DISTRIBUTIVE CONFLICT AND MONETARY POLICY

This paper develops a public choice theory of monetary policy and compares it with political-macroeconomic outcomes theory. The paper develops support for the public choice theory from recent historical evidence. It then employs this theory to explain the difficulty of effecting monetary reform and, in the absence of reform, the difficulty of implementing sustained periods of monetary restraint.     

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL METHOD PATENTS, INNOVATION, AND POLICY

Court decisions in the 1990s are widely viewed as having opened the door to a flood of business method and financial patents at the US Patent and Trademark Office, and to have also impacted other patent offices around the world. A number of scholars, both legal and economic, have critiqued both the quality of these patents and the decisions themselves. This paper reviews the history of business method and financial patents briefly and then explores what economists know about the relationship between the patent system and innovation, in order to draw some tentative conclusions about their likely impact. It concludes by finding some consensus in the literature about the problems associated with this particular expansion of patentable subject matter, highlighting the remaining areas of disagreement, and reviewing the various policy recommendations.     

CAPITAL CONTROLS AND CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

This paper is a normative analysis of the legal restrictions on international financial movements based on a formal model which analyzes the empirical observation that the degree of financial protectionism is associated with changes in the distribution of welfare among agents. The strategic interactions among four types of agents (a trade union, a firm manager, a financial investor and a government) are analyzed, and the optimal amount of capital control is derived as a Nash perfect equilibrium of a non-cooperative game with imperfect information. I conclude that a financial liberalization proposal can be supported by different coalitions of agents, according to the covariance of domestic and foreign returns and the degree of profitability of domestic industrial projects.     

FINANCIAL INTERMEDIATION AND FINANCIAL INNOVATION IN A CHARACTERISTICS FRAMEWORK

This paper shows that the characteristics model provides a unifying framework for analysing both financial intermediation and the process of financial innovation. The role of the financial intermediary is to buy-in the primary liabilities of the firm, unbundle and repackage the characteristics contained in them and issue a set of ultimate assets to households. Assets exist because the balance between the supply of and demand for asset characteristics indicates an interior equilibrium. Financial innovations arise whenever changes in supply and demand induce movements from a corner solution to the interior. A number of existing explanations of financial innovation can be expressed using this framework.     

金融发展、财政分权与地区经济差异

通过对我国28个省份1990-2004年的数据进行面板分析,考察金融发展对地区经济差异的影响,以及与金融联系紧密的财政分权对于这种影响的作用.结果表明:在东部和西部地区,金融发展对经济增长产生了显著的促进作用,而在中部和东北地区,金融发展却没有形成推动经济增长的良性机制.而财政分权对金融发挥促进经济增长作用的影响在不同区域也各不相同,其中仅在东北地区和西部有利于金融发挥促进经济增长的作用,其他地区则产生了不利影响.同时,还考虑了金融政策因素,以及经济的非国有化等反映市场经济制度的变量对金融与地区经济增长之间关系的影响.最后,在实证分析的基础上提出了从区域金融的角度协调我国区域经济发展的政策建议.     

INCOMPLETE FINANCIAL MARKETS,IRREVERSIBILITY OF INVESTMENTS AND FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY INSTRUMENTS*

In this paper, we analyse the use of fiscal and monetary instruments to improve long‐run welfare when productive investment is irreversible and uncollateralizable and there is no insurance. Only fiat money or government issued bonds provide self‐insurance. We demonstrate that an increase in precautionary savings reduces irreversible productive investment. Hence, subsidies to promote productive but irreversible investment should be financed in such a way that they do not reduce insurance capability. When lump‐sum subsidies are high, a consumption tax is likely to be more redistributive and thus more consumption smoothing than are the other sets of instruments analysed in our model.     

