Adverse selection and moral hazard: Quantitative implications for unemployment insurance

A model of optimal unemployment insurance with adverse selection and moral hazard is constructed. The model generates both qualitative and quantitative implications for the optimal provision of unemployment insurance. Qualitatively, for some agents, incentives in the optimal contract imply consumption increases over the duration of non-employment. Calibrating the model to a stylized version of the U.S. economy quantitatively illustrates these theoretical predictions. The optimal contract achieves a welfare gain of 1.94% relative to the current U.S. system, an additional 0.87% of gains relative to a planner who ignores adverse selection and focuses only on moral hazard.     

Drugs,guns, and targeted competition

We consider a dynamic competition game involving three players, in which each player can vary the extent of his competition on a per-rival basis. We call such competition targeted. We show that if the players are myopic, then the weaker players eventually lose the game to their strongest rival. If instead the players are sufficiently far-sighted, then all three players converge in their power and stay in the game. We develop our model in application to drug wars, but the approach of targeted competition can be applied to competition between firms or political parties, or to warfare.     

Trade-offs in means tested pension design

The means-testing of age pension programs allows governments to control the receipt of pension benefits (extensive margin) and the benefit level (intensive margin). We investigate how the presence of the extensive margin influences the trade-off between protecting the poorer elderly and the economic costs of distorting incentives to work and save of young individuals. The means-test effect via the extensive margin improves the insurance aspect but introduces opposing impacts on incentives that potentially have ambiguous welfare outcomes. We characterize combinations of the maximum pension benefit and taper rate that balance the negative incentive effects and positive insurance effects.     

The dynamic contagion of the global financial crisis into Japanese markets

This paper investigates the risk contagion channel of the global financial crisis into Japan using daily data on bond risk premiums for the financial and manufacturing industries from July 18, 2006 to May 25, 2010. We employ a bivariate EGARCH model with the constant exogenous contagion impacts of foreign industries and the time-varying endogenous contagion impacts of domestic industries. We find evidence that: (i) a constant exogenous impact from foreign industries appears in the risk premium for 5-year bonds issued by manufacturing industry firms, and (ii) contagion only exists from the manufacturing industry to the financial industry, and that there is no evidence of any reverse causation, even during the Lehman Brothers shock on September 15, 2008. Thus, in Japan, risk transfers from foreign industries to the domestic manufacturing industry, and thence to the domestic financial industry.     

Aggregate net flows,inflows, and outflows of equity funds: The U.S. versus Japan

This paper investigates the aggregate cash inflows and outflows of domestic equity mutual funds as well as their net flows for the U.S. and Japan in an international context. The U.S. and Japan are two representative countries that have the largest and most developed fund markets in the Western world and Asia, respectively. For the purpose of analyzing dynamic relationships between market volatility, market return, and cash flow, this paper employs reduced-form and structural vector auto-regression (VAR) models. The analysis shows much different empirical findings between the U.S. and Japan, which can be explained by different culture and investment sentiments.     

基于多元随机波动模型方法的股指期货与现货关系研究——以亚洲五地金融市场为例

本文以多元随机波动模型检视亚洲五个主要金融市场股指期货与现货的报酬关系与波动溢出效应。实证发现,五地金融市场股指期货与现货之间皆存在双向的波动溢出效应。股指现货动态相关系数和波动持续系数均高,显示现货市场具有聚类的现象。此外,本研究进一步探讨股指期货与现货的联动和共同波动因子的关系,实证发现,股指期货与现货的波动关系是同时受到共同信息发布的影响。     

银行个体特征、外部融资成本和贷款行为的差异性——来自中国银行业微观数据的经验证据

本文运用了2007至2009年13家上市银行季度数据,考察了紧缩性政策下银行个体特征决定贷款行为差异性的机制。本文首先从我国当前银行体系制度约束的典型事实出发提出理论假说,然后建立引入银行个体特征的贷款决定模型,并进一步扩展为动态面板模型以对理论假说展开检验。研究表明,在以资产主导型的盈利模式,较为宽松的资本金补充机制和完善的银行间同业市场制度的约束下,银行的资产规模越小,资本充足率和流动性比率越高,可能会面临较高的外部融资成本,并且贷款下降幅度较大。反之,银行的资产规模越大,资本充足率和流动性比率越低,就会面临较低的外部融资成本,而贷款下降幅度较小。     

Labor income dynamics at business-cycle frequencies: Implications for portfolio choice

Young agents with low wealth-income ratios counter factually hold more stock than young, rich agents and old agents using the standard portfolio choice model with i.i.d. stock returns and labor income. This paper matches the countercyclical volatility and procyclical mean of U.S. labor income and finds that, consistent with U.S. data, young, poor agents now hold less stock than both young, rich agents and old agents, and no stock a large fraction of the time. Our results suggest that the predictability of labor income growth at a business-cycle frequency, particularly the countercyclical variation in volatility, plays an important role in a young agent's decision making about her portfolio's stock holding.     

National and international market integration in the 19th century: Evidence from comovement

This paper analyzes relative wheat price fluctuations to investigate market integration among 72 European and US cities. Applying a Dynamic Factor Model, which has seldom been used in market integration analysis, prices are decomposed into international, national and local components. Thus, national and international market integration are identified by a statistical restriction, and results for each single market are obtained. The first result is that globalization has accelerated faster in the first than in the second half of the 19th century, putting the post-1850 transport revolution into perspective. The USA integrated only later into the European market, discounting the role of the “grain invasion” for trade history. I also show that the European nations that turned protectionist after 1880 reduced the impact of foreign shocks, while free traders fully integrated into the international economy.     

Bifurcation analysis of Zellner's Marshallian Macroeconomic Model

The Marshallian Macroeconomic Model in Zellner and Israilevich (2005) provides a novel way to examine sectoral dynamics through the introduction of a dynamic entry/exit equation in addition to the usual demand and supply functions found in models of this class. In this paper we examine the possibility of cyclical behavior in the Marshallian Macroeconomic Model and investigate the existence of a Hopf bifurcation with respect to the parameter in the entry/exit equation.