Does credit availability exacerbate asset price inflation? Are there long run consequences? During the farm land price boom and bust before the Great Depression, we find that credit availability directly inflated land prices. Credit also amplified the relationship between positive fundamentals...

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes, and average prices paid by consumers ("effective" prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many US metropolitan areas. Inflation in the effective prices paid by consumers declines...

Term premia implied by maximum likelihood estimates of affine term structure models are misleading because of small-sample bias. We show that accounting for this bias alters the conclusions about the trend, cycle, and macroeconomic determinants of the term premia estimated in Wright (2011). His...

We estimate a state-of-the-art DSGE model to study the natural rate of interest in the United States over the last 20 years. The natural rate is highly procyclical, and fell substantially below zero in each of the last three recessions. Although the drop was of comparable magnitude across the...

Bauer, Rudebusch, and Wu (2014) advocate the use of bias-corrected estimates in their comment on Wright (2011). Econometric estimation of a macro-finance VAR provides quite imprecise estimates of future short-term interest rates. Nonetheless, comparison with survey responses indicates that the...

The rate of inflation fell far less over the period 2007-2013 than in the period 1979-1985 despite similar large increases in the unemployment rate. This paper asks why. Possible explanations include a change in the persistence of inflation, changes in NAIRU, and other shocks. A change in the...

The data in Fehr and Tyran (FT, 2001) and Luba Petersen and Abel Winn (PW,2013) show that money illusion plays an important role in nominal price adjustment after a fully anticipated negative monetary shock. Money Illusion affects subjects' expectations, and causes pronounced nominal inertia...

We propose a continuous time model to investigate the impact of inflation credibility on sovereign debt dynamics. At every point in time, an impatient government decides fiscal surplus and inflation, without commitment. Inflation is costly, but reduces the real value of outstanding nominal debt....

We develop a model with partial insurance against idiosyncratic wage shocks to quantify risk sharing. Closed-form solutions are obtained for equilibrium allocations and for moments of the joint distribution of consumption, hours, and wages. We prove identification and demonstrate how labor...

The newsworthiness of an event is partly determined by how unusual it is and this paper investigates the business cycle implications of this fact. Signals that are more likely to be observed after unusual events may increase both uncertainty and disagreement among agents. In a simple business...