基础设施投资的经济增长效应

基础设施总投资、交通运输仓储和邮电通信投资以及电力、煤气及水生产与供应投资对产出具有较大、持久的正影响,时滞也相对较短;电力、煤气及水生产与供应投资对产出的正影响更大,并且对交通运输仓储和邮电通信投资也具有较大的正影响。我国基础设施投资效应的这些重要特征,对于我国宏观经济政策的制定、实施时机和基础设施投资领域的选择都具有重要意义。     

Long memory,economic policy uncertainty and forecasting US inflation: a Bayesian VARFIMA approach

We compare inflation forecasts of a vector autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (VARFIMA) model against standard forecasting models. U.S. inflation forecasts improve when controlling for persistence and economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Importantly, the VARFIMA model, comprising of inflation and EPU, outperforms commonly used inflation forecast models.     

经济政策不确定性、金融摩擦与宏观经济

基于Baker的经济政策不确定性指数和平滑转移向量自回归模型,分析了经济政策不确定性对宏观经济的影响及其传导机制。研究表明:经济政策不确定性的冲击通过实物期权机制对投资和产出造成短期的负面影响,加大了宏观经济的波动性;金融摩擦使经济政策不确定性冲击对宏观经济的影响具有非对称性;金融摩擦的程度以外部融资溢价水平来衡量,在外部融资溢价水平"高"的情况下,经济政策不确定性的冲击对宏观经济的不良影响更大。     

Does economic policy uncertainty matter for commodity market in China? Evidence from quantile regression

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on China’s agricultural and metal commodity futures returns across quantiles. We address this issue using the panel quantile regression approach, which allows for a more complete analysis of various conditions in the commodity market (i.e. bearish, normal, and bullish markets). Our empirical results reveal that domestic EPU shocks have a significantly negative effect on agricultural futures returns in bearish markets and a significantly positive effect on metal futures returns in bullish markets. The impacts of both domestic and U.S. EPU shocks on commodity markets are heterogeneous across quantiles and are sector specific. Additionally, by isolating positive and negative EPU shocks, the regression and test results indicate an asymmetric response of commodity futures prices in bullish markets. Moreover, our findings indicate that the metal futures market has a higher financialisation level than the agricultural futures market. The findings can be utilized by policymakers and investors.     

Do sunspot numbers cause global temperatures? Evidence from a frequency domain causality test

This article applies the causality test in the frequency domain, developed by Breitung and Candelon (2006), to analyse whether sunspot numbers (used as a partial approximation to solar irradiance) cause global temperatures, using monthly data covering the time period 1880:1–2013:9. While standard time domain Granger causality test fails to reject the null hypothesis that sunspot numbers do not cause global temperatures for both full and sub-samples (identified based on tests of structural breaks), the frequency domain causality test detects predictability for both the full-sample and the last sub-sample at short (2–2.6 months) and long (10.3 months and above) cycle lengths, respectively. Our results highlight the importance of analysing causality using the frequency domain test, which, unlike the time domain Granger causality test, allows us to decompose causality by different time horizons, and hence, could detect predictability at certain cycle lengths even when the time domain causality test might fail to pick up any causality. Further, given the widespread discussion in the literature, those results for the full-sample causality, irrespective of whether it is in time or frequency domains, cannot be relied upon when there are structural breaks present, and one needs to draw inference regarding causality from the sub-samples, we can conclude that there has been an emergence of causality running from sunspot numbers to global temperatures only recently at cycle length of 10.3 months and above.     

从过度投资到产能过剩:理论与经验证据

过度投资与产能过剩是长期困扰中国经济发展的严峻问题,然而现有研究往往笼统地将二者视为一体。实际中,过度投资与产能过剩分别指向企业投资生产过程中的不同决策阶段,前者与需先行做出的长期投资决策有关,而后者则是后发的即期生产决策的结果。通过引入一个包含投资和生产两阶段的动态实物期权模型,尝试性地刻画从过度投资到产能过剩的形成机制,以及经济与政策这两种异质不确定性对这一形成机制的影响,进一步基于2003-2018年中国企业的微观数据进行了实证检验。理论与实证结果表明:(1)尽管产能过剩总是源自前期投资的过度扩张,但并不是所有的过度投资最终都会导致产能过剩;(2)不确定性是导致过度投资与产能过剩的重要因素,但过度投资更多地源于政策不确定性,而产能过剩则主要源于经济不确定性;(3)不确定性对产能过剩的影响要强于对过度投资的影响。因此,对过度投资的治理应以政策不确定性为主,保持政策调节的稳定性和连续性;对产能过剩的治理则应以经济不确定性为主,维护市场运行体系的稳定性。     

Does inflation cause gold market price changes? evidence on the G7 countries from the tests of nonparametric quantile causality in mean and variance

This article utilizes the newly proposed nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test to examine the predictability of mean and variance of changes in gold prices based on inflation for G7 countries. The causality-in-quantiles approach permits us to test for not only causality in mean but also causality in variance. We start our investigation by utilizing tests for nonlinearity. These tests identify nonlinearity, showing that the linear Granger causality tests are subject to misspecification error. Unlike tests of misspecified linear models, our nonparametric causality-in-quantiles tests find causality in mean and variance from inflation to gold market price changes between the 0.20 quantile and the 0.70 quantile, implying that very low- and high-price changes in gold markets are not related to inflation. These changes should be related to other sources, such as financial shocks and exchange market shocks. We find support that gold serves as a hedge against inflation, but only in the mid-quantile ranges, i.e. quantiles from 0.20 to 0.70. Our results show that gold does not serve as a hedge against inflation during periods when gold market price changes are very low or very high, which are respectively quiet and highly volatile periods.     

