IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/sefpps/v26y2009i1p46-61.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Speculative excess and the Federal Reserve's response

Author

Listed:
  • John H. Huston
  • Roger W. Spencer

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a single variable indicative of the state of market speculation; to determine whether the Federal Reserve has attempted to quell speculation when it has been most rampant and whether such attempts were successful. Design/methodology/approach - The paper examine the literature on market “bubbles” and the Federal Reserve's treatment of them; to determine a single variable reflective of market speculation via principle components integration; to examine the Federal Reserve's interaction with market speculation by estimating a vector autoregression version of the Taylor rule. Findings - It is possible to construct a single variable representative of market speculation, termed the index of speculative excess that correlates well with standard views of market excess; the Federal Reserve did attempt to retard market speculation during the three major bull markets of the past century; monetary policy did little to inhibit market speculation. Originality/value - Highly original in the construction of a single variable reflective of market speculation; joins the ongoing debate as to the extent of Federal Reserve concern with speculative activity and the Fed's poor record of accomplishment in this area.

Suggested Citation

  • John H. Huston & Roger W. Spencer, 2009. "Speculative excess and the Federal Reserve's response," Studies in Economics and Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 26(1), pages 46-61, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:sefpps:v:26:y:2009:i:1:p:46-61
    DOI: 10.1108/10867370910946324
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/10867370910946324/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/10867370910946324/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/10867370910946324?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1990. "Margin Requirements, Volatility, and the Transitory Components of Stock Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 736-762, September.
    2. J. Bradford DeLong & Konstantin Magin, 2006. "A Short Note on the Size of the Dot-Com Bubble," NBER Working Papers 12011, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Rappoport, Peter & White, Eugene N., 1993. "Was There a Bubble in the 1929 Stock Market?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 549-574, September.
    4. Barberis, Nicholas & Thaler, Richard, 2003. "A survey of behavioral finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1053-1128, Elsevier.
    5. Schwert, C.W., 1989. "Margin Requirements And Stock Volatility," Papers t6, Columbia - Center for Futures Markets.
    6. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    7. G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), 2003. "Handbook of the Economics of Finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    8. Bennett T. McCallum & Edward Nelson, 1999. "Performance of Operational Policy Rules in an Estimated Semiclassical Structural Model," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 15-56, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Stephen R. Bond & Jason G. Cummins, 2000. "The Stock Market and Investment in the New Economy: Some Tangible Facts and Intangible Fictions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(1), pages 61-124.
    10. Pastor, Lubos & Veronesi, Pietro, 2006. "Was there a Nasdaq bubble in the late 1990s?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 61-100, July.
    11. Froot, Kenneth A & Obstfeld, Maurice, 1991. "Intrinsic Bubbles: The Case of Stock Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1189-1214, December.
    12. Robertson, John C & Tallman, Ellis W, 2001. "Improving Federal-Funds Rate Forecasts in VAR Models Used for Policy Analysis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(3), pages 324-330, July.
    13. Wheelock,David C., 2004. "The Strategy and Consistency of Federal Reserve Monetary Policy, 1924–1933," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521531399, October.
    14. Rudebusch, Glenn D, 1998. "Do Measures of Monetary Policy in a VAR Make Sense?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 907-931, November.
    15. Marc D. Hayford & A. G. Malliaris, 2005. "Monetary Policy And The U.S. Stock Market," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Economic Uncertainty, Instabilities And Asset Bubbles Selected Essays, chapter 15, pages 233-247, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    16. G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), 2003. "Handbook of the Economics of Finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 2.
    17. Robert J. Shiller, 2003. "From Efficient Markets Theory to Behavioral Finance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 83-104, Winter.
    18. Hsieh, David A & Miller, Merton H, 1990. "Margin Regulation and Stock Market Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 3-29, March.
    19. Peter Fortune, 2001. "Margin lending and stock market volatility," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, pages 3-25.
    20. Burton G. Malkiel, 2004. "Models Of Stock Market Predictability," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 27(4), pages 449-459, December.
