Reexamining the permanent income hypothesis with uncertainty in permanent and transitory innovation states

In this paper, we reexamine the permanent income–consumption relationship analytically and empirically, based on the innovation regime-switching (IRS) model developed in [Kuan, C.M., Huang, Y.L., Tsay, R.S., 2005. An unobserved component model with switching permanent and transitory innovations. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 23, 443–454]. A novel feature of the IRS model is that it explicitly allows for uncertainty in innovation states. When the labor income follows an IRS process, it is shown that the agent’s perception on the likelihoods of income innovations being permanent and transitory plays a crucial role in determining the optimal forecasts on the change of consumption. The effect of a current labor income innovation on consumption is a weighted average of two distinct effects resulting from permanent and transitory innovations with the weights equal to the perceived likelihoods of the respective states. Also, past innovations may affect consumption when there are revisions in the perceived likelihoods of previous states. Our empirical study on US data shows that consumption indeed reacts significantly to the perceived likelihoods of innovation states. However, even after controlling for the effect of state uncertainty, we find consumption vastly underreacts to permanent innovations in labor income but reacts about the right magnitude to transitory ones when compared with the prediction of the permanent income hypothesis. This evidence is similar to [Elwood, S.K., 1998. Testing for excess sensitivity in consumption: A state-space unobserved components approach. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 30, 64–82] but in sharp contrast with that found in [Hall, R.E., Mishkin, F.S., 1982. The sensitivity of consumption to transitory income: Estimates from panel data on households. Econometrica, 50, 461–480].     

Does purchasing power parity hold sometimes? Regime switching in real exchange rates

Standard unit root tests are not very powerful in drawing conclusions regarding the validity of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Rather than asking whether PPP holds throughout the whole sample period, we examine, in this study, if PPP holds sometimes by employing Hamilton-type (1989) Markov regime switching models. When at least one of multiple regimes is stationary, PPP holds locally within the regime. There are indeed various reasons that we should expect that the persistence of real exchange rates changes over time. Employing five real exchange rates spanning more than 100 years, we find herein strong evidence that the strength of PPP varies during the sample periods and that there exist stationary regimes in which PPP holds. Throughout the article, we also make comparisons to previous Markov regime switching estimation results by Kanas (2006) on the same data series. The new Markov switching model selection criterion of Smith et al. (2006), which is devised especially for discriminating Markov regime switching models, unambiguously indicates a preference for the Hamilton-type Markov regime switching model employed in this study. We also find that the evidence for PPP is not much different across different nominal exchange rate arrangements.     

Study on the price co-movement among the Asia Pacific,European and Chinese coal markets – based on the empirical analysis of MS-VEC model

In this article, based on weekly data of the three major coal markets (the Asia Pacific, Europe and China) from March 2008 to November 2014, an empirical research on their mutual influence and price co-movement effect among the three major coal markets is conducted by using the Co-integration Theory, Granger Causality Test and markov switching-Vector Error Correction (MS-VEC) model. The conclusions are as follows. (1) There exists a long-term cointegration relationship and bidirectional causality relationship between coal prices at home and abroad, and the influences of foreign coal markets on the domestic coal markets are stronger than the influences of domestic coal markets on foreign coal markets, and thus the interaction between the two markets leads to asymmetric linkage effects. (2) Compared with the VEC model, the MS-VEC model can reflect the nonlinear feature of price co-movement effects. (3) There exists an inherent adjustment mechanism between domestic and foreign coal markets, i.e. the coal prices will be self-revised continuously until a long-term equilibrium state is achieved when a deviation from the equilibrium state occurs. (4) There exists a co-movement effect which varies with the change of regime among the three coal prices, and the self-maintenance is strong and the status transfer phenomenon is clear in different regimes.     

Evaluating currency crises: A Bayesian Markov switching approach

In this paper we examine the nature of a currency crisis. We do so by employing an out-of-sample forecasting exercise to analyse the Mexican crisis in 1994. Forecast evaluation was based on modern econometric techniques concerning the shape of forecaster’s loss function. We also extend the empirical framework suggested by Jeanne and Masson [Jeanne, O., Masson, P., 2000. Currency crises and Markov-switching regimes. Journal of International Economics 50, 327–350] to test for the hypothesis that the currency crisis was driven by sunspots. To this end we contribute to the existing literature by comparing Markov regime switching model with a time-varying transition probabilities with two alternative models. The first is a Markov regime switching model with constant transition probabilities. The second is a linear benchmark model. Empirical results show that the proxy for the probability of devaluation is an important factor explaining the nature of currency crisis. More concretely, when the expectation market pressure was used as a proxy of probability of devaluation, forecast evaluation supports the view that currency crisis was driven by market expectation unrelated to fundamentals. Alternatively, when interest rate differential is used as a proxy for probability of devaluation, currency crisis was due to predictable deterioration of fundamentals.     

