Central Bank Policy Paths and Market Forward Rates: A Simple Model

Increasingly many central banks announce likely paths for future policy rates. Recent experience suggests that market forward rates can differ substantially from those announced. Models commonly adopted in policy analysis ignore such differences. This paper studies a simple model that can capture deviations between announced paths and market forward rates. We detail the macroeconomic transmission of such deviations and show how the model can inform policy deliberations.     

环保约谈能否促进企业绿色投资

环保约谈制度是提高环境治理水平所实行的环境执法监督新方式,对于破解环境治理难题,提高环境治理绩效至关重要。本文利用环保约谈所产生的准自然实验变化,以2013—2019年我国重污染行业上市公司为研究样本,考察环保约谈对企业绿色投资的影响。双重差分法的检验结果表明：在环保约谈所涉及城市的上市公司中,环保约谈促进了企业绿色投资。在此基础上,进一步检验发现,环保约谈对绿色投资的促进效果较为明显的企业主要来自于全要素生产率较高,行业市场竞争程度低及融资约束低的企业。研究结论从企业加强环保绿色投资决策的角度为环保约谈的经济后果提供了微观的证据,这不仅对于我们了解环保约谈这一政策对微观主体企业的影响效应具有一定意义,同时,对国家在经济发展中,如何实施更好的环境治理政策具有一定的指导意义。     

Sticky Expectations and the Profitability Anomaly

We propose a theory of the “profitability” anomaly. In our model, investors forecast future profits using a signal and sticky belief dynamics. In this model, past profits forecast future returns (the profitability anomaly). Using analyst forecast data, we measure expectation stickiness at the firm level and find strong support for three additional model predictions: (1) analysts are on average too pessimistic regarding the future profits of high‐profit firms, (2) the profitability anomaly is stronger for stocks that are followed by stickier analysts, and (3) the profitability anomaly is stronger for stocks with more persistent profits.     

The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850)1

Two distinctive regimes are distinguished in Spain over half a millennium. The first one (1270s–1590s) corresponds to a high land–labour ratio frontier economy, which is pastoral, trade‐oriented, and led by towns. Wages and food consumption were relatively high. Sustained per capita growth occurred from the end of the Reconquest (1264) to the Black Death (1340s) and resumed from the 1390s only broken by late fifteenth‐century turmoil. A second regime (1600s–1810s) corresponds to a more agricultural and densely populated low‐wage economy which, although it grew at a pace similar to that of 1270–1600, remained at a lower level. Contrary to pre‐industrial western Europe, Spain achieved its highest living standards in the 1340s, not by mid‐fifteenth century. Although its death toll was lower, the plague had a more damaging impact on Spain and, far from releasing non‐existent demographic pressure, destroyed the equilibrium between scarce population and abundant resources. Pre‐1350 per capita income was reached by the late sixteenth century but only exceeded after 1820.     

Do Consumers Care about Ethics? Willingness to Pay for Fair‐Trade Coffee

Consumers’ buying behavior is not consistent with their positive attitude toward ethical products. In a survey of 808 Belgian respondents, the actual willingness to pay for fair‐trade coffee was measured. It was found that the average price premium that the consumers were willing to pay for a fair‐trade label was 10%. Ten percent of the sample was prepared to pay the current price premium of 27% in Belgium. Fair‐trade lovers (11%) were more idealistic, aged between 31 and 44 years and less “conventional.” Fair‐trade likers (40%) were more idealistic but sociodemographically not significantly different from the average consumer.     

PURE INDICATOR OF RISK APPETITE

We study the concept of risk appetite, that is investors' willingness to buy risky assets. Market players and researchers have tried to find a proxy for it, notably by means of spreads in high yielding markets like credit or emerging markets. However, these measures might be biased because they hinge on series of prices that include market movements due to the re-pricing of both systemic and specific risks. Being macro factors that affect all the assets in the universe, risk appetite and risk aversion can only produce systemic risk re-pricing. We apply a methodology to correct this bias. We analysed emerging market debt capital markets and compute a systemic risk only indicator that enables one to ascertain more precisely periods in which risk appetite might have driven market returns. We find that from the end of 1997 to 2004 only about 30 per cent of the return of the EMBI+ might have been due to changes in risk appetite.     

Debt Stabilizing Fiscal Rules

Unstable government debt dynamics can typically be stabilized around a certain target level of debt by adjustments in various fiscal instruments, like government spending, transfers, or taxes. This paper investigates properties of debt stabilizing rules which link the needed budgetary adjustments to the state of the economy. The paper establishes that the magnitude of the target level of long‐run debt is a key determinant of whether it is possible to find a rule of this type that can be implemented under all available fiscal instruments. Specifically, considering linear feedback rules, the paper demonstrates that there may well exist a critical target level of debt beyond which this is no longer possible. From an applied perspective, this finding is of particular relevance in the context of a monetary union with decentralized fiscal policies. Depending on the target level of debt, there might be a conflict between a common fiscal framework that tracks deficit developments as a function of the state of the economy and the unrestricted choice of fiscal policy instruments at the national level.     

Avoiding tragedies: a Flemish common and its commoners under the pressure of social and economic change during the eighteenth century1

Despite the wide application of the metaphor of ‘the tragedy of the commons’, there is little historical literature that points to the weaknesses of its historical basis. There is, however, sufficient qualitative and quantitative evidence to prove that commons were well regulated and organized in order to achieve a sustainable management, that also took into account the needs and wishes of its commoners. This case study of a common in Flanders looks at the evidence for this in the eighteenth century, examining bookkeeping and other archival sources. A model that incorporates the different functions of the commons (sustainability, efficiency, and utility) is explained and applied.