INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION,INVESTMENT AND BORROWING WITH EXCHANGE RATE RISK AND FUTURES MARKETS

In this paper we consider a multinational firm under exchange rate and interest rate risks in a multiperiod model. We analyze the impact of exchange rate uncertainty and the use of currency futures on the risk-averse firm's decisions about home and foreign production. Without any hedging markets exchange rate risk lowers foreign investment and output. However, when futures markets exist, the separation property holds. Introducing another source of uncertainty, such as the interest rate, which is nondiversifiable, affects the production in both countries, i.e., the separation property does not hold. However, we show that the adverse effect of the missing financial market (to hedge against this additional risk) disappears when international borrowing is available.     

机制完善而非币值调整--人民币汇率制度改革的核心

2005年7月21日,中国人民银行正式对外宣布,经国务院批准,自2005年7月22日起,我国开始实行以市场供求为基础、参考一篮子货币进行调节、有管理的浮动汇率制度。这是我国1994年汇率制度改革以来,经多次政策微调之后,人民币汇率制度的一次重大变革。     

INTERNATIONAL OUTSOURCING,THE REAL EXCHANGE RATE AND EFFECTIVE DEMAND

We develop a two‐country model of international trade with outsourcing opportunities, and analyze the effects of outsourcing on employment and effective demand under stagnation. Increased outsourcing proves not only to lower employment but also to depreciate the real exchange rate which has the effect of boosting employment. The latter also dominates the former, such that employment and consumption are stimulated. The home and foreign countries respond in opposite ways, however, to the production shift and the real exchange rate adjustment. Furthermore, we find that the effects of outsourcing on consumption are opposite in the presence, and the absence, of unemployment.     

GROWTH,COMMODITY PRICES,INFLATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME

A primary commodity price boom is underway. Given the role of internationally traded primary commodities as inputs into the productive process in the industrialized world, an important question arises: namely what effects will this price‐boom exert upon wage and price inflation in industrialized countries? In order to address this question, we specify and estimate a system of equations in which the key dependent variables are world commodity prices, the domestic inflation rate for finished goods and the rate of domestic industrial wage inflation. This model is estimated against data for each of three major industrialized countries: Japan, the UK and the USA and the implications of the results thus obtained are explored.     

FOREIGN TRADE AND THE EXCHANGE RATE IN BOTSWANA

Botswana is a success story of exceptional economic performance, sound development management, and good governance. A great deal of that success can be attributed to the country's export performance and the avoidance of the 'Dutch Disease' syndrome that has plagued other natural resource based African countries. This article documents and analyzes Botswana's trade and exchange rate relationship, during the past two decades, in the context of the country's economic performance, and examines the related issue of the value of the country's currency to determine whether it is overvalued or undervalued.     

INCOME DISTRIBUTION,TECHNICAL CHANGE AND THE DYNAMICS OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

This paper explores the features of a dynamic multisectoral model that focuses on the relationship between income distribution, growth and international specialization. The model is explored both for the steady‐state properties and the transitory dynamics of integrated economies. Income inequality affects the patterns of growth and international specialization as the model uses non‐linear Engel curves and hence different income groups are characterized by different expenditure patterns. At the same time income distribution is also reflected in the relative wage rates of skilled to unskilled workers, i.e. the skill premium, and hence the wage structure affects comparative costs of industries which have different skill intensities. The model is applied to a situation that analyses qualitatively different economic development strategies of catching‐up economies (a ‘Latin American’ scenario and a ‘East Asian’ scenario).     

INCOME DISTRIBUTION,CREDIT RATIONING AND HOUSEHOLDS' DEBT

In this paper, we present a model of an economy with household debt, and discuss the conditions under which financial fragility arises. Financial instability is driven by distributive effects. In addition to the income transfers associated with interest payments, the accumulation of debt feeds back with the distribution of income between labour and capital. The model also gives a central role to banks and credit rationing. Contrary to the existing literature, credit supply does not depend on the characteristics of borrowers, but on those of banks. There is a feedback channel between the health of the financial system and the quantity of credit in the economy. We show that there is a diversity of channels through which financial fragility may arise. We identify three channels: a debt–deflation effect à la Fisher, a credit‐financed consumption boom and an exhilarating debt effect.     

QUASI-LINEAR UTILITY FUNCTIONS AND THE DYNAMICS OF PURE EXCHANGE OVERLAPPING GENERATIONS MODELS

This paper considers the dynamics of pure exchange OLG models with stationary population (each agent living for two periods), tastes and endowments, homogeneous agents and well behaved preferences. It is shown that any kind of dynamics that can emerge from this class of models can be generated by a subclass of models where preferences are described by quasi-linear utility functions.     

