货币供给冲击对农业的影响

20世纪70年代以来,以货币政策为主的宏观变量与农业之间的关系备受瞩目,特别是货币供给冲击下农产品价格相对于工业品超调成为解释农产品价格波动的一个重要因素。同时,对于货币供给冲击,农业投入和产出价格反应机制和反应程度的差异也会使得农业贸易条件和农户福利水平受到影响。此外,在开放经济条件下,货币供给冲击经由汇率传递机制对农产品贸易产生影响,进而影响到农产品价格和农户收入。本文从上述三个层面梳理并评述已有文献。     

最优财政和货币政策及其福利效应分析

本文建立了财政和货币政策协作的最优政策模型,并以中国经济为研究对象,以福利效应为最优政策的评估标准,研究了财政和货币政策协作的最优政策机制。分析表明:在Ramsey最优均衡下,财政和货币政策共同作用于通货膨胀和产出目标,以严格通货膨胀为目标的最优货币规则会使得政策的福利损失最小,但货币政策在产出目标、通货膨胀目标以及政策福利损失三者上不能同时兼顾;最优财政规则是趋向缩小收支差,从而趋近于福利损失最小。本文同时使用贝叶斯分析,对中国经济政策2005年第一季度至2009年第二季度的福利效应进行了评估,实证分析表明:样本期间政策的无条件福利损失处于波动状态,经济增长增加了家庭部门的条件福利损失,即经济增长导致跨期消费成本增加。     

货币供给的性质:内生抑或外生

本文梳理了中外学术界关于货币供给性质的研究文献，在此基础上从币材、经济体制、货币供给结构、货币供给机制等多个层面探讨了货币供给的性质。其研究结论是：在现代市场经济条件下，货币供给兼具内生性和外生性．它既是内生变量又是外生变量。正是货币供给的外生性为中央银行实施货币政策、实现金融宏观调控提供了理论前提。     

我国房地产价格波动与货币政策调控模式研究——基于政策不确定性视角的实证分析

本文将经济政策不确定性作为门限变量,构建了包括房地产价格、货币政策以及经济政策不确定性在内的三维T-SVAR模型,并且分别采用货币供给量、利率以及信贷规模作为货币政策代理变量,研究不同政策不确定性程度下各货币政策工具对房地产价格调控的有效性.实证结果表明,在当前经济政策不确定性快速攀升时期,信贷规模调控是应对房地产价格过快上涨的最佳选择,其能够在最短时间内有效平抑房地产价格波动,并且在长期中依旧保留一定的政策效果.因此,货币当局在对房地产价格进行调控时应将着力点放在信贷规模上,通过控制信贷增长来抑制房地产价格的过快上涨,从而化解资产价格泡沫并推动经济“脱虚向实”,为经济增长新动力的形成奠定坚实的基础.     

货币紧缩政策对上市公司投资行为的影响

2003年至2008年上半年,我国实行从紧的货币政策。本文在理论分析的基础上,以法定存款准备金率的提高作为货币紧缩政策的替代变量,研究货币紧缩政策对上市公司投资行为的影响。研究结果表明:货币紧缩政策显著降低了上市公司内部流动性和投资规模;规模小的公司投资规模对流动性的敏感度强于规模大的公司;在货币紧缩政策背景下,投资规模对筹资活动现金流量的依赖性更强。     

内生货币体系下货币政策与资产价格关系研究

文章在总结已有的资产价格和货币政策之间互动关系理论基础上,从内生货币供给理论出发,考察货币经济体系下资产价格与货币政策的相互作用,研究结果表明货币政策对资产价格变化的最优反应取决于资产价格在货币传导机制中的作用以及冲击的来源。     

成本渠道假说研究述评

成本渠道假说将货币传导从传统理论中的总需求一侧扩展到总供给一侧,有助于解释货币政策冲击实证研究发现的"放大率之谜"和"价格之谜",对货币传导机制理论做出了重要补充。同时,成本渠道的存在也改变了最优货币政策分析面临的约束条件,为分析和评价货币政策提供了崭新视角,提醒货币当局在设计和执行货币政策时必须重视政策的供给侧效应。本文系统梳理和评述了关于成本渠道作用机制、实证检验及其对于最优货币政策意义的研究,并简要探讨了该领域的未来发展方向。     

货币供应量、大宗商品价格超调对CPI的影响 ——基于协整检验和VEC模型

本文研究了中国货币供给变动对大宗商品价格和CPI的影响,以及货币供给冲击下大宗商品价格波动对CPI的影响.在VAR模型基础上建立误差修正(VEC)模型,得到各变量的长期稳定关系,并通过脉冲响应和方差分解从响应幅度和反应时间上对研究内容进行实证分析,提出对我国货币政策、大宗商品价格与物价调控的相关对策建议.     

