A further investigation of unemployment persistence in European transition economies

This paper analyses the dynamics of the unemployment rate in the eight countries from Central and Eastern Europe which joined the EU in 2004. Unit root tests allowing for nonlinearities and structural changes suggest that the unemployment rate is not stationary in most of the sample countries. Tests allowing for fractional integration, however, reveal that shocks are highly persistent, implying a slow rate of convergence to the natural rate of unemployment. The unemployment rate is least persistent in Hungary and Slovenia, more persistent in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Baltic States and extremely persistent in Poland. The degree of persistence appears to reflect the different levels of economic and institutional development in the countries and possibly also the role of the government.     

Formal targets, central bank independence and inflation dynamics in the UK: A Markov-Switching approach

We examine inflation and uncertainty in the UK with a version of the Markov Switching model, which allows for changes in the variance as well as in the mean and persistence of a series. We find that the UK’s attempts at exchange rate pegs in the form of shadowing the deutschmark and entering the ERM were ineffective, and in the latter case counterproductive in lowering inflation uncertainty. The 1981 budget, however, greatly lowered uncertainty, and the adoption of a formal inflation target also had a palpable, negative impact on inflation uncertainty. As a suggestive exercise, we examine inflation uncertainty in the US, and find that, over 2005–2008, in the absence of an inflation target, uncertainty rose in the US, while uncertainty remained low in the UK over this period of rising commodity prices and financial turmoil.     

Variability Measurements and Choice of Exchange Rate System: Asian Versus industrialized Countries

This paper examines whether the exchange rate movements of six Asian countries and six industrialized countries are normally distributed. This study also uses stochastic dominance to determine whether risk averse investors would prefer the fixed exchange rate system to the floating exchange rate system. Our empirical results show that most exchange rate changes are non-normal stable. Results form the stochastic dominance technique indicate that not all risk averse individuals will necessarily prefer one exchange rate system to the other. [F31]     

Structural changes in exports of an emerging economy: Case of Turkey

This paper indicates that Turkish exports are subject to structural changes as Turkey integrates into global production networks. Integration, which leads vertical specialization in production and changes in the commodity composition of Turkish exports in favor of non-traditional commodities, paces up during economic reform periods. As the export shares of non-traditional commodities, which have higher import and income sensitivity but lower real exchange rate elasticity, increases, coefficients of the aggregate export function change accordingly. Nevertheless, high import and income elasticity of exports imply that the global growth pattern plays a significant role in determining exports of Turkey.     

Financial market imperfections and monetary policy strategy

In a model with imperfect money, credit and reserve markets, we examine if an inflation-targeting central bank applying the funds rate operating procedure to indirectly control market interest rates also needs a monetary aggregate as policy instrument. We show that if private agents use information extracted from money and financial markets to form inflation expectations and if interest rate pass-through is incomplete, the central bank can use a narrow monetary aggregate and the discount interest rate as independent and complementary policy instruments to reinforce the credibility of its announcements and the role of inflation target as a nominal anchor for inflation expectations. This study shows how a monetary policy strategy combining inflation targeting and monetary targeting can be conceived to guarantee macroeconomic stability and the credibility of monetary policy. Friedman's k-percent money growth rule, which can generate dynamic instability, and two alternative stabilizing feedback monetary targeting rules are examined.     

城市街区形态对PM10、PM2.5的影响 研究——以武汉为例

构成城市肌理的普遍街区的空间形态与颗粒物浓度 存在显著差异。基于武汉市18个空气质量监测点的PM10、 PM2.5数据与二维、三维街区形态指标,揭示不同街区形态 与PM10、PM2.5之间的深层关系规律,以期为城市规划管控 提供参考。双变量相关分析与一元回归分析揭示了街区形态 与PM10、PM2.5的相关性及其影响规律,多元线性回归分 析揭示不同街区形态对PM10、PM2.5变化的贡献度。结果表 明,街区之间的平均PM10、PM2.5浓度分别在城市平均水平 55%~106%、59%~117%之间浮动,绿化覆盖率、道路面 积率和相对高程对PM10、PM2.5具有显著影响,相对高程与 绿化覆盖率对PM10变化的贡献度达83.0%,绿化覆盖率对 PM2.5变化的贡献度达72.5%,道路面积率对PM10、PM2.5 变化的贡献度分别为17.0%、27.5%。     

Capital Income Taxes and Growth in a Stochastic Economy: A Numerical Analysis of the Role of Risk Aversion and Intertemporal Substitution

This paper undertakes a numerical analysis of the effects of changes in the tax rates on domestic and foreign capital income in a stochastically growing open economy under recursive preferences, in which the rate of time preference, ?, and the coefficient of risk aversion, R, can be set independently. The responses of the equilibrium growth rate, its volatility, and welfare to changes in the tax changes considered are highly sensitive to the independent variations in both ? and R. Consequently, the errors committed by using the conventional constant elasticity utility function, even for small violations of the compatibility condition (R= 1/?) can be significant, suggesting that this functional form should be employed with caution.     

