The Reaction of Coffee Futures Price Volatility to Crop Reports

Analysis of prices and volatility plays an important role in coffee market, especially for developing countries, whose small producers and economies rely heavily on income generated by coffee trade. This study explores the impact of coffee crop reports on price volatility for coffee futures contracts during 2004–2014. Overall, results indicate that crop reports generally affect price volatility. The impact is particularly stronger when they provide information following the flowering periods in Colombia, Brazil, and Vietnam, world’s major producers.     

Evaluación de la conversión a café orgánico usando la metodología de opciones reales

Since the deregulation of the coffee market in 1989, price crises are proof of the uncertainty and risk around coffee growers’ income, particularly for small producers who, in the case of Mexico, have taken action such as the conversion of their traditional crops into the organic production system which, besides the ecological priority, allows them to get a higher income than from conventional coffee. In this document we model as real investment options (RIO) the possibility of conversion from one system into the other one also including the feasibility of abandoning this strategic decision.     

Efficient Tax Competition with Factor Mobility and Trade: A Note

This note shows that residence- and source-based taxes on capital income are not sufficient to sustain an efficient Nash equilibrium when several goods are internationally traded, apart from two special cases. With several traded commodities, domestic fiscal policies affect foreign welfare not only through changes in the world interest rate but also through changes in the equilibrium relative prices of traded commodities. In order to guarantee the existence of an efficient Nash equilibrium in the general case, additional tax instruments are required. In particular, destination-based taxes on traded commodities are needed to enable the government to control the relative commodity prices faced by domestic consumers. In addition, in order to shield domestic producers from changes in world prices, the government must levy either origin-based commodity taxes or taxes on the immobile factors.     

论对低保户进行分类管理的必要性与可行性

由于缺乏一套有效的收入监测机制,低保户隐性收入很难核实,导致低保户是＂只进不退＂,随之而来的是通过骗取低保户资格以享受低保金待遇的骗保行为日趋严重。本文建议借鉴中国银监会主席刘明康＂不看报表看三表＂的思路,通过水、电、气消耗多少来间接核查低保户的准确收入,以便使己不符合低保资格的低保户退保。同时建议根据低保户的收入状况,把低保户分为A、B、C三类来管理,低保金及优惠救助政策也分成三档,这样就可以参照当地低保待遇标准,实行低保金差（缺）额发放,差（缺）多少就发多少,这不仅可节省低保金,有助控制和减少骗保行为,还可使低保户成为节能减排的＂急先锋＂和＂排头兵＂。     

共同富裕、贸易开放与中国的代际收入流动性

本文利用2002-2018年期间的中国家庭收入调查数据,系统考察了贸易开放对中国代际收入流动性的影响及其作用机制。研究结果表明:(1)从整体上来看,贸易开放显著促进了中国的代际收入流动性,经内生性处理和稳健性检验,这一结论是成立的。(2)贸易开放主要通过促进子代教育、职业向上流动显著提高代际收入流动,但通过激励企业创新、提高子代个人努力程度的两个机制作用不显著。(3)贸易开放显著提高了男性子代的代际收入流动性,对女性子代的影响不显著,与此同时,还具有明显的“弱势群体”特点,显著提高了受教育水平较低子代、低收入家庭子代的代际收入流动性,有助于这类子代跳出“代际低收入传承陷阱”。本文研究提示贸易开放提高了中国的代际收入流动性,有利于促进共同富裕。在继续提高贸易开放水平的同时,应进一步重视提高低收入家庭子代的受教育水平,关注女性子代的收入问题。     

The Impact of the International Coffee Agreement on Producing Countries

Simulations of a global coffee model incorporating a vintagecapital approach to production are run. Over the recent periodof operation of the International Coffee Agreement's exportquota system, the authors find that the quota system had a stabilizingeffect on world coffee prices. The quotas reduced real exportrevenues for most small exporting countries, but large producersgained. Most small countries gained, however, in terms of riskreduction. If a brief suspension of the quota occurs from timeto time, caused, for example, by adverse weather which resultsin a shortfall in world supply, the quota system works likea buffer stock scheme; on average, producing countries as awhole lose transfer benefits but gain risk benefits.     

