Food Prices Policy in Israel: A Strategic Instrument

Abstract:

The goal of this research is to demonstrate a significant importance of state policy of food prices supervision in Israel. The article begins with a detailed discussion of the healthy food basket’s components, based on the Israeli Ministry of Health recommendations. Next, we present the prices of the goods included in the basket, and a calculated estimate of the per capita cost of funding the basket. Based on this cost figure, we assess the economic ability of Israeli households to purchase the basket. The results show that two lowest quintiles would have trouble paying the price of a basic health food basket. Further, it describes the food prices in Israel and its significance, Israel’s food market and the major regulatory tools associated with the food market. In the end, we define the need for short-term and longer-term regulation of food costs, and the necessity of expanding competition in the food market.     

财政支出政策的减贫效应:相对贫困治理视角

为了厘清财政支出政策的减贫效应和作用机制,充分发挥政府支出工具治理相对贫困的积极作用,本文首先运用PSM方法验证了政府转移性支出扶贫效应和投资性支出的增收效应;其次,构建包含两类家庭的异质性动态一般均衡模型以揭示财政支出政策治理非李嘉图家庭相对贫困的经济机理;最后,构造"相对贫困指数"以评估财政支出工具治理相对贫困的动态效应.研究发现:积极的政府转移性(扶贫)支出政策具有迅速治理相对贫困的功效,但是对非李嘉图家庭工资收入存在"挤出"效应;虽然积极的政府投资性支出政策挤出私人投资,但能有效提升非李嘉图家庭就业和劳动收入,具有良好的相对贫困治理效应;积极的政府消费性支出政策会刺激短期需求、促进就业、拉动总产出增长,从而增加非李嘉图家庭收入、减少相对贫困,但是,长期而言会挤出居民消费,并且政策效应的持续性和有效性不及投资性支出.因此,"精准导向"的积极财政支出政策能够提升相对贫困的治理效果.     

全球经济失衡：资本流动的视角

本文试图对全球经济失衡背景下的国际资本流动，尤其是美国国际资本流入的基本模式与特征进行梳理，并在此基础上考察各种不同因素的解释力，希望以此来促进对于全球经济失衡现象的整体认识，并对危机后的国际金融格局做出更为准确的判断。本文认为，由于主要贸易盈余国家对美国的金融产品是刚性需求，因此美国的贸易逆差也必然伴随着资本的流入，并且．流入美国的资本显然已经弥补了经常账户的赤字；从2003年第3季度后，获取收益不再是资本流入美国的主要原因。并且金融危机对资本流入美国的影响是显著的。在为应对全球经济失衡所进行的调整中，以中国为代表的新兴市场国家除了应该调整贸易结构外，还需要更多地从资本流动的角度出发，提高自身金融体系的能力，发展国内外币金融市场，推动本币国际化，逐步减少对美元资产的刚性需求。     

Disentangling the Poverty Effects of Sectoral Output,Prices, and Policies in India

This paper attempts to disentangle the poverty effects of key policy variables that directly affect the poor (namely the government‐led channel of development spending and financing) in both agricultural and non‐agricultural sectors after accounting for the effect of respective sectoral per capita income and prices, using data from India over five decades. The paper emphasizes the sectoral composition of income and prices as mechanisms influencing the level of poverty and establishes empirically that it is the rise in non‐agricultural per capita income that reduces rural poverty via the channel of internal migration, after having controlled for the variation in key components of fiscal spending and monetary/financial policy via the availability of credit. Uneven sectoral growth pattern explains why urban poverty becomes a spill‐over of persistent rural poverty when the agricultural sector shrinks. While checking for robustness, there is evidence that the rise in non‐agricultural income alone may not reduce rural poverty, when measured in terms of rural infant mortality rate as a non‐income indicator of well‐being.     

Challenges in Measuring Poverty and Understanding its Dynamics: A South Asian Perspective

South Asia’s success at reducing poverty does not imply that the topic has become passé. Poverty rates are by now low, but this is because poverty lines are low as well. And the assessment of living standards and their dynamics are blurred by measurement and interpretation challenges. This paper relies mostly on South Asian examples to highlight four tensions: poorer versus richer households, rural versus urban locations, monetary versus non‐monetary dimensions of wellbeing, and household characteristics versus context. The discussion is conducted against the backdrop of the two analytical approaches with South Asian roots that have shaped the debate for decades. This review leads to three main recommendations: household survey data has to be exploited in a more thorough manner, data that is increasingly available from other sources needs to be incorporated more systematically in the analysis, and the multiple dimensions of wellbeing should be better integrated in a common framework.     

