Can Bitcoin become money? The monetary rule problem

The growing literature on Bitcoin can be divided into two groups. One performs an economic analysis of Bitcoin focusing on its monetary characteristics. The other one takes a financial look at the price of Bitcoin. Interestingly, both of these groups have not given much more than passing comments to the problem of whether or not Bitcoin has the right monetary rule in order to become a well‐established currency. This paper argues that Bitcoin in particular, and cryptocurrencies in general, do not have a good monetary rule and that this shortcoming seriously limits its prospect of becoming widely used money.     

Macroeconomic policy cooperation and the G20

Has the G20 achieved its goals in macroeconomic cooperation since 2008? The paper organises the G20's efforts under five themes: macroeconomic stimulus, fiscal consolidation, monetary policy, the global financial safety net and global imbalances. The G20 was initially successful in each of these areas, but this success was short‐lived. While the G20 met its goals on macroeconomic stimulus, it has been less successful in reducing deficits and debt. While it was successful in increasing its resources, the global financial safety net remains too small, too fragmented and institutional reform is incomplete. While the G20 succeeded in moving to more market‐determined exchange rates and avoiding competitive devaluations, it struggled to avoid negative spillovers. Despite years of effort, the G20 has made limited progress in reducing global imbalances. Current account imbalances are creeping back to pre‐crisis levels. Public debt remains high and most economies are moving in the wrong direction in correcting imbalances in household savings and debt. The paper concludes that the G20 has done better in some areas than others. But to suggest the G20 is a forum in decline ignores its shift from reactive crisis response to longer‐term structural challenges outside of the pressing need of an immediate crisis.     

分散决策下的双渠道供应链补偿策略——基于消费者渠道选择行为

为了有效解决由于对消费者的争夺从而引发的渠道之间关于定价、服务水平、利润等方面的冲突,基于消费者渠道选择行为,构建了网络直销市场与传统零售市场需求模型和双渠道供应链利润模型,运用Stackelberg模型,在制造商与零售商实施分决策时,通过制造商对零售商实施补偿激励前后的对比,分析了消费者渠道选择行为对网络直销渠道和传统零售渠道定价、制造商与零售商利润以及供应链总利润的影响,并求得最优定价及制造商的最优补偿额度和零售商的最优销售努力水平,进行了不同情况下的双渠道供应链利润的比较分析。结果表明,无论制造商是否实施补偿激励,都应随着网络消费者比例的增加而增加其网络直销价格;零售商的零售渠道价格应根据网络消费者比例的增加先降低到一定水平后再提升。当更多的消费者选择网络直销渠道时,制造商的补偿激励水平和零售商的销售努力程度均会下降。制造商应提高其补偿水平,进而激发零售商提高销售的努力水平,并使双方利润及供应链总利润最大化。研究结果为基于消费者选择行为的供应链补偿研究提供了新方法,对双渠道的供应链补偿研究有借鉴意义。     

Household Debt Overhang and Transmission of Monetary Policy

We investigate how the level of household indebtedness affects the monetary transmission mechanism in the U.S. economy. Using state‐dependent local projection methods, we find that the effects of monetary policy are less powerful during periods of high household debt. In particular, the impact of monetary policy shocks is smaller on GDP, consumption, residential investment, house prices, and household debt during a high‐debt state. We then build a partial equilibrium model of borrower households with financial constraints to rationalize these facts. The model points to the weakening of the home equity loan channel as a possible reason for the decline in monetary policy effectiveness when initial debt levels are high.     

Board Committees in Corporate Governance: A Cross‐Disciplinary Review and Agenda for the Future

The importance of board committees – specialized subgroups that exist to perform many of the board's most critical functions, such as setting executive compensation, identifying potential board members, and overseeing financial reporting – has grown over time due to increased legal requirements and greater complexity of the environment in which firms operate. This has resulted in a large body of work examining board committees across the accounting, finance, and management disciplines. However, this research has developed rather independently within each discipline, preventing scholars and practitioners from developing a comprehensive understanding of board committees. To address this issue, we conduct a comprehensive review of the literature that: 1) summarizes and synthesizes antecedents and outcomes associated with board committees in publicly‐traded firms in English common law countries; and 2) offers a critical analysis of existing research, providing recommendations for advancements and new directions in board committee research.     

