Overaccumulation,Interest, and Prices

I use a financial accelerator model to study interest and prices under boom–busts driven by changes in expectations about total factor productivity (TFP) and credit. I show that inflation falls in the boom phase of the TFP episode and then recovers during the bust, yet rises in the boom phase of the credit episode and then falls during the bust. Furthermore, for both episodes, the overaccumulation of debt relative to capital during the boom is critical for the busts since it implies a fall in credit worthiness. Finally, I show that stricter inflation targeting reduces inefficiencies in all instances but the boom phase of the TFP episode.     

After the tide: Commodity currencies and global trade

The decade prior to the Great Recession saw a boom in global trade and rising transportation costs. High-yielding commodity exporters׳ currencies appreciated, boosting carry trade profits. The Global Recession sharply reversed these trends. We interpret these facts with a two-country general equilibrium model that features specialization in production and endogenous fluctuations in trade costs. Slow adjustment in the shipping sector generates boom–bust cycles in freight rates and, as a consequence, in currency risk premia. We validate these predictions using global shipping data. Our calibrated model explains about 57% of the narrowing of interest rate differentials post-crisis.     

Payments systems and monetary policy

A dynamic spatial model is constructed where there is a role for money and for centralized payments arrangements, and where there are aggregate fluctuations driven by fluctuations in aggregate productivity. With decentralized monetary exchange and no centralized payments arrangements, there is price level indeterminacy, and the equilibrium allocation is inefficient. A private clearinghouse arrangement improves efficiency but produces a real indeterminacy. The pricing of daylight overdrafts is irrelevant for the equilibrium allocation. Efficiency is achieved with a zero nominal interest rate on overnight central bank lending, or through private overnight interbank lending.     

基于GARCH模型的黄金指数与美元指数波动性研究

近几年的黄金市场与美元指数市场波动都比较大,但波动的方向不一致。通过对两者的波动进行研究,主要有单位根检验、ARCH效应的检验、GARCH模型分析以及因果关系检验,结果表明,黄金指数GARCH(1,1)最适合描述其市场波动,美元指数GARCH(2,1)最适合描述其市场波动,美元指数的预测对黄金指数的预测会有帮助。     

Does accounting comparability affect corporate employment decision-making?

This paper investigates whether accounting comparability affects corporate employment decision-making. We find that firms with greater accounting comparability experience a lower degree of inefficiency in labour investments. Further, our results show that accounting comparability affects labour investments via improved external monitoring and internal governance mechanisms. Additional analyses indicate that our findings are not driven by non-labour investments and are robust to alternative explanations and endogeneity concerns. Collectively, the results are consistent with the view that comparability is an effective monitoring tool, which mitigates agency conflict and thereby reduces opportunistic employment decision-making.     

News about aggregate demand and the business cycle

The plausibility of expectations-driven cyclical fluctuations in an otherwise standard one-sector real business cycle model with variable capital utilization and mild increasing returns-to-scale in production is examined. Due to a dominating wealth effect, our model is able to generate qualitatively as well as quantitatively realistic aggregate fluctuations driven by news impulses to future consumption demand or government spending on goods and services. When the economy is subject to anticipated total factor productivity or investment-specific technology shocks, the relative strength of the intertemporal substitution effect needs to be enhanced for our model to exhibit positive macroeconomic co-movement and business cycle statistics that are consistent with the data.     

The spirit of capitalism and expectation-driven business cycles

While news shocks are believed to be instrumental in explaining business cycles, many existing models fail to predict a boom in consumption, investment, employment, output and asset prices in response to good news about future productivity. A model with the intrinsic desire for wealth is shown to generate the aforementioned responses. A news-driven boom is explained predominantly by an expansion of labor supply and is characterized by the falling real wage. The simulated model not only captures well conventional business cycle statistics, but also reproduces countercyclical real returns and hump-shaped responses of hours and output to an unexpected technology shock.     

Internal controls,risk management,and cash holdings

Exploiting a unique setting in China where internal controls are intended to manage risks, we investigate how internal controls shape the cash holding policies. Results show that firms with higher internal control quality (ICQ) are less likely to have abnormal cash holdings, either excess or deficit cash, and this effect is not driven by corporate governance quality. We also find that firms with higher ICQ are more likely to increase dividend payments and are less likely to increase M&A investments, especially when the firms have had a negative experience with prior M&A investments. Furthermore, our tests on the market valuation of cash holdings show that investors place a higher value on cash holdings of firms with higher ICQ. Collectively, our findings suggest that internal controls help companies shape reasonable cash policies that lead to value creation.     

