Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractSome observers have argued that minority borrowers and neighborhoods were targeted for expensive credit in 2004-06, the peak period for subprime lending. To investigate this claim, we take advantage of a new data set that merges demographic information on subprime borrowers with information on the mortgages they took out. In a sample of more than 75,000 adjustable-rate mortgages, we find no evidence of adverse pricing by race, ethnicity, or gender in either the initial rate or the reset margin. Indeed, if any pricing differential exists, minority borrowers appear to pay slightly lower rates, as do those borrowers in Zip codes with a larger percentage of black or Hispanic residents or a higher unemployment rate. Mortgage rates are also lower in locations that previously had higher rates of house price appreciation. These results suggest some economies of scale in subprime lending. Yet there are important caveats: we are unable to measure points and fees at loan origination, and the data do not indicate whether borrowers might have qualified for less expensive conforming mortgages. The subprime lending boom increased the ability of many Americans to get credit to purchase a house. Yet concerns persist that not all borrowers have been treated equally.Previous research suggests that subprime loans were particularly concentrated in neighborhoods with a high concentration of black and Hispanic residents (Mayer and Pence, 2007). Some commentators have been concerned that minority borrowers were steered into subprime loans in some cases when they might have qualified for cheaper conforming loans, or that minority borrowers were given subprime loans that had fees or rates that were too high.Previous research on housing markets suggests that such concerns might be warranted.Beginning in the early 1990s, data collected from lenders through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) indicate that black or Hispanic applicants were more likely to be rejected for a mortgage relative to a white applicant, even when controlling for credit scores or other observable individual risk factors (Munnell et al 1996). Subsequent research showed that minority borrowers might also have been more likely to default on loans, but these findings were less clear in that they did not control for basic ex-ante risk factors (Ladd, 1998 Despite the size of the mortgage market, as well as previous evidence on racial and ethnic differences in acc...

We present a bargaining model of union contract negotiations, in which the union decides between two threats: the union can strike or continue to work under the expired contract. The model makes predictions about the level of dispute activity and the form the disputes take. Strike incidence increases as the strike threat becomes more attractive, because of low unemployment or a real wage drop during the prior contract. We test these predictions by estimating logistic models of dispute incidence and dispute composition for U.S. labor contract negotiations from 1970 to 1989. We find empirical support for the model's key predictions, but these associations are weaker after 1981.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe use matched point and density forecasts of output growth and infl ation from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters to derive measures of forecast uncertainty, forecast dispersion, and forecast accuracy. We construct uncertainty measures from aggregate density functions as well as from individual histograms. The uncertainty measures display countercyclical behavior, and there is evidence of increased uncertainty for output growth and infl ation since 2007. The results also indicate that uncertainty displays a very weak relationship with forecast dispersion, corroborating the fi ndings of other recent studies indicating that disagreement is not a valid proxy for uncertainty. In addition, we fi nd no correspondence between movements in uncertainty and predictive accuracy, suggesting that time-varying conditional variance estimates may not provide a reliable proxy for uncertainty. Last, using a regression equation that can be interpreted as a (G)ARCH-M-type model, we fi nd limited evidence of linkages between uncertainty and levels of infl ation and output growth.

This paper provides an empirical investigation into the relationship between ex ante U.S.labor contract durations and uncertainty over the period 1970 to 1995. We construct measures of inflation uncertainty as well as aggregate nominal and real uncertainty. The results not only corroborate previous findings of an inverse relationship between contract duration and inflation uncertainty, but document that this relationship extends to both measures of aggregate uncertainty.We also explore the robustness of this relationship to the various measures of inflation uncertainty that have appeared in the literature. The BLS defines a major union contract to be one which covers at least 1,000 workers. The ex ante duration as reported by the BLS is the number of months between the effective date of the contract and the planned expiration date. The ex post duration may differ from the ex ante durations due to early renegotiations or delayed settlements (which effectively extend the duration of the contract). For the remainder of this paper, we will refer to the ex ante duration simply as the contract duration. Robert

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThis paper evaluates current strategies for the empirical modeling of forecast behavior. In particular, we focus on the reliability of using proxies from time series models of heteroskedasticity to describe changes in predictive confidence. We address this issue by examining the relationship between ex post forecast errors and ex ante measures of forecast uncertainty from data on inflation forecasts from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. The results provide little evidence of a strong link between observed heteroskedasticity in the consensus forecast errors and forecast uncertainty. Instead, the findings indicate a significant link between observed heteroskedasticity in the consensus forecast errors and forecast dispersion. We conclude that conventional model-based measures of uncertainty may be capturing not the degree of confidence that individuals attach to their forecasts but rather the degree of disagreement across individuals in their forecasts. 1The most popular example of this modeling approach is the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (ARCH) model of Engle (1982) and its various extensions.It is widely recognized that macroeconomic outcomes depend critically on both peoples' expectations and the confidence attached to those expectations. Because these magnitudes are largely unobservable, a considerable amount of work has focused on the empirical modeling of forecast behavior. As a result of this effort, there is now general agreement among applied researchers on this issue. Following the tenets of the rational expectations hypothesis, subjective predictions are assumed to be optimal forecasts given all available information and are equated to the objective conditional expectation from the specific model under consideration. With regard to modeling forecast uncertainty, the prevailing approach relies on time series models of heteroskedasticity in which the variance surrounding a prediction is allowed to change over time.1 Temporal variation in subjective uncertainty is equated to the objective conditional variance of a series, with heightened (diminished) uncertainty associated with episodes of decreased (increased) predictability.In spite of the important role played by uncertainty in economic behavior, there is a very limited understanding about the nature of this process. Consequently, the use of time series models of heteroskedasticity to generate estimates of uncertainty has la...

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This paper provides an empirical investigation into the relationship between ex ante U.S. labor contract durations and uncertainty over the period 1970 to 1995. We construct measures of inflation uncertainty as well as aggregate nominal and real uncertainty. The results not only corroborate previous findings of an inverse relationship between contract durations and inflation uncertainty, but also document that this relationship extends to both measures of aggregate uncertainty. We also explore the robustness of this relationship to various measures of inflation uncertainty that have appeared in the literature.We thank Nathaniel Baum-Snow for his excellent research assistance. We received helpful comments from Frederick Wallace and seminar participants at the CUNY, University of Missouri, New York University, SOLE, Wharton and York University. The BLS defines a major union contract to be one which covers at least 1,000 workers. The ex ante duration as reported by the BLS is the number of months between the effective date of the contract and the planned expiration date. The ex post duration may differ from the ex ante durations due to early renegotiations or delayed settlements (which effectively extend the duration of the contract). For the remainder of this paper, we will refer to the ex ante duration simply as the contract duration.