我国贸易条件与贸易利益增长关系的研究

长期以来,贸易条件被认为是衡量一国获取贸易利益大小的一项重要指标。文章从价格贸易条件、收入贸易条件及单要素贸易条件的涵义出发,进行了贸易奈件和贸易利益的相关关系分析。分析表明,要全面准确衡量一国的贸易利益必须把价格贸易条件、收入贸易条件和单要素贸易条件这几者结合起来综合考虑,并通过实证研究揭示了我国贸易条件下的静态贸易利益和动态贸易利益现状及制约贸易利益增加的因素。在分析基础上,提出进一步改善我国贸易条件,更多地分享国际贸易利益的措施和建议。     

Saving and Investing Over the Life Cycle and the Role of Collective Pension Funds

Summary This paper surveys the academic literature on optimal saving and investment over an individual’s life cycle. We start out with a simple benchmark model with separable and smooth preferences, one aggregate risk factor and riskless wage income. Within this simple setting, optimal saving and investment behavior are explored from the perspective of individuals. Subsequently, we investigate various constraints to optimal individual decision making. We discuss how collective pension schemes may help to relieve some of the market incompleteness that arises from these constraints while at the same time introducing new types of constraints. Finally, various extensions to the benchmark setting are analyzed: a more elaborate modelling of human capital, additional risk factors, and other types of preferences. We thank Peter Kooreman for helpful comments on an earlier version and Roel Mehlkopf for research assistance.     

Market Valuation,Pension Fund Policy and Contribution Volatility

Summary Market valuation is becoming more and more popular, both in accounting and regulation, as well as in academic circles. For pension funds and their participants, the knowledge that market-valued pension liabilities can indeed be transferred to a third party, if necessary, is a great virtue. Using a simulation model, this paper demonstrates the implicit costs and benefits of using market valuation for a typical Dutch pension fund, which offers a guaranteed average pay nominal pension with conditional indexation. The impact turns out to be fairly small, if fixed discount rates are still used for conditional rights. However, if market valuation is used for both unconditional and conditional rights, contribution volatility increases significantly. A remedy is to increase the duration of assets considerably. It is not clear, though, whether this option is available for large pension funds given the limited supply of long-term bonds. This paper benefited from discussions at seminars at DNB, PVK, ABP and CPB. We are grateful to Jan-Marc Berk, Dirk Broeders, and Peter van Els for useful suggestions and comments on a previous version of the paper. Views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect official positions of De Nederlandsche Bank.