Effects of U.S. Banking Deregulation on Unemployment Dynamics

I use state-level banking deregulation in the U.S. to study the causal impact of credit expansion on unemployment through its effects on the average monthly job-finding and job-losing rates. State-level analysis shows that deregulation increased the average job-finding rate and decreased the job-losing rate, and thus led to a lower unemployment rate. I also find that deregulation decreased the average unemployment duration. Extending the analysis to industry-state level, I find that the impact of deregulation on the job-finding rate is positive, but does not show any pattern across industries with respect to their needs for external finance. However, deregulation reduced the average job-losing rate, and the reduction monotonically increases with industries’ dependence on external finance.     

制度变迁与美国金融制度演变

1999年《金融服务现代化法》的通过意味着美国金融业进入了混业经营的新时代。美国因其在世界经济金融中的独特地位，其金融制度一直是许多国家的主要参照体系。本文从制度变迁的视角，分析美国分业经营的由来、衰落及混业经营的崛起，揭示出美国金融制度演进的内在动力是在经济发展中不同层次的行为主体预期通过变迁建立起更有效率的制度安排并从中获益。混业经营显然是满足以不同层次行为主体的各自偏好的合理制度安排。     

Panel Composition and Judicial Compliance on the US Courts of Appeals

This article integrates the literatures on judicial compliance,panel decision making, and case selection in the federal judiciaryhierarchy. Many studies have speculated that "panel effects"—thephenomena under which an individual judge's vote may dependon her colleagues on a three-judge panel—can be tied toa "whistleblower effect," through which a lower court judgecan constrain a panel majority from disobeying with SupremeCourt precedent by threatening to dissent. However, no studyhas systematically found such a relationship. I present a game-theoreticmodel of circuit court-Supreme Court interaction that demonstrateshow panel composition might affect the likelihood of lower courtcompliance to Supreme Court doctrine. The model illustrateshow three-judge panels, while not inducing perfect doctrinalcontrol of lower courts by the Supreme Court, significantlyincreases the latter's ability to see its preferred doctrinecarried out by its subordinates in the judicial hierarchy.     

少数民族外出务工决策的个人禀赋、家庭特征、制度因素分析

新疆少数民族农村富余劳动力转移是一个急待解决的命题。只有大量减少少数民族农村富余劳动力,民族聚居区的经济活跃才有希望,城乡协调可持续发展才有可能。依据528份新疆少数民族农民工样本的有序Probit模型分析可知:少数民族务工人员的"年龄、清真饮食、务工技能、语言沟通、父母是否健在、家庭年收入、户籍制度和城镇社会保障"对外出务工有显著影响。重视少数民族的个人禀赋、家庭特征差异以及制度安排,对于提升新疆少数民族农民工务工信心,促进少数民族农村富余劳动力合理有序转移具有重要意义。     

The Impact of U.S. Individual and Institutional Investor Sentiment on Foreign Stock Markets

This study examines the degree to which U.S. individual and institutional investor sentiments are propagated abroad. Previous studies construe investor sentiments as fully irrational; we find contrary evidence that individual and institutional investor sentiments are driven by both rational and irrational factors, with distinct effects on domestic and international stock market returns. The generalized impulse response functions from VAR model estimations show that U.S. institutional investor sentiments have varying degrees of impact on the equity markets of the U.K., Mexico, and Brazil, and no effect on Chile. Specifically, the individual investor sentiment effect is statistically significant only for the U.K market. Not surprisingly, the two classes of investor sentiments have a strong significant effect on the U.S. stock market returns. The response of the U.S. to individual investor sentiments is relatively more erratic, while the response to institutional investor sentiments is smoother. This difference in pattern becomes more visible when we consider the response of the foreign stock markets. We find significant effects of rational sentiments of institutional investors on the U.S., the U.K., Mexico, and Brazil. However, there is an insignificant effect of the irrational sentiments on the same set of countries. A direct implication of our empirical evidence is that it is important for international asset pricing models to consider the role of rational sentiments of institutional and individual investors on developed and emerging markets.     

