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When Does Behavioural Economics Really Matter?
When does behavioural economics really matter? Ian McAuley, University of Canberra and Centre for Policy Development (www.cpd.org.au) Paper to accompany presentation to Behavioural Economics stream at Australian Economic Forum, August 2010. Summary Behavioural economics integrates the formal study of psychology, including social psychology, into economics. Its empirical base helps policy makers in understanding how economic actors behave in response to incentives in market transactions and in response to policy interventions. This paper commences with a short description of how behavioural economics fits into the general discipline of economics. The next section outlines the development of behavioural economics, including its development from considerations of individual psychology into the fields of neurology, social psychology and anthropology. It covers developments in general terms; there are excellent and by now well-known detailed descriptions of the specific findings of behavioural economics. The final section examines seven contemporary public policy issues with suggestions on how behavioural economics may help develop sound policy. In some cases Australian policy advisers are already using the findings of behavioural economics to advantage. It matters most of the time In public policy there is nothing novel about behavioural economics, but for a long time it has tended to be ignored in formal texts. Like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain who was surprised to find he had been speaking prose all his life, economists have long been guided by implicit knowledge of behavioural economics, particularly in macroeconomics. Keynes, for example, understood perfectly the “money illusion” – people’s tendency to think of money in nominal rather than real terms – in his solution to unemployment. -
Nber Working Paper Series Accounting for Incomplete
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES ACCOUNTING FOR INCOMPLETE PASS-THROUGH Emi Nakamura Dawit Zerom Working Paper 15255 http://www.nber.org/papers/w15255 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 August 2009 We would like to thank Ariel Pakes and Kenneth Rogoff for invaluable advice and encouragement. We are grateful to Dan Ackerberg, Hafedh Bouakez, Ariel Burstein, Ulrich Dorazelski, Tim Erickson, Gita Gopinath, Penny Goldberg, Joseph Harrington, Rebecca Hellerstein, Elhanan Helpman, David Laibson, Ephraim Leibtag, Julie Mortimer, Alice Nakamura, Serena Ng, Roberto Rigobon, Julio Rotemberg, Jón Steinsson, Martin Uribe and seminar participants at various institutions for helpful comments and suggestions. This paper draws heavily on Chapter 2 of Nakamura's Harvard University Ph.D. thesis. This research was funded in part by a collaborative research grant from the US Department of Agriculture and the computational methods in this paper also draw on a working paper by Nakamura and Zerom entitled "Price Rigidity, Price Adjustment and Demand in the Coffee Industry.'' Corresponding author: Emi Nakamura at [email protected]. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2009 by Emi Nakamura and Dawit Zerom. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. -
Emi Nakamura Recipient of the 2014 Elaine Bennett Research Prize
Emi Nakamura Recipient of the 2014 Elaine Bennett Research Prize EMI NAKAMURA, Associate Professor of Business and Economics at Columbia University, is the recipient of the 2014 Elaine Bennett Research Prize. Established in 1998 by the American Economic Association’s (AEA) Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP), the Elaine Bennett Research Prize recognizes and honors outstanding research in any field of economics by a woman not more than seven years beyond her Ph.D. Professor Nakamura will formally accept the Bennett Prize at the CSWEP Business Meeting and Luncheon held during the 2015 AEA Meeting in Boston, MA. The event is scheduled for 12:30-2:15PM on January 3, 2015 at the Sheraton Boston. Emi Nakamura’s distinctive approach tackles important research questions with serious and painstaking data work. Her groundbreaking paper “Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models” (Steinsson, Jón and Emi Nakamura. 2008. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123:4, 1415-1464) is based on extensive analysis of individual price data. She finds that, once temporary sales are properly taken into account, prices exhibit a high degree of rigidity consistent with Keynesian theories of business cycles and that prior evidence overstated the degree of price flexibility in the economy. Dr. Nakamura’s work on fiscal stimulus combines a novel cross-section approach to identifying parameters with a careful interpretation of business cycle theory to shed new light on crucial questions in macroeconomics. Her findings imply that government spending can provide a powerful stimulus to the economy at times when monetary policy is unresponsive, e.g. -
PAPM 1000 Winter 2011 1
