Optimal Tax Policy, Market Imperfections, and Environmental Externalities in a Dynamic Optimizing Macro Model

This paper develops a dynamic real business cycle model that highlights pollution externalities (on welfare and production) and market imperfections and uses it to determine the socially optimal tax policy that encompasses labor income, capital income, and emission taxes. We show that the optimal tax on capital and labor income only addresses the production inefficiency (and is time-invariant), while the tax on the environmental externalities affects both the production inefficiency and the environmental spillovers (and is time-varying). More interestingly, the socially optimal emission tax will be characterized by a Keynesian-like stabilizer that is designed to mitigate business cycle fluctuations, i.e., that will stimulate the economy with a lower emission tax during recessions. In a positive analysis, we show that the beneficial effects arising from pollution taxation will become larger the greater is the degree of the firms' monopoly power. In addition, a triple dividend in terms of improving environmental quality and increasing employment and firms' profit can be simultaneously realized if the environmental production externality is more significant and if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is relatively small.     

Empirical Evidence of the Leverage Effect in a Stochastic Volatility Model: A Realized Volatility Approach

Increasing attention has been focused on the analysis of the realized volatility, which can be treated as a proxy for the true volatility. In this paper, we study the potential use of the realized volatility as a proxy in a stochastic volatility model estimation. We estimate the leveraged stochastic volatility model using the realized volatility computed from five popular methods across six sampling-frequency transaction data (from 1-min to 60- min) based on the trust region method. Availability of the realized volatility allows us to estimate the model parameters via the MLE and thus avoids computational challenge in the high dimensional integration. Six stock indices are considered in the empirical investigation. We discover some consistent findings and interesting patterns from the empirical results. In general, the significant leverage effect is consistently detected at each sampling frequency and the volatility persistence becomes weaker at the lower sampling frequency.     

Imperfect Competition and the Gains from Trade in a Macro Duopoly Model

A general-equilibrium duopoly trade model is developed. In the micro model, constant-elasticity market demand curves produce backward-bending reaction functions. This is combined with a macro analysis in which the real wage is determined competitively, while nominal variables depend on the money supply. Trade can lead to large increases in aggregate output, employment, and real wages. The gains from trade are the result of increases in market size, and greater competition in each market. The benefits of trade are largest when marginal-cost curves slope downward and the labor supply curve is elastic.     

Endogenous Exchange Rate Volatility, Trading Volume and Interest Rate Differentials in a Model of Portfolio Selection

This paper considers a portfolio model of exchange rate determination and focuses on endogenous sources of exchange rate volatility. It is shown that, in addition to volatility transmitted by conditionally heteroskedastic interest rates, the larger the serial correlation in interest rates the stronger the effect of interest rate differentials on exchange rate volatility. These features are supported by the data. The paper also looks at the volume–volatility relationship implied by the model.     

SETAR模型在中国股市波动率研究中的应用

文章对上证指数2006年1月6日-2011年5月23日收盘价的波动率进行了研究,介绍并使用随机系数SETAR模型与ARCH族模型进行对比拟合,根据数据的特点,文章构建了一种新型的SETAR模型,即AR(r)-SETAR(l,p1,p1)模型,模型利用ADF检验和AIC准则进行识别和估计。结果表明:可用AR(4)-SETAR(2,1,1)模型来拟合中国股市中的上证指数,研究其波动率特点,上证指数波动率呈不对称的响应,而且"负"响应比"正"响应高出约1.3倍。用ARCH族模型也证明了这种不对称响应的特征,但无法度量波动的强度,预测效果也没有SETAR模型精确。说明上证指数波动率不对称响应明显且呈现非线性的趋势,这种非线性的趋势更适合用SETAR模型来拟合。     

Effect of Macro Factor Volatility on the Returns of Financial Sector in Southeast Asian Stock Markets

The emphasis of this study is on the practice of the Pooled Mean Group （PMG） estimators to investigate the magnitude of macroeconomic performances： Real Gross Domestic Product （RGDP）, Foreign Exchange Rate （EX）, and Deposit Interest Rate （DINT） affecting on the rate of financial sector returns in Southeast Asian Stock Markets including Stock Exchange Of Thailand （SET） index （Thailand）, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index （KLSE） index （Malaysia）, Financial Times Share Index （FTSI） （Singapore）, Philippine Stock Exchange （PSE）, and the Jakarta Composite Index （JKSE） （Indonesia）. The Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag （Panel ARDL） is applied to model the relations. The study applies the Levin, Lin, and Chu （LLC） test （2002） and Im, Pesaran, and Shin （IPS） test （2003） to investigates a set of time series data to examine whether the determinants and the rate of financial sector returns contain a unit root, the next step is investigated the cointegration and causality relationship of the determinants of financial sector influencing on long-run rate of returns of financial sector in Southeast Asian Stock Markets.     

