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Abstract:
Commodity futures risk premiums vary across commodities and over time depending on the level of physical inventories, as predicted by the Theory of Storage. Using a comprehensive dataset on 31 commodity futures and physical inventories between 1969 and 2006, we show that the convenience yield is a decreasing, non-linear relationship of inventories. Price measures, such as the futures basis ("backwardation"), prior futures returns, and prior spot returns reflect the state of inventories and are informative about commodity futures risk premiums. The excess returns to Spot and Futures Momentum and Backwardation strategies stem in part from the selection of commodities when inventories are low. Positions of futures markets participants are correlated with prices and inventory signals, but we reject the Keynesian "hedging pressure" hypothesis that these positions are an important determinant of risk premiums.

Commodity, Futures, Theory of Storage, Inventories, Backwardation, Hedging Pressure, Futures Trading

Abstract:
We study the basic properties of an equally-weighted index of U.S. commodity futures from the perspective of a Japanese investor. We find that the returns on the U.S. equally-weighted commodity futures index maintain their basic properties, documented in Gorton and Rouwenhorst (2005), when translated into Yen. In particular, looking at returns on Japanese stocks and bonds, the commodity futures index, translated into Yen, continues to display equity-like returns, but with slightly less volatility. In addition, the Yen-based commodity futures returns show essentially zero correlation with Japanese equities and negative correlation with bonds.

commodity futures

Abstract:
We study the basic properties of an equally weighted index of U.S. commodities futures from the perspective of a Japanese investor. We find that the returns on the U.S. equally-weighted commodity futures index maintain their basic properties documented in Gorton and Rouwenhorst (2005), when translated into Yen. In particular, looking at returns on Japanese stocks and bonds, the commodity futures index, translated into Yen, continues to display equity-like returns, but with slightly less volatility. In addition, the Yen-based commodity futures returns show essentially zero correlation with Japanese equities and negative correlation with bonds.

commodities, futures, commodity, index, diversification

Abstract:
We discuss the foreign currency forward premium puzzle in the context of 20 internationally tradable emerging market currencies. We find that since the late 1990s the broad basket of emerging market currencies has provided significant equity-like excess returns against a number of major market currencies, but with low volatility. We also find that the forward premium, or carry, is significant in explaining that excess return but that excess returns would still have existed even in the absence of positive carry. Our calculation shows that transactions cost due to bid/offer spreads is substantially lower than commonly supposed in the academic literature.

Abstract:
We discuss the foreign currency forward premium puzzle in the context of 20 internationally tradable emerging market currencies. We find that since the late 1990s the broad basket of emerging market currencies has provided significant equity-like excess returns against a number of major market currencies, but with low volatility. We also find that the forward premium, or carry, is significant in explaining that excess return but that excess returns would still have existed even in the absence of positive carry. Our calculation shows that transactions cost due to bid/offer spreads is substantially lower than commonly supposed in the academic literature.

emerging market currencies, excess return, risk premium

Abstract:
This paper examines whether there is a liquidity effect in the Japanese interbank market for overnight loans. If the reserve requirement is the only reason for banks to hold reserves, then the demand for reserves should be infinitely elastic at the overnight rate that is expected to prevail for the rest of the reserve maintenance period. If, however, reserves are also useful for facilitating transactions between banks, then the demand curve will be downward-sloping as a function of the overnight rate. We say that a liquidity effect exists if the demand curve is downward sloping, not horizontal, at the observed level of reserves. Estimating the slope of the demand curve for reserves must deal with the simultaneity problem because the central bank actively chooses the supply of reserves to guide the overnight rate to a range close to the target rate. This paper estimates the liquidity effect in the Japanese interbank market for overnight loans (the so-called Call market).The estimation exploits the institutional features, particularly the fact that the rates observed in the morning are forward rates for funds deliverable at l:00 p.m. of the day. The results indicate that the large injection of reserves by the Bank of Japan after the Yamaichi debacle was not enough to eliminate the liquidity effect. The evidence found in this paper is consistent with the view that the Desk behaved optimally before and after the Yamaichi debacle.

