JEL Classification Code(s): J 31, J 71) "Perceptions of Discrimination, Effort to Obtain Psychological Balance, and Relative Wages: Can We Infer a Happiness Gradient?" There is a substantial literature that finds a linkage between happiness and relative economic well being as measured by earnings or wages. There is also a well documented racial gap in wages. One explanation for this is disparat...

This paper uses MSA level data and a panel VAR model to analyze the dynamic determination and impact of the volatility of single-family home value appreciation. We find that the volatility can be magnified by an exogenous increase in the home appreciation rate, responds to changes in the population growth rate, and is serially correlated. Moreover, an exogenous increase in the volatility increa...

This paper investigates the effects of fiscal policy on the trade balance using a structural factor model. A fiscal policy shock worsens the trade balance and produces an appreciation of the domestic currency but the effects are quantitatively small. The findings match the theoretical predictions of the standard Mundell-Fleming model, although fiscal policy should not be considered one of the m...

This paper estimates a 7 variable TVP-VAR on US data using kernel methods. We identify monetary policy shocks using sign restrictions for each period in our sample. We then fit the SmetsWouters (2007) model to these impulse responses, tracing out evolutions in the structural DSGE parameters over time. Parameters defining nominal rigidities move a lot. Some real side ones move a lot (investment ...

Legal simplification may improve the quality of institutions in industrialised countries that developed over-complex legal systems. In theory, this type of regulatory reform promotes economic efficiency, leading to higher levels of productivity and output. In this paper we use a Panel Factor-Augmented VAR approach to measure the long-run impact of legal-simplification programmes in total factor...

This paper argues that the existence of bank networks is important for banks ́ reaction to monetary policy. For the example of Germany, the VAR analysis shows that following a monetary contraction small banks access the interbank market indirectly through the head institutions of their respective network organisations. The interbank flows within these networks allow small banks to access funds t...

In this paper we test for the inclusion of the bid-ask spread in the consumption CAPM, in the UK stock market over the time period of 1980-2000. Two econometric models are used; first, Fisher’s (1994) asset pricing model is estimated by GMM, and secondly, the VAR approach proposed by Campbell and Shiller is extended to include the bid-ask spread. Overall the statistical tests are unable to reje...

We analyze the optimal portfolio policies of expected utility maximizing agents under VaR Capital Requirement (VaR-CR) regulation in comparison to the optimal policy under exogenouslyimposed VaR Limit (VaR-L) and Limited-Expected-Loss (LEL) regulations. With VaR-CR regulation the agent strategy consists of simultaneous decisions on both the portfolio VaR and on the implied amount of required el...

In this paper, we examine the risk characteristics and capital adequacy of hedge funds using Value-at-Risk (VaR) as the criterion for measuring risk and estimating capital requirements. We find that a vast majority of hedge funds are adequately capitalized, with the level of under-capitalization being only 3.1% for live funds and 7.5% for dead funds. Using extreme value theory, we confirm that ...

We derive a framework for asymptotically valid inference in stable vector autoregressive (VAR) models with conditional heteroskedasticity of unknown form. We prove a joint central limit theorem for the VAR slope parameter and innovation covariance parameter estimators and address bootstrap inference as well. Our results are important for correct inference on VAR statistics that depend both on t...