Macroeconomic consequences of terror: theory and the case of Israel

This paper analyzes the effect of terror on the economy. Terror endangers life such that the value of the future relative to the present is reduced. Hence, due to a rise in terror activity, investment goes down, and in the long run income and consumption go down as well. Governments can offset terror by putting tax revenues into the production of security. Facing a tide in terror, a government that acts optimally increases the proportion of output spent on defense, but does not fully offset the tide. Thus, when terror peaks the long run equilibrium with an optimizing government is of lower output and welfare. Next, we show that this theory of terror and the economy, helps to understand changes in trend and business cycle of the Israeli economy. The estimates show that terror has a large impact on the aggregate economy. Continued terror, at the level of the death toll by about the same size as due to car accidents, is expected to decrease annual consumption per capita by about 5% in 2004. Had Israel not suffered from terror during the last 3 years, we estimate that the output per capita would have been 10% higher than it is today.     

MACROECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A POLICY PERSPECTIVE

A comprehensive macroeconomic adjustment program is expectedto have the following objectives: a sustainable current accountposition, a stable and high rate of economic growth that wouldallow for a steady rise in per capita consumption, a reducedrate of inflation, and a manageable level of foreign debt. Thepackage designed to meet these objectives would typically includepolicy measures that simultatenously restrain aggregate demandand increase the availability of resources. These policies maybe grouped as follows: demand-management policies, structuralpolicies, exchange rate policies, and external financing policies.This article describes how these policies can be expected toachieve the goal of macroeconomic adjustment. The focus is primarilyon the theoretical and empirical links between policy instrumentsand ultimate objectives. An examination of these links is necessarybefore issues of the appropriate mix of demand-management, structural,exchange rate, and external policies, and the sequencing ofthese policies in a program, can be properly addressed.      

城乡居民社会保障性支出对消费水平影响比较研究——基于15个省市面板数据的实证分析

本文以具有一定代表性的15个省市城乡居民2004—2010年7年的城乡居民人均社会保障性支出水平、人均工资收入水平、消费支出水平为例进行探讨,利用省际静态面板数据分析工具和模型对社会保障性年人均支出水平如何影响城乡居民年人均消费支出水平二者进行了面板实证分析并且做出了对比性研究。研究发现,近年来我国农村居民的社会保障支出总体水平较城镇居民依然差距较大,但是其对于消费水平的影响程度约为社会保障性支出对城镇居民消费水平影响程度的1．2倍,各地区之间、省市之间差异明显。该结论在有力模型论证的基础上较好地反映了近几年来城乡之间社会保障性支出水平发展的轨迹及在内需拉动方面的效用。     

劳动力转移对农户消费和投资水平的影响

劳动力转移会显著提高农户人均生活消费和人均居住支出水平,但对农户人均生产性固定资产购置支出没有产生显著影响。通过劳动力就地转移方式和异地转移方式的比较发现,就地转移会使农户人均生活消费和人均居住支出水平得以提高,但异地转移却对农户人均生活消费和人均居住支出没有产生显著影响,同时,两种转移方式对农户人均生产性固定资产购置支出均没有产生显著影响。     

The volatility of consumption-based stochastic discount factors and economic cycles

This paper aims to assess the macroeconomic and financial impact of economic uncertainty using information contained in the second moments of financial risk factors employed in the asset pricing literature. Specifically, we propose the volatility of consumption-based stochastic discount factors (SDFs) as a predictor of future economic and stock market cycles. We employ both contemporaneous and ultimate consumption risk specifications with durable and non-durable consumption. Alternative empirical tests show that this volatility has significant forecasting ability from 1985 to 2006. The degree of predictability tends to dominate that shown by standard predictor variables. We argue that the significant predictability of the volatility of consumption-based SDFs reported in this paper relies mainly on the joint effect of their components.     

Equity markets and growth: Cross-country evidence on timing and outcomes, 1980–1995

The rapid expansion of organized equity exchanges in both emerging and developed markets has prompted policymakers to raise important questions about their macroeconomic impact, yet the need to focus on recent data poses implementation difficulties for econometric studies of dynamic interactions between stock markets and economic performance in individual countries. This paper overcomes some of these difficulties by applying recent developments in the analysis of panels with a small time dimension to estimate vector autoregressions for a set of 47 countries with annual data for 1980–1995. After describing recent theories on the role of stock markets in growth and considering a pure cross-sectional empirical approach, our panel VARs show leading roles for stock market liquidity and the intensity of activity in traditional financial intermediaries on per capita output. The findings underscore the potential gains associated with developing deep and liquid financial markets in an increasingly global economy.     

