Short-horizon incentives and stock price inflation

Do managerial incentive horizons have capital market consequences? We find that they do when short-sale constraints are more binding. Firms experience significant stock price inflation when their CEOs have short horizon incentives. The short-horizon CEOs sell more shares at inflated prices and generate greater abnormal trading profits. The stock price inflation is partly explained by greater earnings surprises and more positive investor reaction to the surprises. To inflate stock prices, short-horizon firms are more likely to employ income-increasing discretionary accruals. Consistent with theoretical predictions, all these effects are attenuated or statistically insignificant when short-sale constraints are less binding.     

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.     

Relationship between inflation and relative price variability in India

The paper attempts to investigate the relationship between relative price variability (RPV) and aggregate inflation rate through parametric and semi-parametric methods (kernel regression method). Monthly data of wholesale price index is used for the period from February 1995 to March 2014 for this purpose. Both the parametric and semi-parametric methods lead us to the non-monotonic relationship between RPV and inflation. An attempt has also been made to determine the optimal inflation rate that would minimize RPV.     

Trade openness and inflation: The role of real and nominal price rigidities

The paper revisits the long-standing question of the impact of trade openness on the inflation–output trade-off by accounting for the effects of product market competition on price flexibility. The study develops a New-Keynesian open-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with non-constant price elasticity of demand and Calvo price setting in which the frequency of price adjustment is endogenously determined. It demonstrates that trade openness has two opposing effects on the sensitivity of inflation to output fluctuations. On the one hand, it raises strategic complementarity in firms' pricing decisions and the degree of real price rigidities, which makes inflation less responsive to changes in real marginal cost. On the other hand, it strengthens firms' incentives to adjust their prices, thereby reducing the degree of nominal price rigidities and increasing the sensitivity of inflation to changes in marginal cost. The study explains the positive relationship between competition and the frequency of price adjustment observed in the data. It also provides new insights into the effects of global economic integration on the Phillips Curve.     

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.     

The reset inflation puzzle and the heterogeneity in price stickiness

New Keynesian models have been criticised on the grounds that they require implausibly large price shocks to explain inflation. Bils et al. (2012) show that, while these shocks are needed to reduce the excessive inflation persistence generated by the models, they give rise to unrealistically volatile reset price inflation. This paper shows that introducing heterogeneity in price stickiness in the models overcomes these criticisms directed at them. The incorporation of heterogeneity in price stickiness reduces the need for large price shocks. With smaller price shocks, the new model comes close to matching the data on reset inflation.     

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 uncertainty based on rounding: New method and application to inflation expectations

The literature on cognition and communication documents that people use round numbers to convey uncertainty. This paper introduces a method of quantifying the uncertainty associated with round responses in pre-existing survey data. I construct micro-level and time series measures of inflation uncertainty since 1978. Inflation uncertainty is countercyclical and correlated with inflation disagreement, volatility, and the Economic Policy Uncertainty index. Inflation uncertainty is lowest among high-income consumers, college graduates, males, and stock market investors. More uncertain consumers are more reluctant to spend on durables, cars, and homes. Round responses are common on many surveys, suggesting numerous applications of this method.     

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.     

Asset price dynamics,inflation and sectoral composition of output: a dependent economy model

This article develops a dependent economy model that focuses on the interactions between inflation and asset price dynamics under a flexible exchange rate and rational expectation. We assume that money wage adjusts instantaneously to clear the labour market. The asset prices are represented by the Tobin’s q and exchange rate. Using this framework, we will examine implications of monetary policy, fiscal policy, tariff liberalization and exogenous capital flows for inflation and asset prices, which in turn determine the allocation of labour and the sectoral composition of output. The effects of different exogenous and policy-induced shocks critically depend on the difference in the speeds of adjustment in commodity price and asset prices and multiple cross effects generated by changes in these prices.     

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。     

Managing price and financial stability objectives in inflation targeting economies in Asia and the Pacific

Many central banks have adopted explicit objectives for financial stability, raising the possibility of trade-offs between price and financial stability objectives. Based on structural vector autoregressions that incorporate both monetary and macroprudential policy shocks for four inflation targeting economies in Asia and the Pacific, we analyse the role of each policy shock in explaining deviations from the other policy’s objective, by applying historical decompositions. The macroprudential measures used in the study affect credit extended to the private sector. We find that there are periods when macroprudential policy shocks have contributed to pushing inflation away from the central bank’s inflation target and when monetary policy shocks have contributed to buoyant credit, suggesting that there have been short-term trade-offs between price and financial stability objectives. However, we also find periods when macroprudential policy shocks helped stabilise inflation and monetary policy shocks contributed to financial stability.     

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.     

National price levels, purchasing power parity, and cointegration: a test of four high inflation economies

The time series properties of exchange rates and wholesale prices from four high inflation countries show some evidence in support of purchasing power parity. Tests for stationarity of real exchange rates and cointegration among price and exchange rate variables are presented for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Israel during the 1970s and 1980s. Error correction models describe the mechanism of adjustment to long-run equilibrium.     

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.