Search, Money, and Prices

It is well known that models in which money is used as a medium of exchange to lubricate trading, frictions display multiplicity of equilibria. I show that the amount of activity varies as the value of money differs across these equilibria when production opportunities involve random fixed costs. When money has high value, trade is more profitable; therefore, there will be more agents engaged in trade relative to equilibria in which money has lower value. The higher-activity equilibria display higher production not only because more is produced and exchanged per transaction but also because more transactions occur per period. This Diamond-style result is obtained without increasing returns in the matching technology.     

Measuring Exchange Market Pressure and Intervention in Interdependent Economies: A Two-Country Model

In this article, operational exchange market pressure and intervention indices are derived for a world composed of two interdependent economies. The model-consistent formulae, which can be calculated from observed data, are obtained by applying general definitions of exchange market pressure and intervention activity to a two-country rational-expectations model. It is demonstrated that the functional forms used to measure exchange market pressure and intervention activity depend on whether intervention is direct or indirect and also on whether foreign exchange reserves are held as currency or in the form of bonds.     

货币循环流动与资产价格的波动

基于货币循环流动的视角,探讨了“金融窖藏”和“热钱”对资产价格波动的影响.通过协整及方差分解,并进一步运用状态空间模型结合广义自回归条件异方差模型进行实证分析结果表明:金融资产价格的波动与金融窖藏、热钱之间具有长期的均衡稳定关系,而且热钱倾向于流入股票市场,股市对热钱的变动具有较强的敏感度,而金融窖藏更愿意进入房地产市场,对房市具有持续稳定的正效应.鉴于此,对引导货币资金流动,有效调控金融资产价格,防范危机风险提出相应的政策建议.     

A Note on Modelling Money Demand in Growing Economies

A prominent feature of US data is the lack of cointegration between nominal interest rates and M1 velocity. Yet, most general‐equilibrium monetary models that have been used for empirical analysis have imposed cointegration between these two series. This paper presents as an alternative a money‐in‐the‐utility function model which does not imply cointegration even though a well‐defined stationary monetary equilibrium exists.     

转型经济的货币深化与货币挤出:中国和俄罗斯的不同

通货膨胀是转型经济所要面临的挑战,因此分析转型经济的货币问题十分必要。通过构建货币深化和货币挤出两种不同货币现象的分析框架,并对中国和俄罗斯的现实情况进行比较,可以发现,货币超发并非通货膨胀的充分条件,只要能够控制好货币的流向,引导货币向货币资本转化,就能够防范和治理通货膨胀,以交易方程式和鲍莫尔—托宾模型的实证检验也印证了上述观点。     

Money Wages, Consumer Prices, and Causality in Australia*

This paper exploits recently developed statistical techniques to examine the causal patterns in lag relationships between changes in wages and consumer prices. The analysis uses quarterly data for selected periods and a total historical sample period 1954-82. Causation has generally been unidirectional from wages to prices. However, for the first half of the 1970s bidirectional causation was detected, though the causation from wages to prices was statistically more significant. Brief consideration is given to some policy implications of the results.     

Long-Run Links among Money, Prices and Output: Worldwide Evidence

Abstract. Starting from the quantity theory of money we analyse the dynamic relationships between money, real output and prices for an unbalanced panel of 110 economies. Complementary to trivariate analyses we also adopt a P-star model explaining inflation via an equilibrium price level (P-star), which in turn depends on potential output and money. A key issue of the paper is the cross-sectional stability of estimation and inference results. We find cointegration among the considered variables. Particularly for high inflation countries homogeneity between prices and money cannot be rejected. Given homogeneity we find evidence for an error-correction mechanism linking current price changes and the lagged price gap. Parameter estimates indicating the adjustment towards the price equilibrium are larger in absolute value for high inflation countries. The latter results indicate that central banks, even in high inflation countries, can improve price stability by controlling monetary growth.     

Search, Bargaining, Money, and Prices Under Private Information

This paper presents a model of money and search where bargaining determines prices and the quality of goods is private information. It studies how a lemons problem affects the purchasing power of money. There are multiple, Pareto-ranked equilibria. The superior equilibrium, where no lemons are produced, exists even if information about quality is relatively scarce. In other equilibria, there is price dispersion, and uninformed buyers pay higher prices than informed buyers for all goods. Taxing money balances (a proxy for inflation) makes buyers less selective, thus reducing the average quality of supply and the premium paid for known quality.     

A Note on Causality Between Money,Wages and Prices in Australia*

Lead and lag relationships between money, wages. and prices are examined using Australian data. Granger causality tests support univariate causality running from money to both wages and prices. This result is consistent with a monetarist explanation of inflation.     

