Central Bank's interventions and the Fisher hypothesis: a threshold cointegration investigation

The long-run relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation is examined, allowing for structural breaks and asymmetric mean reversion. From a Threshold AutoRegressive (TAR) test applied to the residuals of the cointegration relationship (while allowing for both a break in the mean of the long-run equation and a smooth regime-transition), there is strong evidence for non-linear mean reversion properties for the real interest rates of the US Treasury Bill market. This suggests asymmetric changes to inflation shocks in the Central Bank's reaction function. The existence of different regimes is consistent with some interpretations of the monetary policies run by the Fed, such as credibility and opportunism.     

Utility Regulation and Risk Allocation: The Roles of Marginal Cost Pricing and Futures Markets

The effects on consumer welfare of requiring a utility facing cost or demand risk to use either a fixed retail price or marginal cost pricing are assessed. With marginal cost pricing and cost volatility an efficient futures market allows consumer welfare to be at least as high in every state as with the fixed price. With demand risk marginal cost pricing can benefit the consumer in every state without harming the firm if the profit difference is transferred to the consumer. A futures market can act as a partial replacement for the transfer.     

Collusive Long-Run Investments Under Transmission Price-Caps

In the short run, constraints in the electricity transmission system may give market power to generators. This paper examines whether the constraints themselves are a long-run equilibrium outcome in a competitive environment. We show that independent transmission companies and generators can tacitly collude to raise prices to consumers and divide the resulting profits. We also show that price cap regulation does not prevent this behavior and may in fact contribute to it. The mechanism for collusion is that generators locate their plants so that a capacity-constrained transmission line lies between them and their consumer market. We show that this constraint-based collusion can be sustained in a static game without any punishment strategies.     

Overlapping Generations or Infinitely-Lived Agents: Intergenerational Altruism and the Economics of Global Warming

Do we need an overlapping generations model for the economics of global warming? To answer this question, an infinitely-lived agent (ILA) approach and an overlapping generations (OLG) model are contrasted. ILA and OLG can be viewed as polar representations of intergenerational altruism. With ILA an immortal agent acts through his investment/savings decisions as trustee on the behalf of the future generations. With OLG, agents need not behave altruistic. They simply save during working years and dissave completely during retirement. Nevertheless, ILA and OLG must not differ in their implication for greenhouse policy. Greenhouse gas abatement is a straightforward alternative to physical capital formation and, even without altruism, each age cohort has an incentive to provide current abatement in order to reduce future damages attributable to climate change. Indeed, under reasonable assumptions and parameter values, our simulations reveal such an invariance result. Provided carbon taxes are the only policy tool and tax revenues are recycled through socially mandated rules, projections of economic growth, climate change and energy consumption are only insignificantly affected by the choice of approach.     

Corporate Lobbying, Regulatory Conduct and the Porter Hypothesis

Michael Porter, the influential Harvard management guru, has promoted the idea that compliance with stricter environmental regulations can afford secondary benefits to firms through improved product design, innovation, corporate morale and in other ways. Once these secondary benefits are factored, the net cost of compliance is argued to be lower than conventionally thought and may even be negative. Whilst environmental economists have rejected the Porter Hypothesis as being based on excessively optimistic expectations of the likely size of such secondary benefits the underlying ideas do enjoy significant credence in the business community. In the context of a lobbying model of regulatory policy-making we argue that the EPA should change the way it conducts regulatory policy to take account of Porter's views – even if it knows those views to be misguided. The model serves to illustrate the more general point that fashions in management thinking can be expected to impact the optimal conduct of regulatory policy.     

开放条件下我国外贸政策的定位及体系构建

具有渐进性、法制化和市场化特征的我国外贸体制改革以及贸易自由化与贸易保护并存的对外开放 ,要求我国对外贸易政策应该是在贸易自由化过程中的合理保护———开放型有管理的自由贸易政策。这一政策应遵循开放、适度有效的保护和竞争的原则 ,其政策基点是贸易保护的适度性 ,表现为保护的动态性、主动性、目的性和差别性。我国开放型有管理的自由贸易政策的实施应有体制上的保障 ,以扩大出口为主要政策目标 ,并与产业政策相结合 ,真正促进社会资源的有效配置 ,保证社会经济效益的提高并促进市场秩序的完善。     

Assessing Voluntary Programs to Improve Environmental Quality

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the use of voluntaryapproaches (VAs) to environmental protection, which has spurned agrowing literature on the relative merits of voluntary vs. mandatoryapproaches. This paper draws on that literature to discuss both thetheoretical and empirical issues that arise in the evaluation orassessment of a particular VA. We consider both the environmentaleffectiveness and the efficiency of this policy approach. Our aim is toaid policymakers in evaluating a specific program or in thinking aboutthe use and design of a VA. We identify some key features that arelikely to increase both the effectiveness and the efficiency of VAs.     

股票市场的货币政策传导分析

货币政策的传导机制不是唯一的，金融市场的种种特征造成了货币政策传导的多样性，股票市场中的货币政策传导就具有独特的规律，在不与银行信贷的创造机制相连的前提下，信贷资金和股市资金的沟通是合理的，目前中国信贷市场和股票市场之间千丝万缕的关系，并没有为货币政策传导创造更加有效的机制基础，股票市场还不能成为货币政策的有效传导渠道。     

Economic Valuation of Health for Environmental Policy: Comparing Alternative Approaches. Introduction and Overview

Protecting human health is a primary goal of environmental policy and economic evaluation of health can help policy-makers judge the relative worth of alternative actions. Economists use two distinct approaches in normatively evaluating health. Whereas environmental economists use benefit-cost analysis supported by monetary valuation in terms of willingness-to-pay, health economists evaluate interventions based on cost-effectiveness or cost-utility analysis (CEA), using quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) or similar indexes. This paper provides background on the controversy about the relative merits of these approaches and introduces the remaining papers in the special issue. These papers (with one exception) were presented at a conference sponsored by the Department of Economics at the University of Central Florida with support from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Although CEA might not lead to substantially different implications for environmental policy than benefit-cost analysis, and QALY may provide a benefit transfer tool to fill gaps in the morbidity valuation literature, the papers in this issue raise serious concerns about the suitability of QALY-based CEA for environmental regulatory analysis. QALY does not in general appropriately represent individual preferences for health and CEA is neither independent of income distribution nor adequate to assess efficiency.     

金融监管效率的基石:激励相容的监管机制

本文通过金融监管过程中的博弈分析,揭示了当前的金融监管制度安排在信息不对称条件下导致的监管当局提供有效监管激励的缺失及金融机构普遍的道德风险是造成金融监管失灵的主要原因.因而解决金融监管低效率或失灵问题的关键,在于通过金融市场透明度建设、监管制度安排的合理设计及金融机构治理结构的完善,实现社会公众、监管当局、金融机构之间的激励相容.