China—macroeconomic cycles in the 1980S

This paper explores the links between reforms, macroeconomic management and the occurence of macroeconomic instability in China during the last decade, drawing upon previous analytical work and also employing a Granger causality test. It was observed that macroeconomic cycle characteristics were modified by structural changes in the economy. It is further argued that the incompleteness of reforms (which renders macroeconomic management difficult) had the effect of exacerbating the cycles by increasing their amplitude and frequency. Finally, results from the Granger tests suggest that broad money would be a good intermediate target for monetary policy.     

China＇s Changing Economic Structure and Implications for Regional Patterns of Trade, Production and Integration

I. Introduction There is a strong momentum for regional economic integration within East Asia.1 But few countries in the region harbor any illusion of realizing a region-wide economic union any time soon. A crucial ingredient in any successful East Asia-wide economic integration effort is China. China could be a major catalyst in the integration process if it chooses to.But it would do so only if such a move is in line with the overall objectives of its foreign economic policy. More import…     

Income mobility of individuals in China and the United States

Although much has been written about annual income inequality in China, little research has been conducted on longer‐run measures of income inequality and on income mobility. This paper compares income mobility of urban individuals in China and the United States in the 1990s. The following questions are taken up: To what extent are measures of annual income inequality misleading indicators of long‐run income inequality? How much income mobility was there in China in the first half of the 1990s and how did this compare with mobility in other countries? Have real income increases been greater for the poor or the rich? How important is the variation in permanent incomes in China and how has this changed?     

Volatility and Market Risk of Rubber Price in Malaysia: Pre- and Post-Global Financial Crisis

The volatility in rubber price is a significant risk to producers, traders, consumers and others who are involved in the production and marketing of natural rubber. Such being the case, forecasting the rubber price volatility is desired to assist in decision-making in this uncertain situation. The 2008 Global Financial Crisis caused some disruptions and uncertainties in the future supply or demand for natural rubber and thus leading to higher rubber price volatility. Using ARCH-type models, this paper intends to model the dynamics of the price volatility of Standard Malaysia Rubber Grade 20 (SMR 20) in the Malaysian market before and after the Global Financial Crisis. Additionally, Value-at-Risk (VaR) approach is implemented to evaluate the market risk of SMR 20. Our empirical result denotes the existence of volatility clustering and long memory volatility in the SMR 20 market for both crisis periods. Leverage effect is also detected in the SMR 20 market where negative innovations (bad news) have a larger impact on the volatility than positive innovations (good news) for post-crisis period. When tested with Superior Predictive Ability (SPA) test, FIGARCH model is the best model across five loss functions for short- and long-term forecasts for pre-crisis period. Meanwhile, over post-crisis period, FIGARCH and GJR GARCH indicate the superior out-of-sample-forecast results and better forecasting accuracy over short- and long-term horizons, respectively. In terms of market risk, the short trading position encounters higher risk or greater losses than the long trading position at both 1 and 5 % VaR quantile for pre-crisis period. In contrast, over post-crisis period, long traders of rubber SMR 20 tend to face limited gains but unlimited losses.