货币供应量、大宗商品价格超调对CPI的影响 ——基于协整检验和VEC模型

本文研究了中国货币供给变动对大宗商品价格和CPI的影响,以及货币供给冲击下大宗商品价格波动对CPI的影响.在VAR模型基础上建立误差修正(VEC)模型,得到各变量的长期稳定关系,并通过脉冲响应和方差分解从响应幅度和反应时间上对研究内容进行实证分析,提出对我国货币政策、大宗商品价格与物价调控的相关对策建议.     

结构性冲击对中国经济的影响——兼论新冠肺炎疫情的经济影响

传染性疾病作为一种短暂而剧烈的结构性冲击对中国经济的影响以及政策选择因全球爆发的新冠肺炎疫情受到广泛关注.基于包含上下游生产结构、不同类型企业以及异质性金融摩擦的动态随机一般均衡模型的研究发现,疫情冲击是对供给与需求同时产生影响的综合冲击,这一特征对评估其经济影响非常重要,并能解释疫情以来中国消费下滑幅度大于生产投资且恢复较慢的特征事实.结构性减税政策对经济的稳定效果显著优于宽松货币政策且福利损失更小,但两种政策组合使用可以带来更好的福利结果.这是因为货币扩张在稳定需求的同时恶化了信贷资源错配,结构性减税则部分纠正了信贷错配,而政策组合使用能充分发挥两种政策的优势.     

Pleasure and belief in Hume's Decision Process

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce explicitly pleasure and belief in what aims at being a Humean theory of decision, like the one developed in Diaye and Lapidus (2005a). Although we support the idea that Hume was in some way a hedonist – evidently different from Bentham's or Jevons' way – we lay emphasis less on continuity than on the specific kind of hedonism encountered in Hume's writings (chiefly the Treatise, the second Enquiry, the Dissertation, or some of his Essays). Such hedonism clearly contrasts to its standard modern inheritance, expressed by the relation between preferences and utility.

The reason for such a difference with the usual approach lies in the mental process that Hume puts to the fore in order to explain the way pleasure determines desires and volition. Whereas pleasure is primarily, in Hume's words, an impression of sensation, it takes place in the birth of passions as reflecting an idea of pleasure, whose “force and vivacity” is precisely a “belief”, transferred to the direct passions of desire or volition that come immediately before action. As a result, from a Humean point of view, “belief” deals with decision under risk or uncertainty, as well as with intertemporal decision and indiscrimination problems.

The latter are explored within a formal framework, and it is shown that the relation of pleasure is transformed by belief into a non-empty class of relations of desire, among which at least one is a preorder.     

Globalization,Neoliberalism and the attack on social security

Neoliberal political movements advocate privatization of public pension systems. Globalization imposes pressure on nations to conform to neoliberal policy views with respect to the design and structure of social insurance, including public pension systems. The paper begins with an investigation of the economic, ethical and ideological dimensions of the privatization debates in the U.S.; it argues that privatization advocates may be largely moved by ideology, since the other reasons advanced appear weak or unfounded. The second part discusses the history of Social Security, the purposes for its creation, and some of its economic effects. Differences between public and private pension systems are considered. A brief international comparison of some aspects of public pension system finance and benefit structures is presented. The final section considers the ethical, macroeconomic and distributional implications of privatization, prefunding and payroll tax funding, and argues for a pay as you go system financed with income taxes. In order to promote equity, economic security, community, and social cohesion, public pension systems should be universal in coverage. In order to reduce the inequality, income insecurity, and aged poverty generated by market economies, public pension systems ought to be progressive: benefit/contribution ratios should be inversely proportional to income, and progressive income taxes should finance the system. To promote economic growth, the systems should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, and should not be prefunded except for an emergency reserve. The fiscal policy recommendations partially depend upon the theory developed by Abba Lerner in the 1940s, and recently advanced by Wynne Godley and Randy Wray: Lerner's “principle of functional finance.”     

Interest on reserves and inflation

The payment of interest on reserves has been a common practice in inflationary economies. This policy may seem paradoxical since it involves returning part of the seigniorage, generated by the inflation process, with the intention to finance the fiscal deficit. This paper argues that the motivation for this policy can be captured by the discretionary regime, where the policymaker pays interest on reserves because he is concerned with the erosion of real liquidity by inflation, which is in part beyond his control. However, this policy is an unlikely outcome in the commitment regime, where the policymaker is in full control of inflation.     