Explaining long waves of capitalist development

Although basic innovations are bunched in a ‘countercyclical’ manner during the depressive phases of long waves, they do not themselves cause the transition to an expansionary boom phase. Explanation of the turning points must be sought elsewhere. Eong-term changes in the average rate of profit are the main cause of fluctuations in the system, but these are related to other fundamental features of the capitalist mode of production. Whereas the upper turning points from the boom to the depressive phase are determined largely by endogenous factors, especially the rise in the organic composition of capital (growth of capital intensity), this is not true of the lower turning points. Exogenous ‘system shocks’ of various kinds are needed to propel the system out of the depressive phase. This is the arena of acute social and political struggles, whose outcome is by no means mechanistically predetermined.     

Religion and venture investing: A cross-country analysis

Using a sample of 56 countries over the 2000–2016 period, we document lower levels of venture capital investments in more religious countries. These results are not specific to any primary religion. Furthermore, we show that the negative relation between religiosity and venture investing mainly stems from risk aversion inherent in religiosity. Our results are unlikely driven by economic clout, as we show more religious countries in fact have higher levels of domestic credit or nonfinancial investments, despite lower levels of venture investments. We also present several findings consistent with risk aversion. Venture investments in more religious countries are more likely to have successful exits and are less likely to be foreign or early-stage deals. Our results are robust to different measures of venture investments and religiosity, and to alternative specifications that account for endogeneity.     

中国实业部门金融化的异质性

本文基于实业和金融两类投资组合模型的构建,重点考察不同所有权性质和不同行业企业的金融化驱动机制是否具有异质性,并探究不同类别金融投资对应结果的差异性特征。实证结果与已有研究以及传统印象并不一致:我们发现,风险规避是中国非国有企业和制造业企业金融化的显著驱动因素,而国有企业和非制造业企业则不存在这一特征;同时,非制造业企业的金融投资主要由收益率差驱动,而在其他企业样本中均没有证据显示追逐利润是企业金融化的推动因素。不同企业样本的融资约束、杠杆率、成长性、流动性水平以及资产质量等因素对企业金融资产占比的影响也存在显著差异。进一步区分企业金融投资中货币和非货币类金融资产的不同特性并考虑企业的长期股权投资,结果表明货币类金融资产和非货币类金融资产的驱动机制存在明显差异:对于货币类金融资产投资,国有企业主要受资本逐利因素推动,其他企业则未体现这一特征;对于非货币类金融资产投资,非国有企业、制造业和非制造业企业均受到风险因素驱动,而国有企业则不受影响;将企业长期股权投资纳入金融资产后结果则未产生明显差异。     

Economic Policy and the Great Depression in a Small Open Economy

We use a standard New Keynesian model of a small open economy, extended to include a government sector, to investigate the Great Depression in Australia. A calibrated model with a fixed exchange rate regime, similar to the gold standard, does well in replicating the dynamics of output during the interwar period. We then ask to what extent shocks to the economy would have been moderated by adopting modern‐day policies. We find that if policymakers had adopted a flexible exchange rate with a Taylor rule policy that output fluctuations during the Great Depression would have been moderated by up to 25%. Changes in government fiscal policy would also have moderated output fluctuations, but by a slightly smaller amount. Overall, we find that improved policy could have reduced output fluctuations by almost 50%.     

Corporate governance and the sensitivity of investments to cash flows

We find very strong and consistent evidence that investments in Strong‐Governance firms (managers not entrenched) are strongly sensitive to availability of internal cash flows while such sensitivity is not different from zero for Weak‐Governance firms (entrenched management). We interpret this as evidence in support of Kaplan and Zingales' (1997) contention that sensitivity of investments to cash flows is not an adequate measure of financing constraints. More importantly, our findings are consistent with Kaplan and Zingales’ conjecture that the observed sensitivity of investments to cash flows in firms that do not face financing constraints may be driven by excessive risk aversion of managers.     

