Using a new dataset, we document a systematic pattern in the demographic characteristics of car buyers over the model year: as vehicle prices fall over the model year, so do buyer incomes. This pattern is consistent with price-insensitive buyers purchasing early in the year, while others wait...

The motor vehicle industry has undergone important changes in recent years, including a shift in production from autos to light trucks and growth of vehicle leasing. This paper uses household-level data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances to document changes in households'...

This note provides quality-adjusted price indexes and nominal shipments data for highly disaggregate classes of semiconductor devices. These data may be used to construct indexes under different assumptions from those used in indexes that are currently available. Because the construction of...

In this paper, we examine the stock price benefit of meeting or beating earnings expectations. Using a general methodology, we find no evidence that the timing of earnings news has any benefit for firms' stock returns. In fact, in many cases we find firms attempting to engineer positive earnings...

Utilizing a comprehensive database of transactions in municipal bonds, we investigate the volume-volatility relationship in the muni market. We find a positive relationship between the number of transactions and a bond's price volatility. In contrast to previous studies, we find a negative...

By any measure, price deflators for semiconductors fell at a staggering pace over much of the last decade. These rapid declines are typically attributed to technological innovations that lower constant-quality manufacturing costs. But, given Intel's dominance in the microprocessor market, those...

Sharp declines in semiconductor prices are largely responsible for observed declines in computer prices. Although communications equipment also has a large semiconductor content, communications equipment prices do not fall nearly as fast as computer prices. This paper partly resolves the...

This paper documents the basic features of data on motor vehicles from the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey. Despite some methodological differences between the two surveys, we find that they yield strikingly...