Growth, Income Inequality, and Fiscal Policy: What Are the Relevant Trade-offs?

We develop an endogenous growth model with elastic labor supply, in which agents differ in their initial endowments of physical capital. In this context, the growth rate and the distribution of income are jointly determined. We then examine the distributional impact of different ways of financing an investment subsidy. Policies aimed at increasing the growth rate result in a more unequal distribution of pre-tax income, consistent with the positive correlation between income inequality and growth observed in the recent empirical literature. However, there is no conflict between efficiency and equity if inequality is measured in terms of the distribution of welfare.     

Monetary policy and macroeconomic stability in Latin America: The cases of Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico

In 1999, new monetary policy regimes were adopted in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, combining inflation targeting with floating exchange rates. These regime changes have been accompanied by lower volatility in the monetary stance in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, despite higher inflation volatility in Brazil and Colombia. This paper estimates a conventional New Keynesian model for these four countries and shows that: i) the post-1999 regime has been associated with greater responsiveness by the monetary authority to changes in expected inflation in Brazil and Chile, while in Colombia and Mexico monetary policy has become less counter-cyclical, ii) lower interest-rate volatility in the post-1999 period owes more to a benign economic environment than to a change in the policy setting, and iii) the change in the monetary regime has not yet resulted in a reduction in output volatility in these countries.     

Long-term changes in labor supply and taxes: Evidence from OECD countries, 1956-2004

We document large differences in trend changes in hours worked across OECD countries between 1956 and 2004. We assess the extent to which these changes are consistent with the intratemporal first order condition from the neoclassical growth model, augmented with taxes on labor income and consumption expenditures. We find that the model can account for most of the trend changes in hours worked measured in the data. Differences in taxes explain much of the variation in hours worked both over time and across countries.     

A Tale of Two Growth Engines: Interactive Effects of Monetary Policy and Intellectual Property Rights

How do intellectual property rights that determine the market power of firms influence the growth and welfare effects of monetary policy? To analyze this question, we develop a monetary hybrid endogenous growth model in which R&D and capital accumulation are both engines of long‐run economic growth. We find that monetary expansion hurts economic growth and social welfare by reducing R&D and capital accumulation. Furthermore, a larger market power of firms strengthens these growth and welfare effects of monetary policy through the R&D channel but weakens these effects through the capital‐accumulation channel. Therefore, whether the market power of firms amplifies or mitigates the welfare cost of inflation depends on the relative importance of the two growth engines. Finally, we calibrate the model using data in the United States and the Euro Area to quantitatively evaluate and compare the welfare cost of inflation in these two economies and find that the R&D channel dominates in both economies.     

Convenient prices, currency, and nominal rigidity: Theory with evidence from newspaper prices

Certain items’ prices are often set to simplify and expedite transactions, by coinciding with available monetary units, requiring few pieces of money, or requiring little change. In this sense, these prices are more convenient than other proximate prices. This paper models a firm that explicitly incorporates convenience into its pricing decisions—where convenience is quantified by the number of currency units in a transaction—and illustrates the theoretical behaviors that can arise. Newspaper cover price data empirically support the theory. Across a broader range of goods and services, convenience appears to play a role in effecting above-average nominal price rigidity.     

Inflation and Innovation in a Schumpeterian Economy with North–South Technology Transfer

This study analyzes how inflation affects innovation and international technology transfer via cash‐in‐advance constraints on R&D. We consider a North–South quality‐ladder model that features innovative Northern R&D and adaptive Southern R&D. We find that higher Southern inflation causes a permanent decrease in technology transfer, a permanent increase in the North–South wage gap, and a temporary decrease in the Northern innovation rate. Higher Northern inflation causes a temporary decrease in the Northern innovation rate, a permanent decrease in the North–South wage gap, and ambiguous effects on technology transfer. Finally, we calibrate the model to China–U.S. data to perform a quantitative analysis.     

Tax Evasion,Investment Shocks,and the Consumption Puzzle: A DSGE Analysis with Financial Frictions

Recent studies identify Marginal Efficiency of Investment (MEI) shocks as important drivers of the business cycle. However, Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models struggle to explain macroeconomic comovements between consumption and the key real variables after a MEI shock. Moreover, engaging in tax evasion practices is often an answer to financial constraints, which have been recognized as important determinants of cyclical fluctuations as well. We use a medium-scale New Keynesian DSGE model, that combines tax evasion with financial frictions, to simulate a MEI shock. We show that entrepreneurial tax evasion can solve the comovement problem to a fair extent.     

