Federal Reserve System

About: Federal Reserve System is a other organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 2373 authors who have published 10301 publications receiving 511979 citations.

Puzzles in the Chinese Stock Market

Abstract: Many companies on China's stock markets have traditionally had separate, restricted classes of shares for domestic residents and foreigners. These shares are identical other than for who can own them, but foreigners have generally paid only about one-quarter the price paid by domestic residents. We argue that the generally higher level (and volatility) of domestic share prices is consistent with the simplest asset pricing model, assuming plausible differences-about four percentage points-in expected rates of return by foreign and domestic investors. We attribute low Chinese expected returns to the limited alternative investments available in China. We then estimate how various company characteristics (including capital asset pricing model (CAPM) betas, company size, market liquidity, and other characteristics) affect the relative price paid by foreigners in a panel of companies. We find, for example, that foreigners pay a lower relative price for companies with a higher proportion owned by the state-refle...

How Much Consumption Insurance Beyond Self-Insurance?

Abstract: We assess the degree of consumption smoothing implicit in a calibrated life-cycle version of the standard incomplete-markets model, and we compare it to the empirical estimates of Blundell et al. (2008) (BPP hereafter). We find that households in the model have access to less consumption-smoothing against permanent earnings shocks than what is measured in the data. BPP estimate that 36% of permanent shocks are insurable (i.e., do not translate into consumption growth), whereas the model's counterpart of the BPP estimator varies between 7% and 22%, depending on the tightness of debt limits. In the model, the age profile of the insurance coefficient is sharply increasing, whereas BPP find no clear age slope in their estimate. Allowing for a plausible degree of "advance information" about future earnings does not reconcile the model-data gap. If earnings shocks display mean reversion, even with very high autocorrelation, then the average degree of consumption smoothing in the model agrees with the BPP empirical estimate, but its age profile remains steep. Finally, we show that the BPP estimator of the true insurance coefficient has, in general, a downward bias that grows as borrowing limits become tighter.

The Coevolution of the Real and Financial Sectors in the Growth Process

Abstract: The role of debt and equity changes over time and with the level of development. What are these changes, and why should they systematically occur across different countries and time periods? This article characterizes financial innovation as a dynamic process that both influences and is influenced by the development of the real sector. It focuses on the emergence and development of equity markets, using a model that allows for growth and for capital accumulation that is financed externally through a combination of debt and equity. As an economy develops, the aggregate ratio of debt to equity will generally fall; yet, debt and equity remain complementary sources for the financing of capital investments. The results suggest how various government policy actions might affect capital 'accumulation and equity market activity.

Does Market Size Structure Affect Competition? The Case of Small Business Lending

Abstract: Market size structure refers to the distribution of shares of different size classes of local market participants, where the sizes are inclusive of assets both within and outside the local market. We apply this new measure of market structure in two empirical analyses of the US banking industry to address concerns regarding the effects of the consolidation in banking. Our quantity analysis of the likelihood that small businesses borrow from large versus small banks and our small business loan price analysis that includes market size structure as well as conventional measures yield very different findings from most of the literature on bank size and small business lending. Our results do not suggest a significant net advantage or disadvantage for large banks in small business lending overall, or in lending to informationally opaque small businesses in particular. We argue that the prior research that excluded market size structure may be misleading and offer some likely explanations of why our results differ.

Hidden Periodic Autoregressive-Moving Average Models in Time Series Data,

Abstract: SUMMARY Some properties of a class of periodic models for characterizing seasonal time series are explored. The relationships between periodic models and multiple autoregressive-moving average models are developed and used to gain insight into the behaviour of periodic models. In particular it is shown how homogeneous autoregressive-moving average models may be mistakenly specified for series in which periodic properties are present. Consequences of such misspecification on forecasting and diagnostic checking are also derived.