经济租金和物价上涨与通胀的治理

在刚性需求条件下,缺乏供给弹性的商品存在着可观的经济租金,而过量流动性为金融资本竞相追逐经济租金提供了货币基础,这是此轮物价结构性上涨的根源所在。若相关商品供求弹性没有得到有效改善,物价结构性上涨在中长期内将是一种常态,此时单纯的回收流动性等总量调控措施只具有短期性的效果。今后,宏观政策的着眼点应当由以需求管理为主转向以供给管理和需求管理并重,只有通过双管齐下,才能从根本上缓解结构性通胀对宏观经济运行的不利影响。     

Relative price variability,inflation and the allocative efficiency of the price system

This paper develops a theory of the relationship between aggregate and relative price variability based on the inability of people, even in a rational world, to identify permanent changes in relative demands (whether caused by real or by monetary variability) and relative productivities as soon as they occur. The theory implies that the variance of the rate of inflation and the variance of relative price change are positively related. Although expectations are rational and markets always clear, production decisions respond sluggishly to changes in relative prices. Temporary shocks to relative demands cause prolonged changes in the structure of production. Available information is used so as to maximize the efficiency of the price system. However, this efficiency decreases when any of the underlying variances increases. This decrease is more pronounced when the production lag is longer.     

Measuring security price performance

Event studies focus on the impact of particular types of firm-specific events on the prices of the affected firms' securities. In this paper, observed stock return data are employed to examine various methodologies which are used in event studies to measure security price performance. Abnormal performance is introduced into this data. We find that a simple methodology based on the market model performs well under a wide variety of conditions. In some situations, even simpler methods which do not explicitly adjust for marketwide factors or for risk perform no worse than the market model. We also show how misuse of any of the methodologies can result in false inferences about the presence of abnormal performance.     

Unemployment as excess supply of labor: Implications for wage and price inflation

The introduction of both market-clearing wages and nominal rigidities on wage setting can be used to rationalize unemployment as excess supply of labor in the New Keynesian model. As a result, wage inflation dynamics are forward-looking and depend negatively on the rate of unemployment. Moreover, both price inflation and wage inflation evolve as indicated by equations equivalent to those obtained in Erceg et al. (2000), though with different slope coefficients. In an equal-volatility comparison, the model with unemployment conveys less price stickiness and more wage stickiness.     

Trend inflation, wage and price rigidities, and productivity growth

What are the steady-state implications of inflation in a general-equilibrium model with real per capita output growth and staggered nominal price and wage contracts? Surprisingly, a benchmark calibration implies an optimal inflation rate of -1.9 percent. The analysis also shows that trend inflation has important effects on the economy when combined with nominal contracts and real output growth. Steady-state output and welfare losses are quantitatively important even for low values of trend inflation. Further, nominal wage contracting is found to be quantitatively more important than nominal price contracting in generating the results. This conclusion does not arise from price dispersion per se, but from an effect of nominal output growth on the optimal markup of monopolistically competitive labour suppliers. Finally, accounting for productivity growth is found to be important for calculating the welfare costs of inflation. Indeed, the presence of 2 percent productivity growth increases the welfare costs of inflation in the benchmark specification by a factor of four relative to the no-growth case.     

Measuring climate policy stringency: a shadow price approach

To assess the effect of environmental policy on production structures, trade structures, or foreign direct investment, a measure for the stringency of policy is necessary. Measures typically used in empirical studies share several disadvantages: they are not available on a sectoral basis to reflect concerns of industry competitiveness; they are not available for a wide range of countries to allow for international comparisons; or they are not broad enough to reflect the multidimensionality of environmental policy. This paper develops a thorough, internationally comparable, sector-specific measure of multidimensional climate policy stringency where a shadow price approach serves as a basis. The approach is applied to climate policy by determining sector-specific emission-relevant energy costs on the basis of the sectors’ usage of emission-relevant energy carriers and the carriers’ respective prices. The resulting shadow price estimates are heterogeneous and can be applied in future research to test for carbon leakage and pollution havens.     

Measuring price discovery: The variance ratio, the R, and the weighted price contribution

We analyze the statistical properties of three price discovery measures: The variance ratio, the weighted price contribution (WPC), and the R² of unbiasedness regressions. We find that, if the price process is a driftless martingale, only the WPC is an unbiased estimator for the return variance explained during a time interval. For autocorrelated processes with a drift, only the R² of the unbiasedness regression is consistent, but it is biased for small samples.     

当前物价运行及其未来发展趋势

2011年8月以来,CPI同比涨幅持续回落,全年CPI上涨5．4％。从2012年物价走势看,受政策滞后效应和上年同期基数效应影响,上半年物价有望延续回落趋势,而随着政策微调和宏观经济回升,下半年物价重拾升势的可能性较大。预计2012年全年CPI涨幅为3．6％左右。综合考虑我国工业化发展阶段、刘易斯拐点与资源品价格市场化改革等因素来看,中长期内物价仍存在上涨压力。     

Monetary union, price level convergence, and inflation: How close is Europe to the USA?

