DISEQUILIBRIUM BUFFER STOCK MODELS: A SURVEY

Abstract. This paper surveys the growing literature on buffer stock models of the monetary transmission process. The first part indicates the basic issue of how (assumed) exogenous changes in the money supply work their way through the economic system via disequilibrium in the money market. After a brief historical development, buffer stock models are divided into four types depending upon whether the disequilibrium arises in stocks and/or flows, and to whether changes in the money stock are purely exogenous. The empirical implications, including how buffer stock models explain the recent behaviour of money demand functions are given. Theoretical and empirical criticisms of the models are presented in terms of the classification system. The survey concludes that whilst the buffer stock notion is an interesting idea, the current models do not lend themselves to empirical testing, and those models which do have performed poorly.     

Beyond Kelly Green Golf Shoes: Evaluating the Demand for Scholarship of Free‐Market and Mainstream Economists

We evaluate statistics from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) to see how much free‐market economists are being read and ranked compared with mainstream economists. We find that under various rankings using SSRN data, the top free‐market economists rank among the most‐read authors in the economics profession.     

Decomposing the effects of monetary policy using an external instruments SVAR

We study the effects of monetary policy on economic activity separately identifying the effects of a conventional change in the fed funds rate from the policy of forward guidance. We use a structural VAR identified using external instruments from futures market data. The response of output to a fed funds rate shock is found to be consistent with typical monetary VAR analyses. However, the effect of a forward guidance shock that increases long‐term interest rates has an expansionary effect on output. This counterintuitive response is shown to be tied to the asymmetric information between the Federal Reserve and the public.     

Henry George,Jane Jacobs,and Free Trade

Henry George and Jane Jacobs were both journalists and made a contribution to economics based on their commitment to the original version of free trade, as understood by 19^th‐century liberals, rather than the late 20^th‐century version. The distinctive concept of free trade, as originally understood, was as an instrument for small‐scale producers to break up entrenched monopolies and serve the interests of the ordinary citizen. That was how Cobden used it in the debates over the Corn Laws in the 1840s, and how Ruskin, Gesell, Chesterton, and other critics conceived of economic liberation. In debates over free trade in recent decades, that term has come to mean a defense of power and privilege, the exact opposite of the intent of 19^th‐century liberals. George and Jacobs sought to restore the original meaning by developing theories of development and distribution that would enable the market system to benefit everyone.     

货币供应量对我国房地产市场的溢出效应——基于DSGE模型的仿真分析

随着房地产市场与资本市场以及实体经济的关联度愈发紧密,探究货币供应量对房地产市场的溢出效应对于未来提高货币政策传导效率、促进经济平稳运行有着现实意义。通过构建包含房地产中间厂商的DSGE模型,探求货币供应量对房地产市场的影响机制与影响程度,为此在模型中引入货币冲击的外生冲击变量,以更好地模拟现实经济运行机制。仿真分析结果发现,货币供应量不直接影响房地产市场,主要通过利率水平下降与物价水平上升等传导路径对房地产市场产生正向冲击,并且这一间接影响期限短、程度深。为了促进房地产市场的健康发展,以研究结论为现实指导,从控制货币供应量、开发多样化金融产品和加强境外资金流入管理三方面提出针对房地产市场的监管策略。     

POSTCODE LOTTERIES

Postcode lotteries are meat and drink to journalists. Examples appear limitless and predominantly within state sectors, where they are symptomatic of the ineffectiveness of non‐market allocations. With free‐market trading, the tendency is for competition to eliminate differences; but that tendency is offset by uneven advances in technologies and provision. As competition eliminates one set of discrepancies, other sets inevitably emerge.     

If ‘money matters’, what about the monetary base?

Crucial to the debates on monetarism is the money aggregate relevant to its key propositions, in particular those that relate to the determination of nominal national income and inflation. In his influential work on ‘market monetarism’, Scott Sumner has accorded a privileged position to the monetary base in the key monetarist propositions. This article argues that, on the contrary, in a modern economy the role of cash is so small, as well as so clandestine, that the monetary base does not play any direct role in the determination of national income and inflation.     

Indirect Convertibility,Equity‐Based Banking and Financial Stability

Banking reform proposals put forward in the wake of the recent financial crisis maintain that equity‐based banking would be stable and would prevent bank runs. This article argues that complementing this form of banking with an indirect convertibility monetary standard and thereby dispensing with base money would enhance financial stability further. Banks would not hold a distinctive asset (base money) that would be called upon by customers at short notice, thereby removing the possibility of bank runs. No discrepancy in value between the two sides of a bank's balance sheet would arise as its assets (securitised loans) would be marked to market. Unlike other recent contributions, the intermediation model outlined here is not ‘limited purpose’ in nature as banks would not be restricted in the form of lending activity they can pursue. Common sources of banking and financial instability – liquidity risk, solvency risk, moral hazard – would be absent.     

Optimal monetary policy in a new Keynesian model with animal spirits and financial markets

This article presents a macro-finance-interaction model that integrates a NKM with bounded rationality and an agent-based financial market model. We derive four interactive channels between the two sectors where two channels are strictly microfounded. We analyze the impact of the different channels on economic stability and derive optimal (conventional and unconventional) monetary policy rules. We find that coefficients of optimal Taylor rules do not significantly change if financial market stabilization becomes part of the central bank׳s objective function. Additionally, we show that rule-based, backward-looking monetary policy creates huge instabilities if expectations are boundedly rational. Our model is externally validated by showing that it generates fat tailed output growth rates.     

