U.S. DEPOSIT INSURANCE REFORM

Congress, late in 1991, enacted a banking reform measure that (i) authorizes $70 billion of additional FDIC funding, (ii) enhances bank regulation and supervision, and (Hi) adopts a "trip wire" system for increasingly severe regulation based on a bank's capital. Congress rejected a number of key elements of the Treasury proposal submitted early in 1991, such as interstate banking and expanded bank powers. The Congressional action does not end the debate over banking reform. In due time, other attempts likely will be made to restructure the banking system along the lines of the Treasury proposal.
The Treasury proposal's positive points failed to offset its fundamental problems. The Congressional action, though not subject to the Treasury proposal's problems, falls short of complete deposit insurance reform. Both proposals fail to recognize that regulatory oversight is a poor substitute for market discipline in the current financial environment.
This paper reviews problems with the financial reform process and failure of the Treasury proposal to recognize these problems. It also reviews alternative approaches to deposit insurance reform.     

上交所国债市场流动性溢价分析

流动性溢价一直以来都是国际学术界广泛关注与研究的问题.本文选择在上海证券交易所上市交易的7年期、10年期和20年期国债,利用日内交易数据,以新券与旧券为分析对象,实证研究了新券与旧券的流动性溢价问题.发现旧券和新券在收益率上确实存在显著差异,旧券的收益率要高于新券的收益率.同时,本文又通过回归分析研究发现,旧券与新券的流动性差异对旧券与新券的收益率差异只有很小的解释能力,基本可以说明我国国债市场流动性溢价存在,但不是很显著.     

Information content of U.S. treasury inflation-indexed bonds

U.S. Treasury inflation-indexed bonds are designed to provide a stable real return before taxes. A comparison between these bonds and conventional bonds reveals that the effective real yield of U.S. Treasury inflation-indexed bonds is attractive. The econometric results suggest, however, that the real rate provided by U.S. Treasury inflation-indexed bonds is not independent of inflation, implying that the Fisher hypothesis is contradicted by the data. An implication of negative correlation between the real rate and inflation is that the time to buy U.S. Treasury inflation-indexed bonds is when inflation is low. While the yields on U.S. Treasury inflation-indexed bonds are shown to reflect inflation by a lag of about one month, nominal interest rates do not fully adjust to inflation. The author would like to thank Richard A. Cohn and Mahmoud Wahab for their advice and comments.     

THE PUBLIC SECTOR IN FINANCIAL FLOW STATEMENTS: JAPAN'S CASE

One of the most characteristic features of Japan's public sector is the predominant role of the Treasury system, which operates not only budgetary funds of the central government but also various other funds such as Postal Savings Funds and surplus funds of public corporations.
Among the general account and 45 special accounts of the Treasury system, the Foodstuff Control, the Foreign Exchange Fund and the Trust Fund play important roles, both through their intra-governmental transactions and through their transactions with private sectors. Particularly noticeable is the role played by the Trust Fund Bureau, which serves as a financial institution for government agencies. Surplus and accumulated funds in the Postal Savings and other special accounts of the Government are deposited in the Trust Fund Bureau, which employs these funds for intra-governmental ways and means loans, and for government loans and investment programs.
Another feature of Japan's Treasury system is that it deposits all the Treasury funds solely with the Bank of Japan.
The activities of local authorities and local public enterprises are also largely financed by Treasury funds, and are intertwined with the Treasury system.
The statistical systems for monetary and financial flow analysis developed by the Bank of Japan, therefore, place stress on the analysis of flows of Treasury funds, and are based on an institutional sectoring to reflect the flows of funds as they actually take place. One exception is the Monetary Survey compiled in accordance with the IMF formula, which adopts a kind of functional sectoring for international comparison purposes.
In the last three years, Japan's public sector, which had long stood rather neutral in the financial patterns of the economy, has begun to show an increasing financial deficit. With the increasing financial deficit of the sector, the financial patterns of the nation as a whole are undergoing remarkable changes.     

Population intervals and the true cost-of-living index with known price distributions

This paper provides evidence that the apparent rejection of the expectations theory for data on nominal Treasury bill yields is primarily due to the failure of market participants to forecast inflation in a consistent manner over horizons of different length.     