出口贸易风险测度及其影响因素分析——基于跨国数据的经验研究

将部门的出口份额与构建的部门产出方差协方差矩阵相结合,通过定义一国出口结构风险指数,并利用出口结构风险指数对样本国家在样本期内的出口风险进行测算。同时,把出口风险指数分解为赫芬达尔项、平均风险项、协方差效应项以及赫芬达尔项与平均风险项的交互项。最后,选取影响一国出口风险的主要宏观经济变量,利用跨国面板数据对出口风险进行影响因素分析,结果表明：在诸多宏观经济因素中,出口贸易条件和金融开放程度对一国出口风险的影响最为显著,而一国的人均收入水平则对该国的出口风险影响不明显。     

News Shocks in the Data: Olympic Games and Their Macroeconomic Effects

We examine the macroeconomic effects of bidding for the Olympic Games using panel data for 188 countries during the period 1950–2009. Our findings confirm that economies react to news shocks: investment, consumption, and output significantly increase 9 to 7 years before the actual event in bidding countries. Hosting countries also experience significant increases in investment, consumption, and output 5 to 2 years before the hosting of the Games. Mapping the Olympics into a macroeconomic model, we show that we can match our empirical findings if we assume that an Olympic bid represents news about increases in government investment.     

Can Africa's Saving Collapse Be Reversed?

Private saving in Sub-Saharan Africa declined from more than11 percent of disposable income in the 1970s to less than 8percent in the 1980s and only partially recovered (to less than9 percent) in the 1990s. This article analyzes the determinantsof private saving in Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking to explainthe region's dismal performance and identify policies that couldhelp to reverse the region's decline in saving. The analysisshows that in Sub-Saharan Africa causality runs from growthto investment (and perhaps to private saving), whereas a risein the saving rate Granger-causes an increase in investment.Foreign aid Granger-causes a reduction in both saving and investment,and investment also Granger-causes an increase in foreign aid.The empirical analysis of private saving in Sub-Saharan Africaand other regions over 1970–95 suggests that private savingin Africa can be explained by standard behavioral models. Accordingto these models private saving in Africa lags behind that inother regions (most notably, the high performing Asian economies)because of the region's lower per capita income, high young-agedependency ratio, and high dependence on aid. The combined effectsof these factors substantially outweigh Africa's advantage fromits lower public saving and higher government consumption. Finally,analysis of the experiences of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Botswanaprovides further insight into the saving process in Sub-SaharanAfrica.     

宏观调控、市场收益与理财消费——来自我国银行理财产品市场的经验证据

考察2009～2011年我国银行理财消费市场发展的现状并利用经验数据对影响其发展的主要原因进行了实证分析,研究表明:我国银行理财消费规模与股票市场收益率不存在显著关系,但居民可支配收入、物价水平都对银行理财市场的发展发挥了重要作用。此外,我国银行理财消费市场的发展还受到国家宏观经济政策的影响,尤其是当提高存款准备金率导致银行资金面紧张时,商业银行则通过提高收益率来刺激人们的理财消费需求。     

Differences in Hours Worked in the OECD: Institutions or Fiscal Policies?

We study the determinants of the level and the evolution of per capita hours worked in a panel of OECD countries since the 1970s. Following Pesaran (2006) , our empirical strategy allows for the possibility of cross‐sectionally correlated error terms due to unobserved common factors, which are potentially nonstationary. We find that much of the variation in per capita hours worked across countries and over time can be explained by differences in the level and structure of taxes and government expenditures. Differences in (the evolution of) labor and product market institutions have much less of a role to play. Our results show that a careful treatment of the time‐series properties of the data is crucial.     

The cross-section of equity returns and assets’ fundamental cash-flow risk

The decomposition of consumption beta into a component driven by assets’ cash-flow news and one related to assets’ discount-rate news reveals that macroeconomic risks embodied in cash flows largely account for the cross-sectional dynamics of average stock returns. Empirically, we find that differences in expected excess returns between low book-to-market and high book-to-market portfolios are associated with differences in their cash-flow betas, and thus reflect macroeconomic, especially consumption-related risks. This result holds true for a broad set of consumption-based asset pricing models. In addition, the results indicate that the risk premium on equity markets is primarily driven by the exposure of assets’ cash-flow components to the cyclical variability of durable consumption goods.     

我国税收结构与经济增长关系的实证检验

根据我国1985～2008年样本数据,利用多元线性回归模型对我国税收结构与经济增长的关系进行实证检验,结果表明:流转税、所得税(尤其是个人所得税)份额的增加有利于人均GDP的增长,财产税的经济效应尚未体现,宏观税负和赤字融资的增加已经抑制了人均GDP的增长。目前我国需要进一步完善税制,加强征收管理,提高所得税份额,减少债务融资规模。     

Politicians and banks: Political influences on government-owned banks in emerging markets

Government ownership of banks is very common in countries other than the United States. This paper provides cross-country, bank-level empirical evidence about political influences on these banks. It shows that government-owned banks increase their lending in election years relative to private banks. This effect is robust to controlling for country-specific macroeconomic and institutional factors as well as bank-specific factors. The increase in lending is about 11% of a government-owned bank's total loan portfolio or about 0.5% of the median country's GDP per election per government-owned bank.     