From the Global Food Crisis to the Age of Austerity: The Anxious Geopolitics of Global Food Security

The impacts of recent food, financial, and energy crises have reinvigorated a geopolitical enframing of global food security that makes foreign development assistance a primary component of national security strategies. This centres elite fears of hunger and underdevelopment and strongly shapes policies and strategies adopted in response. Geopolitical fears of hungry and food insecure populations are compounded by the politics of austerity and cuts to foreign aid budgets and social spending. This paper examines the geopolitics of food security, fear, and austerity as expressed in the rhetoric and strategies of major aid donor governments, especially the US and UK, and proposes an alternative geopolitics that builds from the affective dimensions of hunger, food insecurity, and vulnerability as experienced by the hungry and poor. The example of farmer suicides and agrarian political mobilisation in India demonstrates how this affective alternative geopolitics may be constructed and examined.     

股票价格的“涟漪效应”研究——基于公司投资决策的视角

公司股价会对其自身的投资决策产生影响,但市场上可能存在一家公司的股价异动会对其他相关公司的投资产生影响的现象,即股票价格的“涟漪效应”.文章选取2007-2014年中国A股上市公司为样本,论证了股票价格“涟漪效应”的存在性,并探讨其作用机制.研究发现:(1)公司投资决策不仅受到自身股票价格的影响,还受到同行公司股票价格的显著正向影响,即存在“涟漪效应”;(2)“涟漪效应”的强弱主要受信息环境的影响,即同行公司股票价格的信息含量较高、信息有效性较强,并有更多分析师覆盖时,股价波动产生的“涟漪效应”则更为明显;(3)公司所属行业的资本密集程度较高、所属地区的市场化程度较低以及公司规模较大时,其投资决策更易受到“涟漪效应”的影响.这说明与社会学习理论和信号理论相一致,同行公司的股票价格可为管理层的投资决策提供有用信息.     

Poor Results and Poorer Policy: A Comparative Analysis of Estimates of Global Inequality and Poverty

This paper examines the data and methods used to estimate worldinequality and world poverty since 1950. It was found that regardlessof method used, world inequality reversed a more than a centuryold trend during the globalization period, loosely defined asthe post 1980 years. Consumption growth of the poor also acceleratedduring globalization, and such growth was in excess of thatof the average person. Poverty declined at close to 1.5 percentagepoints a year, a statistic not affected much by use of differentPPP data, or use of different methods, including the methodadopted by the official "keeper" of world poverty statistics,the World Bank. Indeed, a striking result obtained is that worldpoverty, according to the World Bank method, data, and definitions,was close to 15 percent in 2002, a level that is meant to bethe millennium development goal target for 2015. (JEL O15, O20,O47,O5)     

房价上涨对区域技术创新的影响——基于空间计量视角

文章基于中国285个地级以上城市2006-2018年的相关数据,估算各样本城市房价泡沫指数,并将其作为房价替代指标以研究高房价与区域创新能力二者间的关系.结果 显示:一是虽然房价一直在涨,但房价总体泡沫水平却呈现倒"U"型特征;二是样本期内,城市房价与地区创新呈显著正相关性,即房价每上涨1％,区域技术创新将上升0.154％;三是城市房价上涨通过加快生产资本形成、促进产业结构转型升级及提高外商投资水平三条路径促使区域创新能力上升;四是房价对区域创新能力的影响效应因地区及规模各异而不尽相同,东部地区影响为正,而中西部地区呈负向作用,此外,大城市房价对于创新能力的影响显著高于小城市.     

Long‐Run Impact of Biofuels on Food Prices

About 40 percent of US corn is now used to produce biofuels, which are used as substitutes for gasoline in transportation. In this paper, we use a Ricardian model with differential land quality to show that world food prices could rise by about 32 percent by 2022. About half of this increase is from the biofuel mandate and the rest is a result of demand‐side effects in the form of population growth and income‐induced changes in dietary preferences, from cereals to meat and dairy products. However, aggregate world carbon emissions would increase, because of significant land conversion to farming and leakage from lower oil prices.     

