Measurement of trend growth in European industrial output before 1914: Methodological issues and new estimates

The paper uses a structural time series model to reconsider growth in industrial output in 19th-century Europe. The approach is based on an unobserved components methodology in which there is no ex-ante specification of dates at which the trend is hypothesized to have changed and both trend and cycle are stochastic. We find that trend growth was variable over time in several cases but in general was less volatile than has been claimed and also that in general these times series of industrial output are difference rather than trend stationary.     

Measurement of Technical Efficiency in Public Education: A Stochastic and Nonstochastic Production Function Approach

This paper uses both the stochastic and nonstochastic production function approach to measure technical efficiency in public education in Utah. The stochastic specification estimates technical efficiency assuming half normal and exponential distributions. The nonstochastic specification uses two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) to separate the effects of fixed inputs on the measure of technical efficiency. The empirical analysis shows substantial variation in efficiency among school districts. Although these measures are insensitive to the specific distributional assumptions about the one-sided component of the error term in the stochastic specification, they are sensitive to the treatment of fixed socioeconomic inputs in the two-stage DEA.     

股市泡沫检验研究综述及实证分析

本文实证检验了上证综合指数和深证成份指数数据样本的泡沫水平,并利用单位根检验方法进一步对泡沫序列进行了分析,结论主要有：我国股票市场长期存在泡沫,多数时期泡沫水平都比较高,尤其在股指上升时,泡沫水平通常随之上升,可见泡沫对股市上涨的推动作用明显。而从2005年开始到2007年10月的股市新一轮上涨中,股市的泡沫成分也是空前规模存在的。我国股市泡沫总体上属于理性泡沫,但局部的非理性泡沫时有发生,而在股指快速上涨时,非理性泡沫最为严重。     

What Drives Stock Prices? Identifying the Determinants of Stock Price Movements

In this paper, we show that the data have difficulty distinguishing a stock price decomposition in which expectations of future real dividend growth is a primary determinant of stock price movements from one in which expectations of future excess returns are a primary determinant. The data cannot distinguish between these very different decompositions because movements in the price-dividend ratio are very persistent whereas neither real dividend growth nor excess returns are; most of the information about low-frequency movements in dividend growth and excess returns is contained in stock prices and not the series themselves. We further show that this inability to identify the source of stock price movements is not solely due to poor power and size properties of our statistical procedure, nor does it appear to be due to the presence of a rational bubble.     

Unemployment in Africa: A Fractional Integration Approach

This paper estimates long‐memory models to analyse the stochastic behaviour of unemployment in eleven African countries (Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia) from the 1960s until 2010. The empirical results provide very strong evidence of lack of mean reversion in all series under examination. This suggests that hysteresis models are the most relevant for the African experience (not surprisingly, given the rigidities in their labour markets). Therefore in such countries shocks hitting the unemployment series will have permanent effects, and policy makers should take appropriate action to reverse the effects of negative shocks.     

噪声交易与股票流动性:兼对“正(负)相关”理论的评析及“流动性黑洞”现象的解释

噪声交易与股票流动性都是行为金融研究的重点，但二者的相关性问题学界一直未能达成一致，"正负之争"不休。文章改进Kyle （1985）的假设，构建符合中国实际的流动性数理模型，模型表明：噪声交易与流动性负相关，且相关关系受信息不对称、风险厌恶度等因素的影响。进一步，文章以中国沪深300指数的成分股数据证实了"噪声交易-流动性"关系，发现其存在显著的月历效应和市场行情效应。文章对"正（负）相关"理论进行了梳理和评析，为争论的清晰化、明朗化做出贡献。     

浅谈我国当前的房地产泡沫及泡沫经济

房地产业是国民经济的支柱产业,又是经济泡沫的主要载体之一.近几年来,随着房地产投资额的剧增,房地产泡沫问题成为公众关注的热点.文章从我国房地产的发展现状引发对房地产泡沫以及泡沫经济的探讨,通过对房地产泡沫的成因以及危害性分析,提出了一系列防范房地产泡沫的措施,促使房地产市场沿着持续健康的道路发展.     

