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Working Paper
Are \"deep\" parameters stable? the Lucas critique as an empirical hypothesis
For years, the problems associated with the Lucas critique have loomed over empirical macroeconomics. Since the publication of the classic Lucas (1976) critique, researchers have endeavored to specify models that capture the underlying dynamic decision-making behavior of consumers and firms who require forecasts of future events. By uncovering "deep" structural parameters that characterize these fundamental behaviors, and by explicitly modeling expectations, it is argued one can capture the dependence of agents' behavior on the functions describing policy. However, relatively little effort ...
Working Paper
Inflation persistence
This paper examines the concept of inflation persistence in macroeconomic theory. It begins with a definition of persistence, emphasizing the difference between reduced-form and structural persistence. It then examines a number of empirical measures of reduced-form persistence, considering the possibility that persistence may have changed over time. The paper then examines the theoretical sources of persistence, distinguishing ?intrinsic? from ?inherited? persistence, and deriving a number of analytical results on persistence. It summarizes the implications for persistence from the ...
Conference Paper
Estimating forward-looking Euler equations with GMM estimators: an optimal-instruments approach
We compare different methods for estimating forwardlooking output and inflation equations and show that weak identification can be an issue in conventional GMM estimation. GMM and maximum likelihood procedures that impose the dynamic constraints implied by the forwardlooking relation on the instruments set are found to be more reliable than conventional GMM. These ?optimal instruments? procedures provide a robust alternative to estimating dynamic macroeconomic relations, and suggest only a limited role for expectational terms.
Journal Article
New data on worker flows during business cycles
The most obvious economic cost of recessions is that workers become involuntarily unemployed. During the average business cycle contraction, total employment declines by about 1.5 percent, the unemployment rate rises by 2.7 percentage points, and it takes almost two years before employment recovers its pre-recession level. Both fiscal policy and monetary policy are concerned with these business cycle deviations of employment from its "full-employment" or "equilibrium" level. The aggregate statistics on employment and unemployment mask economically important information about the composition ...
Journal Article
Teaching economics
Working Paper
Inflation dynamics when inflation is near zero
This paper discusses the likely evolution of U.S. inflation in the near and medium term on the basis of (1) past U.S. experience with very low levels of inflation, (2) the most recent Japanese experience with deflation, and (3) recent U.S. micro evidence on downward nominal wage rigidity. Our findings question the view that stable long-run inflation expectations and downward nominal wage rigidity will provide sufficient support to prices such that deflation can be avoided. We show that an inflation model fitted on Japanese data over the past 20 years, which accounts for both short- and ...
Working Paper
Real expectations: replacing rational expectations with survey expectations in dynamic macro models
This paper examines the implications of changing the expectations assumption that is embedded in nearly all current macroeconomic models. The paper substitutes measured or "real" expectations for rational expectations in an array of standard macroeconomic relationships, as well as in a DSGE model. The author finds that the use of survey measures of expectations ? for near-term inflation, long-term inflation, unemployment, and short-term interest rates ? improves performance along a variety of dimensions. Survey expectations exhibit strong correlations to key macroeconomic variables. Those ...
Journal Article
Do consumers behave as the life-cycle/permanent-income theory of consumption predicts?
Widely accepted theories of consumer behavior suggest that consumers act according to a lifetime budget, spending against future earnings so long as they are predictable. Yet this study finds that many consumers respond to changes in income only when they are realized. Furthermore, adjustment costs lead to deviations in the short run from the Life-Cycle/Permanent-Income path. ; These findings suggest that some temporary economic policies may have a larger impact on consumption than LC/PI theory predicts, since consumers do not or cannot spread out the effects over their lifetime. Conversely, ...
Conference Paper
Beyond shocks: what causes business cycles?
Journal Article
Goals, guidelines, and constraints facing monetary policymakers: an overview
Central bankers in the United States and abroad must grapple with a broad array of questions about how best to conduct monetary policy. How much should the goal of price stability be emphasized relative to the goal of employment stability? Does central bank independence aid in achieving either or both of these goals? Does a stable, short-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment exist, and can it be exploited by a central bank? What instrument should the central bank manipulate in order to achieve its short-run and long-run goals? ; In June of 1994, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston ...