Douglas W. Elmendorf

Can financial innovation help to explain the reduced volatility of economic activity

The stabilization of economic activity in the mid 1980s has received considerable attention. Research has focused primarily on the role played by milder economic shocks, improved inventory management, and better monetary policy. This paper explores another potential explanation: financial innovation. Examples of such innovation include developments in lending practices and loan markets that have enhanced the ability of households and firms to borrow and changes in government policy such as the demise of Regulation Q. We employ a variety of simple empirical techniques to identify links between the observed moderation in economic activity and the influence of financial innovation on consumer spending, housing investment, and business fixed investment. Our results suggest that financial innovation should be added to the list of likely contributors to the mid-1980s stabilization.

Taxation of Labor Income and the Demand for Risky Assets

The effect of uninsured labor income risk on the joint saving/portfolio composition decision is analyzed using new techniques from the theory of multiple risk-bearing. Applying this analysis, the effect of labor income taxes on the demand for risky securities is considered. It is well known that when private insurance markets are incomplete, the insurance afforded by labor income taxes can reduce overall saving. This paper establishes that - given plausible restrictions on preferences - the insurance afforded by labor income taxes increases the demand for risky securities, even when labor income is statistically independent of the returns to risky securities.

The Deficit Gamble

The historical behavior of interest rates and growth rates in U.S. data suggests that the government can, with a high probability, run temporary budget deficits and then roll over the resulting government debt forever. The purpose of this paper is to document this finding and to examine its implications. Using a standard overlapping-generations model of capital accumulation, we show that whenever a perpetual rollover of debt succeeds, policy can make every generation better off. This conclusion does not imply that deficits are good policy, for an attempt to roll over debt forever might fail. But the adverse effects of deficits, rather than being inevitable, occur with only a small probability.

Chapter 25 Government debt

Abstract This chapter surveys the literature on the macroeconomic effects of government debt. It begins by discussing the data on debt and deficits, including the historical time series, measurement issues, and projections of future fiscal policy. The chapter then presents the conventional theory of government debt, which emphasizes aggregate demand in the short run and crowding out in the long run. It next examines the theoretical and empirical debate over the theory of debt neutrality called Ricardian equivalence. Finally, the chapter considers various normative perspectives about how the government should use its ability to borrow.

Declining Required Reserves and the Volatility of the Federal Funds Rate

Low required reserve balances in 1991 led to a sharp increase in the volatility of the federal funds rate, but similarly low balances in 1996 did not. This paper develops and simulates a microeconomic model of the funds market that explains these facts. We show that reductions in reserve balances increase the volatility of the federal funds rate, but that this relationship changes over time in response to observable changes in bank behavior. The model predicts that a continued decline in required reserves could increase funds-rate volatility significantly.

Do Provisional Estimates of Output Miss Economic Turning Points

Initial estimates of aggregate output and its components are based on very incomplete source data, so they may not fully capture shifts in economic conditions. In particular, if those estimates are based partly on trends in preceding quarters, provisional estimates may overstate activity when actual output is decelerating and understate it when actual output is accelerating. We examine this issue using the Real Time Data Set for Macroeconomists, which contains contemporaneous estimates of GNP or GDP and its components beginning in the late 1960s, as well as financial-market information and other data. We find that provisional estimates tend to partially miss accelerations and decelerations. We also consider whether better use of contemporaneous data could improve the quality of provisional estimates. We find that provisional estimates do not represent optimal forecasts of the current estimates, but that the improvement in forecast quality from including additional data appears to be quite small.

Budget Deficits, Tax Incentives and Inflation: a Surprising Lesson from the 1983-84 Recovery

The first two years of the economic expansion that began in 1983 were unusually strong and were accompanied by better inflation performance than would have been expected on the basis of experience in past recoveries. Our evidence contradicts the popular view that the recovery was the result of a consumer boom financed by reductions in the personal income tax. We also find no support for the proposition that the recovery reflected an increase in the supply of labor induced by the reduction in personal marginal tax rates. The driving force behind the recovery of nominal demand was the shift to an expansionary monetary policy. The rapid expansion of nominal GNP can be explained by monetary policy without any reference to changes in fiscal and tax policy. But the growth of real GNP was more rapid than would have been expected on the basis of the rise in total nominal spending and the increase in the price level was correspondingly less. The most likely cause of this favorable division of the nominal GNP increase was the sharp rise in the dollar that occurred at this time. Although part of the dollars rise can be attributed to the successful anti-inflationary monetary policy, the dollar also increased because of the rise in real interest rates that resulted from the combination of the increase in anticipated budget deficits and the improved tax incentives for investment in equipment and structures. Thus, expansionary fiscal policy did contribute to the greater-than-expected rise of real GNP in 1983-84 but it did so through an unusual channel. The fiscal expansion raised output because it caused a favorable supply shock to prices and not because it was a traditional stimulus to demand. The budget deficit and investment incentives were expansionary in the short run because, by causing a rise of the dollar, they reduced inflation and thus permitted a faster growth of real GNP.

The Effect of News on Bond Prices: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1900-1920

We study the relationship of non-quantitative news to bond prices. We select a set of major news events based solely on their significance as judged by historians, and examine the corresponding bond price movements. We find strong evidence that news has some influence on bond price movements, but we find no evidence that news can explain more than a small fraction of those movements.

Dynamic scoring: Why and how to include macroeconomic effects in budget estimates for legislative proposals

ABSTRACT:Official estimates of the budgetary effects of legislative proposals generally include anticipated behavioral responses except for those that would alter overall output or employment. Based on my experience as director of the Congressional Budget Office and on the analysis in this paper, I conclude that such macroeconomic effects of legislative proposals should be included in budget estimates—that is, so-called dynamic scoring should be used—for major (but not minor) proposals and for proposals affecting federal spending as well as revenues. However, such macroeconomic effects should not be included when the estimating agencies do not have the tools or time needed to do a careful analysis of those effects. Current rules governing the official estimating process do not fully meet those conditions.