How efficiently do U.S. cities manage roadway congestion?

We estimate efficiency and TFP growth for two measures of congestion and two measures of the monetary value of congestion for the largest 88 contiguous cities in the U.S. over the period 1982–2007. Using stochastic frontier analysis we find that the efficiency scores for congestion and the associated ranking of cities is sensitive to the measure of congestion. In contrast, the efficiency scores and rankings are robust for the two measures of the monetary value of congestion. Most importantly, for the most valid measure of congestion and both measures of the monetary value of congestion, we find that average TFP growth over the study period is characterized by an upward trend. This is an encouraging sign even though in all three cases growth is only zero or slightly less than zero at the end of the study period. We therefore conclude that policies which have been used towards the end of the study period such as providing incentives to carpool and encouraging employers to offer flexi-time and telecommuting arrangements appear to have been effective and should be implemented more widely.     

Monetary Targets and the World Economy

The dominant obsessions to watchers of the world economy at the moment are the weakness of the US dollar and the fear that the world economy is stagnating. In this ‘Briefing Paper’ we seek to put both events into the same intellectual framework, and to show that they are the consequence of monetary policies which are not logically related to each other, nor to a common objective of bringing world inflation steadily down to an acceptable level. Specifically, the US - which for reasons outlined below can warrant monetary growth rather below the world average if it is to preserve some dollar stability - is showing an above average outturn in its monetary aggregates. Germany and Japan, which can accommodate increases well above the average, are in fact adopting monetary targets which are leading to exchange rate appreciation, arid a reduction in both countries' expectations for real growth. The dangers for the world economy in this situation are very serious, particularly at a time when further dollar devaluation could be risky both from the viewpoint of US inflation wide the dollar's role as the key reserve asset. It could lead at worst to US protectionism and a monetaryled recession, rein forcing the slow growth rates already being widely predicted in 1978 for many other industrial countries. However, we show in this ‘Briefing Paper’ that this is not a necessity outcome of the present situation, given three vital perceptions. The first, required by statesmen as much as by technicians. is that the recent stagnation in European & Japanese output and exchange rate instability are essentially a monetary phenomenon, requiring essentially monetary (rather than fiscal) remedies. The second is acceptance of the need and practicability of some monetary consignation, based on reasonably common objectives among the major countries regarding inflation, bands for exchange rate movement and red rates of growth. the third, at the most practical level, is agreement on the actual monetary numbers which broadly reconcile these objectives and also take account of the very different ‘unwanted’ rates of monetary growth between countries which reflect their different underlying conditions of output, productivity and demand for money. It is the (ambitious) aim of this ‘Briefing Paper’ to substantiate these perceptions and to provide the numbers mound which a consideration of monetary policies can be framed. The numbers are necessarily based on trends established over a number of years and need to be supplemented by detailed understanding of each country's financial status But the monetary targets provided do, in our judgement, embody trade-offs between inflation, growth and exchange rate movements which should broadly satisfy national ambitions, and reset the world economy on a worthwhile growth path during 1978 or 1979.     

The Case for Britain Joining the EMS

Nigel Healey, of Leeds Polytechnic, argues that Britain should join the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System. He claims that the EMS would provide an anchor for economic policy in the absence of effective targets for monetary growth.     

通货膨胀背景下的中国经济增长

当前我国物价水平仍然较高,与改革开放以来的前几次通货膨胀有所类似.本次通货膨胀的原因也可归结为中国传统增长模式中常出现的“两难困境”,即长期以来,中国经济增长过度依赖于政府投资,银行信贷与货币的发放难以受到控制,经济高增长的同时始终存在着高通货膨胀的风险,而高通货膨胀所带来的企业生产成本的上升反过来又挤压企业经营利润,从而降低经济增长率.可以预计的是,在货币政策作用空间有限的背景下,此次通货膨胀的压力将持续一段时间.能否处理好总量和结构、抑制通货膨胀和促进经济增长的关系,关键取决于货币政策与财政政策的有机配合.     