The pattern of price dispersion across European and US cities from 1990 to 2004 is documented. There is a striking decline in dispersion for traded goods prices in Europe, most of which took place prior to the launch of the euro. Dispersion in the euro area is now quite close to that of the USA. This evidence provides useful facts for future work assessing the importance of various developments in Europe: harmonization of tax rates, convergence of incomes and labor costs, liberalization of trade and factor markets, and increased coherence of monetary policy.     

Measuring the impact of sales on earnings and equity price

In this paper we examine how sales affect earnings and in turn the stock price using a model in which sales contribute to earnings by a fixed sales margin rate and the stock price responds more sensitively to sales-induced earnings than to non-sales-induced earnings. We report that the regression coefficient of the sales margin (2.54) is about three times the earnings response coefficient (0.85) for the full sample and can be as high as 19 times the earnings response coefficient for an industry (i.e., 11.95 vs. 0.62 for restaurants). We contribute to the literature by identifying and documenting factors that make separating out the sources of earnings more important in equity pricing.

Social Protection in a Crisis: Argentina's Plan Jefes y Jefas

The article assesses the impact of Argentina’s main socialpolicy response to the severe economic crisis of 2002. The programwas intended to provide direct income support for families withdependents and whose head had become unemployed because of thecrisis. Counterfactual comparisons are based on a matched subsetof applicants not yet receiving program assistance. Panel dataspanning the crisis are also used. The program reduced aggregateunemployment, though it attracted as many people into the workforcefrom inactivity as it did people who otherwise would have beenunemployed. Although there was substantial leakage to formallyineligible families and incomplete coverage of those who wereeligible, the program did partially compensate many losers fromthe crisis and reduced extreme poverty.     

Stock returns and inflation revisited: An evaluation of the inflation illusion hypothesis

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the stock return–inflation relation. The Modigliani and Cohn’s inflation illusion hypothesis has received renewed attention. Another hypothesis is the two-regime hypothesis. We reexamine these hypotheses using long sample data of the US and international data. We find that the inflation illusion hypothesis can explain the post-war negative stock return–inflation relation, but it is not compatible with the pre-war positive relation. Using a structural VAR identification method, we show that there are two regimes with positive and negative stock return–inflation relations not only in each period of the US but also in every developed country we consider. This seems inconsistent with the inflation illusion hypothesis that predicts only a negative relation.     

Tight money and inflation: Further Results

The Sargent-Wallace results on inflationary effects of monetary restraint are considered in a Sidrauski money growth model when the utility function is unrestricted except for separability. Temporary monetary tightening will eventually lead to higher inflation when the deficit is fixed only if the elasticity of money demand with respect to the money growth rate is less than unity. It is also shown that for inflation to rise immediately further requires the elasticity with respect to the nominal interest rate to be no less than unity.     

Direct price controls as a source of instability in the interest rate/inflation rate relationship

We hypothesize that an efficient capital market is more concerned with effective inflation rates (which investors experience) than ‘official’ ones (which econometricians observe), and that direct consumer goods price controls are likely to result in disparity between the two. Consequently, direct price controls are also likely to affect the interest/measured inflation rate relationship. We ropose a dummy variable approach which enables us to explore empirically the effects of such controls on the interest/inflation rate relationship in the context of Dwyer's (1981) model. Using Euro rates and inflation rates of the respective countries we explore the impact of the control programmes imposed in the 1970's by governments of the united States, Canada and France. France.     

Deficits,money and inflation: Comment

This paper re-examines the fiscal policy-money growth linkage analysed by Hamburger-Zwick (1981) in this Journal. Newly revised national income accounts data are employed. Unlike Hamburger-Zwick we do not find any strong evidence of a positive Federal budget deficit-money growth relationship over the period 1961–1974. When the estimation period is extended to 1976 and then to 1978, the results suggest no relationship between deficits and money growth.     

Indexing and inflation

Much of the opposition to indexation as a means of adapting to ongoing inflation arises from the view that indexation is itself inflationary. This paper examines the basic for that view in a simple macroeconomic model in which budget deficits are in part financed through the printing of money. It is shown that all aspects of indexing — wage indexation, bond indexation, and tax indexation — tend to increase the impact on the price level of any inflationary shock. However, this association between indexation and inflation is in large part a consequence of the monetary and fiscal policies being followed by the government. Evidence from a cross-section of forty countries on the effects of indexation on the inflationary impact of the oil price shock of 1973–1974 suggests that indexation did not in general increase the inflationary impact of the oil shock. The evidence is, further, consistent with the view that the absence of an excess inflationary effect of indexation is a result of the countries with substantial indexation not having accommodated the oil price shock as much as other countries.     

Nationalised industries: Accounting for inflation

The Secretary of State wants local authorities to cut both manpower and spending. But it is local authority budget makers who face the harsh choices posed by cash limits on the one hand and national wage settlements on the other. That they have come much closer in respect of manpower than spending to what the Secretary of State wants, reflects the trade‐offs facing them in the labour market. New information reveals how brutally these bear on some sections of the workforce rather than others, and how they affect costs both to authorities and to ratepayers.