Robustness and U.S. Monetary Policy Experimentation

We study how a concern for robustness modifies a policymaker's incentive to experiment. A policymaker has a prior over two submodels of inflation‐unemployment dynamics. One submodel implies an exploitable trade‐off, the other does not. Bayes' law gives the policymaker an incentive to experiment. The policymaker fears that both submodels and his prior probability distribution over them are misspecified. We compute decision rules that are robust to misspecifications of each submodel and of the prior distribution over submodels. We compare robust rules to ones that Cogley, Colacito, and Sargent (2007) computed assuming that the models and the prior distribution are correctly specified. We explain how the policymaker's desires to protect against misspecifications of the submodels, on the one hand, and misspecifications of the prior over them, on the other, have different effects on the decision rule.     

Uninvited U.S. Investors? Economic Consequences of Involuntary Cross‐Listings

We study the economic consequences of a recent Securities and Exchange Commission securities regulation change that grants foreign firms trading on the U.S. over‐the‐counter (OTC) market an automatic exemption from the reporting requirements of the 1934 Securities Act. We document that the number of voluntary (sponsored) OTC cross‐listings did not increase following the regulation change, suggesting that it did not achieve its intended purpose of increasing voluntary OTC cross‐listings through a reduction in compliance costs. We do find that the design of the regulation allowed financial intermediaries to create an unprecedented number of involuntary (unsponsored) OTC ADRs: 1,700 unsponsored ADR programs for 920 firms were created for companies that had previously chosen not to cross‐list in the United States. Our difference‐in‐differences analysis based on a matched sample approach documents that foreign firms forced into the U.S. capital markets experience a significant decrease in firm value, and we further show that the decrease in firm value is related to an increase in U.S. litigation risk. We also find that depositary banks’ propensity to involuntarily cross‐list firms is positively related to banks’ expected fee revenue, and that banks chose firms that incur high costs when involuntarily cross‐listed. Our results provide evidence that securities regulation can be exploited for private gain and result in costly unintended consequences.     

Contracting in Peer Networks

We consider multiagent multifirm contracting when agents benchmark their wages to those of their peers, using weights that vary within and across firms. When a single principal commits to a public contract, optimal contracts hedge relative wage risk without sacrificing efficiency. But compensation benchmarking undoes performance benchmarking, causing wages to load positively on peer output, and asymmetries in peer effects can be exploited to enhance profits. With multiple principals, a “rat race” emerges: agents are more productive, with effort that can exceed the first best, but higher wages reduce profits and undermine efficiency. Wage transparency and disclosure requirements exacerbate these effects.     

Dissecting Earnings Recognition Timeliness

We dissect the portion of stock price change of the fiscal year that is recognized in reported accounting earnings of the year. We call this portion earnings recognition timeliness (ERT). The emphasis in our dissection is on empirical identification of two fundamental precepts of financial accounting: (1) the matching principle, which is manifested in the recognition of expenses in the same period as the related benefits (i.e., sales revenue) accrue; and (2) recognition of expenses in the current period due to changes in expectations regarding earnings of future periods (we refer to these expenses as the expectations element of expenses). Although the expectations element has implicitly been at the core of much of the recent empirical literature on asymmetry in the earnings/return relation, it has not been explicitly identified. This recent literature is based on the premise that bad news about the future leads to more recognition of expenses in the current period (such as write‐downs) whereas good news about the future tends to have a much lesser effect on expenses of the current period; asymmetry in the expenses/return relation is captured implicitly via the observation of asymmetry in the earnings/return relation (i.e., asymmetry in ERT). Since the ERT reflects the relation between sales revenue and returns, matched expenses and returns, as well as the relation between the expectations element of expenses and returns, a focus on the expectations element may lead to sharper inferences. Our straightforward empirical procedure permits a focus on this element.     

Briefing Paper

Between the end of 1979 and the end of 1981 unemployment rose by 1.4 million. After that exceptional period unemployment continued to rise rather less rapidly to its current level of 3.2 million, Of this 3.2 million, about 1.3 million have been unemployed for more than a year. In this Briefing Paper we describe and attempt to explain the processes by which long-term unemployment rose to its current level.
We also discuss two related questions; the first concerns the relationship between unemployment and vacancies and the second concerns the relationship between long-term unemployment and inflation. The final sections consider the policy implications of these findings.     

Measuring Strategic Uncertainty in Coordination Games

This paper proposes a method to measure strategic uncertainty by eliciting certainty equivalents analogous to measuring risk attitudes in lotteries. We apply this method by conducting experiments on a class of one-shot coordination games with strategic complementarities and choices between simple lotteries and sure payoff alternatives, both framed in a similar way. Despite the multiplicity of equilibria in the coordination games, aggregate behaviour is fairly predictable. The pure or mixed Nash equilibria cannot describe subjects' behaviour. We present two global games with private information about monetary payoffs and about risk aversion. While previous literature treats the parameters of a global game as given, we estimate them and show that both models describe observed behaviour well. The global-game selection for vanishing noise of private signals offers a good recommendation for actual players, given the observed distribution of actions. We also deduce subjective beliefs and compare them with objective probabilities.     

The organization of the grain trade in the early Roman Empire

Rome was an exceedingly large city at the start of the Roman Empire, and it required massive grain imports to feed its population. We argue that Roman merchants organized these imports and that they used a variety of mechanisms to deal with the informational problems of long‐distance trade at that time. They used general institutions of Rome, such as its legal and social structures, as well as specific mercantile institutions, such as contracts, companies, and invoices. They exploited information in the Roman social structure as well as in the facilities for trade. This combination of social and economic institutions enabled Roman merchants to operate on as large a scale as any other pre‐industrial merchant group.     

DOES MONEY MATTER FOR INFLATION IN THE EURO AREA?

We analyze the relationship between M3 growth and inflation within an error correction framework including also the output gap, the 3‐mo EURIBOR, and the 10‐yr government bond yield. We find robust cointegration between money growth and inflation. Shocks in M3 growth account for up to 30% of the inflation forecast error variance, while the effects of output gap and interest rate shocks are mainly transitory. Significantly different dynamics are found during periods at the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties when interest rate and inflation rate levels were high and real money growth decreasing. (JEL C32, E31, E41)     

Did owner‐occupation lead to smaller families for interwar working‐class households?1

This article examines the links between working‐class home ownership and family limitation in interwar Britain. Purchasing a suburban house enabled families to buy into a new, aspirational model of working‐class respectability. Embracing this model entailed increased accommodation costs and higher levels of conspicuous consumption, placing great strains on many household budgets. Owner‐occupiers therefore sought to limit the size of their families in order to sustain their new lifestyles. Meanwhile the new suburban ideology strongly emphasized improved standards of childcare, based around creating a high‐quality domestic environment, and thus directly encouraged families to aim for fewer, but better‐resourced children.