风雨同舟 共铸辉煌——新中国成立60年经济与银行业携手前行

新中国成立60年来,经济和金融取得了巨大的成就。在经济方面,国民经济综合实力明显增强,国际地位和影响力显著提高;人民生活实现由贫困到总体小康的历史性跨越,正向全面小康目标迈进;对外经济实现了从封闭半封闭到全方位开放,对外贸易和利用外资规模均跃居世界前列;经济结构实现由低级到高级、不均衡到相对均衡的巨大调整。在银行业方面,金融机构资产规模不断扩大;存贷款规模不断上升;资产质量大幅改善,抗风险能力进一步增强;盈利能力稳步提升;从一元化、大一统的银行体制发展到多种类型金融机构相互竞争、共同发展的局面。     

Capitalisation of R&D and the informativeness of stock prices: Pre- and post-IFRS evidence

We examine whether requiring (IFRS) versus allowing (UK GAAP) conditional capitalisation of development expenditure affects the extent to which capitalisation conveys more information about future earnings, relative to expensing. We show that capitalisation results in current returns incorporating more future earnings information than expensing under UK GAAP but not under IFRS. i.e., the amount of information incorporated into market prices of capitalisers is the same as that from firms expensing R&D under IFRS. This result holds irrespective of a firm’s earnings management incentives or strength of corporate governance for the period under IFRS. We argue that this is because investors experience greater uncertainty regarding the realisation of future economic benefits associated with the development costs capitalised in the post-IFRS period. Consistent with this, we do find a positive association between capitalised R&D and future earnings variability in the post-IFRS period only, as well as short-term positive abnormal returns for capitalisers relative to expensers in the pre-IFRS period only. Overall, these findings suggest that when moving away from a standard that offers an overt option to capitalise or expense, capitalisation comes with greater uncertainty, which is resolved only in the long term.     

金融中介发展、企业家精神与区域经济增长——基于省级面板数据的实证研究

本文利用1999--2010年我国30个省市的面板数据,对金融中介、企业家精神和区域经济增长之间的关系进行了实证研究。实证结果显示：金融中介发展尤其是效率的提高,对经济增长有直接的推动作用,但其增长效应存在地区差异;企业家精神能够促进经济增长,但企业家创新精神的经济增长效应远低于创业精神的经济增长效应;金融中介发展主要通过支持企业家创业活动促进经济增长。     

Religion,Corruption, and the Rule of Law

In a 207‐country sample, we find that rule of law and corruption are both associated with a country's religious heritage, thereby partially explaining the correlation between religion and economic growth found in previous research. We also show that our results change when we control for some variables lacking data for all countries in the sample but that these differences are attributable to changes in sample composition rather than the effects of the control variables. Our research suggests that researchers doing cross‐country analysis should distinguish between the effects of adding a control variable and the resulting sample composition effects.     

In Old Chicago: Simons,Friedman, and the Development of Monetary‐Policy Rules

This paper examines the different policy rules proposed by Henry Simons, who, beginning in the mid‐1930s, advocated a price‐level stabilization rule, and by Milton Friedman, who, beginning in the late‐1950s, advocated a rule that targeted a constant growth rate of the money supply. Although both rules shared the objective of eliminating the policy uncertainty emanating from discretion, they differed because of the different views of Simons and Friedman about the stability of secular relationships. Simons’ rule relates to modern rules that emphasize the pursuit of price stability as representing optimal monetary policy.     

Exchange Rate Pass‐Through,Domestic Competition,and Inflation: Evidence from the 2005–08 Revaluation of the Renminbi

Import competition from China is pervasive in the sense that for many good categories, the competitive environment that U.S. firms face in these markets is strongly driven by the prices of Chinese imports, and so is their pricing decision. This paper quantifies the effect of the government‐controlled appreciation of the Chinese renminbi vis‐à‐vis the USD from 2005 to 2008 on the prices charged by U.S. domestic producers. In a panel spanning the period from 1994 to 2010 and including up to 519 manufacturing sectors, import price changes of Chinese goods pass into U.S. producer prices at an average rate of 0.7, while import price changes that can be traced back to exchange rate movements of other trade partners only have mild effects on U.S. prices. Further analysis points to the importance of trade integration, variable markups, and demand complementarities on the one side, and to the importance of imported intermediate goods on the other side as drivers of these patterns. Simulations incorporating these microeconomic findings reveal that a substantial revaluation of the renminbi would result in a pronounced increase in aggregate U.S. producer price inflation.     

