Declining Effects of Oil Price Shocks

In recent years, output responses to oil price shocks have not only been weaker, but have also reached their trough earlier. This paper builds a model that incorporates a realistic structure of U.S. petroleum consumption and explores three possible explanations for the changes. The possible factors considered are (i) deregulation in the transportation industry, (ii) improved energy efficiency, and (iii) a lower degree of persistence of oil price shocks. Under realistic parameter values, the three factors play an important role quantitatively, accounting for half of the reduction in the largest impact on output of an oil price shock over time.     

The Role of Oil Price Shocks in Causing U.S. Recessions

Although oil price shocks have long been viewed as one of the leading candidates for explaining U.S. recessions, surprisingly little is known about the extent to which oil price shocks explain recessions. We provide a formal analysis of this question with special attention to the possible role of net oil price increases in amplifying the transmission of oil price shocks. We quantify the conditional effect of oil price shocks in the net oil price increase model for all episodes of net oil price increases since the mid‐1970s, analyze its determinants, and show that the linear model fits the data better.     

Oil Risk Exposure: The Case of the U.S. Oil and Gas Sector

We estimate oil price risk exposures of the U.S. oil and gas sector using the Fama‐French‐Carhart's four‐factor asset pricing model augmented with oil price and interest rate factors. Results show that the market, book‐to‐market, and size factors, as well as momentum characteristics of stocks and changes in oil prices are significant determinants of returns for the sector. Oil price risk exposures of U.S. oil and gas companies in the oil and gas sector are generally positive and significant. Our study also finds that oil price risk exposures vary considerably over time, and across firms and industry subsectors.     

Investment‐Specific News Shocks and U.S. Business Cycles

We provide robust evidence that news shocks about future investment‐specific technology (IST) constitute a significant force behind U.S. business cycles. Positive IST news shocks induce comovement, that is, raise output, consumption, investment, and hours. These shocks account for 70% of the business cycle variation in output, hours, and consumption, and 60% of the variation in investment, and have played an important role in 9 of the last 10 U.S. recessions. Our findings provide strong support for shifting focus to IST news shocks when investigating the role of news in driving U.S. business cycles.     

国际原油价格波动对中国物价水平的影响

本文在多变量VAR模型的基础上,分别采用协整检验、脉冲响应和方差分解方法分析了国际原油价格对中国物价水平的影响.结果显示：国际石油价格冲击对中国物价水平的影响是显著的,对中国生产者物价水平的影响速度大于对消费者物价水平的影响,对中国生产者物价水平的影响程度大于对消费者物价水平的影响.     

The Dynamic Relationship between Permanent and Transitory Components of U.S. Business Cycles

This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between permanent and transitory components of post-war U.S. business cycles. We specify a time-series model for real GNP and consumption in which the two share a common stochastic trend and transitory component, and Markov-regime switching is used to model business cycle phases in these components. The timing of switches between business cycle phases is allowed to differ across the permanent and transitory components. We find strong evidence of a lead-lag relationship between the switches in the two components. Specifically, switches in the permanent component leads switches in the transitory component when entering recessions.     

Energy Price Shocks and the Macroeconomy: The Role of Consumer Durables

We create a model with a distinction between investment in consumer durables and capital goods, as well as energy use by households and firms, to evaluate the importance of energy price shocks for output fluctuations. Simulation results indicate that this economy has a smaller proportion of output fluctuations attributable to energy price shocks than one without durable goods and household energy use. We show that an energy price hike is absorbed by reducing investment in durables more than in fixed capital. This rebalancing effect cushions the hit to future production. Thus, productivity shocks remain the prime driver for output fluctuations.     

Stochastic Volatility in a Macro-Finance Model of the U.S. Term Structure of Interest Rates 1961–2004

This paper generalizes the standard homoscedastic macro-finance model by allowing for stochastic volatility, using the "square root" specification of the mainstream finance literature. Empirically, this specification dominates the standard model because it is consistent with the square root volatility found in macroeconomic time series. Thus it establishes an important connection between the stochastic volatility of the mainstream finance model and macro-economic volatility of the Okun–Friedman type. This research opens the way to a richer specification of both macro-economic and term structure models, incorporating the best features of both macro-finance and mainstream finance models.     

The Relationships between Permanent and Transitory Movements in U.S. Output and the Unemployment Rate

This paper estimates the permanent and transitory movements in U.S. output and the unemployment rate and the relationships between them. The results suggest that permanent movements in U.S. output and the unemployment rate are important for explaining overall fluctuations. Further, the correlation between changes in these series arises in large part due to the relationship between their permanent components.     

