中美“宽松”货币政策、通胀预期与货币规则的探讨

2008年10月以来,中美两国均采取了不同程度的"宽松"货币政策来应对源于美国金融危机的全球经济衰退。本文的研究显示,2008年,中美两国货币供应量M1和M2增长率是相似的;2008年底到2009年8月,中国的M1和M2增长率分别为20.6%和21.4%,而美国的M1和M2增长率仅为3.36%和2.14%,中国的通胀预期是市场对"超级宽松"货币政策的合理反应。在过去的一年间,中国货币当局对美国金融危机的反应比美国的政策干预更为积极。而货币供应量的高增长孕育着价格上涨的风险,货币政策应当从被动协调美国的相机抉择转向遵循货币数量规则,抑制通胀预期,以实现宏观经济的稳定增长。     

刘易斯拐点是否必然导致通胀?

近期有不少人士认为刘易斯拐点的出现及其引发的劳动力成本冲击会系统性推高中国目前及未来相当长一段时间的通胀水平。本文通过对典型经济体的经验以及理论分析认为,如果没有需求面以及货币供应量的配合,经济体在经历刘易斯拐点之时所面临的劳动力成本上升,并不必然导致通胀水平的系统性抬升。建议中国目前应该注重稳健的货币政策,并加快经济结构调整和城镇化建设。     

The Political and Economic Dimension of Monetary Unions

This paper investigates the relationship between the political and economic aspects of monetary unions. After illustrating the recent change in approach to the theory of optimum currency areas (section 2), the paper analyzes the momentous implications of union members maintaining political sovereignty (section 3) for the notion of currency area optimality and the viability of monetary unions (section 4).     

Business Cycles,Core, and Periphery in Monetary Unions: Comparing Europe and North America

Using different levels of regional aggregation, we compare Europe with the USA and Canada as regards business cycle synchronization and core-periphery patterns. A long annual sample (1950–2005) makes it possible to study how these aspects have evolved over time. Results support the economic viability of EMU. Average cyclical correlations among European countries have risen significantly, reaching levels close to those of North American regions. Applying fuzzy clustering to the analysis of core-periphery issues, we find European countries to actually outperform USA Census Regions: the core-periphery divide is milder, and peripheral status seems generally less protracted.     

Low Inflation,Pass-through,and a Discrete Inflation-targeting Framework for Monetary Policy in China

The performance of inflation in China over the past few decades has been remarkable. This paper characterizes the statistical nature of the inflation series in China over the past quarter of a century and presents an interesting scenario of large decline in inflation pass-through accompanied with low inflation since the end of the 1990s. How should monetary policy in China be conducted under these new economic conditions? We propose a discrete inflation-targeting framework for monetary policy,which is likely to be suitable for the regime of low inflation and inflation pass-through. The advantages and caveats of adopting such a framework are also discussed.     

信息不完全、通货膨胀目标制与货币政策声誉:跨国经验

20世纪90年代以来通行的通货膨胀目标制被认为是极具透明性、灵活性的货币政策框架，受到很多国家的推崇。本文验证通货膨胀目标制是否有助于建立货币政策声誉，构建一个基于信息不完全基础上的动态预期形成模型，通过对通货膨胀目标制能否引起结构性变化的七个发达国家的实证研究，发现政策声誉的建立是一个学习过程。通货膨胀目标制实行的时间越长，该政策对降低通货膨胀率，实现经济稳定增长越有效。     

Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Strategies: Evidence from Six Industrialized Countries

In this paper we address the issue whether a switch to inflation targeting can help build monetary policy credibility and can substitute for a track record of low inflation. To this end, we empirically evaluate the success of inflation targeting in Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and investigate to what extent the joint dynamic processes of inflation and nominal interest rates in these three countries have experienced a structural break at the time of the regime switch to inflation targeting. The experience of Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom is matched with the United States, Australia and Germany. We find that the effectiveness of the direct inflation targeting approach to quickly increase low-inflation credibility so far is ambiguous and that this strategy is not clearly superior to intermediate monetary strategies.     

Goods Inflation,Asset Inflation,and the Greatest Peacetime Inflation in the US

In every episode of global monetary inflation originating in the Federal Reserve, we find both asset price inflation and goods inflation. The interrelationship between these two types of inflation depends both on cycle-specific factors and more general factors which transcend the cycle and stem from essential aspects of monetary disorder. The purpose of this article is to analyse the nature of this interrelationship and elaborate on the concepts of monetary disorder, goods inflation, and asset inflation. In today’s world of monetary systems where there is no stable demand for high-powered money (which itself is no longer a highly distinct asset) monetary disorder can be hard to recognize until quite late in the inflationary process. Asset price inflation now has a popular meaning quite different from the original found in Austrian business cycle theory. Two decades of widespread inflation targeting at around 2% per annum have encouraged us to ignore an old lesson. In a well-functioning capitalist economy under a sound money order, prices would fluctuate considerably upwards and downwards with a tendency to revert to the mean over the very long run. Finally the principles and hypotheses developed here are analysed in the laboratory of history, specifically for the greatest peacetime inflation in the U.S. (1963–80).     

对运用货币政策解决通货膨胀问题的思考

2010年下半年以来,我国的物价出现了明显上涨,按照通常定义,是出现了通货膨胀.政策的制定者提出并实施了相应的解决办法,包括实行加息或提高银行存款准备金率等收紧银根的金融政策,以减少货币供应或流通量.文章从分析通货膨胀的根源入手,评价了以往实行的货币政策,提出源自西方的货币政策不能真正有效解决通货膨胀问题,而解决它的办法在于监测社会劳动总量在各行业、部门间分布比例的失衡程度,并采取相应的宏观调控措施加以矫正.     