浅谈在我国发展REITs

REITs的未来扑朔迷离,但面对旺盛的融资需求,面对未来良好的发展潜力,面对一个不可逆转的多元化融资趋势,笔者认为REITs在经过一系列的调整后会有一个更广阔的发展前景.     

A tale of two states: asymmetries in the UK small,value and momentum premiums

This article performs comparative analysis of the asymmetries in size, value and momentum premium and their macroeconomic determinants over the UK economic cycles, using Markov switching approach. We associate Markov switching regime 1 with economic upturn and regime 2 with economic downturn. We find clear evidence of cyclical variations in the three premiums, most notable being that in the size premium, which changes from positive in expansions to negative in recessions. Macroeconomic indicators prompting such cyclicality the most are variables that proxy credit market conditions, namely the interest rates, term structure and credit spread. Overall, macro factors tend to have more significant impact on the three premiums during economic downturns. The results are robust to the choice of information variable used in modelling transition probabilities of the two-stage Markov switching model. We show that exploiting cyclicality in premiums proves particularly profitable for portfolios featuring small cap stocks in recessions at a feasible level of transaction costs.     

Monetary shocks,equity returns and volatility: a firm-level panel data analysis

This article studies the impact of monetary policy shocks on equity returns and their volatility among nine industries and their affiliated firms in the United States. We use an extension of the traditional CAPM as the analytical framework and approximate policy shocks with the unexpected component of the federal funds rate. Data on the characteristics of firms and industries are obtained from Compustat and the Center for Research in Security Prices, covering a sample period from 1987 to 2009. Our results clearly show that responses to policy shocks vary by industry and across firms. Furthermore, credit availability matters in certain industries, and small, financially constrained, and bank-dependent firms are found to be more vulnerable to unexpected federal funds rate shocks.     

Volatility in asset prices and long-run wealth effect estimates

We argue that the equation commonly used in the estimation of the wealth effect on consumption might be unsuitable for that purpose. In particular, if the usual assumptions are employed, the derivation of the equation implies that the wealth effect is indeterminate. Furthermore, it implies that the estimate of the wealth effect should decrease when asset wealth volatility increases. Estimation of a Markov-switching model of the usual long-run aggregate consumption equation provides evidence favourable to the indeterminacy hypothesis.     

The changing role of house price dynamics over the business cycle

In this paper, we attempt to analyse the relationship between house price dynamics and the business cycle. Employing a time-varying transition probability Markov switching framework, we provide empirical evidence that house price growth may prove a useful leading indicator for turning point detection. Focusing on three countries, the US, UK and Spain, we furthermore provide evidence that although potentially informative from an overall perspective in business cycle modelling, the significance of signals contained in house prices may not be symmetric across the identified high growth and low growth states. In addition, we suggest a possible range of values for house price deflation which may trigger a recession the following period.     

中国真实利率的平稳性和区制性:基于马尔科夫区制转换模型

通过引入三种均值方差都可能不同的区制,并基于改进的马尔科夫区制转换模型对1989年2月至2010年4月中国真实利率演变的考察,结果表明不同阶段的真实利率的确存在不同的均值和方差;考虑到区制转换特征之后,真实利率大体平稳,有均值回复趋势。而以往的应用中,忽略了这种区制转换特征可能导致对真实利率预测值的系统性偏差。     

USA,Japan and the Euro Area: Comparing Business‐Cycle Features

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the USA, Japan and the Euro area. Using Markov‐switching techniques, we identify and compare specifically their major business‐cycle features and examine the case for a common business cycle, asymmetries in the national cycles and, using a number of algorithms, date business‐cycle turning points. Despite a high degree of trade and financial linkages, the cyclical features of USA, Japan and the Euro area appear quite distinct. Documenting and comparing such international business‐cycle features can, for example, aid the development of business‐cycle models and inform policy making.     

Estimating Central Banks’ preferences from a time-varying empirical reaction function

We estimate monetary policy reaction functions for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, using a Markov-switching model that allows for shifts in the coefficients of the central bank's reaction function as well as for independent shifts in the residual variance. The results indicate that central bank policy can be characterized as falling into a low- and a high-inflation regime. Over time all central banks have assigned changing weights to inflation and the output gap. Switching in the residual variance turns out to be important for the fit of the model. As a reaction function is a reduced form, coefficients embody preference parameters as well as parameters characterizing the structure of the economy. To recover the central banks’ preferences, we estimate the preference parameters jointly with a small model of the economy. The results show that the Bundesbank has placed a relatively higher weight on inflation than the Fed. Moreover, for the Bundesbank and the Fed the differences between both regimes seem to originate mainly from a changing preference for interest rate smoothing.