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Working Paper
Are banks market timers or market makers? Explaining foreign exchange trading profits
We analyze the foreign exchange trading earnings of large U.S commercial banks over the past several years. In particular, we use several approaches to try to determine to what extent these profits can be attributed either to position-taking by banks or to the provision of intermediation services to bank customers. The results can be summarized as follows. First, banks appear to generate a substantial portion of their foreign exchange earnings from making markets in conventional spot and forward foreign exchange contracts. In addition, some indirect evidence supports anecdotal reports that ...
Working Paper
Determinants of the 1991-93 Japanese recession: evidence from a structural model of the Japanese economy
The objectives of this paper are to determine the extent to which various factors contributed to the current recession in Japan and to assess whether the recent behavior of the Japanese economy differs from that in previous recessions. Toward that end, we develop a small, structural macroeconometric model of the Japanese economy and estimate it using data from 1971 Q1 through 1991 Q1, the period just prior to the recent downturn. The important results can be summarized as follows. First, the severity of the current recession probably does not reflect structural economic changes. Second, the ...
Working Paper
El Nino and world primary commodity prices: warm water or hot air?
This paper examines the historical effects of El Nio on world prices and economic activity. Although the primary focus is on world real non-oil primary commodity prices, the effects on G-7 consumer price inflation and GDP growth are also considered. This paper has several distinct advantages over previous studies. First, several econometric models are estimated using fairly broad measures of prices and economic activity. Second, the models include continuous measures of El Nio intensity (sea surface temperature and sea-level air pressure anomalies in the Pacific Ocean) rather than dummy ...
Working Paper
Excess returns and risk at the long end of the Treasury market: an EGARCH-M approach
This paper models weekly excess returns of 10-year Treasury notes and long-term Treasury bonds from 1968 through 1993 using an exponential generalized autoregressive conditional hetroskedasticity in mean (EGARCH-M) approach. The results indicate the presence of conditional hetroskedasticity and a strong tendency for the ex-ante volatility of excess returns to increase more following negative excess return innovations compared to positive innovations of equal magnitude. In addition, increases in ex-ante volatility are associated in some subperiods with rising excess returns on longer-term ...
Working Paper
Bank lending and economic activity in Japan: did \"financial factors\" contribute to the recent downturn?
In this paper, we examine the role of "financial factors" in Japan and attempt to gauge their recent impact on the Japanese economy. First, we find that proxies for financial factors enter significantly in behavioral equations for loan standards, loan demand and aggregate demand, although these proxies explain only a small amount of the variation in those variables. Second, there is some, albeit inconclusive, evidence that balance-sheet problems of households and firms contributed to Japan's recent recession. We find that exogenous declines in equity prices contributed significantly to the ...
Working Paper
When is monetary policy effective?
In this paper, we investigate a number of issues that have not been completely addressed in previous studies regarding the possible asymmetric effects of monetary policy. Overall, we interpret our results as weak evidence in favor of sticky-wage and sticky-price theories and strong evidence against credit-rationing theories. First, we find that models that allow for asymmetries with respect to contractionary/expansionary monetary policy fit the data better than models that allow for asymmetries associated with the state of the business cycle. Second, we find that contractionary monetary ...
Working Paper
The federal funds rate and the implementation of monetary policy: estimating the Federal Reserve's reaction function
Several recent studies have reached quite different conclusions about which variable is the best indicator of the stance of monetary policy. These differences likely reflect varying assumptions about bank and Federal Reserve behavior. This paper takes a detailed and comprehensive look at the implementation of monetary policy and the identification of monetary policy shocks. The paper first outlines a general analytical model for studying and evaluating monetary policy procedures. The model is then used to estimate both the Fed's operational policy objectives and its intermediate objectives. ...