定向降准对农业上市公司业绩增长的驱动机制研究

在总量性货币政策传导机制理论的基础上,探究定向降准货币政策驱动农业企业业绩增长的微观机理,并采用倍差法检验定向降准货币政策对农业上市公司与非农业上市公司业绩增长的影响效果差异,结果表明：相对于非农业上市公司而言,定向降准货币政策对农业上市公司业绩增长的驱动效应更加显著;定向降准货币政策对高融资约束农业上市公司业绩增长的驱动作用强于非农业上市公司,而对于低融资约束农业上市公司与低融资约束非农业上市公司业绩的驱动效应没有显著差异;定向降准货币政策对高风险农业上市公司业绩的驱动作用与高风险非农业上市公司相比有显著的差异,而定向降准货币政策对于低风险农业上市公司业绩增长的驱动作用机制并不显著。     

WORLDOUTLOOK

German monetary unification is expected to result in a major expansion in autonomous demand from East Germany. In economic terms this is equivalent to a fiscal shock to West Germany broadly similar to that experienced in the US in the early years of Mr. Reagan's Presidency. Led by the Bundes bank, the monetary authorities' response is again likely to be a tightening of policy, leading to several years of high real interest rates. Overall, the combined monetary-fiscal shock should strengthen growth with only moderate increases in inflation. Germany is expected to grow very rapidly in the -per cent range for several years, with only a slight upturn in inflation. Japan, after a pause over the next year, should be able to return to its under lying growth path fairly quickly. However the US situation is more precarious. FUN adjustment from the previous Reagan shock has not yet taken place, leaving the US vulnerably dependent on increasingly scarce imported capital. In the absence of a significant *peace dividend: the result is the necessity of continued tight policy and sluggish growth in the American economy. US growth stays around 2 per cent, but this allows a substantial reduction in the current account deficit.     

WORLD OUTLOOK

After six years of steadily rising OECD output, fears of a significant rise in world inflation are now increasing. In the last year there has been a slight pick-up in inflation with producer prices up nearly d per cent. But prompt action by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates before the presidential election appears to have damped inflationary expectations in the US and has given Japan and Germany an opportunity to tighten monetary policy without causing major currency fluctuations. It is also apparent that the other possible source of world inflation, commodity prices, is not a problem. OPEC over-production has ensured that the oil price remains weak and other commodity prices appear to have stopped rising after a brief acceleration at the beginning of the year. Nevertheless the major imbalances in world trade are declining only slowly and without a change in fiscal policy in the major economies it is difficult to believe that minor changes in monetary policy will be sufficient if the process of adjustment begins to falter. Despite these risks, we take a sanguine view of world prospects. Tighter monetary policy should effect a slowdown in world growth next year (already indicated by recent developments, particularly in the US) and this should be sufficient to control inflation which we expect to peak at just under 5 per cent at the beginning of next year. From 1990 onwards we see steady growth accompanied by low inflation.     

Will Inflation Follow Rapid Monetary Growth?

Do rapid rates of monetary growth imply an acceleration in inflation? Gordon Pepper, an adviser and director of Midland Montagu, argues that current rates of monetary growth are too rapid.     

Money and economic development: A long-run perspective

This article explores the association between money and long-run economic growth in a panel of 27 countries over 200 years. It presents evidence of a complementarity between freedom and decentralisation of the monetary system in terms of their contribution to growth in GDP per capita. The significant and positive association between freedom and economic growth is found to be significantly stronger in a decentralised (market-based) than in a centralised (government-controlled) monetary system. For the average level of freedom across the 27 countries today, shifting from a centralised to a decentralised monetary system is predicted to almost double growth rates.     

信贷渠道在我国货币政策传导中的现状

根据货币政策传导理论,银行信贷渠道和资产负债表渠道是货币政策信贷传导的主要方式。从2003年开始,我国中央银行连续采取紧缩性的货币政策。文中介绍了此轮货币政策的信贷传导现状,指出现阶段我国货币政策的信贷传导仍然存在梗阻,应加以疏通。     

The Right Road to Monetary Union

How should European monetary coordination develop? John Chown and Geoffrey Wood argue that the European central banks should be forced to compete in providing the best monetary services.     

