On structural stagflation

The theory of structural inflation explains movements of the money-price level via the variation of relative prices. The paper shows that this theory can be extended to provide a possible interpretation of the so-called stagflation paradox. The subject is treated both in general and with reference to economic development.     

谨防可能出现的经济滞胀

美国历史上这次最严重的恐怖袭击事件最终将如何影响建筑行业？问题的答案取决于四个关键性的“宏观冲击波”震荡所产生的作用。第一个宏观冲击波是“大炮换黄油”。在反恐怖战争中，政府将大量转移用于“黄油”上的开支（其中包括教育、基础设施建设和保健）。客户主要由航空航天公司和国防公司组成的建筑、工程与建设公司将会业务兴隆，已经签订了建造军用设施合同的公司同样会财源滚滚。然而，那些依靠“黄油”合同过活的公司将面临市场需求逐渐疲软的局面。第二个宏观冲击波是资本外逃。负责风险防范的企业执行官将转移用于建设新厂房、…     

Joan Robinson's disillusion with economics

In her last public comments on the state of economics, Joan Robinson made some extraordinary remarks that conveyed profound pessimism and theoretical nihilism. To account for the bleakness of Robinson's later views on economics and economic policy this article examines her last decade. These years were marked by an array of reverses to the causes she espoused. While ill health and a propensity to be provocative coloured her disposition, her comment about economic theory disintegrating in her hands was not made casually; it was, rather, an acknowledgement that her project to integrate Keynes with the classical surplus theory had failed. This acknowledgement crystallised into her rejection of the long-period equilibrium interpretation of Keynes's theory of unemployment. At the end of her life Robinson was willing only to embrace the more traditional short-period Keynesian model grounded in uncertainty and expectations.     

"洗钱"与"反洗钱"

“洗钱”已经成为当今国际社会不得不面对的一个“公害”。据世界银行的一份统计,我国自改革开放以来,除了经政府合法批准对外投资的款项外,外流资金中有相当部分与“洗钱”有关。但直到目前为止,世界各国对于洗钱的定义还不尽一致,但一般是指将犯罪收益、不法收益通过各种手段隐瞒或掩饰起来,并使之合法化的活动和过程。各国司法界定的洗钱犯罪大致分为以下几类:一是将所有非法途径如贩毒、走私、抢劫、贪污、诈骗、受贿等方式获得的资金收益进行清洗,使之披上合法外衣的活动统称为“洗钱”。美国、法国等实行这一认定。二是将法律明确规定…     

Social benefit expenditures and stagflation: evidence from the United States

Stagflation refers to the terrible economic malaise associated with declining growth, hyperinflation and high unemployment. Unlike previous cost-push explanations such as an overheated labour market and oil prices, this article suggests that social benefit expenditures are a potential cause of stagflation. We investigate the impact of social benefit expenditures on stagflation in the U.S. over the 1950–2014 period by employing an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration, which was developed by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith. The influence of social benefit expenditures on economic growth and inflation and unemployment rates is estimated. The empirical results from the U.S. suggest that economic growth responds negatively to social benefit expenditures, while inflation and unemployment rates are both positively associated with social benefit expenditures. Thus, government-led rigid welfare could contribute to stagflation in the U.S. Instead of increasing people’s happiness, the over-burdened welfare system could push people into economic malaise. This stagflation risk shouldn’t be ignored. These results are important for U.S. policymakers and can inform other governments characterized by high levels of well-being.     

Money and specialization

Summary.  This paper examines the relationship between specialization and the use of money in two versions of the search-theoretic monetary model. The first version establishes a surprising result that specialization is more likely to occur in a barter economy than in a monetary economy. The result is reversed in the second version where a different specification of preferences is adopted to limit the scope of barter. This contrast between the results provides a concrete illustration of the general argument that money encourages specialization only when it enlarges the extent of the market. Received: January 31, 1995; revised version August 12, 1996     

Money and Information

This paper investigates the role of money in markets in which producers have private information about the quality of the goods they supply. When the fraction of high-quality producers in the economy is given, money promotes the production of high-quality goods, which improves the quality mix and welfare unambiguously. When this fraction is endogenous, however, we find that money can decrease welfare relative to the barter equilibrium. The origin of this inefficiency is that money provides consumption insurance to low-quality producers, which can result in a higher fraction of low-quality producers in the monetary equilibrium. Finally, we find that most often agents acquire more costly information in the monetary equilibrium than in the barter equilibrium. Consequently, money is welfare-enhancing because it promotes useful production and exchange, but not because it saves information costs.     

Money and Price Dispersion

We relax restrictions on the storage technology in a prototypical monetary search model to study price dispersion. In this case, buyers and sellers enter matches with potentially different willingness to trade. Across the distribution of possible bilateral matches, prices generally will differ even though agents have identical preferences and technologies. We provide existence conditions for a particularly simple equilibrium pattern of exchange. We prove that in the limiting case where search frictions are eliminated, equilibrium prices are uniform. We also show that a higher initial money stock can raise the average price level and increase price dispersion.     

