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Journal Article
The tax effect, and the recent behaviours of the after-tax real rate : is it too high?
Concerns that interest rates are too high have been prevalent throughout the 1980s. Even after adjusting for expected inflation, many people argue that real interest rates are inordinately high by historical standards. Yash Mehra, in his article The Tax Effect and the Recent Behaviour of the After-Tax Real Rate: Is It Too High?, points out that because interest income is taxed, business decisions are based on the after-tax real rate and public concern should focus on this measure of interest rates. Mehra adds to the accumulating evidence that changes in taxes on interest income alter the ...
Working Paper
The Taylor principle, interest rate smoothing and Fed policy in the 1970s and 1980s
Using real time estimates of output gaps or Greenbook forecasts of the unemployment rate, this article estimates Taylor-type policy rules that predict the actual behavior of the funds rate during two sample periods, 1968Q1 to 1979Q2 and 1979Q3 to 1994Q4. The inflation rate response coefficient is close to unity over the first sub-period and well above unity over the second, suggesting Fed policy violated the Taylor principle during the first period. The adjustment of the funds rate in response to fundamentals is not as rapid during the first period as it is during the second. Together these ...
Working Paper
Wage growth and the inflation process: an empirical note
A central proposition in the Phillips curve view of the inflation process is that prices are marked up over productivity-adjusted labor costs. If that is true, then long-run movements in prices and labor costs must be correlated. If long-run movements in a time series are modeled as a stochastic trend, then the above noted implication of the 'price markup' view is related to the concept of cointegration discussed in Granger (1986), which says that cointegrated multiple time series share common stochastic trends. The evidence reported here shows that time series measuring rates of change in ...
Journal Article
A forward-looking monetary policy reaction function
Journal Article
Some further results on the source of shift in M1 demand in the 1980s
What caused the observed shift of M1 demand in the 1980s? Rival candidate explanations stress (1) M1 growth volatility, (2) disinflation, (3) rising real value of stocks, (4) rising volume of financial transactions, (5) rising household financial wealth, and (6) introduction into M1 of interest-bearing checkable deposits. The evidence presented here supports item six only.
Journal Article
Inflationary expectations, money growth, and the vanishing liquidity effect of money on interest : a further investigation
Market participants recognize two opposing effects of money supply growth on interest rates: a temporary liquidity effect and a permanent expectations effect. That the latter dominates in the long run is cleara sustained increase in money growth causes proportionally higher interest rates due to a rise in inflationary expectations. In the short run, however, this interest-raising expectations effect is to some degree offset by the interest-lowering liquidity effect as monetary acceleration initially gluts the market for money balances. Depending on the relative strengths of these two opposing ...
Working Paper
The bond rate and actual future inflation
The long-term bond rate is cointegrated with the actual one-period inflation rate during two sample periods, 1961Q1 to 1979Q3 and 1961Q1 to 1995Q4. This result indicates that in the long run the bond rate and actual inflation move together. The nature of short-run dynamic adjustments between these variables has, however, changed over time. In the pre-1979 period, when the bond rate rose above the one-period inflation rate, actual inflation accelerated. In the post-1979 period, however, the bond rate reverted back and actual inflation did not accelerate. Thus, the bond rate signaled future ...