Aftermath of banking crises: Effects on real and monetary variables

This paper models the effects of a banking crisis, and in particular distinguishes between a short-term crisis, such as a banking panic, and a longer-term crisis, such as a banking insolvency. Using an optimizing framework, it shows that depositors shift from deposits into cash in both types of crises, which results in an increase in the interest rates on deposits and loans, and a contraction in output and consumption. However, when the crisis is resolved in a finite time period, there is an intertemporal substitution of consumption, and consumption is postponed until the crisis is resolved. This in turn results in a further decline in the demand for money, availability of credit and output.     

我国政府消费与居民消费的关系研究

消费对经济增长具有巨大的拉动作用,我国的总消费率和居民消费率偏低已经严重影响到经济增长。对此,政府消费应当发挥对居民消费的拉动作用或者对总消费率的平滑作用。但实证研究表明,我国的政府消费并没有发挥应有的作用。应当通过加大社会保障支出等措施降低居民支出预期,有效拉动居民消费,或者通过政府消费水平的调整,把总消费率保持在一个适度的水平上。     

能源工业发展与金融支持——基于面板数据的实证分析

利用2002～2008年中国能源工业发展与金融支持的面板数据,综合考察融资的规模、结构与能源工业的产值增长、能耗强度之间的关系,并基于79家上市能源企业的角度进行拓展和再证实。研究结果显示,融资规模扩大有利于能源工业的产值增长,但融资的开放程度和利用效率不断降低;不同的融资结构对产值增长的贡献率和能源消耗存在明显差异;国内贷款不仅对能源产业产值增长的贡献相对较低,还提高了单位增加值的能耗;相反,利用外资却能二者兼得;此外,增加股票和债券融资有助于促进自筹资金对能源产业产值增长的拉动作用.     

银行体系、技术冲击与中国宏观经济波动

本文运用新凯恩斯的DSGE模型研究金融效率、经济结构变化对技术冲击效应的影响。研究结果印证了传统经济周期理论的核心观点,即技术进步不仅可以刺激产出、消费和投资,还可以降低社会总体价格水平,而金融中介效率、资本收入份额和折旧率的高低都不会影响技术冲击的传导路径。同时,本文的研究还显示,作为金融中介的银行体系效率越高,技术冲击对宏观经济波动的影响越小。该结论意味着,在当前阶段我国应着力提高国内金融体系的效率,以保证宏观经济的平稳健康运行。     

Macroeconomic consequences of terror: theory and the case of Israel

This paper analyzes the effect of terror on the economy. Terror endangers life such that the value of the future relative to the present is reduced. Hence, due to a rise in terror activity, investment goes down, and in the long run income and consumption go down as well. Governments can offset terror by putting tax revenues into the production of security. Facing a tide in terror, a government that acts optimally increases the proportion of output spent on defense, but does not fully offset the tide. Thus, when terror peaks the long run equilibrium with an optimizing government is of lower output and welfare. Next, we show that this theory of terror and the economy, helps to understand changes in trend and business cycle of the Israeli economy. The estimates show that terror has a large impact on the aggregate economy. Continued terror, at the level of the death toll by about the same size as due to car accidents, is expected to decrease annual consumption per capita by about 5% in 2004. Had Israel not suffered from terror during the last 3 years, we estimate that the output per capita would have been 10% higher than it is today.     

Predicting Stock Returns in an Efficient Market

An intertemporal general equilibrium model relates financial asset returns to movements in aggregate output. The model is a standard neoclassical growth model with serial correlation in aggregate output. Changes in aggregate output lead to attempts by agents to smooth consumption, which affects the required rate of return on financial assets. Since aggregate output is serially correlated and hence predictable, the theory suggests that stock returns can be predicted based on rational forecasts of output. The empirical results confirm that stock returns are a predictable function of aggregate output and also support the accompanying implications of the model.     

