Heterogeneity in the Dynamic Effects of Uncertainty on Investment Staff Working Paper 2015-34 Sungje Byun, Soojin Jo How does aggregate profit uncertainty influence investment activity at the firm level? We propose a parsimonious adaptation of a factor-autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model to exploit information in a subindustry sales panel for an efficient and tractable estimation of aggregate volatility. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Domestic demand and components, Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C23, D, D8, D80, E, E2, E22
Risk Sharing in the Presence of a Public Good Staff Working Paper 2015-27 Josef Schroth This paper studies an economy where agents can spend resources on consuming a private good and on funding a public good. There is asymmetric information regarding agents’ relative preference for private versus public good consumption. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D86, E, E6, E62, H, H2, H21, H23, H7, H77
Managerial Compensation Duration and Stock Price Manipulation Staff Working Paper 2015-25 Josef Schroth I build a model of optimal managerial compensation where managers each have a privately observed propensity to manipulate short-term stock prices. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, G, G1, G14, G3, G30, M, M1, M12
A Wake-Up-Call Theory of Contagion Staff Working Paper 2015-14 Christoph Bertsch, Toni Ahnert We propose a novel theory of financial contagion. We study global coordination games of regime change in two regions with an initially uncertain correlation of regional fundamentals. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial stability, International financial markets JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, F, F3, G, G0, G01
Information, Risk Sharing and Incentives in Agency Problems Staff Working Paper 2015-7 Jia Xie This paper studies the use of information for incentives and risk sharing in agency problems. When the principal is risk neutral or the outcome is contractible, risk sharing is unnecessary or completely taken care of by a contract on the outcome. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): D, D8
International Spillovers of Policy Uncertainty Staff Working Paper 2014-57 Stefan Klößner, Rodrigo Sekkel Using the Baker et al. (2013) index of policy uncertainty for six developed countries, this paper estimates spillovers of policy uncertainty. We find that spillovers account for slightly more than one-fourth of the dynamics of policy uncertainty in these countries, with this share rising to one-half during the financial crisis. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, D, D8, D80, F, F4, F42
Information, Amplification and Financial Crisis Staff Working Paper 2014-30 Ali Kakhbod, Toni Ahnert We propose a parsimonious model of information choice in a global coordination game of regime change that is used to analyze debt crises, bank runs or currency attacks. A change in the publicly available information alters the uncertainty about the behavior of other investors. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial stability JEL Code(s): D, D8, D83, G, G0, G01
Consumer Attitudes and the Epidemiology of Inflation Expectations Staff Working Paper 2014-28 Michael Ehrmann, Damjan Pfajfar, Emiliano Santoro This paper studies the formation of consumers’ inflation expectations using micro-level data from the Michigan Survey. It shows that beyond the well-established socio-economic determinants of inflation expectations such as gender, income or education, other characteristics such as the households’ financial situation and their purchasing attitudes also matter. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, D, D8, D84, E, E3, E31
Filling in the Blanks: Network Structure and Interbank Contagion Staff Working Paper 2014-26 Kartik Anand, Ben Craig, Goetz von Peter The network pattern of financial linkages is important in many areas of banking and finance. Yet bilateral linkages are often unobserved, and maximum entropy serves as the leading method for estimating counterparty exposures. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial institutions, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63, D, D8, D85, G, G2, G21, L, L1, L14
Uncertain Costs and Vertical Differentiation in an Insurance Duopoly Staff Working Paper 2014-14 Radoslav Raykov Classical oligopoly models predict that firms differentiate vertically as a way of softening price competition, but some metrics suggest very little quality differentiation in the U.S. auto insurance market. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D4, D43, D8, D81, G, G2, G22, L, L2, L22