Search Results
Working Paper
Interactions between the seasonal and business cycles in production and inventories
This paper shows that in several U.S. manufacturing industries, the seasonal variability of production and inventories varies with the state of the business cycle. We present a simple model which implies that if firms reduce the seasonal variability of their production as the economy strengthens, and they either hold constant or increase the stock of inventories they bring into the high-production seasons of the year, then they must face upward-sloping and convex marginal production cost curves. We conclude that firms in a number of industries face upward-sloping and convex ...
Working Paper
Sticky prices: new evidence from retail catalogs
Conference Paper
Rethinking capital regulation
Journal Article
Will a common European monetary policy have asymmetric effects?
This article reviews the evidence on differences in the transmission of monetary policy across European countries. The authors argue that the existing evidence, based almost exclusively on macroeconomic data, does not allow one to decide whether a common monetary policy will have asymmetric effects. A first peek at microeconomic data suggests this may be a promising route for further work.
Journal Article
Sorting out Japan's financial crisis
This article reports on the size of the Japanese financial crisis (currently estimated to cost taxpayers 24 percent of GDP) and sketches the likely ingredients of a successful solution. The crux is that Japan's banks, insurance companies, and government financial agencies all suffer different problems and require different solutions. But all three sectors are connected, and a failure to tackle concurrently the problems of all three promises to doom any reform plan.