新经济周期中的利率与汇率

新经济周期中的利率与汇率张志一、我国经济周期中的利率利率是中央货币当局法定的七种货币政策工具之一。长期以来,我国最重要的货币政策工具主要是贷款限额,中央银行存贷款利率地位不高,变化很少,不能起到调节货币发行的作用。这与一般市场经济国家把利率作为主要的...     

对外贸易中的铸币税及其经济效应

铸币税是指发行货币所得到的收益,既包括中央银行发行的基础货币,也包括商业银行发行的存款.中央银行征收铸币税的能力随着货币乘数增加而减弱,而商业银行的征收能力则随货币乘数的增加而增加.铸币税可以分解为通货膨胀税和扣除净出口部分的经济增长税两部分,外汇储备本质上是货币当局向本国人们征收的铸币税.     

论我国中央银行体制下的二阶式货币供应

对我国中央银行体制下的货币供应过程及其与市场货币供应量的关系问题的研究,对中央银行选择特定的货币政策工具,实现宏观金融调控目标具有重大的理论和实践意义。在我国中央银行体制下,由于中央银行和商业银行、专业银行(以下通称其为商业银行)在货币发行和货币供应过程中所处地位不同,从而形成了我国中央银行体制下的二阶式货币供应体系,即中央银行供应基础货币,商业银行供应市场货币。一、中央银行与基础货币供应中央银行作为我国掌管人民币发行和管理全国金融事业的机关,并不直接办理对工商企业和个人的货币信贷业务,而是执行发行银行、银行的银行和国家的银行的职能。这     

央行票据调控可持续性分析

央行票据是中央银行为调节商业银行超额准备金而向商业银行发行的短期债务凭证,是中央银行为调节商业银行流动性而出台的一项货币政策工具,其实质是中央银行债券。目前,央票已经是债券市场不可或缺的短期投资工具和流动性管理工具。但伴随中国经济增长趋势的放缓,央行票据发行规模的下降,央票是否继续存在的争论也由此而起。通过分析我国央行票据的发展情况及现状,对央票调控的利弊进行分析,并为央票存在的持续性寻求合理的理论支持。     

我国公开市场操作工具及其主导工具的选择

作为三大货币政策调控工具之一的公开市场操作,在货币市场中的作用越来越显著.现阶段,货币市场操作工具呈现出以中央银行票据为主,国债和政策性金融债券为辅的局面.本文结合公开市场操作的现状,分析了这几种工具所存在的缺陷和不足,提出了以短期国债作为主导工具的发展方向.     

现代中央银行政策:理论、挑战与重构

现代中央银行制度是一国宏观经济治理的重要内容,现代中央银行政策是现代中央银行制度及功能的主要体现。中央银行在演变过程中逐渐具备了为政府提供贷款、货币发行、最后贷款人、制定货币政策、制定宏观审慎政策等现代中央银行的功能。现代中央银行政策作为现代中央银行制度的核心构成,其理论框架主要包括最终目标、操作目标、政策工具、传导机制等。由于现代中央银行政策具有目标多元、工具复杂、从工具到目标间接传导等特征,因此提高政策精准度至关重要。中国构建了较为完整的现代中央银行政策框架,但在金融适度分权改革环境下,地方政府、企业、银行、居民等市场主体的行为选择使现有的中央银行政策需要进一步改进和完善,尤其是需要提高政策的精准性,包括提高政策基准变量计算的精准性,提高货币政策工具和宏观审慎政策工具的精准性,提高"双支柱"政策与财政政策、产业政策、国际金融政策等政策工具组合的精准性。     

我国央行票据货币冲销的成本研究

在中央银行发行央行票据进行货币冲销的过程中,过高的成本一直被国内外学者认为是央行票据不能作为长期冲销工具存在的一项重要理由。本文考察了近三年的有关数据,从有形成本和无形成本两个角度出发,认为次贷危机的爆发使得全球经济形势发生巨变,央行的冲销成本是在动态变化的,对经济增长的“挤出效应”也不太明显。     

我国再贴现政策效应

作为中央银行三大货币政策工具之一,再贴现政策在我国的金融运行过程中,由于实际操作时间短,加上社会信用和票据市场不发达等因素的制约,使其具有特殊的动作机理和特殊的功能效应,本文试图从我国再贴现政策的功能效应入手,研究制约其效应发挥的因素,探索如何更有效发挥再贴现政策效应的途径,以达到促进金融宏观调控方式的转变,增强货币下降政策可操作性的目的。     

货币政策工具的中西比较：论我国货币政策工具的转换

货币政策是中央银行运用各种工具通过货币存量调整总需求进而对宏观经济进行调节的一种手段,一般由政策工具、中介指标和政策目标三部分内容构成。改革开放以来,随着市场经济的不断发展和中央银行制度的建立,我国货币政策的作用日益突出。经过数年来的实践摸索,我国中央银行已积累了一定的宏观调     

美国公开市场业务技术前提的实证分析及借鉴

美国公开市场业务技术前提的实证分析及借鉴李源海陈月公开市场业务是指中央银行在公开市场上买卖政府债券用以控制货币供应量的一种政策手段,主要以短期政府债券及一年内将要到期的中长期政府债券为基础。它是目前西方货币当局使用最频繁的货币政策工具,具有法定存款准...     

