关于失业保障监测预警系统的研究

建立失业保障监测预警系统,对于政府从宏观上把握失业状况、制定相应的宏观调控政策、保证社会保障体系的良性运行以及社会经济的可持续发展具有重要的理论和实际意义。我国失业保障制度还处在改革和完善之中,对失业保障的统计研究正处于起步阶段,更没有建立失业保障预警系统。因此,在我国构建一种对失业保障状况进行监测并通过信号灯向人们发出警报的监测预警系统十分必要。     

Inflation Targeting as Constrained Discretion

This paper suggests a simple framework for modeling inflation targeting as constrained discretion. Although it is widely claimed that inflation targeting has been successful in maintaining low and stable inflation, an announcement of an inflation target does not by itself mean that central bankers are precommiting to how they conduct monetary policy. In comparison to the assumption of many theoretical studies, central banks conduct monetary policy in a discretionary fashion and rarely precommit to a rule in reality. Therefore, the central bank in this paper is modeled as discretionary, yet faced with a constraint, that an average of future inflation over a certain horizon should be kept on or near the preannounced target level. It is natural to add this constraint to the central banker’s optimization problem, since inflation targeting involves one way or another an evaluation of the performance over a certain horizon. So it is argued that the better outcome of inflation targeting does not come from a commitment but from “constrained discretion.” This paper also sheds some light on optimal targeting horizon.     

Nominal GDP Targeting and the Taylor Rule on an Even Playing Field

Some economists advocate nominal GDP targeting as an alternative to the Taylor Rule. These arguments are largely based on the idea that nominal GDP targeting would require less knowledge on the part of policymakers than a traditional Taylor Rule. In particular, a nominal GDP targeting rule would not require real-time knowledge of the output gap. We examine the importance of this claim by amending a standard New Keynesian model to assume that the central bank has imperfect information about the output gap and therefore must forecast the output gap based on previous information. Forecast errors by the central bank can then potentially induce unanticipated changes in the short-term nominal interest rate, distinct from a standard monetary policy shock. We show that forecast errors of the output gap by the Federal Reserve can account for up to 13% of the fluctuations in the output gap. In addition, our simulations imply that a nominal GDP targeting rule would produce lower volatility in both inflation and the output gap in comparison with the Taylor Rule under imperfect information.     

Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans

Using a data set that records banks’ ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find that banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to borrower credit risk, relationship length, collateral, and the provision of business tax returns, but in complex ways. The relation between borrower risk and financial statement requests has an inverted U‐shape; and tax returns can be both substitutes and complements to financial statements, conditional on borrower characteristics and the degree of bank–borrower information asymmetry. Frequent financial reporting is used to monitor collateral, but only for non–real estate loans and only when the collateral is easily accessible to lenders. Collectively, our results provide novel evidence of a fundamental information demand for financial reporting in monitoring small commercial borrowers and a specific channel through which banks fulfill their role as delegated monitors.