国际粮价飙升拉响危机警报

从本世纪初开始,粮食价格持续攀升,并于2008年中期达到顶峰。当时全球多个国家因粮食问题发生动荡,而突如其来的国际金融危机暂时掩盖了粮食问题。由于全球需求下跌,粮食价格迅速回落,但不到两年粮价就再次攀升至高位。人口增长、膳食结构改善等因素引发的粮食需求增长并非国际粮价飙升的主要原因,而耕地减少、农业投入不足等供给因素和利用粮食发展生物能源等人为因素才是国际市场粮价飞涨的根本原因,同时自然灾害和国际投机资金炒作加大了粮价波动。这种局面要求我们更加重视粮食生产,确保粮食安全。     

The Impact of Chinese Exports on Global Import Prices*

This paper evaluates the evidence bearing on the question of whether China's buoyant export growth has led to significant changes in the import prices, and thus inflation performance, of its trading partners. This evidence suggests that the impact of Chinese exports on global import prices has been, while non‐ negligible, fairly modest. We identify a statistically significant effect of US imports from China on US import prices, but given the size of this effect and the relatively low share of imports in US GDP, the ultimate impact on US consumer prices has likely been quite small. Moreover, imports from China had little apparent effect on US producer prices. Finally, using a multi‐country database of trade transactions, we estimate that, since 1993, Chinese exports lowered annual import inflation in a large set of economies by 0.25 percentage point or less on average.     

食品价格上涨对城镇家庭消费与福利影响研究——基于EASI模型

文章基于与2015年度诺贝尔经济学奖得主迪顿的接近理想需求系统 AIDS 来源相同的EASI需求系统 ,采用CHNS调查数据 ,运用 EASI需求系统实证分析了各类食品价格上涨对不同收入等级城镇家庭消费与福利的影响 ,并比较了收入补贴与价格补贴的经济效果.研究发现:(1)我国城镇居民动物性食品消费支出占食品总支出的比重最大 ,其次是粮食和蔬菜 ,城镇居民的食品消费结构为"动物性食品+粮食+蔬菜" ,这说明动物性食品价格上涨对我国城镇居民日常膳食消费的影响相对较大.(2)粮食价格对困难户和最低收入家庭的福利影响最大 ,动物性食品价格对较低收入家庭的福利影响最大.(3)对低收入家庭而言 ,当动物性食品价格上涨时 ,收入补贴政策的效果优于价格补贴政策 ;当粮食价格上涨时 ,价格补贴政策的效果优于收入补贴政策.文章最后从生产、补贴政策和分配制度的角度提出了政策建议.     

全球视角的对外资产与负债——方法论的重新表述

文章推演了测算净国外资产的两种方法:资本项目直接法与经常项目间接法的原理.推演结果显示,在考虑市价变动因素的情况下,前者更准确.测算结果发现,我国从1996年开始有正的对外净资产,但要大大低于经常项目累计顺差或累计外汇储备.因此,不能只关注对外资产而忽视对外负债的增值.我国还存在着对外资产负债主体错配与货币错配.从国际比较看,也不能说我国已持有了过高的净国外资产.以全球视角看,穷国向富国输出资本的发展模式不可持续,也不应该持续.     

货币政策是否应关注资产价格——基于货币稳定的视角

货币稳定是一个伴随着货币交易范围扩展而不断拓展的概念,资产交易规模使资产价格波动能严重影响货币稳定和社会福利,因此,货币稳定应当包括资产价格稳定。利用中国1998-2009年月度、季度数据,以及协整检验、误差修正估计和方差分析等方法研究后得出:资产价格与传统通货膨胀指标现值及预期值存在联动性、与经济运行中的货币存量具有显著的数量解释关系,资产价格通过影响消费、投资等经济因素冲击着货币政策效果;货币政策对维护包括资产价格在内的货币稳定并非无能为力,经验表明资产价格往往对货币政策调整做出积极反应。因此,货币稳定指标应根据传统通货膨胀指标和资产价格指标综合计算,即货币政策应根据资产价格传导机制,精确分析资产价格与货币中介目标的关系,准确采取政策工具。