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.     

Monetary and Financial Cooperation Between China and the One Belt One Road Countries

ABSTRACT

Based on the theory of optimal currency area (OCA), we calculate the OCA index between China and the OBOR partners with the expressed objective of identifying which partners exhibit monetary and financial compatibilities, and hence present the best potential in terms of cost and benefits. Our findings suggest that among South East Asia region, Malaysia exhibits the highest compatibility and profit potential, followed by Thailand and Vietnam. For the East European area, Poland and Croatia show the best potential in terms of monetary and financial cooperation; with the Czech Republic as close third. Based on our computation, currently Central Asia and the Middle East do not possess the condition or potential for beneficial financial and monetary collaboration.     

Open Economy Dynamics in a Floating Exchange Rate Developing Country Context

ABSTRACT

This article develops a wavelet-based control model to simulate fiscal, monetary, and real exchange rate scenarios in an open economy developing country with an inflation-targeting regime. We use South African macro data to jointly simulate optimal fiscal and monetary policy under varying scenarios for real exchange rate stability with interest rate parity. As real exchange rate stability increases, the model simulates the effects on the trade balance under both a constant and depreciating real exchange rate. We find that short-term cycle stability problems are somewhat mitigated by allowing the real exchange rate to depreciate.     

论我国大气污染生态补偿法律机制的完善

大气污染生态补偿法律机制对于促进区域大气污染联合治理、实现大气污染治理法律正义、创新与完善生态补偿法律机制等具有重要意义。我国现有法律法规就大气污染生态补偿进行了原则性规定,特别是山东、陕西、湖北等地方性法规更是对大气污染生态补偿进行了探索性规范,为大气污染生态补偿法律机制完善提供了有益经验。但从总体来看,我国大气污染生态补偿法律机制尚存在缺乏专门法律支撑、生态补偿主体过窄、补偿方式单一、补偿标准不合理、法律责任不完善等问题。为促进生态文明战略与强化大气污染生态补偿的法律保障,我国应以科学理念为指导,采取有效措施推进大气污染生态补偿法律机制完善。     

人工智能发展对通胀动态的影响及政策挑战——基于动态随机一般均衡模型的分析

人工智能的发展是生产力进步的表现，但广泛使用人工智能技术的经济效应尚待深入研究。基于人工智能对劳动的替代作用，将人工智能投资引入动态随机一般均衡模型，通过比较静态分析和短期动态分析考察人工智能发展对通胀动态的影响。稳态分析表明：人工智能投资效率提高和使用范围扩大均会提升劳动生产率进而提高产出水平，但对长期或趋势通胀没有影响；在人工智能发展初级阶段人工智能的发展会引起实际工资下降，而在相对高级阶段人工智能的发展会引起实际工资上升。短期动态分析显示：人工智能发展水平的提高，无论是投资效率的提高还是使用范围的扩大，都会导致通胀及实际边际成本对偏好冲击和技术冲击等外生冲击的反应变弱。人工智能的发展会使通胀动态与实际经济活动变化间的联系减弱，其原因是人工智能对劳动的替代作用使工资调整不再是应对外生冲击的必然选择，进而改变了外生冲击通过影响工资来影响通胀的传导机制。因此，发展人工智能在促进生产率提升和产出增长的同时，还会改变宏观经济变量间的传导机制，进而对通胀等政策调控目标变量的准确预测以及政策调整和实施的有效性带来新的挑战，也为金融理论研究提出新的课题。     

国有企业高管薪酬管制与委托代理问题

由于国企高管的经营业绩难以被准确度量，加上监督约束机制不健全，高管的超额薪酬成为国企代理问题的一种典型表现，于是政府将高管薪酬管制作为应急措施来降低代理成本，缓解国企代理问题。采用双重差分法对2011—2018年A股上市公司的分析表明：第二次限薪令在有效限制国企高管薪酬水平的同时，没有对高管在职消费产生显著影响，有效降低了国企代理成本；但第二次限薪令也降低了薪酬激励效应，导致国企高管努力程度降低，由此造成的利益损失又成为新的代理成本。国企薪酬制度改革面临激励与管制的两难选择，应在国企分类改革的基础上对不同类型国企的高管采取不同的激励机制：对公益类及特殊行业的国企增强高管政治晋升激励，对竞争行业（营利性）国企则应在推向市场的同时放松薪酬管制，从而有效降低代理成本，解决国企代理问题。     

