The Stability of European Money Demand: An Investigation of M3H

The paper assesses the stability and predictive performance of a European money demand function as compared to national money demand functions. With respect to the explanatory accuracy, the national functions perform better than the aggregated function. Examination of the residuals of the national money demand equations indicates that currency substitution is not the major cause for the stability of the aggregated money demand function. The aggregate relation mainly seems to reflect German money demand. This conclusion is supported by the instability of aggregated money demand resulting from the exclusion of Germany from the aggregate.     

The Effects of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) on National Fiscal Sustainability

This paper presents a methodology to analyze the responsiveness of fiscal sustainability to the endogenous fiscal discipline that will be strengthened by the EMU. This discipline arises in response to the harmonization of tax systems, the loss of control of current and prospective money financing, and the deepening of financial market-based discipline. The model developed in this paper is a generalization of Blanchard's 1984 model, in which the interest rate is determined endogenously. This provides the framework to analyze more features of the linkage between sustainability and endogenous fiscal discipline. This paper also presents a new intratemporal fiscal sustainability index.     

Macroeconomic stabilization through monetary and fiscal policy coordination: Implications for European Monetary Union

In a two-country model, we consider the implications of monetary and fiscal policy coordination for macroeconomic stabilization. We show that the optimal regime is one of monetary and fiscal policy coordination under flexible exchange rates. In the context of the European Community, this suggests that the desire to fix exchange rates may not be costless. In addition, we show that fiscal coordination requires a relatively high degree of flexibility in fiscal policy. This result suggests that limits on the flexibility of fiscal policies, as suggested in the Delors Report, may hinder macroeconomic stabilization.     

Bank cooperation and banking policy in a monetary union: A political-economy perspective on EMU

Why do large European banks lobby for monetary union? We show in a game-theoretic model that montary union can trigger a change in the structure of the market for international banking transactions with asymmetric effects on profits: large banks are induced to cooperate internationally and gain from European Monetary Union (EMU), while small banks are likely to lose. Monetary union can be interpreted as a device for large banks to push small banks out of the market for cross-border financial services.     

A suggested reformulation of the theory of optimal currency areas

In contrast to conventional analyses of monetary union between two particular countries or sets of countries, this paper treats the possible expansion of a given currency area as a continuous variable ranging from zero to one; zero if there is no expansion and one if all sources of imports and competition in trade are included in the union. The optimal order in which new members are admitted to the union then becomes a central aspect of the problem. Along with other advantages, this approach makes it easier to defend the argument that many nations are too small for form optimal currency areas. The demands upon the origin of the shocks, factor mobility, and political organization are smaller.     

The European exchange rate mechanism and the European monetary union

Summary This article addresses two central questions related to the prospects of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in Europe: first, is the current exchange rate mechanism viable in the transition stage to EMU or in the period to come if the EMU should be postponed? Second, is a monetary union necessary in an economically fully integrated European Union or would the current or an alternative exchange rate mechanism suffice an integrating Europe? The article reviews the arguments for and against monetary union, the history of European monetary integration, the theoretical and empirical insights into the functioning of targets zones, and the likely developments and prospects for the EMU.The author wishes to thank Martin M.G. Fase and Simon K. Kuipers for their most helpful comments on a previous version of this article.     

Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest with Financial Gaps: The Cases of Japan and South Korea

We estimate “finance-adjusted” trend growth and natural rates of Japan and South Korea by extending a semi-structural model of (Laubach and Williams, 2003). Consistent with international evidence of the advanced economies, both trend growth and natural rates of interest of Japan and South Korea have been declining over the past, suggesting the important role of global factors. However, the declining patterns of Japan and South Korea are far steeper during the past 25 years. When considering domestic and global financial factors, trend growth and natural rate of South Korea are more affected by foreign financial factor while the role of domestic financial factor is more pronounced for Japanese economy.     

朝鲜推行经济改革的原因分析

冷战结束后,特别是金正日主政朝鲜后,朝鲜政府推行了一系列经济改革。但其改革的进程受内外影响所限并不连贯。特别是朝鲜的特殊处境,与其他国家相比,其经济改革受国内外的影响更大。近期,随着朝鲜外部环境的改善,朝鲜新一轮经济改革呼之欲出。此时,梳理、分析朝鲜经济改革的原因有助于更深入了解朝鲜的相关问题。     

多元化折价与多元化溢价的稳健性：一个文献述评

自从Langand Stulz（1994）提出多元化折价以来，多元化折价与溢价的争论成为公司财务领域的焦点问题之一。但是，文献研究表明，多元化本身可能是中性的，多元化可能并不是产生折价的原因。本文对多元化折价与溢价的文献进行了归纳，认为多元化折价与溢价的稳健性取决于多元化赖以存在的条件，以及实证研究是否解决了内生性问题。今后的研究需要提高数据的可靠性、消除内生性、引入新的方法、嵌入制度和政治关联等因素。     

货币政策立场指示器的实证研究——来自我国货币政策操作实践的证据

本文以我国1998年以来的货币政策操作实践为研究背景,对货币政策的经验研究前提--货币政策立场指示器问题进行了实证研究.研究表明,在对实际经济活动的预测能力方面,M1的增长率GM1最强,M2的增长率GM2次之,利率指标则较弱,所以GM1是我国货币政策立场的良好指示器.相应的政策含义是现阶段货币供给量作为中介目标还具有一定的合理性,建议货币当局尽快完善现有的货币统计框架以增强M2作为中介目标的适用性,同时货币政策操作应更加密切地关注M1指标.     

