Several authors have documented a reduced variability ofoutput and inflation in the United States since the beginningof the 1980s.1 In fact, a comparison of the 1980:1-2001:2 periodwith the two preceding decades shows that the standarddeviation of quarterly output growth has fallen 30...

Asset market values react to economic news and policychanges, and consumers react to changes in asset marketvalues. The consumption-wealth channel of monetary policyspells out this mechanism: changes in monetary policy affectasset values, which in turn affect consumer spending onnondurable goods...

[...]In the first half of the paper, we review the significantchanges in the housing finance system over the past thirty yearsand discuss the implications of these changes for the cost andavailability of mortgage credit. In the second half, we present atwo-part econometric analysis of the...

[...]This paper looks for evidence of both types of crediteffects—those that are endogenous to the monetarymechanism and those that are exogenous—using informationon banks’ commercial credit standards as a proxy for bankcredit availability. We compare results from an...

[...]This paper investigates whether the cyclical effects ofmonetary policy have been influenced by the secular growth insecuritization in recent decades. In particular, when the centralbank makes a specific monetary policy move—such asincreasing the overnight interbank rate by 50 basis...

[...]This article documents the “return in retail” in the U.S.banking industry and offers some insight into why this shift hasoccurred. Trends in retail loan shares, retail deposit shares, thebalance sheets of U.S. consumers, and the number of bankbranches all indicate an increased focus on...

[...]This article attempts to bridge some of the gap betweenresearch on real-side FDI and work on financial sector FDI bypresenting a selective survey of the literature. We argue thatreal-side and financial sector FDI share many features.Accordingly, there are many lessons in the research that...

[...]Our analysis of how U.S. financial market structure haschanged over the last decade produces more definitiveconclusions. Using firm-level data from a variety of sources, including data collected by central banks, we document that inaggregate, most U.S. wholesale credit and capital markets...

[...]This article examines why, during the 1970s, Treasuryofficials changed the framework within which they made their debt management decisions. We show that the Treasuryfinanced an unusually rapid expansion of the deficit in 1975with a flurry of tactical offerings. The offerings disrupted...