收入差距、信贷约束与房价变动

本文通过构建一个异质性代理人模型,刻画了收入差距通过信贷渠道影响房价的作用机制。研究表明,收入差距的缩小提升了低收入者的收入占比,使该类人群获得了更多的外部融资进行购房,由此产生了两方面效应:(1)信贷约束放松降低了住房流动性溢价,从而对房价产生负向影响;(2)收入上涨增加了住房边际效用较高的低收入者对房价正向影响的权重,从而使住房需求上升的效应抵消了此前的负向影响,最终促进房价上涨。通过对1970-2017年44个国家的进一步分析发现,相比于高收入者收入的下降,低收入者收入占比的上升在放松信贷约束和提升房价方面具有更显著的作用。据此本文认为:一方面要通过增加住房供给来化解城市化率提升与高房价之间的内在矛盾;另一方面,在经济增速放缓的时期,缩小收入差距,推动以“人”为核心的高质量城市化,并引导信贷资源向低收入群体倾斜是当前促进国内大循环、稳定社会融资规模和房地产市场的重要手段。     

吉林市中低收入群体医疗服务需求的调查分析

对吉林省吉林市315户中低收入家庭进行问卷调查的结果表明：部分中低收入群体的医疗费用负担沉重;城镇居民基本医疗保险的实效性较差;居民对医保政策缺乏了解;社区卫生服务机构没有充分发挥作用。强化政府责任,加大宣传力度,加强社区基础医疗卫生服务机构建设,提高居民医疗保障待遇,是完善我国中低收入群体医疗需求的有效途径。     

Portfolio Choice and Asset Prices: The Importance of Entrepreneurial Risk

Using cross-sectional data from the SCF and Tax Model, we show that entrepreneurial income risk has a significant influence on portfolio choice and asset prices. We find that households with high and variable business income hold less wealth in stocks than other similarly wealthy households, although they constitute a significant fraction of the stockholding population. Similarly for nonentrepreneurs, holding stock in the firm where one works reduces the portfolio share of other common stocks. Finally, we show that adding proprietary income to a linear asset pricing model improves its performance over a similar model that includes only wage income.     

信贷增长如何影响中国的收入和财富不平等

本文基于中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)数据考察了信贷增长对中国家庭收入和财富不平等的影响。整体而言，信贷增长可以缩小家庭收入不平等，主要作用机制是信贷增长通过提高中低收入群体的劳动收入和单位时薪以缩小劳动收入不平等。同时，文献中所发现的信贷增长可能恶化收入不平等的机制——扩大家庭间非货币金融资产差距，在我国表现并不明显，原因在于中国家庭的非货币金融资产比例较低，这一点对于高收入家庭也不例外，且大部分家庭难以从金融资产交易中获利。信贷增长带来了各个收入组的房屋价值上涨，但高收入家庭房产价值上涨的幅度高于中低收入家庭，因此房价上涨扩大了不同收入家庭所持有的房产价值差异。考虑到家庭调查数据往往对高收入家庭的收入和财产覆盖不完整，上述结论可能低估了信贷增长对极少数高收入家庭收入和资产的影响。本文有助于更好地理解我国信贷增长对收入分配问题的影响，为相关政策制定提供了一定启示。     

Endogenous Fertility and the Design of Family Taxation

The paper innovates on the existing optimal taxation literature by taking fertility as endogenous, and allowing for households to be differentiated by their ability to raise children, as well as by their ability to raise income. In a context where the government cannot observe personal abilities, fertility behaviour conveys a great deal of information about those characteristics, which helps to relax the self-selection constraints on re-distribution. Bi-dimentional household differentiation introduces the possibility that re-distribution will be from households with low utility to households with high utility, and that it may be optimal to accentuate or reverse the sign of laissez-faire utility inequality. Contrary to popular belief, we find that it is not necessarily optimal for the tax system to be so designed that an additional child would lighten the tax burden on his or her parents. If it is, the optimal policy may include an unusual mix of taxes on number of children, subsidies on child-specific commodities, income support for low-wage households, and positive marginal income tax rates for all.     

Crowding out in Ricardian economies

The crowding-out coefficient is the ratio of the reduction in privately-issued bonds to the increase in government bonds that are issued to finance a tax cut. If (1) Ricardian Equivalence holds, and (2) households do not borrow risklessly while holding positive gross positions in other riskless assets, the crowding-out coefficient equals the fraction of the aggregate tax cut that accrues to households that borrow. In the conventional case in which all households receive equal tax cuts, the crowding-out coefficient equals the fraction of households that borrow; in the United States, about 75% of households borrow, so the crowding-out coefficient is predicted to be 0.75. Allowing for cross-sectional variation in tax changes increases the crowding-out coefficient to about 0.85.     

