China’s evolving inequality

China’s inequality is evolving. This paper brings the story up to date, drawing on recent research, much of it by the author. It begins with a brief account of rising inequality, and its causes, over the period of economic reform. It then examines the fall in the inequality of income in recent years and the reasons for this reversal of trend. Inequality of wealth, by contrast, has risen over the twenty-first century: its dimensions, components and causes are analysed. The final substantive section considers the evaluation of inequality in more depth and detail than is conventional, and provides pointers as to how value judgements about inequality might be made.     

ASEM and the evolving global order

Growing resistance to globalization that characterized the end of the twentieth century and, indeed the beginning of this one, is the essential context within which any analysis of the utility of ASEM should be judged. In this regard, the Asian financial crisis represented a watershed for ASEM almost before it got started.     

Asia's evolving role in global wine markets

Over the past decade Hong Kong and China have become far more important to the world's wine markets, while Southeast Asia's imports of fine wine continue to grow steadily. This paper reviews recent developments in the light of comparative advantage theory before drawing on a model of global wine markets to project developments in Asia and elsewhere over the next five years under various economic growth, real exchange rate, and policy assumptions. It concludes that China is set to continue to be by far the most dominant player in Asia, and to change global markets for wines dramatically, just as it has been doing and will continue to do for so many other products.     

Indonesia's stock market: evolving role,growing efficiency

The banking sector traditionally dominated Indonesia's financial system, and until the 1990s the stock market remained of little significance. Re-opened in 1977 after two decades of inactivity, the stock exchange made little contribution to Indonesia's development until a series of reform and deregulation measures were implemented from December 1987. This study examines the evolving role of the stock market in the financial system, and analyses changes in its efficiency over time. We find that stock market activity grew markedly in importance relative to banking after the reforms began to take effect, gaining the ascendancy in 2004 and moving well ahead subsequently. One contributor to this success is improvement in efficiency. Using two simple technical trading rules, we demonstrate that the stock exchange secondary market has indeed become significantly more efficient over time.     

The evolving renminbi regime and implications for Asian currency stability

The Chinese authorities described the management of the renminbi after its 2005 unpegging from the US dollar as involving a basket of trading partner currencies. Outside analysts have detected few signs of such management. We find that, in the 2 years from mid-2006 to mid-2008, the renminbi strengthened gradually against trading partners’ currencies within a narrow band. In mid-2008, the financial crisis interrupted this experiment and the bilateral renminbi/dollar exchange rate stabilised at 6.8. The 2006-2008 experience suggests that a shared policy of gradual nominal effective appreciation renders East Asian currencies quite stable against one another. Such a shared policy would create favourable conditions for regional monetary cooperation.     

The macroeconomic effects of the ECB’s evolving QE programme: a model-based analysis

This paper analyses the macroeconomic effects of the European Central Bank’s asset purchase programme in its initial version and subsequent modifications under the lens of a dynamic macroeconomic model, which includes assets of different types and maturity, and explicitly introduces asset purchases of long-term bonds (held by euro area and non-euro area residents) by the central bank. With imperfect substitutability between asset classes, portfolio rebalancing in the context of quantitative easing (QE) affects bond yields, stock prices, the exchange rate and the private sector’s saving decision. QE as announced in January 2015 generates 0.4% effective euro depreciation and raises real GDP in the euro area by 0.2% and prices by 0.3% by 2017 in the model. The subsequent extensions of the QE programme (extension in time and increase in volume) more than double the medium-term output and inflation effects according to the simulations.     

The evolving role of the central government in economic planning and policy making in Indonesia

This paper examines the changing role of the central government in the final years of the Soeharto era and since 1998. It argues that although economic policy making is now conducted in a very different political climate from that of the Soeharto period, there remains a powerful institutional legacy. In addition many old problems persist. The paper examines the evolving role of the national planning process and looks at the implications of the new law on national planning, especially for the division of labour between the national planning agency (Bappenas) and the Ministry of Finance. It also looks at some ongoing problems that are central to the economic policy process: the need for civil service reform and for a stronger audit process at all levels of government, and the issue of relations between the centre and the regions.     

