Enclosed is a copy of the Board of Governors’ Semiannual Agenda of Regulations for the period August 1, 1980 through February 1, 1981. The Semiannual Agenda provides you with information on those regulatory matters that the Board now has under consideration or anticipates considering over the next six months, and is divided into three parts: (1) regulatory matters that the Board had considered during the previous six months on which final action has been taken; (2) regulatory matters that have been proposed for public comment and that require further Board consideration; and (3) regulatory matters that the Board may consider over the next six months.

Federal Reserve Bank of New Yorkの制定せる財務諸表様式について

*Empirical research on cities starts with a spatial equilibrium condition: workers and fi rms are assumed to be indifferent across space. This condition implies that research on cities is different from research on countries, and that work on places within countries needs to consider population, income, and housing prices simultaneously. Housing supply elasticity will determine whether urban success reveals itself in the form of more people or higher incomes. Urban economists generally accept the existence of agglomeration economies, which exist when productivity rises with density, but estimating the magnitude of those economies is diffi cult. Some manufacturing fi rms cluster to reduce the costs of moving goods, but this force no longer appears to be important in driving urban success. Instead, modern cities are far more dependent on the role that density can play in speeding the fl ow of ideas. Finally, urban economics has some insights to offer related topics such as growth theory, national income accounts, public economics, and housing prices. (JEL R11, R23, R31, R32)

/pdf/the-wealth-of-cities-agglomeration-economies-and-spatial-8zt9a5ougf.pdf

The Wealth of Cities: Agglomeration Economies and Spatial Equilibrium in the United States

What is the impact of time-varying business uncertainty on economic activity? Using partly confidential business survey data from the U.S. and Germany in structural VARs, we find that positive innovations to business uncertainty lead to prolonged declines in economic activity. In contrast, their high-frequency impact is small. We find no evidence of the "wait-and-see"-effect - large declines of economic activity on impact and subsequent fast rebounds - that the recent literature associates with positive uncertainty shocks. Rather, positive innovations to business uncertainty have effects similar to negative business confidence innovations. Once we control for their low-frequency effect, we find little statistically or economically significant impact of uncertainty innovations on activity. We argue that high uncertainty events are a mere epiphenomenon of bad economic times: recessions breed uncertainty.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=1630148

Uncertainty and Economic Activity: Evidence from Business Survey Data

How do individuals form expectations about future inflation? We propose that individuals overweight inflation experienced during their lifetimes. This approach modifies existing adaptive learning models to allow for age-dependent updating of expectations in response to inflation surprises. Young individuals update their expectations more strongly than older individuals since recent experiences account for a greater share of their accumulated lifetime history. We find support for these predictions using 57 years of microdata on inflation expectations from the Reuters/Michigan Survey of Consumers. Differences in experiences strongly predict differences in expectations, including the substantial disagreement between young and old individuals in periods of highly volatile inflation, such as the 1970s. It also explains household borrowing and lending behavior, including the choice of mortgages. JEL Codes: E03, G02, D03, E31, E37, D84, D83, D14.

/pdf/learning-from-inflation-experiences-l7ayauamlq.pdf

Learning from Inflation Experiences

What is the impact of time-varying business uncertainty on economic activity? Using (partly confidential) business survey data from the U.S. and Germany in structural VARs, we find that positive innovations to business uncertainty lead to prolonged declines in economic activity. In contrast, their high-frequency impact is small. We find no evidence of the “wait-and-see”-effect ‐ large declines of economic activity on impact and subsequent fast rebounds ‐ that the recent literature associates with positive uncertainty shocks. Rather, positive innovations to business uncertainty have effects similar to negative business confidence innovations. Once we control for their low-frequency effect, we find little statistically or economically significant impact of uncertainty innovations on activity. We argue that high uncertainty events are a mere epiphenomenon of bad economic times: recessions breed uncertainty.

