Pass-through Effects of Global Commodity Prices on China＇s Inflation： An Empirical Investigation

The present paper uses a two-step approach to estimate the pass-through effects of changes in international commodity prices and the RMB exchange rate on domestic consumer price inflation in China. We first estimate the pass-through effects of international commodity prices on producer prices and then estimate the pass-through effects of producer price inflation on consumer price inflation. We find that a l O-percent increase in international commodity prices would lead to China＇ s producer prices increasing by 1.2 percent 3 months later, which in turn would increase China＇ s domestic inflation by 0.24 percent over the same period. However, a 10-percent appreciation of the RMB exchange rate against the US dollar would help to reduce increases in producer prices by 4.4 percent over the following 3 months, which in turn would lead to a 0. 89-percent decline in consumer price inflation over the same period. Our findings suggest that appreciation of the RMB in an environment of rising global commodity prices and a weak US dollar could be an effective instrument to help contain inflation in China.     

An asymmetric and DCC analysis of two stock markets returns＇ volatility： An evidence study on the Hong Kong and Japan＇s stock markets

This paper discusses the model construction and the association between the Hong Kong and the Japanese stock markets. The data period is from January 4, 1999 to December 30, 2005. This paper also utilizes student＇s t distribution to analyze the proposed model. The empirical results show that the bivariate asymmetric-GARCH （1, 2） model with a dynamic conditional correlation （DCC） seemed to be appropriate in evaluating the relationship between them. The empirical result also indicates a positive relation between the Hong Kong and the Japanese stock markets returns. The average estimation value of DCC coefficient equals to 0.5196, which implies that these two stock markets＇ return volatility had synchronized influence on each other. In addition, the empirical results also show that the Hong Kong and the Japanese stock markets have an asymmetrical effect. Based on the idea of the good and bad news, the explanatory ability of proposed model is better than the model of the bivariate GARCH with a DCC.