Price discrimination in physician services markets based on race: New test of an old implicit hypothesis

Prior econometric studies of physician fee determination report that fees are positively related to the proportion of the market area that is black and negatively related to the proportion of the market area that is white, but the studies provide only sketchy explanations for these results. This article presents a price discrimination model which explains the empirical results and provides the specific prediction that low income self-pay consumers in the black community constitute the group that pays higher prices for physician services. The study then replicates prior econometric results on a more recent national database, but finds that the results are sensitive to specification. When geographic differences are controlled for in the empirical model, the results fade and a statistical test indicates that the expanded specification is superior to the specification which replicated the price discrimination result. The conclusion is that there is no compelling evidence of price discrimination in physician services markets based on race.     

Bubble into reallocation: How bubbles improve capital allocation in China

This paper develops a theoretical framework to shed lights on the relations between the segmented financial market and the housing bubble in China. In our framework, capital misallocation across firms plays a central role. The segmented financial market causes discrimination against private enterprises and favoritism to state-owned firms. This biased financial system not only gives rise to capital misallocation across firms but also significantly pushes down the equilibrium interest rate in the formal financial market. The overly low interest rate in the formal financial market causes a rational bubble in a dynamically efficient economy. More importantly, the bubble improves capital allocation across firms by crowding out inefficient investment in the state-owned sector. Despite the role of improving capital allocation, bubbles may still reduce welfare by crowding out aggregate capital.     

ON MEASURING THE EFFECT OF INFLATION UNCERTAINTY ON REAL GNP GROWTH

In this paper we re-examine the relationship between inflationuncertainty and total output. To properly specify an estimatingequation, we investigate the time series properties of two frequentlyused measures of inflation uncertainty. We fail to reject thehypothysis that each series has a unit root. However, the uncertaintymeasures are not cointegrated with output and relative oil prices.This means that the proper specification is in terms of differences.With this specification we find that an increase in inflationuncertainty growth reduces real GNP growth but, unlike earlierwork, we find that this effect is temporary. It is also unlikelythat an inflation uncertainty shock on its own could producea recession.     

Agricultural labour and the incidence of surplus labour: experience from China during reform

This paper contributes to the pool of studies of rural underemployment and revisits a number of estimates of surplus agricultural labour in China. The study is devoted to the conceptualization, identification and measurement of surplus at regional, provincial and national levels by a stochastic frontier functional specification. The analysis indicates that the existing size of agricultural surplus labour is still significantly large with the continued practice of the household registration system and China's WTO membership.     

The spirit of capitalism, stock market bubbles and output fluctuations

This paper presents a representative agent model in which stock market bubbles cause output fluctuations. Assuming that utility depends directly on wealth, we show that stock market bubbles arise if the marginal utility of wealth does not decline to zero as wealth goes to infinity. Bubbles can affect output positively or negative depending on whether the production function exhibits increasing or decreasing returns to scale. In sunspot equilibria, the bursting of a bubble is followed by a sharp decline in output one period later. Various numerical examples are given to illustrate the behavior of stochastic bubbles and the relationship between bubbles and output.     

The Impact of Inflation Uncertainty on Output Growth and Inflation in Thailand*

We explore the impact of inflation uncertainty on output growth in Thailand, an emerging market economy with moderate inflation. Inflation and output uncertainty are modeled in a bivariate constant conditional correlation generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (AR(p)‐cccGARCH(1,1)) specification. We include the exchange rate in the mean equations, and use the headline and core inflation rates and industrial production to generate inflation and output uncertainty series. These series are then used in Granger causality tests to make inferences about the effect of monetary policy‐induced inflation uncertainty. Causality tests show a positive relation from inflation to inflation uncertainty. Additionally, increased inflation uncertainty decreases output. These results are consistent with real costs associated with moderate inflation. Finally, we find no evidence that monetary policy reduced these costs.     

