Information and institutions in the capital market

In the capital market information and institutions are logically coordinate concepts. The paper argues that it is impossible to derive a complete view of the role played by capital market institutions without constructing a theory of information, a theory of institutions, and a theory of how the two are related. Consideration is given to existing epistomological and methological approaches to information and institutions. On this basis a new approach is outlined and its relevance to accounting demonstrated by analysing one major problem currently facing the accounting profession.     

市场退出制度引路

到目前为止,金融市场改革在一些方面还落后于整个改革进程。虽然金融监管机制近年来不断改进,但市场化的金融准入和退出制度尚未建立起来,这在客观上阻碍了中国金融改革深化的步伐。     

Labor market polarization and international macroeconomic dynamics

During the last thirty years, labor markets in advanced economies were characterized by their remarkable polarization. As job opportunities in middle-skill occupations disappeared, employment opportunities concentrated in the highest and lowest wage occupations. A two-country stochastic growth model that incorporates trade in tasks, rather than in goods, accounts for this evidence. This polarization did not result from a steady process: the relative employment share of each skill group significantly fluctuated over short to medium horizons. The aggregate shocks estimated within this framework can rationalize the observed skill-based employment dynamics, while providing a good fit to the macroeconomic data.     

Labor market search, the Taylor principle, and indeterminacy

In a sticky-price model with labor market search and matching frictions, forecast-based interest rate policy almost always induces indeterminacy when it is strictly inflation targeting and satisfies the Taylor principle. Indeterminacy is due to a vacancy channel of monetary policy that makes inflation expectations self-fulfilling. The effect of this channel strengthens as the sluggishness of the adjustment of employment relative to that of consumption increases. When this relative sluggishness is high, the Taylor principle fails to ensure determinacy, regardless of whether the policy is forecast-based or outcome-based, whether it is strictly or flexibly inflation targeting, or contains policy rate smoothing.     

Labor market flows in the cross section and over time

Many theoretical models of labor market search imply a tight link between worker flows (hires and separations) and job gains and losses at the employer level. We use rich establishment-level data to assess several theoretical models and to study the relationship between worker flows and jobs flows. Hires, quits, and layoffs exhibit strong, highly nonlinear relationships to employer growth rates in the cross section. Simple statistical models of these relationships greatly improve our ability to account for fluctuations in aggregate worker flows and enable us to construct synthetic measures of hires, separations, quits, and layoffs back to 1990.     

Labor market participation,unemployment and monetary policy

Models of unemployment and monetary policy usually assume constant participation. Incorporating a participation decision into a standard New Keynesian model with matching frictions, we show that market tightness becomes endogenously more volatile because both the opportunity cost of home production and the reservation wage vary with participation. The model can simultaneously explain the low volatility of participation, the high volatility of unemployment, and a procyclical workers׳ outside option of working. A policy of strict inflation targeting is close to optimal, and increasing the response of the interest rate to inflation does not have a large impact on the volatility of unemployment because of the endogenous response of participation.     

积极培育中国股市的机构投资者

上市公司和机构投资者是证券市场的两大主体。培育机构投资者,加大机构投资者比重对改善投资主体结构和运行环境,提高市场的整个质量和长期可持续发展能力,加快证券市场的市场化进程有着深远意义。     

Labor market dynamics under long-term wage contracting

Recent research seeking to explain the strong cyclicality of US unemployment emphasizes the role of wage rigidity. This paper proposes a micro-founded model of wage rigidity—an equilibrium business cycle model of job search, where risk neutral firms post optimal long-term contracts to attract risk averse workers. Equilibrium contracts feature wage smoothing, limited by the inability of parties to commit to contracts. The model is consistent with aggregate wage data if neither worker nor firm can commit, producing too rigid wages otherwise. Wage rigidity does not lead to a substantial increase in the cyclical volatility of unemployment.     

Labor market frictions,capital, taxes and employment

International Tax and Public Finance - This paper studies the role of the tax on mobile capital in labor markets with matching frictions and the effects of such frictions on inefficiency of capital...     

The subprime asset-backed securities market and the equity prices of large complex financial institutions

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the subprime asset-backed collateralized debt obligations (CDO) market and Large Complex Financial Institutions (LCFIs). We attempt to account for the dynamics between the ABX index returns and the banks’ equity returns through conditioning our analysis on the historical correlation between the variables. Three key results emerge from the analysis. First, we find a positive correlation between movements of the ABX index and the equity returns for all the LCFIs. Second, the volatility of ABX index returns tend to be transmitted to the volatilities of the equity returns of the financial institutions. Third, ABX prices changes lead equity returns changes of the European-based LCFIs. For the US LCFIs a two-way linkage emerges.     

Efficient market hypothesis and fraud on the market theory a new perspective for class actions

Following recent judgment of the Supreme Court of US (June 2014), several commentators had declared that “Securities class actions are here to stay” (insidecounsel.com—September 2014, 11). This paper provides a critical perspective on this judgment, which “implicates substantive issues at the intersection of economic theory, financial markets, and securities regulation” (128Harv. L. Rev. 291 2014–2015, 291), and shows that we must be much more careful. This recent judgment is based on the Fraud on the Market Doctrine, which was introduced in 1973 in order to preserve the class action procedure in securities fraud litigation. The characteristic of the Fraud on the Market Doctrine is to have been structured from one of the most popular financial theory: Efficient Market Hypothesis. In this paper, by analysing the implementation of the Efficient Market Hypothesis in Fraud on the Market Theory, we argue that if the Supreme Court had to take position for a second time about the Fraud on the Market Doctrine it is due to the practical difficulties inherited from Efficient Market Hypothesis and that have raised several problems to the US courts, including the Supreme Court. This issue is illustrated by the definition of Efficient Market Hypothesis lawyers used (“most” vs “all”/“fully”). As this paper shows, if “Securities class actions are here to stay”, the opportunity to open such a class action is strongly reduced in the facts.     

