Showing 1 - 10 of 21,130
This paper presents and implements statistical tests of stock market forecastability and volatility that are immune from the severe statistical problems of earlier tests. Although the null hypothesis of strict market efficiency is rejected, the evidence against the hypothesis is not...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005085168
This paper addresses the issue of how to give optimal advice about monetary policy when it is known that the advice may not be heeded. We examine a simple macroeconomic model in which monetary policy has the ability to stabilize output by offsetting exogenous shocks to aggregate demand. The...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005089199
The founding of the Federal Reserve System in 1914 led to a substantial change in the behavior of nominal interest rates. We examine the timing of this change and the speed with which it was effected. We then use data on the term structure of interest rates to determine how expectations...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005828532
This paper evaluates the role of the destruction of the gold standard and the founding of the Federal Reserve, both of which occurred in 1914, in contributing to observed changes in the behavior of interest rates and prices after 1914. The paper presents a model of policy coordination in which...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005829526
This paper examines popular advice on portfolio allocation among cash, bonds, and stocks. It documents that this advice is inconsistent with the mutual-fund separation theorem, which states that all investors should hold the same composition of risky assets. In contrast to the theorem, popular...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710463
This paper examines the impact of major demographic changes on the housing market in the United States. The entry of the Baby Boom generation into its house-buying years is found to be the major cause of the increase in real housing prices in the l97Os. Since the Baby Bust generation is now...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005050411
This paper examines the aftermath of financial crises in advanced countries in the four decades before the Great Recession. We construct a new series on financial distress in 24 OECD countries for the period 1967–2007. The series is based on assessments of the health of countries’ financial...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011201887
From the early 1950s to the early 1990s, increases in Social Security benefits in the United States varied widely in size and timing, and were only rarely undertaken in response to short-run macroeconomic developments. This paper uses these benefit increases to investigate the macroeconomic...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010796704
This paper examines an important gap in the monetary explanation of the Great Depression: the lack of a well-articulated and documented transmission mechanism of monetary shocks to the real economy. It begins by reviewing the challenge to Friedman and Schwartz's monetary explanation provided by...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951469
This paper describes a new data set of the forecasts of output growth, inflation, and unemployment prepared by individual members of the Federal Open Market Committee. The paper discusses the scope of the data set, possibilities for extending it, and some potential uses. It offers a preliminary...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005033485