Volatility and firm growth

A growing body of macroeconomic evidence suggests that volatility is detrimental for economic growth. The channel through which this materializes, however, is less clear. Moreover, substantive evidence based on disaggregate data is scarce. In this paper, we provide empirical support for this relationship using a detailed cross-country firm-level dataset. We also provide additional evidence that institutional obstacles magnify the adverse effect of perceived volatility on firm growth.      

Volatility,growth and cycles

The paper investigates the factors affecting the equilibrium level of output in a panel of European countries. Output depends on factor inputs and on the technology and the efficiency with which those factors are used. Efficiency may be driven by international conditions and institutional changes such as the Single Market Programme in Europe. The technology indicators used in this study depend upon research and development and also include the level of labour efficiency which is indexed on skills data. The level of the capital stock depends upon the user cost of capital, which may depend upon risk and hence on the volatility of the economy. Recent literature suggests that real exchange rate volatility is important in determining investment and therefore has an impact on equilibrium output. A link of this form is uncovered for the European economies. If policy can reduce these volatilities then it can also raise equilibrium output.

Exchange Rate Volatility and Output Volatility: A Theoretical Approach*

This paper makes an attempt to determine the factors influencing exchange rate and exchange rate uncertainty, as well as output and output variability. In the context of a small open economy under flexible exchange rates regime it is found that the level both of exchange rate and output is affected by monetary and inflationary shocks, as well as shocks in government spending, output, and trade balance. Further, the uncertainty of exchange rate and output is associated positively with the uncertainty of all shocks while the contemporaneous occurrence of selected shocks imposes either a positive or negative impact on exchange rate and output volatility. Finally, it is shown that the effect of the determinants either of exchange rate volatility or output volatility is very sensitive to the parameter values.     

交易冲击与资产的非对称波动：基于“已实现波动率”

采用日内“已实现波动率”测度，本文从交易冲击的角度对中国A、B股的目内波动特征进行研究。结果表明，已实现波动率可以很好捕捉我国股市波动的非对称效应。而且这种非对称波动存在显著的时变特征；交易行为能够解释A股的非对称效应．但B股的非对称波动还存在其他的影响因素；知情交易降低了波动性，不知情交易则增强了波动性；结合“处置效应”对波动非对称性的更深入考察以及稳健性检验的都支持了我们的经验发现。     

Aid, Volatility, and Growth Again: When Aid Volatility Matters and When it Does Not

In previous papers the authors have argued that aid is likely to mitigate the negative effects of external shocks on economic growth (i.e. that aid is more effective in countries which are more vulnerable to external shocks). Recently an important debate has emerged about the possible negative effects of aid volatility itself. However, the cushioning effect of aid may involve some volatility in aid flows, which then is not necessarily negative for growth. In this paper the authors examine to what extent the time profile of aid disbursements may contribute to an increase or a decrease of aid effectiveness. They first show that aid, even if volatile, is not clearly as pro-cyclical as is often argued, and, even if pro-cyclical, is not necessarily destabilizing. They measure aid volatility by several methods and assess pro-cyclicality of aid with respect to exports, thus departing from previous literature, which usually assess pro-cyclicality of aid with respect to national income or fiscal receipts. The stabilizing/destabilizing nature of aid is measured by the difference in the volatility of exports and the volatility of the aid plus export flows. Then, in order to take into account the diversity of shocks to which aid can respond, they consider the effect of aid on income volatility and again find that aid is making growth more stable, while its volatility reduces this effect. They finally show through growth regressions that the higher effectiveness of aid in vulnerable countries is to a large extent due to its stabilizing effect.     

Volatility equicorrelation: A cross-market perspective

This paper contains the first empirical application of the Dynamic Equicorrelation (DECO) model to a cross-market dataset composed of equities, bonds, foreign exchange rates and commodities during 1983–2013. The originality of our approach consists of examining the volatility equicorrelations, by updating the concept of ‘volatility surprise’. We document that the average volatility equicorrelation across markets is around 15%, while being time-varying with regime shifts before/after September 2005 and with a low mean-reversion level.     

Specialisation in key enabling technologies and regional growth in Europe

This paper explores the specialisation of European Union (EU) regions in key enabling technologies (KETs) and assesses whether or not being specialised in these technological areas has an effect on regional growth. The evidence presented shows that regions specialised in KETs are concentrated in central Europe; however, over the period taken into account (1996–2011), less innovative and peripheral EU regions have been increasing their specialisation in these technological areas at the expense of the most advanced regions. There is also evidence that (spatial) diffusion of KETs often occurs across regions contiguous to each other. The results of the econometric estimations show that being specialised in KETs affects regional economic growth (per capita gross domestic product) and that this effect is stronger in the case of less innovative EU regions. Overall, these results hint at the pervasive nature and enabling role of KETs and demonstrate the importance for EU regions to target these technologies as part of their smart specialisation strategies.     

