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.     

Private Investment and Political Institutions

Recent research has demonstrated a negative link between macroeconomic and political uncertainty and levels of private investment across countries. This raises the question whether certain types of government institutions might help reduce this uncertainty. North and Weingast (1989) propose that political institutions characterized by checks and balances can have beneficial effects on investment by allowing governments to credibly commit not to engage in ex post opportunism with respect to investors. In this paper I develop and test a modified version of their hypothesis, suggesting that checks and balances, on average, improve possibilities for commitment, but that they are not a necessary condition for doing so. Results of heteroskedastic regression and quantile regression estimates strongly support this proposition.     

Political Uncertainty and Policy Innovation

Conventional wisdom has it that outside sources of information enhance the capability of political institutions to separate selfish from benevolent incumbents. This paper investigates, in the presence of innovative public policies whose outcomes are uncertain, the role of outside information and shows that it is more involved than typically thought. While it is true that enhanced information helps in separating politicians, it also creates an externality that reduces the incentives to experiment with innovative public policies.     

Influencing Agencies Through Pivotal Political Institutions

We draw on the positive political theory and campaign financeliteratures to examine how interest groups allocate influenceactivities (e.g., monetary donations, lobbying) across multiplegovernment institutions when seeking more favorable agency policydecisions. By modeling agency behavior in the context of legislativeoversight, we derive testable predictions about the politicalconditions under which an interest group will influence (1)only the agency, (2) the legislature and/or executive insteadof the agency, and (3) the legislature or executive in additionto the agency in order to induce a shift in regulatory policy.One implication of our conclusions relating to (2) and (3) isthat empirical studies seeking to identify a relationship betweenelectoral campaign contributions and public policy using dataon legislative votes are potentially misspecified.     

Oil Discovery,Political Institutions and Economic Diversification

Diversification is touted as a desirable policy objective for oil‐rich nations because it reduces exposure to volatility. However, the empirical relationship between petroleum and diversification is not well understood. Here, we test the effect of giant oil discoveries on diversification using a panel dataset of 136 countries observed over the period from 1962 to 2012. We notice non‐oil sector export concentration 8 years after a discovery. However, we do not observe any effect on the structure of employment in non‐resource and manufacturing sectors. Democratic political institutions moderate the export and employment concentration effects of petroleum discovery.     

Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate Volatility in a Small Open Economy

We lay out a small open economy version of the Calvo sticky price model, and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a simple representation in domestic inflation and the output gap. We use the resulting framework to analyse the macroeconomic implications of three alternative rule-based policy regimes for the small open economy: domestic inflation and CPI-based Taylor rules, and an exchange rate peg. We show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail. We also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy, and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with the suboptimal rules.     

政策调整对股票市场波动的影响

以利率调整、存款准备金率调整、货币供应量变动作为货币政策调整变量,以印花税调整和财政支出变动作为财政政策调整变量,来研究股票市场的波动,分析了单个政策调整对股票市场波动的影响和政策调整组合对股票市场波动的影响。研究发现,单一货币政策中存款准备金率调整对股票市场波动性影响显著,而利率调整对股票市场波动性影响不显著。单一财政政策中印花税调整在中期对股票市场波动性影响显著。不考虑宏观经济指数变动时,只有利率调整对股票市场波动性的影响显著为负向,印花税调整和存款准备金率调整对股票市场波动性影响不显著;考虑宏观经济指数变动时,三个政策调整对股票市场波动性的影响不显著。不论是否考虑宏观经济景气指数的变动,财政支出变动对股票市场波动的影响显著负向,货币供应量变动对股票市场波动的影响显著为正。     

COVID-19 Regulations,Political Institutions,and the Environment

Environmental and Resource Economics - The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with short-term air quality improvements in many countries around the world. We study whether the degree of democracy and...     

抑制我国房地产市场过度投机的政策研究

房价的过快上涨引起了社会的普遍关注,如何抑制房价的过度波动成为政府管理的重要目标。从中国房价的实际来看,很多研究者认为是投机推动了房价的较大波动。中国房价的上涨已经无法用价值规律和其他经济学原理来加以解释,很多城市的房价收入比和房屋租售比远远超过国际警戒线,如此离谱的涨幅背后,房地产投机炒作行为功不可没,抑制投机成为关键的手段。利用有关模型,本文分析了投机动力的产生机理,并且研究了房地产市场中过度投机产生的原因,包括投机的进入门槛低,地方政府、住宅房产的特性和不完善的租赁市场等对投机的影响等。根据这些诱因,从防止出现金融危机和削弱投机动力降低投机预期收益的角度,可能的政策组合包括建立和完善保降性住房政策、改革政绩考核指标、完善税制结构、取消预售制度或建立预售款第三方托管制度和完善租赁市场等。     