Abstract:
Commodity futures risk premiums vary across commodities and over time depending on the level of physical inventories, as predicted by the Theory of Storage. Using a comprehensive dataset on 31 commodity futures and physical inventories between 1969 and 2006, we show that the convenience yield is a decreasing, non-linear relationship of inventories. Price measures, such as the futures basis, prior futures returns, and spot returns reflect the state of inventories and are informative about commodity futures risk premiums. The excess returns to Spot and Futures Momentum and Backwardation strategies stem in part from the selection of commodities when inventories are low. Positions of futures markets participants are correlated with prices and inventory signals, but we reject the Keynesian hedging pressure hypothesis that these positions are an important determinant of risk premiums.

Abstract:
About 20 percent of the gross investment expenditures of U.S. manufacturing firms is expenditures on research and development. Like investment in physical capital, R&D also responds to news about future prospects of the firm, such as profitability, technological opportunities, or changes in factor prices. Using data from a panel of large U.S. manufacturing firms that was developed within the Productivity Program of the NBER, we investigate the differential responses of these two types of investment to changes in the value of the firm's assets as perceived by financial markets and the interaction of these responses.

In order to study this topic empirically, we develop a stochastic dynamic programming model of a firm with two types of capital (physical and knowledge capital) which are used to produce profits. A feature of the model is the distinction between the accumulation of the two kinds of capital: expenditures on the physical capital stock are incurred one or more years before the capital actually becomes productive, whereas R&D capital is produced jointly as a function of current expenditure and the past technological position of the firm. Two individual firm-specific shocks are considered: one to the overall profitability of the firm, and one to the "productivity" of R&D. In the empirical estimates, we find that these two shocks account for about 20 percent of the total variance in net investment, 15 percent of the variance in the firm-level R&D to capital ratio, but only about 5 percent of the annual rates of return. The profitability shock is well described by a moving average process of order three, while the technology shock process is more nearly permanent: first order autoregressive with parameter near unity.

Abstract:
We use the 1988 PSID to study the effects of income and wealth on transfers of money and time between individuals and their parents as well as the effects of incomes of other relatives on these flows. We relate the relative incomes of parents and parents in-law to transfer amounts given and received by married couples. We also study how the relative incomes of divorced parents influence transfers. We find that money transfers tend to reduce inequality in household incomes and that time transfers are only weakly related to income differences. Richer siblings give more to parents and receive less. Among parents and parents in-law the richer set of parents is more likely to give money and less likely to receive money. The same is true of divorced parents. In contrast to the implications of simple exchange models of transfers, there is little evidence in the cross section or in the analysis using siblings that parental income or wealth raises time transfers from children or that time transfers are exchanged for money transfers. In the cross section and among siblings, the strong negative relationship between time transfers and distance from parents is not associated with a strong negative relationship between distance and money transfers. We discuss the implications of our results for alternative models of transfers.

Abstract:
This paper examines whether the sensitivity of corporate investment to internal funds depends on the firm's access to a main bank, using the sample of Japanese manufacturing firms constructed by Hayashi and Inoue (1991). For either of two classifications of firms by their access to a main bank, there is no evidence that main bank ties mitigate the sensitivity of investment to the firm's liquidity. The large effect of main bank ties reported in Hoshi, Kashyap, and Scharfstein (1991) is most likely due to the relatively poor quality of their capital stock estimate.

Abstract:
The permanent income hypothesis is tested on a four-quarter panel of about two thousand Japanese households for ten commodity groups. Consumption is a distributed lag function of expenditures, and the utility function is additively separable in time. Durability is defined as the persistence of the distributed lag. The permanent income hypothesis implies that, for each commodity group, expected change in expenditures is correlated neither with past expenditure changes on other commodities nor with expected change indisposable income, if its own lags are controlled for. The main results are the following: (1) durability is substantial even for food and services, (2)the permanent income hypothesis applies to almost all (probably more than ninety percent) of the population, and (3) the habit persistence hypothesis is rejected in favor of the permanent income hypothesis.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper surveys recent empirical work on tests for liquidity constraints.The focus of the survey is on the tests based on the Euler equation. After examining the technical aspects of the recent tests on aggregate time-series data and on micro data, the survey tries to evaluate their economic significance. The paper concludes that for a significant fraction of the population the behavior of consumption over time is affected in away predicted by credit rationing and differential borrowing and lending rates. However, the available evidence is shown to have failed in providing information necessary to calculate the response of consumption to changes in the time profile of income.The paper attributes the failure to the fact that not much attention in the literature has been paid to the cause of liquidity constraints.

