Central Bank independence: Low inflation at no cost? A numerical simulations exercise

The independent nature of the Central Bank is often associated with achieving low and stable inflation. Further to that the merits of independence are stretched to achieving low(er) output variability when compared to a government run monetary policy. In this paper we use the Alesina (1989) and Alesina and Gatti (1995) model to examine how often an Independent Central Bank can achieve an improvement on both counts. To do that we run numerical simulations where we change the ex ante probability of elections (and hence the degree of electoral uncertainty) with a view to determining how the private sector’s perceptions affect the level of output variability. Our conclusions agree with the Alesina and Gatti assertion that there will exist occasions when all political parties will be better off by consenting to the running of monetary policy by an independent institution but more often than not this comes at some cost to output. On theoretical grounds therefore, the trade-off between inflation and output variability (à la Rogoff) is still a valid one.     

Potential impacts of increasing average yields and reducing maize yield variability in Africa

This study evaluates the potential impacts of investing in Drought Tolerant Maize (DTM) in 13 countries of East, South and West Africa. The analysis utilizes geo-referenced production data at the regional and household levels and employs a model that estimates both the conventional mean yield gains and the additional benefits from yield stability gains of DTM varieties as well as impacts on poverty. The results indicate that by 2016, adoption of DTM can generate between US$ 362 million and US$ 590 million in cumulative benefits to both producers and consumers. Yield variance reductions stand to generate considerable benefits, especially in high drought risk areas. These benefits translate into poverty reductions in the range of 0.01–4.29% by 2016. Significant benefits are also found among different types of households living in drought risk areas of Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria.     

The Influence of Commodity Programs on Acreage Response to Market Price: With an Illustration Concerning Rice Policy in the United States

Farm programs influence the parameters of typically estimated supply functions. We develop and apply an approach that uses detailed information about farm program incentives and constraints to identify underlying structural acreage response parameters when the data reflect behavior under complex government commodity programs. We illustrate the approach with data on rice acreage response to market price in the United States. For U.S. rice, estimates that fail to appropriately incorporate the program rules under which market data were generated are three to four times smaller than the structural parameters that are useful for most policy analysis or projections under alternative policies.     

过氧化物增白牙齿技术概述

随着人们对口腔卫生的日益关注，增白牙齿技术变得越来越重要。由于过氧化物在预防口腔病症中的具有重要作用及其增白作用，研究过氧化物增白牙齿产品成为一个重要课题。本文介绍了近十余年来过氧化物增白牙齿产品中的增白剂、增稠剂、磨擦剂、保温剂等方面的研究情况，并且提出了需要进一步改进的方面。     

Banking Regulation and Systemic Risk

The term Systemic Risk belongs to the standard rhetoric of economic policy discussions related to the banking industry. Besides the goal of protecting small depositors, control of systemic risk is given as one of the main arguments for banking regulation. Various recent financial crises have increasingly focused the regulatory debate on issues of systemic risk and financial stability. There is, however, no generally accepted definition of systemic risk and the effectiveness and the economic consequences of various instruments of banking regulation that are intended to attenuate it are still only partially understood both theoretically and empirically. In this paper, we make an attempt to discuss some of the issues raised in this debate by reviewing recent contributions to the academic literature.     

An Economic Analysis of Leniency Programs in Antitrust Law

Within a dynamic market environment the forces that drive the effectiveness of leniency programs in antitrust law are analyzed. This effectiveness unambigously is enhanced by (i) increasing the reduction in fine payments in return for reporting a cartel, and (ii) increasing the expected per-period cartel detection probability for any (future) period. Increasing fine payments for violating antitrust law also enhances the programs' effectiveness provided that the reduction in fine payment in return for reporting is large enough. The effectiveness of leniency programs is not influenced by the length of the period of limitation that comes with violating antitrust laws.     

美元霸权论与我国的应对策略

霸权稳定论是20世纪70年代兴起的西方国际政治经济学主流经济理论之一,它认为具有霸权地位大国的存在,是世界经济稳定和充分发展的必要条件。在经济金融领域,霸权稳定论产生了深远影响,美国通过多种形式推行美元霸权,如金融外交、汇率安排、制定国际规则等。美元霸权给美国带来巨大收益的同时却使世界为之“付费”。本文对霸权稳定论与美元霸权进行评述,并总结归纳了中国应对美元霸权的对策。     

News Effects and Structural Shifts in Price Discovery in Hong Kong

This paper examines two questions about the temporal stability of the price discovery relationship using data from Hong Kong. We first study the extent to which abnormally large returns (positive or negative) to securitized real estate are transferred to the returns in the direct real estate market. Our regressions show that price discovery is much reduced in the period following a news event. They show that the estimate of the long run price discovery effect also is reduced once we control for news effects. The second question we examine is whether the price discovery relationship is stable over time. The evidence appears to indicate that the post-1994 period was different from the preceding period. The change in the strength of the price discovery effect may be linked to a change in banking regulations in February 1994 that limited banks' risk exposure to real estate loans by capping them at 40 percent of total lending or to anti-speculative measures introduced by the government in the second quarter of 1994 to curb speculation in the residential market. Our statistical tests of structural stability give mixed results and are therefore inconclusive. These findings suggest that the size of the price discovery effect depends upon the amount of real estate information embedded in the history of securitized returns. The findings further suggest that the securitized return series itself may be an incomplete measure of the quantum of information.     

An evolutionary analysis of insurance markets with adverse selection

The equilibrium nonexistence problem in Rothschild and Stiglitz's insurance market is reexamined in a dynamic setting. Insurance firms are boundedly rational and offer menus of insurance contracts which are periodically revised: profitable competitors' contracts are imitated and loss-making contracts are withdrawn. Occasionally, a firm experiments by withdrawing or innovating a random set of contracts. We show that Rothschild and Stiglitz's candidate competitive equilibrium contracts constitute the unique long-run market outcome if innovation experiments are restricted to contracts which are sufficiently “similar” to those currently on the market.     

About an interactive model for sexual populations

In this paper the continuous random mating two-sex model with «harmonic mean» fertility function, partially investigated by Schoen (1983), is studied. Its closed form solution in the phase space is obtained in virtue of the homogeneity of the vector field considered. By introducing the notion of survival ability it has been clarified the balancing role played by the «marriage market».

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Riassunto Questo lavoro tratta il modello a «media armonica» per popolazioni sessuate parzialmente studiato da Schoen (1983). Si ricavano e si studiano dettagliatamente le soluzioni corrispondenti a quei valori dei parametri che individuano i casi più rilevanti dal punto di vista demografico. Per completezza, si presentano cornunque i diagrammi di fase in relazione a tutti i possibili valori delle «capacità di sopravvivenza». È stato così possibile definire chiaramente le situazioni che danno luogo, nel lungo periodo, a comportamenti di tipo stabile secondo la definizione di Lotka, facendo, in particolare, luce sul ruolo giocato dal «mercato matrimoniale».