Extending the approach of Bernanke and Blinder (1992), Strongin (1992), and Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Evans (1994a, 1994b), we develop and apply a VAR-based methodology for measuring the stance of monetary policy. More specifically, we develop a 'semi-structural' VAR approach, which extracts...

Over the last twenty-five years, a set of influential studies has placed interest rates at the heart of analyses that interpret and evaluate monetary policies. In light of this work, the Federal Reserve's recent policy of "quantitative easing," with its goal of affecting the supply of liquid...

This paper exploits a data rich environment to provide direct econometric estimates of time-varying macroeconomic uncertainty, defined as the common volatility in the unforecastable component of a large number of economic indicators. Our estimates display significant independent variations from...

The standard measures of nominal capital formation show the United States investing a proportion of GDP much lower than those of other developed countries throughout the last 25 years and falling further behind over time. In contrast, measures we have calculated in real terms across countries...

This paper examines the role of corporate headquarters in allocating scarce resources to competing projects in an internal capital market. Unlike a bank lender, headquarters has control rights that give it both the authority and the incentive to engage in 'winner-picking' -- the practice of...

In all modern industrial countries, redistributive expenditures are a larger component of the government budget than consumption of goods and services. In this paper, we use a general equilibrium, two- country model with exportables, importables and nontradables to study redistribution across...

Firm numbers first rise, and then fall as the typical industry evolves. This nonmonotonicity in the number of producers is explained in this paper using a competitive model in which innovation opportunities induce firms to enter, but in which a firm's failure to implement new technology causes...