Monetary Policy Uncertainty and Inflation: The Role of Central Bank Accountability

We analyse the issue of central bank accountability with the aid of a simple monetary policy game with uncertainty about the agent's inflation stabilisation preferences. We find that there may be an important economic role for accountability in addition to its political function of making the central bank answerable to voters through its accountability to the executive. The model suggests that for countries with relatively little central bank independence, or perhaps a poor inflationary track record, significant reductions in inflation can be achieved by lowering monetary policy uncertainty. These reductions are much smaller for inflation-averse central banks, when monetary policy uncertainty is reduced by the same absolute amount. Thus, the effectiveness of accountability – as a means of lowering both inflation and inflation uncertainty – is higher the lower the degree of central bank conservativeness.     

Monetary Unions in Historical Perspective: What Future for the Euro in the International Financial System

This paper discusses the introduction of the euro in the present international monetary context. European Monetary Union is not only an economic concept but also primarily a political one. Based on past experience, two aspects of monetary union seem essential: the nature of the future European Central Bank and the necessity that monetary union is implemented with a fiscal union. The euro's success on world markets, as a dollar substitute, depends on monetary authorities' credibility in targeting low-inflation, and on fiscal authorities' reputation. A central bank that does not respond to a political authority can cause social difficulties, especially if social policies are left in the hands of single countries and fiscal transfers, to support these policies, are not allowed     

中国通货膨胀率与其不确定性之间的非线性动态关系

通货膨胀率和通货膨胀不确定性之间相互影响,二者之间的内在关系对政府运用货币政策具有重要的现实意义。本文采用1990年1月以来居民消费价格指数(CPI)的月度数据,结合随机域回归模型、系列随机域的非线性检验方法、最大似然估计及贝叶斯估计方法,对我国通货膨胀率与通货膨胀不确定性的关系进行了实证分析。实证研究发现,通货膨胀率引起了通货膨胀不确定性,两者呈现非线性的U型关系,支持了Friedman假说;大的通货膨胀不确性引起通货膨胀率先升后降,呈现非线性倒U曲线关系,Cukierman-Meltzer假说在U型左侧范围内成立,于U型右侧Holland结论成立。     

通货膨胀、通货膨胀不确定性与中国实际产出增长

基于中国1993年1月至2010年12月的月度数据,本文采用双变量GARCH模型测量了中国通货膨胀不确定性,并借助于传统的Granger因果检验以及基于马尔科夫区制转移向量自回归(MS-VAR)模型下Granger因果检验等方法对通货膨胀、通货膨胀不确定性与中国实际产出增长进行了实证研究.本文研究发现:中国通货膨胀和通货膨胀不确定性之间存在着Granger意义上的双向因果性,在作用机制上支持了Okun-Friedman理论假说以及Holland论断;传统的Granger因果检验表明中国通货膨胀、通货膨胀不确定性对中国实际产出增长之间存在Granger意义上的因果性,但是基于MS-VAR模型的Granger因果检验研究则表明上述因果性仅存在于特定的机制下.     

Policy Risk of Current Bank Bailouts in China

Chinahasstartedanewroundofbailoutstohelpitsstate-ownedbanksgetoutofthenon-performingloans(NPLs)mire.Measureshavebeentaken,suchastheinjectionofforeignexchangereserves.Althoughreformanddevelopmentofstate-ownedbanksisoneofthemostimportantfactorsinChinaseconomy,ifwetakealookatthewholepicture,wemayfindthatsomepolicyrisksstillexist.Thispaperwillmainlyfocusonthispotentialproblem.I.ChinasNewRoadmapforBankBailouts1.BankbailoutsinChinaAttheendof2003,ChinapumpedpartofitsforeignexchangereservesofUS$…     

Optimal Monetary Policy Rules and Inflation Targets: Are Australia,Canada, and New Zealand Different from the U.S.?

Outwardly, the central banks of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. follow somewhat different approaches to controlling inflation. The U.S. does not explicitly target inflation while the other countries do. Canada and New Zealand have target bands for inflation while Australia has a point target. Results in this paper nevertheless find broad similarities in the monetary policies of these countries. Each can be described as having pursued optimal inflation targeting (explicit or implicit), with heavy interest rate smoothing, but perhaps placing little weight on output variability. We argue that interest rate smoothing is used to introduce gradualism into the response of monetary policy to inflation. We show that given heavy interest rate smoothing, a concern for output variability is redundant.     

Inflation,expectations, and cyclical aggravations

Summary The negative relationship between output and producers' expectations and the positive relationship between output and consumers' expectations, as hypothesized by Brunner and Meltzer, is very sensitive to the choice of the model. These Brunner-Meltzer predictions would not be supported by the results derived from a Fisherian model with or without a Phillips curve specification, such as the models presented in this paper.Within the context of the Fisherian model, an increase in the degree of adjustment by one or both sectors will lead to greater price stability. For policy purposes, this result suggests that the increase in available information or significant reduction in the costs of acquiring information may yield greater price stability. A welfare gain may also be achieved if the parameters are interdependent such that information conveyed to one sector effectively leaks to the other. In the latter case, the policy approach may be to try to influence the exogeneous expectations parameters and the lag adjustment between them.Recent studies have proposed that the labor market—or the market for new entrants and transitory workers—is the arena in which all firms participate. Hence, most of the information regarding price movements could be efficiently gathered in this market. If this is an accurate presumption, thenB* would, to some extent, be a function then of the labor market adjustment parameterA*. Further amendments to the model presented in this paper would, however, be necessary to incorporate this alternative.