Economic Viewpoint Bringing Counter-Inflation Policy Back on Course

There is no doubt that the monetary limit for the first year of the Government's Medium-Term Financial Strategy will be grossly exceeded, The reported figure for sterling M3 is likely to show a growth of 16 per cent to 18 per cent for the financial year compared with the upper limit of 11 per cent. This is a setback for the government's counter-inflationary policy but not a disaster. The likely overshoot can be largely (but not completely) explained by the removal of the Bank of England's Supplementary Special Deposits Scheme (the corset). Its significance is best understood if we re-examine monetary history since June 1978. (when the corset was imposed). A reasonable interpretation is that the money supply has effectively been growing at an annual rate of 15 to 16 per cent for the past three years (Details are shown in Table 4 on p. 12.) In retrospect it can be said that last year's monetary policy (but not that of the previous two years) was defensible in the light of the shock to prices caused by the oil price rise and the increase in VAT. We did in fact argue in Economic Outlook of June/July 1979 (“Price Shocks and the Economy”) that if the UK'S past record of monetary control had been better we would advocate a relaxation of monetary policy to accommodate these shocks. In the event monetary policy was relaxed (albeit unintentionally) and the squeeze on the real money supply was less severe than appeared at the time. However, there must be a steady reduction in monetary growth from now onwards if the government is to maintain its current progress in reducing inflation. We believe that such a policy is feasible and will be successful However the government must stick to the fiscal policy set out in the Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS). Our preliminary estimates suggest that, if Current public expenditure plans are fulfilled, there may be little or no scope for a reduction in personal taxation in 1981-82. Further ahead, the danger point, on past experience, will be 1983 when the economy should be on a strong path of recovery and inflation should be well below current rates. That is the point at which upward pressures on the money supply are likely to reappear and will have to be resisted     

Economic Viewpoint: Does broad money matter?

Last October the Chancellor of the Exchequer suspended the target for the broad money supply (£M3). It was reinstated in this year's Budget with a range of 11 to 15 per cent. Its growth is currently exceeding even that apparently generous target. (On the terms of the original Medium-Term Financial Strategy in 1980, the growth should have been cut to 5 to 9 per cent by 1983–4.) Does this rapid growth of £M3 matter? Does it raise the threat of higher inflation some time in the future, or can the government now readily abandon £M3 completely and concentrate instead on some other measure of the money supply – or indeed abandon monetary targeting altogether? The relevance of £M 3 as an intermediate target depends on whether there is a stable demand for it. We report econometric evidence which suggests that there is a stable demand for £M3, which depends, among other things, on the rate of inflation. We believe that the unexpectedly rapid growth of the money supply since 1981 partly reflects an adjustment of desired money balances to lower inflation. But once this process of adjustment is complete, monetary growth must be brought to far lower levels. We conclude that the government should continue to use £M3 as an intermediate target, supported, as at present, by a narrow measure.     

Adaptive learning and monetary exchange

This paper investigates three classic questions in monetary theory: How can an intrinsically worthless asset, such as fiat money, maintain value as a medium of exchange? What are the short-run and long-run effects of a change in the money supply? What is the social cost of inflation? I answer these questions using a microfounded model of monetary exchange that replaces the rational expectations assumption with an adaptive learning rule. First, I show that monetary exchange is a robust arrangement in the sense that agents are able to learn the stationary monetary equilibrium while the non-monetary equilibrium is unstable under learning. Second, an unanticipated monetary injection has real effects in the short-run because learning the value of money takes time. In the long run, agents successfully learn the value of money, hence money is neutral. Third, under a constant money growth policy, an increase in the growth rate of money increases output in the short-run producing a short-run Phillips curve. A ten percent increase in the money growth rate has a social cost of 0.41 percent of output per year. Alternatively, a ten percent decrease in the money growth rate has a social benefit of 0.37 percent of output per year.     

