Knowledge that Transforms

Recent research in international business cycles finds that international consumption comovements do not match the risk-sharing predictions of standard complete markets models. In this paper, I ask whether two different types of explanations can help explain this result: (1) nonseparabilities between tradables and nontradable leisure or goods and (2) the effects of capital market restrictions on consumption risk sharing. I find that risk sharing cannot be resolved by either explanation alone. However, when I allow for both nonseparabilities and certain market restrictions, risk sharing among unrestricted countries cannot be rejected. This evidence suggests that a combination of these two effects may be necessary to explain consumption risk sharing across countries.

We use a survey of 452 Russian shops, most of which were privatized between 1992 and 1993, to measure the importance of alternative channels through which privatization promotes restructuring. Restructuring is measured as major renovation, a change in suppliers, an increase in hours stores stay open, and layoffs. There is strong evidence that the presence of new owners and new managers raises the likelihood of restructuring. In contrast, there is no evidence that equity incentives of old managers promote restructuring. The evidence points to the critical role new human capital plays in economic transformation.

This paper reports overwhelming evidence against the hypothesis that the federal funds rate follows a martingale over the two-week reserve maintenance period, establishing that banks do not regard reserves held on different days of the week to be perfect substitutes. A theoretical model of the federal funds market is proposed that could account for these empirical regularities as the result of line limits, transaction costs, and weekend accounting conventions. The paper concludes that such transaction costs lie at the heart of the liquidity effect that enables the Federal Reserve to change the interest rate on a daily basis.

This paper uses an equilibrium multifactor model to interpret the cross-sectional pattern of postwar U.S. stock and bond returns. Priced factors include the return on a stock index, revisions in forecasts of future stock returns (to capture intertemporal hedging effects), and revisions in forecasts of future labor income growth (proxies for the return on human capital). Aggregate stock market risk is the main factor determining excess returns but, in the presence of human capital or stock market mean reversion, the coefficient of relative risk aversion is much higher than the price of stock market risk.

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