Search Results
Working Paper
A comparison of discount rate models using international stock market data
This paper compares the ability of four discount rate models to explain the cross-sectional and time-series variation of stock returns in the U.S., Japan, England, Germany, and Canada. The data consist of quarterly returns (in dollars) on Morgan Stanley's Capital International indices for the period 1972 through 1991. The following four models are considered: (1) A consumption CAPM model, linking the discount rate to the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution in consumption, (2) A production CAPM model, linking the discount rate to the intertemporal marginal rate of transformation in ...
Working Paper
Testing Present Value Models of the Current Account: A Cautionary Note
Following Campbell (1987) and Campbell and Shiller (1987), many papers have evaluated the intertemporal approach to the current account by testing restrictions on a Vector Autoregression (VAR). The attractiveness of the Campbell-Shiller methodology is that it is thought to be immune to omitted information. This paper uses results from Hansen and Sargent (1991a) and Quah (1990) to show that this is not true in certain (empirically plausible) situations. In particular, it is shown that if fundamentals are driven by unobserved (to the econometrician) permanent and transitory components, then the ...
Working Paper
A Robust Hansen-Sargent Prediction Formula
This paper derives a formula for the optimal forecast of a discounted sum of future values of a random variable. This problem reflects a preference for robustness in the presence of (unstructured) model uncertainty. The paper shows that revisions of a robust forecast are more sensitive to new information, and discusses the relevance of this result to previous findings of excess sensitivity of consumption and asset prices to new information.
Working Paper
Signal extraction and the propagation of business cycles
This paper studies a class of models developed by Townsend (1993) and Sargent (1991). These models feature dynamic signal extraction problems in which firms with heterogeneous information draw inferences from endogenously generated time series about the value of common persistent shock. Because the information firms receive is partially determined by the expectations of other firms, each firm must 'forecast the forecasts of others'. Moreover, since it is common knowledge that everyone is in the same situation, there occurs an infinite regress in expectations, in which each firm attempts to ...
Journal Article
Generational accounting in open economies
Using data on U.S. and Japanese government debt, we calibrate a version of Weil's (1989) model and study the international and intergenerational consequences of recent fiscal policy. Assuming debt/GDP ratios stabilize at current levels, the model implies: (1) the world real interest rate rises by fewer than two basis points; (2) the United States runs small but persistent external deficits; and (3) current generations in the United States experience a slight increase in wealth, while future generations both at home and abroad suffer analogous decreases. Most of the wealth effects are ...
Journal Article
Contractionary effects of devaluation
Journal Article
New measures of Japanese monetary policy
Journal Article
Will inflation targeting work in developing countries?
Journal Article
Export competition and contagious currency crises
Journal Article
International trade and U.S. labor market trends