Rethinking the role of NCBs in the EMU

Five years after the introduction of unified monetary policy in the EMU, some member countries are wondering whether they have ceded too much of their policy-making powers. The fact that National Central Banks no longer carry out sizable expansionary open market or foreign exchange market operations suggests that they face substantially reduced abilities to set economic policy.This paper demonstrates that, in fact, very little power has been yielded: on the fiscal front, the force of such policy initiatives is enhanced by the fixity of the exchange rate. On the monetary front, we show that there is an observational equivalence between all Central Bank actions under fixed exchange rates. This implies that the authorities retain the same amount of policy flexibility as before. So long as they use an alternative form of policy initiative, carrying out what previously would have been characterized as sterilized foreign exchange market operations, their ability to influence the macro performance of their economy is undiminished.     

国际资本流动的新特点与我国利用外资的基本思路

中国正式加入WTO，标志着中国对外开放进入了一个新的阶段，本文试图在分析国际资本流动的新特点的基础上，从完善市场经济制度和投资环境，引资方式创新，发挥利用外资对结构调整战略的配合作用，以及利用外资与宏观经济目标的相互协调等方面，提出中国利用外资的基本思路。     

对远期外汇合约信用风险的监管

随着远期外汇合约近几年来在我国的逐步推行,外汇市场活跃的同时也增加了外汇交易的信用风险,。要实现外汇市场的有序开放和稳定发展,就必须对其实行有效的风险管理,这包括交易主体对信用风险的识别,处置和外部监管。     

汇率决定理论的发展与前沿述评

汇率决定问题是国际金融领域的一个重要命题,其间得到不断地丰富和发展。本文对汇率决定理论的发展脉络、内容、前沿作系统性地概述,并作出精要地评判。文章指出汇率行为的复杂性将是汇率决定理论研究的一个方向,非线性分析工具将成为汇率行为研究的主要手段。     

Macroeconomic interdependence under incomplete markets

This paper uses a two-country, flexible-price model with overlapping generations of infinitely lived households to study the role of net foreign asset dynamics in the propagation of productivity shocks. Absence of Ricardian equivalence ensures existence of a unique steady-state level of net foreign assets, to which the economy returns following temporary shocks. Model dynamics are significantly different from those of a setup in which terms of trade movements perform all the international adjustment and net foreign assets do not move. The difference relative to a complete markets economy in which net foreign asset movements play no role in shock transmission is smaller. It is amplified if the substitutability across goods rises and if shocks are permanent.     

China''''s Economic Prospects and Sino-US Economic Relations

I. Introduction The rapid rise of the economic weight of China in the world economy has increasingly caught the attention of many analysts as well as policy-makers, eliciting various opinions on the global implications. Although China’s economic performance in the past 2 decades46 Pingfan Hong / 45 – 55, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2006 or so is indeed miraculous, the rest of the world should become less surprised or bewildered if they see China’s recent performance from a long-run historical perspe…     

Vertical intra-industry trade and foreign direct investment in East Asia

As economic integration in East Asia progresses, trade patterns within the region are displaying an ever-greater complexity: Though inter-industry trade still accounts for the majority, its share in overall trade is declining. Instead, intra-industry trade (IIT), which can be further divided into horizontal IIT (HIIT) and vertical IIT (VIIT), is growing in importance.In this paper, we set out to measure and examine vertical intra-industry trade patterns in the East Asian region and compare these with the results of previous studies focusing on the EU, to which such analyses so far have been confined. Based on the supposition that VIIT is closely related to offshore production by multinational enterprises, we then develop a model to capture the main determinants of VIIT that explicitly includes the role of FDI. The model is tested empirically using data from the electrical machinery industry. The findings support our hypothesis, showing that FDI plays a significant role in the rapid increase in VIIT in East Asia seen in recent years. J. Japanese Int. Economies 17 (4) (2003) 468–506.     

对外贸易对我国生态环境影响的实证分析

学术界对对外贸易与生态环境的关系还存在争论。本文建立了对外贸易影响环境的投入产出分析模型，并以此模型为基础，利用我国2002年投入产出表和我国能源消费数据，对我国2002年对外贸易对环境的影响进行了实证分析，得出了对外贸易有利于我国生态环境改善的结论。     

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.     

Efficient Markets Hypothesis and the Emerging Capital Market in Sri Lanka: Evidence from the Colombo Stock Exchange – A Note

The behaviour of stock prices on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is examined with a view to determine its consistency with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH). Runs, Autocorrelation and Cointegration tests are applied to daily, weekly and monthly CSE index data for the period of January 1991–November 1996. Results of Runs, Correlation and Cointegration tests overwhelmingly reject the serial independence hypothesis, leading to the conclusion that the behaviour of stock prices in the Colombo Stock Exchange is not consistent with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. Tests of the-day-of-the-week-effect, however, show that there is no evidence of such a phenomenon on the Colombo Stock Exchange stock prices. Results of the tests of the-month-of-the-year-effect lead to the conclusion that CSE prices do not display any month-specific behaviour.