PAPM 1000 Winter 2011 1 Carleton University Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs PAPM 1000: Introduction to Public Affairs and Policy Management Winter Term: History of Economic Thought Winter 2011 Instructor: Derek Ireland Wednesday: 14:35-16:25 (2:35-4:25 PM) Office: D199 Loeb Building C164 Loeb Building Phone: 613 747 9593 Office Hours: Wednesdays From 13:00 to 14:20 --Or Email: [email protected] Determined Through Emails with Student Course Objective The objective of the course is to provide an understanding of economic ideas and thinking, how these ideas have evolved and developed and been applied through many centuries, and the implications of economic ideas for past and current policy debates, analysis, development and management. What do we mean by economic ideas? Economic ideas are essentially the concepts, hypotheses, presumptions, guesses and initial thoughts on cause and effect relationships that have been identified, discussed and argued about by economic thinkers over the past decades and centuries. Some of these concepts, guesses and so on are then developed into economic theories which are applied and tested in theoretical and empirical research and policy analysis in our attempts to find answers to such questions as: . Why do consumers purchase what they do? . Why do businesses produce what they do and locate in one place rather than another? . Why do countries trade with each other and should there be more or less international trade in the future? . Why do some countries grow faster than others? . Why are the more advanced OECD countries expected by many economists to grow much more slowly in the future? . -
The Origins and Development of Financial Markets and Institutions: from the Seventeenth Century to the Present
This page intentionally left blank The Origins and Development of Financial Markets and Institutions Collectively, mankind has never had it so good despite periodic economic crises of which the current sub-prime crisis is merely the latest example. Much of this success is attributable to the increasing efficiency of the world’s financial institutions as finance has proved to be one of the most important causal factors in economic performance. In a series of original essays, leading financial and economic historians examine how financial innovations from the seventeenth century to the present have continually challenged established institutional arr- angements forcing change and adaptation by governments, financial intermediaries, and financial markets. Where these have been success- ful, wealth creation and growth have followed. When they failed, growth slowed and sometimes economic decline has followed. These essays illustrate the difficulties of coordinating financial innovations in order to sustain their benefits for the wider economy, a theme that will be of interest to policy makers as well as economic historians. JEREMY ATACK is Professor of Economics and Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and has served as co-editor of the Journal of Economic History. He is co-author of A New Economic View of American History (1994). LARRY NEAL is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was founding director of the European Union Center. He is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). -
Texte Intégral
Working Paper History as heresy: unlearning the lessons of economic orthodoxy O'SULLIVAN, Mary Abstract In spring 2020, in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, central bankers in rich countries made unprecedented liquidity injections to stave off an economic crisis. Such radical action by central banks gained legitimacy during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and enjoys strong support from prominent economists and economic historians. Their certainty reflects a remarkable agreement on a specific interpretation of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States, an interpretation developed by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in A Monetary History of the United States (1963). In this article, I explore the origins, the influence and the limits of A Monetary History’s interpretation for the insights it offers on the relationship between theory and history in the study of economic life. I show how historical research has been mobilised to show the value of heretical ideas in order to challenge economic orthodoxies. Friedman and Schwartz understood the heretical potential of historical research and exploited it in A Monetary History to question dominant interpretations of the Great Depression in their time. Now that [...] Reference O'SULLIVAN, Mary. History as heresy: unlearning the lessons of economic orthodoxy. Geneva : Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History, 2021, 38 p. Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:150852 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. 1 / 1 FACULTÉ DES SCIENCES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History Economic History Working Papers | No. 3/2021 History as Heresy: Unlearning the Lessons of Economic Orthodoxy The Tawney Memorial Lecture 2021 Mary O’Sullivan Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History, University of Geneva, UniMail, bd du Pont-d'Arve 40, CH- 1211 Genève 4. -
Aggregation in the Presence of Demand and Supply Shocks
