New mammals from Guatemala and Honduras.

v.20:no.11(1935)

Notes on Dinomys.

v.18:no.6(1931)

Mammals.

v.33:no.2(1952)

Remarks on the bats of the genus vampyrops.

v.37:no.14(1955)

Bats of the genera Anoura and Lonchoglossa.

v.20:no.5(1933)

The land mammals of Uruguay.

v.17:no.4(1929)

Chicago winter birds / by Colin C. Sanborn, Asst., Division of Birds.

no.2(1922)

Bats of the genus Micronycteris and its subgenera.

v.31:no.27(1949)

Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784. From the German. Translated and edited by Alfred J. Morrison.

2

Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784. From the German. Translated and edited by Alfred J. Morrison.

1

Stock market volatility and learning

Introducing bounded rationality in a standard consumption-based asset pricing model with time separable preferences strongly improves empirical performance. Learning causes momentum and mean reversion of returns and thereby excess volatility, persistence of price-dividend ratios, long-horizon return predictability and a risk premium, as in the habit model of Campbell and Cochrane (1999), but for lower risk aversion. This is obtained, even though our learning scheme introduces just one free parameter and we only consider learning schemes that imply small deviations from full rationality. The findings are robust to the learning rule used and other model features. What is key is that agents forecast future stock prices using past information on prices.

Optimal Monetary Policy in a New Keynesian Model with Habits in Consumption

While consumption habits have been utilised as a means of generating a humpshaped output response to monetary policy shocks in sticky-price New Keynesian economies, there is relatively little analysis of the impact of habits (particularly,external habits) on optimal policy. In this paper we consider the implications of external habits for optimal monetary policy, when those habits either exist at the level of the aggregate basket of consumption goods (‘superficial’ habits) or at the level of individual goods (‘deep’ habits: see Ravn, Schmitt-Grohe, and Uribe (2006)). External habits generate an additional distortion in the economy, which implies that the flex-price equilibrium will no longer be efficient and that policy faces interesting new trade-offs and potential stabilisation biases. Furthermore, the endogenous mark-up behaviour, which emerges when habits are deep, can also significantly affect the optimal policy response to shocks, as well as dramatically affecting the stabilising properties of standard simple rules.

Electoral Uncertainty and the Deficit Bias in a New Keynesian Economy

Recent attempts to incorporate optimal fiscal policy into New Keynesian models subject to nominal inertia, have tended to assume that policy makers are benevolent and have access to a commitment technology. A separate literature, on the New Political Economy, has focused on real economies where there is strategic use of policy instruments in a world of political conflict. In this paper we combine these literatures and assume that policy is set in a New Keynesian economy by one of two policy makers facing electoral uncertainty (in terms of infrequent elections and an endogenous voting mechanism). The policy makers generally share the social welfare function, but differ in their preferences over fiscal expenditure (in its size and/or composition). Given the environment, policy shall be realistically constrained to be time-consistent. In a sticky-price economy, such heterogeneity gives rise to the possibility of one policy maker utilising (nominal) debt strategically to tie the hands of the other party, and influence the outcome of any future elections. This can give rise to a deficit bias, implying a sub-optimally high level of steady-state debt, and can also imply a sub-optimal response to shocks. The steady-state distortions and inflation bias this generates, combined with the volatility induced by the electoral cycle in a sticky-price environment, can significantly

When is Monetary Policy All we Need?

We consider optimal monetary and scal policies in a New Keynesian model of a small open economy with sticky prices and wages. In this benchmark setting monetary policy is all we need - analytical results demonstrate that variations in government spending should play no role in the stabilization of shocks. In extensions we show, rstly, that this is even when true when allowing for in ation inertia through backward-looking rule-of-thumb price and wage-setting, as long as there is no discrepancy between the private and social evaluation of the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure. Secondly, the optimal neutrality of government spending is robust to the issuance of public debt. In the presence of debt government spending will deviate from the optimal steady-state but only to the extent required to cover the deficit, not to provide any additional macroeconomic stabilization. However, unlike government spending variations in tax rates can play a complementary role to monetary policy, as they change relative prices rather than demand.