Forecasting in Macroeconomics: A Practitioner's View

Statistical criteria for forecast quality in practice have limited relevance. They can be valid only in the context of a set of untested assumptions which are usually unknown and certainly difficult to judge for the client. Three non-statistical criteria are stressed: logical coherence, economic coherence, and stability. These criteria are best served by the use of structural models. As loss functions are usually unknown and certainty equivalence is unlikely to prevail, a forecaster must enable his client to form his opinion on the uncertainty associated with the forecast. To this end, uncertainty variants and alternative scenarios appear adequate. The robustness and flexibility of policy choices should be tested against different scenarios.     

Proxies for Economic Freedom: A Critique of the Hanson Critique

Economic freedom indicators have become quite popular recently as a useful tool to quantify the relationship between a country's institutions and its prosperity. In a recent article, Hanson (2003) criticizes these types of studies for: (i) failing to adequately distinguish between different proxies for economic freedom, (ii) not considering the potential for endogeneity, and (iii) accepting significance of economic freedom's ability to promote prosperity even though regression analysis generates “nonsensical” results. Closer inspection reveals that most of his arguments are questionable, do not apply to much of the literature, or are not original, and that he is guilty of misinterpreting his own econometric evidence relating freedom to the level of GDP.     

新开放经济宏观经济学:研究文献综述

1995年Obstfeld和Rogoff提出了Redux模型,将名义粘性和不完全竞争纳入到建立在坚实微观基础上的动态一般均衡模型中,从而开辟了“新开放经济宏观经济学”的研究方法。此后,沿着这一方向,出现了大量的文献,将研究进一步推向深入。“新开放经济宏观经济学”将开放经济下宏观经济学的发展带入了一个全新的时代,成为当前研究的一个主导方向,本文将对这一方向的产生和发展作一较为系统全面的综述。     

信息、预期与动态均衡--对现代宏观经济学的一项研究

本文采用动态一般均衡的分析框架讨论现代宏观经济学及中国经济在发展中存在的一些问题。在70年的时间里,宏观经济学通过对信息、预期与市场均衡之间关系的把握,逐步形成了深刻揭示宏观经济特性的动态一般均衡框架,各种流派的理论均可以归结为在信息不完备条件下宏观经济如何实现动态一般均衡的理论,宏观经济学业已成为关于宏观经济长期动态均衡的理论。     

The New Open Economy Macroeconomics: A Critical Appraisal

Within only a few years, the new open economy macroeconomics (NOEM) has emerged as a potential rival to the Mundell-Fleming framework, as modified by Dornbusch and others in the 1980s and 1990s using linear-quadratic models, as the dominant analytical framework in the study of open economies. This paper reviews some of the main developments in this literature. It offers a critical appraisal of its contributions to date and discusses potential pitfalls of taking a pure NOEM approach by dismissing work not based in explicit utility maximization as ad hoc. The paper proposes broadening the NOEM literature to include consideration of heterogeneities within and across open economies. In light of the complexities involved in modeling heterogeneous agents or structures, the field of open economy macroeconomics may stand to gain from the pursuit of an impure NOEM. Work along these lines would de-emphasize dynamics, general equilibrium, and explicit optimization in favor of a focus on the true innovation of the NOEM literature, which has been highlighting the crucial importance of accounting for imperfect competition and price and wage rigidities in macroeconomic theories of open economies.     

The Macroeconomics of Transition: Zimbabwe in the 1980s

Abstract: At independence, Zimbabwe was faced with the dilemma of redressing the inherited inequalities while, at the same time, ensuring continued expansion of the economy, to provide employment to the increasing labour force. The implied frictions were exemplified by large budget deficits, accumulated in a bid to extend social services to the countryside, but keeping urban consumer subsidies intact, and tight controls on the external sector, in order to ensure the continued viability of the import-substituting industry. Though Zimbabwe's economic performance was better than that of its neighbours, the control regime was coming under tremendous pressure at the end of the 1980s. The paper attempts to put these challenges into a consistent macroeconomic perspective. Résumé: A l'indépendance le Zimbabwe était confronté au dilemne de redresser les inégalités dont il a hérité, tout en veillant en meme temps à l'expansion continue de l'économie, pour assurer du travail à la main d'?uvre croissante. Les frictions que cela impliquait ont été mises en évidence par d'importants déficits budgétaires cumulés dans une tentative pour étendre les services sociaux à la campagne, mais en conservant intactes les subventions des consommateurs urbains et des contrôles serrés sur le secteur exterieur pour assurer, la rentabilité de l'industrie de substitution des importations. Bien que la performance économique du Zimbabwe ait été meilleure que celle de ses voisins, le régime du contrôle subissant une énorme pression à la fin des années 1980. Ce document essaie de placer ces déficits dans une perspective macroéconomique cohérente.     

Financial Globalization in Botswana and Nigeria: A Critique of the Thresholds Paradigm

Since the Asian financial crises, economists are more circumspect in their advocacy of ‘financial globalization’. A new consensus emerged which contends that increased financial liberalization and capital account openness may only produce economic benefits when countries are open to trade and have good institutions and policies in place. This paper critically reviews this consensus, which we term the ‘thresholds paradigm’, through a survey of the available literature and a comparative case study of two African countries that have undertaken financial and capital account liberalization: Nigeria and Botswana. The paper argues that the thresholds paradigm leaves important theoretical and policy-related questions unresolved, in particular, the origins of good institutions and policies. Further, while at first glance the paradigm appears to capture the divergent outcomes of financial globalization policies in Nigeria and Botswana, a deeper investigation reveals important factors that are neglected and occluded. The paper concludes that economists need to be more methodologically ambidextrous and must integrate institutional factors in their theoretical frameworks in order to better understand the outcomes of ‘financial globalization’ and to provide useful policy advice to developing countries contemplating financial reforms in the future.