Search Results
Working Paper
Consumption, durable goods, and transaction costs
We study consumption of durable and nondurable goods when the durable good is subject to transaction costs. In the model, agents derive utility from a service flow of a durable good and a consumption flow of a nondurable good. The key feature of the model is the existence of a fixed transaction cost in the durable good market. The fixed cost induces an inaction region in the purchase of the durable good. More importantly, the inability to adjust the durable stock induces variation in consumption of the nondurable good over the inaction region. The variation is a function of the degree of ...
Discussion Paper
Potential Output and Recessions: Are We Fooling Ourselves?
The economic collapse in the wake of the global financial crises (GFC) and the weaker-than-expected recovery in many countries have led to questions about the impact of severe downturns on economic potential.
Working Paper
Monetary policy and house prices: a cross-country study
This paper examines periods of pronounced rises and falls of real house prices since 1970 in eighteen major industrial countries, with particular focus on the lessons for monetary policy. We find that real house prices are pro-cyclical?co-moving with real GDP, consumption, investment, CPI inflation, budget and current account balances, and output gaps. House price booms are typically preceded by a period of easing monetary policy, but then diminishing slack and rising inflation lead monetary authorities to begin tightening policy before house prices peak. In a careful reading of official ...
Working Paper
Exchange rate pass-through to U.S. import prices: some new evidence
This paper documents a sustained decline in exchange rate pass-through to U.S. import prices, from above 0.5 during the 1980s to somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.2 during the last decade. This decline in the pass-through coefficient is robust to the measure of foreign prices that is included in the regression (i.e., CPI versus PPI), whether the estimation is done in levels or differences, and whether U.S. prices are included as an explanatory variable. Notably, the largest estimates of pass-through are obtained when commodity prices are excluded from the regression. In this case, the ...
Working Paper
Housing market risks in the United Kingdom
House prices in the United Kingdom rose rapidly in recent years. The run-up, larger than any other in U.K. history, leveled off early last year. House prices are currently declining at rates faster than those seen in the early 1990's downturn. The housing downturn, however, is far from complete. Using the price-rent ratio as a guide, house prices are likely to fall at least a further 30 percent before leveling off. Given the historic links between housing and real activity, the downturn is likely to be associated with very slow growth. Going forward, we recommend the price-rent ratio as the ...
Working Paper
A trend and variance decomposition of the rent-price ratio in housing markets
We use the dynamic Gordon-growth model to decompose the rent-price ratio for owner-occupied housing in the U.S., four Census regions, and twenty-three metropolitan areas into three components: The expected present value of real rental growth, real interest rates, and future housing premia. We use these components to decompose the trend and variance in rent-price ratios for 1975-2005, for an early sub-sample (1975-1996), and for the recent housing boom (1997-2005). We have three main findings. First, variation in expected future real rents accounts for a small share of variation in our sample ...
Working Paper
Are recoveries from banking and financial crises really so different?
This paper studies the behavior of recoveries from recessions across 59 advanced and emerging market economies over the past 40 years. Focusing specifically on the performance of output after the recession trough, we find little or no difference in the pace of output growth across types of recessions. In particular, banking and financial crisis do not affect the strength of the economic rebound, although these recessions are more severe, implying a sizable output loss. However, recovery does change with some characteristics of recession. Recoveries tend to be faster following deeper ...
Working Paper
Cheap Talk and the Efficacy of the ECB’s Securities Market Programme: Did Bond Purchases Matter?
In 2010, in response to an ever-worsening fiscal crisis, the ECB began purchasing sovereign debt from troubled euro-area countries through its Securities Market Programme (SMP). This program was designed to improve market functioning and restore the monetary transmission mechanism within the euro area. This paper does not test those ideals. Rather, we test whether SMP purchases systematically lowered peripheral yields and spreads. We find limited evidence of purchase effects but large announcement effects. In addition, on days in which the ECB was believed to have made large purchases, yields ...
Working Paper
The growth of Chinese exports: an examination of the detailed trade data
Over the past decade, Chinese exports have boomed, increasing far faster than GDP growth. What can account for this explosion? Our paper uses finely detailed Chinese export data (8-digit HS codes) combined with U.S. trade data to explore this question. Although exchange rate policy clearly boosted the trade surplus, and the structure of the economy, e.g. abundant cheap labor, encouraged investment, these alone cannot account for the changing composition and acceleration of exports. We find that the growth in exports is most likely a product of effective Chinese industrial policy and ...