Inflation and inequality

Cross-country evidence on inflation and income inequality suggests that they are positively related. This article explores the hypothesis that this correlation is the outcome of a distributional conflict underlying the determination of government policies. A political economy model is presented in which equilibrium inflation is positively related to the degree of inequality in income due to the relative vulnerability to inflation of low income households.     

The Debt‐Payment‐to‐Income Ratio as an Indicator of Borrowing Constraints: Evidence from Two Household Surveys

Liquidity constraints have been proposed as an important explanation for deviations from the rational expectations/permanent income hypothesis. This paper introduces to the liquidity constraint literature the ratio of a household's debt payments to its disposable personal income, the debt service ratio (DSR). We find that a household with a high DSR is significantly more likely to be turned down for credit than other households. Also, the consumption growth of likely constrained households, identified using the DSR along with the liquid‐asset‐to‐income ratio, is significantly more sensitive to past income than that of other households, confirming the DSR's value in identifying constrained households.     

地方政府举债影响工业经济增长的空间效应研究

通过构建了地方政府举债影响工业经济增长的理论模型,并分析两者呈正向相关的作用机制;基于空间关联模型,采用2010-2015年全国30个省份地方政府债务的面板数据,对地方政府举债的工业经济增长效应进行实证研究.结果表明:(1)地方政府举债对工业经济增长具有显著的促进作用.地方政府通过对国有土地的绝对垄断来经营城市,利用土地抵押融资来大规模举债,并改善城市基础设施吸引投资,促进工业经济增长;(2)地方政府举债对地区工业经济增长的溢出效应不明显.地方政府债务主要投向了市政建设、交通运输等基础设施建设领域,对邻近地区的工业经济发展很难起到推动作用.     

转型期中国土地出让收入和价格的演变规律——基于财政分权与经济目标的视角

针对当前突出的“土地财政”问题,利用1998~2012年省际面板数据,构建面板数据模型,实证分析转型期我国土地出让收入和价格是否由财政分权和经济目标考核的共同影响。结果表明,在财政分权下,地方政府通过出让更多的土地来获得收支平衡,导致出让收入增加和价格快速上涨;在经济目标考核下,地方政府会采取工业和商业混合发展模式,工业上采取协议方式低价出让土地与商业上采取“招拍挂”方式高价出让土地,两者之间差距逐渐扩大;房价和地区市场开放度也影响土地出让收入。     

On the Transmission of World Agricultural Prices

Two questions are asked about the relationship between domesticprices and world prices of agricultural commodities: are variationsin world prices transmitted to domestic prices, and do thesevariations in world prices constitute an important componentof variations in domestic prices? Domestic prices are regressedon world prices in various forms, taking into account the possibleeffects of exchange rates and inflation. The empirical analysisis based on data from the Food and Agriculture Organizationof the United Nations for 58 countries for 1968–78 andfor the countries of the European Community for 1961–85.The results show that most of the variations in world pricesare transmitted and that they constitute the dominant componentin the variations of domestic prices.     

土地价格、土地财政与宏观经济波动

本文在一个包含金融加速器的新凯恩斯动态一般均衡模型中引入土地财政和政府隐性担保融资机制,借此考察在土地财政体制下土地价格的波动特征、驱动因素和对宏观经济的影响机制,同时使用2004Q1到2016Q1的中国宏观经济数据对模型进行贝叶斯估计。方差分解的结果表明,在样本期间,土地需求冲击、土地供给冲击和货币政策冲击是驱动中国土地价格变动的主要因素,货币政策冲击和土地供给冲击是引起短期土地价格波动的主要因素,土地需求冲击在长期中驱动了土地价格波动。数值模拟结果发现,土地财政对宏观经济波动具有放大效应,正向的土地需求冲击将推高土地价格,并通过抵押约束机制引起宏观经济波动,地方政府对土地财政的依赖将放大该效应,并进一步对土地价格形成正向反馈,从而引起宏观经济更大的波动;在土地财政体制下,正向的土地供给冲击有助于抑制土地价格上涨,并减少宏观经济波动。     

房价对城镇居民收入差距的影响研究

依据我国33个大中城市2000—2017年的面板数据构建动态面板模型,考量房价对城镇居民收入差距的影响及区域性差异。结果表明：房价上涨对于城镇居民收入差距扩大具有显著正向影响,且对东部城市的影响显著高于非东部城市,人均GDP、政府教育投入、城镇人口比重和第三产业比重也对城镇居民收入差距具有一定影响。鉴此,宜从税收政策、产业结构、政府教育投入及居住成本等方面合理控制城镇居民收入差距。