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.

Do Small Businesses Still Prefer Community Banks

Abstract: We formulate and test hypotheses about the role of bank type – small versus large, single-market versus multimarket, and local versus nonlocal banks – in banking relationships. The conventional paradigm suggests that “community banks” – small, single-market, local institutions – are better able to form strong relationships with informationally opaque small businesses, while “megabanks” – large, multimarket, nonlocal institutions – tend to serve more transparent firms. Using the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finance (SSBF), we conduct two sets of tests. First, we test for the type of bank serving as the “main” relationship bank for small businesses with different firm and owner characteristics. Second, we test for the strength of these main relationships by examining the probability of multiple relationships and relationship length as functions of main bank type and financial fragility, as well as firm and owner characteristics. The results are often not consistent with the conventional paradigm, perhaps because of changes in lending technologies and deregulation of the banking industry.

Entry, Exit, and Plant-Level Dynamics over the Business Cycle

Abstract: This paper analyzes the implications of plant-level dynamics over the business cycle. We first document basic patterns of entry and exit of U.S. manufacturing plants, in terms of employment and productivity, between 1972 and 1997. We show how entry and exit patterns vary during the business cycle, and that the cyclical pattern of entry is very different from the cyclical pattern of exit. Second, we build a general equilibrium model of plant entry, exit, and employment and compare its predictions to the data. In our model, plants enter and exit endogenously, and the size and productivity of entering and exiting plants are also determined endogenously. Finally, we explore the policy implications of the model. Imposing a firing tax that is constant over time can destabilize the economy by causing fluctuations in the entry rate. Entry subsidies are found to be effective in stabilizing the entry rate and output.

Bargaining and the Value of Money

Abstract: Search models of monetary exchange have typically relied on Nash (1950) bargaining or strategic games that yield an equivalent outcome to determine the terms of trade. By considering alternative axiomatic bargaining solutions in a simple search model with divisible money, we show how this choice matters for important results such as the ability of the optimal monetary policy to generate an efficient allocation. We show that the quantities traded in bilateral matches are always inefficiently low under the Nash (1950) and Kalai-Smorodinsky (1975) solutions, whereas under strongly monotonic solutions such as the egalitarian solution (Luce and Raiffa, 1957; Kalai, 1977), the Friedman Rule achieves the first best allocation. We evaluate quantitatively the welfare cost of inflation under the different bargaining solutions, and we extend the model to allow for endogenous market composition.

The Excess Sensitivity of Long-Term Interest Rates : Evidence and Implications for Macroeconomic Models

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that long-term forward interest rates in the U.S. often react considerably to surprises in macroeconomic data releases and monetary policy announcements. This behavior is inconsistent with the assumption of many macroeconomic models that the long-run properties of the economy are time-invariant and perfectly known by all economic agents. Under those conditions, the shocks we consider would have only transitory effects on short-term interest rates, and hence would not generate large responses in forward rates. Our empirical findings suggest that private agents adjust their expectations of the long-run inflation rate in response to macroeconomic and monetary policy surprises. Consistent with our hypothesis, forward rates derived from inflation-indexed Treasury debt show little sensitivity to these shocks, indicating that the response of nominal forward rates is mostly driven by inflation compensation. In addition, we find that in the U.K., where the long-run inflation target is known by the private sector, long-term forward rates have not demonstrated excess sensitivity since the Bank of England achieved independence in mid-1997. We present an alternative model in which agents' perceptions of long-run inflation are not completely anchored, which fits all of our empirical results.

On the political economy of income redistribution and crime

Abstract: This article analyzes a general equilibrium model in which agents choose to specialize in either legitimate or criminal activities. Expenditures on police to apprehend criminals, as well as income redistribution, are determined endogenously through majority voting. We investigate how crime, redistribution, and police expenditures depend on characteristics of the underlying distribution of income-earning abilities and on the apprehension technology. Our model accounts for the positive correlation between inequality and crime, the positive correlation between expenditures on police and redistribution, and the lack of correlation between crime and redistribution observed in U.S. data.