Model design and simulation

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of the uses of simulation in building econometric models. By its means we can solve complicated non-linear systems and discover how sensitive the solutions are to changes in the parameter values and in the form of particular relationships. These uses are exemplified in a simple model of cyclical growth, whose stability depends on the speed with which the wage rate is kept adjusted to the marginal product of labour.     

Foreign Exchange Controls and the Parallel Market Premium

This paper studies the relationship between the official and parallel exchange rates, using cointegration, Granger causality, and reduced form methods on data from three Caribbean countries, Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad & Tobago, for the period 1985–93. Where the central bank follows a passive policy of infrequent and large adjustments to the official rate, changes in the official rate Granger causes changes in the parallel rate, and larger disparities prevail between the two rates. Foreign exchange controls, expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, and changes of government mostly have a positive effect on the parallel market premium, with foreign exchange controls exerting the strongest impact.     

Dynamically inefficient equilibria in the Auerbach-Kotlikoff model

The issue addressed in this paper is how robust dynamically efficient steady state equilibria in a 55 periods overlapping generations economy are to changes in the parametrization of the model. Numerical simulations are used to detect parameter constellations which lead to non Pareto optimal market solutions with the capital stock in excess of the so called Golden Rule level. The results suggest that rather unplausible values of the pure rate of time preference, the intertemporal elasticity of substitution or the annual population growth rate are required to obtain dynamic inefficiency.I would like to thank Prof. Roger Farmer as well as Albert Jäger for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this paper. The numerical model used in this work was programmed by Christian Keuschnigg. I am grateful to him for supplying me generously with his software.     

Financial Deregulation and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism

Major changes to the Australian financial system in the 1980s may possibly have influenced the effects of monetary policy on economic activity. Using vector autoregressive econometric techniques we find that the deregulation of the financial system has made very little difference to the reduced form relationships among interest rates, employment growth, inflation and the growth rate of real credit. We find that interest rates are an important determinant of the business cycle, with credit being much less significant. We also find that monetary policy reacts to unexpected movements in real variables but does not react to surprises in the inflation rate.     

The Optimality of a Zero Inflation Rate with Menu Costs: Australia

This paper juxtaposes the policy trend towards a zero inflation rate against the theoretical standard of optimal deflation at the real interest rate. It extends an example monetary economy to include a simple form of nominal adjustment costs and calibrates the model with recent evidence on Australian money demand. There is a critical value that the calibrated parameter for menu costs must exceed in order for a zero inflation rate to be optimal. An inflation rate of –2 per cent to 0 per cent is found to be optimal. The quantitative results, of whether inflation-adjustment costs imply a zero inflation rate policy for Australia, are tempered by the abstraction of the model and its sensitivity to parameters. Qualitatively, the paper shows the effects of changes in the adjustment cost function and in the structural parameters.     

Inflation targeting in an import dependent indebted economy

This paper develops a one-sector Kaleckian model of an import dependent indebted small open economy; where the mark-up rate is sensitive to both changes in the interest rate and the exchange rate and foreigners provide part of the long-term finance. The short-run consequences of an inflation targeting policy in the form of high interest rates and strong domestic currency are explored. Among the possible short-run scenarios, the one most relevant for developing countries involves a decline in the profit rate, the capacity utilization rate and the rate of accumulation as well as the employment rate and the real wage. Leverage ratio of the firms and the extent of external indebtedness play an important role in bringing about this result. Long-run analysis reveals that this scenario is associated with instability in the long run and that, also in the long run, the extent of foreign indebtedness and the responsiveness of capital inflows to the return on existing portfolios are important in determining the direction of the effects of inflation targeting on the equilibrium debt–capital ratio.     