Pitfalls in using market prices to assess the financial condition of depository institutions

In this article we examine the information that stock prices provide about the financial condition of federally insured thrift institutions. In order to assess their financial condition from the different perspectives of stockholders and the federal insurer, we calculate the value of the put option of federal deposit insurance available to thrift institutions. Our results demonstrate that the two perspectives often provide, particularly for unhealthy institutions, quite different views of the financial condition of individual institutions.     

关于非银行金融机构参与外汇市场问题的研究

相比国际外汇市场,我国非银行金融机构参与外汇市场程度较低,这与外汇市场长期以来坚持实需交易原则有关,可考虑从适度放开自营交易、丰富产品等方面拓宽非银行金融机构参与外汇市场。     

中国外汇交易中心举办2009年度银行间外汇市场表彰交流会

2010年4月9日．2009年度银行间外汇市场表彰交流会在珠海召开。国家外汇管理局、中国人民银行货币政策司、人民银行上海总部、中国外汇交易中心、26家做市商银行及部分会员银行派员参加了会议。外汇局国际收支司副司长王春英、     

On a class of diverse market models

A market model in Stochastic Portfolio Theory is a finite system of strictly positive stochastic processes. Each process represents the capitalization of a certain stock. If at any time no stock dominates almost the entire market, which means that its share of total market capitalization is not very close to one, then the market is called diverse. There are several ways to outperform diverse markets and get an arbitrage opportunity, and this makes these markets interesting. A feature of real-world markets is that stocks with smaller capitalizations have larger drift coefficients. Some models, like the volatility-stabilized model, try to capture this property, but they are not diverse. In an attempt to combine this feature with diversity, we construct a new class of market models. We find simple, easy-to-test sufficient conditions for them to be diverse and other sufficient conditions for them not to be diverse.     

Labor market reform and price stability: An application to the Euro Area

Central bankers frequently suggest that labor market reform may be beneficial for inflation management. This paper investigates this topic by simulating the effects of reductions in firing costs and unemployment benefits on inflation volatility in the Euro Area, using an estimated New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions. Qualitatively, changes in labor market policies alter the volatility of inflation in response to shocks, by affecting the volatility of the three components of real marginal costs (hiring costs, firing costs and wage costs). Quantitatively, we find, however, that neither policy is likely to have an important effect on inflation volatility, due to the small contribution of hiring and firing costs to inflation dynamics.     

Bid ask spread in a competitive market with institutions and order size

Large orders, particularly from institutions, are quite common these days and hence there is interest to know if institutional trading has any bearing on the price effect associated with large trades. Recent empirical studies contradict earlier evidence of negative price effect on selling large blocks and find no price effect associated with large trades. Existing theoretical framework suggests a monotonic and increasing adverse price effect for large trades, where the motivation for a large trade is private information. We model a trading system where pure information, information-liquidity, and pure liquidity traders trade small and large sizes. The pure information traders strategically choose an order size. Institutions trade only large sizes because of their low execution costs for large trades; they are information-liquidity traders whose ability to use an information signal to determine their trades is subject to a binding liquidity constraint. We show that in such a market a separating equilibrium where trade size is informative does not exist and hence there is no price effect for large trades. Trade size may be revealing only if there is a buy sell asymmetry (large buy size is not equal to large sell size) or the corresponding price effect is asymmetric (price effect due to a large buy is not equal to that of a large sell). Further for a pooling equilibrium to exist, where trade size is not informative, the width of the market denoted by the ratio of order size (large size/small size) needs to be small, while the shallowness (inverse depth) of the market denoted by the ratio between pure information and institutional trades and the information signal needs to be stronger (higher). Our results on bid and ask prices and spread confirm recent empirical evidence on price effect of large and institutional trades found in the literature.

The stakes in the over 50s market for financial institutions in France

A lot of research has examined the mature market, defined here as people aged 50 or over. One field of research remains little studied in France, however: the behaviour of senior citizens in the field of financial services. This paper indicates the demographic and economic potential represented by French over 50s. It also examines the way they manage their money and the special way in which these consumers deal with financial products. Finally, the paper considers what offers in the field of insurance and banking are made to this age group in France.     

Is there market discipline for New Zealand non-bank financial institutions?

This paper studies effects of market discipline on the pricing of term deposit type investment products issued by New Zealand Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs) and how risk disclosure by NBFIs affects this relationship. While we find that more risky NBFIs indeed have to offer higher interest premiums, it is remarkable that investors do not appear to reward NBFIs for disclosure by accepting lower interest rates for better transparency. We attribute this unexpected result to possible limitations of a purely prospectus based disclosure quality index developed for this study or the inherent opaqueness of financial firms which cannot be overcome by even the best of disclosure [as argued by Morgan D.P., 2002. Rating banks: risk and uncertainty in an opaque industry. The American Economic Review 92 (4), 874–888].