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Alan Stuart Blinder February 2020
CURRICULUM VITAE Alan Stuart Blinder February 2020 Address Department of Economics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs 284 Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544-1021 Phone: 609-258-3358 FAX: 609-258-5398 E-mail: blinder (at) princeton (dot) edu Website : www.princeton.edu/blinder Personal Data Born: October 14, 1945, Brooklyn, New York. Marital Status: married (Madeline Blinder); two sons and four grandchildren Educational Background Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, l97l M.Sc. (Econ.), London School of Economics, 1968 A.B., Princeton University, summa cum laude in economics, 1967. Doctor of Humane Letters (honoris causa), Bard College, 2010 Government Service Vice Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 1994-1996. Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers, 1993-1994. Deputy Assistant Director, Congressional Budget Office, 1975. Member, New Jersey Pension Review Committee, 2002-2003. Member, Panel of Economic Advisers, Congressional Budget Office, 2002-2005. Honors Bartels World Affairs Fellow, Cornell University, 2016. Selected as one of 55 “Global Thought Leaders” by the Carnegie Council, 2014. (See http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/studio/thought-leaders/index) Distinguished Fellow, American Economic Association, 2011-. Member, American Philosophical Society, 1996-. Audit Committee, 2003- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991-. John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow, American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2009-. William F. Butler Award, New York Association for Business Economics, 2013. 1 Adam Smith Award, National Association for Business Economics, 1999. Visionary Award, Council for Economic Education, 2013. Fellow, National Association for Business Economics, 2005-. Honorary Fellow, Foreign Policy Association, 2000-. Fellow, Econometric Society, 1981-. -
Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much?
Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much? Xavier Gabaix and Augustin Landier MIT and NBER, NYU Stern February 14, 2006∗ Preliminary and incomplete — Please do not circulate Abstract This paper develops a simple competitive model of CEO pay. It appears to explain much of the rise in CEO compensation in the US economy, without assuming managerial entrenchment, mishandling of options, or theft. CEOs have observable managerial talent and are matched to assets in a competitive assignment model. The marginal impact of a CEO’s talent is assumed to increase with the value of the assets under his control. Under very general assumptions, using results from extreme value theory, the model determines the level of CEO pay across firms and over time, and the pay-sensitivity relations. We predict that the level of CEO compensation should increase one for one with the average market capitalization of large firms in the economy. Therefore, the eight-fold increase of CEO pay between 1980 and 2000 can be fully attributed to the increase in market capitalization of large US companies. The model predicts the cross-section Cobb-Douglass relation between pay and firm size and can be used to study other large changes at the top of the income distribution, and offers a benchmark for calibratable corporate finance. ∗[email protected], [email protected]. For helpful comments, we thank David Yermack and seminar participants at MIT. 1 1Introduction This paper proposes a neoclassical model of equilibrium CEO compensation. It is simple, tractable, calibratable. CEOs have observable managerial talent and are matched to firms competitively. -
Understanding the Greenspan Standard
Commentary: Understanding the Greenspan Standard John B. Taylor No matter what metric you use, the Greenspan era gets exceedingly high marks for economic performance. The era always will be remembered for its price stability—with declining and now low, stable inflation—and for its economic stability—with only two historically short, mild recessions and three long expansions. An indi- cation of how different things are in the Greenspan era is that the current expansion is already one of the longest in American history. Alan Blinder and Ricardo Reis have provided us with a comprehen- sive evaluation of the Greenspan era, shedding light on key policy issues and controversies. I particularly liked their behind-the-scenes review of the move toward greater transparency. And I agree with their overall evaluation of Alan Greenspan that “when the score is toted up, we think he has legitimate claim to be the greatest central banker who ever lived.” Evaluating policy with a monetary policy rule The core of the Blinder-Reis paper is an evaluation of monetary policy through the lens of a policy rule, in particular the Taylor rule. Blinder and Reis find that this rule fits the Greenspan era very well. 107 108 John B. Taylor They then use the estimated rule for a number of purposes. They use it to identify key episodes, defined as the deviations from the rule. They also use the rule to back out Alan Greenspan’s implicit esti- mate of the natural rate of unemployment and to assess the correct response to a change in productivity growth. -