Strategic Judging Under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines: Positive Political Theory and Evidence

We present a positive political theory of criminal sentencingand test it using data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.Under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, judges can use "offense-leveladjustments" (fact-based decision making) to lengthen or shortenthe Guidelines' presumptive sentences. Judges also can use "departures"from the Guidelines (law-based decision making) to lengthenor shorten sentences. In general, departures are reviewed morestrictly than adjustments by circuit (appeals) courts. Our theorypredicts that a sentencing judge politically aligned with thecircuit court will be more likely to alter sentences throughsentencing departures than a judge not so aligned with the circuit;by contrast, our theory predicts that judges can more freelyuse fact-oriented adjustments to alter sentences, regardlessof the circuit court's sentencing policy preferences. Our analysisof federal sentencing data largely supports the theory's predictionsregarding the use of adjustments and departures and the impactof political alignment between higher courts and sentencingjudges.     

Dynamics of volatility transmission between the U.S. and the Chinese agricultural futures markets

The U.S. and China are two of the biggest players in the world agricultural market. The literature documents that volatility in the U.S. agricultural futures market spills over significantly to that of China. This article provides further insights into the spillovers from China to the U.S. as well as the time horizon and dynamics of the bidirectional spillovers through the application of a multivariate extension of the heterogeneous autoregressive model, in relation to four commodities – soybean, wheat, corn and sugar. The results confirm the existence of significant spillovers from the U.S. to China for four commodities, which are primarily generated by the shorter-term volatility components in the U.S., and provide evidence for the increasing pricing power of the Chinese market. The findings are robust against various specifications and have important investment and policy implications.     

美国经济失衡对美元汇率的影响

经济内部失衡或者外部失衡对汇率的影响都是不确定的,但是,当经济内外部同时失衡时,汇率贬值或政府干预外汇市场的可能性最大。实证结果支持了上述结论。当美国经济内外部同时失衡时,美元贬值或美国政府干预外汇市场的概率就会提高27个百分点。这意味着,通过汇率变动,美国将内部问题外部化了。理解了美元汇率变动的原因实际上也就理解了21世纪初期以来人民币面临升值压力的原因。     

Estimating the Effect of Redistricting on Minority Substantive Representation

This article applies modern Bayesian roll call analysis to estimatelegislators' support for minority-favored policies, and to determinethe likely impact of competing redistricting plans on the substantiverepresentation of minority interests. We first provide a theoryof districting and policy outcomes that points to the importanceof coalition building in advancing minority policy concernsand motivates our estimation techniques. We then apply thismethodology to the redistricting of the South Carolina StateSenate following the 1990 census. We show that this redistrictingled to more minorities being elected to office but less substantiverepresentation.     

曼哈顿工程与美国科技制度变迁:一个“社会运动”的诠释

基于资源动员理论、政治过程理论和社会结构理论的整合分析框架,将二战期间的美国"曼哈顿工程"视作由政府、军队、科学家、工程师和工业企业家等自上而下联合发动的一场社会运动。这场运动得以实现的原因在于领袖、参与者与支持者的转换,并在特定的历史条件下导致了强政治机会结构的出现和强内生组织的形成。这场运动的后果是解放了社会对科学家与科学技术应用的认知,推动了社会结构的变迁,使得美国的科技制度从"小科学"进入到"大科学"。在新的社会结构下,美国的经济增长模式从"资源依赖"转变为"以知识为基础"。     

The Wealth Dynamics of Entrepreneurship for Black and White Families in the U.S.