The Effects of Oil Price Uncertainty on Global Real Economic Activity

This paper investigates the effect of oil price uncertainty on global real economic activity using a quarterly vector autoregressive model with stochastic volatility in mean. Stochastic volatility allows oil price uncertainty to vary separately from changes in the level of oil prices, and allows one to incorporate an extraneous indicator of oil price uncertainty such as realized volatility that greatly improves the precision of the estimated uncertainty series. The estimation results show that an oil price uncertainty shock has negative effects on world industrial production all else equal. For example, it is shown that a doubling of oil price volatility is associated with a cumulative decline as high as 0.3 percentage points in world industrial production.     

International Transmission Channels of U.S. Quantitative Easing: Evidence from Canada

The U.S. Federal Reserve responded to the great recession by implementing quantitative easing, or large‐scale asset purchases, when its conventional policy rate reached the zero lower bound. We assess the international spillover effects of this quantitative easing program on the Canadian economy in a factor‐augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) framework, by considering a counterfactual scenario in which the Federal Reserve's long‐term asset holdings do not rise in response to the recession. We find that U.S. quantitative easing boosted Canadian output, mainly through the financial channel.     

The U.S. current account deficit and the expected share of world output

We investigate the possibility that the large current account deficits of the U.S. are the outcome of optimizing behavior. We develop a simple long-run world equilibrium model in which the current account is determined by the expected discounted present value of its future share of world GDP relative to its current share of world GDP. The model suggests that under some reasonable assumptions about future U.S. GDP growth relative to the rest of the advanced countries—more modest than the growth over the past 20 years—the current account deficit is near optimal levels. We then explore the implications for the real exchange rate. Under some plausible assumptions, the model implies little change in the real exchange rate over the adjustment path, though the conclusion is sensitive to assumptions about tastes and technology. Then we turn to empirical evidence. A test of current account sustainability suggests that the U.S. is not keeping on a long-run sustainable path. A direct test of our model finds that the dynamics of the U.S. current account—the increasing deficits over the past decade—are difficult to explain under a particular statistical model (Markov-switching) of expectations of future U.S. growth. But, if we use survey data on forecasted GDP growth in the G-7, our very simple model appears to explain the evolution of the U.S. current account remarkably well. We conclude that expectations of robust performance of the U.S. economy relative to the rest of the advanced countries is a contender—though not the only legitimate contender—for explaining the U.S. current account deficit.     

The effects of oil price shocks on U.S. stock order flow imbalances and stock returns

This paper investigates for the first time the effects of oil demand shocks and oil supply shocks on stock order flow imbalances leading to changes in stock returns. Through the estimation of a structural VAR model, positive oil demand shocks are able to explain almost 36% of the observed variation in the daily average stock order flow imbalances measured by the buy/sell trades ratio; which consequently lead to a negative rather than positive stock returns reaction. In contrast, oil supply shocks exhibit a negative and marginally significant effect on stock order flow imbalances. Our aggregate analysis suggests that positive shocks on stock order flow imbalances are negatively related to stock returns. These effects are stronger for oil-related sectors when compared with the rest of the equities sectors.     

美欧消费者金融调查的主要做法及对我国的启示

美国和欧洲的消费者金融调查起步较早。本文整理了美国和欧洲消费者金融调查的主要做法．并对我国开展此项工作提出相关建议：进一步完善消费者金融调查内容,定期开展调查;加强对消费者金融调查的分析与披露;重视加强对消费者科学配置金融资产的引导。     

The Impact of Inflation Measures on the Real Returns and Risk of U.S. Stocks

Using different inflation measures produces economically significant differences in both the inflation record and inflation‐adjusted stock returns. We introduce a more consistent measure of the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate to better measure real returns over 1913–2004, for which the official CPI exists. We also extend the series backward to 1871 on a monthly basis, an important addition to the data series. We analyze the impact of inflation on the real standard deviation of stock returns and find that, in contrast to the results for geometric mean returns, inflation adjustments have little impact on estimates of return variability.     

Fiscal Stimulus in Times of High Debt: Reconsidering Multipliers and Twin Deficits

We investigate the impact of fiscal stimuli at different levels of the government debt‐to‐GDP ratio for a sample of 17 European countries from 1970 to 2010. This is implemented in an interacted panel VAR framework in which all coefficient parameters are allowed to change continuously with the debt‐to‐GDP ratio. We find that responses to government spending shocks exhibit strong nonlinear behavior. While the overall cumulative effect of a spending shock on real GDP is positive and significant at moderate debt‐to‐GDP ratios, this effect turns negative as the ratio increases. The total cumulative effect on the trade balance as a share of GDP is negative at first but switches sign at higher levels of debt. Consequently, depending on the degree of public indebtedness, our results accommodate long‐run fiscal multipliers that are greater and smaller than one or even negative as well as twin deficit and twin divergence behavior within one sample and time period. From a policy perspective, these results lend additional support to increased prudence at high public debt ratios because the effectiveness of fiscal stimuli to boost economic activity or resolve external imbalances may not be guaranteed.     

