Exchange rate sensitivity of commodity flows between the Philippines and the US

Previous studies that tried to assess the impact of exchange rate changes on the inpayments and outpayments of a country used aggregate trade flows between two countries. They are said to suffer from aggregation bias, and disaggregation by industry is recommended. In this paper, we consider response to exchange rate changes of export earnings (inpayments) of 133 industries that export from the US to the Philippines (Philippines’ importing industries) and outpayments of 65 US industries (Philippines exporting industries) that import from the Philippines using annual data over the period 1973–2012. While in most industries exchange rate changes had significant effects in the short run, the short-run effects did not last into the long run in most industries. Economic activity played more role in the long run than the exchange rate.     

Same currency,different strategies? The (asymmetric) role of the exchange rate in shaping European agri-food exports

This article uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NADRL) model introduced by Shin, Yu, and Greenwood-Nimmo (2014) to assess the role that the exchange rate plays in shaping European agri-food exports after the introduction of the Euro. Although the 10 countries of this study share the same currency (and thus a single nominal exchange rate with the US), cross-country discrepancies of exports’ reactions to exchange rate changes are evident. Moreover, I find that exchange rate changes influence exports asymmetrically in the long run. Euro appreciations are harmful to a lesser extent than Euro depreciations are beneficial for European agri-food exports. The magnitude of this effect is country-specific and varies considerably between individual exporting countries. Exported quantities are less affected by exchange rate fluctuations than export values, which is in line with local currency price stabilization strategies of the exporters. This finding is interpreted as a sign of an incomplete exchange rate pass-through due to strategic (asymmetric) markup adjustments by firms with heterogeneous productivity. Besides that, the outcomes suggest that nonprice competition might be in play in some cases.     

An investigation of the effects of exchange rate volatility on exports in East Asia

This study investigates the effects of the exchange rate volatility on the export flows of Indonesia, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines during 1974–2011. Towards this goal a trade weighted real effective (rather than the bilateral) exchange rate and three different measures of volatility, i.e. obtained from an ARCH model, a GARCH model and a moving-average standard deviation measure are used in this study. Specifically, the export flows between six Asian countries and the rest of the world are investigated rather than focusing on trade with only one country. Our findings reveal that the exchange rate volatility has a significant impact on export flows in the short run as well as in the long run for all the countries in the sample. The impact in the long run is predominantly negative with the exception of Singapore, but in the short run the impact varies across countries. Moreover, our results are robust to the alternative measures of volatility used and most of the findings in the long run and short run are also robust to the crisis period.     

Regime-switching purchasing power parity in Latin America: Monte Carlo unit root tests with dynamic conditional score

We suggest a Monte Carlo simulation-based unit root test of the purchasing power parity theory for Latin American countries. Under the null hypothesis, we use a Markov regime-switching (MS) model with unit root in the conditional location and MS volatility dynamics. Under the alternative hypothesis, the proposed test incorporates Markov regime-switching autoregressive moving average (MS-ARMA) plus MS volatility dynamics. Under both the null and alternative hypotheses, one of the volatility models estimated is Beta-t-EGARCH, which is a recent dynamic conditional score volatility model. We use data on real effective exchange rate time series for 14 Latin American countries. For each country, we estimate by Monte Carlo simulation the critical values of the unit root test. We provide an economic discussion of the unit root test results and also study the robustness of MS-ARMA plus MS volatility with respect to smooth transition autoregressive models with Fourier function.     

Explaining divorce rate determinants: new evidence from Spain

This article examines the main determinants of divorce rates in Spain for the period 1995 to 2010. According to the results, the so-called Express Divorce Law (passed in 2005) seems to be positively associated with divorce rates in the short term. Income level and growth, female employment rate, and the proportion of foreign population are also positively related to divorce rates. However, as expected, the percentage of conservative vote seems to have a negative impact.     

Exchange rate regime classifications and exchange rate variability

It is well known that the exchange rate regime (ERR) declared to the IMF is often different from the actual regime. Several alternative schemes for de facto regime classification have been developed. In this article, we compare the ability of four popular schemes to track exchange rate variability (ERV). We find that the existing ERR classifications do not match well with the degree of ERV, especially for intermediate regimes. For instance, in the Levy-Yeyati and Sturzenegger (2003) coding, the intermediate regimes exhibit greater ERV than the floaters. On the other hand, for the Reinhart and Rogoff (2004) coding, the fixers show greater variability than some intermediates.     

The Impact of Regret on Exports

We examine optimal production and export decisions of a firm facing exchange rate uncertainty, where the firm's management is not only risk averse but also regret averse, i.e., is characterized by a utility function that includes disutility from having chosen ex post suboptimal alternatives. Experimental and empirical results support the view that managers tend to be regret averse. Under regret aversion a negative risk premium need not preclude the firm from exporting which would be the case if the firm were only risk averse. Exporting creates an implicit hedge against the possibility of regret when the realized spot exchange rate turns out to be high. The regret‐averse firm as such has a greater ex ante incentive to export than the purely risk averse firm. Finally, we use a two‐state example to illustrate that the firm optimally exports more (less) to the foreign country than in the case of pure risk aversion if the low (high) spot exchange rate is more likely to prevail. Regret aversion as such plays a crucial role in determining the firm's optimal allocation between domestic sales and foreign exports.     

对SHIBOR作为货币市场基准利率在货币政策框架转型下的基准性研究

基于上海银行间同业拆放利率（SHIBOR）报价时间的调整,通过选取银行间回购定盘利率与短期SHIBOR的报价数据,运用格兰杰因果关系检验的方法,对SHIBOR在报价时间调整前后两阶段的基准性进行了对比分析。研究结果表明：SHIBOR报价时间调整以后,在货币市场利率体系中的基准性地位不仅没有得到提升,反而出现了弱化的趋势。     

P2P网贷平台借款信息对投资决策的影响研究

以人人贷平台作为研究对象,通过编写程序抓取实际交易数据,构建了基于二元logistic回归方法的P2P（Peer-to-Peer）网络借贷决策模型,以研究影响投资决策的因素。该模型对13684条样本进行了是否满标的预测,其综合预测率为97%。实证结果表明,P2P平台上的借款信息对投资决策行为及是否能成功借贷的影响十分显著——利率、年龄、婚姻状态、学历、信用等级以及逾期次数与满标成功率呈正相关关系;金额、期限、申请借贷笔数与满标成功率呈负相关关系。     

Uncovering the Truth about Chinese Urban Unemployment Rates: 2005–2012

Using China Urban Household Survey data from 2005 to 2012, the present paper examines the changing pattern of China's urban unemployment rates. The paper shows that the annual urban unemployment rates during 2005–2012 averaged approximately 8.5 percent, as opposed to the official figure of approximately 4.1 percent, and despite the significant slowdown of GDP growth since 2008, the urban unemployment rates still exhibit a downward trend. This paper finds that continuous job creation in both the tertiary and the non‐state sectors helps explain the decreasing trend in unemployment rates. Meanwhile, the downward trend of the unemployment rates could also be explained by the fact that both the secondary industry and the state‐owned sector have destructed fewer jobs because of the execution of macroeconomic stimulus policies since 2008.