Among black and white families, entrepreneurs hold disproportionately more wealth than workers. Black entrepreneurs hold a lower fraction of black family wealth than white entrepreneurs hold of white family wealth, because black families have a lower rate of entrepreneurship. Black and white entrepreneurs have more upward and less downward mobility in the wealth distribution than black and white workers, respectively. The black entrepreneurs and white entrepreneurs have similar upward mobility and black entrepreneurs less downward mobility in the wealth distribution. The entrepreneurs save at higher rates than workers, and the saving rates of black entrepreneurs and white entrepreneurs are not found to differ.     

Time Series Analysis of Deregulatory Dynamics and Technical Efficiency: The Case of the U.S. Airline Industry

As markets worldwide become less regulated, it becomes increasingly possible and timely to establish the presence of an empirical relationship between technical efficiency and market forces compelling agents to economize. This article, taking an innovative approach to test the hypothesis that competitive pressure enhances efficiency, constructs a methodology to examine time series of technical efficiency indices for cointegration and convergence. A panel of U.S. airlines, observed quarterly between 1970 and 1990, is used as a case study. Cointegration results are suggestive of long-run relationships between carriers; furthermore, convergence tests document less dispersion in firm performance over time.     

U.S. farm dynamics and the distribution of U.S. agricultural subsidies

The persistent instability of the agricultural sector is the fundamental premise of most agricultural policy. Yet no research has ever quantified the aggregate dynamics of individual farms in the US. This article is the first to combine the US Census of Agriculture with the Agricultural Resource Management Survey to observe the dynamics of nearly 1.5 million farms. The data reveal substantial variation in farm size expansion and contraction. Most of this variation is unobservable in the sector totals reported by the US Department of Agriculture each year. The distribution of agricultural subsidies suggests that subsidies become more important as farms get smaller and may play a role in slowing farm size contraction.     

国际旅游:大力开拓欧美市场

上世纪60年代大众旅游兴起,随着科学技术进步,特别是大型喷气客机的发明和信息技术的进步,人民生活水平不断提高,家庭可支配收入和休闲时间增多,促进了国际旅游市场的繁荣和发展,形成了世界范围内的大规模的旅游活动,特别是不同国家和地区之间的旅游流现象.     

Bank failures in the U.S.: A note on regulation Q

Bank failures in the U.S. have increased enormously since 1981. In order to explain this situation, certain factors have been identified—recession, the cost of funds to banks, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In addition, the interest rate ceilings imposed upon banks in the U.S. under Regulation Q (until its elimination) have been suggested as a possible contributing cause of the bank failure problem. The purpose of this paper is to provide an initial, formal, and empirical investigation into whether or not Regulation Q did influence the bank failure rate in the U.S. In fact, Regulation Q appears to have been a statistically significant contributor to the commercial bank failure rate.     

The impact of regulation on innovation: Some U.S. data

Data is presented on the impact of government regulation on the rate and direction of innovation in U.S. manufacturing and industry. Regulation has forced some innovation, be it compliance, but in most cases it has not stimulated radical technical change. Overall, evidence suggests that the impact of regulation on business innovation has been negative and that regulation has delayed and even prevented innovation in a number of areas.     

The Costs of U.S. Hegemony: Military power,military spending,and U.S. trade performance

For David Gordon and his collaborators in the social structures of accumulation (SSA) tradition, the willingness to threaten potential adversaries with military forces capable of acting on a global scale was seen to positively affect the U.S. terms of trade. U.S. hegemony yielded specific supply side benefits as favorable terms of trade reduced relative input prices and boosted profitability. Although Gordon and his co-authors recognize the potential costs of sustaining a large, globally active military apparatus, these costs are not incorporated in the econometric models supporting the SSA theory. This paper attempts to extend the SSA analysis by empirically measuring the effects of both military spending and military power on U.S. trade performance over the 1951–1987 period. It is shown that while military power and spending commitments may have positive effects on the terms of trade, these military variables had direct and indirect negative impacts on the U.S. net export balance and therefore domestic aggregate demand. In the context of a model of U.S. growth performance open to international transactions, the overall effect of the postwar military system on U.S. economic growth was likely negative in the cold-war era