Lerner symmetry and trilateral relations in international monetary economics

The classical Lerner symmetry theorem concerning the equivalence of import and export tariffs is extended to a monetary economy under flexible exchange rates. Under fixed exchange rates, this should be replaced by the trilateral-relation theorem. The Meade theorem is also extended.     

Minimum wage regulation and economic growth

This paper investigates the long-run growth implications of minimum wage regulation (MWR) enforced nationally using a familiar aggregate growth model. The paper shows that MWR, if it is effective, always lowers the rate of growth, and that the minimum wage floor, if it is sufficiently high, causes the economy to decay all the way toward the origin. The effects of a “wage-mark-up” policy, a variation of MWR, are also examined.     

Pricing average options under time-changed Lévy processes

This paper presents an approximate formula for pricing average options when the underlying asset price is driven by time-changed Lévy processes. Time-changed Lévy processes are attractive to use for a driving factor of underlying prices because the processes provide a flexible framework for generating jumps, capturing stochastic volatility as the random time change, and introducing the leverage effect. There have been very few studies dealing with pricing problems of exotic derivatives on time-changed Lévy processes in contrast to standard European derivatives. Our pricing formula is based on the Gram–Charlier expansion and the key of the formula is to find analytic treatments for computing the moments of the normalized average asset price. In numerical examples, we demonstrate that our formula give accurate values of average call options when adopting Heston’s stochastic volatility model, VG-CIR, and NIG-CIR models.     

Inflation or monetary overhang?: Planners' preferences in china

Two models, based on utility maximization of economic planners, are developed to explain the stock of households' money holdings and rate of open inflation in China for the period 1954–85. Planners' preferences are found to be biased in favour of monetary overhang. This bias was reinforced when the bargaining strength of planners vis-a-vis households was weakened and during the post-Mao reform period. This could help to explain the increase in the value of rents and level of corruption during the reform period.