Loss and damage: a critical discourse analysis of Parties’ positions in climate change negotiations

The years-long negotiations on loss and damage (L&D) associated with climate change impacts reached a milestone with the adoption of the Paris Agreement, sanctioning the permanence of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) created in 2013. The WIM aims at advancing knowledge gathering, coordination and support to address L&D associated with extreme and slow onset events in vulnerable developing countries (Decision 2/CP.19). Despite being among the most controversial issues to be recently treated in climate change negotiation, L&D has attracted little attention in the field of international relations. This paper aims at addressing this gap by reconstructing the emergence and evolution of the negotiating positions on L&D of developing and developed countries. It employs a critical discourse analytical approach and builds on Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework for critical discourse analysis, taking decision 2/CP.19 as the core communicative event. Consistently, the decision is analysed at three different levels: as a text (micro-scale); as a discursive practice (meso-scale); and as a social practice (macro-scale). The analysis makes use of a wide range of materials including previous decisions, High Level Segment statements and Parties submissions. It reconstructs Parties’ conflicting views on the positioning of L&D vis-à-vis the adaptation space (L&D as a part of, or as beyond adaptation) and the scientific, ethical and legal arguments employed to support these standpoints. It highlights, in particular, the strategic importance which the ‘compensation argument’ had in determining developing countries’ capacity to influence the UNFCCC process up to the inclusion of a specific article on L&D in the Paris Agreement. While calls for compensation might have lost momentum as a result of the Warsaw and Paris talks, the paper argues that their potential is far from exhausted. They in fact imply a more general request for climate justice which the UNFCCC has not yet addressed.     

重叠滤波多音系统的频偏性能分析及优化

重叠滤波多音(O-FMT)是针对滤波多音(FMT)系统频谱利用率低的缺点而根据超奈奎斯特(FTN)概念引入子载波重叠得到的方案。鉴于O-FMT系统在频偏环境下的性能缺陷，理论分析了频偏对系统信号各部分的影响，比较了O-FMT与正交频分复用（OFDM）系统的抗频偏性能。针对频偏性能优化问题，提出了基于最佳线性无偏估计（BLUE）的改进盲估计算法，设计了基于频域滤波器系数的内嵌结构进行频偏补偿。仿真实验表明，O-FMT相比OFDM具有更好的抗频偏能力，改进的盲估计算法估计值精度更高，抗干扰、抗衰落能力更强，设计的频偏补偿结构可以使系统获得更好的性能。     

城市轨道交通主变电所无功补偿方案研究

分析了城市轨道交通用电负荷的特点及主变电所无功补偿的意义,在现有三种无功补偿方案(电抗器固定补偿、SVC及SVG动态补偿)的基础上,结合轨道交通用电负荷的特点及目前低压配电系统、直流牵引系统新设备的采用,提出了两种新的无功补偿方案。     

Economic Globalization and Inflation in China: A Multivariate Approach

This paper evaluates whether globalization has increased the role of global factors in driving inflation in China. Unlike other published studies on the relationship between globalization and inflation, which mostly use Phillips curve models, this paper uses multivariate dynamic models to examine the dynamic interactions between globalization and inflation in China. Empirical results with quarterly data spanning from 1995 to 2012 show that the global output gap significantly affects the dynamics of inflation in China. In particular, the global output gap is superior to the domestic output gap in predicting domestic inflation. Impulse response and variance decomposition analyses reinforce this finding. Our results indicate that the central bank of China should take developments in global output into account in its monetary policy‐making process.     

Wilhelm Röpke and Richard C. Koo On Secondary Deflations and Balance Sheet Recessions

The concept of a ‘secondary deflation’ was developed in the 1930s by the German economist Wilhelm Röpke, who saw it as something different from a normal depression. While a primary deflation is a necessary reaction to the inflation from a boom period, a secondary deflation is independent and economically purposeless. Röpke argued that secondary depressions occurred in the US, Germany, France and Switzerland during the 1930s, but was vague on what made them follow primary depressions. Recently, the Taiwanese–American economist Richard C. Koo has claimed to have discovered the ‘Holy Grail of macroeconomics’, that is, what made the Great Depression so deep and long. During the Great Depression, the bursting of the asset price bubble resulted in private sectors having more debt than assets; as they shifted from maximising profits to minimising debt, the consequent debt deflation shrank the economy. According to Koo, Western economies today are suffering from a similar ‘balance sheet recession’. Strengthened by the notion of a balance sheet recession, Röpke's long‐lost insights might advance our understanding of the business cycle in general and the present crisis in the US and the Eurozone in particular.