金融地理学理论视角及中国金融地理研究

基于对国际文献和中国实际的了解和思考,从金融机构的空间结构、空间发展过程以及金融机构与环境的关系等方面分析了金融地理学的主要研究内容。主要理论问题包括地理存在论、金融变化的区域经济影响观点、区域金融系统演化模式、金融地理的路径依赖、金融全球化与地方关系等;在此基础上,从环境对金融地理影响、全球化与区域金融系统、行政格局与金融体系、金融系统与区域发展、金融企业地理5方面提出中国金融地理研究的切入点。     

FINANCIAL LIBERALISATION, CONSUMPTION AND WEALTH EFFECTS IN SEVEN OECD COUNTRIES

We estimate the impact of financial liberalisation on consumption in seven major industrial countries, and find a marked shift in behaviour, notably a decline in short‐run income elasticities and a rise in short‐run wealth and interest rate elasticities. A corollary is that consumption equations estimated over both pre‐ and post‐liberalisation regimes may be misleading, and either a form of testing as presented here or a shortening of the sample period may be appropriate for accurate forecasting and simulation.     

ADAPTATION OF DETAILED INPUT-OUTPUT INFORMATION: RESTRUCTURING AND AGGREGATION

This article deals with problems of construction of "square" input-output tables from detailed commodity and industry data and operationalization of the tables for use in econometric modeling. The adaptation procedure suggested is quite new and involves perfect and imperfect aggregation, and suppression of insignificant cells of the tables.
Using slight modifications of well-known input-output methods (to make definitions conform to general concepts of network flow theory) it is shown that the construction and aggregation of tables, as well as the suppression of minor cells, can be viewed as still higher levels of the very same process: the search for a manageable model with roughly the same abstract properties as the original detailed, but overwhelmingly large, model.
Simultaneously a consistent input-output terminology is suggested with fewer symbols and more rules than usual.
The adaptation procedure has been applied successfully to the 1982 version of ADAM, the macroeconometric model operated by Danmarks Statistik (the Danish Central Bureau of Statistics).     

FINANCIAL MARKET IMPERFECTIONS AND IRREGULAR GROWTH CYCLES

In this paper we analyze the generation of endogenous growth and irregular fluctuations in a simple New Keynesian model whose background assumptions are borrowed from a class of asymmetric information models popularized by Greenwald and Stiglitz. We extend the framework put forward by Greenwald and stiglitz taking explicitly into account technological progress as the engine of growth. We show how irregular endogenous fluctuations can arise around an endogenous trend: the traditional view of fluctuations as 'short run' phenomena must be abandoned in favour of models of fluctuating growth.     

中国社会科学院金融法律与金融监管研究基地

中国社会科学院金融法律与金融监管研究基地是由中国社会科学院批准设立的院级非实体性研究单位。专门从事金融法律、金融监管及金融政策等领域的重要理论和实务问题研究。     

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE OPENNESS

This paper empirically investigates the interaction between financial development and trade openness through simultaneous‐equation systems. The identification and estimation of the systems rely on the methodology of identification through heteroskedasticity proposed by Rigobon (2003). Using a panel consisting of 70 countries over the period 1960–2007, we find a two‐way causal relationship between financial development and trade openness. A better‐developed financial sector induces higher openness to trade, while higher openness in goods market stymies financial development. And such findings hold well for low‐income, high‐inflation, or low‐governance countries.     

建立和完善我国生态环境补偿财政机制研究

财政支持生态环境建设和保护是我国公共财政支出改革的重要内容,健全的环境财政机制是建立和完善我国生态补偿机制不可或缺的组成部分。分析公共财政改革条件下建立和完善生态补偿机制的政策环境,阐述我国环境财政支出和管理主要内容及其实施进展,研究我国财政转移支付支持生态环境建设和保护过程中存在的主要问题和原因。在此基础上,重点从生态财政的政府间责任、资金来源、资金整合、支出方向、重点领域以管理模式等方面提出完善我国生态补偿财政机制的总体思路和政策建议。     

CONSUMPTION (IN)EFFICIENCY AND FINANCIAL ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

Consumption may be inefficient when a household cannot choose the optimal bundle of goods at a minimum cost. After discussing alternative approaches, this paper proposes the use of money metric indirect utility function motivated by Feenstra and Varian in measuring consumption inefficiency. Then, Bamoul–Tobin transactions demand for money model is extended to show how household ability to manage its income, expenditure and financial accounts may affect consumption inefficiency. Results of the stochastic cost frontier approach, which is employed in estimation and the prediction of the European Union household consumption inefficiency, suggest that household expenditure performance is partly explained by the changes in the consumption efficiency and the efficiency is not independent of financial account management.