The transition from imitation to innovation: An enquiry into China's evolving institutions and firm capabilities

How is the Chinese economy making the transition from imitation to innovation as the source of sustained long-term growth? We address this question using the evolutionary approach to growth in which institutions support technical advance and enterprises develop capabilities to learn and innovate. Growth is seen as a series of disequilibria in which obstacles to innovation such as outdated institutions and weak incentive systems can cause growth to slow. We review existing literatures on institutions and firm behavior in China and compare these findings with those of our survey of Chinese firms in 2006. Industry and firm studies in the literature show how productivity is rising because of firm entry and exit rather than the adoption of new technologies. A striking feature both of the studies in the literature and our survey is the increasing competitive pressures on firms that encourage learning. Our survey of privately owned small and medium enterprises in five high-tech industries in Zhejiang province found a market-based innovation system and evidence of much process and some product innovations. These enterprises respond to growing product competition and demanding customers with intensive internal learning, investment in R&D and a variety of international and research linkages.     

Emerging markets, evolving institutions, and the new opportunities for growth in China's rural economy

In this essay, our goal is to assess the state of China's rural economy and examine whether rural China is capable of participating in the sequence of economic events that will lead to modernization. We examine how agricultural productivity has changed, the nature of the shift of labor moving from rural to urban areas, how commodity markets have evolved, and how the rural industrial sector is adjusting the recent reforms. According to our own work and that of others, we show how the rural economy is beginning to be fundamentally transformed and is contributing to China's modernization.     

由国外智囊团的演进特点看我国管理咨询业的发展趋势

文章结合国外智囊团及思想库演进与发展的特点，分析了中国的管理咨询业面临的尴尬局面，并对其改革的趋势进行了探索。     

另类投资正在向主流演变——欧关对冲基金的新趋势分析

近期,美国次货危机引发了全球金融机构的大面积亏损和恐慌.对冲基金在这次危机中也难于独善其身,次贷及其衍生证券的多头机构损失惨重.由于对国际对冲基金认识的错位,一些学者再一次夸大对冲基金在此次金融事件中的破坏作用.而在我国,随着<证券公司融资融券业务试点管理办法>出台,标志着股票市场放大操作和做空机制的开始;下一步,随着金融期货,尤其是股指期货和债券期货的推出,做空和杆杠融资机制将得到进一步的完善,国内市场对冲基金的生长环境正在日趋成熟.本文旨在通过研究近代欧美对冲基金的最新发展状态,披露国际对冲基金的市场出现的最新动向,为中国市场正确对待可能出现的对冲投资行为和对冲基金,实施有效的疏导和监管政策提供一些有益的参照.     

另类投资正在向主流演变——欧美对冲基金的新趋势分析

近期,美国次贷危机引发了全球金融机构的大面积亏损和恐慌。对冲基金在这次危机中也难于独善其身,次贷及其衍生证券的多头机构损失惨重。由于对国际对冲基金认识的错位,一些学者再一次夸大对冲基金在此次金融事件中的破坏作用。而在我国,随着《证券公司融资融券业务试点管理办法》出台,标志着股票市场放大操作和做空机制的开始;下一步,随着金融期货,尤其是股指期货和债券期货的推出,做空和杆杠融资机制将得到进一步的完善,国内市场对冲基金的生长环境正在日趋成熟。本文旨在通过研究近代欧美对冲基金的最新发展状态,披露国际对冲基金的市场出现的最新动向,为中国市场正确对待可能出现的对冲投资行为和对冲基金,实施有效的疏导和监管政策提供一些有益的参照。     

Setting an exam as an information design problem

We take a teacher's exam-setting task as an information design problem. Specifically, the teacher chooses a conditional distribution of grades given students' types. After observing their exam results, each student updates her belief regarding her type via Bayes' rule and chooses an action. Students' reactions to the same exam result could be different, depending on their heterogeneous prior beliefs. The teacher's objective is to persuade students to take a certain action (e.g., applying to universities), which some may not choose without an exam. The teacher adopts different grade distributions, depending on the teacher's and the students' heterogeneous prior beliefs.     

接地气，才有人气

在“感动中国2011年度人物颁奖典礼”上，当主持人白岩松提到“两弹一星”元老朱光亚先生时，说了这么一句话：见到做过大事儿的人时，总会感到他好像没做过什么事儿一样。     

一条古街的发现之旅

这是3月的高原,一早一晚春寒料峭、乍暖还寒,可正午的阳光,照在人露于空气外的皮肤,已经隐约有点刺痛感了.……