Optimal Growth with Endogenous Technical Progress: Hicksian Bias in a Macro Model

If productivity growth is endogenous, the question of whether to allocate some resources to increase the efficiency of capital needs to be examined in spite of the conventional wisdom that only Harrod-neutral technical progress is compatible with the steady state. This paper describes the crucial role that the production technology and research sectors play in determining the allocation of resources for accumulating physical capital and enhancing the productivity of inputs. We develop a model of biased growth, where, even in the steady state, the efficiency of capital and labour are increasing due to the allocation of resources to the research sector.
JEL Classification Numbers: C62, O31.     

Volatility,growth and cycles

The paper investigates the factors affecting the equilibrium level of output in a panel of European countries. Output depends on factor inputs and on the technology and the efficiency with which those factors are used. Efficiency may be driven by international conditions and institutional changes such as the Single Market Programme in Europe. The technology indicators used in this study depend upon research and development and also include the level of labour efficiency which is indexed on skills data. The level of the capital stock depends upon the user cost of capital, which may depend upon risk and hence on the volatility of the economy. Recent literature suggests that real exchange rate volatility is important in determining investment and therefore has an impact on equilibrium output. A link of this form is uncovered for the European economies. If policy can reduce these volatilities then it can also raise equilibrium output.

Expectations, Drift, and Volatility in Evolutionary Games

This paper proposes an evolutionary model of learning in simple coordination games where expectations are the driving force of the process. As time proceeds, agents adjust their expectations through some (possibly different) updating rules, whose only requirement is that of consistency with long stationary evidence. Sporadically, expectations are also subject to arbitrary perturbation. The main point of the paper is that, due to the possibility of random drift on expectations, the evolutionary process will be subject to high volatility across equilibria. Specifically, every Nash equilibrium (even if risk- or payoff-dominated) will have significant positive weight in the long-run invariant distribution. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C73. D83. D84.     

Growth Volatility and Technical Progress: A Simple Rent-seeking Model

Recent empirical evidence demonstrates that a higher level of technical progress is associated with a lower level of growth volatility and higher expected economic growth. This paper builds a simple growth model which combines the insights of Angeletos and Kollintzas (2000) and Tse (2000; 2001; 2002) with endogenous productivity growth and rent-seeking behavior to account for these stylized facts. Our model complements the literature that focuses on the heterogeneity of different agents.     

Learning,Matching, and Aggregation

Fictitious play and stimulus–response/reinforcement learning are examined in the context of a large population where agents are repeatedly randomly matched. We show that the aggregation of this learning behavior can be qualitatively different from learning at the level of the individual. This aggregate dynamic belongs to the same class of simply defined dynamic as do several formulations of evolutionary dynamics. We obtain sufficient conditions for convergence and divergence which are valid for the whole class of dynamics. These results are therefore robust to most specifications of adaptive behavior.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C72, D83.     

Financial Integration,Growth and Volatility

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the welfare gains from financial integration for developing and emerging market economies. To do so, we build a stochastic endogenous growth model for a small open economy that can: (i) borrow from the rest of the world; (ii) invest in foreign assets; and (iii) receive foreign direct investment. The model is calibrated on 46 emerging market and developing economies for which we evaluate the upper bound for the welfare gain from financial integration. For plausible values of preference parameters and actual levels of financial integration, the mean welfare gain from financial integration is around 13.5% of initial wealth. Compared with financial autarky, actual levels of financial integration translate into higher annual growth rates.     

Excess Volatility of Realized Excess Profit from Currency Speculation in a Two-Country General Equilibrium Model

This paper examines whether the Lucas model can explain stylized facts in foreign exchange markets, by employing Monte Carlo studies. It is assumed that changes in the logarithms of endowments and of money supplies follow a multivariate Markov switching process. From the results of the Monte Carlo studies, with plausible values of the preference parameters, the excess volatility of the realized excess profit from currency speculation, the strong autocorrelation of the forward premium in the sample can be found in the model for four exchange rates. However, the implied covariance between the forward premium and depreciation rates is positive.     

