Savings and early economic growth in the United States and Japan

The period of early economic growth in both the United States (the antebellum period) and Japan (the Meiji period) was marked by a pronounced rise in the rates of domestic saving and investment. This paper decomposes the observed changes in saving/investment rates and shows that substantial components – about two-thirds in US and more than one-third in Japan – were due to unexplained shifts in the saving function. In turn we argue that an important factor behind the exogenous shift in savings and hence behind the rise in the net investment rate was the increased degree of financial intermediation in each country.     

Exchange Rate Behavior of Canada,Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States

We revisit a significant research topic on exchange rate behavior by restating the test procedures with an appropriate econometric methodology to re-examine three aspects. (i) Does the inflation (price) factor affect nominal exchange rate? (ii) Do relative interest rates affect a country’s exchange rate? (iii) Do the price and interest rate effects hold if controls for non-parity factors are embedded in tests? The quarterly data series for this study are taken over 55 years. The traditional parity condition model with price and interest rate as criterion variables is extended to take into account recently-verified non-parity factors, namely trade, productivity and foreign reserves. The results affirm that both parity factors and also the non-parity factors significantly affect the exchange rates of Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In our view, these findings relating to four free-floating currencies help extend our knowledge on how currency behavior is consistent with parity and non-parity theorems using a relevant methodological approach in this study.     

Urban Development in the United States, 1690-1990

The United States transformed itself from a rural to an urban society over the last three centuries. After a century of unremarkable growth, the pace of urbanization was historically unprecedented between the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In the twentieth century, the urban population continued to increase but in a much more dispersed manner as the suburban population increased. Throughout these developments, cities also exhibited considerable variation in their population sizes. This paper finds that the pace and pattern of U.S. urban development are explained by changes in regional comparative advantage and in economies in transportation and local public goods, which in turn were determined by the changes in the economic structures of cities. This paper also finds that cities varied considerably in size because the larger cities reduced market transaction costs associated with coordinating greater geographic division of labor.     

Demographic change and income inequality in the United States, 1976-1989

"The U.S. economy experienced significant increases in the degree of income inequality over the past two decades.... In this paper we consider the effects of race, age, female headship, and college education on the distribution of family income by developing a multivariate methodology that allows us to gauge the influence of one factor while holding other determinants of family incomes constant. Over the period studied we find that race had only a minor effect on the overall size distribution of income. Age had a somewhat greater effect than race. In contrast, the impact of female heads and college education were quite substantial. The multivariate estimates reveal that the effects of female heads and college education both increase the Gini to a much greater extent than the progressivity of federal income taxes decreases it. The effects of college education and female headed families on inequality have grown larger across time, while the influence of age has declined. We find that the effects of race on inequality have changed little over the 1976 to 1989 period."     

Mandatory Pensions and Personal Savings in The Netherlands*

The Netherlands has a relatively generous social security system and a wide coverage of individuals by private (occupational) pension schemes. Total household savings are rather high and fairly stable, although the amount of contractual savings apears to be going up at the expense of non-contractual (free) savings. Using an approach originally pioneered by Feldstein (1974) we employ microdata to investigate the displacement effect of security and pension wealth on free household savings. It turns out that the data available are too noisy to make precise statements about the displacement effects. Our results do suggest, however, that a one-for-one displacement of free savings by social security is consistent with the data. For pensions such a complete offset is less likely. This suggests that increase of coverage by private pensions is an effective way of raising savings.     

Mechanical refrigeration, seasonality, and the hog-corn cycle in the United States: 1870-1940

This paper examines the role of mechanical refrigeration in seasonality and structural change in the U.S. hog-corn cycle, 1870-1940. This period covers an era in which the widespread adoption of mechanical refrigeration greatly affected the ability to store and transport perishable commodities. These developments in turn altered the seasonal production and price structure for many commodities, including pork. We use a new class of time series models, time-varying smooth transition autoregressions (TV-STARs), to document both the structural change and the nonlinear features observed in seasonal patterns for the U.S. hog-corn price relationship during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

Exchange Rate or Wage Changes in International Adjustment？ Japan and China versus the United States

I. IntroductionSeldom have the pages of the financial press in Europe and America been so full of graveeditorializing on the need for a major depreciation of the dollar to correct the “unsustainable”current account and trade deficits of the United States. Much of this international moralizingdirects the high-growth East Asian countries to stop pegging their currencies to the dollar– or, in China’s case, to allow a large appreciation of the renminbi before moving to unrestrictedfloating.…     

上海市储蓄结构及变动情况调查

最近中国人民银行上海分行同工商银行、农业银行、中国银行、中国建设银行、交通银行、上海银行、浦东发展银行、招商银行等上海分行及农村信用合作社联社进行了联合调查。这次调查取得有效样本115个,其中城     

