Time-Varying Response of Monetary Policy to Macroeconomic Conditions

We reject the hypothesis that the Federal Reserve's response to the macroeconomy over the period of 1953-1994 can be accurately represented with a fixed-parameter discrete choice model. Thus, we model the Fed's time-varying response with a nonlinear Kalman filter. The estimated time paths of the reaction function coefficients suggest that the Fed has responded countercyclically to movements in the price level except for the middle 1970s when it accommodated inflation. The Fed has generally responded countercyclically to unemployment and output during recessions. However, it has not maintained a countercyclical policy during nonrecessionary times until the 1980s.     

Some considerations on a class of macro-economic production functions

Summary It is demonstrated that dimensional analysis can be a tool in investigating the properties of a production function. First, the economic implications of the CES Function are shown. Secondly, endorsing the statements made by the SMAC Group that the Leontief and the Cobb and Douglas types of the production function arise as limiting cases of the CES production function, detailed proofs of these statements are given that maintain the dimensional homogeneity in proceeding to the limits. It is shown that certain dimensional constants of the CES production function become dimensionless entities in the limit.Finally, an expression for the curvature of the isoquants is derived. A dimensionally homogeneous relation is presented between the elasticity of substitution, the slope, the curvature and the factor endowments. This relation can be used to derive a general Variable Elasticity of Substitution production function.1970-71 Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, F.S.U. (Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.A.).The authors thank Professor Th. van de Klundert, Dr. H. de Haan and Dr. S. K. Kuipers for their useful comments on the first draft of this paper.     

House prices, money, credit, and the macroeconomy

This paper assesses the links between money, credit, house prices,and economic activity in industrialized countries over the lastthree decades. The analysis is based on a fixed-effects panelvector autoregression, estimated using quarterly data for 17industrialized countries spanning the period 1970–2006.The main results of the analysis are the following. (i) Thereis evidence of a significant multidirectional link between houseprices, monetary variables, and the macroeconomy. (ii) The linkbetween house prices and monetary variables is found to be strongerover a more recent sub-sample from 1985 to 2006. (iii) The effectsof shocks to money and credit are found to be stronger whenhouse prices are booming.     

Random prices and estimation of the elasticity of substitution

Summary We have examined the profit-maximizing specification for estimating the elasticity of substitution from the CES production function under conditions of random output prices. The results added further support to the suggestion that a cost-minimizing specification is preferable. But the main purpose of the paper was to offer a sample of one instance where the recent developments in the uncertainty literature cause econometric difficulties. Much further study needs to be done on other estimation problems. After all, the purpose of estimation is to shed light on the values of “real world” parameters and the real world is filled with uncertainty to one degree or another.     

上海市三大产业CES生产函数弹性估计

替代参数的合理估计是应用CES生产函数进行经济活动分析首要前提。而现有研究现有关于上海市三大产业生产函数替代参数的估计,使得后续研究缺乏必要的依据。本文以各统计年鉴中上海经济统计数据为基础,结合CES生产函数一阶优化条件式中的经济变量进行数据的处理,采用贝叶斯方法估计出CES生产函数假设下的上海市三大产业的替代弹性,从而为相关研究提供了可行的方法和可信的参数。     

BAYESIAN METHODS OF FORECASTING INVENTORY INVESTMENT

This paper develops a Bayesian Vector Error Correction Model (BVECM) for forecasting inventory investment. The model is estimated using South African quarterly data on actual sales, production, unfilled orders, price level and interest rate, for the period 1978 to 2000. The out-of-sample-forecast accuracy obtained from the BVECM over the forecasting horizon of 2001:1 to 2003:4, is compared with those generated from the classical variant of the Vector Autoregresssive (VAR) model and the VECM, the Bayesian VAR, and the recently developed ECM by Smith et al. , for the South African economy. The BVECM with the most-tight prior outperforms all the other models, except for a relatively tight BVAR which also correctly predicts the direction of change of inventory investment over the period of 2004:1 to 2006:3.     

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.     

