Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 43.
(refine search)
Working Paper
Evaluating the impact of fair value accounting on financial institutions: implications for accounting standards setting and bank supervision
Recent standard-setting activity related to fair value accounting has injected new life into questions of whether fair value provides information useful for decision-making, and whether there might be unintended consequences on financial stability. This discussion paper provides insight into these questions by performing a holistic evaluation of fair value accounting?s usefulness, the potential impacts it may have on financial institutions and any broader macroeconomic effects. Materials reviewed as part of this analysis include public bank regulatory filings, financial statements, and fair ...
Journal Article
Cashing out: the treasurer's evolving role
Journal Article
Making the numbers
Report
Capital account liberalization as a signal
This paper presents a model in which a government's current capital controls policy signals future policies. Controls on capital outflows evolve in response to news on technology, contingent on government attitudes toward taxation of capital. When there is uncertainty over government types, a policy of liberal capital outflows sends a positive signal that may trigger a capital inflow. This prediction is consistent with the experience of several countries that have recently liberalized their capital accounts.
Discussion Paper
A Closer Look at the Fed’s Balance Sheet Accounting
An earlier post on how the Fed changes the size of its balance sheet prompted several questions from readers about the Federal Reserve?s accounting of asset purchases and the payment of principal by the Treasury on Treasury securities owned by the Fed. In this post, we provide a more detailed explanation of the accounting rules that govern these transactions.
Working Paper
Beyond the numbers: an analysis of optimistic and pessimistic language in earnings press releases
In this paper, we examine whether managers use optimistic and pessimistic language in earnings press releases to provide information about expected future firm performance to the market, and whether the market responds to optimistic and pessimistic language usage in earnings press releases after controlling for the earnings surprise and other factors likely to influence the market*s response to the earnings announcement. We use textual-analysis software to measure levels of optimistic and pessimistic language for a sample of approximately 24,000 earnings press releases issued between 1998 and ...
Working Paper
Accounting for non-annuitization
Why don't people buy annuities? Several explanations have been provided by the previous literature: large fraction of preannuitized wealth in retirees' portfolios; adverse selection; bequest motives; and medical expense uncertainty. This paper uses a quantitative model to assess the importance of these impediments to annuitization and also studies three newer explanations: government safety net in terms of means-tested transfers; illiquidity of housing wealth; and restrictions on minimum amount of investment in annuities. This paper shows that quantitatively the last three explanations play a ...
Working Paper
Accounting for Central Neighborhood Change, 1980-2010
Neighborhoods within 2 km of most central business districts of U.S. metropolitan areas experienced population declines from 1980 to 2000 but have rebounded markedly since 2000 at greater pace than would be expected from simple mean reversion. Statistical decompositions reveal that 1980-2000 departures of residents without a college degree (of all races) generated most of the declines while the return of college educated whites and the stabilization of neighborhood choices by less educated whites promoted most of the post-2000 rebound. The rise of childless households and the increase in the ...
Working Paper
Two flaws in business cycle accounting
Using ?business cycle accounting? (BCA), Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2006) (CKM) conclude that models of financial frictions which create a wedge in the intertemporal Euler equation are not promising avenues for modeling business cycle dynamics. There are two reasons that this conclusion is not warranted. First, small changes in the implementation of BCA overturn CKM?s conclusions. Second, one way that shocks to the intertemporal wedge impact on the economy is by their spillover effects onto other wedges. This potentially important mechanism for the transmission of intertemporal wedge shocks ...
Working Paper
Market price accounting and depositor discipline in Japanese regional banks
We examine the determinants of Japanese regional bank decisions concerning pricing unrealized losses or gains to market. We also examine the impact of these decisions on the intensity of depositor discipline, in the form of the sensitivity of deposit growth to bank financial conditions. To obtain consistent estimates of depositor discipline, we first model and estimate the bank pricing-to-market decision and then estimate the intensity of depositor discipline after conditioning for that decision. We find that banks were less likely to price to market the larger were their unrealized ...