The long-run demand for labor in the banking industry

An examination of the decline in banking employment over the last decade, finding that technological changes explain the downturn only for large banks, and that acquisition accounts for very little of the overall employment shift.Banks and banking ; Bank employees

Why are TIIS yields so high? The case of the missing inflation-risk premium

Treasury inflation-indexed securities are just like nominal Treasuries, except that their coupon and principal payments are indexed to inflation. The yield spread between the two types of securities should serve as a daily measurement of the market's perception of expected inflation, modified to reflect the cost of inflationary risk. But TIIS yields are about 60 basis points higher than expected. This Commentary examines several factors other than inflation that might raise TIIS yields relative to nominal Treasuries.Inflation-indexed bonds ; Government securities

Are wages inflexible?

An analysis of wage adjustments for hourly employees in the mid-1980s, finding that workers whose wages change often are likely to see larger fluctuations and those whose wages change infrequently tend to see smaller movements, and concluding that wage flexibility is in fact pervasive in the U.S. economy.Wages

The growing significance of purchasing power parity

The principle of purchasing power parity is central to the theoretical underpinnings of the analysis of many trade issues, but up until recently, there was little evidence that PPP held in the long run. Current research has changed that. The key to finding the evidence was realizing how to test for a long-run effect given the fact that exchange rates adjust to their long-run levels in a nonlinear way.Purchasing power parity

Resisting electronic payment systems: burning down the house?

This commentary explains the phenomena of path dependence, hysteresis, and network economies using lively historical and contemporary examples. The author shows how the path dependence and network economies can interact to produce a variety of undesirable ends-inefficient payment systems, the adoption of inferior technology, or disasters like the 1834 fire that destroyed the British House of Lords.Payment systems

Inflation and welfare: a search approach

This paper extends recent findings in the search-theoretic literature on monetary exchange regarding the welfare costs of inflation. We present first estimates of the welfare cost of inflation using the "welfare triangle" methodology of Bailey (1958) and Lucas (2000). We then derive a money demand function from the search-theoretic model of Lagos and Wright (2005) and we estimate it from U.S. data over the period 1900-2000. We show that the welfare cost of inflation predicted by the model accords with the welfare-triangle measure when pricing mechanisms are such that buyers appropriate the social marginal benefit of their real balances. For other mechanisms, welfare triangles underestimate the true welfare cost of inflation because of a rent-sharing externality. We also point out other inefficiencies associated with noncompetitive pricing, which matter for estimating the cost of inflation. We then illustrate how endogenous participation decisions can mitigate or exacerbate the cost of inflation, and we provide calibrated examples in which a deviation from the Friedman rule is optimal. Finally, we discuss distributional effects of inflation.Inflation (Finance)

The Eurosystem money market auctions: a banking perspective

This paper analyzes the individual bidding behavior of German banks in the money market auctions conducted by the ECB from the beginning of the third quarter of 2000 to the end of the first quarter of 2001. Our approach takes a variety of characteristics of the individual banks into account. In particular, we consider variables that capture the different use of liquidity and the different attitude towards liquidity risk of the individual banks. It turns out that these characteristics are reflected in the banks’ respective bidding behavior to a large extent. Thus our study contributes to a deeper understanding of the way liquidity risk is managed in the banking sector.Banks and banking, Central ; Bank liquidity ; European Central Bank ; Interbank market

The reduced form as an empirical tool: a cautionary tale from the financial veil

An analysis of the limitations of the reduced-form empirical strategy as a method of testing the Modigliani-Miller model of corporate financial structure, demonstrating that an empirical strategy that is not closely tied to an underlying economic theory of behavior will usually yield estimates that are too imprecise or too unreliable to form a basis for policy.Corporations - Finance ; Investments

Credit default swaps and their market function

Credit derivative instruments allow default risk to be segregated from debt of all kinds. They have granted investors the ability to hedge their portfolios and provided numerous institutions with a new source of income. However, the market for credit default swaps is neither transparent nor regulated, perhaps undermining the stability of the financial system it has helped innovate.Credit derivatives ; Swaps (Finance)

Bubble, toil, and trouble

When people call the dot-com boom a bubble, they imply that investors based their decisions on something other than a good estimate of the future value of the assets theywere buying. But some economists say that is not likely because episodes like the dot-com bust show future value is not always easy to predict, especially when the asset is a new technology. This Commentary shows how both explanations can describe a famous historical bubble that occurred after the introduction of a technology that was new at the beginning of the eighteenth century—a novel macroeconomic theory.Speculation ; Financial crises ; Law, John