Showing papers by "Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas published in 2017"

Is there a debt-threshold effect on output growth?

Abstract: This paper studies the relationship between public debt expansion and economic growth and investigates whether the debt-growth relation varies with the level of indebtedness. We contribute theoretically by developing tests for threshold effects in the context of dynamic heterogeneous panel data models with cross-sectionally dependent errors. In the empirical application, using data on a sample of forty countries over the 1965–2010 period, we find no evidence for a universally applicable threshold effect in the relationship between public debt and economic growth. Regardless of the threshold, however, we find significant negative effects of public debt buildup on output growth.

Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters

Abstract: We analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States, based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of various economic indicators. Comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a real-time measure of uncertainty surrounding subjective forecasts in a simple framework. We jointly model and estimate macroeconomic (common) and indicator-specific uncertainties of four indicators, using a factor stochastic volatility model. Our macroeconomic uncertainty estimates have three major spikes has three major spikes aligned with the 1973–1975, 1980, and 2007–2009 recessions, while other recessions were characterized by increases in indicator-specific uncertainties. We also show that the selection of data vintages affects the estimates and relative size of jumps in estimated uncertainty series. Finally, our macroeconomic uncertainty has a persistent negative impact on real economic activity, rather than producing “wait-and-see” dynamics.

Income inequality, media fragmentation, and increased political polarization

Abstract: The increasing polarization of congressional voting has been linked to legislators' inability to reach consensus on many pressing economic issues. We examine two potential factors driving polarization: greater income inequality and the increasingly fragmented state of American media. Using cointegration techniques, we find evidence indicating that media fragmentation has played a more important role than inequality. Periods of rising media fragmentation are followed by increased polarization. If recent patterns of media structure and income inequality persist, a polarized policymaking environment will likely continue to impede efforts to address major challenges, such as the long-run fiscal imbalances facing the United States. (JEL D72, D31)

Impact of oil booms and busts on human capital investment in the USA

Abstract: This paper uses Census IPUMS data from 1970 to 2000 and ACS data from 2010 to estimate the impact of oil booms and busts on wages and human capital formation in the USA. The paper finds that the oil boom between 1970 and 1980 was associated with a slower growth in the relative demand for skills in the oil and gas sector and regions where the sector had a large presence. The oil boom led to a sharp rise in real wages and a modest decline in college wage premium in oil-rich regions in the USA. Using a synthetic cohort approach, the paper finds that relative to cohorts who went to high school in the pre-oil boom period, the cohort reaching high school age during the oil boom was about 1–2% points less likely to have a college degree by 2000 and 2010.

Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters

Abstract: We analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States, based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of various economic indicators. Comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a real-time subjective measure of uncertainty in a simple framework. We jointly model and estimate macroeconomic (common) and indicator-specific uncertainties of four indicators, using a factor stochastic volatility model. Our macroeconomic uncertainty has three major spikes aligned with the 1973–75, 1980, and 2007–09 recessions, while other recessions were characterized by increases in indicator-specific uncertainties. We also show that the selection of data vintages affects the estimates and relative size of jumps in estimated uncertainty series. Finally, our macroeconomic uncertainty has a persistent negative impact on real economic activity, rather than producing “wait-and-see” dynamics.

Impact of global uncertainty on the global economy and large developed and developing economies

Abstract: Global uncertainty shocks are associated with a sharp decline in global inflation, growth and interest rate. Global uncertainty shocks have more protracted, statistically significant and substantia...

Do Restrictions on Home Equity Extraction Contribute to Lower Mortgage Defaults? Evidence from a Policy Discontinuity at the Texas Border

Abstract: Texas is the only US state that limits home equity borrowing to 80 percent of home value. This paper exploits this policy discontinuity around the Texas’ interstate borders and uses a multidimensional regression discontinuity design framework to find that limits on home equity borrowing in Texas lowered the likelihood of mortgage default by about 1.5 percentage points for all mortgages and 4-5 percentage points for nonprime mortgages. Estimated nonprime mortgage default hazards within 25 to 100 miles on either side of the Texas’ border are about 20 percent smaller when crossing into Texas.