Monetary aggregates and the business cycle

A monetary aggregate consisting predominantly of zero-maturity deposits, called MZM, tends to systematically lead output in the US business cycle. Such fluctuations are observed both before and after the 1979 monetary policy change. Similar dynamics are obtained in a model with multi-stage production and purchase-size heterogeneity when agents optimally choose their mix of cash, checkable, and time deposits used in transactions. The causality in the model runs from real activity to money, rather than the other way around. Although the monetary base is endogenous, through a Taylor-type rule, the lead in MZM is primarily driven by deposit creation.     

Cyclicality of credit supply: Firm level evidence

We quantify fluctuations in bank-loan supply in the time-series by studying firms' substitution between loans and bonds using firm-level data. Any firm that raises new debt must have a positive demand for external funds. Conditional on the issuance of new debt, we interpret firms' switching from loans to bonds as a contraction in bank-credit supply. We find strong evidence of this substitution at times that are characterized by tight lending standards, depressed aggregate lending, poor bank performance, and tight monetary policy. We show that this substitution behavior has strong predictive power for bank borrowing and investments by small firms.     

Implied Lévy volatility

We study the cause of large fluctuations in prices on the London Stock Exchange. This is done at the microscopic level of individual events, where an event is the placement or cancellation of an order to buy or sell. We show that price fluctuations caused by individual market orders are essentially independent of the volume of orders. Instead, large price fluctuations are driven by liquidity fluctuations, variations in the market's ability to absorb new orders. Even for the most liquid stocks there can be substantial gaps in the order book, corresponding to a block of adjacent price levels containing no quotes. When such a gap exists next to the best price, a new order can remove the best quote, triggering a large midpoint price change. Thus, the distribution of large price changes merely reflects the distribution of gaps in the limit order book. This is a finite size effect, caused by the granularity of order flow: in a market where participants place many small orders uniformly across prices, such large price fluctuations would not happen. We show that this also explains price fluctuations on longer timescales. In addition, we present results suggesting that the risk profile varies from stock to stock, and is not universal: lightly traded stocks tend to have more extreme risks.     

Financial fragility in the Great Moderation

A nascent literature explores the measurement of financial fragility. This paper considers evidence for rising financial fragility during the 1984–2007 Great Moderation in the U.S. The literature suggests that macroeconomic stability combined with strong growth of credit to asset markets, in asset prices and in credit relative to output are all indicators of rising financial fragility. We show each of these trends in the Great Moderation. We derive the testable implication that in the Great Moderation credit growth is driven more by past credit growth and less by output growth (Allen and Gale, 2000), relative to pre-Great Moderation years. Results from a VAR model estimated on quarterly data for 1955–2007 are consistent with the hypothesis. This invites a reinterpretation of the Great Moderation. Our methodology may help understand when a credit boom turns into a credit bubble, and contributes to the development of methods of measuring financial fragility.     

Urban Vibrancy and Corporate Growth

We find that a firm's investment is highly sensitive to the investments of other firms headquartered nearby, even those in very different industries. A firm's investment also responds to fluctuations in the cash flows and stock prices (q) of local firms outside its sector. These patterns do not appear to reflect exogenous area shocks such as local shocks to labor or real estate values, but rather suggest that local agglomeration economies are important determinants of firm investment and growth.     

汇率与黄金价格的非对称传递效应——来自全球八大黄金产消地的经验证据

本文构建NARDL模型研究全球八大黄金产消地1990-2019年汇率波动与金价变动的联系.结果表明,长期看,主要黄金消费地印度、美国、土耳其金价对汇率下跌的正响应大于对汇率上升的负响应;主要黄金生产地澳大利亚金价对汇率波动的负向传递效应为正向传递的1.3倍;短期内,黄金供需弹性分化加剧主要产消地之间金价与汇率波动的异质...     

Optimal portfolio choice of gold assets in the differential market and differential game structures

Portfolio choices of gold-related assets for market investors and dealers may not only depend on price differences and the inflation rate, but may also react to the market participants’ strategic behavior and risk attitude. This study develops a two-agent stochastic differential game model to solve the portfolio choice problem of the asset allocations of gold spot, futures, and cash for market participators who are exposed to inflation risks. The equilibrium prices of spot and futures driven by the volatility rate and co-variances that reflect various risk sources are also determined. Specifically, regarding the choice of hedging tools, market participators may prefer gold spot to futures for the purpose of hedging inflation risk. By capturing the stylistic facts of differential market and multiple agent structures, the article can develop a more reasonable and practical model to usefully explain the gold portfolio choices and pricing in the gold markets.