Dynamic connectedness network in economic policy uncertainties

This study investigates the dynamic connectedness across nine economic policy uncertainty indexes. Our results indicate that the total spillover index is on average 67.4%, indicating a high level of interconnectedness across the nine indexes. In particular, the EU is the largest transmitter of uncertainty connectedness. In addition, China becomes a net transmitter of connectedness during the global financial crisis and European debt crisis. This finding indicates that the uncertainty of Chinese economic policy is an important contributor to the connectedness of the uncertainty network.     

Can volume predict Bitcoin returns and volatility? A quantiles-based approach

Prior studies on the price formation in the Bitcoin market consider the role of Bitcoin transactions at the conditional mean of the returns distribution. This study employs in contrast a non-parametric causality-in-quantiles test to analyse the causal relation between trading volume and Bitcoin returns and volatility, over the whole of their respective conditional distributions. The nonparametric characteristics of our test control for misspecification due to nonlinearity and structural breaks, two features of our data that cover 19th December 2011 to 25th April 2016. The causality-in-quantiles test reveals that volume can predict returns – except in Bitcoin bear and bull market regimes. This result highlights the importance of modelling nonlinearity and accounting for the tail behaviour when analysing causal relationships between Bitcoin returns and trading volume. We show, however, that volume cannot help predict the volatility of Bitcoin returns at any point of the conditional distribution.     

Dynamic linkages between Asian stock prices and exchange rates: new evidence from causality in quantiles

This article applies the Granger causality test in quantiles to investigate causal relations between stock returns and exchange rate changes for nine Asian markets over the period 1 January 1997 to 16 August 2010. Our empirical results indicate that the quantile causal relations vary across different quantiles and different periods. Although the causal effects of exchange rate changes on stock returns (or stock returns on exchange rate changes) are heterogeneous across quantiles, the overall evidence suggests that most stock and foreign exchange markets are negatively correlated. The result shows that there are more bidirectional causal relations in accordance with this method than the conventional least square (LS) estimation. The symmetry of these quantile causal effects (the ‘averaging effect’) helps to explain why conventional LS method usually obtains an insignificant result of causality.     

中国经济波动可预测性的福利分析

使用一阶自回归随机过程来描述中国的消费波动,并重新估算经济波动福利成本和经济增长福利成本,研究结果表明,经济波动的福利成本和消费波动的可预测性是正相关的,并且在一阶自回归假设条件下计算出的福利成本略低于独立同分布情形。     

农业面源污染控制的一体化环境经济政策体系研究

农业面源污染由于排放主体的分散性和隐蔽性、污染发生的随机性、污染负荷的时空差异性,使得农业面源污染具有很强的外部性、不确定性和非对称信息,这是农业面源污染控制的理论依据。文章在对农业面源污染控制面临的污染控制成本不确定性、污染者排污水平不确定性进行理论分析后,构建了农业面源污染控制的一体化环境经济政策体系,指出农业面源污染控制须针对各责任主体设计独特化、具体化、精确化、针对性的环境经济政策。     

经济政策不确定性、产业政策与中国企业海外并购

本文通过融入偏向性产业政策特征,拓展了在经济政策不确定下企业并购时机选择的实物期权模型。本文使用2002—2018年中国上市企业海外并购数据,从微观层面检验了经济政策不确定性对企业海外并购时机选择的影响以及产业政策对上述影响的调节作用。理论研究发现不确定性升高会导致企业最优并购时机延后,产业政策会缓解上述影响从而使得并购呈现“逆势”特征。实证检验证实了中国企业海外并购存在“逆势”特征,且“五年规划”产业政策是中国企业呈现“逆势”并购特征的重要推动力。机制分析显示,“五年规划”产业政策通过缓解融资约束和增加政府补贴两个渠道影响企业海外并购时机选择。相对于未实施海外并购的企业,在上一期实施了并购的企业获得贷款资金和国家补贴资金显著提高。企业对上述“政策收益”的预期进一步助推了其海外并购决策。     

Macroeconomic policy uncertainty shocks on the Chinese economy: a GVAR analysis

This article studies the spillovers of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) from developed economies to China in terms of the source, extent and persistence by estimating a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model with both financial and trade variables acting as the transmission channels. Our findings confirm the existence of international transmissions of policy uncertainty, while the patterns differ markedly. The US EPU appears to be the most significant cause of the fall of export, industrial production, equity price and exchange rate, meanwhile, the EU EPU is also to be blamed for the depreciation of RMB. In contrast to industrial production, which shows the largest negative impact, Chinese inflation increases to a relatively smaller extent with the EPU shocks ranking as the US, Japanese and the EU. Regardless of the minor impact on a long-term interest rate, the short-term interest rate in China reacts positively to the European and US EPU shocks. Despite the independent national monetary policies, EPUs from the EU, Japan and the UK can decrease the Chinese monetary aggregate. In summary, the Chinese economy responds the most to the US EPU, especially to its inflation expectation disagreement component, whereas it responds the least to the UK EPU.