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

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

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

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

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

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

Voting on social security: evidence from OECD countries

An examination of the subset of public choice models for Social Security that have empirical implications. The data, collected from OECD countries for the years 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990, show that higher median voter age, greater income heterogeneity, similarity in family size, and variables that make a public pension program profitable are all associated with a larger program.Social security

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

Rethinking the welfare cost of inflation

New models of monetary economies, developed in the last 15 years, suggest that traditional measures of the welfare cost of inflation may underestimate the true loss that inflation inflicts on society. According to these models, the cost of 10 percent inflation ranges from 1 to 5 percent of real income.Inflation (Finance)

Sterilized intervention, nonsterilized intervention, and monetary policy

Sterilized intervention is generally ineffective. Countries that conduct monetary policy using an overnight, interbank rate as an intermediate target automatically sterilize their interventions. Nonsterilized interventions can influence nominal exchange rates, but they conflict with price stability unless the underlying shocks prompting them are domestic in origin and monetary in nature. Nonsterilized interventions, however, are unnecessary since standard open-market operations can achieve the same result.Foreign exchange ; Foreign exchange rates ; Monetary policy