Aggregation in the Presence of Demand and Supply Shocks Emi Nakamura £ Harvard University July 11, 2004 Preliminary and Incomplete Comments welcome Abstract This paper points out that the real GDP statisics respond differently to sector- specific demand and supply shocks for the exactly same changes in physical quantities. The paper illustrates how this property arises from the theoretical quantity aggregates that real GDP is designed to approximate. The paper also presents an application to US data suggesting that these factors have contributed significantly to the behavior of US aggregate investment growth in the post-WWII period. Keywords: macroeconomic growth, index number theory. JEL Classifications: C43, O47, E23. £I would like to thank W. Erwin Diewert for extremely helpful and inspiring comments on this paper. I would also like to thank Susanto Basu, Dan Benjamin, N.G. Mankiw, Robert Parker, Marc Prud'homme, Ricardo Reis, Julio Rotemberg, Michael Woodford, Jesse Shapiro, Assaf Ben Shoham, Martin Weitzman, seminar participants at Harvard University and Statistics Canada, and particularly Alice Nakamura and Jon Steinsson for helpful discussions and comments. I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for financial support. Contact information: Department of Economics, Harvard University, Littauer Center, Cambridge MA 02138. E-mail: [email protected]. Homepage: http://www.harvard.edu/˜ nakamura. 1 1 Introduction At an abstract level, macroeconomists have often interpreted real GDP as a measure of the physical quantity of output. For example, in a classic paper, Robert Solow (1957) notes that aggregate output is denominated in "physical" units. Yet, actual real GDP statistics have certain features that measures of “physical quantity” typically do not. -
Valuation Risk and Asset Pricing∗
Valuation Risk and Asset Pricing∗ Rui Albuquerque, Martin Eichenbaum, Victor Luo, and Sergio Rebelo December 2015 ABSTRACT Standard representative-agent models fail to account for the weak correlation be- tween stock returns and measurable fundamentals, such as consumption and output growth. This failing, which underlies virtually all modern asset-pricing puzzles, arises because these models load all uncertainty onto the supply side of the economy. We propose a simple theory of asset pricing in which demand shocks play a central role. These shocks give rise to valuation risk that allows the model to account for key asset pricing moments, such as the equity premium, the bond term premium, and the weak correlation between stock returns and fundamentals. J.E.L. Classification: G12. Keywords: Equity premium, bond yields, risk premium. ∗We benefited from the comments and suggestions of Fernando Alvarez, Ravi Bansal, Frederico Belo, Jaroslav Borovicka, John Campbell, John Cochrane, Lars Hansen, Anisha Ghosh, Ravi Jaganathan, Tasos Karantounias, Howard Kung, Junghoon Lee, Dmitry Livdan, Jonathan Parker, Alberto Rossi, Costis Skiadas, Ivan Werning, and Amir Yaron. We thank Robert Barro, Emi Nakamura, Jón Steinsson, and José Ursua for sharing their data with us and Benjamin Johannsen for superb research assistance. Albuquerque gratefully acknowledges financial support from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement PCOFUND-GA-2009-246542. A previous version of this paper was presented under the title "Understanding the Equity Premium Puzzle and the Correlation Puzzle," http://tinyurl.com/akfmvxb. The authors declare that they have no relevant or material financial interest that relate to the research described in this paper. -
Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines*
TYING ODYSSEUS TO THE MAST: EVIDENCE FROM A COMMITMENT SAVINGS PRODUCT IN THE PHILIPPINES* NAVA ASHRAF DEAN KARLAN WESLEY YIN We designed a commitment savings product for a Philippine bank and im- plemented it using a randomized control methodology. The savings product was intended for individuals who want to commit now to restrict access to their savings, and who were sophisticated enough to engage in such a mechanism. We conducted a baseline survey on 1777 existing or former clients of a bank. One month later, we offered the commitment product to a randomly chosen subset of 710 clients; 202 (28.4 percent) accepted the offer and opened the account. In the baseline survey, we asked hypothetical time discounting questions. Women who exhibited a lower discount rate for future relative to current trade-offs, and hence potentially have a preference for commitment, were indeed significantly more likely to open the commitment savings account. After twelve months, average savings balances increased by 81 percentage points for those clients assigned to the treatment group relative to those assigned to the control group. We conclude that the savings response represents a lasting change in savings, and not merely a short-term response to a new product. I. INTRODUCTION Although much has been written, little has been resolved concerning the representation of preferences for consumption over time. Beginning with Strotz [1955] and Phelps and Pollak [1968], models have been put forth that predict individuals will exhibit more impatience for near-term trade-offs than for future trade-offs. These models often incorporate hyperbolic or quasi- * We thank Chona Echavez for collaborating on the field work, the Green Bank of Caraga for cooperation throughout this experiment, John Owens and the USAID/Philippines Microenterprise Access to Banking Services Program team for helping to get the project started, Nathalie Gons, Tomoko Harigaya, Karen Lyons and Lauren Smith for excellent research and field assistance, and three anony- mous referees and the editors. -
LELAND EDWARD FARMER • American, British, and Canadian