人民币升值预期与我国汇率制度改革

近几年来,我国经济持续快速发展,投资环境不断改善,外国直接投资持续增加。然而,西方主要国家经济长期持续低迷,对我国施加压力,要求人民币升值,形成了强烈的人民币升值预期。对此,我国将改革汇率制度,在完善人民币汇率形成机制的基础上,在均衡、合理的水平上保持人民币汇率的基本稳定。     

中国与新加坡汇率制度比较分析

从2005年7月21日开始,我国实行以市场供求为基础、参考一篮子货币进行调节、有管理的浮动汇率制度。人民币不再单一钉住美元,也不是严格钉住一篮子货币,可简单称之为“软钉住篮子货币”。一些机构和市场人士认为, 中国最终将实行新加坡式的BBC (Basket,Band and Crawling)制度,     

EXCHANGE RATE PASS-THROUGH IN THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

This article examines empirically the exchange rate pass-through of car manufacturers on the Swedish market. It first analyzes the changes in prices by supplying countries during the period 1976 - 1996. In a second stage, the relationship between price-level adjusted exchange rates and quality-adjusted prices is investigated. Although there exist significant differences across countries, the evidence shows that actual price adjustments are associated with stabilization of local currency prices. The policy implication of the results is that the use of an exchange rate policy in the case of external imbalances should therefore be reconsidered within the broader context of how market structure and conduct influence the optimal pricing of traded goods.     

SCARCE NATURAL RESOURCES AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION*

: Introduction. SECTION I: Differential rent - 1. The production system with lands of different qualities; 2. Relations between the rates of profit, wage and rent; 3. Order of fertility and income distribution. SECTION II: Rent on land of a single quality - 1. The production system with land of the same quality; 2. Relations between the rates of profit, wage and rent; 3. Possibility of an upward-sloping wage-profit frontier     

我国居民收入差距形成的原因和对策

改革开放以来 ,我国居民收入差距明显扩大 ,影响因素主要有经济增长、体制变迁与经济政策变化。解决收入分配差距的方法有加强政府责任、规范行业垄断、加快发展与扩大就业、完善再收入分配功能、加强法制建设。     

MARX‐BIASED TECHNICAL CHANGE AND THE NEOCLASSICAL VIEW OF INCOME DISTRIBUTION

This paper empirically tests two competing views about capital–labour substitution at the aggregate level in capitalist economies: the classical model with Marx‐biased technical change versus the neoclassical model. Following Foley and Michl (1999 ), the classical viability condition of technical change is used to draw out two different hypotheses about the profit share in national income corresponding to the two competing models. A stochastic version of the viability condition is empirically tested with data from the Extended Penn World Tables 2.1 using a simple cross‐country estimation strategy. It is found that the data overwhelmingly rejects the neoclassical theory.     

DIFFERENTIAL DEPRECIATION AND THE 2 × 2 MODEL OF DISTRIBUTION,PRICING AND PRODUCTION

In a two‐sector model it is entirely arbitrary to take the depreciation rate to be the same in both sectors; capital is being used differently in the two sectors! With differential depreciation rates factor‐intensity‐reversal can arise even when both sectors have a Cobb–Douglas technology. Efficient allocations do not involve mutual tangency points between consumption–good and capital–good isoquants.     

MEASURES OF PRODUCTION PRICE‐LABOUR VALUE DEVIATION AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN ACTUAL ECONOMIES: A NOTE

Many empirical studies indicate that the deviations of actual prices of production from labour values are not too sensitive to the type of measure used for their evaluation. This paper attempts to theorize this rather ‘stylized fact’ by focusing on the relationships between the traditional and the numéraire‐free measures of deviation. On the empirical side, it provides an illustration of these relationships using input–output data from the Japanese economy.     

PRICE DETERMINATION IN POLYPOLISTIC MARKETS AND EXCHANGE RATE CHANGES

A number of extensions of monopolistic competition to international trade have proved able to account for observed deviations from models of perfect competition. New fundamental research has questioned the concept of perfect competition by investigating firms’ decisions directly, with results quite similar in spirit to Kahn's idea of a “polypolistic market”. This paper follows this latter route; it presents a model of a firm's price and output decisions under uncertainty which produces the typical behavior of monopolistic competition even in a homogeneous industry. The model yields insights into the issue of the price and quantity effects of nominal changes in exchange rates.