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.

What are the Driving Forces of International Business Cycles

Abstract: We examine the driving forces of G-7 business cycles. We decompose national business cycles into common and nation-specific components using a dynamic factor model. We also do this for driving variables found in business cycle models: productivity; measures of fiscal and monetary policy; the terms of trade and oil prices. We find a large common factor in oil prices, productivity, and the terms of trade. Productivity is the main driving force, with other drivers isolated to particular nations or sub-periods. Along these lines, we document shifts in the correlation of the G-7 component of each driver with the overall G-7 cycle.

Where is an oil shock

Abstract: Much of the literature examining the effects of oil shocks asks the question “What is an oil shock?” and has concluded that oil-price increases are asymmetric in their effects on the US economy. That is, sharp increases in oil prices affect economic activity adversely, but sharp decreases in oil prices have no effect. We reconsider the directional symmetry of oil-price shocks by addressing the question “Where is an oil shock?”, the answer to which reveals a great deal of spatial/directional asymmetry across states. Although most states have typical responses to oil-price shocks—they are affected by positive shocks only—the rest experience either negative shocks only (5 states), both positive and negative shocks (5 states), or neither shock (5 states).

Did Affordable Housing Legislation Contribute to the Subprime Securities Boom

Abstract: We use a regression discontinuity approach and present new institutional evidence to investigate whether affordable housing policies influenced the market for securitized subprime mortgages. We use merged loan-level data on nonprime mortgages with individual- and neighborhood-level data for California and Florida. We find no evidence that lenders increased subprime originations or altered loan pricing around the discrete eligibility cutoffs for the Government-Sponsored Enterprises' (GSEs) affordable housing goals or the Community Reinvestment Act. Although we find evidence that the GSEs bought significant quantities of subprime securities, our results indicate that these purchases were not directly related to affordable housing mandates.

When does determinacy imply expectational stability

Abstract: Since the introduction of rational expectations, there have been issues with multiple equilibria and equilibrium selection. We study the connections between determinacy of rational expectations equilibrium and learnability of that equilibrium in a general class of purely forward-looking models. Our framework is sufficiently flexible to encompass lags in agents' information and either finite horizon or infinite horizon approaches to learning. We are able to isolate conditions under which determinacy does and does not imply learnability and also conditions under which long-horizon forecasts make a clear difference for learnability. Finally, we apply our result to a relatively general New Keynesian model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR