The Employer's Role in Reforming the U.S. Health Care System

In 2005 large U.S. employers spent an average of almost $7,400 per head on health care benefits, a 73% increase in the last five years. If the current trend continues, American companies may find it difficult to compete in a global marketplace where international competitors provide labor with heath care at a fraction of U.S. costs. This article argues that effective reform of the U.S. health care system will require major efforts from all major “stakeholders,” starting with the federal government and state and local governments and including insurance companies and the “consumers” of health care services. By far the important role, however, is reserved for private‐sector employers, which have been the incubator for recent innovations in American health care and are in the best position to coordinate and drive health care reform. But incremental steps in cost‐sharing, small‐scale pilot projects of consumer‐based designs, and employee awareness campaigns will not be enough. Employers need to take radical steps to break through the inertia that has built up among all stakeholders over the past 50 years. Chief among the author's proposals for employers are the following:

• ? In choosing a health care plan for employees, use value‐based purchasing criteria that consider more than just the price and access to services.
• ? Help consumers by demanding information from providers and insurers about the cost and efficacy of health care services, and of alternative treatments, before the choices are made.
• ? Encourage “consumerism” by setting up benefit plans that have a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) or a Health Savings Account (HSA) component.

As the author states in closing, “Let these reforms begin with employers as the organizing force to drive needed change across the system. That may very well be the only way to save our employment‐based model.”     

U.S. tax policy and health insurance demand: Can a regressive policy improve welfare?

The U.S. tax policy on health insurance is regressive because it subsidizes only those offered group insurance through their employers, who also tend to have a relatively high income. Moreover, the subsidy takes the form of deductions from the progressive income tax system giving high income earners a larger subsidy. To understand the effect of the policy, we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogenous agents and an endogenous demand for health insurance. A complete removal of the subsidy may lead to a partial collapse of the group insurance market, reduce the insurance coverage and deteriorate welfare. There is, however, room for improving the coverage and welfare by extending a refundable credit to the individual insurance market.     

Effects of business diversification on asset risk-taking: Evidence from the U.S. property-liability insurance industry

We investigate the effect of line-of-business diversification on asset risk-taking in the U.S. property-liability industry. The coordinated risk management hypothesis (Schrand and Unal, 1998) implies a negative relation between underwriting risk and investment risk. Consistent with this hypothesis we find that diversified insurers take more asset risk than non-diversified insurers, and that the degree of asset risk-taking is positively related to diversification extent. Our results are robust to corrections for potential endogeneity bias, selectivity bias, and alternative diversification and asset risk measures. We also provide event study evidence that further supports the coordinated risk management hypothesis. Specifically, we find that when a focused firm diversifies, it increases its asset risk relative to firms that remain focused, and when a diversified firm refocuses, it reduces its asset risk relative to firms that remain diversified.     

Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries and U.S. Treasury yields

Foreign official holdings of U.S. Treasuries increased from $400 billion in January 1994 to about $3 trillion in June 2010. Most of this growth is accounted for by a handful of emerging market economies that have been running large current account surpluses. These countries are channeling their savings through the official sector, which is then acquiring foreign exchange reserves. Any shift in policy to reduce their current account surpluses or dampen the rate of reserves accumulation would likely slow the pace of foreign official purchases of U.S. Treasuries. Would such a slowing of foreign official purchases of Treasury notes and bonds affect long-term Treasury yields? Most likely yes, and the effects appear to be large. By our estimates, if foreign official inflows into U.S. Treasuries were to decrease in a given month by $100 billion, 5-year Treasury rates would rise by about 40–60 basis points in the short run. But once we allow foreign private investors to react to the yield change induced by the shock to foreign official inflows, the long-run effect is about 20 basis points.     

Patient Power: The Free-Enterprise Approach to the U.S. Health Care Problem

Giving people choices in health care and instilling cost-consciousness is plain old common sense. In Medical Savings Accounts, authors Goodman and Musgrave have hit upon a bold concept that may revolutionize the way health care is delivered throughout America.     

