Demographic Transition and Fertility Rebound in Economic Development*

Recent evidence on the “fertility rebound” offers credence to the idea that, from the onset of early industrialization to the present day, the dynamics of fertility can be represented by an N-shaped curve. An overlapping generations model with parental investment in human capital can account for these observed movements in fertility rates during the different stages of demographic change. A demographic transition with declining fertility emerges at the intermediate stage, when parents engage on a child quantity–quality trade-off. At later stages, however, the process of economic growth generates sufficient resources so that households can rear more children while still providing the desirable amount of education investment per child.     

FX Intervention in the New Keynesian Model

We develop an open-economy New Keynesian Model with foreign exchange (FX) intervention in the presence of a financial accelerator and shocks to risk appetite in international capital markets. We obtain closed-form solutions for optimal monetary and FX intervention policies assuming the central bank cannot commit to future policies, and we compare the solution to that under policy commitment. We show how FX intervention can help reduce the volatility of the exchange rate, of inflation, and of the output gap, thus mitigating welfare losses associated with shocks in the international capital markets. We also show that, when the financial accelerator is strong, there is a risk of indeterminacy (self-fulfilling currency and inflation movements) although FX intervention can reduce this risk and thus reinforce the credibility of the inflation targeting regime. Model simulations match well the impact of a VIX shock obtained by local projections on a panel of inflation targeting emerging markets.     

The Role of Inflation Target Adjustment in Stabilization Policy

How and under what circumstances can adjusting the inflation target serve as a stabilization-policy tool and contribute to welfare improvement? We answer these questions quantitatively with a standard New Keynesian model that includes cost-push-type shocks. Our proposed inflation target rule calls for the target to be adjusted in a persistent manner and in the opposite direction to the realization of a cost-push shock, which is essentially a makeup strategy. The inflation target rule, combined with a Taylor-type rule, significantly reduces inflation fluctuations originating from cost-push shocks and mitigates the stabilization trade-off, resulting in a similar level of welfare to that associated with the Ramsey optimal policy.     

The value of ongoing venture capital investment to newly listed firms

We examine whether the market values continuing venture capital (VC) investor involvement in firms post-IPO. Compared to the US, Australian VC investors exit their investments post-IPO by on-market sales rather than distribution of holdings to their investors. Lockup periods tend to be longer and ownership thresholds for reporting trades lower. We find that the market responds positively to buy transactions, negatively to sell transactions of VC investors and negatively to the resignation of VC directors. These results are consistent with VC investors in the firm having a positive influence and creating value from which the VCs and other shareholders benefit.     

Asset pricing and energy consumption risk

This paper proposes energy consumption in the US as a new measure for the consumption capital asset pricing model. We find that (i) industrial energy growth produces reasonable values for the relative risk aversion coefficient and the implied risk-free rate; (ii) compared to alternative consumption measures, industrial energy performs well in explaining the cross-sectional variation in stock returns with the lowest implied risk aversion and pricing errors; (iii) the industrial energy consumption risk model performs equally well as the Fama–French three-factor model in the cross-sectional asset pricing tests; and (iv) total energy consumption risk is priced in the presence of the Fama–French factor risks.     

Politically connected boards,family and business group affiliations,and cost of capital: Evidence from Indonesia

We investigate the effect of politically connected boards (both supervisory boards [SBs] and boards of directors [BODs]) on cost of debt and equity capital of listed companies in Indonesia which has established a two-tier corporate governance system. The results, based on 250 firms, suggest that companies with politically connected SBs experience lower cost of debt and equity capital, whereas politically connected BODs have no association with cost of either debt or equity. Furthermore, we find that family firms and firms belonging to business groups with politically connected SBs enjoy lower cost of debt and equity capital. Our main results are robust to alternative measures and to tests for endogeneity.     

Beta and firm age

We document a robust pattern of beta declining over the age of a firm. We find that changes in systematic risk via firm characteristics and life-cycle stages are insufficient to explain this pattern. Moreover, standard proxies for the quantity and quality of information also explain this pattern only partially. To fully explain this pattern we rely on the increasingly important role of familiarity in financial decision making: familiarity is a determinant of beta and firm age is a proxy for the degree of familiarity that investors feel toward individual stocks. To illustrate the implication of our findings, we document that when we control for firm age there is support for the CAPM and its use as an input for the cost of equity capital calculation.     

Solvency Ⅱ与C-ROSS非寿险保险风险最低资本要求比较研究——基于中国60家财产保险公司的经验证据

本文以非寿险业务保险风险最低资本要求为考察对象,研究了欧盟Solvency Ⅱ与中国C-ROSS的差异,并利用中国保险市场60家财险公司的经验数据,对两者之间的差异进行了实证和模拟分析。研究结果表明,Solvency Ⅱ和C-ROSS对中国财险公司保险风险最低资本要求存在差异。对于拥有传统业务结构的财险公司,Solvency Ⅱ对保险风险最低资本要求更高,但是这种差距随着公司业务规模的缩小而减弱;对于以经营某些专业险种为主的财险公司,主营业务险种对两者差异具有决定性影响。本文的研究结论详细解释了Solvency Ⅱ与C-ROSS在非寿险保险风险最低资本计算上的异同,对C-ROSS下一步的修订工作提供了一定的支持与参考。     

大数据与监视型资本主义

本文首先介绍了监视型资本主义的概念,描述信息时代的资本是如何通过收集个人数据,无视私隐,筛选用户,在不受法律监控的情况下进行帝国式扩展的。进而,本文提出数据的附身性和数码资本错位这两个特征,用以分析技术如何在数据收集和应用上激活数据的私人财产属性,以及资本如何利用价值错位和技术优势去诱使用户参与这一资本增值的进程。数据的附身性揭示了个体如何被卷入大数据时代的生产关系,数码资本错位揭示了资本具体实现监视型资本主义的技术。这两个概念将完善监视型资本主义这一理论体系,进一步展现这个时代隐蔽的不平等状况。     

Do news shocks increase capital utilization?

Using the workweek of capital as a measure of capital utilization, we empirically test whether news shocks actually increase capital utilization. To this end, by estimating a panel VAR on two-digit manufacturing data identifying news shocks as innovations to stock returns orthogonal to the variations in current-period TFP growth, we find the positive response of capital utilization to news shocks. Moreover, to explain the positive response of capital utilization to news shocks in terms of plant-level investment behavior, we propose a heterogeneous plant model that combines the fixed cost of capital adjustment and an endogenous capital utilization choice. With the presence of fixed costs, except for the plants that have recently adjusted capital stock, news shock shortens the effective time horizon of currently installed capital stock and increases capital utilization. When the model economy is calibrated to match the salient features of the plant-level investment rate distribution, the economy generates a news-driven positive response of capital utilization.