Bailouts, Endogenous Financial Regimes, and Market Sentiments

The authors examine the role of strategic interactions among a small number of financial intermediaries who know that the current financial regime is subject to change. The current financial regime offers protection to the intermediaries against bad outcomes. Each financial intermediary's investment strategy is shown to depend on its rivals' strategies. It is shown that a small shock that causes an initially small deviation from an intermediary's equilibrium strategy can lead to a series of larger deviations by its rivals, thereby precipitating a change of financial regime.     

What do Thirteen Million Price Records have to Say about Consumer Price Rigidity?*

Based on the analysis of 13 million price records underlying the computation of the French consumer price index, we provide a detailed assessment of consumer price rigidity. Our main results are as follows. The average duration of prices is around 8 months. Price durations and the patterns of price‐setting strongly differ across sectors. Price cuts are almost as frequent as increases, suggesting no specific downward nominal rigidity. Price changes typically have large absolute sizes. Time variation in the frequency of price changes and in their size both contribute to inflation fluctuations. Overall there is evidence of both time‐ and state‐dependent price‐setting.     

Opportunistic monetary policy: An alternative rationalization

This paper offers an alternative rationalization for opportunistic behaviour, i.e., a gradual disinflation strategy where policymakers react asymmetrically to supply shocks, opting to disinflate only in recessionary period. Specifically, we show that adaptive expectations combined with asymmetry in the Phillips curve of a specific sort together provide an optimizing justification for opportunism. However, the empirical basis for these conditions to be satisfied in the current low-inflation context of most OECD countries remains however to be established.     

台湾居民消费变动的思考

三十多年台湾居民消费变动资料显示，随着经济发展，居民消费变动呈先下降后上升的“U”形变动。本文研究认为，经济发展初期居民收入水平低下，仅能维持基本生活需求，消费倾向相对偏高，随着经济发展，居民收入增加，消费倾向随之下降，之后又由于住宅饱和度上升，经济波动所产生的财富效应，人口结构变动。社会保障制度完善以及流动性约束减弱等因素综合作用，成为台湾居民消费倾向上升的原因，本文同时讨论了台湾居民消费变动对大陆居民消费－储蓄研究的启示。     

Gains to Mutual Fund Sponsors Offering Multiple Share Class Funds

Although the number of mutual funds grew during the 1990s, much of the growth is attributable to the introduction of multiple share class (MS) funds. Proponents argue that the MS structure leads to cost savings, which can be passed onto investors as lower expenses. However, if the structure lowers costs, sponsors are likely to profit from it. Though investors are concerned about the base expense ratio, the sum of administrative and management fees, fund sponsors generate profits from the management fees. As such, they would prefer to increase the management fee if they can simultaneously lower administrative fees. Our results indicate that MS fund investors pay lower administrative fees, but management fees are approximately 7 basis points higher than single-class funds. Overall, base expense ratios are higher than for single-class funds, suggesting fund sponsors capture the cost benefits the MS structure provides. Our results are robust to different model specifications and different estimation techniques.