International Capital Markets and Non-Scale Growth

New growth models exhibit "scale effects," meaning that variations in the levels of key variables exert permanent influences on growth rates. Such predictions run counter to recent empirical evidence. This paper extends a general non-scale model to the open economy. With complete capital markets, only output and capital, but not consumption, retain their non-scale structure. Introducing capital market imperfections, the model is again fully non-scale. Debt subsidies are analyzed and shown to provide capital flow reversals consistent with the recent experience in East Asia.     

Capital Accumulation and Innovation as Complementary Factors in Long-Run Growth

We study capital accumulation and innovation as determinants of long-run growth by adding capital to our earlier model of creative destruction. No special functional forms are imposed on the aggregate production function. The equations describing perfect foresight equilibrium are identical to those of the augmented Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model, except that the rate of technological change is a function of the stock of capital per effective worker. Contrary to previous models, a subsidy to capital accumulation will raise the long-run growth rate. The key assumption is that capital is used in R and D. Some evidence is presented on the capital intensity of R and D.     

Devaluation,Capital Mobility,and Long-Run Equilibrium*

The paper considers a small, fully employed economy with non-tradeables, securities, and money. The paper first analyzes the effects of devaluation and financial controls in the short-run equilibrium on the trade balance, the capital account, and the overall balance of payments. Disequilibria in the capital account and the overall balance of payments cause changes in the stock of securities and money, shifting the short-run equilibrium. The paper investigates the condition for the- uniqueness and stability of the long-run equilibrium under this adjustment process (‘specie flow mechanism’). Finally, the long-run equilibrium effects of devaluation and monetary policies are examined.     

政府公共资本投资的长期经济增长效应

本文首先建立一个包含政府公共资本投资的两部门内生增长模型,并把公共资本投资分为政府物质资本投资和人力资本投资,从而对公共资本投资的长期经济增长效应进行理论分析。结论是,两种形式的公共资本投资对长期经济增长都可能具有正效应也可能具有负效应,取决于民间经济主体消费跨时替代弹性大小。其次,我们利用向量自回归分析框架,对我国1978—2004年间公共资本投资对长期经济增长的影响作实证分析。结论是,我国两种形式的公共资本投资与经济增长之间存在着长期均衡关系,其中政府公共物质资本投资对长期经济增长的正影响更为显著,而政府公共人力资本投资对长期经济增长的正影响较小,且在短期内不利于经济增长。这一结论对我国今后科学制定财政政策和选择公共投资领域都具有重要意义。     

Endogenous, Efficient Long-Run Cyclical Unemployment, Endogenous Long-Run Growth, and Division of Labor

The paper uses a dynamic equilibrium model to explain the concurrence of economic growth and business cycles. Introducing durable goods into a model with ex-ante identical consumer–producers and economies of specialized learning-by-doing, the author shows that when job-shifting costs, economies of specialized learning-by-doing, and trading efficiency are sufficiently large, a dynamic equilibrium with business cycles and unemployment might be Pareto superior to noncyclical growth patterns. Long-run cyclical unemployment still exists when the credit market is imperfect. Extending the model into overlapping generations framework, the author shows that complete division of labor with business cycles would still occur in equilibrium.     

Gender Equality and Long-Run Growth

This research suggests that long-run economic and demographic development in Europe can be better understood when related to long-term trends in gender equality, dating back to the spread of Christianity. We set up a growth model where gaps in female-to-male human capital arise at equilibrium through a coordination process. An economy which over a long stretch of time re-coordinates on continuously more equal equilibria—as one could argue happened in Europe—exhibits growth patterns qualitatively similar to that of Europe.     

Asset Markets and Endogenous Liquidity

In financial markets characterized by imperfect depth, speculative trading will have transitory effects on the market price as market makers must be compensated for the risk of holding the asset. The number of people providing liquidity to a market will generally be endogenously determined by the quantity of liquidity demanded. This paper looks for evidence of endogenous liquidity provision in several international stock and bond markets. Evidence shows strong support for these speculative dynamics in the stock markets. The evidence for these dynamics is less striking with fixed‐income prices, consistent with the less speculative nature of these markets.     

