Knowledge that Transforms

Dynamic Inconsistencies: Counterfactual Implications of a Class of Rational-Expectations Models by Arturo Estrella and Jeffrey C. Fuhrer. Published in volume 92, issue 4, pages 1013-1028 of American Economic Review, September 2002

Immediately following World War II, many economists believed that a trade policy based on import substitution would best promote economic development. Subsequent experience instead revealed the costs of protectionism (Anne 0. Krueger, 1997). In the late 19th century as well, many political economists (such as Friedrich List) advocated import tariffs to promote the growth of domestic manufacturing in countries that were behind the industrial leader, then the United Kingdom. Unlike the recent period, however, the late 19th-century experience is often interpreted as confirming the wisdom of import substitution.' Recent work by Kevin H. O'Rourke (2000) and Michael A. Clemens and Jeffrey G. Williamson (2001) has strengthened this impression by finding a positive correlation between import tariffs and economic growth across countries from 1875 to 1914. Such a correlation does not establish a causal relationship between tariffs and growth, but it is tempting to view the correlation as constituting evidence that protectionist or inward-oriented trade strategies were successful during this period. This paper argues that such a conclusion is unwarranted and that the tariff-growth correlation should be interpreted with great care. First, several individual country experiences in the late 19th century are not consistent with the view that import substitution promoted growth. For example, the two most rapidly expanding, high-tariff countries of the period (Argentina and Canada) grew because capital imports helped stimulate export-led growth in agriculturalstaples products, not because of protectionist trade policies. Second, most land-abundant countries (such as Argentina and Canada) imposed high tariffs to raise government revenue, and revenue tariffs have a different structure than protective tariffs. The fact that labor-scarce, land-abundant countries had a high potential for growth and also tended to impose high revenue-generating tariffs confounds the inference that high tariffs were responsible for their strong economic performance during this period.

Auctions are generally not efficient when the object's expected value depends on private and common value information. We report a series of first-price auction experiments to measure the degree of inefficiency that occurs with financially motivated bidders. While some subjects fall prey to the winner's curse, they weigh their private and common value information in roughly the same manner as rational bidders, with observed efficiencies close to predicted levels. Increased competition and reduced uncertainty about the common value positively affect revenues and efficiency. The public release of information about the common value also raises efficiency, although less than predicted.

The empirical literature on intergenerational income mobility in the United States has focused predominantly on sons. This paper partly redresses that imbalance by using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate intergenerational mobility among daughters. We find that intergenerational transmission of income status is somewhat weaker for daughters than for sons, but is still quite substantial. We also find that assortative mating is an important element in the intergenerational transmission process. 1Intergenerational Income Mobility among Daughters in the United States I.

A longstanding question in economics is why some countries are so much richer than others. Today, for example, income per capita in the world's richest countries is roughly thirty-five times greater than it is in the world's poorest countries. Recent work argues that the proximate cause of the disparity is that today's poor countries began the process of industrialization much later and that this process is slow. In this paper we argue that a model of structural transformation provides a useful theory of both why industrialization occurs at different dates, and why it proceeds slowly. A key implication of this model is that growth in agricultural productivity is central to development, a message that also appears prominently in the traditional development literature.

ABSTRACT The standard class of affine models produces poor forecasts of future Treasury yields. Better forecasts are generated by assuming that yields follow random walks. The failure of these models is driven by one of their key features: Compensation for risk is a multiple of the variance of the risk. Thus risk compensation cannot vary independently of interest rate volatility. I also describe a broader class of models. These aessentially affine‐ models retain the tractability of standard models, but allow compensation for interest rate risk to vary independently of interest rate volatility. This additional flexibility proves useful in forecasting future yields.

ABSTRACT We study shareholder returns for firms that acquired five or more public, private, and/or subsidiary targets within a short time period. Since the same bidder chooses different types of targets and methods of payment, any variation in returns must be due to the characteristics of the target and the bid. Results indicate bidder shareholders gain when buying a private firm or subsidiary but lose when purchasing a public firm. Further, the return is greater the larger the target and if the bidder offers stock. These results are consistent with a liquidity discount, and tax and control effects in this market.

ABSTRACT We investigate the role of information‐based trading in affecting asset returns. We show in a rational expectation example how private information affects equilibrium asset returns. Using a market microstructure model, we derive a measure of the probability of information‐based trading, and we estimate this measure using data for individual NYSE‐listed stocks for 1983 to 1998. We then incorporate our estimates into a Fama and French (1992) asset‐pricing framework. Our main result is that information does affect asset prices. A difference of 10 percentage points in the probability of information‐based trading between two stocks leads to a difference in their expected returns of 2.5 percent per year.

The distance between small firms and their lenders is increasing, and they are communicating in more impersonal ways. After documenting these systematic changes, we demonstrate they do not arise from small firms locating differently, consolidation in the banking industry, or biases in the sample. Instead, improvements in lender productivity appear to explain our findings. We also find distant firms no longer have to be the highest quality credits, indicating they have greater access to credit. The evidence indicates there has been substantial development of the financial sector, even in areas such as small business lending.

ABSTRACT We provide evidence that stocks with higher dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts earn lower future returns than otherwise similar stocks. This effect is most pronounced in small stocks and stocks that have performed poorly over the past year. Interpreting dispersion in analysts forecasts as a proxy for differences in opinion about a stock, we show that this evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that prices will reflect the optimistic view whenever investors with the lowest valuations do not trade. By contrast, our evidence is inconsistent with a view that dispersion in analysts' forecasts proxies for risk.