Milton Friedman: a Bibliography
__________________________________________________________________ MILTON FRIEDMAN: A BIBLIOGRAPHY Compiled by Julio H. Cole1 Milton Friedman (1912-2006), the world-famous author of Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and Free to Choose (1980), was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, and his memory will live long in the lore of economics. To mark the centenary of his birth, Laissez-Faire is pleased to publish this bibliography, the most complete listing to date of his scholarly writings. It provides both an indication of the breadth of his interests, and a measure of the magnitude of his contribution to economic scholarship. A. Books by Milton Friedman .…………………………………………… 98 B. Other Publications by Milton Friedman .……………………………… 100 C. Published Correspondence ……………………………………………. 120 D. Published Interviews ...………………………………………………... 121 1Professor of Economics, Universidad Francisco Marroquín (Guatemala). This bibliography is based upon three earlier bibliographical orientations to Friedman‘s writings: Niels Thygesen, ―The Scientific Contributions of Milton Friedman,‖ Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 79 (1977): 84-98, Kurt Leube (ed.), The Essence of Friedman (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), pp. 526-51 (compiled by Gloria Valentine), and Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia (eds.), Milton Friedman et son oeuvre (Montreal: Presses de l‘Université de Montréal, 1993), pp. 191-24 (compiled by Gilles Dostaler). It includes books authored, co-authored or edited by Milton Friedman, introductions and forewords to books by other authors, articles in scholarly and professional journals, comments and replies, chapters in edited volumes, articles in encyclopedias and general interest magazines, book reviews, and published interviews. It does not include articles published in newspapers or in news magazines, speeches, or testimonies to congressional committees. -
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: Business Cycle Research and the Needs of Our Times Volume Author/Editor: Arthur F. Burns Volume Publisher: NBER Volume ISBN: Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/annu53-1 Publication Date: 1953 Chapter Title: Business Cycle Research and the Needs of Our Time Chapter Authors: Arthur F. Burns Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c12287 Chapter pages in book: (1 - 46) Business Cycle Research and the Needs of Our Times ARTHUR F. BURNS Director of Research .33rd ANNUAL REPORT NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC. 4 Business Cycle Research and the Needs of Our Times ARTHUR F. BURNS Director of Research THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC. 181 9 BROADWAY, NEW YORK 23, N. Y. MAY 1953 OFFICERS 1953 Harry Schennan, Chairman C. C. Balderston, President Percival F. Brundage, Vice-President George B. Roberts, Treasurer W. J. Carson, Executive Director DIRECTORS AT LARGE Donald R. Belcher, Westfield, New Jersey Wallace J. Campbell, Director, The Cooperative League of the USA Albert J. Hettinger, Jr., Lazard Freres and Company COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY Oswald W. Knauth, Beaufort, South Carolina NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC. H. W. Laidler, Executive Director, League for Industrial Democracy 1819 BROADWAY, NEW YORK 23, N. Y. Shepard Morgan, New York City C. Reinold Noyes, Princeton, New Jersey ALL RIGHTS RESERVED George B. Roberts, Vice-President, National City Bank Beardsley Ruml, New York City TYPOGRAPHY BY OSCAR LEVENTHAL, INC. Harry Scherman, Chairman, Book-of-the-Month ,Club PRINTING BY BASSO PRINTING CORPORATION George Soule, Bennington College N. -
Quantitative Easing: Entrance and Exit Strategies
Quantitative Easing: Entrance and Exit Strategies Alan S. Blinder This article was originally presented as the Homer Jones Memorial Lecture, organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, April 1, 2010. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review , November/December 2010, 92 (6), pp. 465-79. pparently, it can happen here. On easing is something aberrant. I adhere to that December 16, 2008, the Federal Open nomenclature here. Market Committee (FOMC), in an I begin by sketching the conceptual basis for effort to fight what was shaping up quantitative easing: why it might be appropriate Ato be the worst recession since 1937-38, reduced and how it is supposed to work. I then turn to the the federal funds rate to nearly zero. 1 From then Fed’s entrance strategy—which is presumably on, with all its conventional ammunition spent, in the past, and then to the Fed’s exit strategy— the Federal Reserve was squarely in the brave which is still mostly in the future. Both strate gies new world of quantitative easing . Chairman Ben invite some brief comparisons with the Japanese Bernanke tried to call the Fed’s new policies experience between 2001 and 2006. Finally, I “credit easing,” probably to differentiate them address some questions about central bank inde - from actions taken by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) pendence raised by quantitative easing before earlier in the decade, but the label did not stick. 2 briefly wrapping up. Roughly speaking, quantitative easing refers to changes in the composition and/or size of a central bank’s balance sheet that are designed to THE CONCEPTUAL BASIS ease liquidity and/or credit conditions. -
