Effects of speculation and interest rates in a “carry trade” model of commodity prices

The paper presents and estimates a model of the prices of oil and other storable commodities, a model that can be characterized as reflecting the carry trade. It focuses on speculative factors, here defined as the trade-off between interest rates on the one hand and market participants' expectations of future price changes on the other hand. It goes beyond past research by bringing to bear new data sources: survey data to measure expectations of future changes in commodity prices and options data to measure perceptions of risk. Some evidence is found of a negative effect of interest rates on the demand for inventories and thereby on commodity prices and positive effects of expected future price gains on inventory demand and thereby on today's commodity prices.     

US stock market sensitivity to interest and inflation rates: a quantile regression approach

This article studies the sensitivity of the US stock market to nominal and real interest rates and inflation during the 2003–2013 period using quantile regression (QR). The empirical results show that the stock market has a significant sensitivity to changes in interest rates and inflation and finds differences across sectors and over time. Moreover, the effect of changes in both interest rates and inflation tends to be more pronounced during extreme market conditions, thus distinguishing expansion periods from recession periods.     

Convexity theory for the term structure equation

We study the convexity and model parameter monotonicity properties for prices of bonds and bond options when the short rate is modeled by a diffusion process. We provide sharp conditions on the model parameters under which the convexity of the price in the short rate is guaranteed. Under these conditions, the price is decreasing in the drift and increasing in the volatility of the short rate. We also study the convexity properties of the logarithm of the price and find simple conditions on the coefficients that guarantee that the price is log-convex or log-concave.      

公益诉讼在防范企业国有资产流失中的制度价值

公益诉讼有助于把社会民众的法律监督权与司法机关对违法行为的审判权有机结合起来,改变行政机关单向监管格局,形成权利监督权力的机制,弥补现有防范机制的制度性缺失。为追究企业国有资产流失行为人的法律责任提供司法保障,构建全方位、立体综合的防范体系。     

Demographics and interest rates in Asia

Demographic developments have been regarded as one important cause of the long-term movement in global interest rates. This paper provides empirical evidence of the relationship between demographics and interest rates over a wide sample of advanced and emerging market economies. It also finds that capital account openness limits the direct sensitivity of a country's interest rates to its own demographics. The results suggest that future demographic developments will continue to apply downward pressure on the interest rates in Asia which foresees a rapid aging.     

The determinants of China's lending rates and interest rates pass-through: A cointegration analysis

Based on quarterly data between Q4, 2008–Q4, 2017, this study examines the interest rates pass-through from policy rate to lending rates, and more broadly, the determinants of lending rates in China. The results show that while there is a certain level of pass-through from money market rates to lending rates, and the interest rates pass-through has improved after the interest rate liberalization completion on October 2015, this pass-through is also negatively affected by the asset quality of commercial banks and shadow banking activities as well. This study also finds that the macroeconomic condition also affects the lending rates.     

中国化泰勒规则的构建与规则利率的估算——基于考虑金融周期信息的潜在产出与自然利率的再估算

我国货币政策正在向价格型调控方式转型,有必要探索符合我国实际的泰勒规则以确定政策利率目标水平,而如何科学合理地估算潜在产出和自然利率是关键。本文对构建多目标下的中国化泰勒规则时应考虑的因素作了深入探讨,并将金融周期信息纳入我国潜在产出的测算,同时采用基于潜在产出的方法对自然利率进行估算,进而分不同情形尝试估算我国的规则利率水平。结果表明,考虑金融周期信息后的潜在产出在金融扩张期将低于传统方法的估计结果,可为政策制定者有效应对经济运行的过热现象或泡沫化状态提供参考;无论是基于何种潜在产出和自然利率的测算组合,将国内外利差、房价涨幅偏离经济增长程度纳入中国化泰勒规则的构建均是合理的;不同情形下估算的规则利率走势,自2004年以来与货币市场利率走势均较为相近,且2013年后随着利率市场化改革的快速推进,差距呈明显缩小态势,但2017年下半年至2018年期间,受国际宏观形势和国内因素影响,估算的规则利率均快速上扬,与货币市场利率走低形成反差。     

论高利放贷行为的类型化治理

高利放贷是一种利弊兼有的经济活动,关于其是否入罪、如何入罪存在较大的理论纷争。目前司法机关在《关于办理非法放贷刑事案件若干问题的意见》中选择以非法经营罪惩治高利贷活动。然而,通过刑法直接高压管控利率并不利于经济社会良性发展,民间放贷活动的社会危害并非源于获取高利,而往往出自放贷行为导致的恶性衍生行为。高利放贷虽然可能滋生衍生性危害,但其产生具有合理性,也有必然性,不宜一刀切式入罪。为此,对于民间放贷行为,应采取分类治理与重点治理相结合的思路。将不同类型的高利放贷活动区别对待,刑法重点规制社会危害性较强的暴力型、欺诈型放贷,而社会危害性较弱的高利贷类型无罪。     

How should monetary policy respond to changes in the relative price of oil? Considering supply and demand shocks

This paper examines optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian model where supply and demand shocks affect the price of oil. Optimal policy fully stabilizes core inflation when wages are flexible. The nominal rate rises (falls) in response to the demand (supply) shock. With sticky wages core inflation falls (rises) in response to the demand (supply) shock. Impulse response functions from a VAR estimated with post-1986 U.S. data show minimal movement in core inflation in response to both shocks. The federal funds rate rises (falls) in response to the demand (supply) shock, consistent with the predictions from the theoretical model for policy that stabilizes core inflation.     

The intraday multivariate structure of the Eurofutures markets

We investigate the multivariate intraday structure in interest rates, focusing on implied forward rates from Eurofutures contracts. Since futures markets are the most liquid for interest rate instruments and they yield high-quality intraday data, it is somehow surprising that their intraday behavior has not been thoroughly studied in the literature.We find interesting similarities with the foreign exchange market: scaling law, intraday patterns, all of which point to the heterogeneity of market participants. Other properties like asymmetric causal information flow between fine and coarse volatilities for the same time series are present in our data. There are also lead–lag correlations across the term structure of implied forward rates, but they tend to disappear as markets mature.A principal component analysis of the short end of the yield curve allows us to determine the most important components and to reduce the number of time series needed to describe the term structure. We find the decomposition rather stable over time. The first component, which describes the curve level, shows an asymmetry in the information flow between volatilities of different time resolution, i.e., the coarse-grained volatility predicts the fine-grained volatility better than the other way around, as observed in the foreign exchange market. The remaining components do not show such an effect, having instead significant negative autocorrelations for the time series themselves. A heterogeneous autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (HARCH) model is estimated for the first component and the impact of different market agents is discussed.