Identifying Monetary Policy Shocks via Changes in Volatility

A central issue of monetary policy analysis is the specification of monetary policy shocks. In a structural vector autoregressive setting there has been some controversy about which restrictions to use for identifying the shocks because standard theories do not provide enough information to fully identify monetary policy shocks. In fact, to compare different theories it would even be desirable to have over-identifying restrictions that would make statistical tests of different theories possible. It is pointed out that some progress toward over-identifying monetary policy shocks can be made by using specific data properties. In particular, it is shown that changes in the volatility of the shocks can be used for identification. Based on monthly U.S. data from 1965 to 1996 different theories are tested and it is found that associating monetary policy shocks with shocks to nonborrowed reserves leads to a particularly strong rejection of the model whereas assuming that the Fed accommodates demand shocks to total reserves cannot be rejected.     

A New Time‐Varying Parameter Autoregressive Model for U.S. Inflation Expectations

We study the evolution of U.S. inflation by means of a new noncausal autoregressive model with time‐varying parameters that outperforms the corresponding causal and constant‐parameter noncausal models in terms of fit and forecast accuracy. Our model also beats the unobserved component stochastic volatility (UCSV) model, one of the best‐performing univariate inflation forecasting models, in terms of both point and density forecasts. We also show how the new Keynesian Phillips curve can be estimated based on our noncausal model. Both expected and lagged inflation turn out important, but the former dominates in determining the current inflation.     

Optimal Design of Forest Taxation with Multiple-Use Characteristics of Forest Stands

The paper studies optimal forest taxation under uncertainty about future timber price when private forest owners value amenity services of forest stands and forest stands have public goods characteristics. It is assumed that preferences of forest owners can be described by a quasi-linear, intertemporal utility function which reflects risk aversion in terms of consumption and constant marginal utility in terms of amenity services. The comparative statics of current and future harvesting in terms of timber price risk, site productivity tax and yield tax are first developed. It is shown that, given the optimal site productivity tax, which is independent of the timber harvested and thus non-distortionary, it is desirable to introduce the yield tax at the margin; it both corrects externality due to the public goods characteristic of forest stands and serves as a social insurance device. The optimal yield tax is less than 100% and depends on the social value of forest stands, timber price risk and properties of compensated timber supply. In the general case the 'inverse elasticity rule – according to which the optimal yield tax is negatively related to the size of the substitution effects – may not hold. Under certainty, the desirability of the yield tax, given the optimal site productivity tax, depends only on the existence of public goods characteristic and is thus a pure Pigouvian tax.