Temporal and ethnic decompositions of homeownership rates: Synthetic cohorts across five censuses

We perform probit-based Oaxaca–Fairlie decompositions of the change in ownership rates for four ethnic groups and three age groups over five censuses, and then construct second-order decompositions of the white/non-white differentials. There is substantial heterogeneity in how Hispanic, Asian and Black households of various age cohorts converge to and diverge from their white counterparts with respect to homeownership.     

Default Risk in Corporate Yield Spreads

An important research question examined in the credit risk literature focuses on the proportion of corporate yield spreads attributed to default risk. This topic is reexamined in light of the different issues associated with the computation of default probabilities obtained from historical default data. We find that the estimated default risk proportion in corporate yield spreads is sensitive to the ex ante estimated term structure of default probabilities used as inputs. This proportion can become a large fraction of the spread when sensitivity analyses are made with respect to the period over which the probabilities are estimated and the recovery rates.     

Intermediate imports, the terms of trade, and the dynamics of the exchange rate and current account

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of an increase in the price of an imported intermediate production input. The framework of the analysis is a small open economy with a floating exchange rate and endogenous terms of trade, in which saving depends on residents' (variable) rate of time preference. Contrary to popular conceptions, an intermediate price shock may lead to an appreciation of the exchange rate in both the short run and the long run, and is likely to occasion a current-account surplus. The terms of trade between foreign and domestic finished goods always improve in the long run.     

Business is not a Game: The Metaphoric Fallacy

Sport and game metaphors are ubiquitous in the culture and language of business. As evocative linguistic devices, such metaphors are morally neutral; however, if they are indicative of a deep structure of understanding that filters experience, then they have the potential to be ethically problematic. This article argues that there exists a danger for those who forget or confuse metaphor with definition: the metaphoric fallacy. Accordingly, business is like a game, but it is not the equivalent of a game. If business is equated to a game, then the potentially negative implications for ethical content and the application of ethical theories are numerous. This article suggests a fresh approach to issues of contemporary business ethics discourse, by attending to the business-as-game metaphor.     

International Trade and the Connection between Excess Demand and Inflation

This paper demonstrates that globalization, taking the form of a higher import component of consumption and a larger export component of GDP, is the cause of the apparent breakdown in the relationship between excess demand and inflation. Within a parsimonious empirical framework, we show that increasing openness of the US economy is all that is needed to re‐establish the relationship between inflation and capacity utilization. We also show that international trade has a significant separate influence on inflation, and is important for identifying a Phillips curve relationship between unemployment and inflation.     

Simultaneous Public and Private Provision of Services, Asymmetric Information and Innovation

Public and private provision of a service coexist. There is asymmetric information between the government and the agency providing the public service with respect to the costs, the quality of the service and the innovation effort of the agency. We examine the optimal government design of the funding contracts to induce the agency to reveal its costs and exert high innovation effort. The optimizing behaviour of consumers and private firms generates observable information, which can be used by the government to reduce its information problem. In the optimal contracts, the informational rents of the agency increase with the level of innovation effort that the government induces from the agency. Correlation between public and the private sector costs results in a trade-off in the government's policy between inducing innovation and extracting the informational rent of the agency. To increase the redistribution inherent in the public provision of the service, the government will manipulate the expected profits of the private firms to induce higher innovation effort.     

The immoderate world economy

This paper explores the connection between the much-debated global current account imbalances of the past decade and the U.S. financial collapse. It argues that the connection is an intimate one, although nothing so simple as cause and effect. Instead, the imbalances were a primary symptom of forces that led directly to the financial crash. The paper goes on to examine lessons for reforming the global financial architecture. A major lesson is the need to take a systemic view of global financial stability – a view that analyzes the global economy much as one would analyze an integrated domestic economy.