Search Results
Working Paper
Asset Prices and Credit with Diagnostic Expectations
Using long-run cross-country panel data, we document that (i) contemporaneous credit growth strongly predicts contemporaneous equity returns with positive sign, and (ii) lagged credit growth strongly predicts contemporaneous equity returns with negative sign. This correlation reversal is robust to added controls for contemporaneous and lagged consumption growth and these credit factors have greater explanatory power than the consumption factors. We find that a general equilibrium model with financial frictions and rational expectations fails to match the empirically estimated sign on ...
Journal Article
What Do Financial Officers Predict for Price Growth?
Survey responses from chief financial officers and other financial decisionmakers yield a new measure of inflation expectations. Rather than asking about expectations for overall inflation, this survey asks about expected price growth at each respondent’s business. Aggregating survey responses provides an economy-wide indicator that tracks well with actual core consumer price index inflation. Survey responses collected before and during the recent oil shock imply that core inflation could remain elevated this year if the historical relationship between financial officer expectations and ...
Working Paper
Understanding Persistent ZLB: Theory and Assessment
We develop a theoretical framework that rationalizes two hypotheses of long-lasting low interest rate episodes: deflationary-expectations-traps and secular stagnation in a unified setting. These hypotheses differ in the sign of the theoretical correlation between inflation and output growth that they imply. Using the data from Japan over 1998:Q1-2019:Q4, we find that the data favor the expectations-trap hypothesis. The superior model fit of the expectations trap relies on its ability to generate the observed negative correlation between inflation and output growth.
Working Paper
Distribution of Market Power, Endogenous Growth, and Monetary Policy
We incorporate incumbent innovation in a Keynesian growth framework to generate an endogenous distribution of market power across firms. Existing firms increase markups over time through successful innovation. Entrant innovation disrupts the accumulation of market power by incumbents. Using this environment, we highlight a novel misallocation channel for monetary policy. A contractionary monetary policy shock causes an increase in markup dispersion across firms by discouraging entrant innovation relative to incumbent innovation. We characterize the circumstances when contractionary monetary ...
Journal Article
Does Monetary Policy Have Long-Run Effects?
Monetary policy is often regarded as having only temporary effects on the economy, moderating the expansions and contractions that make up the business cycle. However, it is possible for monetary policy to affect an economy’s long-run trajectory. Analyzing cross-country data for a set of large national economies since 1900 suggests that tight monetary policy can reduce potential output even after a decade. By contrast, loose monetary policy does not appear to raise long-run potential. Such effects may be important for assessing the preferred stance of monetary policy.
Working Paper
Understanding Persistent Stagnation
We theoretically explore long-run stagnation at the zero lower bound in a representative agent framework. We analytically compare expectations-driven stagnation to a secular stagnation episode and find contrasting policy implications for changes in government spending, supply shocks and neo-Fisherian policies. On the other hand, a minimum wage policy is expansionary and robust to the source of stagnation. Using Bayesian methods, we estimate a DSGE model that can accommodate two competing hypotheses of long-run stagnation in Japan. We document that equilibrium selection under indeterminacy ...
Working Paper
Longer-Run Economic Consequences of Pandemics
How do major pandemics affect economic activity in the medium to longer term? Is it consistent with what economic theory prescribes? Since these are rare events, historical evidence over many centuries is required. We study rates of return on assets using a dataset stretching back to the 14th century, focusing on 12 major pandemics where more than 100,000 people died. In addition, we include major armed conflicts resulting in a similarly large death toll. Significant macroeconomic after-effects of the pandemics persist for about 40 years, with real rates of return substantially depressed. In ...
Working Paper
Supply or Demand? Policy Makers' Confusion in the Presence of Hysteresis
Policy makers need to separate between temporary demand-driven shocks and permanent shocks in order to design optimal aggregate demand policies. In this paper we study the case of a central bank that ignores the presence of hysteresis when identifying shocks. By assuming that all low frequency output fluctuations are driven by permanent technology shocks, monetary policy is not aggressive enough in response to demand shocks. In addition, we show that errors in assessing the state of the economy can be self-perpetuating if seen through the lens of the mistaken views of the policymaker. We show ...
Working Paper
Can Models with Idiosyncratic Risk Solve the Equity Premium Puzzle? Redux
Can idiosyncratic risk explain the equity premium? We revisit this question using a novel measure of imperfect risk sharing, implied by a large class of heterogeneous-agent models, constructed using household-level panel data. We identify a group of households – with relatively high income but low net worth – whose consumption is sufficiently volatile and risky to explain 94% of the observed U.S. Sharpe ratio. In contrast, the consumption dynamics of high net-worth individuals predict a negative Sharpe ratio and so do not constitute the relevant pricing factor, consistent with models ...
Working Paper
Low Risk Sharing with Many Assets
Classical contributions in international macroeconomics rely on goods-market mechanisms to reconcile the cyclicality of real exchange rates when financial markets are incomplete. However, cross-border trade in one domestic and one foreign-currency-denominated risk-free asset prohibits these mechanisms from breaking the pattern consistent with complete markets. In this paper, we characterize how goods markets drive exchange rate cyclicality, taking into account trade in risk-free and/or risky assets. We show that goods-market mechanisms come back into play, even when there is cross-border ...