How Large Are Housing and Financial Wealth Effects? A New Approach

This paper presents a simple new method for measuring “wealth effects” on aggregate consumption. The method exploits the stickiness of consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption “habits”) to distinguish between immediate and eventual wealth effects. In U.S. data, we estimate that the immediate (next quarter) marginal propensity to consume from a $1 change in housing wealth is about 2 cents, with a final eventual effect around 9 cents, substantially larger than the effect of shocks to financial wealth. We argue that our method is preferable to cointegration‐based approaches, because neither theory nor evidence supports faith in the existence of a stable cointegrating vector.     

Trading behaviour connectedness across commodity markets: Evidence from the hedgers’ sentiment perspective

This paper analyses the connectedness network for commercial traders’ sentiment across agriculture, energy, metals and livestock futures markets. The findings find that: (a) producer/merchant/processor/user (PMPU) in agricultural and energy markets are mainly engaged in cross-hedging in the futures market, and most of them would avoid risks in these markets by operating in the metal markets, which can be considered safe for PMPU traders, and that the cross-hedging strategies may play the role of PMPU sentiment spillover across futures markets; (b) as index traders, the swap dealers operate more in two markets, namely between the agricultural and metal markets, or between the agricultural and energy markets; (c) the influence of geopolitical risks in some countries can affect the stability of energy markets, which in turn can cause PMPU system-wide connectedness.     

上证180指数成份股调整价格效应的实证研究——基于后经济危机时期的市场数据

本文在对国内外相关文献综述的基础上,对调整指数成份股的价格效应进行分析。在剔除了一系列特殊停牌的样本后,对国内上证180指数调整成份股事件对股票价格的影响进行实证研究,发现近年来成份股被调出后,其价格反转趋势愈加明显。     

福建省华侨农场养老保险改革评析

福建省在政策安排上对华侨农场养老保险改革有所优待,并体现了灵活务实、以人为本等政策特点。政策颁布后,经上级部门的重视和推动,以及各级政府的财政支持,如今福建省华侨农场职工已基本纳入省级统筹。当然,资金紧缺、层次较低、发展不平衡等后续问题仍然存在,需要进一步解决。     

The other January effect: International, style, and subperiod evidence

We report international, style, and subperiod evidence for the other January effect (OJE) documented in Cooper et al. [2006. The other January effect. Journal of Financial Economics 82, 315–341]. When examining the OJE in 22 countries starting as early as 1801, we find that the spread between 11-month returns following positive and negative Januarys does tend to be positive. However, the spreads are rarely statistically significant and the returns of other calendar months exhibit similar subsequent 11-month return spreads. Further, the international OJE spreads and the OJE spreads in disaggregate U.S.-style portfolios are more related to the U.S. market-level January return, rather than the respective country-specific or portfolio-specific January return. Finally, the OJE is weaker over the 1975–2006 post-discovery period than over the 1940–1974 pre-discovery period. Our evidence indicates that the OJE is primarily a U.S. market-level-based phenomenon that has diminished over time, which suggests a ‘temporary anomaly’ interpretation.     

Bank lending opportunities and credit standards

This article empirically tests the hypothesis that credit-screening standards can be first increasing and then decreasing in the quality of the bank's pool of potential borrowers, which in turn may vary through the business cycle or across different segments of the lending markets. A key implication is that banks with lending opportunities toward the middle of the quality spectrum can have loan portfolios that perform better than do the portfolios of banks with loan-origination opportunities that are either too weak or too strong. Using banks’ volume of secondary-market loan sales as a proxy for the richness of lending opportunities, I find an inverse U-shaped relation between the performance of banks’ loan portfolios and their activity in the loan sales market. The pattern deserves scrutiny for its policy implications, as many regulators hold the view that countercyclical variation in credit standards may have a destabilizing effect on business cycles.