On Sraffa's Standard commodity: is its price invariant with respect to changes in income distribution?

In his 1960 book, Sraffa suggested using a composite commodity,which he called the ‘Standard commodity’, to solveRicardo's search for an invariable measure of value, i.e., astandard capable of isolating the price movements of any othercommodity induced by changes in income distribution. The absencein Sraffa's book of an explicit proof of the invariance propertyof this standard gave rise to many misunderstandings about itsmeaning and its role as an invariable measure of value. In orderto clear up these questions, Bellino (On Sraffa's Standard commodity,Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 28, 121–32, 2004)has proposed a ‘proper’ definition of an ‘invariablemeasure of value’, showing that Sraffa's Standard commoditydoes fulfil the requirements of this definition. He claims thatthe fulfilment of this property (but not the constancy of its‘nominal’ price) qualifies the Standard commodityas an invariable measure of value. In this paper, a proof ofthe invariance of the price of the Standard commodity with respectto changes in income distribution is given, and the equivalenceof this property with Bellino's definition of invariance isshown.     

Equilibria in large economies with a separable Banach commodity space and non-ordered preferences

The purpose of this paper is to provide an existence result of equilibria for economies with a measure space of agents, a non-trivial production sector and an infinite dimensional commodity space. The commodity space is modeled by an ordered separable Banach space whose positive cone has a non-empty interior. The discretization approach proposed in this paper, allows us to extend the existence results in Khan and Yannelis [Equilibrium in markets with a continuum of agents and commodities. In: Khan, M.A., Yannelis, N.C. (Eds.), Equilibrium Theory in Infinite Dimensional Spaces. Springer, Berlin, 1991] and Podczeck [Economic Theory 9 (1997) 585] to economies with a non-trivial production sector and with possibly non-ordered but convex preferences as well as partially ordered (possibly incomplete) but non-convex preferences.     

Reforming the Direct–Indirect Tax Mix

This paper provides a new framework for evaluating the welfare effects of commodity tax reforms. It is shown that tax reforms are welfare improving if and only if they satisfy the following intuitive property: on average, consumer prices fall for commodities with high marginal excess burdens. The rule is then applied to analyze a shift from differentiated commodity taxation to direct flat-rate taxation of labour income. The welfare impact of such reforms can be decomposed into two effects: (i) the increase in welfare associated with substitution among taxed commodities, and (ii) the loss in welfare associated with substitution between commodities and leisure. On balance, a shift towards direct taxation is desirable when inter-commodity substitution effects are large relative to commodity–leisure substitution effects. The analysis allows us to reconcile the apparently conflicting results of the tax reform and optimal taxation literatures.     

Pre-Harvest Price Expectations for Corn: The Information Content of USDA Reports and New Crop Futures

This article examines the puzzle of why futures prices continue to react to USDA crop reports despite the fact that reports appear to be no longer "newsworthy," that is, provide no better production estimates than private forecasts. The information value of reports is measured in terms of their influence on rational agents' harvest-time corn price expectations, which are uncovered using a Hamilton-type modeling approach. Results show that reports are still "newsworthy," as they would contribute to agents' price expectations if released a day early. Thus futures price reactions, which closely reflect price expectations, are rational and consistent with efficient markets hypothesis.     

International interest rates and US monetary policy announcements: Evidence from Hong Kong and Singapore

This paper investigates the responses of market interest rates to US monetary policy announcements for the US and two emerging economies, Hong Kong and Singapore which are similar on many respects but have experienced opposite exchange rate regimes in the last twenty years. Our results, based on market expectations extracted from federal fund futures rates, document that FOMC announcements significantly affect the term structure of interest rate in the US and both Asian countries. Further, international interest rate differentials around FOMC meeting dates tend to be negative for short maturities with the impact gradually dissipating as bond maturity increases. Finally, for the case of Singapore, we find that domestic interest rates react to both external and domestic monetary policy announcements with a magnitude that is larger over the full bond maturity spectrum for domestic announcements. These results are robust to time-varying futures risk premia and alternative measures of interest rates expectations.     

Forecasting Stock Index Futures Price Volatility: Linear vs. Nonlinear Models

The study examines the relative ability of various models to forecast daily stock index futures volatility. The forecasting models that are employed range from naïve models to the relatively complex ARCH-class models. It is found that among linear models of stock index futures volatility, the autoregressive model ranks first using the RMSE and MAPE criteria. We also examine three nonlinear models. These models are GARCH-M, EGARCH, and ESTAR. We find that nonlinear GARCH models dominate linear models utilizing the RMSE and the MAPE error statistics and EGARCH appears to be the best model for forecasting stock index futures price volatility.     

期转现是大宗商品期货交割的有效形式

期转现是当今世界商品期货交易中通行的一种大宗商品期货交割方式,是期货交易方式与现货交易方式最有效率的结合,是典型的非标准期货交割方式.本文着重论述了期转现的积极效应和实现条件.     

中国期货市场价格发现功能实证研究

从已有的和本文的实证研究结果来看，我国国内期货价格与现货价格之间以及国内外期货价格之间基本上存在着长期均衡关系。从实际情况来看，我国商品生产者与经营者利用期货市场价格信息，发挥期货市场价格发现功能的事例在不断增多。但与期货市场应有的功能相比，我国期货市场的价格发现功能还没有得到应有的发挥。为此，一方面要进一步完善我国期货市场价格形成机制，另一方面要进一步提高我国期货市场价格信息的指导作用和国际市场的定价权。     

对开设股指期货的几点思考

股指期货交易的设立关系到整个证券市场的创新和发展,涉及到修改法规、市场体系划分、合约设计、交易清算运作、风险管理体系等一系列复杂的制度和技术问题,因此必须在广泛调研、认真研究可行方案的前提下,审时度势、循序渐进地加以推进。在此,笔者对我国开展股指期货的场所、股指的编制及交易的风险控制作一粗略探讨。     

价值理论研究中的热点难点问题探讨（下）

马克思的政治经济学的任务，主要是研究资本主义的生产关系。而当代马克思主义的经济学，不仅要研究包括社会主义社会的生产劳动在内的经济问题，也要研究当代资本主义的经济关系、经济运行和发展的新特点。因此，马克思主义理论工作者，需要在继承与坚持劳动价值论的前提下，对这一理论进行创新和发展。