Restricting capital outflow

According to the “Capital Asset Pricing Model”, an individual can increase his utility by diversifying his capital across countries. If that is the case, then why do governments impose restrictions on capital outflow? This paper argues that foreign owners of capital have less political power than domestic ones and therefore capital liberalization weakens the political power that protects capital, increases the taxation of capital and thus reduces total investment. Indeed, most of the empirical evidence suggests that capital liberalization is positively correlated with government expenditure, social security spending and corporate taxation.     

The Impact of Exchange Rate Volatility on International Trade Flows

Despite the best efforts of economists, a basic paradox as to the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade flows remains unresolved at both the theoretical and empirical level. This paper surveys the vast literature in the area in an attempt to identify major issues which have contributed to the development of the debate and examine whether any general direction for consensus may be found.     

Does trade integration alter monetary policy transmission?

This paper explores the role of trade integration—or openness—for monetary policy transmission in a medium-scale new Keynesian model. Allowing for strategic complementarities in price setting, we highlight a new dimension of the exchange rate channel by which monetary policy directly impacts domestic inflation: a monetary contraction which appreciates the exchange rate lowers the local currency price of imported goods; this, in turn, induces domestic producers to lower their prices too. We pin down key parameters of the model by matching impulse responses obtained from a vector autoregression on time series for the US relative to the euro area. Our estimation procedure yields plausible parameter values and suggests a strong role for strategic complementarities. Counterfactual simulations show that openness alters monetary transmission significantly. While the contractionary effect of a monetary policy shock on inflation and output tends to increase in openness, we find that monetary policy's control over inflation increases, as the output decline which is necessary to bring about a given reduction of inflation is smaller in more open economies.     

Relative risk aversion and the transmission of financial crises

We study how investor behavior affects the transmission of financial crises. If investors exhibit decreasing relative risk aversion, then negative wealth shocks increase the risk premium required to hold risky assets. We integrate this into a second generation model of currency crises which allows for contagion through changes in fundamentals. Investor behavior can be a transmission channel of financial crises, as changes in risk premia increase the coverage ratio and makes the defense of a peg less attractive for the policy maker. The feedback effect of the risk premia on the probability of devaluation also makes multiple equilibria more likely. The possible stabilization effects of capital controls and a Tobin tax on the international transmission of financial crises are also studied.     

Exchange rate volatility and Spanish-American commodity trade flows

A number of recent studies have tested the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade flows, particularly for individual commodities, for various country pairs. These have found that risk can increase as well as decrease trade, but that oftentimes industries are not affected. This study examines trade between the United States and Spain over the period from 1962 to 2009, for 131 U.S. export industries and 88 import industries. We find that exchange rate volatility has short-run and long-run effects in only a fraction of the cases, but that exports respond more to increased uncertainty than imports do. In all, only 35 of the 74 U.S. export industries are affected (11 positive, 24 negative), whilst only three out of 37 import industries have positive coefficients and 11 have negative ones. We find no evidence that durable or nondurable goods are more likely to respond to volatility, whilst small industries or specialized goods might show more of a positive response.     

A note on tax competition in the presence of agglomeration economies

This paper analyzes tax competition in the presence of agglomeration effects. The obtained results are then compared to the results of the traditional model, without agglomeration effects. As is well known, the presence of a fiscal externality affects the provision of the public good in the standard competitive model of tax competition. In the model with agglomeration effects, in addition to this externality, a new effect shows up. This effect reflects heightened government concern about capital flight, which depresses firm productivity by limiting external economies of scale. As a result, capital tax rates end up being lower than in the case where agglomeration effects are not present, worsening the underprovision of the public good. This conclusion holds in both the competitive and strategic versions of the model.     

Does the foreign sector help forecast domestic variables in DSGE models?

This paper evaluates the forecasting performances of several small open-economy DSGE models relative to a closed-economy benchmark using a long span of data for Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. We find that opening the model economy usually does not improve the quality of point and density forecasts for key domestic variables, and can even cause it to deteriorate. We show that this result can be attributed largely to an increase in the forecast error due to the more sophisticated structure of the extended setup, which is not compensated for by a better model specification. This claim is based on a Monte Carlo experiment in which an open-economy model fails to beat its closed-economy benchmark consistently even if the former is the true data generating process.     

退出盯住汇率制度不同策略的比较研究

在开放经济争件下,盯住汇率制度变得越来越不可维持。很多国家不断退出盯住汇率制度,实行更加灵活的汇率制度。本文把银行体系引入到第二代货币危机模型中,并对模型进行了扩展,构建了退出盯住汇率制度的不同策略模型,即危机驱动退出策略模型和主动退出策略模型。同时,本文还比较了作为退出策略的一种替代,即资本管制策略。     

从西方国家税制看我国税制改革的五大走势

税收政策、财政政策和货币政策是经济宏观调控的三大杠杆。目前,在全球金融危机尚未缓解的经济环境下,迫切要求我们明确税收政策的调控目标及其选择原则,理清税制改革与建设的基本思路和方向,从而促进我国经济持续健康发展。     

汇率波动对外商直接投资的影响 ——基于知识资本模型从产业角度的实证检验

本文运用知识资本模型分别从国别和产业的角度对汇率波动与国际直接投资(FDI)进行实证检验。该模型考虑到资源禀赋对FDI的影响,并将FDI细分为垂直型和水平型;同时,为了使计量更加精确,本文还将模型中汇率的波动分解为一价定律失效导致的波动和不可解释的原因导致的波动;最后,本文还检验了美元盯住制对FDI的影响。结果发现,东道国货币贬值是否有利于吸引FDI取决于该国FDI是以水平型还是垂直型为主,同时,美元盯住制对FDI没有促进作用。     

资本管制有效性与中国汇率制度改革

本文在利率平价框架下考察了近十年中国资本管制的效力。我们采用比较类似金融工具在国内外市场的收益率、检验未抛补利率平价理论偏差的平稳性两种方法进行分析。研究表明,尽管资本管制的效力随时间推移有所下降,但境内外美元利差的持续存在以及未抛补利率平价理论偏差的非平稳性仍然足以证明中国的资本管制基本有效。资本管制的有效性在盯住制框架下确保了汇率稳定和一定的货币政策自主性,并且使未来汇率制度弹性化改革可以渐进地推进。