Disinflation and the December 1994 Devaluation in Mexico

This paper discusses the determinants of the Mexican peso devaluation of December 1994. An examination of basic economic data reveals the shortcomings of existing explanations based on either inconsistent macroeconomic policies or self-fulfilling prophecies. We argue in contrast that the devaluation was related to the exhaustion of the disinflationary programme launched in the late 1980s, and that the timing of policy change was critically influenced by a conflict between the inherited disinflationary stance and the economic goals of the administration taking office in December 1994. The analysis suggests that a prolonged period of real currency appreciation before the devaluation was made possible not only by the strong inflationary aversion of the authorities but by a series of positive shocks that reduced the appreciation's negative effects.     

On the Cost of Opportunistic Behavior in the Public Sector: A General‐Equilibrium Approach

This paper studies the wasteful effect of bureaucracy on the economy by addressing the link between opportunistic behavior of government bureaucrats and the public sector wage bill. In particular, public officials are modeled as individuals competing for a larger share of those public funds. A simple extraction technology in the government administration is introduced in a standard real‐business‐cycle setup augmented with detailed public sector. The model is calibrated to German data for the period 1970–2007. The main findings are: (i) the model performs well vis‐à‐vis the data; (ii) due to the existence of a significant public sector wage premium and the high public sector employment, a substantial amount of working time is spent in opportunistic activities, which, in turn, leads to significant losses in terms of output; and (iii) the model‐based loss measures obtained for the EU‐12 countries are highly correlated to indices of bureaucratic inefficiency.     

Disinflation,credibility and price inertia: A Danish exposition

This paper analyses the disinflationary policy pursued in Denmark since October 1982, focusing on the Phillips curve trade-off and the credibility of this disinflationary policy. The overall conclusion confirms no significant indication of the disinflationary policy being credible.     

Farm Acreage Shocks and Crop Prices: An SVAR Approach to Understanding the Impacts of Biofuels

The last 10?years have seen tremendous expansion in biofuels production, particularly in corn ethanol in the United States, at the same time that commodity prices (e.g., corn) have experienced significant spikes. While supporters claim that biofuels are renewable and carbon-friendly, concerns have been raised about their impacts on land use and food prices. This paper analyzes how US crop prices have responded to shocks in acreage supply; these shocks can be thought of as a shock to the residual supply of corn for food. Using a structural vector auto-regression framework, we examine shocks to a crop??s own acreage and to total cropland. This allows us to estimate the effect of dedicating cropland or non-crop farmlands to biofuels feedstock production. A negative shock in own acreage leads to an increase in price for soybeans and corn. Our calculations show that increased corn ethanol production during the boom production year 2006/2007 explains approximately 27% of the experienced corn price rise.     

Central Bank Independence and the Cost of Disinflation: Why the Wage Contracts Length Matters?

Recent empirical contributions demonstrate that countries with less independent central banks enjoy lower output losses during disinflationary cycles. To explain these somewhat surprising empirical findings, some authors suggest that independent central banks probably face a flatter short-run Phillips curve. In this paper, we provide both theoretical and empirical arguments to rationalize this intuition. We demonstrate that, since central bank independence reduces the mean inflation rate and its variance, wage setters opt for a lower degree of nominal wage indexation leading to more wage and price inertia and, thus, to a flatter short-run Phillips curve. Consequently, this paper put forward a channel of positive influence of central bank independence on the sacrifice ratio through its impact on nominal wage indexation. Empirical tests, performed using a sample of 19 OECD countries during the 1960–1990 period, show that these theoretical results hold also empirically.     

机会主义资产重组与刚性管制

本文选择 1 993— 2 0 0 0年间上海证券交易所 1 2 0 2例上市公司资产重组事件为研究样本 ,考察了资产重组与政府管制之间的关系。研究发现 ,1 997年我国宏观经济由过热转向软着陆 ,而监管部门对上市公司的配股管制 ,却仍然采用经济过热时期制订的标准 ,由于管制标准偏离了实际经济情况和投资者的机会成本 ,许多上市公司采取了相应的对策———“机会主义资产重组”来规避管制。本文的发现为我国的“替代性管制”提出了新的不利的证据。     

Understanding Heterogeneous Preferences in Random Utility Models: A Latent Class Approach

A finite mixture approach toconditional logit models is developed in whichlatent classes are used to promoteunderstanding of systematic heterogeneity. The model is applied to wilderness recreationin which a branded choice experiment involvingchoice of one park from a demand system wasadministered to a sample of recreationists. The basis of membership in the classes orsegments in the sample involved attitudinalmeasures of motivations for taking a trip, aswell as their stated preferences overwilderness park attributes. The econometricanalysis suggested that four classes of peopleexist in the sample. Using the model toexamine welfare measures of some hypotheticalpolicy changes identified markedly differentwelfare effects than the standard singlesegment model, and provided insight into thedifferential impact of alternative policies.     

Understanding Hurricane Evacuation Decisions Under Contingent Scenarios: A Stated Preference Approach

We conduct a stated preference analysis to understand the factors that individual households take into consideration to evacuate during hurricanes. In designing the contingent scenarios for evacuation, we randomly assign varying levels of hurricane characteristics (wind speed, lead time for landfall and the height of storm surge) combined with different types of emergency management options (voluntary versus mandatory evacuation order and a voucher with varying amounts to cover evacuation expenses). Findings indicate that individual households respond, in a non-linear fashion, to the intensity of hurricanes when making evacuation decisions. Respondents are also more likely to evacuate when the storm surge reaches a certain threshold. In terms of policy interventions, mandatory evacuation orders are more effective to increase the likelihood of evacuation. The potential intervention in the form of providing evacuation vouchers to assist households to cover their expenses (e.g. for food, water, transportation and lodging) also seems effective. We discuss policy implications of our findings.     