/pdf/uncertainty-and-economic-activity-evidence-from-business-510dm8o1ze.pdf

This paper examines matched point and density forecasts of inflation from the Survey of Professional Forecasters to analyze the relationship between expected inflation, disagreement, and uncertainty. We extend previous studies through our data construction and estimation methodology. Specifically, we derive measures of disagreement and uncertainty by using a decomposition proposed in earlier research by Wallis and by applying the concept of entropy from information theory. We also undertake the empirical analysis within a seemingly unrelated regression framework. Our results offer mixed support for the propositions that disagreement is a useful proxy for uncertainty and that increases in expected inflation are accompanied by heightened inflation uncertainty. However, we document a robust, quantitatively and statistically significant positive association between disagreement and expected inflation.

/pdf/the-relationship-between-expected-inflation-disagreement-and-1yxv6fsnnn.pdf

The Relationship between Expected Inflation, Disagreement, and Uncertainty: Evidence from Matched Point and Density Forecasts

It is argued in many circles that a structural change occurred in U.S. collective bargaining in the 1980s. We investigate the extent to which the hiring of replacement workers can account for this change. For a sample of over 300 major strikes since 1980, we estimate the likelihood of replacements being hired. We find that the risk of replacement declines during tight labor markets, and is lower for bargaining units with more experienced workers. We use the predicted replacement risk as an explanatory variable in a model of the union's choice between the strike and holdout threat. We find that strike usage decreases significantly as the predicted replacement risk increases. We estimate that a ban on the use of replacement workers would have increased strike incidence from 1982-1989 by 3 percentage points, a 30 percent increase.

The Use of Replacement Workers in Union Contract Negotiations: The U.S. Experience, 1980-1989

Labor disputes are an intriguing feature of the landscape of industrialized economies. Economists have had a long-standing interest in formulating a framework for understanding and analyzing labor disputes. The development of noncooperative bargaining theory provided the tools for a theory of collective bargaining and labor disputes. A general aim of this theoretical development is to inform policy makers of the efficiency and equity effects associated with different labor laws and institutions that govern and shape the collective bargaining process. While this new literature is still evolving, it can already offer many insights into the interplay between policy and the bargaining process. In this chapter, we will provide a sketch of this new collective bargaining theory and illustrate its ability to aid in policy analysis. We will also relate the predictions of the model to existing empirical findings in the literature.

/pdf/unions-bargaining-and-strikes-2nnkcdvmjg.pdf

Unions, Bargaining and Strikes

We document the consequences of real exchange rate movements for the employment, hours, and hourly earnings of workers in manufacturing industries across individual states. Exchange rates have statistically significant wage and employment implications in these local labor markets. The importance and size of these dollar-induced effects vary considerably across industries and are more pronounced in some U.S. regions. In addition to the importance of exchange rate shocks, we confirm prior research results showing that relatively strong local conditions drive up wage in local industries, while anticipated future (positive) local shocks reduce current wages.

Exchange rates and local labor markets

The boom and subsequent bust in housing construction and prices over the 2000s is widely regarded as a principal contributor to the Financial Panic of 2007 and the subsequent Great Recession. As of this writing, housing market activity remains at depressed levels as the economy slowly resolves the legacy of excess supply and sharply lower prices. Over 2.6 million foreclosures have been completed since 2008 and 1.9 million foreclosures are in process. Much has been written about the demand side of this pronounced housing cycle, in particular, the innovations in mortgage finance and the loosening of underwriting standards that greatly expanded the pool of potential homebuyers. In this paper, we take a closer look at developments on the supply side of the housing market. Following a short literature review, we begin with a descriptive review of housing production, sales, and prices at the national, regional, and state levels. We then look at developments in the homebuilding industry over this period. We also take a closer look at land markets using a quarterly price index for metropolitan statistical areas with both elastic and inelastic housing supplies across the United States. An important question is to what extent the supply side of the market contributed to the boom/bust dynamics. A second question is whether the significant changes in the industrial organization of the homebuilding industry exacerbated or ameliorated this supply impact.

/pdf/the-supply-side-of-the-housing-boom-and-bust-of-the-2000s-214ld7d3f3.pdf

Joseph Tracy

Papers

The Relationship between Expected Inflation, Disagreement, and Uncertainty: Evidence from Matched Point and Density Forecasts

The Use of Replacement Workers in Union Contract Negotiations: The U.S. Experience, 1980-1989

Unions, Bargaining and Strikes

Exchange rates and local labor markets

The Supply Side of the Housing Boom and Bust of the 2000s