中国货币政策传导的股市渠道——基于宏微观视角的实证分析

本文利用中国的经济数据从宏观和微观两个视角对中国货币政策传导股市渠道的有效性进行了实证研究和分析。实证结果显示在中国现阶段货币政策传导在股市渠道的第一个阶段是有效的。但是,货币政策的传导在第二阶段从整体来说并非有效。文中构建的宏观模型和微观模型的结论得到了相互印证,增强了实证结论的可靠性。最后,文章对疏通中国货币政策传导的股市渠道提出了政策建议。     

Value-added taxation and consumption

One of the main rationales for taxing consumption rather than income is that it is believed that consumption taxes discourage consumption, encourage savings, and thus generate higher economic growth. However, empirical evidence on the actual effectiveness of consumption taxes in stimulating savings is very limited. In this paper, we estimate the impact of a broad-based consumption tax, the value-added tax (VAT), on the aggregate consumption of fifteen European Union countries over the period 1961–2005. Our empirical results indicate, across a variety of estimation methods and specifications, that a one percentage point increase in the VAT rate leads to roughly a one percent reduction in the level of aggregate consumption in the short run and to a somewhat larger reduction in the long run.     

What do technology shocks tell us about the New Keynesian paradigm?

Researchers have used unanticipated changes to monetary policy to identify preference and technology parameters of macroeconomic models. This paper uses changes in technology to identify the same set of parameters. Estimates based on technology shocks differ substantially from those based on monetary policy shocks. In the post-World War II United States, a positive technology shock reduces inflation and increases hours worked, significantly and rapidly in both cases. Relative to policy shock identification, technology shock identification implies: (i) long duration durability in preferences instead of short duration habit, (ii) built-in inflation inertia disappears and price flexibility increases. In response to technological improvement, consumption durability increases hours worked because households temporarily increase labor supply to accumulate durables towards a new, higher steady state level. Limited nominal rigidities allow inflation to fall because firms are able to immediately cut prices when households’ labor supply increases. Finally, we consider alternative data constructions and econometric specifications; we find that (i) and/or (ii) hold in nearly every case.     

文化消费质量：内涵刻画、描述性评价与现状测度

文化消费质量问题正日益受到关注,但梳理相关文献可以发现,关于文化消费质量的已有研究严重欠缺.论文尝试从人均文化消费水平、文化消费占总消费支出的比重、文化消费与收入的匹配度、文化消费的内部结构、文化消费的差异以及文化消费的成本与消费效果等六个维度对文化消费质量的科学内涵进行刻画,藉此构建文化消费质量的描述性评价指标体系,并基于该指标体系对2001～2013年我国居民文化消费质量状况进行了测度,从而得出结论和建议.     

Sovereign default risk and state-dependent twin deficits

This paper analyzes the impact of the government debt-to-GDP ratio on the correlation of the fiscal balance and the current account. Above a government debt-to-GDP ratio of 90 percent the correlation of the two balances decreases by 0.16 in a sample of 12 euro area countries and by 0.17 for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. This paper develops a small open economy model with defaultable government debt and riskless international capital markets to explain the empirical evidence of a state-dependent change in the correlation. In the model high public debt-to-GDP ratios raise sovereign risk premia as the default probability increases, leading to higher uncertainty about future taxes. In this case precautionary savings of households increase and partially compensate current account deficits that result from fiscal deficits. The increase in households' saving reduces the correlation of the two balances by the same magnitude as documented in the data. The model calibrated to Greece matches further business cycle moments and the empirical default frequency.     

Understanding multidimensional tax systems

Income tax systems are multidimensional, and ignoring their non-rate aspects can introduce bias into cross-country empirical estimation of the impact of taxation on economic outcomes. We analyze 10 non-rate tax system aspects, codified based on recent reports published by the Organisation for Co-operation and Development. We find that a single factor (which we call Dispersed Responsibility), related to the role of taxpayers and third parties in tax collection, can reasonably summarize the cross-country covariation, and offer it as a parsimonious measure of non-rate tax system dimensions for future empirical analysis. We also ascertain that a standard measure of trust in government is positively associated with greater administrator coverage and administrative assessment, as well as more serious sanctions for non-compliance. Ethnic heterogeneity, individualism, and a history of external conflict also can explain certain aspects of tax systems. We find that countries with greater trust in government score lower on Dispersed Responsibility. Finally, we find that adding a measure of the number of tax authority employees can eliminate the otherwise significant positive estimated coefficient of GDP per capita on the tax level, and attracts a significant positive correlation itself, suggesting that the extent of tax administration and enforcement is part of the story that explains the enduring statistical regularity between tax levels and per capita income.