Do Fundamentals Explain the Behaviour of the Swedish Real Effective Exchange Rate?

This study examines the long‐run relationship between the real effective exchange rate and its fundamental determinants, and derives a real effective equilibrium exchange rate for the Swedish krona. Our results indicate that the krona was severely overvalued in late 1992, when the fixed exchange rate regime was abandoned. By the end of 2000 the krona was undervalued by approximately 5 percent, given the prevailing economic conditions. Arithmetic examples of suitable SEK/EUR conversion rates are calculated under various assumptions to provide a guideline if Sweden were to adopt the euro in the future.     

服务业集聚与产业结构优化关系探究

随着全球化进程的不断加快，服务业集聚已经成为人们普遍关注的话题。产业集聚在获得规模效应的同时避免了垄断现象的产生，服务业集聚不但拥有这样的优势，而且还有自己独特的形成和发展特点。从产业结构的优化角度切入，借助区位商和专门化率等分析指标，以江苏省和上海市为例，对服务业集聚的形成进行理论和实证分析，提出产业结构的优化对于服务业集聚的形成和发展有着积极的作用。合理的产业结构能够为服务业集聚提供坚实的基础，各地区应该根据各自的产业特点积极的进行优化，催生服务业集聚，加快本地区经济的进一步发展。     

我国入境旅游发展现状、趋势预测及策略分析

通过对1997—2006年我国旅游服务贸易出口国际市场占有率指数、旅游服务贸易竞争优势指数和显示性比较优势指数的比较，可以看出我国旅游服务贸易国际竞争力尚不强。结合1978—2007我国历年入境旅游人次和外汇收入数据，通过建立时间序列模型，可以对未来五年我国入境旅游发展趋势进行预测。建议根据我国入境旅游消费结构特征，采用从宏观上实行差异化引导等策略。     

Fixed Exchange Rates and Disinflation in Emerging Markets: How Large Is the Effect?

We examine developing countries which have institutional quality ratings for the effects of exchange rate rigidity on inflation. The level of institutional development exerts no effect on the impact of currency regimes. However, the interaction of institutional quality and exchange rates has, in the most plausible specifications, a negative impact on inflation. This suggests that fixed exchange rates exert at most a contingent effect on inflation, and indicates that countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America contemplating currency pegs would be better off improving institutional quality prior to adopting the euro or dollar and expecting a large subsequent disinflationary effect. JEL no.  F31, O11     

基于BP网络对我国通货膨胀率的预测及其分析

本文首先由我国的CPI计算出通货膨胀率,综合分析了我国通货膨胀率和GDP增长率数据。其次,用带有动量项和自适应学习率的BP神经网络预测出2008～2009年我国CPI,从而推算出2008～2009年我国通货膨胀率分别是4.99%和4.91%左右。并提出了一些相应的政策建议。     

International interest rates and US monetary policy announcements: Evidence from Hong Kong and Singapore

This paper investigates the responses of market interest rates to US monetary policy announcements for the US and two emerging economies, Hong Kong and Singapore which are similar on many respects but have experienced opposite exchange rate regimes in the last twenty years. Our results, based on market expectations extracted from federal fund futures rates, document that FOMC announcements significantly affect the term structure of interest rate in the US and both Asian countries. Further, international interest rate differentials around FOMC meeting dates tend to be negative for short maturities with the impact gradually dissipating as bond maturity increases. Finally, for the case of Singapore, we find that domestic interest rates react to both external and domestic monetary policy announcements with a magnitude that is larger over the full bond maturity spectrum for domestic announcements. These results are robust to time-varying futures risk premia and alternative measures of interest rates expectations.     

Asymmetric volatility in the foreign exchange markets

We examine the presence or absence of asymmetric volatility in the exchange rates of Australian dollar (AUD), Euro (EUR), British pound (GBP) and Japanese yen (JPY), all against US dollar. Our investigation is based on a variant of the heterogeneous autoregressive realized volatility model, using daily realized variance and return series from 1996 to 2004. We find that a depreciation against USD leads to significantly greater volatility than an appreciation for AUD and GBP, whereas the opposite is true for JPY. Relative to volatility on days following a positive one-standard-deviation return, volatility on days following a negative one-standard-deviation return is higher by 6.6% for AUD, 6.1% for GBP, and 21.2% for JPY. The realized volatility of EUR appears to be symmetric. These results are robust to the removal of jump component from realized volatility and the sub-samplings defined by structural-changes. The asymmetry in AUD, GBP and JPY appears to be embedded in the continuous component of realized volatility rather than the jump component.     

Generalized piecewise linear histograms

We extend the concept of piecewise linear histogram introduced recently by Beirlant, Berlinet and Györfi. The disadvantage of that histogram is that in many models it takes on negative values with probability close to 1. We show that for a wide set of models, the extended class of estimates contains a bona fide density with probability tending to 1 as the sample size n increases to infinity. The mean integrated absolute error in the extended class of estimators decreases with the same rate n^–2/5 as in the original narrower class.     

Inflation,interest and exchange rates in the transition1

Central and Eastern European economies have made extraordinary progress in their trade and exchange regimes. Surprisingly, instant convertibility was established for a great variety of exchange rate regimes. In spite of diversity, all these countries have followed a common pattern: severe initial undervaluation - the cost of speed and unrestricted trade - followed by rapid real revaluation and incipient protectionism. Since 1994 in many cases an embarrass de richesse has appeared: high capital inflows which are either inflationary or costly to sterilize. A major cause of these flows - or at any rate of the high cost of sterilization - is the presence of significant interest rate differentials higher than required to cover the risk of devaluation. These are the necessary consequence of a policy of positive real interest rates and of real revaluation from excessively undervalued exchange rates. Lower interest rates are recommended, both to stem financial capital inflows and to reduce the cost of their sterilization.     

Sources of Bank Interest Rate Risk

We investigate bank stocks'sensitivity to changes in interest rates and the factors affecting this sensitivity. We focus on whether the exposure of commercial banks to interest rate risk is conditioned on certain balance sheet and income statement ratios. We find a significantly negative relation between bank stock returns and changes in interest rates over the period 1991–1996. We also find that bank characteristics measured from basic financial statement information explain bank stocks'sensitivity to interest rate changes. These results suggest that bank managers, analysts, and regulators can use this information to assess the relative risk exposure of banks.