Institutions and Development: The Interaction Between Trade Regime and Political System

This paper argues that an unequal distribution of political power, biased to landed elites and owners of natural resources, in combination with openness to trade is a major obstacle to development of natural resource- or land-abundant economies. We develop a two-sector general equilibrium model and show that in an oligarchic society public investments conducive to industrialization. schooling for example.are typically lower in an open than in a closed economy. Moreover, we find that, under openness to trade, development is faster in a democratic system. We also endogenize the trade regime and demonstrate that in a land-abundant economy the landed elite has an interest to support openness to trade. We present historical evidence for Southern economies in the Americas that is consistent with our theoretical results: Resistance of landed elites to mass education, comparative advantages in primary goods production in the 19th century globalization wave, and low primary school enrollment and literacy rates.     

政府换届、经济政策与政治经济周期

在梳理政治经济周期理论的基础上,比较中西方国家该理论前提、内在逻辑的差异,并从实际出发提出相关命题,建立计量模型,运用中国1953年～2008年的年度数据进行实证研究.结果表明,"两会"召开周期 (中央政府换届)与经济波动周期之间存在较显著的相关性;中央政府换届导致地方政府交流周期,政绩考核晋升机制使地方政府产生纵向、横向上的竞争,并形成周期性的经济发展举措,进而加大了对经济周期的影响;中央政府政治周期使财政政策、货币政策具有一定的顺周期特征,地方政府通过财政项目竞争、软预算约束以及货币信贷倒逼机制,扩大了财政政策、货币政策的顺周期性;在受到国际经济危机异常冲击时,我国财政政策、货币政策表现出平稳经济波动的特征.     

货币冲击、房地产收益波动与最优货币政策选择

与传统资产定价模型中风险收益权衡关系相悖,我国房地产市场存在投资异象和波动长记忆性特征。文章利用泰勒规则(Taylor Rule)的利率缺口,在剔除市场预期之后测度了中国市场的货币政策冲击,并基于房地产投资回报的时序数据波动聚集性和时变性特征构建GARCH(1,1)-M模型,以此度量我国房地产市场投资收益的波动演变路径,解释了央行实施加息的货币政策后当期房价反而上涨的投资现象。文章还立足于房地产市场参与人的投资特征,从行为金融学的全新研究视角出发,建立包含行为资产定价的动态模型经济系统,研究资产价格波动与最优货币政策选择问题,求得相应闭型解,为实施关注资产价格波动的最优货币政策提供理论基础。     

德国公立研究机构的知识产权管理及政策

德国科技创新能力一直位居世界前列,与其完善的知识产权管理战略密不可分。在德国联邦政府的不断努力下,德国构建了“国家引导,社会支持,企业主体,产研结合”的知识产权创造、运用、保护和管理体系,建立了一大批世界顶级的大学、科研院所和企业。本文对德国公立研究机构的知识产权保护与管理现状,知识产权成果创新和应用管理机制,及德国联邦政府促进知识产权战略实施的相关政策等进行了系统的介绍和分析。     

Mass Media Competition, Political Competition, and Public Policy

If better informed voters receive favourable policies, then mass media will affect policy because mass media provide most of the information people use in voting. This paper models the incentives of the media to deliver news to different groups. The increasing-returns-to-scale technology and advertising financing of media firms induce them to provide more news to large groups, such as taxpayers and dispersed consumer interests, and groups that are valuable to advertisers. This news bias alters the trade-off in political competition and therefore introduces a bias in public policy. The paper also discusses the effects of broadcast media replacing newspapers as the main information source about politics. The model predicts that this change should raise spending on government programmes used by poor and rural voters.     

A Political Economy Model of Earnings Mobility and Redistribution Policy

This paper presents a politico‐economic model that includes a mutual link between life cycle earnings mobility and redistributive politics. The model demonstrates that when an economy features a high opportunity of upward mobility and high risk of downward mobility, it attains a unique equilibrium where unskilled, low‐income agents support a low redistribution because of the hope of upward mobility in future. In contrast, the economy attains multiple equilibria when mobility opportunity and risk are low: one is an unskilled‐majority equilibrium defined by low mobility and the other is a skilled‐majority equilibrium defined by high mobility. The paper gives a comparison between the political equilibrium and the social planner's allocation in terms of mobility, and shows that the skilled‐majority equilibrium realizes mobility close to the optimal one.