Abstract:
What is the basic economic decision-making unit? Is it the household or the extended family? This question is fundamental to economic analysis and policy design. The answer given by the Life Cycle and Keynesian models is that the economic unit is the household. According to these models, members of particular households act selfishly and do not fully share resources with extended family members in other households. Hence, altering the distribution of resources across households within the extended family will alter the consumption and labor supply of those households who acqUire or lose resources. In contrast to the Life Cycle and Keynesian models, the altruism model implies that the extended family is the basic economic decision-making unit. According to this model the extended family is linked through altruism and, as a result, acts as if it fully shares resources. In the altruism model nondistortionary changes in the distribution of resources across households within the extended family will have no effect on the consumption or labor supply of any of its members. Despite its importance, the boundaries of economic decision-making units have not, to our knowledge, been examined directly with micro data. Stated differently, the altruism model has not been tested against the Life Cycle and Keynesian alternatives with such data. This paper uses matched data on parents and their adult children, contained in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to perform such a test. In essence our test asks whether the distribution of consumption and labor supply across households within the extended family depends on the distribution of resources across households within the extended family. Our findings provide quite strong evidence against the altruism model. The distribution of resources across households within the extended family is a highly significant (statistically and economically) determinant of the distribution of consumption within the extended family. This finding holds for the entire sample as well as the subsample consisting of rich parents and poor children. In addition to showing that the distribution of extended family resources matters for extended family consumption, we test the life cycle model by asking whether only own resources matter, i.e., whether the resources of extended family members have no affect on a household's consumption. Our results indicate that extended family member resources have, at most, a modest effect on household consumption after one has controlled for the fact that extended family resources help predict a household's own permanent income.

Abstract:
The question we address in this paper is why the Japanese miracle didn't take place until after World War II. For much of the pre-WWII period, Japan's real GNP per worker was not much more than a third of that of the U.S., with falling capital intensity. We argue that its major cause is a barrier that kept agricultural employment constant at about 14 million throughout the prewar period. In our two-sector neoclassical growth model, the barrier-induced sectoral mis-allocation of labor and a resulting disincentive for capital accumulation account well for the depressed output level. Were it not for the barrier, Japan's prewar GNP per worker would have been close to a half of the U.S. The labor barrier existed because, we argue, the prewar patriarchy, armed with paternalistic clauses in the prewar Civil Code, forced the son designated as heir to stay in agriculture.

Abstract:
This paper constructs a multi-sector model to take explicit account of the very sharp change in the relative price between non-IT and IT goods. The model is calibrated to the Japanese economy, and its solution path from 1990 on is compared to Japan`s macroeconomic performance in the 1990s. Compared to the one-sector analysis of Japan in the 1990s in Hayashi and Prescott (2002), our model does slightly better or just as well in accounting for Japan`s output slump and does worse in accounting for the capital-output ratio. We also show that, to revive a 2% long-term growth in percapita GDP, Japan needs to direct 10% of private total hours to the IT sector.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper presents a life-cycle simulation analysis of the interaction among savings decisions, housing purchase decisions, and the tax system in the United States and Japan. To investigate this issue, we first document the stylized fact that the typical Japanese household purchases a house later in the life-cycle with a higher downpayment ratio than its U.S. counterpart. Second, a life-cycle simulation model that includes the housing purchase decision is constructed and used to compare the behavior of typical U.S. and Japanese households. The Japanese household is induced to save more early in the life cycle in order to meet the higher downpayment requirement. The saving-consumption pattern resulting from a higher growth rate is shown to contribute to a higher _aggregate_ saving rate in Japan compared to the U.S. However, the contribution of the induced early saving due to the downpayment requirement seems to be too small to explain a large differential in the saving rates of the two countries. Only if we introduce a bequest motive can the model generate the observed saving rate in Japan. Finally, tax reform concerning the tax deductibility of mortgage interest payments or the tax exempt status of interest income is shown to have a small impact on the aggregate saving rate in either country. For example, the introduction of tax-exempt saving in the U.S. would increase the saving rate by only 1.5%.