汇率波动与居民消费:基于中国、美国、日本数据的检验

理论研究表明,国家之间资本和产品流动的渠道越通畅、风险共享程度越高,国内消费增长状况与货币币值波动状况的联系就越紧密。本文利用2001年第1季度至2010年第4季度中国、美国、日本的数据对此命题进行验证,研究结果表明:在2005年7月人民币汇率形成机制改革前后,中美、中日消费支出增长率之差与汇率变化率的关系发生了显著的转变,汇改前表现为不相关甚至负相关,汇改后表现为正相关;而美日情形则有所不同,消费支出增长率与汇率变化率关系一直表现为正相关。这为中国扩大居民消费需求提供了新的解决思路。     

The origin and diffusion of shocks to regional interest rates in the United States, 1880-2002

This paper is about the behavior of regional interest rates in the United States from 1880 to 2002. The main concern is with the shocks to regional rates. Where did they originate? How did they diffuse? How did the pattern change over time? We show that in the late nineteenth century the main source of shocks to rates on the periphery were shocks originating on the periphery itself. This pattern continued through World War I and the Great Depression. After World War II, however, the importance of disturbances on the periphery diminished and shocks to rates in the Eastern financial centers became the main source of fluctuations in all regions.     

Enforcement,Socioeconomic Diversity,and Tax Filing Compliance in the United States

In this article, we examine the determinants of tax filing compliance in the United States. We use county‐level data on non‐filing rates for the tax year 2000, obtained directly from the Internal Revenue Service. We include explanatory variables identified in the “rational compliance” framework, including an enforcement index against identified non‐filers, the audit rate of filers, and the average penalty rate for both filers and non‐filers. We also examine the role of socioeconomic diversity on tax compliance, testing whether within‐county heterogeneity in household income, language, race, and religion can help explain variation in non‐filing rates. We find that non‐filing is increasing with heterogeneity by race, although not by income or language, and that non‐filing is decreasing with heterogeneity by religious membership. As for enforcement variables, we find that non‐filing rates tend to fall with the enforcement index. Other variables have somewhat mixed results.     

环境核算在美国

20世纪60年代末70年代初,环境核算作为社会核算的一部分被提了出来。美国在环境核算方面是一个积极的先行者和参与者,经济分析局1992年开始着手建立“经济环境一体化卫星账户”。本文对美国的环境核算进行综述。     

From home to hospital: The evolution of childbirth in the United States, 1928-1940

This paper examines the shift in childbirth from home to hospital that occurred in the United States in the early 20th century. Using a panel of city-level data over the period 1928-1940, we examine the impact on maternal mortality resulting from the shift of childbirth from home to hospital. Results suggest that until the late 1930s when sulfa drugs were developed, medical intervention had a limited impact on maternal mortality. Post-sulfa, the medicalization of childbirth reduced maternal mortality. Regressions estimated separately by race provide mixed evidence as to whether blacks and whites benefited differentially from medical intervention.     

Agricultural policy,migration, and malaria in the United States in the 1930s

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was associated with a population shift in the United States in the 1930s. Evaluating the relationship between the AAA and the incidence of malaria can therefore offer important lessons regarding the broader consequences of demographic changes. Using a quasi-first difference model and a robust set of controls, we find a negative association between AAA expenditures and malaria death rates at the county level. Further, we find that the AAA was associated with increased out-migration of low-income groups from counties with high-risk malaria ecologies. These results suggest that the AAA-induced migration played an important role in the reduction of malaria.     

Arrival Cohort, Assimilation, and the Earnings of Caribbean Women in the United States

Utilizing data on U.S.-born and Caribbean-born black women from the 1980–2000 U.S. Censuses and the 2000–2007 waves of the American Community Survey, I document the impact of cohort of arrival, tenure of U.S. residence, and country/region of birth on the earnings and earnings assimilation of black women born in the English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. I also test whether selective migration accounts for earnings differences between U.S.-born and Caribbean-born black women in the United States. I show that almost all arrival cohorts of Caribbean women earn less than U.S.-born black women when they first arrive in the United States. However, over time the earnings of early arrival cohorts from the English- and French-speaking Caribbean are projected to surpass the earnings of U.S.-born black women. Indeed, this crossover is most pronounced for women from the English-speaking Caribbean. In models that account for selective migration by comparing the earnings of Caribbean women to U.S.-born black women who have moved across states since birth, I show that more time is required for early arrival cohorts from the English- and French-speaking Caribbean to surpass the earnings of U.S.-born black internal migrants. Women from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean do not seem to experience earnings growth as their tenure of U.S. residence increases. In summary, the findings suggest that selective migration is an important determinant of earnings differences between U.S.-born black women and black women from the Caribbean.     

财政、货币和汇率政策对经常账户的影响——以中美两国为例

本文从理论和实证的角度论证了财政、货币和汇率政策对中美两国经常账户的影响。理论模型推导出汇率和货币政策相较于财政政策对经常账户的影响更大,而实证分析得出汇率政策相较于其他政策对我国经常账户的影响更大,货币政策相较于其他政策对美国经常账户的影响更大,财政政策相较于汇率政策的影响力较大。所以,不能简单地套用传统的内外均衡调节方法,而应该根据各国的具体国情来灵活选择不同的调节政策。