{"title":"Risk Taking and Low Longer-Term Interest Rates: Evidence from the U.S. Syndicated Loan Market","authors":"Sirio Aramonte, S. J. Lee, Viktors Stebunovs","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2662615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2662615","url":null,"abstract":"We use supervisory data to investigate risk taking in the U.S. syndicated loan market at a time when longer-term interest rates are exceptionally low, and we study the ex-ante credit risk of loans acquired by different types of lenders, including banks and shadow banks. We find that insurance companies, pension funds, and, in particular, structured-finance vehicles take higher credit risk when investors expect interest rates to remain low. Banks originate riskier loans that they tend to divest shortly after origination, thus appearing to accommodate other lenders' investment choices. These results are consistent with a \"search for yield\" by certain types of shadow banks and, to the extent that Federal Reserve policies affected longer-term rates, the results are also consistent with the presence of a risk-taking channel of monetary policy. Finally, we find that longer-term interest rates have only a modest effect on loan spreads.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"119 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133139564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monetary Policy, Hot Housing Markets and Leverage","authors":"C. Ungerer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2628295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2628295","url":null,"abstract":"Expansionary monetary policy can increase household leverage by stimulating housing liquidity. Low mortgage rates encourage buyers to enter the housing market, raising the speed at which properties can be sold. Because lenders can resell seized foreclosure inventory at lower cost in such a hot housing market, ex-ante they are comfortable financing a larger fraction of the house purchase. Consistent with this mechanism, this study documents empirically that both the housing sales rate and loan-to-value ratios increase after expansionary monetary policy. Calibrating a New Keynesian macroeconomic model to fit the response of housing liquidity to monetary policy, the interaction between credit frictions and housing market search frictions generates endogenous movements in the loan-to-value ratio which amplify the economy's response to monetary policy.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124606885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"High-Dimensional Copula-Based Distributions with Mixed Frequency Data","authors":"D. Oh, Andrew J. Patton","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2670996","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2670996","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a new model for high-dimensional distributions of asset returns that utilizes mixed frequency data and copulas. The dependence between returns is decomposed into linear and nonlinear components, enabling the use of high frequency data to accurately forecast linear dependence, and a new class of copulas designed to capture nonlinear dependence among the resulting uncorrelated, low frequency, residuals. Estimation of the new class of copulas is conducted using composite likelihood, facilitating applications involving hundreds of variables. In- and out-of-sample tests confirm the superiority of the proposed models applied to daily returns on constituents of the S&P 100 index.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126066825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does Exporting Improve Matching? Evidence from French Employer-Employee Data","authors":"M. Bombardini, G. Orefice, Maria D. Tito","doi":"10.17016/FEDS.2015.113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.113","url":null,"abstract":"Does opening a market to international trade affect the pattern of matching between firms and workers? This paper answers this question both theoretically and empirically in three parts. We set up a model of matching between heterogeneous workers and firms in which variation in the worker type at the firm level exists in equilibrium only because of the presence of search costs. When firms gain access to the foreign market, their revenue potential increases. When stakes are high, matching with the right worker becomes particularly important because deviations from the ideal match quickly reduce the value of the relationship. Hence, exporting firms select sets of workers that are less dispersed relative to the average. We then document a novel fact about the hiring decisions of exporting firms versus non-exporting firms in a French matched employer-employee dataset. We construct the type of each worker using both a traditional wage regression and a model-based approach and construct measures of the average worker type and worker type dispersion at the firm level. We find that exporting firms feature a lower type dispersion in the pool of workers they hire. This effect is comparable and larger than the common finding in the literature that exporters pay higher wages because, among other factors, they employ better workers. The matching between exporting firms and workers is even tighter in sectors characterized by better exporting opportunities as measured by foreign demand or tariff shocks. Finally, we show that revenue loss is lower relative to the optimum allocation for exporting and more productive firms. This analysis is suggestive of the potenti al presence of additional gains from trade due to improved sorting.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124863359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Consumers' Attitudes and Their Inflation Expectations","authors":"Michael Ehrmann, D. Pfajfar, E. Santoro","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2595719","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2595719","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies consumers' inflation expectations using micro-level data from the Surveys of Consumers conducted by University of Michigan. It shows that beyond the well-established socio-economic factors such as income, age or gender, other characteristics such as the households' financial situation and their purchasing attitudes are important determinants of their forecast accuracy. Respondents with current or expected financial difficulties, pessimistic attitudes about major purchases, or expectations that income will go down in the future have a stronger upward bias in their expectations than other households. However, their bias shrinks by more than that of the average household in response to increasing media reporting about inflation. Equivalent results are found during recessions.