The Role of International Discipline in Three Developing Economies: Exchange Rate Effects on Domestic Prices in Colombia, Korea, and Morocco

This study examines three developing countries—Colombia, Korea, and Morocco—in order to determine the linkage between exchange rate movements and domestic producer pricing. Generally, incomplete passthrough into domestic prices is found, but greater impact than previously found for developed economies. An important common thread in explanations of industry-varying effects for the three countries is that entry and entry barriers seem to matter in the transmission of exchange rate changes into domestic prices, suggesting that increased openness to imports has only limited influence on domestic prices of import-competing goods, and can be aided by domestic competition policy.     

Interdependent preferences and segregating equilibria

This paper shows that models where preferences of individuals depend not only on their allocations, but also on the well being of other persons, can produce both large and testable effects. We study the allocation of workers with heterogeneous productivities to firms. We show that even small deviations from purely “selfish” preferences leads to widespread workplace skill segregation. That is, workers of different abilities tend to work in different firms, as long as they care somewhat more about the utilities of workers who are “close”. This result holds for a broad class and distribution of social preferences.     

Interdependent Preferences and Groups of Agents

An individual's preferences are assumed to be malleable and may be influenced by the preferences of others. Mutual interaction among individuals whose preferences are interdependent powers a dynamic process in which preference profiles evolve over time. Two formulations of the dynamic process are presented. One is an abstract model in which the iteration of a mapping from profiles to profiles defines a discrete time dynamic process; the other is a linear discrete time process specified in more detail. Examples motivate the model and illustrate its application. Conditions are given for the existence of a stable preference profile—a rest point of the dynamic process. A stable profile is naturally associated with a division, not in general unique, of the set of agents into subgroups with the property that preference interdependencies within a subgroup are "stronger" than those across subgroups. The conventional case in which each agent's preference relation is exogenously given is, in this model, the special case where each subgroup consists of just one agent.     

Trade Liberalisation in Developing Economies: Modest Benefits but Problems with Productivity Growth, Macro Prices, and Income Distribution

Microeconomically, the case for liberalisation is dubious under increasing returns to scale and when firms can invest directly in productivity enhancement. Distributional effects of commercial policy changes can be regressive and large, but the 'rents' they generate can serve as a basis for effective policy intervention contingent on firms' performance. Macroeconomically, the case of liberalisation rests on Say's Law, which is not always enforced. Recent combined current and capital market liberalisations have been associated with strong exchange rates and high interest rates and output and productivity growth have positive mutual feedbacks which liberalisation may well suppress.     

洗钱与反洗钱

“洗钱”已经成为当今国际社会不得不面对的一个“公害”。据世界银行的一份统计,我国自改革开放以来,除了经政府合法批准对外投资的款项外,外流资金中有相当部分与“洗钱”有关。但直到目前为止,世界各国对于洗钱的定义还不尽一致,但一般是指将犯罪收益、不法收益通过各种手段隐瞒或掩饰起来,并使之合法化的活动和过程。各国司法界定的洗钱犯罪大致分为以下几类:一是将所有非法途径如贩毒、走私、抢劫、贪污、诈骗、受贿等方式获得的资金收益进行清洗,使之披上合法外衣的活动统称为“洗钱”。美国、法国等实行这一认定。二是将法律明确规定…     

Evolution of Interdependent Preferences in Aggregative Games

We study the evolution of preference interdependence in aggregative games which are symmetric with respect to material payoffs but asymmetric with respect to player objective functions. We identify a class of aggregative games whose equilibria have the property that the players with interdependent preferences (who care not only about their own material payoffs but also about their payoffs relative to others) earn strictly higher material payoffs than do the material payoff maximizers. Implications of this finding for the theory of preference evolution are discussed. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, D62.     

产业政策的经济学分析

分析我国的产业政策实践,可以得到生产率提高的模式是:驱动资本投资--人力资源运动--机会成本因素--专业化分工--生产率提高--驱动资本投资.我国的产业政策对促进生产率的提高发挥了促进作用,同时也产生了寻租、生态环境、收入差距扩大、区域发展不平衡等问题.     

The Perils of Base Money

Insecure linkage of ordinary money to fractional reserves of a distinct base money can sometimes endanger the smooth working of modern monetary systems. This danger applies most obviously to the analogous insecure pegging of domestic to foreign currency. Worry would better focus, however, not on the size of reserve ratios but on the very existence of something distinct to which ordinary money is linked.In the modern world money is a device for monitoring transactions, keeping records, calculating economic benefits and costs, and accomplishing multilateral clearing. Money enables people conveniently to use the entitlements acquired by delivering goods and services and securities to some trading partners to obtain others of these from other trading partners. The tickets and memoranda employed in these operations need not take the form of little disks of precious metal or even of certificates convertible into them or some other kind of ultimate base money.It would be economically advantageous and feasible to make all money inside money (in the sense of Gurley and Shaw), with the value of the money unit determined and maintained otherwise than through convertibility into a distinct base money, which would have been abolished.