Aging, Asset Markets, and Asset Returns: A View From Europe to Asia

The extent of the demographic changes is dramatic especially in some Asian and European countries. This paper investigates the effect of aging on global asset markets and asset returns, focusing on markets for productive capital, and especially on interactions between European and Asian economic development. Aging has complex effects on the markets for real capital. If elderly people save less than younger people, interest rates will increase. At the same time, however, the younger generation becomes smaller, which reduces the demand for new investment. The equilibrium effect is thus uncertain. Our multicountry computational equilibrium model delivers a subtle picture: there will be some decline in the return from productive capital, but it is relatively small. We find noticeable interaction effects between labor market and pension reforms in Europe on the one hand, and the demographic and economic developments in Asia, especially India and China, on the other hand.     

资本配置、管理激励与内部资本市场效率

通过构造了一个多分部企业内部跨期资本配置模型,本文考察了内部资本市场的管理激励和配置效率问题,这是对企业内部资本市场配置效率研究的一个综合和扩展。本文的模型把内部资本市场“有效率论”和“无效率论”结合到一起,分析表明,在通过内部资本市场重新配置资本并能诱使两个经理努力工作的情况下,内部资本市场的效率可能高于、低于或等于两个单分部企业组合的效率,而不只是其中的某一种结果。     

资本积累、社会结构与资本主义经济增长——积累的社会结构理论的视角

资本主义经济增长的长波是资本主义经济的一个典型事实,即在长期的发展过程中,资本主义经济表现出大约五十年左右一个轮回的长期增长与长期动荡和萧条周期性更迭。而一些美国激进经济学家批判的吸收马克思主义经济学、凯恩斯主义经济学和长波理论的成果,构建了"积累的社会结构"理论,对战后美国和世界资本主义的发展过程,以及现当代资本主义的特征提出了极具价值的研究。     

Information Markets and the Comovement of Asset Prices

Traditional asset pricing models predict that covariance between prices of different assets should be lower than what we observe in the data. This paper introduces markets for information that generate high price covariance within a rational expectations framework. When information is costly, rational investors only buy information about a subset of the assets. Because information production has high fixed costs, competitive producers charge more for low-demand information than for high-demand information. The low price of high-demand information makes investors want to purchase the same information that others are purchasing. When investors price assets using a common subset of information, news about one asset affects the other assets' prices; asset prices comove. The cross-sectional and time-series properties of comovement are consistent with this explanation.     

Banks' Capital Structure and the Liquid Asset – Policy Implication of Taiwan

Banks' size, liquidity and profitability are the main determinants of their capital ratios in Taiwan. Large banks implicitly substitute bank capital for regulator's capital and banks mainly depend on internal cash flows for capitalization. However, medium-sized banks in Taiwan use liquidity as a substitute for bank capital, and small banks with low liquidity tend to have lower capital ratios. Regulators should pay close attention to these banks since they may be undercapitalized.     

Asset Markets and Investment Decisions*

In an incomplete asset market, firms assign values to investment plans by projecting their payoffs on the span of the payoffs of marketed assets. This is a criterion that does not require firms to possess information, such as the marginal valuation of revenue across date‐events by shareholders, which is not directly observable; rather, it is based on the prices and payoffs of marketed assets. Under standard assumptions, competitive equilibria exist. However, even in the absence of nominal assets, competitive equilibrium allocations are generically indeterminate. The set of competitive equilibria is indexed by the price level at each state of the world, which has implications for the effectiveness of monetary policy.     