货币政策、消费品和投资品通货膨胀——基于金融加速器视角

本文建立一个包含消费品和投资品生产的两部门新凯恩斯DSGE模型,并且引入金融加速器以分析货币政策对消费品和投资品通货膨胀的影响机制,同时使用1999Q1至2015Q4的中国宏观经济数据对模型进行贝叶斯估计。估计结果表明,两个部门的菲利普斯曲线都具有较高的价格粘性。外部融资溢价对两个部门企业投资的影响存在异质性,投资品部门的金融加速器效应更加明显。脉冲响应分析表明货币政策扩张时,投资品部门的产出和通胀膨胀上升幅度比消费品部门更大。理论模型的脉冲响应与VAR实证分析得到的经验事实相一致。金融摩擦导致的消费品和投资品部门需求结构的异质性是解释货币政策对两个部门影响差异的关键。数值模拟分析发现金融加速器机制主要改变货币政策对投资品产出和通货膨胀的影响,对消费品部门影响改变较小。方差分解结果表明加总技术冲击、投资边际效率冲击和货币政策冲击是经济波动的主要来源。     

Consumption,government spending,and the real exchange rate

Using panel structural VAR analysis and quarterly data from four industrialized countries, we document that an increase in government purchases raises output and private consumption, deteriorates the trade balance, and depreciates the real exchange rate. This pattern of comovement poses a puzzle for both neoclassical and Keynesian models. An explanation based on the deep-habit mechanism is proposed. An estimated two-country model with deep-habits is shown to replicate well the observed responses of output, consumption, and the trade balance, and the initial response of the real exchange rate to an estimated government spending shock.     

货币扩张、消费习惯偏好与产出非对称效应研究

运用 LSTVAR 方法,考量货币扩张、消费习惯偏好与产出非对称效应,发现货币扩张的产出效应具有非对称性,且货币扩张在“低增长区制”下的产出效应显著大于在“高增长区制”下的产出效应。消费习惯偏好的程度差异是导致不同经济区制下货币政策非对称效应的主要原因,且低消费习惯偏好下货币扩张的产出效果更好。鉴此,政府在主动降低经济增速要求的同时,应积极创新宏观调控方式,改善居民消费环境,优化居民消费结构,以降低居民消费习惯偏好。     

Anticipated growth and business cycles in matching models

In a business cycle model that incorporates a standard matching framework, employment increases in response to news shocks, even though the wealth effect associated with the increase in expected productivity reduces labor force participation. The reason is that the matching friction induces entrepreneurs to increase investment in new projects and vacancies early. If there is underinvestment in new projects in the competitive equilibrium, then the efficiency gains associated with an increase in employment make it possible that consumption, employment, output, as well as the investment in new and existing projects jointly increase long before the actual increase in productivity materializes. If there is no underinvestment, then investment in existing projects decreases, but total investment, consumption, employment, and output still jointly increase.     

On‐the‐Job Learning and News‐Driven Business Cycles

This paper proposes a new channel of on‐the‐job learning to explain the positive comovement between consumption and employment following good news about future productivity. The new recruits can generate an additional stream of output production in all future periods, and the firm's labor demand is thus characterized by the forward‐looking property. Therefore, the firm is motivated to hire more new recruits in advance in response to good news about future productivity. Once the increase in labor demand is greater than the decrease in labor supply caused by the income effect, the coincident rise in consumption and employment can be driven by the news shock. When such a channel is paired with investment adjustment costs and the endogenous capacity utilization rate, this paper provides a plausible explanation for simultaneous booms in current consumption, investment, output, and employment to match the empirical evidence under the news shock.     

The Economics of a Reduction in VAT*

We explore the effects of a temporary cut in VAT, identifying three possible effects: an income effect as people benefit from a lower cost of living during the period of the reduction, a substitution effect as people bring their consumption forward and an arbitrage effect as people buy non‐perishable goods before the end of the period of low VAT for consumption after the VAT rate has been raised. International evidence suggests a clear overall impact on consumption, although the nature of the pattern depends on the way in which the data are analysed. However, the key policy issue is the impact of the VAT change on output and, to examine that, a simulation model of the whole economy is needed. Evidence from the National Institute's Global Economic Model suggests that the impact of the recent VAT reduction is likely to build up during the course of 2009. The reduction in VAT from 17½ per cent to 15 per cent is likely to result in consumption being augmented by less than 1 per cent by the fourth quarter of 2009. However, GDP is likely to be raised by less than half a per cent relative to what would have happened without the VAT increase. After the temporary reduction is over, both consumption and GDP are depressed as a result of the policy.     