A STOCHASTIC ESTIMATION FRAMEWORK FOR COMPONENTS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONSUMER PRICE INDEX

Under inflation targeting in South Africa, it is important to monitor and forecast changes in prices, not only for aggregate measures of the consumer price index, but also its underlying sub-components. Hypotheses about sectoral transmission of policy and shocks are often more specific than hypotheses about overall transmission. This study employs a stochastic framework to estimate richly specified equilibrium correction models, four-quarters-ahead, for the 10 sub-components of the first targeted measure of the consumer price index, CPIX. The stochastic trends are estimated by the Kalman filter, and interpreted as capturing structural breaks and institutional change, a frequent cause of forecast failure. The trends suggest the design of deterministic split trends for use in recursive forecasting models, towards more accurate overall inflation forecasting. This research also has practical use for monetary policy in allowing identification of sectoral sources of inflation.     

我国股票市场运行中的政府行为研究

金融证券理论认为投资者行为受市场机制约束,政府的作用在于防止投资者脱离投资理性。但我国股票市场是在政府主导下运行的,政府行为不仅导致市场的波动,而且还可以改变市场运行的方向。政府主导市场的结果是扭曲了投资者行为,加大了市场"泡沫",并为利益集团寻租创造了条件。     

THE SOUTH AFRICAN AGGREGATE PRODUCTION FUNCTION: ESTIMATION OF THE CONSTANT ELASTICITY OF SUBSTITUTION FUNCTION

This paper assesses the validity of the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) and the Cobb-Douglas (CD) production functions in modelling the aggregate production function and computing the total factor productivity (TFP) in South Africa for the period 1970-2006. The CES function is estimated with Nerlove's two-step procedure using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration and the Kalman filter estimation techniques, while the CD production function is estimated using the Kalman filter technique. The results of the forecast performance of the two model specifications show that the CD specification outperforms the CES for the period 1970-2006, although the CD specification may be too restrictive.     

货币政策对房地产市场的调控：中、日比较

中国的房地产价格从2003年以来持续快速上涨，政府及中央银行虽然采取了一系列调控政策抑制房价，但房地产泡沫并未显著萎缩。本文通过比较中国与日本泡沫经济时期房地产泡沫的成因、货币政策调控目标、调控工具以及政策时滞的异同，分析了导致中国货币政策低效的主要原因，在汲取日本的教训和经验基础上，结合我国的具体情况，提出了增强货币政策对房地产市场调控效果的政策建议。     

Assessing the impact of Atlantic City casinos on Nevada gaming revenues

The commencement of casino gaming activities in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during 1978 marked the end of Nevada's virtual monopoly of casino-style gambling. This paper attempts to quantify the impact of Atlantic City casino gaming activity on Nevada gross taxable gaming revenues by using a dynamic unobserved components time series model. Such structural time series models have the ability to represent local linear (stochastic) trends, stochastic seasonality, and nonstationary time series. The stochastic trend model is augmented with exogenous variables to explicitly account for the effects of changing consumer incomes, Atlantic City play, and the California lottery. The empirical results show that by 1985 the impact of Atlantic City casinos reached an apparently stable level of reducing Nevada gaming revenues by about 10 to 12 percent.Research supported by the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station. Without suggesting their complicity, T. F. Cargill, W. R. Eadington, and G. A. Horton have benefitted this study with their observations and comments.     

Estimation of bubble dynamics in the Chinese real estate market: a State space model

This paper analyses the existence of a bubble in the Chinese real estate market and examines its driving factors with a state-space model. The model considers macroeconomic and real estate time series variables as inputs and employs a Kalman filter to obtain an estimated fundamental price using demand and supply for Chinese real estate. We then measure the deviation between actual and estimated fundamental real estate prices to test for the existence of a bubble. We find evidence for the existence of a bubble especially post 2010, when the deviation ratio is found to be significantly higher with a peak of 80% in 2012. Our estimation of overvaluation is generally much higher than in other studies.