Sectoral elasticities of substitution between labour and capital in venezuelan manufacturing: A cross-sectional micro analysis

This paper presents estimates of the elasticities of substitution between capital and labour for 19 Venezuelan manufacturing industries. The elasticities are estimated using micro data collected from the 1970 Venezuelan Census of Manufacturing. Estimates of these elasticities are generally not significantly different from unity. This suggests that the traditional view of limited substitution possibilities in manufacturing sectors of less developed countries does not apply in the Venezuelan case. Moreover, the Cobb-Douglas functional specification may be appropriate for estimating industrial production functions. In addition, the ‘market’ position in the current ‘structuralist versus market’ controversy concerning the labour absorption problem plaguing LDCs is supported.     

Specification and estimation of the unemployment-vacancy curve in the period 1956–1979

Summary The aim of this article is to improve the specification of theUV curve to get satisfactory statistical results for the whole post war period up to 1979. This is done by including a dummy structure and the utilisation rate of production capacity. Results are presented for macro-data, data for men and women separately also at a regional level. Moreover, indicators were developed to represent some causes of the increase in unemployment due to market imperfections for the 1970–1979 period. These indicators were used as explanatory variables in a regression to explain the increase of unemployment due to market imperfections in the 1970–1979 period. Ministry of Economic Affairs (Directorate for General Ecomomic Policy The author is indebted to Professor S.K. Kuipers for his helpful remarks. This article has been written à titre personnel.     

The increasing returns to scale CES production function and the law of diminishing marginal returns

This article analyzes the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function when there are increasing returns to scale and the elasticity of substitution exceeds 1, which I refer to as the explosive case of the CES. For this explosive case of the CES, the article demonstrates a new and surprising result: marginal and average products of labor and capital approach infinity as either labor or capital approach infinity. Obviously, in this explosive case of the CES, the law of diminishing marginal returns is eventually violated in a dramatic way. Some implications of this result for growth theory are discussed. The article concludes by deriving, for this explosive case of the CES, lower and upper bounds for the capital labor ratio which are consistent with the law of diminishing marginal returns.     

Sectoral border effects and the geographic concentration of production

The object of this paper is to study the relationship between the border effect and the geographic concentration of production. We explain this relationship through the home market effect and test the robustness of this explanation by using an analysis that considers the European single market. A sectoral gravity equation is estimated with different econometric estimators; in particular, we discuss a recently suggested estimator for log-linear CES models. Overall, our findings suggest a steady relationship between the border effect and the concentration of production. Furthermore, the analysis of concentration through a synthetic index provides us with valuable insights into the structure of the European industry.     

THE IMPLICATIONS OF SOUTH AFRICAN ECONOMIC GROWTH FOR THE REST OF AFRICA

This paper measures the extent to which South African economic growth is an engine of growth in sub‐Saharan Africa. Results based on panel data estimation for 47 African countries over four decades suggest that South African growth has a substantial positive impact on growth in the rest of Africa, even after controlling for other growth determinants. The estimates are robust to the effects of global and regional shocks, changes in model specification, and sample period.     

THE SOUTH AFRICAN PHILLIPS CURVE: HOW APPLICABLE IS THE GORDON MODEL?

Is there a Phillips curve relationship present in South Africa and if so, what form does it take? Traditionally the method to establish whether or not there is a relationship between the output gap and the change in inflation is merely to regress the latter on the former. This yields the well‐known augmented Phillips curve. However, Gordon has argued that this specification of the Phillips curve produces biased results. Instead, he puts forward and estimates successfully for several industrialised countries his so‐called triangular model that tests for hysteresis and inertia in the behaviour of inflation, as well as the impact on inflation of changes in the output level. This paper considers whether or not Gordon's triangle model is applicable to South Africa, i.e. are hysteresis and inertia present in South Africa? In addition, in an attempt to find a better estimation of the output gap, the paper also experiments with alternative ways to estimate the long‐run output level, including the standard HP‐filter, as well as a production function approach.     

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.     