Time-Varying Fundamentals of the Euro–Dollar Exchange Rate

Abstract

This study examines changes in the impact of the economic fundamentals on the euro–dollar exchange rate. First, the monetary model is augmented with the equity markets and the model is estimated in its structural form. Second, the time-varying impacts of the long-run fundamentals representing equilibrium in different markets on the euro–dollar exchange rate are examined using Kalman filtering. The time-varying structural model indicated that the relative importance of the different fundamentals was not equal and the impact of the fundamentals was time-dependent.     

Federal reserve monetary policy and the non-linearity of the Taylor rule

We propose and estimate a generalized Taylor rule for the monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) to find out how the Fed funds rate is sensitive to changes in inflation and output gap variables in the post war period. We find that Fed's monetary policy has only reacted significantly to changes in inflation when they were between approximately 6.5–8.5%. However, the policy stance change on these changes was relatively small. The findings suggest that the US Fed has been too averse to change from its current monetary policy stance, and that it has not reacted noticeably to changes in the US economic activity, as measured by the output gap. The generalized functional form for the monetary policy rule suggests that similar non-linearity exists in the directional change of the Fed rate.     

中国市域综合城市化水平测度与空间格局研究

新世纪的城市化已不仅仅是农村人口向城市转移这一问题,经济结构和空间利用的变化也对城市化区域空间格局产生深刻影响。在城市化内涵界定的基础上,以人口城市化、经济城市化和空间城市化复合而成综合城市化水平,对中国城市2007年的综合城市化水平进行测度,并借助Arcgis对城市化格局进行分析,认为中国市域综合城市化水平由东北向西南递减,城市化水平较高的城市在空间上彼此接近,形成若干城市化水平高值集聚区。依据3个城市化分量发展水平的组合情况,将全国城市划分为均衡发展型、较均衡发展型、不均衡发展型等3大类9个亚类,从城市化系统的协调性角度揭示每种类型存在的主要问题,并提出未来城市化发展的主要方向。     

Monetary policy rules in Central and Eastern European Countries: Does the exchange rate matter?

We estimate monetary policy rules for six Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) during the period when they prepared for membership to the EU and monetary union. By taking changes in the policy settings explicitly into account and by splitting up the exchange rate impact into two different components we significantly improve estimation results for monetary policy rules in CEEC. We uncover that the focus of the interest rate setting behaviour in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland explicitly switched from defending the peg to targeting inflation. For Slovakia, however, there still seemed to be on ongoing focus on the exchange rate. Finally, Slovenia and, after a policy switch, Romania exhibit a solid relation with inflation as well.     

A vector error correction model of the Singapore stock market

This article examines the long-term equilibrium relationships between the Singapore stock index and selected macroeconomic variables, as well as among stock indices of Singapore, Japan, and the United States. Upon testing appropriate vector error-correction models, we detected that changes in two measures of real economic activities, industrial production and trade, are not integrated of the same order as changes in Singapore's stock market levels. However, changes in Singapore's stock market levels do form a cointegrating relationship with changes in price levels, money supply, short- and long-term interest rates, and exchange rates. While changes in interest and exchange rates contribute significantly to the cointegrating relationship, those in price levels and money supply do not. This suggests that the Singapore stock market is interest and exchanges rate sensitive. Additionally, the article concludes that the Singapore stock market is significantly and positively cointegrated with stock markets of Japan and the United States.     

The influence of money on prices in 14 OECD countries 1958–1975

A simple monetarist model is specified which has a reduced form relating the rate of change of prices to lagged price changes and current and lagged rates of change of money supply. The reduced form is estimated for 14 OECD countries using quarterly data for 1958–1975 and the stability of the estimated equations is examined. A policy of a constant rate of growth of money supply is found to imply a cyclical or fluctuating adjustment in the rate of price change.     

Stock prices,production and interest rates: Comparison of three European countries with the USA

This paper investigates the relationships between stock returns, changes in production, and changes in interest rates in three European countries: France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The results obtained using annual data are much more conclusive than those obtained using quarterly data. Stock returns are affected by current changes in interest rates and by future changes in production. The dependence on changes in interest rates seems to be higher than on changes in production. Furthermore, the influence of future changes in production on stock returns diminishes substantially when contemporaneous changes in interest rates are taken into account. With reference to these points, the European markets behave in a similar fashion, but are in sharp contrast with the U.S. market.I am very grateful to Kay Davidson, Patric Hendershott and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions. I am solely responsible for all remaining errors.