The informational content of different forecasts can be compared by regressing the actual change in a variable to be forecasted on forecasts of the change. We use the procedure in Fair and Shiller (1987) to examine the informational content of three sets of ex ante forecasts: the American...

The information contained in the forecasts from two econometric models can be compared by regressing the actual change in the variable forecasted on the two forecasts of the change. We do such comparisons in this paper, where the forecasts are based only on information through the period prior...

An indexed unit of account is a money analogue, used to express prices; the unit's purchasing power is defined by an index. Indexed units of account are not true money in that they are not used as a medium of exchange. The first successful indexed unit of account, the Unidad de Fomento (UF) has...

Uncertainty about national income growth poses significant macroeconomic risk to households all over the world. To help reduce investors' exposure, researchers have proposed a controversial new set of security markets called macro markets. These international markets would trade long-term claims...

Recent empirical research on the term structure of interest rates has shown that the long-term interest rate is well described by a distributed lag on short-term interest rates, but does not conform to the expectations theory of the term structure. It has been suggested that the long rate...

Long historical averages of real earnings help forecast present values of future real dividends. With aggregate U.S. stock market data (1871-1986), a vector-autoregressive forecast of the present value of future dividends is, for each year, roughly a weighted average of moving-average earnings...

This paper relates the 2006-2008 meltdown in mortgage markets to falling asset prices, excessive psychological reaction to the burst bubble, and new mortgage vehicles incapable of accommodating sudden changes in asset values. A combination of market-based and regulatory innovations are proposed....

Land isn't that scarce and people just don't seem to understand how little housing should and will appreciate long term. These irrational expectations are likely to bite us again and again with more housing bubbles, according to Robert Shiller.

We examine the link between increases in housing wealth, financial wealth, and consumer spending. We rely upon a panel of 14 countries observed annually for various periods during the past 25 years and a panel of U.S. states observed quarterly during the 1980s and 1990s. We impute the aggregate...