U.S. Monetary Regimes and Optimal Monetary Policy in the Euro Area

Monetary policy in the United States has been documented to have switched from reacting weakly to inflation fluctuations during the 1970s, to fighting inflation aggressively from the early 1980s onward. In this paper, I analyze the impact of the U.S. monetary policy regime switches on the Eurozone. I construct a New Keynesian two‐country model where foreign (U.S.) monetary policy switches regimes over time. I estimate the model for the U.S. and the Euro Area using quarterly data and find that the United States has switched between those two regimes, in line with existing evidence. I show that foreign regime switches affect home (Eurozone) inflation and output volatility and their responses to shocks, substantially, as long as the home central bank commits to a time‐invariant interest rate rule reacting to domestic conditions only. Optimal policy in the home country instead requires that the home central bank reacts strongly to domestic producer‐price inflation and to international variables, such as imported goods relative prices. In fact, I show that currency misalignments and relative prices play a crucial role in the transmission of foreign monetary policy regime switches internationally. Interestingly, I show that only marginal gains arise for the Euro Area when the European Central Bank (ECB) adjusts its policy according to the monetary regime in the United States. Thus, a simple time‐invariant monetary policy rule with a strong reaction to Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation and relative prices is enough to counteract the effects of monetary policy switches in the United States.     

Hot Money and Quantitative Easing: The Spillover Effects of U.S. Monetary Policy on the Chinese Economy

We develop a factor‐augmented vector autoregression (FA‐VAR) model to estimate the effects that unanticipated changes in U.S. monetary policy and economic policy uncertainty have on the Chinese housing, equity, and loan markets. We find the decline in the U.S. policy rate since the Great Recession has led to a significant increase in Chinese housing investment. One possible reason for this effect is the substantial increase in the inflow of “hot money” into China. The responses of Chinese variables to U.S. shocks at the zero lower bound are different from those responses in normal times.     

需求和供给冲击对企业投资以及价值链的影响——基于突发事件的研究

2019年底爆发的COVID-19疫情给全球经济的需求和供给带来了冲击,本文分析了历史上若干需求和供给冲击对企业投资和全球价值链的影响,在此基础上探讨此次疫情事件的潜在影响以及应对措施。需求冲击方面,我们发现2008年的国际金融危机对中国上市企业的固定资产投资有明显的抑制作用,但这种负面影响随着国内宏观调控政策的见效而很快减小;危机对全球价值链的分布有显著影响,欧盟地区的制造业增加值占全球比重下降,中国和东盟的占比上升。供给冲击方面,2003年的SARS疫情在短期内抑制了疫区上市企业的固定资产投资,但我国迅速有效的防疫措施很快扭转了投资下降势头。相比之下,2011年日本地震的冲击逆转了此前该国制造业增加值长期上升的势头,在中短期内显著降低了日本在全球价值链中的重要性。从针对此次疫情的应对措施来看,建议采取提振内需的宏观政策,在行业层面稳定产业链上的核心企业,同时整合优化产能。在国际上我国应坚持对外开放,立足和周边国家以及"一带一路"沿线国家的合作,促进疫情后国际经济治理秩序的改革和优化。     

The Role of Book Income, Web Traffic, and Supply and Demand in the Pricing of U.S. Internet Stocks

In this paper I assess the degree of similarity in the cross-sectionalpricing of Internet and non-Internet stocks during the tumultuousyear of 2000. Despite large differences in their economic fundamentals, I find that the equity market values of Internetfirms with immaterial web traffic, firms that are randomly selected, and firms that went public atthe same time as Internet firms are similarly related to analysts' forecasts of earnings in 2001 andthe long-term rate of growth in earnings. This is not the case for firms with intensive web traffic.I also find that at the peak of Internet prices in March 2000 the market rewarded losses ofweb-traffic-intensive firms but did not reward profits, while after the peak the market reversed itsview, rewarding profits but not losses. Beyond earnings, web traffic is significantly positivelypriced both at and after the Internet peak. However, I find no evidence that two proxies forsupply and demand forces – the degree of public float and short interest – are value-relevantfor Internet firms. Overall, I argue that there are enough similarities in the cross-sectional pricingof Internet and non-Internet firms to make it unlikely that the pricing of Internet stocks during2000 was entirely irrational. Moreover, any irrationality in the prices of Internet stockscannot be linked to public float and short interest.