THE QUALITY OF CURRENT APPROXIMATIONS TO THE MEASUREMENT OF COMPENSATION COSTS

THE measurement of compensating variation, when data is givenon the price and income elasticity of a good, as well as itsbudget share, is examined here. The exact measure is calculatedwhen autility function is specified and the sensitivity of themeasure to the specification is reported. Various approximationsthat do not require knowledge of the utility function are alsotried and compared. Some conclusions are offered as to the relativeaccuracies of various procedures.     

PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT OF THE MODERN VARIETIES OF RICE IN INDIA

The present paper analyzed the long‐term yield growth and total factor productivity (TFP) growth by applying Tornqvist‐Theil index method for two periods, namely, 1970–85 (early Green Revolution) and 1986–2000 (late Green Revolution), for major rice‐growing states of India. The yield data shows an increasing long‐term growth trend throughout the Green Revolution period in irrigated states where modern variety (MV) adoption was nearly complete. However, yield advances started to slow down for intensive irrigated rice systems in the 1990s, whereas rainfed ecosystems have increased during the late Green Revolution period. The domestic spillovers of MV from irrigated to rainfed states is likely to be one of the contributing factors to increased TFP growth in ranifed areas after the 1980s. This implies that the MV of rice developed for irrigated ecosystems have also benefited substantially the rainfed‐dominant eastern Indian states in the long run where partial irrigation facilities such as shallow tube wells were created after the mid‐1980s.     

Economic Fluctuations in the U.S. and Euro Area: Quantifying the Contribution of Technical Change

This article aims at quantifying the contribution of technical change to cyclical fluctuations in the U.S. and euro area. We distinguish technical progress in labor-augmenting and capital-augmenting change. To this end, we derive and estimate a New Keynesian DSGE model embodying a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function for both areas. Our main findings are: (i) capital-augmenting progress is the main source of technical change volatility; (ii) labor-augmenting shocks give a negligible contribution to the variance of output; (iii) technical change (of both types) explains more economic fluctuations in the U.S. than in the euro area; and (iv) historical decomposition of GDP growth over our sample period (1980–2008) shows that capital-augmenting progress is one of the key drivers of the business cycle.     

NEW ESTIMATES OF TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN INDONESIAN MANUFACTURING

This paper estimates new elasticities of value added with respect to labour and capital in Indonesian manufacturing, controlling for the simultaneity problem that potentially exists between the choice of input levels and a productivity shock (such as an increase in productivity due to new production processes), for plant exit, and for quasi-constant unobservable plant characteristics. It does so by applying the Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) production function estimator to plant-level value added, fixed assets, labour, and electricity consumption data over the period 1988–95. This methodology allows us to revisit the previously used growth accounting based elasticities, and thereby improves total factor productivity (TFP) estimates. The results show that, in the period under study, aggregate TFP growth in Indonesian manufacturing was higher than had previously been estimated.     

论中国可接受的产出缺口区间与宏观经济走势

2008年中国经济增长步伐明显放缓,中国经济已步入收缩期。在全球金融动荡的背景下,分析中国当前的宏观经济形势与近期走势、及时调整经济政策具有重要的现实意义。文章构建状态空间模型进行Kalman滤波,估算我国1978—2008年的潜在产出与产出缺口,分析我国经济长期增长趋势、可接受的产出缺口区间与可接受的经济增长区间,据此对2009年经济走势进行预测并提出相应的政策建议。     

SOURCES OF INCOME DIFFERENCES ACROSS CHINESE PROVINCES DURING THE REFORM PERIOD: A DEVELOPMENT ACCOUNTING EXERCISE

The present paper performs a development accounting analysis to investigate the sources of China's interprovincial income inequality over the period 1982–2005. We estimate a Cobb–Douglas aggregate production function with various specifications. Using the estimated parameters, we conduct a development accounting analysis as well as a variance decomposition. Our results suggest that differences in physical capital intensity and in total factor productivity are both important sources of cross‐province income differences, each accounting for roughly half of the variation in income levels. Differences in human capital explain only a small amount of income differences across provinces. The results are robust to whether or not the assumption of constant returns to scale is imposed. The interaction between factor accumulation and total factor productivity is also discussed.