The stained China miracle: Corruption,regulation, and firm performance

Regional corruptness in China has a positive effect on the profitability of private firms, but not that of state-owned firms. A natural experiment of exogenous trade policy change suggests that corruption may help private firms circumvent government regulation.     

Pricing Nikkei 225 Options Using Realized Volatility

This article examines option pricing performance using realized volatilities with or without handling microstructure noise, non‐trading hours and large jumps. The dynamics of realized volatility is specified by ARFIMA(X) and HAR(X) models. The main results using put options on the Nikkei 225 index are that: (i) the ARFIMAX model performs best; (ii) the Hansen and Lunde (2005a) adjustment for non‐trading hours improves the performance; (iii) methods for reducing microstructure noise‐induced bias yield better performance, while if the Hansen–Lunde adjustment is used, the other methods are not necessarily needed; and (iv) the performance is unaffected by removing large jumps from realized volatility.     

Location and ownership of public goods

We introduce location choice for the public good in the property rights framework. We find that it can be optimal to separate location from ownership.     

Corporate Cash Holding in Asia

In this paper, we analyze the determinants of corporate saving in the form of changes in cash holdings for 11 Asian economies using firm‐level data from the Oriana Database for the 2002–2011 period. We find some evidence that cash flow has a positive impact on the change in cash holdings (i.e. that the cash flow sensitivity of cash is positive) and that the positive impact of cash flow on the change in cash holdings is larger and more significant in the case of smaller and presumably more constrained firms than in the case of larger and presumably less constrained firms in both developed and developing economies. Both of these findings corroborate the importance of financial constraints in Asian firms. In addition, we find that the cash flow sensitivity of cash declined after the global financial crisis and that Tobin's q has a positive impact on the change in cash holdings, especially in the case of larger and presumably unconstrained firms.     

流行病应急响应的国际合作——联合国领导下的禽流感防疫机制透析

随着跨国公共卫生安全在全球治理中分量日益加重,流行病应急响应（Epidemic preparedness and response）的国际合作逐步被提上了全球日程。2005年,人感染高致病性禽流感在全球范围内的大规模传播,国际社会尤其是联合国领导下的相关组织如何构建防疫机制来应对这一形势成为焦点。经过多年的努力,联合国领导下的禽流感防疫机制日臻完善,该机制主要包括核心领导机构、法理基础、重要应急措施以及相关国际行为体参与4个方面。同时,该机制的有效性与局限性并存,值得引起人们的注意。     

A bootstrap test for jumps in financial economics

An i.i.d. bootstrap is applied for the ratio test of Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2006) for jumps in jump diffusion processes. Asymptotic validity is established for the bootstrap test both under the null of no jump and under the alternative of jumps. Finite sample simulation shows that the bootstrap test has more stable size than the ratio test of Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2006).     

Does sovereign debt weaken economic growth? A panel VAR analysis

We estimate panel vector autoregressions to analyze the highly disputed relationship between sovereign debt and economic growth. Using data on 20 developed countries, we find no evidence for a robust effect of debt on growth, even for higher levels of debt. We do find a significant negative reverse effect of growth on debt, which explains the negative correlation.     

Pervasive inattentiveness

In this paper we analyze how inattentiveness in capital investment decisions shapes business cycle dynamics in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with inattentiveness. We find that the model with pervasive inattentiveness matches several business cycle moments much better than an otherwise identical model without informational frictions in investment. These findings reinforce the need for pervasive stickiness to mimic the inertia found in macroeconomic data.     

The effects of the raising-the-official-pension-age policy in an overlapping generations economy

This paper studies how economic variables are affected by raising the official pension age. Although it is said that such a policy increases output, this paper shows that such a statement is not necessarily true. Moreover, the paper finds that the social security benefit can decrease, which implies that it might be impossible to sustain the same level of benefit only by such a policy.     

On the size of fiscal multipliers: A counterfactual analysis

We point out that fiscal multipliers derived from SVAR-models include the predicted future path of policy instruments. After the initial shock, net taxes and government expenditures react to each other and are autocorrelated. In a counterfactual simulation, we report fiscal multipliers that abstract from these dynamic responses.