Investment decision-making under economic policy uncertainty

It is widely established that economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects investment decisions and performance, yet research in this area has overlooked the direct property investment market. This article seeks to rectify this and proposes a multistage multilevel analytical framework to offer new insights and a richness of findings. Using a news-based measure of EPU in the United Kingdom, and controlling for economic conditions, a national-level analysis reveals some evidence of Granger-Causality between EPU and total returns, indicating that pricing is responsive to uncertainty. These findings suggest that EPU is an important risk factor for direct property investments, with pricing implications. Differences in data and performance measure are important, however, with income returns unresponsive. A micro-level investigation begins to reveal some of the asset-pricing decisions underpinning the national results, indicating investors’ concerns for income streams are consistently high, regardless of varying EPU. Pricing can also cause changes in EPU, such as in the retail and industrial markets (increasingly linked through logistics) reflecting sector-specific stakeholder groups and newsworthy issues. This evidence highlights how important it is for policy-makers to understand the complex and bi-directional relationship, that indecision can undermine investment confidence and cause investment market volatility, in turn raising EPU.     

How justified is abandoning money in the conduct of monetary policy in Australia on the grounds of instability in the money‐demand function?

The role of money in the design and conduct of monetary policy has reemerged as an important issue in both advanced and developing economies, especially since the 2007 global financial crisis. A growing body of recent literature suggests that the causal relationship between money supply growth and inflation remains intact across countries and over time and that this relation is not conditional on the stability of the money‐demand function or whether money is endogenous or exogenous. Moreover, critical for a rule‐based monetary policy is the presence of a long‐run stable money‐demand function, rather than a short‐run money‐demand model that may exhibit instability for many reasons, including problems with estimating a money‐demand model with high‐frequency data. Provided that a stable money‐demand function exists, it could be useful to establish long‐run equilibrium relations among money, output, prices, and exchange rates, as the classical monetary theory suggests. Within this analytical framework, this paper addresses the question of whether money has any role in the conduct of monetary policy in Australia. The conventional wisdom is that the money‐demand function in Australia has been unstable since the mid‐1980s due to financial deregulation and reforms; this led to a change in the strategy of monetary policy for price stability in the form of inflation targeting that ignores money insofar as inflation and its control are concerned. This paper reports empirical findings for Australia, obtained from a longer quarterly data series over the period 1960Q1–2015Q1, which suggest that instability in the narrow‐money‐demand function in Australia was primarily due to the exclusion of variables which have become important in the deregulated environment since the 1980s. These findings are confirmed by an expanded form of the narrow‐money‐demand function that was found stable over the past two decades, although it experienced multiple structural breaks over the study period. The paper draws the conclusion that abandoning the monetary aggregate as an instrument of monetary policy in Australia, under a rule‐based monetary policy such as inflation targeting, cannot be justified by instability in the money‐demand function or even by lack of a causal link between money supply growth and inflation.     

美国需求端产业结构的变化及对中国的启示

对产业结构演化的研究都是从供给端计算的产业结构，本文构造了从需求端计算的产业结构并依此对美国需求端产业结构的演化进行了实证分析。研究表明，当年价所计算的美国需求端三次产业结构的变化小于供给端产业结构的变化；1970年以来美国第二产业的变化差异中近40%可以用外贸因素来解释。进而本文采取不变价计算了美国产业结构的变化，研究表明，自1970年以来按不变价计算的美国需求端的产业结构变化很小，且美国第三产业比例提升中有31%可以用不同产业价格因素变化来解释，44%可以用国际贸易来解释，仅有25%可以用第三产业收入弹性的变化来解释，因而收入弹性不是美国第三产业比例提升的重要原因。美国能够维持经常账户的逆差，将第三产业作为动力产业的根本原因在于美元的霸权地位。相比较而言，中国一直以来处于国际收支“双顺差”的状态，中国的具体国情和国家实力均无法满足大规模输出人民币使之成为其他国家储备货币的条件。     

Inflation,real economic growth and unemployment expectations: an empirical analysis based on the ECB survey of professional forecasters

Expectations are at the centre of modern macroeconomic theory and policymakers. In this article, we examine the predictive ability and the consistency properties of macroeconomic expectations using data of the European Central Bank (ECB) Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). In particular, we provide evidence on the properties of forecasts for three key macroeconomic variables: the inflation rate, the growth rate of real gross domestic product and the unemployment rate.     

