Forecasts of US short-term interest rates: A flexible forecast combination approach

This paper develops a flexible approach to combine forecasts of future spot rates with forecasts from time-series models or macroeconomic variables. We find empirical evidence that, accounting for both regimes in interest rate dynamics, and combining forecasts from different models, helps improve the out-of-sample forecasting performance for US short-term rates. Imposing restrictions from the expectations hypothesis on the forecasting model are found to help at long forecasting horizons.     

中国清末民初银本位下的汇率浮动:影响和启示

清末民初,银本位下的中国货币对大多数金本位国家的货币汇率自由浮动。浮动汇率并非影响中国国际收支和宏观经济的主要因素:在汇率大体持续贬值情况下,中国贸易逆差不断增大;汇率贬值有利于刺激外商直接投资和侨汇流入,弥补贸易逆差。关键问题是中国货币状况乃至整体经济活动受制于白银数量,容易大起大落。当前中国汇率弹性有待提高,对货币调控造成较大制约。我国汇率浮动早已有之,不必过于担心,中国完全具备主动加快汇率改革的条件。     

A New Regime Switching Model with State–Varying Endogeneity

In this paper, we propose a state-varying endogenous regime switching model (the SERS model), which includes the endogenous regime switching model by Chang et al., the CCP model, as a special case. To estimate the unknown parameters in the SERS model, we propose a maximum likelihood estimation method. Monte Carlo simulation results show that in the absence of state-varying endogeneity, the SERS model and the CCP model perform similarly, while in the presence of state-varying endogeneity, the SERS model performs much better than the CCP model. Finally, we use the SERS model to analyze Chinese stock market returns, and our empirical results show that there exists strongly state-varying endogeneity in volatility switching for the Shanghai Composite Index returns. Moreover, the SERS model can indeed produce a much more realistic assessment for the regime switching process than the one obtained by the CCP model.     

Regime shift,speculation, and stock price

We investigate the impacts of speculation on stock price and return volatility in a framework with regime shifting. We find that greater difference in beliefs about the probability of bad state leads to higher stock prices. The intuition is that in periods of higher dispersion of beliefs, the investors perceive greater speculative opportunities, leading to increased demands and valuations of the stock. When investors agree with each other on the state of dividend growth, they have a stronger incentive to invest in the riskless bond, when becoming more pessimistic about the dividend growth. As a result, the demand and the valuations of stock decrease. Moreover, higher level of heterogeneity in beliefs gives rise to higher volatility of the stock returns, even in the absence of dividend shocks. Furthermore, with homogeneous beliefs, return volatility with respect to investors’ beliefs follows an inverted-U shape.     

社会—技术系统可持续转型阻力及治理研究——基于利基保护空间思路

可持续转型研究是一个发展迅速的新领域,旨在解释社会-技术系统转型如何发生以及如何治理，其理论影响日益显著。然而，当前实践表明，以能源、交通为代表的系统转型进程依然相当缓慢，因此厘清转型进程中的阻力具有重要意义。归纳分析系统转型的基本要求以及转型动态过程和机制，从产业结构、基础设施、知识基础、市场和消费需求结构、公共政策与政治力量及社会认知6个方面分析社会-技术系统中现行非持续体制，对新的可持续技术利基发展和转型进程构成阻力。在现行技术体制稳定情况下，加速转型进程必须扶持技术利基成长，从防护、培育、赋能3个方面建立和强化利基保护空间功能,突破体制路径依赖。最后，从“谁治理、治理什么、如何治理”3个问题切入，提出在利基保护空间动态发展过程中，政策制定者需要以治理思维推进其战略管理。     

Recursive risk measures under regime switching applied to portfolio selection

In this paper, we define the conditional risk measure under regime switching and derive a class of time consistent multi-period risk measures. To do so, we describe the information process with regime switching in a product space associated with the product of two filtrations. Moreover, we show how to establish the corresponding multi-stage portfolio selection models using the time consistent multi-period risk measure for medium-term or long-term investments. Take the conditional value-at-risk measure as an example, we demonstrate the resulting multi-stage portfolio selection problem can be transformed into a second-order cone programming problem. Finally, we carry out a series of empirical tests to illustrate the superior performance of the proposed random framework and the corresponding multi-stage portfolio selection model.     

中国证券市场波动的区制关联性

应用单变量和二元向量SW-ARCH模型,本文发现我国证券市场收益率波动具有明显的"区制转移"特征,可以将其分为"高波动"和"低波动"两个区制.在"高波动区制"下,沪深两市间具有明显的波动"溢出"和"传染"特征,市场整体风险强;相反,在"低波动区制"下,市场间主要表现"低系统风险"特征,负相关的波动关联性使证券市场具有较强的风险分散功能和较高的资金配置效率.     

从保障措施制度的演进看WTO多边贸易体系规则变动的内在机制——兼论保障措施制度的经济学基础

与GATT体制不同,WTO框架下保障措施贸易调查数量远高于GATT时期,并正在成为印度等发展中成员的"新宠",而由此引发的贸易摩擦不可小视。文章利用世界贸易体系经济学的研究方法,分析了保障措施制度设定的经济学基础,并以保障措施制度的演进过程为例,阐述了WTO多边贸易体系规则变动的内在机制,其许多共性对于后危机时代,新贸易规则不断涌现的今天有着重要的借鉴意义。     

When does the cost channel pose a challenge to inflation targeting central banks?

In a sticky-price model where firms finance their production inputs, there is both a lower and an upper bound on the central bank's inflation response necessary to rule out the possibility of self-fulfilling inflation expectations. This paper shows that real wage rigidities decrease this upper bound, but coefficients in the range of those on the Taylor rule place the economy well within the determinacy region. However, when there is time-variation in the share of firms who finance their inputs (i.e. Markov-switching) then inflation targeting interest rate rules frequently result in indeterminacy, even if the central bank also targets output. Adding a nominal growth target to the policy rule can often alleviate this indeterminacy and therefore anchor inflation expectations.     

OccBin: A toolkit for solving dynamic models with occasionally binding constraints easily

The toolkit adapts a first-order perturbation approach and applies it in a piecewise fashion to solve dynamic models with occasionally binding constraints. Our examples include a real business cycle model with a constraint on the level of investment and a New Keynesian model subject to the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. Compared with a high-quality numerical solution, the piecewise linear perturbation method can adequately capture key properties of the models we consider. A key advantage of the piecewise linear perturbation method is its applicability to models with a large number of state variables.