Milton Friedman Economist As Public Intellectual
Economic Insights FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF DALLAS VOLUME 7, NUMBER 2 Milton Friedman Economist as Public Intellectual If asked to name a famous economist, most Americans would probably say Milton Friedman. Economists usually make their contributions behind the scenes at think tanks, gov- ernment agencies or universities. Friedman has done that, but he also has taken his ideas and policy proposals directly to his fellow citizens through books, magazine columns and, especially, television. It is not an exaggeration to say he has been the most influential American economist of the past century. He has changed policy not only here at home but also in many other nations, as much of the world has moved away from economic controls and toward economic freedom. Milton Friedman marks his 90th birthday on July 31, 2002, and the Dallas Fed commem- orates the occasion with this issue of Economic Insights. Happy birthday, Milton! —Bob McTeer Professor Steven N.S. Cheung Professor President, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Milton Friedman Milton Friedman has been an ardent introduced the young economist to the uct accounts and many of the tech- and effective advocate for free enter- works of Cambridge School of Eco- niques applied to them in the 1920s prise and monetarist policies for five nomics founder Alfred Marshall. Jones, and ’30s. Because Friedman’s early decades. He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., a pivotal figure in the monetarist camp, study in economics involved constant in 1912, the son of Jewish immigrants introduced Friedman to Frank Knight contact with theorists such as Burns, who had come to America in the late and the early Chicago school, espe- Mitchell and Kuznets, it is not surpris- 1890s. -
Reporter NATIONAL BUREAU of ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NBER Reporter NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH Reporter OnLine at: www.nber.org/reporter 2012 Number 1 Program Report IN THIS ISSUE Program Report The Changing Focus of Public Public Economics 1 Economics Research, 1980–2010 Research Summaries Private Health Insurance Markets 7 Transfer of Knowledge across Countries 10 Raj Chetty and Amy Finkelstein* Inflation Forecasting 13 Wealth After Retirement 16 The NBER’s Program on Public Economics (PE) has covered a very wide range of topics since the last program report six years ago. Rather than NBER Profiles 19 attempting to summarize the entire corpus of work that has been done by Conferences 21 this program in the past few years, this report provides a bird’s eye view NBER News 25 of some of the major changes in the field from two perspectives. First, we Program and Working Group Meetings 29 quantify the main trends in public finance research at the NBER over the Bureau Books 35 last thirty years, drawing on statistics from the database of NBER Working Papers. Second, we qualitatively summarize some of the emerging themes of recent research, both in terms of topics and methods. A Statistical Perspective The Public Economics Program began as the Business Taxation and Finance Program, which held its first meeting under the direction of David Bradford in December 1977. It was renamed the Taxation Program in 1980, to reflect the broader research interests of its affiliated researchers. To recog- nize the importance of expenditure as well as tax research, the program was renamed “Public Economics” in 1991, when James Poterba succeeded David Bradford as Program Director. -
Macroeconomic Crises Since 1870
11302-04_Barro_rev.qxd 9/12/08 1:04 PM Page 255 ROBERT J. BARRO Harvard University JOSÉ F. URSÚA Harvard University Macroeconomic Crises since 1870 ABSTRACT We build on Angus Maddison’s data by assembling inter- national time series from before 1914 on real per capita personal consumer expenditure, C, and by improving the GDP data. We have full annual data on C for twenty-four countries and GDP for thirty-six. For samples starting at 1870, we apply a peak-to-trough method to isolate economic crises, defined as cumulative declines in C or GDP of at least 10 percent. We find 95 crises for C 1 and 152 for GDP, implying disaster probabilities of 3 ⁄2 percent a year, with 1 mean size of 21–22 percent and average duration of 3 ⁄2 years. Simulation of a Lucas-tree model with i.i.d. shocks and Epstein-Zin-Weil preferences accords with the observed average equity premium of around 7 percent on levered equity, using a coefficient of relative risk aversion of 3.5. This result is robust to several perturbations, except for limiting the sample to nonwar crises. n earlier study by Barro used Thomas Rietz’s insight on rare eco- Anomic disasters to explain the equity premium puzzle introduced by Rajnish Mehra and Edward Prescott.1 Key parameters were the probability p of disaster and the distribution of disaster sizes b. Because large macro- economic disasters are rare, pinning down p and the b distribution from historical data requires long time series for many countries, along with the assumption of rough parameter stability over time and across countries. -
