Oil price shocks on Indian economy: evidence from Toda Yamamoto and Markov regime-switching VAR

The study investigates the dynamic impact of linear and non-linear specifications of oil price shocks on macroeconomic fundamentals for an oil-importing emerging economy – India – during the period March 1991 to January 2009. The paper deploys extended vector autoregressive (VAR) model of possibly integrated processes proposed by Toda and Yamamoto, which has its advantage of application irrespective of the variables being stationary or cointegrated. The study further estimates two-state Markov regime-switch VAR model to examine regime shift behaviour of the underlying variables and its relationship. The study finds that inflation and foreign exchange reserve are greatly impacted by oil price shocks. The study also confirms that the movement in oil price is exogenous with respect to the movement of India’s macroeconomic variables and the impact of oil price shocks are asymmetric in nature with negative price shocks having more pronounced effect than positive shocks.     

Trade Openness and Exchange Rate Regimes

The paper evaluates the net welfare gains of inflation targeting over a fixed exchange rate as a function of a country's trade openness, using a multisectoral structural model calibrated to Chile. For most calibrations with separable preferences, net welfare gains are increasing in trade openness. The reason is that in more open economies terms of trade shocks, which favor inflation targeting, become quantitatively more important, while price markup shocks in the imperfectly competitive nontradables sector, which favor exchange rate targeting, become less important. The most important exception is heavily indebted countries, where net welfare gains are decreasing in trade openness.     

北京奥运新闻标题辞格分析——以《体坛周报》为例

讲究修辞,恰当运用辞格是使新闻标题准确、鲜明、形象、生动、新颖、简洁,富有吸引力的有效方法。《体坛周报》北京奥运新闻标题不仅善用辞格,而且用出了自己的特色。文章从考察其辞格运用情况入手,简分析了其辞格运用的特色。     

Do Monetary Unions Make Economic Sense? Evidence from the Scandinavian Currency Union, 1873–1913

Popular propositions as to what constitutes a successful single currency area are examined by looking at the Scandinavian Currency Union (1873–1913) formed by Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Applying a frequently used indicator of the desirability of monetary union, we study the symmetry of country-specific structural shocks (measured net of the non-Scandinavian influence) in these three countries. It is found that country-specific shocks are not highly symmetric. This conclusion is also supported by the absence of clear-cut differences between the pattern of structural shocks in Belgium and structural shocks in the Scandinavian countries. This suggests that the three Scandinavian countries did not form an optimum currency area during the period 1873–1913.
JEL classification : F 15; F 33; N 13     

Multivariate GARCH Volatility Across Major Industry Groups of the Stock Exchange of Thailand

This paper examines the volatility on the time-series relations among the returns of industry group indices in the stock exchange of Thailand. Does volatility of the return series in one industry group indices necessarily lead to volatility in other industry group indices among the sample of eight industry groups？ This research will be valuable to investors utilizing a better understand diversification needed to get good returns. Daily data （2,116 days） are used in this paper covering data for the nine-year period from January 5, 2004, to August 31, 2012. Multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity was tested consisted of： （1） Diagonal VEC Model; （2） Baba Engle Kraft Kroner Models （BEKK Models）; （3） Vector Autoregressive Moving Average GARCH Model （VARMA GARCH Model）; and （4） Constant Conditional Correlation Model （CCC Model）. The findings indicated that the major result shows that, volatility in one industry group necessarily lead to volatility in other industry group indices in the opposite way and in the similar way.     

Oil Crisis,Market Reforms,and Human Welfare： An Econometric Analysis of the Australian Economy

As an active trader in international crude oil and petroleum product markets, Australia＇s human welfare is affected by oil crisis and contagion from the perspectives of economic growth, income inequality, and environmental sustainability. This paper investigates the impacts of oil price shocks upon Australia＇s gross domestic product （GDP） growth, Gini coefficients, and carbon dioxide emissions per capita from 1970 to 2012 with yearly frequency. Hypotheses concerning whether Australia＇s economic immunity against oil crisis is affected after the deregulation of oil market and whether endogenous oil price shocks account for more variations in human welfare than exogenous oil price shocks are tested. The methodologies include a theoretic model and a series of econometric tests. For the short-run dynamics, oil price is integrated into the model both linearly and non-linearly. Oil price shocks are categorized into exogenous and endogenous shocks. The conclusions are that inflated oil prices exert mainly non-linear negative impacts upon human welfare indicators and exogenous shocks induce endogenous shocks through labor price, Consumer Price Index （CPI）, interest rate, and exchange rate. For the long-run equilibrium, non-linear shocks＇ effects decay more slowly than linear shocks and the impacts of endogenous shocks last longer than that of exogenous shocks. Finally, oil market policies are evaluated and proposed.     

月度要闻

<正>陈德铭部长在京与欧委会贸易委员曼德尔森会谈2月24日,商务部部长陈德铭与欧委会贸易委员曼德尔森举行会谈。双方就落实第十次中欧领导人会晤的共识,筹备中欧经贸高层对话机制及中欧双边重要经贸议题交换了意见。     

Insuring Banks Against Liquidity Shocks: The Role of Deposit Insurance and Lending of Last Resort

Abstract.  It has long been recognized that banks' simultaneous provision of monitoring and liquidity services is advantageous but leaves them susceptible to liquidity shocks that may culminate in a system failure. Because a system failure is costly, this provides a rationale for adopting arrangements, including a lender of last resort and deposit insurance (DI), to insure banks against liquidity shocks. These arrangements have proven themselves very successful, but they have also been the source of problems. Researchers have identified some of the main sources of these problems and have suggested ways to improve the design of these arrangements, but there are still many issues that remain unaddressed. This paper reviews the literature on the two arrangements that most countries have adopted to insure banks against liquidity shocks, a lender of last resort and DI, and compares the design of these arrangements across countries. The paper ends with a brief summary of the key lessons learned about the design of these arrangements and the issues related to them that remain unaddressed.     

A portfolio approach to a cross-sectoral and cross-national investment strategy in transition economies

This paper takes a systematic look at the portfolio choice problem faced by Investment Banks or Funds investing in transition economies. We relate the performance of projects in the transition economies to the broader macroeconomic and international environments, which affect the project through their input-output structures and financial balance sheets. Among the macroeconomic determinanst of enterprise behaviour are productivity growth, real wage growth, movements in the international terms of trade, shocks to the relative price of traded and non-traded goods, domestic and foreign interest rates, currency depreciation and the rate of inflaction. We evaluate the attractiveness of alternative investment strategies and provisioning rules from the perspective of portfoio theory.