Foreign bank lending in the U.S. during three U.S. recessions

We study whether foreign banks engaged in countercyclical lending in the United States during the 1990–1991, 2001, and 2007–2009 recessions. Aggregate lending by foreign banks increased in the 1990–91 recession and by domestic banks in the 2001 recession. Controlling for local GDP and unemployment, we show countercyclical lending by foreign branches in the 1990 recession and by foreign subsidiaries in the 2001 recession. In the 2008 recession, foreign branches and subsidiaries exhibited neither countercyclical nor procyclical lending. We conclude that foreign banks like domestic banks respond to local economic conditions; the foreign ownership is not a factor.     

美国经济的三大风险及其对中美经济的影响

当前,美国经济正面临三大风险的威胁,这三大风险分别是巨额的"双赤字"及持续增长的债务、能源价格的大幅波动以及美国当前愈演愈烈的次级债务危机.这些风险将导致美国经济的下滑及美元的贬值,同时也会导致中国外贸出口增速减慢,以及给中国经济带来过多流动性的负面影响.     

Do foreign purchases of U.S. stocks help the U.S. stock market?

This paper investigates the relationship between the U.S. S&P 500 stock market and purchases of U.S. corporation stocks by foreign investors. Estimations using monthly data from 1978:1 to 2008:7 under various methodologies show that, controlling for asset prices (interest rates and the yield curve) and inflation, purchases of U.S. stocks by foreign investors have a positive and statistically significant impact on the U.S. stock market performance. We also show that their relationship is time variant. In a global world, the demand-side variable captured by the foreign appetite for U.S. stocks attenuates the negative effects associated with the domestic forces.     

Hamilton and the U.S. Financial Revolution

In these excerpts from their recently published collection of Alexander Hamilton's writings on “Finance, Credit, and Debt,” the authors provide an overview of “the neatest, quickest financial revolution in history”—the one that took place in the United States during the six‐year tenure of its first Treasury Secretary. Between Hamilton's appointment by Washington in September 1789 and his resignation in February 1795, and as foreshadowed in letters that Hamilton was writing as early as 1780 (as a 23‐year‐old colonel in the Revolutionary army), the new nation saw the emergence of virtually all of what the authors identify as the six key components of modern financial systems. The financial revolution that produced the American financial system was accomplished through the following six developments:

1. The establishment of effective institutions of public finance, including a well‐functioning Treasury debt market, that would enable the government to fund its operations, to restructure its then massive unpaid debts (much of it owed to foreigners), and, perhaps most important, to establish the public credit that would enable it to borrow ever larger amounts on favorable terms.
2. The founding, in 1791, of a central bank to aid and oversee the government's finances and serve as the main supervisor and coordinator of the country's emergent banking and financial systems. By 1795, the Bank of the United States had five offices in different states and thus the beginnings of a national branch banking system.
3. The creation, in 1791, of the U.S. dollar as the country's first national currency. With gold and silver as the monetary base into which bank notes and deposits were convertible, the dollar was endowed with the stability of value that would make it a sound basis for long‐term contracts (such as bonds) as well as a safe asset in which to hold savings. By 1795, all the states, which had earlier issued their own notes and currency, had become members of the national currency union.
4. The development of a private banking system by encouraging state governments to charter banks to support their own finances and lend to businesses and individual entrepreneurs. By 1795, the three state‐chartered U.S. banks that existed in 1789 had become 20, providing the beginnings, with the five offices of the central bank, of what would become a vibrant (if crisis‐prone) American banking system.
5. The establishment of securities markets designed to make financial assets—both government and private‐sector bonds, and equities (including stock in the Bank of the United States)—liquid and transferrable. By 1795, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston all had established organized exchanges for trading national as well as local bonds and, in some cases, stocks.
6. The growth of business corporations, financial (such as banks and insurance companies) as well as industrial (utilities, manufacturers, and road, bridge, and canal companies), thereby encouraging the pooling of individuals’ capital that would allow the creation of larger enterprises that could realize economies of scale.

