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Working Paper
Interest rates and the volatility and correlation of commodity prices
We purpose a novel explanation for the observed increase in the correlation of commodity prices over the past decade. In contrast to theories that rely on the increased influence of financial speculators, we show that price correlation can increase as a result of a decline in the interest rate. More generally, we examine the effect of interest rates on the volatility and correlation of commodity prices, theoretically through the framework of Deaton and Laroque (1992) and empirically via a panel GARCH model. In theory, we show that lower interest rates decrease the volatility of prices, as ...
Discussion Paper
Do Low Interest Rates Decrease Commodity Price Volatility?
Commodity prices have been volatile over the past decade relative to the 1990s. Over the same period interest rates have also been relatively low, suggesting a possible connection.
Working Paper
Entry dynamics and the decline in exchange-rate pass-through
The degree of exchange-rate pass-through to import prices is low. An average passthrough estimate for the 1980s would be roughly 50 percent for the United States implying that, following a 10 percent depreciation of the dollar, a foreign exporter selling to the U.S. market would raise its price in the United States by 5 percent. Moreover, substantial evidence indicates that the degree of pass-through has since declined to about 30 percent. ; Gust, Leduc, and Vigfusson (2010) demonstrate that, in the presence of pricing complementarity, trade integration spurred by lower costs for importers ...
Working Paper
Pitfalls in estimating asymmetric effects of energy price shocks
A common view in the literature is that the effect of energy price shocks on macroeconomic aggregates is asymmetric in energy price increases and decreases. We show that widely used asymmetric vector autoregressive models of the transmission of energy price shocks are misspecified, resulting in inconsistent parameter estimates, and that the implied impulse responses have been routinely computed incorrectly. As a result, the quantitative importance of unanticipated energy price increases for the U.S. economy has been exaggerated. In response to this problem, we develop alternative regression ...
Working Paper
How does the border affect productivity? evidence from American and Canadian manufacturing industries
This paper studies how much of productivity fluctuations are industry specific versus how much are country specific. Using data on manufacturing industries in Canada and the United States, the paper shows that the correlation between cross-border pairings of the same industry are more often highly correlated than previously thought. In addition, the paper confirms earlier findings that the similarity of input use can help describe the co-movement of productivity fluctuations across industries.
Working Paper
Learning in the Oil Futures Markets: Evidence and Macroeconomic Implications
Using expectations embodied in oil futures prices, we examine how expectations are formed and how they affect the macroeconomic transmission of shocks. We show that an empirical framework in which investors form expectations by learning about the persistence of oil-price movements successfully replicates the fluctuations in oil-price futures since the late 1990s. We then embed this learning mechanism in a model with oil usage and storage. Estimating the model, we document that an increase in the persistence of TFP-driven fluctuations in oil demand largely account for investors' perceptions ...
Journal Article
The elusive boost from cheap oil
The plunge in oil prices since the middle of 2014 has not translated into a dramatic boost for consumer spending, which has continued to grow moderately. This has been particularly surprising since the sharp drop should free up income for households to use toward other purchases. Lessons from an empirical model of learning suggest that the weak response may reflect that consumers initially viewed cheaper oil as a temporary condition. If oil prices remain low, consumer perceptions could change, which would boost spending.
Working Paper
Do oil prices help forecast U.S. real GDP? the role of nonlinearities and asymmetries
There is a long tradition of using oil prices to forecast U.S. real GDP. It has been suggested that the predictive relationship between the price of oil and one-quarter ahead U.S. real GDP is nonlinear in that (1) oil price increases matter only to the extent that they exceed the maximum oil price in recent years and that (2) oil price decreases do not matter at all. We examine, first, whether the evidence of in-sample predictability in support of this view extends to out-of-sample forecasts. Second, we discuss how to extend this forecasting approach to higher horizons. Third, we compare the ...
Working Paper
Entry dynamics and the decline in exchange-rate pass-through
The degree of exchange-rate pass-through to import prices is low. An average pass-through estimate for the 1980s would be roughly 50 percent for the United States implying that, following a 10 percent depreciation of the dollar, a foreign exporter selling to the U.S. market would raise its price in the United States by 5 percent. Moreover, substantial evidence indicates that the degree of pass-through has since declined to about 30 percent. ; Gust, Leduc, and Vigfusson (2010) demonstrate that, in the presence of pricing complementarity, trade integration spurred by lower costs for importers ...
Working Paper
Assessing structural VARs
This paper analyzes the quality of VAR-based procedures for estimating the response of the economy to a shock. We focus on two key issues. First, do VAR-based confidence intervals accurately reflect the actual degree of sampling uncertainty associated with impulse response functions? Second, what is the size of bias relative to confidence intervals, and how do coverage rates of confidence intervals compare with their nominal size? We address these questions using data generated from a series of estimated dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium models. We organize most of our analysis around a ...