动量货币与传统货币指标的理论与经验分析

简单加总的货币指标早已受到理论和实践的挑战,而主流国家的各种改革方案均没有取得成功.其原因是西方学者偏重货币的资产功能,忽视到货币的交易功能,对货币的基本认识存在偏差.宇宙中不存在绝对静止的事物,货币的本性是运动.物理学的动量定理与经济学的交易方程式可以进行类比.笔者尝试建立了动量货币的指标,初步的经验分析结果富有启发意义.货币的重要性依赖于它的数量和速度.西方学者排斥货币的真实速度,宏观经济学的基本结构存在重大缺陷.     

On Income Velocity of Money,Precautionary Money Demand and Growth

A stochastic growth model with money introduced via a cash-in-advance constraint is used to analyze the behavior of the income velocity of real monetary balances and money demand. Agents can purchase consumption goods only using government issued money. The cash-in-advance constraint may become nonbinding because of the uncertainty about the realization of the state of the economy. We find that the precautionary money demand may introduce significant changes into the volatility of the income velocity if it happens almost always. Its presence can also alter the relationship between the average growth rate of money supply and the average growth rate of the economy.     

当前我国经济运行显现的“滞涨”现象分析及其矫治方略新探

根据相关数据(主要是指反映通胀程度、失业程度和经济增速下滑程度的数据)显示,当前我国经济运行已经显现出"滞涨"现象.国际金融危机向经济危机的深化,正在严重地推进和加剧我国经济的"滞涨".这对我国宏观经济调控提出了新的难题.我们必须正视这一客观事实,及时研究破解对策.本文运用中国特色分享经济机制原理,从革新微观经济组织内生机制入手,以全新的视角提出了应对"滞涨"的对策.     

Money illusion and coordination failure

Economists long considered money illusion to be largely irrelevant. Here we show, however, that money illusion has powerful effects on equilibrium selection. If we represent payoffs in nominal terms, choices converge to the Pareto inferior equilibrium; however, if we lift the veil of money by representing payoffs in real terms, the Pareto efficient equilibrium is selected. We also show that strategic uncertainty about the other players' behavior is key for the equilibrium selection effects of money illusion: even though money illusion vanishes over time if subjects are given learning opportunities in the context of an individual optimization problem, powerful and persistent effects of money illusion are found when strategic uncertainty prevails.     

Money and Prices Under Uncertainty

We study whether monetary economies display nominal indeterminacy: equivalently, whether monetary policy determines the path of prices under uncertainty. In a simple, stochastic, cash-in-advance economy, we find that indeterminacy arises and is characterized by the initial price level and a probability measure associated with state-contingent nominal bonds: equivalently, monetary policy determines an average, but not the distribution of inflation across realizations of uncertainty. The result does not derive from the stability of the deterministic steady state and is not affected essentially by price stickiness. Nominal indeterminacy may affect real allocations in cases we identify. Our characterization applies to stochastic monetary models in general, and it permits a unified treatment of the determinants of paths of inflation.     

Money, credit and banking

In monetary models where agents are subject to trading shocks there is typically an ex post inefficiency since some agents are holding idle balances while others are cash constrained. This problem creates a role for financial intermediaries, such as banks, who accept nominal deposits and make nominal loans. In general, financial intermediation improves the allocation. The gains in welfare come from the payment of interest on deposits and not from relaxing borrowers’ liquidity constraints. We also demonstrate that when credit rationing occurs increasing the rate of inflation can be welfare improving.     

Alchian and Menger on Money

Carl Menger and Armen Alchian told stories of the emergence of money as a spontaneous order involving two types of costs—costs of recognizing attributes of goods and costs of finding willing exchange partners. Menger assumed that the first are zero and the second are positive. Alchian assumed the opposite. In the real world both types of costs are positive, so a truly satisfactory story of the emergence of money as a spontaneous order has yet to be written. This is another example of the complementarity of work done by some Austrian and some neoclassical economists.     

Money Laundering and Its Regulation

The recent wave of terrorist attacks has increased the attention to money laundering activities, and the role played by the regulatory frameworks controlling feeder activities. We investigate empirically the determinants of money laundering and its regulation in close to 100 countries. We use various methodologies to put together a cross‐country dataset on proxies for money laundering and construct specific money laundering regulation indices based on specific laws and their enforcement. Results show that tougher money laundering regulation, particularly those that criminalize feeding activities and improve disclosure, are linked to lower levels of money laundering across countries. The relevance of historical factors in explaining the variation of money laundering regulation across countries sheds light on the theories of institutions and provides room for further action, particularly in the areas of the law that reduce the burden of proof, increase the liability of intermediaries and improve disclosure.