    21. Rudebusch, Glenn D, 1998. "Do Measures of Monetary Policy in a VAR Make Sense? A Reply," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 943-948, November.
    22. Grube, R Corwin & Joy, O Maurice & Panton, Don B, 1979. "Market Responses to Federal Reserve Changes in the Initial Margin Requirement," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 34(3), pages 659-674, June.
    23. De Long, J. Bradford & Shleifer, Andrei, 1991. "The stock market bubble of 1929: evidence from clsoed-end mutual funds," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(3), pages 675-700, September.
    24. Kumar, Raman & Ferris, Stephen P & Chance, Don M, 1991. "The Differential Impact of Federal Reserve Margin Requirements on Stock Return Volatility," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 26(3), pages 343-366, August.
    25. Jeremy J. Siegel, 2003. "What Is an Asset Price Bubble? An Operational Definition," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 9(1), pages 11-24, March.
    26. Bill Dupor & Timothy Conley, 2004. "The Fed Response to Equity Prices and Inflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 24-28, May.
    27. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1.
    28. Christian Weller, 2002. "Policy on the margin: Evaluating the impact of margin debt requirements on stock valuations," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 26(1), pages 1-15, March.
    29. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sheng Guo, 2014. "Margin requirements and portfolio optimization: A geometric approach," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 15(3), pages 191-204, June.
    2. Matthijs Lof, 2015. "Rational Speculators, Contrarians, and Excess Volatility," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1889-1901, August.
    3. Gordon Menzies & Ron Bird & Peter B. Dixon & Maureen T. Rimmer, 2011. "Asset Price Regulators, Unite: You have the Macroeconomy to Win and the Microeconomic Losses are Small," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 87(278), pages 449-464, September.
    4. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    5. Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2002. "Assessing Nominal Income Rules for Monetary Policy with Model and Data Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(479), pages 402-432, April.
    6. Batini, Nicoletta & Nelson, Edward, 2001. "Optimal horizons for inflation targeting," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(6-7), pages 891-910, June.
    7. Vasco Gabriel & Luis Martins, 2011. "Cointegration tests under multiple regime shifts: An application to the stock price–dividend relationship," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 639-662, December.
    8. Hommes, Cars & in ’t Veld, Daan, 2017. "Booms, busts and behavioural heterogeneity in stock prices," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 101-124.
    9. Pierre Monnin, "undated". "Are stock markets really like beauty contests? Empirical evidence of higher order belief's impact on asset prices," IEW - Working Papers 202, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    10. Taipalus, Katja, 2006. "Bubbles in the Finnish and US equities markets," Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, number 35/2006.
    11. repec:zbw:bofism:2012_047 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Anton Muscatelli & Carmine Trecroci, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules, Policy Preferences, and Uncertainty: Recent Empirical Evidence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(5), pages 597-627, December.
    13. Lubos Komarek & Ivana Kubicová, 2011. "The Classification and Identification of Asset Price Bubbles," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 61(1), pages 34-48, January.
    14. repec:zbw:bofism:2006_035 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Taipalus, Katja, 2012. "Detecting asset price bubbles with time-series methods," Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, number 2012_047.
    16. Taipalus, Katja, 2012. "Detecting asset price bubbles with time-series methods," Bank of Finland Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, volume 0, number sm2012_047, July.
    17. Bachar Fakhry & Christian Richter, 2015. "Is the sovereign debt market efficient? Evidence from the US and German sovereign debt markets," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 339-357, September.
    18. Zhang, Ting & Li, Honggang, 2013. "Buying on margin, selling short in an agent-based market model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(18), pages 4075-4082.
    19. Queirós, Francisco, 2024. "Asset bubbles and product market competition," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(1), January.
    20. F Alexandre & P Bacao, 2006. "Investment and Non-fundamental Movements in Asset Prices: is there a role for monetary policy?," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 11(1), pages 65-95, March.
    21. Abootaleb Shirvani & Svetlozar T. Rachev & Frank J. Fabozzi, 2019. "A Rational Finance Explanation of the Stock Predictability Puzzle," Papers 1911.02194, arXiv.org.
    22. Glenn D. Rudebusch & Tao Wu, 2008. "A Macro‐Finance Model of the Term Structure, Monetary Policy and the Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 906-926, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:sefpps:v:26:y:2009:i:1:p:46-61. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.