What can we learn about monetary policy transparency from financial market data?

In this paper we investigate the impact of UK macroeconomic news announcements on selected futures contracts and exchange rates. We include a wide set of scheduled public news announcements in our study, including official interest rate decisions. We investigate whether the reaction to these announcements has changed since the Bank of England was granted operational independence in May 1997. Our results indicate that there may well have been changes in the way that financial markets incorporate key economic data into securities prices. In particular, we document an increase in the speed of the reaction to interest rate announcements, but also some evidence of a fall in the size of the full reaction. -- In diesem Papier wird untersucht, wie in Großbritannien makroökonomische Neuigkeiten auf ausgewählte Terminkontrakte und Wechselkurse wirken. In der Studie wird eine breite Palette regelmäßig veröffentlichter Daten betrachtet, einschließlich der Entscheidungen über die Notenbankzinsen. Wir untersuchen, ob die Reaktionen auf diese Ankündigungen sich geändert haben, seit der Bank von England im Mai 1997 operationelle Unabhängigkeit gewährt worden ist. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass durchaus Veränderungen zu verzeichnen sind in der Art und Weise, wie auf den Finanzmärkten ökonomische Daten die Wertpapierpreise ändern. Insbesondere dokumentieren wir, dass die Reaktionen auf Zinsänderungen schneller erfolgen aber auch, dass die Stärke der Reaktionen geringer ist.

Increasing incidence of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis on Crete, Greece

To determine whether the incidence of canine leishmaniasis has increased on Crete, Greece, we fitted infection models to serodiagnostic records of 8,848 dog samples for 1990–2006. Models predicted that seroprevalence has increased 2.4% (95% confidence interval 1.61%–3.51%) per year and that incidence has increased 2.2- to 3.8-fold over this 17-year period

Navigating through the interest rate morass: some basic principles

Interest rates

What really happened to interest rates? a longer-run analysis

Interest rates

The Fed and the real rate of interest

Federal funds rate ; Interest rates

Are monetarists an endangered species?

Monetary policy

The epidemiology of canine leishmaniasis: transmission rates estimated from a cohort study in Amazonian Brazil

We estimate the incidence rate, serological conversion rate and basic case reproduction number (R0) of Leishmania infantum from a cohort study of 126 domestic dogs exposed to natural infection rates over 2 years on Marajó Island, Pará State, Brazil. The analysis includes new methods for (1) determining the number of seropositives in cross-sectional serological data, (2) identifying seroconversions in longitudinal studies, based on both the number of antibody units and their rate of change through time, (3) estimating incidence and serological pre-patent periods and (4) calculating R0 for a potentially fatal, vector-borne disease under seasonal transmission. Longitudinal and cross-sectional serological (ELISA) analyses gave similar estimates of the proportion of dogs positive. However, longitudinal analysis allowed the calculation of pre-patent periods, and hence the more accurate estimation of incidence: an infection–conversion model fitted by maximum likelihood to serological data yielded seasonally varying per capita incidence rates with a mean of 8·66×10[minus sign]3/day (mean time to infection 115 days, 95% C.L. 107–126 days), and a median pre-patent period of 94 (95% C.L. 82–111) days. These results were used in conjunction with theory and dog demographic data to estimate the basic reproduction number, R0, as 5·9 (95% C.L. 4·4–7·4). R0 is a determinant of the scale of the leishmaniasis control problem, and we comment on the options for control

Solving the 1980s' velocity puzzle: a progress report

Money supply ; Velocity of money

Would lower federal deficits increase U.S. farm exports?

Agriculture ; Exports

Unlikely Estimates of the Ex Ante Real Interest Rate: Another Dismal Performance from the Dismal Science1

The ex ante real rate of interest is one of the most important concepts in economics and finance. Because the universally-used Fisher theory of interest requires positive ex ante real interest rates, empirical estimates of the ex ante real interest rate derived from the Fisher theory of interest should also be positive. Unfortunately, virtually all estimates of the ex ante real interest rate published in economic journals and textbooks or used in macroeconomic models and policy discussions for the past 35 years contain negative values for extended time periods and, thus, are theoretically flawed. Moreover, the procedures generally used to estimate ex ante real interest rates were shown to produce biased estimates of the ex ante real rate over 30 years ago. In this article, we document this puzzling chasm between the Fisherian theory that mandates positive ex ante real interest rates and the practice of macroeconomists who generate and use ex ante real interest rate estimates that violate this theory. We explore the reasons that this problem exists and assess some alternative approaches for estimating the ex ante real interest rate to determine whether they might resolve this problem.ex ante real interest rate, Fisher theory of interest, biased real interest rate estimates