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126395343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mode Effects in Mixed-Mode Economic Surveys: Insights from a Randomized Experiment","authors":"Joanne W. Hsu, B. Helppie‐McFall","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2571447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2571447","url":null,"abstract":"Web-based surveys have become increasingly common in economic, marketing, and other social science research. However, questions exist about the comparability of data gathered using a web interview and data gathered using more traditional survey modes, particularly for surveys on household economic behavior. Differences between data from different survey modes may arise through two different mechanisms: sample selectivity due to (lack of) web access and mode effects. This study leverages the randomized experimental design of the mixed-mode Cognitive Economics Study to examine mode effects separately from sample selectivity issues. In particular, we examine differences in survey response rates, item nonresponse, and data quality due to mode effects. Our results indicate that, in contrast to mail mode, web mode surveys (1) attain higher response rates among web users, (2) display lower item nonresponse, and (3) elicit more precise values for financial measures. We conclude that, for web-using populations, web mode surveys appear to result in more usable data than mail mode surveys, and these data appear to be of high quality. However, we also find no systematic mode differences in the categorical distributions of responses to items, providing no evidence that pooling data from the two modes is inadvisable.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121837097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Macroeconomic Effects of the Federal Reserve's Unconventional Monetary Policies","authors":"Eric M. Engen, Thomas Laubach, D. Reifschneider","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2561522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2561522","url":null,"abstract":"After reaching the effective lower bound for the federal funds rate in late 2008, the Federal Reserve turned to two unconventional policy tools -- quantitative easing and increasingly explicit and forward-leaning guidance for the future path of the federal funds rate -- in order to provide additional monetary policy accommodation. We use survey data from the Blue Chip Economic Indicators to infer changes in private-sector perceptions of the implicit interest rate rule that the Federal Reserve would use following liftoff from the effective lower bound. Using our estimates of the changes over time in private expectations for the implicit policy rule, and estimates of the effects of the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing programs on term premiums derived from other studies, we simulate the FRB/US model to assess the actual economic stimulus provided by unconventional policy since early 2009. Our analysis suggests that the net stimulus to real activity and inflation was limited by the gradual nature of the changes in policy expectations and term premium effects, as well as by a persistent belief on the part of the public that the pace of recovery would be much faster than proved to be the case. Our analysis implies that the peak unemployment effect -- subtracting 1¼ percentage points from the unemployment rate relative to what would have occurred in the absence of the unconventional policy actions -- does not occur until early 2015, while the peak inflation effect -- adding ½ percentage point to the inflation rate -- is not anticipated until early 2016.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127781290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reconstruction Multipliers","authors":"R. Trezzi, F. Porcelli","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2511233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2511233","url":null,"abstract":"A law issued to allocate reconstruction grants following the 2009 \"Aquilano\" earthquake has resulted in a large and unanticipated discontinuity across municipalities with comparable damages. Using diff-in-diff analysis we estimate the \"local spending\" and the \"local tax\" multipliers -- according to the composition of the stimulus -- controlling for the negative supply shock generated by the event. The stimulus prevented a fall in economic activity and the multiplicative effects of tax cuts are estimated much higher than those of spending. Our results underline the importance of countercyclical fiscal interventions and suggest the most effective composition of such a stimulus.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130084021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alexander Michaelides, Andreas Milidonis, George P. Nishiotis, Panayiotis Papakyriakou
{"title":"The Adverse Effects of Systematic Leakage Ahead of Official Sovereign Debt Rating Announcements","authors":"Alexander Michaelides, Andreas Milidonis, George P. Nishiotis, Panayiotis Papakyriakou","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1973556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1973556","url":null,"abstract":"Rating agencies consult with local government officials several days prior to official announcements of sovereign debt rating changes, making information leakage likely. Using cross-country data from 1988 to 2012, we find evidence of information leakage. In particular, we find statistically and economically significant negative daily abnormal stock index returns prior to downgrade announcements. These effects are more pronounced in countries with lower institutional quality, and they persist during times with no downgrade rumors and no concurrent bad news in general. A mild post-announcement reversal consistent with overreaction to pre-event downgrade rumors highlights the adverse effects of such leakage and, thus, should be a policy concern for capital market regulators.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124250520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Role of Training and Development in an Organization","authors":"A. Rehman","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2480345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2480345","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reviews the role of training and development in an organization. Training and development provides the environment for workshops, seminars, mentoring, coaching and all other learning opportunities to employees in an organization. Training and development provides all tools and motivate the employees to perform their role.","PeriodicalId":153113,"journal":{"name":"Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Research Series","volume":"304 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114159042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}