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.

Making Sense of the Subprime Crisis

Abstract: Should market participants have anticipated the large increase in home foreclosures in 2007 and 2008? Most of these foreclosures stemmed from mortgage loans originated in 2005 and 2006, raising suspicions that lenders originated many extremely risky loans during this period. We show that although these loans did carry extra risk factors, particularly increased leverage, reduced underwriting standards alone cannot explain the dramatic rise in foreclosures. We also investigate whether market participants underestimated the likelihood of a fall in home prices or the sensitivity of foreclosures to falling prices. We show that given available data, they should have understood that a significant price drop would raise foreclosures sharply, although loan-level (as opposed to ownership-level) models would have predicted a smaller rise than occurred. Analyst reports and other contemporary discussions reveal that analysts generally understood that falling prices would have disastrous consequences but assigned that outcome a low probability.

SIGMA: A New Open Economy Model for Policy Analysis

Abstract: In this paper, we describe a new multicountry open economy SDGE model named "SIGMA" that we have developed as a quantitative tool for policy analysis. We compare SIGMA's implications to those of an estimated large-scale econometric policy model (the FRB/Global model) for an array of shocks that are often examined in policy simulations. We show that SIGMA's implications for the near-term responses of key variables are generally similar to those of FRB/Global. Nevertheless, some quantitative disparities between the two models remain due to certain restrictive aspects of SIGMA's optimization-based framework. We conclude by using long-term simulations to illustrate some areas of comparative advantage of our SDGE modeling framework.

Forecasting the Price of Oil

Abstract: We address some of the key questions that arise in forecasting the price of crude oil. What do applied forecasters need to know about the choice of sample period and about the tradeoffs between alternative oil price series and model specifications? Are real and nominal oil prices predictable based on macroeconomic aggregates? Does this predictability translate into gains in out-of-sample forecast accuracy compared with conventional no-change forecasts? How useful are oil futures prices in forecasting the spot price of oil? How useful are survey forecasts? How does one evaluate the sensitivity of a baseline oil price forecast to alternative assumptions about future oil demand and oil supply conditions? How does one quantify risks associated with oil price forecasts? Can joint forecasts of the price of oil and of U.S. real GDP growth be improved upon by allowing for asymmetries?

Uncovering the Risk-Return Relation in the Stock Market

Abstract: There is ongoing debate about the apparent weak or negative relation between risk (conditional variance) and expected returns in the aggregate stock market. We develop and estimate an empirical model based on the intertemporal capital asset pricing model (ICAPM) that separately identifies the two components of expected returns, namely, the risk component and the component due to the desire to hedge changes in investment opportunities. The estimated coefficient of relative risk aversion is positive, statistically significant, and reasonable in magnitude. However, expected returns are driven primarily by the hedge component. The omission of this component is partly responsible for the existing contradictory results. THE RETURN ON THE MARKET PORTFOLIO plays a central role in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), the financial theory widely used by both academics and practitioners. However, the intertemporal properties of stock market returns are not yet fully understood. 1 In particular, there is ongoing debate in the literature about the relation between stock market risk and return, and the extent to which stock market volatility moves stock prices. This paper provides new evidence on the risk‐return relation by estimating a variant of Merton’s (1973) intertemporal capital asset pricing model (ICAPM). In his seminal paper, Merton (1973) shows that the conditional excess market return, Et−1rM,t − rf ,t−1, is a linear function of its conditional variance, σ 2 M,t−1 , (the risk component) and its covariance with investment opportunities, σMF,t−1, (the hedge component); that is,

How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project

Abstract: How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We analyze individualsA¢â‚¬â„¢ earnings in 31 different data sets from sixteen countries, from which we obtain a total of 360 wage change distributions. We find a remarkable amount of variation in wage changes across workers. Wage changes have a notably non-normal distribution; they are tightly clustered around the median and also have many extreme values. Furthermore, nearly all countries show asymmetry in their wage distributions below the median. Indeed, we find evidence of both downward nominal and real wage rigidities. We also find that the extent of both these rigidities varies substantially across countries. Our results suggest that variations in the extent of union presence in wage bargaining play a role in explaining differing degrees of rigidities among countries.