对资金流动性的认识与疏导

为解决我国目前所存在的资金流动性过剩的问题,以分析资金流动性对经济影响的两面性为出发点,探讨当今中国存在的资金流动性过剩所产生的直接原因,并结合资金流动性过剩产生的后果,分析这些原因背后的联系,为解决和控制资金流动性过剩的问题得出构想方法,即需要将收入分配改革、外汇管理改革与行政政策、货币政策相结合,让内在变革和外在动力共同作用、互相协作,使经济能够更加健康有效地发展.     

Widening the Economic Approach to Hatred

The economics of hate is a barely developed field. There is one paper overtly on the topic by Glaeser and several related papers on racism. war and other important topics. This paper considers the scope for taking the economic analysis of hate beyond the narrow confines of the neoclassical approach by Glaeser and those working in cognate areas.

理性认识我国风电产业的发展

随着科技进步和社会发展,越来越多的不可再生资源被消耗掉,而风能的优越性使其成为当今时代的一大主题。在国家大力发展清洁能源政策的支持下,近年来,我国风电产业已经显示出迅猛的发展势头。面对已经取得的成绩,我们应该保持谨慎的心态,理性认识风电产业的综合效益。     

读罗杰斯的《传播学史——一种传记式的方法》有感

达尔文和进化论、弗洛伊德和精神分析理论、马克思和批判学派是对传播学发展产生重要影响的欧洲三大思想渊源,通过梳理这三大思想对传播学发展的影响,探讨了传播学研究传统的划分问题.     

An Alternative Approach to the Concept of Demand

The authors argue that the loanable-funds approach is substantively equivalent to the more widely used IS-LM pedagogy but is simpler and more readily comprehended by students. They demonstrate its use for analyzing the macroeconomic goods, money, and labor market interactions and policy applications.     

低碳消费方式实现途径探讨

低碳消费方式是在全球环境恶化和能源危机下产生的新型消费方式.低碳消费是从保护消费者身体健康、保护生态环境、承担社会责任角度出发,在生活消费过程中减少资源浪费和防止污染而采用的一种理性消费方式.本文就我国低碳消费市场不完善,消费者低碳消费意识比较淡薄,消费结构和过程高碳化的问题进行了分析,并提出了树立低碳消费理念,完善低碳消费市场机制,优化低碳消费结构等实现低碳消费方式的途径.     

ARDL Approach to Test the Productivity Bias Hypothesis

The productivity bias hypothesis states that a relatively more productive country should experience a real appreciation of its currency. Most studies in the literature that have tested the hypothesis have employed cross‐sectional data. Only a few studies have used time‐series data and they have tested the hypothesis for only a small number of countries. In this paper the authors test the hypothesis by using time‐series data over the 1960–90 period for a sample of 44 countries and with a relatively new method of cointegration known as the ARDL approach. For most countries there is strong evidence supporting the hypothesis.     

A Value-Added Approach to Macroeconomics

Focusing on the “value-added” approach to computing Gross National Product encourages students to see their role as a producers, rather than only as consumers. It also offers an alternative approach the distribution of income between labor and capital from that provided by marginal productivity theory.     

庭园林业探析

目前，庭园林业在广大农村呈蓬勃发展之势，本文就庭园林业的概念、性质、模式类型和措施等方面作了初步探讨与归纳。     

放弃成本、政府偏好与资本控制:一个审慎的机会主义汇率制度选择模型

本文在Obstfeld(1 996)第二代货币危机模型的基础上 ,建立了一个考虑经济结构、供给冲击以及金融风险的多因素汇率制度选择模型 ,以成本分析为工具解释了资本控制、各类成本和政府偏好对均衡的影响以及对汇率制度选择的影响。研究表明 :(1 )资本控制可以通过多种途径对均衡产生影响 ,在一定条件下可以利用资本控制措施使经济避免多重均衡 ;(2 )放弃成本对汇率制度选择发挥关键作用 ;(3 )较大的政府偏好促使政府选择固定汇率制度 ,在放弃成本不足够大的条件下 ,决策者也可以通过提高政府偏好或者实施资本控制措施来保护本国固定汇率制度 ;(4)对人民币现行汇率制度的放弃成本的估计表明 ,当前人民币汇率制度放弃成本正处于中间水平 ,因此有必要增大政府对固定汇率制度的偏好并且对资本帐户实施适度管理以保持人民币汇率的稳定 ,防范金融风险。至于未来人民币汇率波动幅度的扩大、资本项目自由化的进程以及人民币汇率制度何时回归真正的“管理浮动” ,应主要取决于人民币汇率制度放弃成本的有效降低     

对与企业财务相关的内部控制建设的几点认识

内部控制作为企业的一项重要管理活动,主要试图解决三方面的基本问题,即财务报告及相关信息的可靠性、资产的安全完整以及对法律法规的遵循;与此同时,它还要促进企业提高经营的效率效果,并促进实现企业的发展战略。国外的安然、国内的红光实业等一系列公司财务报表舞弊事件发生后,人们认识到健全有效的内部控制对预防此类事件的发生至关重要。随着人们对内部控制的重视程度的提升,也从注重财务报告本身可靠性转向注重对保证财务报告可靠性机制的建设,也就是通过过程的有效保证结果的有效。