Environmental Tax Policy and Long-Run Economic Growth

This paper focuses on two competing effects of environmental taxation on long-run economic growth. One is a negative force, which hampers production; the other is a positive force, which increases the level of environmental quality bequeathed to future generations. The analysis shows that there exists a critical level of the tax that balances one force with the other. If the tax is initially set below (or above) the critical level, then raising the tax rate is beneficial (or harmful) to economic growth.
JEL Classification Numbers: D62, D91, H26, O11, O30, Q20     

On the Long-Run Distribution of Capital in the Ramsey Model

We study issues related to the long-run distribution of wealth in two variants of Ramsey's model of optimal capital accumulation. First we show that, in the case where a government levies a progressive income tax, there exist infinitely many stationary equilibria in which all households own positive capital stocks. Moreover, it is demonstrated that non-stationary equilibria can exhibit complicated dynamics. Then we discuss the case where households exercise market power on the capital market and we show that this may also lead to equilibria in which all households own positive amounts of capital. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E62, O41.     

Economic Data,Conventions, and Replication in Laboratory Asset Markets

Data extracted from naturally occurring markets and other economic environments often suffer from problems like data confounds and intercorrelations. We report results from a series of experimental markets that suggest some of the data problems can be overcome by using experimental techniques. We use predetermined (videotaped) draws to replicate results from prior research. This is contrary to the conventional wisdom in the literature, which holds that draws should be "live." Our results suggest that the price and allocation behavior of markets can be replicated using predetermined draws to initiate trading. Furthermore, the primary strength of the experimental method-control-is maintained.     

人口老龄化、资产价格与资本积累

生育率降低和平均预期寿命延长会加深人口老龄化程度,它们通过储蓄和投资渠道影响资产价格和资本积累。本文引入凸调整成本的资本调整技术,在新古典增长模型基础上通过内生化资产价格建立了不同社会保障制度安排下的世代交叠(OLG)一般均衡模型。研究表明,生育率降低会减少当期国民储蓄和投资,从而使资产价格下降、资本积累上升;但在下一个时期,资产价格和资本积累存在均值回归过程。平均预期寿命延长会提高当期资产价格;但在长期,它与社会保障税、养老金替代率以及个人账户挪用比例都没有影响资产价格。生育率降低和平均预期寿命延长同时期发生会使长期资产价格产生通缩效应。此外,平均预期寿命延长会提高当期资本积累;在长期,当资本产出弹性较小时,长期资本积累会随着平均预期寿命的延长而增加;当资本产出弹性较大时,它会随着平均预期寿命的延长而呈现非对称的倒"U"型变化。本文的结论在政策含义上表明,在需求管理的同时应加强供给侧改革,提高全要素生产率是应对资产价格通缩和增加长期资本积累的有效方式。     

An Apartment Story: To Introduce the Study of Spot,Forward, and Futures Markets,the Term Structure,and Arbitrage

An imagined apartment condominium complex is used as a device to teach how real markets work.     

Pension Reform, Capital Markets and the Rate of Return

Abstract. This paper discusses the consequences of population aging and a fundamental pension reform – that is, a shift towards more pre‐funding – for capital markets in Germany. We use a stylized closed‐economy, overlapping‐generations model to compare the effects of the recent German pension reform with those of a more decisive reform that would freeze the current pay‐as‐you‐go contribution rate and thus result in a larger funded component of the pension system. We predict rates of return to capital under both reform scenarios over a long horizon, taking demographic projections as given. Our main finding is that the future decrease in the rate of return is much smaller than often claimed in the public debate. Our simulations show that the capital stock will decrease once the baby‐boom generations enter retirement, even if there were no fundamental pension reform. The corresponding decrease in the rate of return, the direct effect of population aging, is around 0.7 percentage points. While the capital market effects of the recent German pension reform are marginal, the rate of return to capital would decrease by an additional 0.5 percentage points under the more decisive reform proposal.     

Interdependence and Contagion in Global Asset Markets

We assess interdependence and contagion across three asset classes (bonds, stocks, and currencies) for over 60 economies over the period 1998–2011. Using a global VAR, we test for changes in the transmission mechanism—both within and cross‐market changes—during periods of global financial turbulence. Contagion effects within‐market are notable in Latin American and Emerging Asian equities. In addition, in times of financial crisis, we find that US equity shocks lead to risk aversion by investors in equities and currencies globally and in some emerging market bonds. Euro area shocks are significant mainly within the bond market.