Sticky Price Models,Durable Goods,and Real Wage Rigidities

The standard two‐sector New Keynesian model with durable goods is at odds with conventional wisdom and vector autoregression (VAR) evidence: Following a monetary shock, the model generates (i) either negative or no comovement across sectoral outputs and (ii) aggregate neutrality of money when durable goods' prices are flexible. We reconcile theory with evidence by incorporating real wage rigidities into the standard model: As long as durable goods' prices are more flexible than nondurable goods' prices, we obtain positive sectoral comovement and, thus, aggregate nonneutrality of money.     

Can Industrial Restructuring Significantly Reduce Energy Consumption? Evidence from China

This article uses China’s input–output (I-O) tables in 2002, 2007, and 2012 to estimate the real energy consumption of each sector after the I-O adjustment. The relationship between the sectors is further analyzed using the utility analysis method based on ecological network analysis. The empirical results show that although the traditional energy-intensive industries are the major energy-consuming sectors from a direct energy consumption perspective, large energy consumption by energy-intensive industries is transferred to downstream industries through intermediate products after the I-O adjustment. Specifically, the building industry and service sector are the sectors with the highest real energy consumption. With the upgrading and optimization of the industrial structure, the proportion of energy-intensive sectors in China is declining. However, the development of the service sector and infrastructure construction still requires large intermediate inputs. Thus, industrial restructuring cannot significantly reduce China’s total energy consumption.     

Price competition in the spatial real estate market: allies or rivals?

This paper examines whether real estate firms can avoid price competition when properties in the vicinity are priced by allies. An oligopoly model with differentiated products generally suggests that real estate firms engage in price competition with their spatially closest rivals. Yet, they can raise property prices when the market share of their allies increases. To test this prediction, a spatial autoregressive model with spatial autoregressive disturbances, including a share of allies in the vicinity, is estimated using data on the prices of residential condos in central Tokyo, Japan. The model prediction is supported by the empirical results. In the data set, the magnitude of the market share on property prices increases with the expansion of the size of the spatial market.     

The Impact of Unionization Structures with Heterogeneous Firms and Rent‐Sharing Motives

How are unemployment and output affected if wages are set on the sector level rather than firm level? We take a new look at this question, allowing for heterogeneous firms and rent‐sharing motives. Without these motives, employment and output are lower under sector‐level wage‐setting due to higher wage markups. With rent‐sharing motives, however, firm selection is higher under sector‐level wage‐setting, which tends to increase employment and output, thus counteracting the markup effect. Simulations show that the firm‐selection effect decreases the difference between the two unionization structures substantially but it does not change the signs of the effects on output and employment.     

State‐Led Financial Regulation and Representations of Spatial Fixity: The Example of the Spanish Real Estate Sector

This article offers a bottom‐up contribution to the fixity–motion literature. It aims to unravel the apparent contradiction of real estate spatial fixity in Spain, which is portrayed both as a barrier to accumulation and as a unique source of investment by different capitalist actors. Empirically, it describes the shifts in real estate ownership and changes in profit‐making strategies that have taken place across the real estate sector during the crisis years, and the role of the state in these shifts. The article asserts that the idea of spatial fixity representing a spatial barrier for accumulation does not necessarily apply in the Spanish case. It further claims that the tensions in capital circulation through real estate are not only to be found in the action of time, but in different state strategies pursued by various actors. The opposing representations of fixity are the result of state regulation of interest rates, taxation and risk weighting. The state also increasingly promotes land rents as a source of liquidity creation.