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.”     

Neurally reconstructing expected utility

While the concept of “expected utility” informs many theories of decision making, little is known about whether and how the human brain might compute this quantity. This article reviews a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) experiments designed to localize brain regions that respond in anticipation of increasing amounts of monetary incentives. These studies collectively suggest that anticipation of increasing monetary gains activates a subcortical region of the ventral striatum in a magnitude-proportional manner. This ventral striatal activation is not evident during anticipation of losses. Actual gain outcomes instead activate a region of the mesial prefrontal cortex. During anticipation of gain, ventral striatal activation is accompanied by feelings characterized by increasing arousal and positive valence. These findings affirm the role of emotion in the anticipation of incentives, and may provide an initial step towards a neural reconstruction of expected utility.     

Duplication, Growth and ‘Total Return Economics’

Maintenance consumption is an expense recovered in product prices, yet also a source of taste satisfaction which must be exhausted, rather than reinvested, from the capital affording it. This riddle is solved in the duplication rules: the cost of maintenance consumption is recovered in pay and prices, but an equal flow is exhausted from the human capital of the worker earning the pay. The rules impact tradition in several ways. If output is defined in principle as value added, then it cannot also be described as consumption plus net investment without double-counting the maintenance consumption recovered in prices. Also rate of return in the stationary state is not zero, but is the rate sufficient to offset the exhaustion of individual human capital. The rules lead to new insights into economic return, and support an argument that all growth at the scale of closure is due to productivity gain rather than to thrift.     

John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution

Although he was much influenced by David Ricardo when he wrote the classical part of his Principles , John Stuart Mill was not a Ricardian when he penned his theories of wealth and distribution. They are based on a triple foundation. First, a belief that economics is a moral discipline. Second a theory of custom-driven human behavior. Third, an empirically formed conviction that the institutions of state, education and business cooperate to structure the distribution of income. On the basis of these presuppositions, Mill formulated 1) an institutional theory of the formation of human and non-human wealth and 2) an even more institutional theory of distribution demonstrating how the aforementioned institutions malignantly skew the distribution of income to the advantage of the propertied classes and to the extreme disadvantage of the working class. As a social economist, Mill recommended institutional reforms designed to eradicate the poverty of the working class.     

Forecasting the price of gold

This article seeks to evaluate the appropriateness of a variety of existing forecasting techniques (17 methods) at providing accurate and statistically significant forecasts for gold price. We report the results from the nine most competitive techniques. Special consideration is given to the ability of these techniques to provide forecasts which outperforms the random walk (RW) as we noticed that certain multivariate models (which included prices of silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium, besides gold) were also unable to outperform the RW in this case. Interestingly, the results show that none of the forecasting techniques are able to outperform the RW at horizons of 1 and 9 steps ahead, and on average, the exponential smoothing model is seen providing the best forecasts in terms of the lowest root mean squared error over the 24-month forecasting horizons. Moreover, we find that the univariate models used in this article are able to outperform the Bayesian autoregression and Bayesian vector autoregressive models, with exponential smoothing reporting statistically significant results in comparison with the former models, and classical autoregressive and the vector autoregressive models in most cases.     

Simulating the Effect of Regulatory Systems in a Fishery, An Application to the French Driftnet Albacore Fleet

With a thin economic component, most bio-economic models of fisheries failto assess the effects of the regulation systems on firms. In order to analysethe short term consequences of different management schemes, a simulationmodel is applied to the French driftnet albacore fleet: licence allocation withdriftnet regulation, individual quotas, and individual transferable quotaswithout any input control. Vessel technology is estimated by using the datacollected, and groups of vessels are distinguished according to criteria ofperformance. We present the adjustment within firms and between groupsunder different scenarios (limited entry with and without driftnetregulation, individual quotas and individual transferable quotas allocation),and we compare their results in terms of quasi-rent value and otherindicators such as hake harvests or dolphin by-catches.     

Knowledge as a Path-Dependence Process

By following a new approach proposed by Cognitive and Neuroeconomics, this paper presents and extends that part of Hayek's theory concerning knowledge in path-dependent terms, and shows that this is a fertile theory, opening new lines of inquiry for contemporary economics. In his theory of knowledge Hayek shows that the dynamics of economic change is path-dependent, in a different and more profound way than in the rest of the path-dependent literature. This literature deals with an important controversy, which will be also discussed and its specific and original meaning will be highlighted. As it will emerge, knowledge as a path-dependent process is consistent with cognitive theories of perception and learning and it plays a more important role than is traditionally assumed. Path-dependence is in fact always present in the cognitive dimension of perception and in individual decision-making processes, as well as in the processes of organizational innovation, and even in the macro-dimension of institutional change. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

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.