A search for leading sectors over the business cycle: The case of Korea

This paper studies the sectoral mechanism of shock propagation in business cycles by performing a case study. After we transform business survey indices of different industries into comparable metrics, we trace and compare them before and after reference dates. From these observations, we show that manufacturing industry leads the peak and the trough of the most recent business cycle in Korea; and six sectors are major players in manufacturing industry, i.e. ‘food products and beverages,’ ‘chemicals,’ ‘machinery,’ ‘motor vehicles, etc.,’ and ‘basic metals,’ and ‘fabricated metals.’ In conclusion, the heavy and chemical sectors may be the key to understanding recent business cycles in Korea.     

Trade Unions in Local and Regional Development and Governance: The Northern Trades Union Congress in North East England

From a position of relative isolation, trade unions have become increasingly important agents in local and regional development and governance in the UK since the election of the New Labour government in 1997. Analysis of the experience of the Northern Trades Union Congress (NTUC) suggests that devolution and regionalisation are exerting increasing pressures upon trade union federations to adopt a multi-level approach to organisation across a range of scales—local, sub-regional, regional, sub-national, national and international—to connect with the evolving multi-layered governance structures of the UK political economy. Strategic multi-level organisation suggests the decentralisation of power, authority and resources within the labour movement—challenging the national and centralised legacy of its collective bargaining history—and a division of labour and set of priorities at the different scales to build the links between local and regional engagement and trade union renewal.     

The effect of North Korean threats on financial markets in South Korea and Japan

This paper examines the effects of North Korean threats, as measured by the proprietary North Korean Threat Index (NKTI), on financial markets in South Korea and Japan. We examine the effects of the threats on stock markets, foreign exchange markets, and overnight interest rates. We consider causality in mean and variance tests to determine any link between the NKTI and financial variables. The causality-in-mean test results indicate the presence of a causal link running from North Korean threats to stock returns and exchange rate returns in both countries, but no significant link to the overnight interest rate in either country. The causality-in-variance test results indicate no significant impact emanating from North Korean threats. Integrating the North Korean economy into the global economy stands to eliminate these threats and thus to contribute to regional financial stability.     

Modeling the Impact of Real and Financial Shocks on Mercosur: The Role of the Exchange Rate Regime

This paper studies to what extent the diversity of exchange rate regimes within Mercosur exerts an influence on the feasibility of a monetary union in this area. A semi-structural vector autoregression model is built for each country, including a set of international and domestic variables. Based on impulse response functions and forecast error decomposition, we conclude that differences in exchange rate regimes explain significantly the divergences of economic dynamics triggered by foreign or domestic shocks. Second, we decompose the structural innovations generated by each country model into unobservable common and idiosyncratic components, using a state-space model. This last exercise, intended to assess the degree of policy coordination between the Mercado Común del Sur members, did not disclose any common component for the structural innovations generated by the three national models.

Roles of Formal Institutions and Social Capital in Innovation Activities: A Cross-Country Analysis

This paper investigates the roles of formal institutions and social capital in countries’ innovation activities. The sample consists of 62 developed and developing countries, using the ordinary least squares robust standard error estimations, instrumental variable (IV) estimators, and quantile regression. The empirical results indicate that formal institutions and social capital complement one another in influencing countries’ innovations level. In terms of the relative importance of both in promoting innovation activities, the social capital has greater role compared to formal institutions. Furthermore, the empirical result suggests that innovation level tends to be higher in countries with higher social capital. We also use the quantile regression to estimate whether the relationship among formal institutions, social capital, and innovation differs at different points in the conditional distribution of innovation. The results demonstrate that formal institutions yield a significant positive impact only after exceeding in 50th quantile, whereas social capital do so at lower 10th quantile. Therefore, in addition to a policy focus on improving the formal institutions, countries with a low level of innovation should enrich social capital in their promotion of innovation activity.     

A New EU Member Country on the Road to the Euro Area: Monetary and Fiscal Policies for Slovenia

Slovenia was the first of the ten new EU member states to enter the Euro Area on January 1, 2007. It was an explicit objective of Slovenian policy-makers to introduce the euro as early as possible. Slovenia was participating in the exchange rate mechanism ERM-II since June 2004. This paper analyses whether the choice of participating in the ERM-II soon after EU accession was the best strategy in terms of the macroeconomic performance. It is shown that a better overall economic performance could have been achieved under a crawling peg regime allowing a depreciation of the Slovenian tolar (SIT) before introducing the euro in 2007. The worst policy results are obtained when the exchange rate is totally fixed at an early stage of EMU integration. The labor market performance can be significantly improved by cutting income taxes and social security contribution rates.      

The estimation of monetary policy reaction function in a data-rich environment: The case of Japan

This paper reports the estimates of a monetary policy reaction function for the Bank of Japan in a data-rich environment. There are two main findings. First, a weak identification problem arises in the estimates under the specifications that some previous works employ, though in a data-rich environment it may be possible to avoid this problem. Second, the evidence from the estimates in a data-rich environment suggests that the Bank of Japan only controlled the inflation forecast, and placed no weight on output stabilization directly over the period from November 1988 through February 2001.