Hall's consumption hypothesis and durable goods

Hall shows that consumption obeys an AR(1) process if the life cycle-permanent income hypothesis is true. This paper expands Hall's framework to show that expenditure on durable goods should be ARMA(1, 1) but not AR(1). Post-war U.S. data rejects the expanded model.     

Optimal monetary policy with durable consumption goods

We document that the durable goods sector is much more interest-sensitive than the nondurables sector, and then investigate the implications of these sectoral differences for monetary policy. We formulate a two-sector general equilibrium model that is calibrated both to match the sectoral responses to a monetary shock derived from our empirical VAR and to imply an empirically realistic degree of sectoral output volatility and comovement. While the social welfare function involves sector-specific output gaps and inflation rates, the performance of the optimal policy rule can be closely approximated by a simple rule that targets a weighted average of aggregate wage and price inflation. In contrast, a rule that stabilizes a more narrow measure of final goods price inflation performs poorly in terms of social welfare.     

New Keynesian models, durable goods, and collateral constraints

Econometric evidence suggests that, in response to monetary policy shocks, durable and non-durable spending co-move positively, and durable spending exhibits a much larger sensitivity to the shocks. A standard two-sector New Keynesian model with perfect financial markets is at odds with these facts. The introduction of a borrowing constraint, where durables play the role of collateral assets, helps in reconciling the model with the empirical evidence.     

Long-run risk in durable consumption

Durable consumption growth is persistent and predicted by the price-dividend ratio. This provides strong and direct evidence for the existence of a highly persistent expected component. Durable consumption growth is left-skewed and exhibits time-varying volatility. I model durable consumption growth as containing a persistent expected component and driven by counter-cyclical volatility, nondurable consumption as a random walk, and dividend growth as exposed to the expected component of durable consumption growth. Together with nonseparable Epstein-Zin preferences, the model demonstrates that long-run risk in durable consumption can explain major asset market phenomena. The model also generates an upward-sloping real term structure.     

Equilibrium traits of durable commodity money

A dynamic model of utility-maximizing agents explains why scarce, durable commodities are typically monetary. The model provides quantitative criteria for distinguishing between monetary and non-monetary durables, and is also used to analyze symmetallic equilibria.The model is then extended to analyze commodity-backed paper money. It is demonstrated that the backing generates trust in the paper money in the dynamic-consistency sense. The model predicts regular devaluations as an equilibrium phenomenon, but finds such behavior to be efficient. Finally, the results are integrated to make a technical point about dynamic models of pure fiat money.     

Durable goods and conformity

A consumer's demand for a durable good is governed not only by his individual preferences but also by preferences of other market participants. This interdependence of preferences arises from the inevitable resale of durable goods. If most people prefer goods with certain features, original buyers conform and choose goods with these features even if they do not like them. Using a matching model, we show there is always conformity in equilibrium. The incentive to conform is strongest for long‐lived durables and for people who trade frequently. If average preferences are sufficiently strong, there is always too little conformity in equilibrium.     

黄金，薄如蝉翼的黄金

购买贵金属本来为了躲避通货膨胀．但投资者蜂拥而至,再加上炒家投机．黄金、白银本身也成了充满危险的大宗商品     

Tax competition and club goods

International Tax and Public Finance - We augment the traditional model of tax competition with spillovers in public good provision. In our model, identical countries compete for mobile capital. A...     

Security prices in a production economy with durable capital

Security prices and physical stocks of capital are determined jointly in a rational expectations economy as functions of a set of exogenous stochastic factors. Investors employ firm marginal productivity of capital to allocate savings across firms. Firm capital stocks adjust to exogenous shocks across many periods. Security price functions in period t are derived in the cases of constrained and unconstrained firm capital in t. The risk premia in security returns include two sets of terms. One set, corresponding to traditional asset pricing models, relates cash flows directly to the stochastic factors. The second set captures interfirm effects which arise because firm capital in each period t is durable.     

Indirect tax harmonization and global public goods

This paper identifies conditions under which, starting from any tax-distorting equilibrium, destination- and origin-based indirect tax-harmonizing reforms are potentially Pareto improving in the presence of global public goods. The first condition (unrequited transfers between governments) requires that transfers are designed in such a way that the marginal valuations of the global public goods are equalized, whereas the second (conditional revenue changes) requires that the change in global tax revenues, as a consequence of tax harmonization, is consistent with the under/over-provision of global public goods relative to the (modified) Samuelson rule. Under these conditions, tax harmonization results in redistributing the gains from a reduction in global deadweight loss and any changes in global tax revenues according to the Pareto principle. And this is the case independently of the tax principle in place (destination or origin).     

Credit frictions and the comovement between durable and non-durable consumption

Frictions in lending between households have been proposed as a solution to the difficulties new-Keynesian models have in predicting a decline in both durable and non-durable consumption following a monetary tightening. By revisiting a standard new-Keynesian framework with collateral constraints, it is shown that the presence of such credit frictions in fact makes it more difficult to generate the joint decline. The intuitive reasons behind this result are provided, which should be helpful in developing models that are more successful in generating a positive comovement between durables and non-durables.     

特殊商品的融资困境

藏茶的特殊地位使其明显区别于完全市场环境下的一般商品,纯市场化的发展路径对这种特殊商品是不适合的。政府支持力度与方式的选择会在很大程度上左右藏茶产业的未来。     

G20必须更好地提供全球性公共产品

在中国社会科学院世界经济与政治研究所、上海国际问题研究院、中国人民大学重阳金融研究院主办的2016年二十国集团智库会议上,上海国际问题研究院院长陈东晓发表了主题演讲,他认为：如果人类不做共同发展的工作,就会面临更加严重的保护主义和排他主义,这也是全球治理的核心。”他这样说。     

产成品评估方法的探讨

在现实的资产评估工作中,产成品价值的评估一般只在企业整体资产评估中才会遇到。在大多数情况下产成品价值量在企业总资产中所占的比例也不大,因此没有得到应有的重视,甚至不少评估师是以产成品的账面值确定其评估值的。1996年发布的《资产评估操作规范意见(试行)》,对产成品的评估虽然作了规范,但在执行中仍然存在一些问题值得探讨。     

Time-saving goods,time inequalities and optimal commodity taxation

International Tax and Public Finance - Time-saving goods are defined as market goods that reduce home labor requirements (e.g., restaurants; washing machines). Assuming that time savings are...     

Imperfect competition,indirect tax harmonization and public goods

This paper shows that the welfare implications of indirect tax harmonization in a two-country imperfectly competitive framework, are, in general, indeterminate in the presence of public goods: Both countries can be made either worse off or better off. This holds under both the destination and origin principles of taxation and is in sharp contrast to existing results where revenue effects are not present. A consequence of this indeterminacy is that a precise evaluation of tax-harmonizing policies under both tax regimes requires an explicit consideration of the underlying preferences for private and public goods as well as the oligopolistic sectors’ relative cost structures. JEL code F15⋅ H21⋅ H41⋅ H87     

Nontraded goods, market segmentation, and exchange rates

Empirical evidence suggests that movements in international relative prices are large and persistent. Nontraded goods, both in the form of final consumption goods and as an input into the production of final tradable goods, are an important aspect driving international relative price movements. In this paper we show that nontraded goods play an important role in the context of an otherwise standard open-economy macromodel. Our quantitative study with nontraded goods generates implications along several dimensions that are more closely in line with the data relative to the model that abstracts from nontraded goods.