Bayesian estimation of duration models: An application of the multiperiod probit model

The multiperiod probit model is presented and Bayesian estimation using the Gibbs sampler with data augmentation is described. As an empirical illustration, the multiperiod probit model is then used to estimate a duration model using employment duration data for the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Bayesian estimation with unobserved heterogeneity is shown to be a simple extension of estimation of a duration model with no unobserved heterogeneity. More importantly, perhaps, some numerical problems encountered by other authors using Maximum Likelihood are avoided.I would like to thank M. Baker, G. Koop, A. Melino and D. Poirier for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank M. Baker for providing his data.     

Scenarios and creativity: Thinking in new boxes

To be creative and make change happen, leaders must do more than simply ‘think outside the box’, as the traditional business manuals suggest, using the popular American expression. After all, the space outside the box is infinitely expansive. Moreover, there can be no guarantee that a solution to the problem will be found. The answer: ‘Think in new boxes.’ This requires developing the right new box; in other words, useful new models, a helpful new approach to a problem. That is the real art of practical creativity. This short article outlines the approach (Thinking in New Boxes) and its application to classic scenario planning with a few examples. The authors also present the ‘Expressway to Scenarios’, an approach that wins in impact and practicality what it loses in deep analysis, by having top executives involved in key steps.     

On the Role of Paradigms in Understanding Economic Globalization

Any adequate analysis of economic globalization necessarily requires fundamental understanding of the worldviews underlying the views expressed with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization. This paper is based on the premise that any worldview can be associated with one of the four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. It argues that any view expressed with respect to economic globalization is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews. It, therefore, discusses four views with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization which correspond to the four broad worldviews. The paper emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of economic globalization from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. Emphasizing this example in the area of economic globalization, the paper concludes that there are opportunities for each paradigm to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms.     

A Humean theory of choice of which rationality may be one consequence

For the reader who considers economic theory of choice as a special case of a more general theory of action, Hume's discussion of the determinants of action in the Treatise of Human Nature (1739?–?40), in the Enquiry on Human Understanding (1748) and in the Dissertation on Passions (1757) deserves attention. However, according to some modern commentators, Hume does not seem to have given any evidence that would favour what nowadays we would consider as the kind of rationality involved in modern theories of rational choice. On the contrary, this paper arrives at the conclusion that consistency between preferences and choice, like the usual properties of completeness and transitivity, may be considered as outcomes of a mental process, described by means of a decision algorithm that aims to represent Hume's theory of choice.     

The concept of freedom and its relation to economic development--a critical appreciation of the work of Amartya Sen

Following a brief review of the conception of freedom as employedin economic discourse, this paper focuses on the evolution ofthe concept of freedom in the work of Amartya Sen. It tracesthe development of Sen's thought from the capability analysisof the late 1970s to his more recent separation of freedom intoits opportunity and process aspects. While broadly appreciativeof Sen's development of the concept of positive freedom, thepaper identifies some difficulties arising from his definitionof capability as a set of options as well as from his separationof the opportunity and process aspects of freedom. Aspects ofthe relationship between Sen's conception of freedom and thatof Marx are discussed briefly in the context of Sen's recentdiscussion of the market as a source of freedom.     

How chaebol restructuring after the 1997 crisis has affected corporate decision and performance in Korea: debt financing,ownership structure,and investment

ABSTRACT

Korean chaebol firms, characterized by excessive debt financing and overinvestment, experienced restructuring after the 1997 crisis. By reducing debt financing and thus overinvestment, they tried to reorganize financing structure and ownership structure. Chaebols’ debt reduction turns out to have improved performance. However, polarization between chaebol and non-chaebol firms has become more significant. Even after the crisis, firms that give higher cash flows to a controlling shareholder take more capital investment, indicating that agency problems still exist within chaebols. Chaebol-affiliated firms continue to be more active in R&D than non-chaebol firms. However, the pattern is limited to the group of top 10 chaebols after the crisis.

Abbreviations: KFTC: Korea Fair Trade Commission     

Types of technology

Technology is a concept rife with confusion. Here, I argue that technologies can be distinguished as a combination of type of producer and an idealized artefact life history. Using this definition, a number of technologies are identified. The first technology historically, in the Protostomes, was the production of individual or family dwellings. Next came objects such as spider webs for trapping prey. Stigmergy followed, with the social insects, as a collective endeavour to construct a mega-structure using simple rules of accretion. Some birds and primates began to make tools, or simple technological objects whose function is closely related to their form. Humans are distinguished by their ability to make machines. Traditional technology took place once people voluntarily organised into groups with specialised knowledge to produce more complex objects and structures. Monumental objects like ceremonial pyramids came with the command economies of the early agrarian societies, which also resulted in a new category of artefact, the network. Finally, with modern civilizations came ad hoc accretion, or population-level adding-on, to make truly complex technological systems. Developing a theoretical framework within which artefacts, production processes and ways of interacting with them are identified should help the study of technology to become more scientific.