Multiperiod Loans,Occasionally Binding Constraints,and Monetary Policy: A Quantitative Evaluation

We introduce multiperiod mortgage loans, fixed interest rate, a lower bound constraint on newly granted loans, and a possibly slack collateral constraint, in an otherwise standard Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with housing. Our nonlinear estimation shows that all those features are important to understand the evolution of mortgage debt during the recent U.S. housing market boom and bust. The transmission of monetary policy becomes dependent on the housing cycle, with weaker effects when house prices are high or start falling sharply. Higher average loan duration makes monetary policy less effective, eventually leading to asymmetric responses to positive and negative monetary shocks.     

Top management team incentive heterogeneity,strategic investment behavior,and performance: A contingency theory of incentive alignment

Research summary : We develop and test a contingency theory of the influence of top management team (TMT) performance‐contingent incentives on manager–shareholder interest alignment. Our results support our theory by showing that although TMTs engage in significantly higher levels of acquisition investment when their average incentive levels increase, investors' responses to those large investments are generally negative. More importantly, however, we further find that within‐TMT incentive heterogeneity conditions that effect, such that investors evaluate TMTs' large acquisition investments more positively as the variance in those top managers' incentive values increases. Thus, within‐TMT incentive heterogeneity appears to increase manager–shareholder interest alignment, in the context of large acquisition investments. Managerial summary : We find that as the average value of TMTs' incentives increase, relative to their total pay, they invest more in acquisitions and investors' respond negatively to the announcement of those deals. However, we further show that investors respond more positively to acquisitions announced by TMTs whose members' incentive values vary (some TMT members hold higher incentives and others hold lower). Results imply that when TMT members hold differing incentives levels, they approach investments from divergent perspectives, scrutinize those investments more heavily, and make better decisions, relative to TMTs with similar incentives. They also suggest that boards seeking tighter manager–shareholder interest alignment may benefit from introducing variance into TMT members' incentive structures, as doing so appears to create divergent preferences that can improve team decision making. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Financialization and Vested Interests: Self-Regulation vs. Financial Stability as a Public Good

I propose an institutionalist analysis of financialization through the lens of Thorstein Veblen, built on some peculiar characteristics of money and related financial instruments in a market-based capitalist economy. Following the case of the overcapitalization of farmlands, studied by Veblen (1919), I argue that modern capitalism is a financialized society dominated by vested interests that rely on financial liberalization-led speculative overcapitalization, often leading to a perverse accumulation process and resulting in systemic catastrophes. Consequently, one of the major constituent institutions of liberal finance, market-dependent selfregulation, proves unable to deal with society-level issues like financial stability. This latter issue must be handled at a systemic level, as a public good. Therefore, specific public regulation and action mechanisms must be designed to maintain society (and dominant vested-interests) within some viability limits to ensure a smooth functioning of the economy.     

CEO political ideologies and pay egalitarianism within top management teams

Research summary : We examine the influence of CEO and compensation committee liberalism on top management teams (TMT ) pay arrangements. Given that politically liberal individuals tend to value egalitarianism, we test whether firms with liberal CEO s tend to (1) reduce pay dispersion among non‐CEO executives; and (2) reduce pay gaps between CEO and non‐CEO executives, and whether compensation committee liberalism moderates these relationships. We find some evidence of a direct effect of CEO liberalism on TMT pay arrangements as well as some interaction between CEO and compensation committee liberalism on the pay arrangements. This study provides a better understanding of the antecedents of TMT pay arrangements and empirical evidence showing the influence of values at the top of organization . Managerial summary : Do the values of the CEO and compensation committee influence the pay of other top managers? Our study provides evidence that political ideology affects top manager pay. We examine whether CEO liberalism produces more egalitarian pay arrangements among top managers, and whether the liberalism of the compensation committee affects that relationship. We find that CEO liberalism reduces differences in the total pay among top managers, but does not influence the difference between CEO total pay and the total pay of top managers. We also find that compensation committee liberalism strengthens the negative influence of CEO liberalism on differences in total pay among top managers. Finally, we find that CEO liberalism reduces the difference between CEO bonus pay and the bonus pay of other top managers . Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.