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.     

政府研发补贴促进企业创新了吗

政府补贴能否促进企业创新一直存在争议。与以往从资源视角探讨政府补贴与企业创新关系的研究不同，基于信号理论视角，以2012—2016年沪深A股非金融类上市公司为研究样本，通过剔除非研发补贴的噪音并控制样本自选择偏误，实证检验中国转型经济背景下，政府研发补贴对企业创新的微观政策效应，以及企业层面制度因素（产权性质）和区域层面制度因素（制度环境）对该效应的调节作用。研究发现，政府研发补贴释放的积极信号能够帮助企业获取外部创新资源，有效促进企业创新；相比于国有企业，政府研发补贴对非国有企业创新的激励效应更强；制度环境越好，政府研发补贴对企业创新的激励效应越强。研究理论丰富了科技创新政策有效性和信号理论相关研究。同时，研究发现，政府应继续加大对企业创新活动的补贴额度，不断深化所有制改革，为企业创新营造良好的外部制度环境；另外，企业还应充分发挥政府研发补贴信号的杠杆效应，拓宽外部创新资源获取渠道。     

Alienation and anxiety in tourism motivation

Although underexplored in tourism studies, recent work suggests theories of alienation, as the dialectic of authenticity, have much to contribute to our understanding of tourism motivation. This paper uses three major theoretical tropes (Marxism, existentialism, and Lacanian psychoanalysis) to examine the role of alienation in the motivations of hiking and rock climbing tourists. In particular, these tourists describe only temporary and retrospective relief from anxiety, articulating authenticity as an elusive experience that lies at the horizon, in the next adventure, or in the past as a memory. Alienation is an ever-present component of the human condition, and as such, anxiety is omnipresent in our lives, contributing significantly to touristic desires for escape, rejuvenation, and existential experiences.     

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.     

The relationship between people's activities and values with the protection level and biodiversity

We investigated how people's recreational activities, values, and land use preferences are related to the protection level, biodiversity and cultural heritage values of nature-based tourism areas in northern Finland. We assessed peoples' opinions using a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) and analyzed the data together with spatial biodiversity and cultural heritage data from the same area. Associations between the PPGIS place markings with the protection level and biodiversity values were quite low, and for the cultural heritage sites they were altogether missing. Negative preferences were often marked in areas with high numbers of sites rated as pleasant and they overlapped with each other, indicating conflicting preferences. Since most activities are not noticeably related to the protection level or biodiversity values of a site they can be planned so as to protect the biodiversity of the area.     

Producing Localized Commodity Frontiers at the End of Cheap Nature: An Analysis of Eco‐scalar Carbon Fixes and their Consequences

There is no single ‘great’ commodity frontier whose exploitation under current socio‐technical conditions could fuel capital accumulation at the global scale. According to Jason Moore, this represents the ‘end of Cheap Nature’ and signals a terminal crisis for capitalism as we know it. In this article we complicate this assertion by showing how, in the context of global environmental governance frameworks of carbon control, a diverse range of actors situated at multiple scales are intensifying the use of cities and their hinterlands for the production/transgression of localized commodity frontiers. We draw on scholarship on uneven geographical development, state‐led restructuring and eco‐scalar fixes to present two case studies from different segments of the carbon cycle in the global South. The first case demonstrates how the introduction of waste‐to‐energy technology in Delhi facilitated the generation of ‘carbon credits’ while waste matter itself became a commodity. The second discusses attempts by the Brazilian state of Amazonas (Amazônia) aspiring to shift from rainforest exploitation to financialized conservation supported by the ‘green global city’ functions of metropolitan Manaus. These cases demonstrate that although the global carbon‐control regime may enable accumulation, implementation remains speculative, and localized commodity frontiers provoke social resistances that jeopardize their durability.     

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.     

Central Bank Actions and Words: The Intraday Effects of FOMC Policy Communications on Individual Equity Volatility and Returns

We compare intraday impacts of the release of Federal Reserve decision announcements and of Federal Open Market Committee minutes between 2004 and 2015 on 1,997 equity return and volatility series. We find that returns are unresponsive to either news release, but conditional volatility increases for both, manifesting immediately after each information release, and persisting for 30 minutes post‐announcement. These effects are larger for decisions than for minutes. On stratifying firms by trading intensity, we find most “high trading intensity” firms respond to these announcements, while “low trading intensity” firms are less affected. Our results show that traders respond, albeit differently, to both sets of information releases.     

Constructing landscapes of value: Capitalist investment for the acquisition of marginal or unused land—The case of Tanzania

The current global wave of land acquisition – variously debated as land grabbing or investment in land – is promoted by the World Bank and the FAO as creating win–win-situations for local populations and investors alike. Common policy recommendations suggest expanding the production of export crops, by making use of marginal or unused land. Considerable potentials for such an expansion are assumed. Taking Tanzania as a case study, the evidence for such types of land is assessed by using a broad range of statistics. We will argue firstly, that the terms marginal and unused land serve as a manipulative terminology for the benefit of attempts to commercially valorize and commodify African landscapes, from biofuel to large-scale food production and tourism. However, they relate to different rationalities of domination. Unused land refers to a state-bureaucratic narrative, which excludes user groups deemed irrelevant for national development, while marginal land refers to a capitalist-economic narrative that excludes what is not profitable. Secondly, the terms are analyzed as categories central for state simplification of social relations attached to land. Modelling of these land use categories based on remote sensing is an attempt to compensate weak state capacities to enhance the legibility of the landscape by constructing it as a landscape of commercial value.     

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。