Thanks to these six developments, the United States was transformed from a bankrupt and severely divided nation in 1789 with huge debts to overseas creditors to a country whose government in 1795 produced a large budget surplus and whose securities were viewed by foreigners as among the most creditworthy in the world. And that was important since, as Hamilton clearly foresaw from the start, the U.S. government would have to rely heavily on overseas capital to fund its operations.     

Contemporaneous Spillover Effects between the U.S. and the U.K. Equity Markets

We use high frequency data and the “identification through heteroskedasticity” approach of Rigobon (2003) to capture the contemporaneous volatility spillover effects between the U.S. and U.K. equity markets. We demonstrate the relevance of taking into account the information present during simultaneous trading hours by comparing the results generated by our structural vector autoregression with those of a traditional reduced-form vector autoregression. Our findings clearly demonstrate that contemporaneous relations matter and that ignoring them leads to inappropriate conclusions regarding the magnitude and direction of volatility spillover.     

美国金融危机成因分析——基于价值观的视角

2008年9月15日,雷曼兄弟公司申请破产保护;同日,美国银行以440亿美元收购美林公司;随后,美国国际集团的信用等级被下调,标志着美国陷入了"百年一遇"的金融危机。随后,美国金融危机迅速演变成席卷全球的经济危机。     

美国市场形势好转

<正>美国劳工节过后,飓风给美国市场造成的沉闷 气氛似乎缓和。原油和汽油价格有所回落、股市强劲 上涨、灾区部分炼油厂即将恢复生产。但美国专家警 告说,能源市场的不确定因素仍然很多,油价上行的 可能依然大于下降。     

Capital Inflows and the U.S. Housing Boom

We estimate an open‐economy vector autoregressive (VAR) model to study the effect of capital‐inflow shocks on the U.S. housing market. We look at different external shocks that generate capital inflows to the U.S., in particular “saving‐glut” shocks and foreign monetary‐policy expansions. The shocks are identified with theoretically robust sign restrictions derived from an open‐economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. Our findings suggest that capital inflows that result from “saving‐glut” shocks have a positive and persistent effect on real house prices and real residential investment.     

美国“管理层讨论与分析”及对我国的借鉴

良好的公司治理结构是管理层诚实尽责披露信息的内在保证。对管理层己知的趋势和不确定性信息披露出现的问题，表面上是由于规则的漏洞，根源则在于公司治理不佳和诚信程度不高。……     

美国证监会和小企业—小企业筹资及相应联邦证券法规指南

解答小企业疑问的几条途径 SEC试图通过它(所制定)的规则和监管来满足小企业的要求。它也会通过电话、信件或者电子邮件来回答小企业的问题，提供非正式的指导。SEC提供了很多渠道，以方便小企业……     

Official Demand for U.S. Debt: Implications for U.S. Real Rates

We estimate a structural term-structure model of U.S. real rates, where arbitrageurs accommodate demand pressures exerted by domestic and foreign official investors. Official demand affects rates by altering the aggregate price of duration risk, and thereby bond risk premiums. Although foreign central banks' demand contributed to reduce long-term real rates mainly in the years prior to the global-financial crisis, the Federal Reserve's demand lowered rates during the quantitative easing period. Overall, the two-factor model, augmented to account for changing liquidity conditions, offers a good representation of real rates during the 2001–16 period; however, we flag some caveats and possible extensions.     

Taking the Long Way Home: U.S. Tax Evasion and Offshore Investments in U.S. Equity and Debt Markets

We empirically investigate one form of illegal investor‐level tax evasion and its effect on foreign portfolio investment. In particular, we examine a form of round‐tripping tax evasion in which U.S. individuals hide funds in entities located in offshore tax havens and then invest those funds in U.S. securities markets. Employing Becker's ( 1968 ) economic theory of crime, we identify the tax evasion component by examining how foreign portfolio investment varies with changes in the incentives to evade and the risks of detection. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical evidence of investor‐level tax evasion affecting cross‐border equity and debt investment.