On credit and output: Is the supply of credit relevant?

The consensus that changes in the supply of credit were irrelevant to making monetary policy decisions existed among macroeconomists during the second half of the twentieth century. Transmission of shocks to the real economy through changes in the supply of credit, however, played an important role in the recent U.S. financial crisis. This paper explores the extent to which policymakers should consider changes in the supply of credit when making forecasts and monetary policy decisions. More specifically, it considers whether a measure of real credit balances offers consistent and stable information, beyond that of a real interest rate and real money balances, about future output gaps during the U.S. post-war era. Results yield evidence that changes in real credit balances are the only variable, among those considered, to provide consistent and stable information about future output gaps over the entire sample period. Each information variable, however, provides relatively little value added for forecasting future output gaps, beyond a simple autoregressive model. To improve upon forecasts and monetary policy decisions, policymakers therefore should consider a broader range of information variables and occasionally reassess the relative weightings assigned to each.     

Hedging and temporal permit issuances in cap-and-trade programs: The Market Stability Reserve under risk aversion

Cap-and-trade programs such as the European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) expose firms to considerable risks, to which the firms can respond with hedging. We develop an intertemporal stochastic equilibrium model to analyze the implications of hedging by risk-averse firms. We show that the resulting time-varying risk premium depends on the size of the permit bank. Applying the model to the EU ETS, we find that hedging can lead to a U-shaped price path, because prices initially fall due to negative risk premiums and then rise as the hedging demand declines. The Market Stability Reserve (MSR) reduces the permit bank and thus, increases the hedging value of the permits. This offers an explanation for the recent price hike, but also implies that prices may decline in the future due to more negative risk premiums. In addition, we find higher permit cancellations through the MSR than previous analyses, which do not account for hedging.     

Quantitative Easing Forever? Financialisation and the Institutional Legitimacy of the Federal Reserve’s Unconventional Monetary Policy

Scholars of financialisation have argued that the emergence of finance-led grow regimes requires new instruments for effective conduct of economic policy. In this scholarship, central banks have been seen as the most promising actors to utilise one of the most synergetic policies, the maintenance of high and stable prices of financial assets. Since the financial crisis of 2007–8, central banks of the developed world have adopted various unconventional monetary policy measures that serve this function. But will these unconventional measures become institutionally legitimate and institutionalised as conventional practice, as suggested necessary by scholars of financialisation? In this paper, we answer to this question by studying the institutional legitimation of the Federal Reserve’s Quantiative Easing (QE) programmes. We argue that the QE programmes have been legitimated successfully but with institutional legitimation strategies, which cause institutional pressures that question the potential of QE from becoming a regular policy instrument and practice.     

Conservation finance and sustainable tourism: the acceptability of conservation fees to support the Tambopata National Reserve,Peru

Protected areas are key to the conservation of global biodiversity and ecosystem services; however, their success is contingent upon adequate funding. One possibility to increase funding for park management is to “sell” a wider suite of ecosystem services “produced” by protected areas, such as carbon sequestration. We conducted 420 tourist surveys to analyze willingness to pay (WTP) for ecosystem service benefits via a conservation fee in the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru. We also interviewed eight tour operators about their perceptions of the proposed fee. The average stated WTP was 15 USD. Sixty-six percent of tourists stated they would pay 10 USD or more, which, if actually paid, would have resulted in 318,000 USD for park management in 2015. Most respondents stated they would pay an additional fee if it supported biodiversity conservation or local ecosystem services, such as water, but less than 10% of tourists were motivated by carbon sequestration as a reason to pay the fee. Most tour operators supported the additional fee. Our findings suggest that tourists are willing to pay higher fees to support conservation but that interest in paying for additional ecosystem services from parks may not extend to global and intangible benefits such as carbon sequestration.     

玉米临时储备粮收购政策引发的问题及建议--以吉林省德惠市玉米临储粮情况为例

玉米临时储备粮收购政策扭曲了市场价格，由于临储粮收购价高于市场价格，黑、吉、辽、内蒙古等四省区玉米积压严重。本文以实地调研为基础，建设性地提出以市场机制为前提，实行价补分开，增加农田水利建设等政策建议。     

The evolution of U.S. monetary policy: 2000–2007

A vector autoregression with time-varying parameters is used to characterize changes in Federal Reserve policy that occurred from 2000 through 2007 and describe how they affected the performance of the U.S. economy. Declining coefficients in the model׳s estimated policy rule point to a shift in the Fed׳s emphasis away from stabilizing inflation over this period. More importantly, however, the Fed held the federal funds rate persistently below the values prescribed by this rule. Under this more discretionary policy, inflation overshot its target and the funds rate followed a path reminiscent of the “stop-go” pattern that characterized Fed behavior prior to 1979.     

The dynamics of tourism discourses and policy in Brazil

This article employs a Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis in order to unveil hidden aspects of the tourism development policy-making process in the UNESCO Espinhaço Range Biosphere Reserve, Brazil. It identifies the emergence of different representations of tourism development and demonstrates the process of social construction of sustainable tourism as an overarching discourse, which incorporates different—sometimes opposing—representations of tourism development to gather the support of people with different backgrounds and interests. However, this research demonstrates that this flexibility caused the sustainable tourism narrative to become a vague and imprecise discourse in the context of the case study, which has been used by the regional elites to conserve the status quo, but disguised as a critical alternative perspective.     

投标人平行串谋与最优公开保留价博弈分析

本文将投标人平行串谋问题与招标人公开保留价定价策略相结合,研究了第二价格密封招标方式下投标串谋联盟的串谋报价及利润分配机制,分析了串谋联盟的存在对非串谋联盟中成员的投标策略和期望利润的影响,揭示了串谋联盟成员人数与串谋联盟总收益之间的关系,探讨了招标人公开保留价定价策略、串谋联盟成员人数与招标公开保留价之间的关系,指出了招标人应通过降低公开保留价的方式来防止或减少投标人平行串谋行为的发生。     

对我国外汇储备超适度规模的实证分析——基于改进的阿格沃尔模型

本文运用改进的阿格沃尔模型,选取1994-2010年数据对我国外汇储备适度规模进行了实证分析,结果表明:目前我国外汇储备规模已经明显过量。Johansen协整检验和Granger因果关系检验显示:进出口额、GDP、外商直接投资与外汇储备规模之间存在长期协整关系,对外汇储备规模能够产生长期的影响;但外债余额尤其是短期外债余额和广义货币供应量也能在短期内对外汇储备规模产生影响。本文认为,改善贸易结构并扩大内需,加大进口力度并支持对外投资,重视GDP的质量并促进经济理性增长,严格外企准入制度并转变外企引进结构,增强人民币汇率弹性等政策措施是抑制我国外汇储备过度增长的有效途径。     

浅析美联储“量化宽松”的货币政策

从2008年3月27日至2010年3月18日,美联储面对汹涌而来的金融危机打开印钞机,资产总额大幅上升,基于美联储所采取的种种举动,总结出美联储量化宽松的货币政策的特点,并且分析它所产生的影响。