A Narrative Analysis of Mortgage Asset Purchases by Federal Agencies

Abstract: This paper provides a narrative analysis of regulatory policy changes affecting the purchases and holdings of mortgages and related securities of five US government entities over the 1968–2014 period. We focus on federal government policies that aim to influence the allocation and/or supply of residential mortgage credit. We use contemporary primary sources and various institutional histories to identify significant policy interventions, to document their economic and regulatory context, surrounding motives, and pertinent timing, as well as to quantify projected impacts on agencies’ mortgage holdings. Finally, we classify each significant policy change as either ‘cyclically motivated’ or ‘non-cyclically motivated.’ The results of the narrative analysis of federal housing credit policy changes yield a record of events that can be used as an instrumental variable for agency purchase activity.

Incorporating the Beige Book into a Quantitative Index of Economic Activity

Abstract: We apply customized text analytics to the written description of economic activity contained in the Beige Book (BB) in order to obtain a quantitative measure of current economic conditions. This quantitative BB measure is then incorporated into a dynamic factor index model that also contains other commonly used quantitative economic data. We find that at the time the BB is released it has information about current economic activity not contained in other quantitative data. This informational advantage is relatively short lived. By 3 weeks after their release date, ‘old’ BBs contain little additional information about economic activity not already contained in other quantitative data. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Estimating the natural rate of interest in an open economy

Abstract: The concept of the natural or equilibrium rate of interest has attracted a lot of attention from monetary policymakers in recent years. Most attempts to estimate the natural rate use a closed-economy framework. We argue that in the face of greater integration of global product and capital markets, an open economy framework is more appropriate. We provide some initial estimates of the natural rate for the USA and Japan in a two-country framework. Our identifying assumptions include a close relationship between the time-varying natural rate of interest and the low-frequency fluctuations of potential output growth in both the home country and the foreign country. Our results suggest that the natural rates in both countries are mainly determined by their own trend growth rates of potential output. Nevertheless, the other country’s trend growth plays an important role in several specific periods. The gap between the actual real interest rate and our estimated natural rate offers valuable insights into the recent stance of monetary policy in both of these two countries.

Forward Guidance and the State of the Economy

Abstract: This paper examines the economic effects of forward guidance using a New Keynesian model with a zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the short-term nominal interest rate. Forward guidance is modeled with anticipated news shocks to the monetary policy rule. There are five key findings: (1) the stimulative effect of forward guidance falls as the economy deteriorates or as households expect a slower recovery because there is a smaller margin to lower expected policy rates; (2) longer forward guidance horizons do not generate increasingly larger impact effects on output when the total amount of news is fixed, unlike with an exogenous interest rate peg; (3) in steady state, an unanticipated shock has a larger impact effect on output than a news shock, but a news shock has a larger cumulative effect in every state of the economy; (4) at the ZLB, the cumulative effect on output from lengthening the forward guidance horizon increases over short horizons but decreases thereafter, which indicates the central bank faces limits on how far forward guidance can extend into the future and continue to add stimulus; and (5) forward guidance is stimulative in the absence of other shocks, but the observed effect on output is smaller or even negative if another shock simultaneously reduces demand.

Measuring the world natural rate of interest

Abstract: This article makes the first attempt to estimate the time-varying natural rate jointly with the output gap and trend potential output growth for the world as a whole using a simple unobserved components model broadly following the methodology developed by Laubach, T., and J. Williams (“Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest.” Review of Economics and Statistics, 85(4), 2003, 1063–1070). We find that the world natural rate has been trending down for the past few decades. Over a quarter of the variation in the natural rate is accounted for by the trend potential output growth rate. However, the relationship between the world natural interest rate and the world trend growth is modest and not statistically significant. (JEL E4, E52, E32, C32)

Anomalies and False Rejections

Abstract: We use information from over two million trading strategies that are randomly generated using real data, and from strategies that survive the publication process to infer the statistical properties of the set of strategies that could have been studied by researchers. Using this set, we compute t-statistic thresholds that control for multiple hypothesis testing when searching for anomalies, at 3.84 and 3.38 for time-series and cross-sectional regressions, respectively. We estimate the expected proportion of false rejections that researchers would produce if they failed to account for multiple hypothesis testing to be 45.3%.

