Macro markets : creating institutions for managing society's largest economic risks / Robert J. Shiller

Oxford : Clarendon, 1993. 1st edition. Hardcover. Fine cloth copy in a very good, slightly edge-nicked and dust-dulled dust-wrapper, now mylar-sleeved. Remains particularly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and strong. Physical description; 254 pp. Contents; Preface; Acknowledgements; Contents; 1 Introduction; The ideal: A world market for major income risks; Hedging income risk in today's markets; Markets as inventions; Markets as accidents of history; 2 Psychological Barriers; Research on psychology and risk perceptions; Lack of information and ambiguity; Demand for insurance by firms; Social-psychological factors; Gambling behavior; Speculative behavior; Promoting proper public use of macro markets; Psychological barriers: summing up; 3 Mechanisms for Hedging Long Streams of Income; Settlement based on cash-market asset price. Settlement based on measures of income rather than priceExchange-guaranteed securities markets for perpetual claims on indices; Perpetual futures; Rational speculative bubbles; Appendix to Chapter 3: Futures markets; 4 National Income and Labor Income Markets; Market structure and associated institutions; Problems enforcing payments of losses; Other users of aggregate income markets; Markets in actual or full-employment income?; Measurement issues; Measuring uncertainty about present values of incomes; Results with individual countries; World market return and betas; Cross hedging. Interpretation of resultsAppendix to Chapter 4: Econometric methods; 5 Real Estate and Other Markets; Real estate; Markets in residential real estate and urban land; Effects of hedging markets on cash market inefficiency; Commercial real estate; Land containing natural resources; Unincorporated businesses and privately held corporations; Consumer and producer price-index futures; Aggregate price-level risk; Components of consumer or producer price indices; Agriculture; The use of agricultural futures by farmers; Intermediaries; Difficulties measuring the cost of hedging. Inadequacy of short-term hedging to manage farmers' risk wellCreating long-term hedging markets in agriculture; Art and collectibles; Systematic approaches to finding other markets; 6 The Construction of Index Numbers for Contract Settlement; Analogies to other indices used to settle contracts; Extending chain indices to infrequently traded assets '; Basics of hedonic indices; Problems in measuring quality; Repeated measures and hedonics; Simplifying regression forms; Ordinary repeated-measures indices; Hedonic repeated-measures index; Arithmetic repeated-measures indices. 7 Index Numbers: Issues and Alternatives. Expected incidence of repeated measures: standard errors; Binomial model; Equal-representation model; Restrictions on coefficients of subject dummies and hedonic variables; Smoothing and improving indices: Bayesian methods; Choice of hedonic variables; Hedonic variables related to improvements; Hedonic variables related to depreciation; Market conditions as hedonic variables; Other models; Factor-analytic models: interaction effects; Selection bias corrections; Interpretation; 8 The Problem of Index Revisions. Variance components in regression-per-period hedonics. Subjects; Macroeconomics. Income distribution. Financial institutions. Markets. Risk. Insurance.