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Ellis Tallman |

Senior Economic Advisor

Ellis Tallman, Senior Economic Advisor

Ellis Tallman is a senior economic advisor in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. His current research interests include macroeconomics, economic forecasting, and historical episodes of financial crises.

Dr. Tallman is also the Danforth-Lewis Professor of Economics at Oberlin College, where he teaches macroeconomics, financial intermediation, and economic and financial history. He is on sabbatical for the 2011-2012 school year. Prior to joining Oberlin College, Mr. Tallman was a vice president and team leader for the macro group in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and an adjunct professor at Emory University. In 1996, Dr. Tallman began a two-year appointment as a visiting senior research economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia, where he engaged in policy support and economic research for the Australian central bank.

Dr. Tallman holds a BA in economics from Indiana University and an MA and PhD in economics at the University of Rochester.

  • Fed Publications
Title Date Publication Author(s) Type

 

 October, 2012 ; Saeed Zaman; Economic Commentary
Abstract: In the wake of Great Recession, the Federal Reserve engaged in conventional monetary policy actions by reducing the federal funds rate. But soon the rate hit zero, and could go no lower. In such environments, policymakers still think in terms of where the federal funds rate should be, were it possible to go negative. To project the "unconstrained path" of the funds rate—ignoring the zero lower bound—and to identify the key underlying shocks driving that path, we employ a statistical macroeconomic forecasting model. We find that the federal funds rate would have been extremely negative during 2009-2010.
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 October, 2012 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, working paper no. 12-21 ; James M Nason; Working Papers
Abstract: This paper explores the hypothesis that the sources of economic and financial crises differ from noncrisis business cycle fluctuations. We employ Markov-switching Bayesian vector autoregressions (MS-BVARs) to gather evidence about the hypothesis on a long annual U.S. sample running from 1890 to 2010. The sample covers several episodes useful for understanding U.S. economic and financial history, which generate variation in the data that aids in identifying credit supply and demand shocks. We identify these shocks within MS-BVARs by tying credit supply and demand movements to inside money and its intertemporal price. The model space is limited to stochastic volatility (SV) in the errors of the MS-BVARs. Of the 15 MS-BVARs estimated, the data favor a MS-BVAR in which economic and financial crises and noncrisis business cycle regimes recur throughout the long annual sample. The best-fitting MS-BVAR also isolates SV regimes in which shocks to inside money dominate aggregate fluctuations.
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 July, 2010 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 1010 ; Jon R Moen; Working Papers
Abstract: We employ a new data set comprised of disaggregate figures on clearing house loan certificate issues in New York City to document how the dominant national banks were crucial providers of temporary liquidity during the Panic of 1907. Clearing house loan certificates were essentially “bridge loans” arranged between clearing house members. They enabled and were issued in anticipation of gold imports, which took a few weeks to arrive. The large, New York City national banks acted as private liquidity providers by requesting (and the New York Clearing House issuing) a volume of clearing house loan certificates beyond their own immediate liquidity needs, in accord with their role as central reserve city banks in the national banking system.
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 July, 2010 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 1009 ; Elmus R Wicker; Working Papers
Abstract: This paper assesses the validity of comparisons between the current financial crisis and past crises in the United States. We highlight aspects of two National Banking Era crises (the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1907) that are relevant for comparison with the Panic of 2008. In 1873, overinvestment in railroad debt and the default of railroad companies on that debt led to the failure of numerous brokerage houses, precursor to the modern investment bank. During the Panic of 1907, panic-related deposit withdrawals centered on the less regulated trust companies, which had only indirect access to the existing lender of last resort, similar to investment banks in 2008. The popular press has made numerous references to the banking crises of the Great Depression as relevant comparisons to the recent crisis. This paper argues that such an analogy is inaccurate. The previous banking crises in U.S. history refl ected widespread depositor withdrawals whereas the recent panic arose from counterparty solvency fears and large counterparty exposures among large complex financial intermediaries. In historical incidents, monitoring counterparty exposures was standard banking practice and the exposures were smaller. From this perspective, the lessons from the past appear less directly relevant for the current crisis.
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