Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

About: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is a other organization based out in St Louis, Missouri, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 203 authors who have published 1650 publications receiving 46084 citations.

Are Government Spending Multipliers Greater During Periods of Slack? Evidence from 20th Century Historical Data

Abstract: A key question that has arisen during recent debates is whether government spending multipliers are larger during times when resources are idle. This paper seeks to shed light on this question by analyzing new quarterly historical data covering multiple large wars and depressions in the U.S. and Canada. Using an extension of Ramey’s (2011) military news series and Jorda’s (2005) method for estimating impulse responses, we find no evidence that multipliers are greater during periods of high unemployment in the U.S. In every case, the estimated multipliers are below unity. We do find some evidence of higher multipliers during periods of slack in Canada, with some multipliers above unity.

Why are married women working so much

Abstract: We study the large observed changes in labor supply by married women in the United States over 1950-1990, a period when labor supply by single women has hardly changed at all. We investigate the effects of changes in the gender wage gap, technological improvements in the production of nonmarket goods and potential inferiority of these goods on understanding this change. We find that small decreases in the gender wage gap can explain simultaneously the significant increases in the average hours worked by married women and the relative constancy in the hours worked by single women, and single and married men. We also find that technological improvements in the household have-for realistic values-too small an impact on married female hours and the relative wage of females to males. Some specifications of the inferiority of home goods match the hours patterns, but have counterfactual predictions for wages and expenditure patterns.

Speculation in the oil market

Abstract: The run-up in oil prices since 2004 coincided with growing investment in commodity markets and increased price co-movement among different commodities. We assess whether speculation in the oil market played a role in driving this salient empirical pattern. We identify oil shocks from a large dataset using a dynamic factor model. This method is motivated by the fact that a small-scale vector autoregression is not informationally sufficient to identify the shocks. The main results are as follows. (i) While global demand shocks account for the largest share of oil price fluctuations, speculative shocks are the second most important driver. (ii) The increase in oil prices over the last decade is mainly driven by the strength of global demand. However, speculation played a significant role in the oil price increase between 2004 and 2008 and its subsequent collapse. (iii) The co-movement between oil prices and the prices of other commodities is mainly explained by global demand shocks. Our results support the view that the recent oil price increase is mainly driven by the strength of global demand but that the financialization process of commodity markets also played a role.

Nonlinearity and the permanent effects of recessions

Abstract: This paper presents a new nonlinear time series model that captures a post-recession ‘bounce-back’ in the level of aggregate output. While a number of studies have examined this type of business cycle asymmetry using recession-based dummy variables and threshold models, we relate the ‘bounce-back’ effect to an endogenously estimated unobservable Markov-switching state variable. When the model is applied to US real GDP, we find that the Markov-switching regimes are closely related to NBER-dated recessions and expansions. Also, the Markov-switching form of nonlinearity is statistically significant and the ‘bounce-back’ effect is large, implying that the permanent effects of recessions are small. Meanwhile, having accounted for the ‘bounce-back’ effect, we find little or no remaining serial correlation in the data, suggesting that our model is sufficient to capture the defining features of US business cycle dynamics. When the model is applied to other countries, we find larger permanent effects of recessions. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.