美联储金融监管体制、影响及其启示

长期以来,美联储从本国利益出发制定经济监管政策,在美国和世界经济体系中创造了过量的信用,导致美元在全世界泛滥,美国人放弃储蓄,过度投资和消费;美国主体经济从制造业转向了非出口服务业;美国的债务,不管是从国家角度还是从个人角度都达到了前所未有的高度,这一切最终演变成了这次全球金融危机.对于中国这样的经济大国,一定要从中吸取教训,扬长避短,并建立科学发展的核心价值观.     

Investment behaviour in transition countries and computable general equilibrium models

When applying Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models to transition economies, it is not plausible to use the standard assumption that the base year data represent stable structural characteristics or even the steady state of the economy. The suggestions forwarded until now to overcome this problem are discussed in this article. An amendment is proposed by modifying the investment modelling within the dynamic CGE setting. The standard formulation of installation costs for capital is extended through the inclusion of adjustment costs that depend on the change of the investment level. Such formulation of the adjustment costs within the dynamic CGE model leads to an investment behaviour that mirrors the empirical data of the first years of the transition.     

One size may not fit all: Financial fragmentation and European monetary policies

This article investigates the impact of European Central Bank policies on credits considering financial and banking fragmentation. Using European data from the past decade, we estimate SVAR models to analyze the regional impact of conventional and unconventional measures on price and volume indicators of fragmentation. The risk-taking channel is studied using GVAR models to document the national consequences of this fragmentation. We find that unconventional measures increase credit in peripheral countries. Monetary policies alleviate fragmentation, but mostly in terms of price dispersion rather than credit volume. Finally, unconventional measures imply a rebalancing of European bank assets in favor of foreign currency denominated-assets.     

Federal Reserve System Rising: The Expansion of Board Veto Authority on the Eve of the Great Depression

Most scholars agree that restrictive Federal Reserve System (FRS) policies contributed to the depression’s duration and severity. FRS policy mistakes are attributed to faulty ideas, poor leadership, and decentralised institutions. Extant scholarship treats ideas as constraints which systematically led policy-makers astray. This paper instead focuses on the dual roles ideas play in shaping institutions and uniting coalitions behind institutional projects. It traces the rise and fall of New York FRS Governor Benjamin Strong’s ‘great idea’ that the FRS should promote international monetary stability. Declining support for New York’s internationalism enabled a rural Board faction to expand its veto power from 1928 to 1930. In the critical year following the 1929 stock market crash, Board obstruction of New York FRS attempts to lower its discount and bill rates caused its investments to fall faster than the system’s bond portfolio expanded, forcing outstanding system credit to contract. Beyond showing that the Board’s pre-depression rise mattered, the paper speaks to broader debates about how ideas become empowered to shape policies and inform interests.     

Federal Reserve communications and newswire coverage

In this article, we explore the determinants of newswire coverage of Federal Reserve (Fed) communications. Our sample covers all 344 forward-looking communications made in the period May 1999 to May 2004. We find, first, that there is a higher likelihood of newswire coverage for monetary policy reports and speeches by Chairman Greenspan than for testimony and speeches by other Fed members. Furthermore, communications with an explicit monetary policy inclination or tone different from the current interest rate path are particularly likely to be covered. However, the release of important macroeconomic news reduces the likelihood of newswire coverage. Second, speeches by regional Fed presidents are relatively less likely to be reported than speeches by Board members. Nevertheless, newswire coverage of Fed president speeches is more likely if central bank communication is stale. Finally, our results indicate that Ben Bernanke played a distinguished role even before his Chairmanship.     

Imagining the European Economy: 'Competitiveness' and the Social Construction of 'Europe' as an Economic Space

This article analyses the political and ideological agency of an emergent European transnational capitalist class in the socioeconomic governance of the European Union (EU) by examining the case of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). It seeks to show that the ERT‐as an elite forum mediating the interests and power of the most transnationalise d segments of European capital‐has played a significant role in shaping European governance in as much as it has successfully articulated and promoted ideas and concepts thathave at critical times set the political agenda and, beyond, have helped to shape the discourse within which European policy making is embedded. Here, the increasingly neoliberal orientation of the ERT reflects, and at the same time is a constitutive element within, the construction of a new European order in which governance is geared to serve the interests of a globalising transnational capitalist elite, and hence the exigencies of global 'competitiveness'. Although in recent years some detailed work has been done on the role of the ERT in the internal market programme, there has as yet been little attention paid to (and thus interpretation of) the content of the ideas promoted by the ERT and hence to the ideological power that this forum of transnational capitalists exercises. The article is divided into four main parts. The first briefly elaborates the theoretical framework that informs my analysis. Drawing upon what has come to be labelled the 'neo-Gramscian school' in International Relations (IR), I willadvance a historical materialist understanding of the dynamics of European integration, emphasising in particular the role of transnational social forces‐as engendered by the capitalist production process‐in the political and ideological struggles over European order. The second part introduces the case of the European Round Table. I will claim that the ERT is neither a simple business lobby nor a corporatist interest association, but must rather be interpreted as having developed into an elite platform for an emergent European transnational capitalist class from which it can formulate a common strategy and‐on the basis of that strategy‐seek to shape European socioeconomic governance through its privileged access to the European institutions. It is this latter role of the ERT that will be the focus of the final two parts. As such, the third presents an analysis of the evolution of ERT's strategic project and the initiating role the Round Table played in the relaunching of the integration process from Europe 1992 to Maastricht. Following this, the fourth part will analyse the ideological orientation and strategic outlook of today's Round Table and its current role in shaping what I will call the neoliberal discourse of competitiveness which, I argue, increasingly underpins European governance.