Big Banks, Idiosyncratic Volatility, and Systemic Risk

Abstract: Starting in the 1990s, US bank assets grew more concentrated among a few large institutions We explore the changing role of idiosyncratic volatility as a shaping force of the bank asset power law distribution Our results reveal that idiosyncratic asset volatilities for bank-holding companies declined since the 1990s To the extent that firm-specific shocks can have significant macroeconomic consequences, this result implies that even as one obvious source of aggregate risk and contagion--bank asset concentration--has increased, another important source--idiosyncratic volatility--has diminished

New Findings on the Fiscal Impact of Immigration in the United States

Abstract: The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2016) report on the economic and fiscal effects of immigration included the first set of comprehensive fiscal impacts published in twenty years. The estimates highlight the pivotal role of the public goods assumption. If immigrants are assigned the average cost of public goods, such as national defense and interest on the debt, then immigration’s fiscal impact is negative in both the short and long run. If, instead, immigrants are assigned the marginal cost of public goods, then the long-run fiscal impact is positive and the short-run effect is negative but very small (less negative than that of natives). Highly educated immigrants confer large positive fiscal impacts, contributing far more in taxes than they consume in public benefits. To the extent that immigrants impose net costs, these are concentrated at the state and local level and are largely due to the costs of public schooling.

Segmentation of consumer markets in the US: What do intercity price differences tell us?

Abstract: We quantify the magnitude of market segmentation in US consumer market and explore the underlying factors behind this segmentation, using a quarterly panel of retail prices for 45 products in 48 US cities from 1985 to 2009. The extent of market segmentation is estimated using city-pair price differences within the framework of both linear autoregressive (AR) and nonlinear threshold autoregressive (TAR) models. We find that the magnitude of market segmentation varies from one product to another, but even more across city pairs in each product. Contrary to a widespread perception, market segmentation within the US is not necessarily larger for non-tradable services compared to tradable goods. We identify potential drivers of market segmentation by relating the cross-city and cross-product variations of market segmentation to location-specific and product-specific characteristics—distance, relative city sizes, differences in wage and rent, type of product and proximity to marketplace. Distance, which captures more than transport costs, turns out to be the most salient factor even after controlling for a range of other potential factors. The effect of distance, however, varies substantially across products, with perishable products and locally produced products showing larger distance effect on market segmentation. We find that the magnitude of market segmentation has been somewhat stable during the sample period, but intercity price differences have become more sensitive to distance over time in many products under study.

Did the Renewable Fuel Standard Shift Market Expectations of the Price of Ethanol

Abstract: It is commonly believed that the response of the price of corn ethanol (and hence of the price of corn) to shifts in biofuel policies operates in part through market expectations and shifts in storage demand, yet to date it has proved difficult to measure these expectations and to empirically evaluate this view.

Blockchain Technology Disrupting Traditional Records Systems

Abstract: This article gives a very general introduction to the technology, promises and limitations of blockchain technology --- popularized by the digital currency Bitcoin and a key force behind the surge of cryptocurrencies. Blockchain acts as a distributed database or joint global register of all transactions --- a decentralized digital ledger --- and has the potential to become a disruptive force in the financial industry and elsewhere, bypassing traditional, centralized channels such as banks.

Growth Options and Credit Risk

Abstract: We analyze the relation between credit risk and growth options in a dynamic structural model of the firm. Our model features real and financing frictions that make investments relevant for capital structure decisions, and counter-cyclical risk premia that determine investment decisions. We find that growth options are negatively related to credit risk, as the conditions that allow such growth options to become valuable are also related to the firm’s ability to repay debt obligations.

How Taxes and Required Returns Drove Commercial Real Estate Valuations Over the Past Four Decades

Abstract: We document the evolution of U.S. tax law regarding commercial real estate (CRE) since 1975, noting changes in income and capital gains tax rates and tax depreciation methods. The most prominent changes were the 1981 and 1986 Tax Acts, but numerous significant changes occurred in the last dozen years. We then compute the present value of tax depreciation per dollar of acquisition price and an effective tax rate for CRE. We explain the quarterly variation in CRE capitalization rates using an error correction framework and find that the long run estimates are statistically significant in the way theory would suggest. Moreover, the required financial asset return and the tax depreciation variable temporally predict (“cause”) capitalization rates in the long run, but not vice versa.