江河经济与城市土地利用问题研究--"梅州模式"的评价、反思与对策

基于"堤围改造和房地产开发相结合,企业筹资进行堤围改造,政府以土地作为补偿"这样一个命题,梅州市区通过发展"江河经济",实现了综合治理江河水患、打造现代化生态城市的目的。文章对"梅州模式"在防洪、房地产开发、旅游休闲和交通等方面的效益进行了评价;对"梅州模式"带动下的城市化引发的水文效应进行了反思,并提出对策:①实施"与洪水共存亡"的治水方略;②启动污水处理费征收机制;③加快雨洪资源化研究工作;最后就城市土地可持续利用问题进行了探讨。     

Pricing Efficiency and Arbitrage in the Bitcoin Spot and Futures Markets

This study examines the pricing efficiency for the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin using spot prices and all CBOE and CME futures contracts traded from January 2018 to March 2019. We find that the futures basis provide some predictive power for future changes in the spot price and in the risk premium. However, the basis of Bitcoin is a biased predictor of the future spot price changes. Cointegration tests also demonstrate that futures prices are biased predictors of spot prices. Deviations from no-arbitrage between spot and futures markets are persistent and widen significantly with Bitcoin thefts (hacks, frauds) as well as alternative cryptocurrency issuances.     

Persistence of cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon: A spatial analysis of the rationale for beef production

Fed by demand for beef within Brazil and in global markets, the Brazilian herd grew from 147 million head of cattle in 1990 to ≈200 million in 2007. Eighty-three percent of this expansion occurred in the Amazon and this trend is expected to continue as the industry bounces back from a recent agricultural downturn. Intensification of the cattle industry has been suggested as one way to reduce pressure on forest margins and spare land for soybean or sugarcane production, and is the cornerstone of Brazil's plan for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. To this end, federal credit programs and research and development activities in Brazil are aligning to support intensification goals, but there is no guarantee that this push for intensification will decrease the demand for land at the forest margin and as result curb CO₂ emissions from deforestation. In this paper we use a spatially explicit rent model which incorporates the local effects of biophysical characteristics, infrastructure, land prices, and distance to markets and slaughterhouses to calculate 30-year Net Present Values (NPVs) of extensive cattle ranching across the Brazilian Amazon. We use the model to ask where extensive ranching is profitable and how land acquisition affects profitability. We estimate that between 17% and 80% of land in the Amazon would have moderate to high NPVs when ranched extensively if it were settled, i.e. if the rancher does not buy the land but acquires it through land grabbing. In addition, we estimate that between 9% and 13% of land in the Amazon is vulnerable to speculation (i.e. areas with positive NPVs only if land is settled and not purchased), which suggests that land speculation is an important driver of extensive ranching profitability, and may continue to be in the future. These results suggest that pro-intensification policies such as credit provision for improved pasture management and investment in more intensive production systems must be accompanied by implementation and enforcement of policies that alter the incentives to clear forest for pasture, discourage land speculation, and increase accountability for land management practices if intensification of the cattle sector is to deter new deforestation and displace production from low-yield, extensive cattle production systems in frontier regions of the Brazilian Amazon.     

房地产泡沫的形成机理——基于行为经济学视角的分析

运用行为经济学相关理论,通过分析房地产市场微观主体从泡沫形成至泡沫破裂各阶段的心理和行为过程,探究了房地产泡沫形成的内在机理,并揭示了泡沫非理性的本质.最后针对房地产市场存在的非理性行为,提出应通过制度设计及借助税收杠杆等政策工具来规范房产交易、抑制过度投机,从而有效地防范和控制房价过度增长.     

Working Women: A Study of Women in Paid Jobs

First, Veblen's distinction between industrial and pecuniary employments with special regard to speculation is introduced. Second, investment banking as a prime example for pecuniary activities is presented. Third, a dominant fundamentalist, market efficiency and a heterodox speculation paradigm of financial markets are distinguished. Fourth, ten proposals for financial market reform (e.g., decentralization) are proposed. Finally, it is asked why these reforms, which should support a productive-serviceable function of finance, will not be realized. This is due to a capturing of the public sector and the prevailing scientific and ideological habits of thought.     

Return dynamics during periods of high speculation in a thinly traded commodity market

This article studies the effects of speculation in a thinly traded commodity futures market, paying particular attention to periods characterized by high-speculative activity of long–short speculators. Using the speculation ratio as a daily measure for long–short speculation, we employ generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity regressions to study its impact on return dynamics. Our results for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange feeder cattle futures market suggest that futures returns are predominantly explained by fundamentals, but their volatility is significantly driven by the speculation ratio. This relationship holds for periods of high- and low-speculative activity alike.     

我国上市公司套利性并购盛行的表现、原因与对策

大量套利性并购的盛行是我国转型期并购市场上一个极其特殊的现象。套利性并购是与实质性并购相对立,不以生产经营为目的的投机性行为。考察上市公司套利性并购的特点、在我国的表现状况、其盛行的直接原因与深层次原因,从中得出相关的政策启示。     

Currency crises, sunspots and Markov-switching regimes

This paper investigates the theoretical properties of a class of escape clause models of currency crises as well as their applicability to empirical work. We show that under some conditions these models give rise to an arbitrarily large number of equilibria, as well as cyclic or chaotic dynamics for the devaluation expectations. We then propose an econometric technique, based on the Markov-switching regimes framework, by which these models can be brought to the data. We illustrate this empirical approach by studying the experience of the French franc between 1987 and 1993, and find that the model performs significantly better when it allows the devaluation expectations to be influenced by sunspots.     

Turkish Currency Crisis of 2000–2001, Revisited

Turkey’s exchange rate based stabilization programme had collapsed within just 11 months of its implementation in the midst of a liquidity crunch in November 2000 caused by a reversal in the capital inflow. The onset of the stabilization programme created ample opportunities for speculative investors to make relatively safe one‐sided bets, and the initial success of the programme in bringing down interest rates implied substantial capital gains over securities obtained in 1999 and early stages of the programme. It was only natural that speculative investors would take the opportunity to realize these gains while the firm exchange rate commitment was still in place. The programme failed to deal with this contingency effectively, assuming that as long as it was implemented faithfully, long‐term investors would be forthcoming to takeover positions speculators would want to unload. That assumption proved disastrously wrong.     

Self-fulfilling Currency Crises and Central Bank Independence

We develop a model of a fixed exchange rate peg arrangement derived from the Barro–Gordon model of rules versus discretion. It is shown that the fixed peg is vulnerable to self-fulfilling currency crises in which the unemployment rate increases, the credibility of the rule decreases, but, paradoxically, the reputation of the policy-maker improves. Delegating monetary policy to an independent central banker does not prevent this type of crisis from arising, and can even make it more costly.
JEL Classification: F 3; F 4