Forecasting the effects of reduced defense spending

Forecasts from a vector autoregressive model indicate that the substantial cuts in defense spending proposed by the Bush Administration in 1991 are likely to reduce GNP in both the short run and the long run. These forecasts hold even if proceeds from the spending cuts are used to reduce the federal debt. The long-range VAR forecasts, in particular, contrast markedly with those of the large-scale econometric models employed by the Congressional Budget Office.Defense contracts

M2 and monetary policy: a critical review of the recent debate

Monetary policy ; Money supply

The rational expectations hypothesis of the term structure, monetary policy, and time-varying term premia

Rational expectations (Economic theory) ; Interest rates ; Monetary policy

On Measuring the Welfare Cost of Business Cycles

Lucas (1987) argues that the gain from eliminating aggregate fluctuations is trivial. Following Lucas, a number of researchers have altered assumptions on preferences and found that the gain from eliminating business cycles are potentially very large. However, in these exercises little discipline is placed on preference parameters. This paper estimates the welfare cost of business cycles, allowing for potential time-non-separabilities in preferences, where discipline is placed on the choice of preference parameters by requiring that the preferences be consistent with observed fluctuations in a model of business cycles. That is, a theoretical real business cycle world is constructed and the representative agent is then placed in this world. The agent responds optimally to exogenous shocks, given the frictions in the economy. The agent's preference parameters, along with other structural parameters, are estimated using a Bayesian procedure involving Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Two main results emerge from the paper. First, the form for the time-non-separability estimated in this paper is very different than the forms suggested and used elsewhere in the literature. Second, the welfare cost of business cycles is close to Lucas's estimate.

On the Cyclicality of Real Wages and Wage Differentials

In this paper we investigate the cyclicality of real wages. The approach we take is to search for the largest possible common cyclical component in a statistical sense. This contrasts with the existing literature which uses observable variables to proxy for a common cycle. We do so by using a Bayesian dynamic latent factor model and longitudinal microdata. We find that the comovement of real wages can be related to a common factor that exhibits a significant but far from perfect correlation with the national unemployment rate. Our findings indicate that (i) the common factor explains, on average, no more than 9% of wage variation, (ii) the common factor accounts for 20% or less of the wage variability for 88% of the workers in the sample and (iii) roughly half of the wages move procyclically while half move countercyclically. These facts are inconsistent with claims of a strong systematic relationship between real wages and the business cycle. We show that these results are inconsistent with models of Walrasian labor markets typically used in DSGE models. We also confirm findings of previous studies in which skilled and unskilled wages exhibit roughly the same degree of cyclical variation.Wages, wage differentials, business cycles, Bayesian analysis.

On Measuring the Welfare Cost of Business Cycles

Lucas (1987) argues that the gain from eliminating aggregate fluctuations is trivial. Following Lucas, a number of researchers have altered assumptions on preferences and found that the gain from eliminating business cycles are potentially very large. However, in these exercises little discipline is placed on preference parameters. This paper estimates the welfare cost of business cycles, allowing for potential time-non-separabilities in preferences, where discipline is placed on the choice of preference parameters by requiring that the preferences be consistent with observed fluctuations in a model of business cycles. That is, a theoretical real business cycle world is constructed and the representative agent is then placed in this world. The agent responds optimally to exogenous shocks, given the frictions in the economy. The agent's preference parameters, along with other structural parameters, are estimated using a Bayesian procedure involving Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Two main results emerge from the paper. First, the form for the time-non-separability estimated in this paper is very different than the forms suggested and used elsewhere in the literature. Second, the welfare cost of business cycles is close to Lucas's estimate.Business Cycles, Nonseparable preferences, Welfare cost, Markov Chain Monte Carlo

Stochastic Discount Factor Models and the Equity Premium Puzzle

One view of the equity premium puzzle is that in the standard asset-pricing model with time-separable preferences, the volatility of the stochastic discount factor, for plausible values of risk aversion, is too low to be consistent with consumption and asset return data. We adopt this characterization of the puzzle, due to Hansen and Jagannathan (1991), and establish two results: (i) resolutions of the puzzle based on complete frictionless markets and non-separabilities in preferences are very sensitive to small changes in the consumption data, and (ii) models with frictions avoid this sensitivity problem. Using quarterly data from 1947-97, we calibrate a state non-separable model and a time non-separable model to satisfy the Hansen-Jagannathan volatility bound and show that the two resolutions are not robust. We support our argument via a bootstrap experiment where the models almost always violate the bound. These violations are primarily due to the fact that small changes in consumption growth moments imply changes in the mean of the stochastic discount factor, which render the volatility of the stochastic discount factor to be too low relative to the bound. Asset-pricing models with frictions, however, are much more successful in the bootstrap experiment relative to the case without frictions.Stochastic Discount Factor; Hansen-Jagannathan Bound; Equity Premium;

Measuring Globalization: A hierarchical network approach

This paper investigates the business cycle co-movement across countries and regions since the middle of the last century as a measure for quantifying the ongoing globalization process of the world economy. Our methodological approach is based on analysis of a correlation matrix and the networks it contains. Such an approach summarizes the interaction and interdependence of all elements and it represents a more accurate measure of the global interdependence involved in the economic system. Our results show (1) that the dynamics of globalization has been more driven by synchronization in regional growth patterns than by the synchronization of the world economy as a whole in contrast with other empirical works and (2) that world crisis periods increase dramatically the global co movement in the world economy.Globalization, regionalism, correlation matrix, clustering, synchronization

Output Fluctuations in the G-7: An Unobserved Components Approach

This paper contributes to the debate about the relative importance of permanent versus transitory disturbances as sources of variation in output across the G-7 countries. We employ a multivariate unobserved components model to simultaneously decompose the real GDP for each of the G-7 countries into their respective permanent and transitory components. In contrast to much of the related literature, our model allows for explicit interaction between the components both within and across series. This approach thus allows us to distinguish cross-country correlations driven by the relationships between permanent innovations from those between transitory movements. We find that fluctuations in output are primarily due to permanent movements for all of the G-7 countries. We also find that the correlation between the permanent and transitory innovations within each series is significantly negative. With regards to cross- country relationships, we find important idiosyncratic variation in the correlation across different country pairs.Permanent-Transitory Decompositions, Business Cycles, Correlations, Real GDP