Financial innovation and monetary policy effectiveness

Monetary policy - United States ; Money supply

Banking and securities and insurance: economists' views of the synergies - summary of presentations

Financial services industry ; Bank supervision

The Information in the High Yield Bond Spread for the Business Cycle: Evidence and Some Implications

The market for high yield (below investment-grade) corporate bonds developed in the middle 1980s. We show that, since this time, the high yield spread has had significant explanatory power for the business cycle. We interpret this finding as possibly symptomatic of financial factors at work in the business cycle, along the lines suggested by the financial accelerator. We also show that over this period the high yield spread outperforms other leading financial indicators, including the term spread, the paper-bill spread and the Federal Funds rate. We conjecture that changes in the conduct of monetary policy over time may account for the reduced informativeness of these alternative indicators, all of which are tied closely to monetary policy.

The capital gains and losses on U. S. government debt: 1942-1986

Deficit financing ; Government securities

Credit effects in the monetary mechanism

Paper for a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York entitled Financial Innovation and Monetary TransmissionCredit ; Monetary policy

Local null controllability of the N-dimensional Navier-Stokes system with N-1 scalar controls in an arbitrary control domain

In this paper we deal with the local null controllability of the N-dimensional Navier-Stokes system with internal controls having one vanishing component. The novelty of this work is that no condition is imposed on the control domain

Tracing the tin-opacified yellow glazed ceramics in the western Islamic world: the findings at Madinat al-Zahra’

A small group of opaque yellow glazed sherds has recently been identified among the ceramics excavated at the Islamic city of Madinat al-Zahra’ near Cordoba, in al-Andalus (southern Spain), which was founded in 936 AD as the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate power. A small group of sherds from Madinat al-Zahra’, which can be dated to about 960–980 AD, has been examined in polished section in a SEM with EDS attached. These analyses have established that the Madinat al-Zahra’ sherds were opacified with lead stannate, and not lead antimonate, as was being used to opacify yellow glazed ceramics in Egypt and Tunisia in the ninth and tenth centuries AD. Islamic opaque yellow glazed ceramics, with lead stannate as the opacifier, were first produced (Beiträge Zur Islamischen Kunst Und Archäologie 4:125–144, 2014) in Egypt and Syria in seventh/eighth centuries AD, and from there, the technology spread eastwards into Iraq and Iran in the ninth century AD and continued in use in Iran and Central Asia into the tenth century AD and beyond. However, the question of where these opaque yellow glazed ceramics were produced has not been fully resolved. Because such ceramics are extremely rare in al-Andalus, it seems most likely that they were either imported from Iran or Central Asia or produced locally by potters arriving from these areas. The study adds one further, yet not fully understood chapter to the story of a persistent glaze technology which has been widely ignored.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Listening to loan officers: the impact of commercial credit standards on lending and output

Over most of the last thirty-three years, the Federal Reserve has polled a small number of bank loan officers about their moves to tighten or ease commercial credit standards. Although the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey uses a small sample and gathers only qualitative information, it proves to be a useful tool in predicting changes in commercial lending and output. The authors find a strong correlation between tighter credit standards and slower loan growth and output, even after controlling for credit demand and other predictors of lending and output. The analysis also shows that the loan officer reports can help predict narrower measures of business activity, including inventory investment and industrial production.Bank loans ; Business cycles ; Forecasting