提升经济性薪酬心理价值的途径探析

提高经济性薪酬激励效果的关键在于提升其对员工的心理价值。应针对员工偏好,提高员工对经济性薪酬的效价判断,运用适当的组织分配程序和形式,赋予经济性薪酬特定的象征价值,放大员工对经济性薪酬的整体感知价值。     

The Conduct of Monetary Policy Without Monetary Aggregates

A central dilemma for the monetary authorities is how to determine monetary policy. The increasing unreliability of monetary aggregates has led over the past few years to less concern for monetary targeting, both in the UK and elsewhere, and a greater influence for the exchange rate on monetary policy. But in the UK, most recently, there has been a move away from setting monetary policy in relation to the exchange rate and external considerations in favour of setting monetary policy in relation to domestic demand. Not surprisingly, this shift has occurred at a time of rising concern about domestic overheating. It illustrates the dilemma of whether monetary policy should be driven by domestic demand considerations or by external, exchange rate considerations. This dilemma is not just confined to the UK for it is a real source of conflict underlying the Louvre Accord and its successors that seek to determine G7 exchange rates in a cooperative manner. In what follows, we argue that exchange rate developments should have an appreciable influence on monetary policy, since this is helpful in attaining stable inflation. But we also suggest that this influence should not go too far, since this stability of inflation may be at the expense of stability of domestic demand and output. Targeting of exchange rates within narrow bands is unlikely to be desirable, unless fiscal policy can be used more flexibly to stabilize domestic demand. This suggests that, in the period up to the spring, the use of monetary policy to hold the £/JDM exchange rate within narrow limits may have been overdone. More seriously, international exchange rate agreements among the G7 countries are likely to founder under adverse market pressures, unless current imbalances in fiscal policy are adjusted. In the absence of greater flexibility in fiscal policy, policy makers will have to trade off domestic and exchange rate considerations in determining monetary policy. An important outstanding issue that needs further consideration is what indicators should be used for monetary policy, in a world in which monetary aggregates provide unreliable signals.     

Financial Depth and the Asymmetric Impact of Monetary Policy

This paper investigates the importance of financial depth in evaluating the asymmetric impact of monetary policy on real output over the course of the US business cycle. We show that monetary policy has a significant impact on output growth during recessions. We also show that financial deepening plays an important role by dampening the effects of monetary policy shocks in recessions. The results are robust to the use of alternative financial depth and monetary policy shock measures as well as to two different sample periods.     

利率期限结构、商业银行投资组合与宏观经济波动——基于DSGE的分析框架

将包含同业业务的商业银行投资组合、利润和利率期限结构的局部均衡模型嵌入以家庭、资本投资者、商业银行、中间厂商和最终厂商为经济主体的DSGE模型中,分析商业银行风险错配、货币政策工具和经济增长对利率期限结构的影响。结果表明:经济增长冲击和商业银行的风险错配冲击对我国利率期限结构的影响最大,其次是数量型货币政策和价格型货币政策冲击。     

How better monetary statistics could have signaled the financial crisis

This paper explores the disconnect of Federal Reserve data from index number theory. A consequence could have been the decreased-systemic-risk misperceptions that contributed to excess risk-taking prior to the housing bust. We find that most recessions in the past 50 years were preceded by more contractionary monetary policy than indicated by simple-sum monetary data. Divisia monetary aggregate growth rates were generally lower than simple-sum aggregate growth rates in the period preceding the Great Moderation, and higher since the mid 1980s. Monetary policy was more contractionary than likely intended before the 2001 recession and more expansionary than likely intended during the subsequent recovery.     

An investment‐led expansion is no pipe dream

• Contrary to some perceptions, the UK's economic recovery has not been a disproportionately consumer‐led one. In fact, business investment has punched well above its weight in supporting growth. And the conditions look good for this outsized contribution to continue.
• Consequently, we think that the threat of ‘secular stagnation’, reflecting a lack of appetite to spend on the part of firms, is one that the UK should avoid. Moreover, strong investment growth should have desirable by‐products in the form of more accommodative monetary and fiscal policy.