Kevin D. Salyer

Time-Varying Uncertainty and the Credit Channel

We extend the Carlstrom and Fuerst (1997) agency cost model of business cycles by including time varying uncertainty in the technology shocks that affect capital production. We first demonstrate that standard linearization methods can be used to solve the model yet second moments enter the economys equilibrium policy functions. We then demonstrate that an increase in uncertainty causes, ceteris paribus, a fall in investment supply. A second key result is that time varying uncertainty results in countercyclical bankruptcy rates - a finding which is consistent with the data and opposite the result in Carlstrom and Fuerst. Third, we show that persistence of uncertainty affects both quantitatively and qualitatively the behavior of the economy. However, the shocks to uncertainty imply a quantitatively small role for uncertainty over the business cycle. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

The Response of Term Rates to Monetary Policy Uncertainty

This paper shows that greater uncertainty about monetary policy can lead to a decline in nominal interest rates. In the context of a limited participation model, monetary policy uncertainty is modeled as a mean-preserving spread in the distribution for the money growth process. This increase in uncertainty lowers the yield on short-term maturity bonds because the household sector responds by increasing liquidity in the banking sector. Long-term maturity bonds also have lower yields but this decrease is a result of the effect that greater uncertainty has on the nominal intertemporal rate of substitution - which is a convex function of money growth. These predictions are broadly supported by the data: the conditional variance of monetary policy shocks identified from a conventional monetary VAR negatively affects the yields of federal funds, and the three and six-month treasury bills.

Real Business Cycles : A Reader

Real Business Cycle theory combines the remains of monetarism with the new classical macroeconomics, and has become one of the dominant approaches within contemporary macroeconomics today. This volume presents: * the authoritative anthology in RBC. The work contains the major articles introducing and extending the theory as well as critical literature * an extensive introduction which contains an expository summary and critical evaluation of RBC theory * comprehensive coverage and balance between seminal papers and extensions; proponents and critics; and theory and empirics. Macroeconomics is a compulsory element in most economics courses, and this book will be an essential guide to one of its major theories.

Spotting sunspots: Some evidence in support of models with self-fulfilling prophecies

Abstract This paper adds financial assests to Roger Farmers business cycle model with increasing returns and self-fulfilling beliefs. By using information from the financial markets in conjunction with the structure of the model, we can uncover from financial data the belief shocks that drive the model. Specifically, we assume that belief shocks drive both economic fluctuations and asset returns. The financial market information allows us to identify these shocks. We use our methods to generate dynamic simulations of the model and show that it has incremental predictive power for key US time series.

A Search-Theoretic Model of the Term Premium

A consistent empirical feature of bond yields is that term premia are, on average, positive. That is, investors in long term bonds receive higher returns than investors in similar (i.e.\ same default risk) shorter maturity bonds over the same holding period. The majority of theoretical explanations for this observation have viewed the term premia through the lens of the consumption based capital asset pricing model. In contrast, we harken to an older empirical literature which attributes the term premium to the idea that short maturity bonds are inherently more liquid. The goal of this paper is to provide a theoretical justification of this concept. To that end, we employ a model in the tradition of modern monetary theory extended to include assets of different maturities. Short term assets always mature in time to take advantage of random consumption opportunities. Long term assets do not, but agents may liquidate them in a secondary asset market, characterized by search-and-bargaining frictions a la Duffie, Garleanu, and Pedersen (2005). In equilibrium, long term assets have higher rates of return to compensate agents for their relative lack of liquidity. Consistent with empirical findings, our model predicts a steeper yield curve for assets that trade in less liquid secondary markets.

Calibration and Real Business Cycle Models: An Unorthodox Experiment

Abstract This paper examines the calibration methodology used in real business cycle (RBC) theory. We confront the calibrator with data from artificial economies (various Keynesian macroeconomic models) and examine whether a prototypical real business cycle model, when calibrated to these data sets using standard methods, can match a selected set of sample moments. We find that the calibration methodology does constitute a discriminating test in that the calibrated real business cycle models cannot match the moments from all the artificial economies we study. In particular, we find the RBC model can only match the moments of economies whose moments are close to actual U.S. data.

Technology Shocks or Colored Noise?: Why Real-Business-Cycle Models Cannot Explain Actual Business Cycles

Typically real-business-cycle models are assessed by their ability to mimic the covariances and variances of actual business cycle data. Recently, however, advocates of RBC models have used them to fit the historical path of real GDP using the Solow residual as a driving process. We demonstrate that the success of RBC models at matching historical GDP data does not confirm the validity of RBC models. Through simulations we demonstrate that the Solow residual does not carry useful information about technology shocks and that the RBC model does not add incremental information about GDP. RBC models fit historical GDP data entirely because the Solow residual is itself just a noisy measure of GDP.

Macroeconomic priorities and crash states

This paper reproduces Lucass analysis of the costs of business cycles in an economy with a low probability, crash state in consumption growth. For reasonable parameter values, it is shown that the presence of a crash state dramatically increases the costs ofconsumption volatility. Specifically, for relative risk aversion around 5, households in the US economy would, in aggregate, pay over

Rationale Erklärungen für Immobilienpreis Bubbles: Die Auswirkungen von Risikoschocks auf die Wohnimmobilienpreisvolatilität und die Volatilität von Investitionen in Wohnimmobilien

60 billion (approximately 3% of consumption in 2001) to eliminate consumption uncertainty. The conclusion is that stabilization policy is important not for its effects on second moments but inreducing kurtosis by lowering both the probability and severity of a crash state.

The term structure of interest rates within a production economy: A parametric example

Abstract The dramatic world-wide housing boom and bust cycles during the last few years are often described in the media as “bubbles” and were largely caused by irrational exuberance due to the liberalization of housing finance (i.e. credit market irregularities in the U.S.: the subprime markets and mortgage structured products). Following Dorofeenko et al (2011), this paper, however, argues that many of the business and housing stylized facts, especially, the U.S. housing price and residential investment volatilites can be explained by analyzing the role of uncertainty (risk) in the framework of a Real Business Cycle model that includes a housing sector with financial information frictions. Consequently, we show for the U.S., these large housing price and residential investment boom and bust cycles are at least were driven largely by economic fundamentals with irrationality (or psychology) at most in the background.