1,721,090 research outputs found
How inflation hawks escape expectations traps
Full text linkWhy did inflation increase so dramatically from the 1960s to the 1970s? One possible theory is that once people started believing inflation would rise, the Fed was forced to validate those expectations by increasing the money supply. In "How Inflation Hawks Escape Expectations Traps," Sylvain Leduc discusses this "expectations trap" hypothesis and uses a direct measure of expectations to see if the theory is consistent with the data.Inflation (Finance)
Deficit-financed tax cuts and interest rates
Full text linkWhy do proposals to lower taxes often meet with opposition in Congress. One argument is that lowering taxes without an equivalent fall in government spending may lead to future budget deficits, which will translate into higher long-term interest rates and a lower level of income. Sylvain Leduc discusses the theoretical arguments under which budget deficits lead to higher interest rates. He also surveys empirical studies that used data on expected budget deficits to document the possibility that increases in future budget deficits are associated with higher real long-term interest rates.Deficit financing ; Taxation ; Interest rates
US imbalances: the role of technology and policy
Full text linkThis paper investigates the role of three likely factors in driving the steady deterioration of the US external balance: US technology developments, changes in the US government fiscal position and the Fed’s monetary policy. Estimating several Vector Autoregressions on US data over the period 1982:2 to 2005:4 we identify five structural shocks: a multi-factor productivity shock; an investment-specific technology shock; a monetary policy shock; and a fiscal revenue and spending shock. Together these shocks can account for the deterioration and subsequent reversal of the trade balance in the 1980s. Productivity improvements and fiscal and monetary policy easing also play an important role in the increase of the external deficit since 2000, but these structural shocks can not explain why the trade balance deteriorated in the second half of the 1990s. JEL Classification: F3, F4global imbalances, open economy, VARs
Optimal Monetary Policy in an Estimated Local Currency Pricing Model
Full text linkWe analyze fluctuations in inflation and the nominal exchange rate under optimal monetary policy with local currency pricing by developing two-country DSGE local currency pricing and producer currency pricing models. We estimate our models using Bayesian techniques with Japanese and US data, and calculate impulse response functions. Our estimation results show that local currency pricing is strongly supported against producer currency pricing. From the estimated parameters, we show that completely stabilizing consumer price index inflation is optimal from the viewpoint of minimizing welfare costs and that completely stabilizing consumer price index inflation is consistent with completely stabilizing the nominal exchange rate.local currency pricing, optimal monetary policy, CPI inflation, fixed exchange rate, Bayesian estimation
Trade Integration, Competiton, and the Decline in Exchange-rate Pass-through
Full text linkOver the past twenty years, U.S. import prices have become less responsive to the exchange rate. We propose that this decline is a result of increased trade integration. To illustrate this effect, we develop an open economy DGE model in which there is strategic complementarity in price setting so that a firm's pricing decision depends on the prices set by its competitors. Because of the complementarity in price setting, a foreign exporter finds it optimal to vary its markup over cost in response to shocks that change the exchange rate, which insulates import prices from exchange rate movements. With increased trade integration, exporters have become more responsive to the prices of their competitors and this change in pricing behavior accounts for a significant portion of the observed decline in the sensitivity of U.S import prices to the exchange rate. Our environment of low pass-through also has important implications for the welfare benefits of trade integration: we find that the benefits are substantially reduced compared to an environment with complete pass-through.Pass-through, Trade Integration, Strategic Complementarities
Monetary policy transparency and inflation persistence in a small open economy
Full text linkUsing a New Keynesian small open economy model, we examine the effects of central bank transparency on inflation persistence. We have found that more opacity could reinforce the effect of persistent shocks on the level and variability of endogenous variables if the difference between the interest elasticity of domestic goods demand and the degree of trade openness is sufficient large or sufficiently low, judging on structural parameters characterising the economy, the central bank preference and its initial degree of opacity. Our result implies that, under perfect capital mobility, a high degree of domestic financial development is a good reason for increasing the transparency.Central bank’s transparency, open economy, inflation persistence, real exchange rate persistence
Replication data for: Learning in the Oil Futures Markets: Evidence and Macroeconomic Implications
No full textReplication data for the work in in the Oil Futures Markets: Evidence and Macroeconomic Implications by Sylvain Leduc, Kevin Moran, and Robert Vigfusso
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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