中国信贷市场利率与经济波动:2004-2010

本文基于VAR和VEC模型对我国信贷市场利率与经济波动的关系进行实证分析。研究结果表明:(1)投资、消费对于信贷市场利率的冲击处于负的脉冲响应,投资的响应更显著。投资、消费对信贷市场利率的影响非常有限。(2)投资波动对产出波动起主要作用;产出对投资波动和消费波动的影响程度有限;(3)信贷市场利率与投资、消费、产出之间存在长期均衡关系。基于这些分析结论,文章提出若干政策建议。     

News shocks and business cycles

This paper proposes and implements a novel structural VAR approach to the identification of news shocks about future technology. The news shock is identified as the shock orthogonal to the innovation in current utilization-adjusted TFP that best explains variation in future TFP. A favorable news shock leads to an increase in consumption and decreases in output, hours, and investment on impact - more suggestive of standard DSGE models than of recent extensions designed to generate news-driven business cycles. Though news shocks account for a significant fraction of output fluctuations at medium frequencies, they contribute little to our understanding of recessions.     

Wealth Distribution, Inflation Tax, and Societal Benefits of Illiquid Bonds

Illiquid nominal government bonds are shown to have two opposing effects on welfare. First, the relatively poor choose to top-up money balances for future consumption by purchasing nominal bonds at a discount. The wealth distribution becomes more centered with a smaller consumption deviation from the first best. Second, the higher inflation tax on monetary wealth to finance interest payments makes money less valuable, so that the quantity of output produced in exchange for money decreases. The trade-off between the welfare-enhancing effect on wealth distribution and the distortionary effect on output implies the socially optimal discount rate and liquidity.     

Implications of habit formation for optimal monetary policy

We study the implications for optimal monetary policy of introducing habit formation in consumption into a general equilibrium model with sticky prices. Habit formation affects the model's endogenous dynamics through its effects on both aggregate demand and households’ supply of output. We show that the objective of monetary policy consistent with welfare maximization includes output stabilization, as well as inflation and output gap stabilization. We find that the variance of output increases under optimal policy, even though it acquires a higher implicit weight in the welfare function. We also find that a simple interest rate rule nearly achieves the welfare-optimal allocation, regardless of the degree of habit formation. In this rule, the optimal responses to inflation and the lagged interest rate are both declining in the size of the habit, although super-inertial policies remain optimal.     

How Efficient Is China’s Heavy Industry? A Perspective of Input–Output Analysis

Heavy industry accounts for nearly 65% of the energy consumption and over 60% of the electricity consumption of China. Under the framework of real savings and green GDP, the huge energy consumption and carbon emissions will bring in huge natural resource losses, and then affect the total factor productivity (TFP) seriously. When taking the input–output relationship into consideration, the natural resource losses of heavy industry will decrease significantly. As the upstream of the industrial chain, heavy industry offered a large number of subsidies to the downstream industries by providing energy, raw materials, and taking on carbon emissions. This article verified the transfer of natural resource losses among industries, and estimated the real TFP of heavy industry from input–output and traditional perspective, respectively. The results showed that there was an increasing trend in the growth rate of heavy industry’s TFP in the perspective of input–output.     

Estimating the Euler equation for output

New Keynesian macroeconomic models have generally emphasized that expectations of future output are a key factor in determining current output. The theoretical motivation for such forward-looking behavior relies on a straightforward generalization of the well-known Euler equation for consumption. In this paper, we use maximum likelihood and generalized method of moments (GMM) methods to explore the empirical importance of output expectations. We find little evidence that rational expectations of future output help determine current output, especially after taking into account the small-sample bias in GMM.     

Indeterminacy, aggregate demand, and the real business cycle

We show that under indeterminacy aggregate demand shocks are able to explain not only aspects of actual fluctuations that standard RBC models predict fairly well, but also aspects of actual fluctuations that standard RBC models cannot explain, such as the hump-shaped, trend reverting impulse responses to transitory shocks found in US output (Cogley and Nason, Am. Econom. Rev. 85 (1995) 492); the large forecastable movements and comovements of output, consumption and hours (Rotemberg and Woodford, Am. Econom. Rev. 86 (1996) 71); and the fact that consumption appears to lead output and investment over the business cycle. Indeterminacy arises in our model due to capacity utilization and mild increasing returns to scale.