Abstract:
We present an infinite horizon model with capital in which fiat money and barter are two competing means of payment. Fiat money has value because barter is limited by the extent of a double coincidence of wants. The pattern of exchange generally involves both money and barter. We find that the Chicago rule is sufficient for Pareto efficiency, while nominal interest smoothing is necessary. For a specific utility function we provide a complete characterization of the patterns of exchange and calculate the range of inflation rates over which a stationary monetary equilibrium exists.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

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No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper attempts to provide a framework for analyzing the interaction between real decisions (concerning investment and factor inputs)and financial decisions (concerning debt and new share issues) of a corporation. The model carries a rich menu of tax rates and explicitly incorporates bankruptcy and default. The firm`s multi-period optimization problem is set up where real and financial decisions are simultaneously determined to maximize the value of the firm which is the market price of uncertain future dividends. The main results of the paper are as follows:if the firm`s after-tax profits are small relative to investment, the firm finances new investment by retentions and debt; if they are large relative to investment, financing additional investment is done through new shares and debt; in the intermediate case, additional investment is financed entirely by debt.

Abstract:
This paper uses PSID data on the extended family to test whether inter vivos transfers from parents to children are motivated by altruism. Specifically, the paper tests whether an increase by one dollar in the income of parents actively making transfers to a child coupled with a one dollar reduction in that child's income results in the parents increasing their transfer to the child by one dollar. This restriction on parental and child transfer-income derivatives is derived for the standard altruism model augmented to include uncertain and liquidity constraints. These additional elements pin down the timing of inter vivos transfers. The paper's method of estimating income-transfer derivatives takes into account unobserved heterogeneity across families in the degree of altruism. The findings strongly reject the altruism hypothesis. Redistributing one dollar from a recipient child to donor parents leads to less than a 13 cent increase in the parents' transfer to the child -- far less than the one dollar increase implied by altruism.

Abstract:
This paper uses PSID data on the extended family to test whether inter vivos transfers from parents to children are motivated by altruism. Specifically, the paper tests whether an increase by one dollar in the income of parents actively making transfers to a child coupled with a one-dollar reduction in that child's income results in the parents' increasing their transfer to the child by one dollar. This restriction on parental and child transfer-income derivatives is derived for the standard altruism model augmented to include uncertainty and liquidity constraints. These additional elements pin down the timing of inter vivos transfers. The method used to estimate income-transfer derivatives takes into account unobserved heterogeneity across
families in the degree of altruism. The findings strongly reject the altruism hypothesis. Redistributing one dollar from a recipient child to donor parents leads to less than a 13-cent increase in the parents' transfer to the child, far less than the one-dollar increase implied by altruism.

Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of taxes on the incentive to invest for the Japanese manufacturing sector in the postwar period. The idiosyncratic sector in the postwar period. The idiosyncratic feature of the Japanese corporate tax system as compared to the U.S. is the prevelance of tax-free reserves and the tax deductibility of a part of taxes paid by corporations in the previous year. Our formula for the tax-adjusted Q and the cost of capital incorporates this. The main conclusions are as follows. While the postulated negative relation with the cost of capital cannot be found, investment in Japanese manufacturing shows until 1974 a strong association with the tax-adjusted Q. Since the change in stock prices, not taxes, is the primary source of changes in Q, the profitability of capital is the major determinant of investment.

Abstract:
Altruism has the well-known neutrality implication that the family's demand for commodities is invariant to the division of resources within the family. We test this by estimating Engel curves on a cross-section of Japanese extended families forming two- generation households. We find that the pattern of food expenditure is significantly affected by the division of resources. The food components whose budget share increases with the older generation's share of household income are precisely those favored by the old such as cereal, seafood, and vegetables.