Competition Between Online and Physical Stores: The Implications of Providing Product Information by Pure‐Play E‐tailer

This paper studies the competition between a single pure‐play e‐tailer and a bricks‐and‐mortar retailer, which are originally spatially differentiated. By utilizing information and communication technology, a pure‐play e‐tailer can strategically control consumers' disutility for online purchase. However, such an action may also raise consumers' motivation to visit the physical store, which causes free‐riding by the bricks‐and‐mortar retailer. We show that in the presence of a high free‐riding effect, the e‐tailer should be willing to provide information only about ‘niche’ products, which also results in improving the welfare of all members in the market. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

股市“财富效应”对我国货币政策的影响

伴随着中国证券市场的长足发展 ,股市的“财富效应”也日益显著。本文从分析股市“财富效应”及“财富负效应”影响货币政策的机制入手 ,进而探讨了其对我国现行货币政策的冲击 ,并相应提出了几点政策建议。     

Economic Freedom and Women's Emancipation in the MENA Region

The position of women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is a complex topic, difficult to comprehend without allowing for socio‐cultural norms, legal frameworks and the global gender context. In thinking about a practical framework for action, the free market perspective is relevant and necessary. However, this alone does not seem to provide a complete answer to the problem of promoting women's economic status. This article makes the case for the importance of market‐friendly, but also gender‐sensitive, policies to promote women's economic freedom and hence women's emancipation in the MENA region.     

THE CHINA MODEL: IS IT A GOLDEN FORMULA?

The economic crisis is an opportunity for governments to face the fact that Keynesian interventionist policies are not the path to success. However, support for such policies is being sustained by misperceptions of China's remarkable economic progress in recent years. Its success is commonly attributed to government‐led initiatives, labelled as ‘The China Model’, which divert credit away from the true source of growth: its experience of the free market. This article examines the development of the free market in China and explains why the government's recent behaviour threatens to undermine the gains of recent decades.     

Managed Floating as a Monetary Policy Strategy

Although there seems to be a broad consensus among economists that purely floating or completely fixed exchange rates (the so-called corner solutions) are the only viable alternatives of exchange rate management, many countries do not behave according to this paradigm and adopt a strategy within the broad spectrum of exchange rate regimes that is limited by the two corner solutions. Many of these intermediate regimes are characterized by significant foreign exchange market interventions and a certain degree of exchange rate flexibility with non-preannounced exchange rate targets. While academic research in this area usually concentrates on some specific aspects of intermediate regimes (such as the effectiveness of interventions or institutional aspects), managed floating has rarely been analyzed as a comprehensive monetary policy strategy. In this paper, we present a monetary policy framework in which central banks simultaneously use the exchange rate and the interest rate as operating targets of monetary policy. We explain the mechanics of foreign exchange market interventions and sterilization and we explain why a central bank has an interest of controlling simultaneously the two operating targets. We derive the monetary policy rules for the two operating targets from a simple open economy macro model in which the uncovered interest parity condition and the monetary conditions index play a central role.     

BANKING ON SOCIALISM

Terry Arthur argues that the current UK banking system represents the very opposite of a free market, and that a genuine free market, in which there is no place for a nationalised central bank, is the best solution. One of the most successful examples of such a market is the Scottish experience of the nineteenth century, destroyed only by Peel's Banking Acts of 1844–45.     

Herding versus Hotelling: Market Entry with Costly Information

Why do businesses such as fast‐food restaurants, coffee shops, and hotels cluster? In the classic analysis of Hotelling, firms cluster to attract consumers who have travel costs. We present an alternative model where firms cluster because one firm is free riding on another firm's information about market demand. One consequence of this free riding is that an informed firm might forego a market that it knows to be profitable. Furthermore, an uninformed firm might earn higher profits when research costs are high, because it can credibly commit to ignorance.     

城市地价分类管理研究

指出我国城市土地市场是国家垄断为主的一级市场与自由竞争的二级市场并存的二元结构,提出城市地价分类管理的基本思想,深入剖析地价体系中存在的基准地价缺陷、标定地价作用不充分以及市场机制形成土地价格不完善等问题,分别对一级、二级市场地价管理的目标和平台进行设计,初步构建基于分类管理的新的地价体系.     

Do Labour Market Programmes Speed up the Return to Work?*

We evaluate the impact of labour market programmes on unemployment durations in Norway, by means of a distribution‐free mixed proportional competing risks hazard rate model. We find that programme participation, once completed, improves employment prospects, but that there is often an opportunity cost in the form of a lock‐in effect during participation. The average net effect of programme participation on the length of the job search period is found to be around zero. For participants with poor employment prospects, the favourable post‐programme effects outweigh the negative lock‐in effects.     

以国债为我国公开市场操作主要工具的实证分析

随着我国金融宏观调控从直接调控为主转向间接调控为主,公开市场操作越来越成为主要的间接调控手段。相比政策性金融债券和中央银行票据,国债因其所具有的优势决定了其更加适合作为我国公开市场操作的主要工具。本文通过中美国债比较,认为通过优化国债投资方向和国债期限结构等一系列政策手段,解决目前我国国债在发行规模、期限结构、投资者资产结构和市场结构方面存在的问题,可使得以国债作为主要工具更加具有可行性。     

Media market concentration and pluralism

We study the relationship between market concentration and market variety, and thereby focus on two dimensions of variety, namely on internal variety and on external variety. In our setup, firms can expand their internal variety continuously around their focus point on a Salop‐circle. External variety then refers to the market supply of variety offered by all firms on the circle. We believe that this setting is particularly applicable to media. It turns out that in more concentrated markets, there is an incentive to provide more internal variety in order to compete for consumers. Then, the relationship between market concentration and external variety turns out to be ambiguous. There also exists no clear free market bias with respect to socially optimal internal and external variety.