Generatiaon NEXT 25 Economists Under 45 Who Are Shaping the Way We Think About the Global Economy
Generatiaon NEXT 25 economists under 45 who are shaping the way we think about the global economy e asked you, our readers, and assorted international economists and journal editors to tell us which economists under 45 will have the most influence in the coming decades on our under- standing of the global economy. F&D researcher Carmen Rollins gathered information from Wscores of sources to compile this—by no means exhaustive—list of economists to keep an eye on. Nicholas Bloom, 41, British, Stanford University, uses quantitative research to measure and explain management Amy Finkelstein, 40, American, practices across firms and countries. He also researches the MIT, researches the impact of pub- causes and consequences of uncertainty and studies innova- lic policy on health care systems, tion and information technology. government intervention in health insurance markets, and market failures. Raj Chetty, 35, Indian and American, Harvard University, received his Ph.D. at age 23. He Kristin Forbes, 44, American, Bank of England and MIT, combines empirical evidence has held positions in both academia and the U.S. and U.K. eco- and economic theory to research nomic policy sphere, where she applies her research to policy how to improve government pol- questions related to international macroeconomics and finance. icy decisions in areas such as tax policy, unemployment insurance, education, and equal- Roland Fryer, 37, American, Harvard, focuses on the ity of opportunity. social and political economics of race and inequality in the United States. His research investigates economic disparity through the development of new economic theory and the Melissa Dell, 31, American, Harvard, examines poverty and implementation of randomized experiments. -
Rare Disasters and Exchange Rates
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES RARE DISASTERS AND EXCHANGE RATES Emmanuel Farhi Xavier Gabaix Working Paper 13805 http://www.nber.org/papers/w13805 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 February 2008 For helpful comments, we thank Andy Atkeson, David Backus, Robert Barro, Daniel Cohen, Alex Edmans, Christian Julliard, Pat and Tim Kehoe, Raj Mehra, Emi Nakamura, Eric van Wincoop, and seminar participants at Boston University, Dartmouth, LBS, LSE, Minneapolis Fed, NBER, New York Fed, NYU, UBC, and the University of Virginia. Gabaix thanks the NSF for support. 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. © 2008 by Emmanuel Farhi and Xavier Gabaix. 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. Rare Disasters and Exchange Rates Emmanuel Farhi and Xavier Gabaix NBER Working Paper No. 13805 February 2008 JEL No. E43,E44,F31,G12,G15 ABSTRACT We propose a new model of exchange rates, which yields a theory of the forward premium puzzle. Our explanation combines two ingredients: the possibility of rare economic disasters, and an asset view of the exchange rate. Our model is frictionless, has complete markets, and works for an arbitrary number of countries. -
Empirical Analyses in Finance and Macroeconomics
Empirical Analyses in Finance and Macroeconomics The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40050093 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Empirical Analyses in Finance and Macroeconomics A dissertation presented by Yueran Ma to The Department of Economics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Business Economics Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2018 c 2018 Yueran Ma All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisors: Author: Professor Andrei Shleifer Yueran Ma Professor Edward Glaeser Empirical Analyses in Finance and Macroeconomics Abstract This thesis has three essays which are empirical studies at the intersection of finance and macroeconomics. The topics include low interest rates and financial markets, debt contracts and corporate borrowing constraints, and expectations in finance and macro. The essays hope to provide empirical evidence, using diverse approaches, to better understand the connections as well as differences between classic theories and economic activities in practice. iii Contents Abstract . iii Acknowledgments . xii Introduction 1 1 Low Interest Rates and Risk Taking: Evidence from Individual Investment Deci- sions 3 1.1 Introduction . .3 1.2 Benchmark Experiment . .8 1.2.1 Experiment Design and Sample Description . .9 1.2.2 Results . 16 1.3 Potential Mechanisms .