Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

About: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas is a other organization based out in Dallas, Texas, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 196 authors who have published 994 publications receiving 35508 citations.

Shadow Banking Reemerges, Posing Challenges to Banks and Regulators

Abstract: Shadow banking has come roaring back and in new forms that still manage to escape bank regulation and could pose systemic risks since these activities remain deeply intertwined with traditional banking.

The Rise of Goods-Market Competition and the Fall of Nominal Wage Contracting: Endogenous Wage Contracting in a Multisector Economy

Abstract: This paper shows how heterogeneity in wage setting and a link between nominal wage flexibility and goods-market competition arise in a multisector economy that is affected by aggregate and sector-specific shocks. Aggregate volatility increases the variance of real contract wages, whereas sectoral volatility increases the relative variance of real Walrasian wages. Given this trade-off, the prevalence of nominal wage contracting reflects both the relative volatility of aggregate versus sectoral disturbances and the overall degree of goods-market market competition. We find that these variables help explain the decline in unionization (a proxy for contracting) in the United States.

State Variation of Student Loan Debt and Performance

Abstract: National student loan debt has continued to climb trending up despite the decline of other types of consumer debt since the Great Recession. This paper provides an overview of the student loan market and the distribution of individual loan balances and loan performance. The empirical analysis uses a state and time fixed-effect model to examine factors that influence the variation across states in the amount borrowed and delinquencies measured in terms of balance or number of borrowers. The results show that states with higher student loan balances are not necessarily those with poorer loan performance. There are no clear patterns of amount borrowed, but loan performance differs among races and ethnicities. States with a higher percentage of their population with a college degree borrow less and have better loan performance. States with higher average credit scores tend to have lower rates of delinquency. Credit scores are not necessarily related to the amount borrowed because the majority of student loans are federal are not underwritten based on borrowers’ credit risks. Controlling for time fixed effects wipes out the influence of state median income, unemployment, tuition and fees, and state support for higher education on average loan balance or loan performance. State financial aid only affects amount borrowed, but not impact loan performance. Patterns of college enrollment by state have a very small impact on student loan balance or loan performance. Because information at the level of the individual borrower is limited, this analysis, which instead uses state-level data, can help shed light on consumer decisions to take out and repay student loans, and may also help determine how to allocate resources at both the state level and national level.

Good Policies or Good Luck? New Insights on Globalization and the International Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanism

Abstract: The open-economy dimension is central to the discussion of the trade-offs that monetary policy faces in an increasingly integrated world. I investigate the monetary policy transmission mechanism in a two-country workhorse New Keynesian model where policy is set according to Taylor (1993) rules. I find that a common monetary policy isolates the effects of trade openness on the cross-country dispersion, and that the establishment of a currency union as a means of deepening economic integration may lead to indeterminacy. I argue that the common (coordinated) monetary policy equilibrium is the relevant benchmark for policy analysis showing that in that case open economies tend to experience lower macro volatility, a flatter Phillips curve, and more accentuated trade-offs between inflation and slack. Moreover, I show that the trade elasticity often magnifies the effects of trade integration (globalization) beyond what conventional measures of trade openness would imply. I also discuss how other features such as the impact of a stronger anti-inflation bias, technological diffusion across countries, and the sensitivity of labor supply to real wages influence the quantitative effects of policy and openness in this context. Finally, I conclude that the theoretical predictions of the workhorse open-economy New Keynesian model are largely consistent with the stylized facts of the globalization era started in the 1960s and the Great Moderation period that followed.

Size, openness, and macroeconomic interdependence

Abstract: The curse of dimensionality, a problem associated with analyzing the interaction of a relatively large number of endogenous macroeconomic variables, is a prevailing issue in the open economy macro literature. The most common practise to mitigate this problem is to apply the so-called Small Open Economy Framework (SOEF). In this paper, we aim to review under which conditions the SOEF is a justifiable approximation and how severe the consequences of violation of key conditions might be. Thereby, we use a multicountry general equilibrium model as a laboratory. First, we derive the conditions that ensure the existence of the equilibrium and study the properties of the equilibrium using large N asymptotics. Second, we show that the SOEF is a valid approximation only for economies (i) that have a diversified foreign trade structure and if (ii) there is no globally dominant economy in the system. Third, we illustrate that macroeconomic interdependence is primarily related to the degree of trade diversification, and not to the extent of trade openness. Furthermore, we provide some evidence on the pattern of global macroeconomic interdependence by calculating probability impulse response functions in our calibrated multicountry model using data for 153 economies. JEL Classification: F41