Mortgage Put Options and Real Estate Markets

In this paper we offer direct evidence that financial intermediation does impact underlying asset markets. We develop a specific observable symptom of a banking system that underprices the put option imbedded in non-recourse asset-backed lending. Using a dataset for 19 countries and over 500 real estate investment trusts, we find that, following a negative demand shock, the “underpricing” economies experience far deeper asset market crashes than economies in which the put option is correctly priced.

In which financial markets do mutual fund theorems hold true?

The mutual fund theorem (MFT) is considered in a general semimartingale financial market S with a finite time horizon T, where agents maximize expected utility of terminal wealth. The main results are:

文化产业在经济危机中的抗衰性研究

经济危机发生后,以满足人们物质需求为目的的传统产业会受到重大冲击。与此不同,文化产业却在经济危机中逆势增长,表现出明显的抗衰性。经济危机成了文化产业发展的契机。文化产业的抗衰性,既为减缓经济衰退做出了直接贡献,又具有精神抚慰和激励作用,为人们战胜经济衰退提供了精神力量。文化产业之所以在经济危机中具有抗衰性,是因为文化产品和文化服务具有"口红效应",文化产业具有相对稳定性和优化产业结构、转变经济增长方式的功能。因此,我国要充分发挥文化产业的抗衰性作用,努力建设成文化产业强国。     

Asset Prices as Indicators of Euro Area Monetary Policy: An Empirical Assessment of Their Role in a Taylor Rule

This paper estimates forward-looking and forecast-based Taylor rules for France, Germany, Italy, and the euro area. Performing extensive tests for over-identifying restrictions and instrument relevance, we find that asset prices can be highly relevant as instruments in policy rules. While asset prices improve Taylor rule estimates, different assets prove most relevant across countries and this result could be seen as complicating the tasks of the European Central Bank. Encompassing tests show that forecast-based outperform forward-looking Taylor rules. A policy implication is that central banks ought to release their own forecasts and the basis upon which they are generated.

Testing the Unstable Middle and Two Corners Hypotheses About Exchange Rate Regimes

The recent rash of international currency crises has generated considerable interest in the role that exchange rate regimes have played in contributing to these crises. Many economists have argued that efforts to operate adjustably pegged exchange rate regimes have been a major contributor to “the unstable middle” hypothesis and some have argued that this unstable middle is so broad that only the two corners of hard fixes or floating rates will be stable in a world of high capital mobility—the two corners or bipolar hypothesis. Two recent empirical studies by researchers at the International Monetary Fund reach opposing conclusions on these issues. We examine the issue further and show that conclusions can be quite sensitive to how exchange rate regimes are grouped into categories and the measures of currency crises that are used. In general we find that the dead center of the adjustable peg is by far the most crisis prone broad type of exchange rate regimes, but that countries need not go all the way to freely floating rates or hard fixes to substantially reduce the risks of currency crises.

突破“柠檬市场”探索危机形势下二手车行业的发展出路

经济学家称二手车交易市场是一个"柠檬市场",由于信息的极度不对称,买卖双方博弈将导致二手车的品质将会越来越差、流通速度会越来越慢,蕴含了自我破坏、自我毁灭机制。2008年爆发的金融危机对高速增长的二手车行业产生巨大影响,"柠檬市场"特性凸显,对并不成熟和完善的二手车行业来说如何度过这个阶段非常关键。通过对日本、台湾二手车行业发展历程及成功模式进行分析,对比我国二手车行业现状,基于金融危机形势下特定的消费环境,以及"柠檬市场"特性根源,从现实条件出发,通过改善法律环境、加强从业人员的专业管理以及经营者审慎报价来提高在售二手车的品质保障,解决消费者"不信任"的核心问题,通过改变经营思路、大力推进拍卖业的发展、开拓CtoC、BtoB商务平台等手段加快二手车流通速度,将是非常有效的途径。     

试析美国金融危机的根源——“政府”与“市场”关系的重大失误

在"政府"与"市场"的关系的长期论争中,自由市场派占据上风并导致监管缺失,成为美国金融危机的根源。其主要表现为:金融监管法律放松,长期宽松的货币政策,对市场的自由放任和对金融衍生品的监管放纵,对投资银行等金融机构的监管失职等。对我国的启示:要正确认识和处理好"政府"与"市场"的关系,要审慎推动金融创新,防范金融衍生品风险,要加强对金融机构和住房抵押贷款的监管。     

国际金融危机与中国企业经营创新

国际金融危机从短期来看,进一步凸显了我国过去长期形成的粗放型经济增长方式的局限;从长期来看,对于中国企业而言,机遇大于挑战。当前,中国企业迫切需要进行企业经营创新,在企业内部优化整合渡过危机的基础上,谨慎寻求海外"抄底"和新的投资机会,努力开拓新兴市场和国内市场,推进自主创新和品牌建设,从而增强企业竞争力,实现企业的跨越式发展。     

On the bilateral trade effects of free trade agreements between the EU-15 and the CEEC-4 countries

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC-4, i.e. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania) and model their effects on trade flows by treating the agreement variable as endogenous. Our theoretical framework is the gravity model, and the econometric method used to isolate and eliminate the potential endogeneity bias of the agreement variable is the fixed effect vector decomposition (FEVD) technique. Our estimation results indicate a positive and significant impact of FTAs on trade flows. This finding is robust to the inclusion in the sample of a group of control countries (specifically Belarus, the Russian Federation and the Ukraine) that did not sign an FTA. Besides, we show that trade growth after the FTA agreement with the EU was signed exceeded trade growth of the control group of countries, which did not become members.

金融危机下企业财务战略与财务竞争力研究

此次金融危机的破坏性越来越严重,尽快走出危机的“泥潭”成为政府、企业和社会公众的一致愿望。文章对本次金融危机爆发的根源进行简要阐述,指出克服“旁观者”效应,鼓励企业“打造核心竞争力”．变“救市输血”为“强企造血”才是应对危机的根本。提升企业核心竞争力的方面很多,文章以财务竞争力和价值链的视角为企业应对危机,进而也为后危机时代建立系统完善有效的财务管理体系提出思路。