Monetary policy in the UK

The authors argue that the institutional dimension of the Bankof England monetary policy and the role the UK HM Treasury assumesin this framework are both firmly based on the New Consensusin Macroeconomics (NCM). This is also the theoretical frameworkupon which the inflation targeting element of monetary policyis firmly based. This paper discusses these aspects of UK monetarypolicy, and then assesses the policy that has been pursued since1997 (with some reference made to the period between 1992 and1997 when a version of the framework was introduced). The strategyhas been successful in terms of keeping UK inflation rates withinthe targets set by HM Treasury. However, a number of problematicissues are highlighted and discussed.     

Tax rate effects on interest rates

This paper investigates empirically the effects of personal and corporate taxes on taxable interest rates. The results suggest that the effective tax rate of marginal investors in the Treasury bill market is that of households, as opposed to that of tax-exempt institutions or corporations.     

Relative pricing of French Treasury inflation-linked and nominal bonds: an empirical approach using arbitrage strategies

Portuguese Economic Journal - This paper investigates whether arbitrage opportunities exist between inflation-linked bonds and nominal bonds on the French Treasury market. Following arbitrage...     

Asymmetric determinants of CDS spreads: U.S. industry-level evidence through the NARDL approach

This paper investigates the presence of asymmetries in the short- and long-run relationships between the 5-year CDS index spreads at the U.S. industry level and a set of major macroeconomic and financial variables, namely the corresponding industry stock indices, the VIX index, the 5-year Treasury bond yield and the crude oil price, using the NARDL approach. The empirical results provide significant evidence of both short-run and long-run asymmetries in the linkage between ten industry CDS spreads and the potential driving factors common for all industries, confirming the importance of asymmetric nonlinearity in this context. It is also shown that the industry equity prices, the VIX, the 5-year Treasury bond rate and, to a lesser extent, the crude oil price constitute important asymmetric determinants of these U.S. industry CDS spreads. The findings of this study have relevant implications for investors, speculators, arbitrageurs and policy makers interested in credit risk at the industry level.     

An empirical investigation into the impact of US federal government budget deficits on the real interest rate yield on intermediate-term treasury issues, 1972–2012

This study provides new empirical evidence on the impact of the federal budget deficit on the real interest rate yields on intermediate-term debt issues of the US Treasury, represented herein by the ex post real interest rate yields on 3-year Treasury notes and 7-year Treasury notes, two interest rate measures that have received essentially no attention in the economics and finance literature in recent years. This study is couched within a loanable funds model that includes two ex post real interest rate yields, the monetary base as a per cent of GDP, the change in per capita real GDP, net financial capital inflows as a per cent of GDP and the budget deficit as a per cent of GDP. This study uses annual data for the study period 1972 to 2012, a time period that includes ‘quantitative easing’ monetary policies by the Federal Reserve. Two-stage least squares estimations reveal that the federal budget deficit, expressed as a per cent of GDP, exercised a positive and statistically significant impact on the ex post real interest rate yields on both 3-year and 7-year Treasury notes, even after allowing for quantitative easing and other factors. The study also considers the time period 1980 to 2012 and offers simple robustness testing.     

Asymmetric response to monetary policy surprises at the long-end of the yield curve

This paper investigates the responsiveness of asset markets to monetary policy path revisions. Using federal funds futures contracts to extract near-term path revisions, we find that the responsiveness of longer term Treasury securities to path revisions is significantly asymmetric, the magnitude of which increases during tightenings and decreases during easings. These findings blend nicely with the earlier literature that documents asymmetric effects of monetary policy on output.     

TREASURY NOTE AND BANK BILL RATES, THE RISK PREMIUM AND AUSTRALIAN MONETARY POLICY*

This paper examines a link in the Australian monetary transmission mechanism based on the risk structure of certain interest rates. Monthly data on the bank-accepted bill and Treasury note rates reveal a significant reduction in both the mean and variance of the risk premium linking the two rates towards the end of 1989. The two interest rates cointegrate in each of the periods January 1984 to September 1989 and October 1989 to December 1995, though less significantly so in the earlier period, and formal tests indicate that the risk premium was stationary for each of the sub-periods. Well defined error-correction mechanisms suggest that the burden of adjustment to shocks to the money market was shared by the two interest rates. A stationary risk premium, combined with evidence that the Treasury note rate Granger-caused the bank bill rate in both sub-periods, indicates that the Reserve Bank has been able to influence the bill rate by targeting the note rate.     