LELAND EDWARD FARMER DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CONTACT INFORMATION DEPARTMENT ADDRESS http://www.lelandfarmer.com Department of Economics [email protected] University of Virginia 248 McCormick Rd Charlottesville, VA 22904-4182 CITIZENSHIP • American, British, and Canadian EMPLOYMENT • Assistant Professor of Economics - Department of Economics, University of Virginia, August 2017 - present EDUCATION • Ph.D. Economics - University of California, San Diego, 2017 Dissertation Title: Discrete Methods for the Estimation of Nonlinear Economic Models Dissertation Committee Co-Chairs: James D. Hamilton, Allan Timmermann • B.S. Mathematical and Computational Science, with Honors - Stanford University Minor in Economics, 2011 RESEARCH FIELDS PRIMARY FIELDS: Macroeconomics, Finance SECONDARY FIELDS: Econometrics, Computational Economics REFEREED PUBLICATIONS • "The Discretization Filter: A Simple Way to Estimate Nonlinear State Space Models." Accepted at Quantitative Economics. • "Discretizing Nonlinear, Non-Gaussian Markov Processes with Exact Conditional Moments," with Alexis Akira Toda, Quantitative Economics, July 2017. WORKING PAPERS • “Pockets of Predictability,” with Lawrence Schmidt and Allan Timmermann. Revision requested at the Journal of Finance. LELAND EDWARD FARMER DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA RESEARCH IN PROGRESS • “Estimating High-Dimensional State Space Models.” • “Learning about the Long Run,” with Emi Nakamura and Jón Steinsson. • “National Debt and Economic Welfare,” with Roger E. A. Farmer • “The Market Speaks: Inferring the Values of Drugs from Stock Reactions to Changes in the R&D Status,” with Gaurab Aryal, Federico Ciliberto, and Katya Khmelnitskaya. • “What Does the Market Think?,” with Daniel Murphy and Kieran Walsh. SEMINAR AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS • 2020 (including scheduled): Cornell University; Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City; Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; National University of Singapore; Vanderbilt University • 2019: UC Berkeley; University of Warwick; Federal Reserve Bank of St. -
This PDF Is a Selection from a Published Volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research
This PDF is a selection from a published volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Supplement to NBER Report Six Volume Author/Editor: NBER Volume Publisher: NBER Volume ISBN: Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/unkn70-2 Conference Date: Publication Date: June 1970 Chapter Title: National Bureau of Economic Research Fiftieth Anniversary Dinner: Transcript of Proceedings Chapter Author(s): NBER Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c4232 Chapter pages in book: (p. 1 - 30) NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY DINNER Transcript of Proceedings A Supplement to National Bureau Report 6 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC. 261 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016 JUNE 1970 National Bureau Report and supplements thereto have been exetn pied from the rules governing submission of manuscripts to, and critical review by, the Board of Directors of the National Bureau. Each issue, however, is reviewed and accepted for publication by the Research Committee of the Bureau and a standing committee of the Board. Copyright ©1970by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY DINNER Starlight Roof —Waldorf-AstoriaHotel New York, New York February 27, 1970 PRESIDING: MR. THEODORE 0. YNTEMA: Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen: We are here to celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the National Bureau of Eco- nomic Research and to honor Arthur Burns for his distinguished leadership of the Bureau for so many years. This is also an occasion on which we are happy to greet new friends and to recognize and thank all of you, literally hundreds of you here, who have supported the Bureau and participated in its work. -
Arthur Burns and G. William Miller: the Hapless Inflators
Excerpt from Fed Watching for Fun and Profit Edward Yardeni March 2020 Chapter 3 Arthur Burns and G. William Miller: The Hapless Inflators Fueling the Great Inflation Arthur Burns served as Fed chair from February 1, 1970 to January 31, 1978 under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. Burns was an academic, and the first PhD macroeconomist to head the Fed. He taught economics at both Rutgers University (starting in 1927) and Columbia University (1945), having earned his PhD at the latter. As a doctoral student at Columbia, Burns studied under Wesley Clair Mitchell, a founder of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and its chief researcher. Mitchell brought Burns into the NBER, where Burns began his lifelong research into the business cycle. Together, in 1946, they published Measuring Business Cycles, which introduced the characteristic NBER methods of analyzing business cycles empirically.32 It was Burns who started the NBER’s academic tradition of determining recessions—a role that has been continued by the organization’s Business Cycle Dating Committee. The NBER remains the preeminent authority on dating recessions.[33] Burns served as president and chair of the NBER at points throughout his teaching career. He also chaired the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 1953 to 1956 under President Dwight Eisenhower. The CEA was established by the Employment Act of 1946, which stated that it is the responsibility of the federal government to create “conditions under which there will be afforded useful employment for those able, willing, and seeking work, and to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power.” The CEA was created to help President Eisenhower and successive Presidents make sure another Great Depression would never happen.