Income Inequality and Macroeconomic Volatility: An Empirical Investigation

We explore the impact of macroeconomic volatility on the distribution of income. Using a cross‐section of developed and developing countries, we find that greater output volatility, defined as the standard deviation of the rate of output growth, is associated with a higher Gini coefficient and income share of the top quintile. The coefficients suggest that a strong effect on inequality resulting from a reduction in volatility: the Gini coefficient of a country like Chile would fall by 6 points if it were to reduce its volatility to the same level as Sweden or Norway. Our results seem not to be driven by the high‐inequality/high‐volatility Latin American countries.     

旅游景区治理绩效:政府与利益相关者的博弈

从利益相关者理论和博弈论的角度,相关学者对旅游景区开发治理参与各方利益均衡进行了分析.在景区治理过程中,利益相关者之间存在多重利益博弈关系,而地方政府在协调各方利益中扮演着重要角色,实现与各方的利益均衡是提高景区绩效的基本动力.研究表明,地方政府要配合大局,制定规制,从制度上协同各方利益,这是实现利益相关者利益均衡和景区绩效最大化的根本保障.     

Empirical Evidence of the Leverage Effect in a Stochastic Volatility Model: A Realized Volatility Approach

Increasing attention has been focused on the analysis of the realized volatility, which can be treated as a proxy for the true volatility. In this paper, we study the potential use of the realized volatility as a proxy in a stochastic volatility model estimation. We estimate the leveraged stochastic volatility model using the realized volatility computed from five popular methods across six sampling-frequency transaction data (from 1-min to 60- min) based on the trust region method. Availability of the realized volatility allows us to estimate the model parameters via the MLE and thus avoids computational challenge in the high dimensional integration. Six stock indices are considered in the empirical investigation. We discover some consistent findings and interesting patterns from the empirical results. In general, the significant leverage effect is consistently detected at each sampling frequency and the volatility persistence becomes weaker at the lower sampling frequency.     

Political Institutions and Policy Volatility

Checks and balances that limit the discretion of policy-makers reduce the volatility of government expenditure and revenue. While this assumption is at the heart of a large body of empirical work, the association between political institutions and policy volatility has itself been the focus of only limited empirical testing. The results presented here support the existence of this link, allow for a comparison between two prominent measures of checks and balances and provide insight into the relative impact of checks and balances on the volatility of nine different types of fiscal policy both during times of macroeconomic stability and upheaval.     

Volatility and stock price indexes

The stochastic approach to index numbers has been successfully applied to the estimation of inflation, the world interest rate and international competitiveness.?One distinct advantage of this approach is that it provides the whole distribution of the index, not simply one value. In this article, we extend the stochastic approach to the estimation of a stock market index. We demonstrate how this approach can be used to identify ‘redundant stocks’ that do not contribute significantly to the overall index.?For index tracking purposes, these stocks can be safely excluded.     

Inflation Volatility and Forecast Accuracy

We examine the statistical properties of inflation in a sample of inflation‐targeting (IT) and non‐IT countries. It is hard to distinguish in which monetary regime inflation is less volatile. Inflation became easier to forecast in both groups of countries after the introduction of IT. The improvement was greater for IT countries, but forecast errors remain smaller for non‐IT countries. Our analysis is based on a stochastic volatility model proposed by Stock and Watson and its novel modification. Forecasts from the modified model are generally superior to both simple benchmarks and the original Stock and Watson model.     

通货膨胀与股票价格波动

股票收益和通货膨胀之间的关系不仅依赖于供给冲击和需求冲击,而且还受到货币政策制度的影响。需求冲击使得两者是正相关的,供给冲击对两者关系的作用还和货币政策制度有关。顺周期的货币政策使得供给冲击对两者关系是正相关的,而逆周期的货币政策使得供给冲击对两者关系是负相关的。对中国1991年1月—2009年7月实践的经验分析表明,股票收益和通货膨胀的相关性发生了两次结构性突变。进一步分析表明,1997年6月股票收益和通货膨胀的结构性突变主要是由货币政策制度引起的;2005年8月股票收益和通货膨胀的结构性突变主要是供给冲击和需求冲击的相对重要性发生了改变而导致的。     

也谈“长三角”城市政府竞争与定位

我国是共产党执政的国家，政府体系同样是竞争性的。长三角地区的地方分权，如财政收支权力的下放、外贸权力的下放、非公有企业的发展、地方国有企业及地方投资的扩展、开发区的发展以及金融权力的地方化不仅起步比较早，而且发展相对成熟。这种地方化为长三角各省市地方政府获得和维持独立利益和自     

企业、政府与自主创新——“中星微”自主创新案例的启示

自主创新是一个国家经济增长的原动力。文章以中星微公司在自主创新方面的发展历程与成功经验为案例,深入阐述了企业应该是自主创新的主体,只有形成一大批拥有自主知识产权和核心技术的创新型企业,我国的整体创新实力才能得到增强。在此基础上,文章进一步论述了政府在促进自主创新中的地位和作用。