Temperature and Growth: A Panel Analysis of the United States

We document that seasonal temperatures have significant and systematic effects on the U.S. economy, both at the aggregate level and across a wide cross section of economic sectors. This effect is particularly strong for the summer: a F increase in the average summer temperature is associated with a reduction in the annual growth rate of state‐level output of 0.15 to 0.25 percentage points. We combine our estimates with projected increases in seasonal temperatures and find that rising temperatures could reduce U.S. economic growth by up to one‐third over the next century.     

Asset Prices,News Shocks,and the Trade Balance

We analyze the relationship between asset prices and the trade balance estimating a Bayesian VAR for a broad set of 38 industrialized and emerging market countries. To derive model‐based identifying restrictions, we model asset price shocks as news shocks about future productivity in a two‐country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Such shocks are found to exert sizable effects on the trade balance. Moreover, the effects are highly heterogeneous across countries. For instance, following a news shock that implies on impact a 10% increase in domestic equity prices relative to the rest of the world, the U.S. trade balance will worsen by up to 1.0 percentage points, but much less so for most other economies. We find that this heterogeneity appears to be linked to the financial market depth and equity home bias of countries. Moreover, the channels via wealth effects and via the real exchange rate are important for understanding the heterogeneity in the transmission.     

Impact of the stock market capitalization and the banking spread in growth and development in Latin American: A panel data estimation with System GMM

This research is aimed at assessing the impact of the stock market capitalization and the banking spread in per capita economic growth (as a proxy of economic development) in the major Latin American economies during period 1994–2012. To do this, a panel data model is estimated with both system and difference Generalized Method of Moments. The main empirical findings are that economic growth in the countries under study is positively impacted by the stock market capitalization and negatively by the banking spread. Typical problems of multicollinearity and autocorrelation appearing in panel data analysis are corrected under the proposed methodology.     

人民币实际有效汇率、FDI与中国经济增长——兼论巴拉萨—萨缪尔森效应在中国的适用性

本文在VAR模型的基础上,利用协整分析、格兰杰因果检验和脉冲响应函数,研究了人民币实际有效汇率、FDI和中国经济增长的动态关系。结果表明,长期内人民币实际有效汇率贬值,促进了FDI流入;中国经济增长促进了人民币实际有效汇率的升值,证明了巴拉萨-萨缪尔森效应的存在。     

Macro Liquidity Risk,Money Growth,and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns: The Case of Korea

According to the homogeneity of money holding purpose, we decompose the broad money M2 into an underlying and a non-underlying part and propose innovations in future non-underlying M2 growth as a proxy for macro liquidity. In both the cross-sectional regression tests and the GMM tests, we find that risk related to innovations in future non-underlying M2 growth is strongly significantly priced in Korea, after controlling for the well-known risk factors and other macroeconomic variables. Meanwhile, risk related to innovations in future aggregate or underlying M2 growth is insignificantly priced. These results indicate that non-underlying M2 growth more directly affects macro liquidity than does aggregate or underlying M2 growth.     

供应链经济背景下供应链金融发展现状、问题与策略研究——基于构建经济发展新格局的视角

构建以国内经济大循环为主的国内国际经济双循环的经济发展新格局,是党中央应对当前国际国内新形势提出的新的发展战略。供应链经济是实现经济双循环目标的重要抓手,而供应链金融则是供应链经济能否持续繁荣的重要保障。近年来,我国的供应链金融虽然有了较快的发展,但面对复杂多变的经济金融形势,特别是构建经济发展新格局的战略背景下,必须根据供应链经济变化新特点,扎紧供应链金融的风险敞口,设计好供应链金融的新布局,提升供应链金融在各项金融产品中的比重,加快供应链金融各项政策落地,以数字化为主要手段全面推动供应链金融生产能力的再释放,充分满足供应链经济发展的需求,发挥金融在供应链经济发展,特别是经济发展新格局构建中的重要作用。