Asymmetric persistence in GDP? A deeper look at depth

If an economic time series behaves asymmetrically, then an interpretation of economic fluctuations based on linear time-series models could be misleading. Beaudry and Koop (1993) recently argued that for post-war US GDP data there exists a statistically significant difference in persistence between negative and positive shocks. We demonstrate that their test has two pitfalls: First, the t-statistic for testing asymmetry in persistence does not have a conventional interpretation. Second, a highly significant t-value may come from sources different from asymmetry. Using international data, we investigate for the presence of asymmetric persistence across the G-7 countries.     

Consumer valuation of energy-saving features of residential air conditioners with hedonic and choice models

The promotion of energy-efficient appliances is necessary to reduce the energetic and environmental burden of the household sector. However, many studies have reported that a typical consumer underestimates the benefits of energy-saving investment on the purchase of household electric appliances. To analyze this energy-efficiency-gap problem, many scholars have estimated implicit discount rates that consumers use for energy-consuming durables. Although both hedonic and choice models have been used in previous studies, a comparison between the two models has not yet been made. This study uses point-of-sale data about Japanese residential air conditioners and estimates implicit discount rates with both hedonic and choice models. Both models demonstrate that a typical consumer underinvests in energy efficiency. Although choice models generally estimate a lower implicit discount rate than hedonic models, the latter models estimate the values of other product characteristics more consistently than choice models.     

China's economic system reform: Underlying factors and prospects

Three important determinants of economic growth in the Chinese context are: the motivation of economic units, the absorption of foreign technology and its diffusion and agricultural productivity. The Stalin model of the 1950s served China well, especially when sustained by ‘Chinese sub-models’ such as ties of trust with rural brigades, workers' innovation etc. After that investment effectiveness declined, and today the structural changes necessary point to the need to alter existing institutions which have become obsolete. In agriculture, the use of cash inputs is more common now and a sense of economic efficiency is increasingly required. Care should be taken in comparing China with East European countries given that China's per capita gross domestic product is much lower as is the percentage of agricultural output reaching the market. The comprehensiveness of the economic reform likely in China means that it will only be possible to judge it over a time horizon longer than five years. For such economic reforms to be wholly successful, they need to continue to incorporate Chinese ‘sub-models’ mentioned in the paper and must develop a network of supplying industries and inter-dependent factories.     

China's Emergence: Prospects,Opportunities and Challenges

Barring major disruptions, China will become the world's most dynamic growth pole, and could become one of the world's largest economies, if not the largest, by the year 2020. Industrial countries, especially Japan and the United States, are expected to benefit, while many developing countries may be put under competitive pressure. A simulation analysis shows that in the long run China will be resilient to adverse external developments, but in the short term, a shock such as loss of most favoured nation status in the US market could threaten the macroeconomic stability so important to its continued economic opening. Preserving open trade relations is in the best interest of both China and the United States.     

Why has the Unemployment Rate Been so Low in Japan? An Explanation by Two‐Part Wage Bargaining

The Japanese wage payment system is considered from a perspective of two-part tariff pricing. Using the "amusement park" analogy, Shunto wages can be regarded as an "entrance fee", whereas bonuses are a "variable charge". Empirical investigation showed that a qualitative difference exists between these two types of wage: Shunto sets the coordinated wage rate by focusing on the whole labour market condition, while bonuses respond to idiosyncratic shock. Based on the standard prediction of two-part wage tariff pricing, such a unique combination is the ultimate source of Japan's low unemployment.
JEL Classification Number: J51.     

Upstream and downstream pollution taxations in vertically related markets with imperfect competition

When two markets are vertically related, the government can control pollution at the upstream as well as the downstream market levels. This paper employs the stylized model of input price discrimination and compares the effectiveness of upstream and downstream pollution taxations. We consider the situation in which downstream firms have heterogeneous abatement technologies and an upstream monopolist performs input price discrimination against them. In order to mitigate pollution, the government imposes input tax on the intermediate inputs and emission tax on the pollutant. We show that the degree of input price discrimination decreases with a rise in the input tax and increases with a rise in the emission tax. We further examine the effect of a green tax reform in which the government changes the source of taxation from input tax to emission tax. We argue that although this green tax reform may reduce the tax revenue of the government, it will certainly increase social welfare.      

THE CYCLICALITY OF SEPARATION AND JOB FINDING RATES*

This article uses CPS gross flow data to analyze the business cycle dynamics of separation and job finding rates and quantify their contributions to overall unemployment variability. Cyclical changes in the separation rate are negatively correlated with changes in productivity and move contemporaneously with them, whereas the job finding rate is positively correlated with and tends to lag productivity. Contemporaneous fluctuations in the separation rate explain between 40 and 50% of fluctuations in unemployment, depending on how the data are detrended. This figure becomes larger when dynamic interactions between the separation and job finding rates are considered.     

Stock market liberalization and international risk sharing

This paper empirically examines what macroeconomic risks are shared (or not shared) internationally after stock market liberalization in several developing countries. To address this issue, we incorporate an international asset pricing model into a non-linear structural vector autoregression (VAR) system that identifies various sources of macroeconomic risks. We find that most of the risks corresponding to exogenous financial market shocks are surprisingly well shared, although other macroeconomic risks associated with exogenous shocks to output, inflation and monetary policies are not fully shared across countries. Our results suggest that one of the main benefits from stock market liberalization is to allow the countries studied in this paper to better hedge against exogenous and idiosyncratic financial market risks, and stock market liberalization needs to be accompanied by other measures of economic integration in order to achieve the full benefits of international risk sharing.