通胀惯性、通胀预期与我国通货膨胀的空间特征——基于空间动态面板模型

本文将经济地理空间权重矩阵引入通胀惯性和通胀预期共存的新凯恩斯混合菲利普斯曲线框架,通过空间动态面板模型计量方法考察我国地区通胀在时间和空间上的特征。我们通过蒙特卡罗模拟发现,使用拟最大似然函数方法估计空间动态面板模型明显优于用于估计动态面板模型的向前正交离差广义矩方法。分析发现,消费者物价指数和零售商品物价指数空间传染性较强,GDP平减指数空间相关性较弱。新凯恩斯混合菲利普斯曲线较好地拟合了我国通胀的运行机理,其中,在影响当期通胀水平上,通胀惯性明显占优于通胀预期,治理通胀必须承受必要代价。     

股价波动、社会福利与货币政策制定——基于中国DSGE模型的模拟分析

文章构建了一个包含股票市场财富效应和稳态股利水平且反映中国现实特征的DSGE模型,通过扩展的货币政策泰勒规则,考察了面对技术冲击、利率冲击和股票市场冲击时,中央银行应如何制定货币政策以保持产出、价格和股票市场的稳定,并尽可能地降低社会福利损失.结果表明,货币政策考虑股价波动能够有效降低社会福利损失;中央银行存在多重调控目标时需要注意区分冲击的类型来相机抉择,在利率冲击下,货币政策应当对股价波动做出反应,而在技术冲击和股票市场冲击下,则需要在各个经济变量之间进行权衡.     

Aid, Volatility, and Growth Again: When Aid Volatility Matters and When it Does Not

In previous papers the authors have argued that aid is likely to mitigate the negative effects of external shocks on economic growth (i.e. that aid is more effective in countries which are more vulnerable to external shocks). Recently an important debate has emerged about the possible negative effects of aid volatility itself. However, the cushioning effect of aid may involve some volatility in aid flows, which then is not necessarily negative for growth. In this paper the authors examine to what extent the time profile of aid disbursements may contribute to an increase or a decrease of aid effectiveness. They first show that aid, even if volatile, is not clearly as pro-cyclical as is often argued, and, even if pro-cyclical, is not necessarily destabilizing. They measure aid volatility by several methods and assess pro-cyclicality of aid with respect to exports, thus departing from previous literature, which usually assess pro-cyclicality of aid with respect to national income or fiscal receipts. The stabilizing/destabilizing nature of aid is measured by the difference in the volatility of exports and the volatility of the aid plus export flows. Then, in order to take into account the diversity of shocks to which aid can respond, they consider the effect of aid on income volatility and again find that aid is making growth more stable, while its volatility reduces this effect. They finally show through growth regressions that the higher effectiveness of aid in vulnerable countries is to a large extent due to its stabilizing effect.     

Globalization, Financial Volatility and Monetary Policy

Recently it has often been claimed that globalization eases the job of central banks as it helps to tame inflation. This is used to argue that central banks (particularly the ECB, referring to the objectives as laid down in the EU Treaty) could or should reduce their efforts in the fight against inflation in favor of supporting the general economic policies of the governments. This paper takes a critical look at this argument, pointing to the structural changes associated with globalization and to the corresponding increase in uncertainty by which the central banks are affected. As an example of this, the increase in financial volatility is analyzed and explained as the result of optimal portfolio allocation, and its implications for monetary policy are discussed.     

Heterogeneity, Job Creation and Unemployment Volatility

In this paper, I explore the impact of match‐specific heterogeneity at the job creation margin on business cycle fluctuations. I show that this form of heterogeneity alone does not help to amplify labor market volatility, either under full or under asymmetric information. First, I show analytically that, under full information, heterogeneity has no first‐order effect on the response of unemployment and job creation to productivity, and actually tends to dampen the response of market tightness. Then, in a series of calibrations, I show that with both full and asymmetric information, the model delivers labor market volatilities close to the representative‐agent, full‐information benchmark.     

Persistence, Asymmetries and Interrelation in Factor Demand

A neoclassical factor demand model for structures, equipment and labour is analyzed in this paper. It incorporates a variety of dynamic specifications, such as a multi-period time-to-build for structures, internal adjustment costs for each production factor, and external investment adjustment costs. First-order conditions of the model are estimated by the generalized method of moments using manufacturing industry data from the US, Canada, West Germany, the UK (all 1960.I–1988.IV), France (1970.I–1992.II) and the Netherlands (1971.I–1990.IV). The results endorse time-to-build for structures, persistence of technology shocks and interrelations in adjustment cost dynamics.     

Fiscal Convergence, Business Cycle Volatility, and Growth

This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal convergence on business cycle volatility and growth. Using a panel of 11 EMU and 21 OECD countries and 40 years of data, we find that countries with similar government budget positions tend to have smoother business cycles. That is, fiscal convergence (in the form of persistently similar ratios of government surplus/deficit to GDP) is systematically associated with smoother business cycles. We also find evidence that reduced business cycle volatility through higher fiscal convergence stimulates growth. Our empirical results are economically and statistically significant, and robust.