城市化水平对农村居民消费的影响——1978～2008年数据的协整分析

本文运用时间序列计量技术,分析了农村居民消费与城市化水平的关系。结果显示,我国农村居民年人均消费支出和城市化率之间存在长期均衡的协整关系。从短期来看,它们之间的关系由短期偏离向长期均衡调整的力度较大。城市化率与农村居民消费之间存在双向因果关系。总的看来,要拉动农村居民消费,增加农村居民收入是关键,但加速城市化建设既能提高农民的收入又能拉动消费,以城市化促进农村消费应成为扩大内需重要战略。     

金融危机前后全球主要股指间的影响机制比较

选取2005年～2010年间12个国家或地区股票指数为样本,在实证研究的基础上对金融危机前后股指间的关联特征进行对比讨论。研究结果表明:金融危机后,美国的股票市场在很大程度上受到其他国家的影响,欧洲国家股票市场与其它国家的联系变得紧密;一些新兴的经济体对世界股市的影响逐渐增强;中国一直处于被影响的边缘。     

Advertising Expenditure,Enplanement, and Market Concentration

This paper investigates the long‐run relationship between advertising expenditure and enplanement (representing the number of passengers boarding an aircraft), advertising expenditure across carriers, and advertising expenditure and market concentration for the six largest US airlines. Advertising expenditure is evidenced to be strategic, although not clearly effective at increasing enplanement, suggesting collusive behavior. Advertising is also evidenced to be, for the most part, balancing in nature across rival carriers. Further tests suggest a positive and linear relationship with positive bi‐directional causality between advertising and market concentration. This paper’s findings raise three important questions. First, if advertising is not clearly effective at increasing enplanement, then why advertise? Second, if advertising increases market concentration, then shouldn’t airline activities be under some degree of scrutiny, or even be partially regulated? Third, could airline advertising be important in explaining higher post‐deregulation fares?     

经济开放度与金融发展:基于中国数据的实证研究

根据金融发展理论的最新研究,产品市场与金融市场的同时开放能够极大地促进金融体系的发展。文章综合多个衡量我国金融市场和产品市场开放程度的指标,利用因子分析计算我国的经济开放度的数据,使用协整分析和Granger因果检验对经济开放度与金融发展之间的关系进行实证研究。结果发现,除了CAP指标外,经济开放度是BANK的Granger原因,并且与其他的金融发展指标之间存在协整关系。     

Hong Kong's aviation and tourism growth - An empirical investigation

This study investigates the critical link between aviation and tourism growth in Hong Kong, with a focus on the identification of causal relationships between scheduled airline seat capacity and visitor arrivals. This is achieved through the cointegration analysis and Granger-causality test, using monthly data collected from Hong Kong's top 17 tourist source markets during 2008–2018. Our analysis finds clear evidence of an overall two-way causal relationship between airline scheduled capacity and tourist arrivals. The positive externalities between the two crucial sectors to the Hong Kong economy call for coordinated planning and policy design in the tourism and aviation sectors, and justify continued government support. On the other hand, market-specific features are evident in selected markets. Such heterogeneity is likely due to airline network effect and regulation in the international market. Therefore, direct subsidy is not always an efficient support measure. A combination of liberalization policy and industry supports are preferred in views of the benefits to be achieved for the two sectors and the Hong Kong economy.     

The lead–lag relationship between the spot and futures markets in China

Based on daily and one-minute high-frequency returns, this paper examines the lead–lag dependence between the CSI 300 index spot and futures markets from 2010 to 2014. A nonparametric and non-linear method based on the thermal optimal path method is adopted. Empirical results of the daily data indicate that the lead–lag relationship between the two markets is within one day but this relationship is volatile since neither of the two possible situations (the futures leads or lags behind the spot market) takes a dominant place. Our results using the high-frequency data demonstrate that there is a price discovery in the Chinese futures market: the intraday one-minute futures return leads the cash return by 0–5 min regardless of the price trend of the market.     

The heterogeneous behaviour of the inflation hedging property of cocoa

In this paper, we examine distinctly the inflation hedging potential of cocoa in net cocoa-exporting and net cocoa-importing countries. The choice of cocoa is motivated by its significance as a key ingredient in the production of chocolate which is largely consumed at every household and therefore serves as a major source of revenue to cocoa investors in exporting and importing countries. Based on our preliminary analyses including panel causality tests, we formulate both panel threshold regression model and panel smooth transition regression model in order to account for any inherent nonlinearity, time-variation and structural breaks in the inflation-cocoa returns nexus. We find that cocoa offers better inflation hedging characteristics in cocoa importing countries than their cocoa exporting counterparts. While the results are robust to alternative frequency and market size, we are able to establish that ignoring the presence of threshold effects may lead to wrong conclusions.     

Exploring the causal relationships and allocation puzzle between portfolio investments and real sector growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study explores the causal dynamics and allocation puzzles between real sector growth and portfolio investments (equity and private debt) in Sub Saharan (SSA). We use growth in manufacturing, industry, agriculture, and services to capture the real sector and employ the two-step dynamic systems GMM model to establish our empirical relationships over the period 1980–2017. We found no evidence in support of the puzzle at the overall level of the real sector and portfolio investments. However, at a decomposed level, we established a bi-directional relationship of a positive association between debt flows and growth in agriculture and services, with no evidence of an allocation puzzle. Though we found a bi-directional association between debt and industrial growth, the association was detrimental in both directions. Finally, the study established a two-way inverse causality between equity flows and manufacturing growth. The paper provides a strong foundation for an additional source of financing, especially for the growth of the service and agriculture sectors. The findings also indicate complementary reactions between real sector growth and portfolio investments in SSA.     

Forecasting in social settings: The state of the art

This paper provides a non-systematic review of the progress of forecasting in social settings. It is aimed at someone outside the field of forecasting who wants to understand and appreciate the results of the M4 Competition, and forms a survey paper regarding the state of the art of this discipline. It discusses the recorded improvements in forecast accuracy over time, the need to capture forecast uncertainty, and things that can go wrong with predictions. Subsequently, the review classifies the knowledge achieved over recent years into (i) what we know, (ii) what we are not sure about, and (iii) what we don’t knowIn the first two areas, we explore the difference between explanation and prediction, the existence of an optimal model, the performance of machine learning methods on time series forecasting tasks, the difficulties of predicting non-stable environments, the performance of judgment, and the value added by exogenous variables. The article concludes with the importance of (thin and) fat tails, the challenges and advances in causal inference, and the role of luck.     

河北省农业保险促进农业产出的实证分析

本文依据农业保险促进农业产出的理论基础,选用1985-2012年河北省农业保险费收入和农业GDP的年度数据,做了实证检验。得出的结论是:河北省农业保险费收入和农业GDP之间不存在协整关系,回归结果也表明二者相关性不大,甚至不存在Granger因果关系,也即农业保险促进农业产出的作用并没有充分发挥出来。然后分析了原因,并从农业保险的角度提出几点政策建议。