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UK TREASURY BILLS AND THE TERM STRUCTURE OF CERTIFICATES OF DEPOSIT*

Using principal components analysis, this paper derives a direct measure of movements in the level and slope of the certificate of deposit yield curve. Appealing to the efficient markets view of the term structure of interest rates, evidence is reported which suggests that changes in Treasury Bill yields have a considerable influence over changes in the level of CD yields but only have a small, transitory effect on the slope of the term structure of CDs.     

基于生态系统服务价值的武夷山市绿色GDP核算研究

20世纪60年代之后,随着全球性资源短缺、环境污染等问题的出现,仅用GDP表征国家的发展存在明显缺陷。基于此需要在国民经济核算中考虑自然环境成本,这类研究统称为绿色GDP核算。本文总结了基于生态系统服务的第二类绿色GDP核算方法,并引入一种新的核算思路：将直接生态系统服务（DES）的价值纳入GDP核算体系之中。该方法可在一定程度上减小这种重复计算的可能性。以武夷山市为例,应用这种基于生态系统服务价值的绿色GDP核算思路,计算了武夷山市2005年的绿色GDP。结果表明,武夷山市第二类绿色GDP的价值为153．2亿元,是当年地区生产总值的5倍。     

Treasury auctions in Spain: a linear approach

Abstract. The majority of Treasuries use discriminatory auctions to sell government debt. A few Treasuries use uniform auctions. The Spanish Treasury is the only one that uses a hybrid format of discriminatory and uniform auctions. All Treasury auctions are multiple-unit multiple-bid auctions, usually assumed to be common and unknown value auctions. Taking in account these features, we analyze the Spanish auction format, taking a linear approximation to bidders' multiple bids, and characterize a parameter set in which the Spanish format gives higher expected seller's revenue than discriminatory and uniform auctions. Policy implications are obtained by calibrating theoretical results with data. We thank S. Nu?ez, and seminar participants at GREQAM, CEFI, the 1999 CEF meeting in Boston and the 57th European Meeting of the Econcometric Society for suggestions. We are especially grateful to two anonymous referees for detailed comments that greatly improved the paper. Any error is our responsability. The authors express their thanks for financial support to Ministerio de Ciencia y Teconologia from Proyecto SEC2000-0723, n_o 9114.     

绿色物流研究的现状及其评述

在回顾整理绿色物流研究文献的基础上,将绿色物流研究成果归纳梳理为起源、发展动因、定义和研究范围等四个方面。立足现有研究成果,综合参考逆向物流和绿色供应链管理的研究现状,指出既有研究成果的不足主要表现为:专门针对绿色物流的研究成果很少,且已有成果大多以定性研究为主;与绿色物流有关的各种研究普遍存在理论根基不足的问题;已有成果的研究方法陈旧单一,绿色物流研究缺乏研究视角的创新。据此提出了未来研究应掌握的原则和方向。     

Comment on Articles by Green,Loescher, and d’Arge and Wilen

Despite unprecedented lender-of-last-resort efforts by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department, the U.S. economy continues to be plagued by high levels of unemployment and foreclosures. Although several proposals to address these problems have been developed, their reactive nature limits their potential effectiveness. This paper describes how combining an employer-of-last-resort program with Treasury-financed mortgage mitigation initiatives could enhance economic stabilization.     

Professional forecasts of interest rates and exchange rates: Evidence from the Wall Street Journal’s panel of economists

We analyze economists’ forecasts of interest rates and exchange rates from the Wall Street Journal. We find that a majority of economists produced unbiased forecasts but that none predicted directions of changes more accurately than chance. Most economists’ forecast accuracy is statistically indistinguishable from a random walk model in forecasting the Treasury bill rate, but many are significantly worse in forecasting the Treasury bond rate and the exchange rate. We also find systematic forecast heterogeneity, support for strategic models predicting the industry employing the economist matters, and evidence that economists deviate less from the consensus as they age.     

HOW SHOULD BANK REGULATORY AGENCIES BE ORGANIZED?

The U.S. Treasury Department (1991) makes a strong case for consolidating federal bank regulatory authority. However, its proposal to eliminate direct FDIC authority over insured nonmember banks contributes little to this end because deposit insurance requires supervisory oversight. The U.S. Treasury Department (1991) also maintains an independent role for the Federal Reserve. Elimination of neither the insurance agency nor the central bank appears practical. A better approach to regulatory agency consolidation would combine supervision with deposit insurance and central banking in an institutional structure modified somewhat from the present Federal Reserve structure.