Into the Mussa puzzle: monetary policy regimes and the real exchange rate in a small open economy

Industrial countries moving from fixed to floating exchange rate regimes experience dramatic rises in the variability of the real exchange rate. This evidence, forcefully documented by Mussa [Nominal exchange regimes and the behavior of real exchange rates: evidence and implications. Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 25 (1986) 117], is a puzzle because it is hard to reconcile with the assumption of flexible prices. This paper lays out a dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy that combines nominal price rigidity with a systematic behavior of monetary policy able to approximate a continuum of exchange rate regimes. A version of the model with complete exchange rate pass-through is broadly consistent with Mussa’s findings. Most importantly, this holds independently of the underlying source of fluctuations in the economy, stressing the role of the nominal exchange rate regime per se in affecting the variability of the real exchange rate. However, only a model featuring incomplete exchange rate pass-through can account for a broader range of exchange rate statistics. Finally there exist ranges of values for either the degree of openness or the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods for which the baseline model is also consistent with the empirical insensitivity of output volatility to the type of exchange rate regime, as documented by Baxter and Stockman [Journal of Monetary Economics 23 (1989) 377].     

Does corporate philanthropy exist?: business giving to the arts in the U.K.

This paper addresses the question of the existence of corporate philanthropy. It proposes a framework for analysing corporate philanthropy along the dimensions of business/society interest and primary/secondary stakeholder focus. The framework is then applied in order to understand business involvement with the arts in the U.K. A unique dataset of 60 texts which describe different firms' involvement with the Arts is analysed using formal content analysis to uncover the motivations for business involvement. Cluster analysis is then used in order to identify motivational groupings. Two broad types of involvement are identified – advertisers and legitimators. Only in one case of the 60 is there the potential to observe pure altruism. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it provides a clear framework to understand the motivations for corporate giving and applies this using empirical data. Secondly, this research finds little evidence, if at all, of corporate philanthropy in the context of firms giving to the Arts in the U.K.     

Protection and jobs: explaining the structure of trade barriers across industries

This paper develops a model of protection and tests it using US data, including new protection measures. We find that protection in an industry increases with its employment but not with its level of output. We also find that lobbying entails significant transactions costs. We have limited evidence that industry characteristics, such as the number of firms and geographical concentration, affect protection. Nested tests imply that assuming lump-sum rebating of import revenues or rents is justified. The results also suggest that US policy makers weight a dollar of campaign contributions about 15% more heavily than a dollar of national income.     

Trade and the distribution of human capital

We develop a two-country, two-sector model of trade where the only difference between the two countries is their distribution of human capital endowments. We show that even if the two countries have identical aggregate human capital endowments the pattern of trade depends on the properties of the two human capital distributions. We also show that the two distributions of endowments also completely determine the effects of trade on income inequality. We also look at a simple majority voting model. It turns out autarky and free trade with and without compensation may be the voting outcome.     

Endogenous political organization and the value of trade agreements

In a bargaining model of endogenous protection, I introduce fixed costs of political-organization that need to be incurred by capitalists prior to actual lobbying. Unlike Maggi and Rodriguez-Clare [J. Pol. Econ. 106(3) (1998) 575] intersectoral capital mobility is disallowed. Nevertheless, I am still able to obtain their main result that a government with low bargaining power vis-à-vis the import-competing lobby precommits to a free-trade agreement. Further, with high fixed organizational costs, the government prefers to stay out of such agreements. Its maximum bargaining power consistent with signing a trade agreement has an inverse-V-shaped relationship with respect to the size of fixed costs.     

绿色贸易措施的政治博弈

随着贸易自由化和全球经济一体化,世界各国出于维护本国国际竞争比较优势战略目标和实现贸易与环境协调发展的客观需要,以可持续发展为口号,以保护环境和人类健康为目的或借口,以产品标准、环境标志、绿色包装、贸易制裁等为手段的绿色贸易措施正在成为国际社会特别是发达国家越来越频繁使用的新的国际贸易保护手段。形形色色的绿色贸易措施正在向系统化、制度化和国际化方向演进。本文通过对近期一些国外经济学家的相关文献回顾,对绿色贸易措施产生的政治博弈过程进行简单的综述,为我国参与新一轮的WTO谈判提供一些理论参考。     

AID US TO WIN THE ELECTIONS: FOREIGN AID AND VOTER TURNOUT

We use an innovative procedure to determine the effect of foreign aid on institutions of governance. We use voter turnout as an indicator variable which allows us to identify whether political competition in a country is based on private goods, such as vote‐buying, or on public goods. We suggest that the marginal effect of foreign aid on voter turnout depends on the wider underlying institutional setting. Contrary to popular belief, the theoretical model implies that a higher voter turnout in response to foreign aid can be undesirable when the increase is a consequence of vote‐buying in the electoral campaign. The empirical evidence we examine is consistent with private‐goods political competition, i.e., political parties use foreign aid for vote‐buying and similar electoral tactics, particularly when the underlying institutions are sufficiently bad. This is consistently estimated across specifications which address a range of endogeneity sources.     

An accounting revolution? The financialisation of standard setting

This paper analyses the political-economic content of the recent ‘revolutionary’ shift in financial accounting rules for listed companies, specifically the rise of IFRS and fair value. It connects this shift to the socio-economic changes that are currently being discussed in the literature on financialisation, e.g. the rise of shareholder value and the proprietary view of the firm. Two ideal-typical accounting systems are constructed on the basis of normative accounting theory and extant standards – historical cost accounting (HCA) and fair value accounting (FVA). The ‘accounting revolution’ of the past 10–15 years can be understood as a qualitative shift from HCA to FVA. It is further argued that these ideal-typical systems are related to different circuits or forms of capital – productive and money capital respectively – and to the particular perspective that these afford on the, capitalist firm. Inasmuch as financialisation is related to the circuit of money capital one can make sense of the rise to prominence of FVA, which represents the dominance of a financial view of the firm in the field of financial accounting. Throughout this paper, however, the limits to financialisation are also highlighted and traced back to the ineradicable manifestation of the circuit of productive capital.     

Return prediction and stock selection from unidentified historical data

The experimental approach was applied to test the value of historical return series in technical prediction. Return sequences were randomly drawn cross-sectionally and over time from S&P500 records and participants were asked to predict the 13th realization from 12 preceding returns. The hypothesis that predictions (nominal or real) are randomly assigned to historical sequences is rejected in permutation tests, and the best-stock portfolios by experimental predictions significantly outperform the worst-stock portfolios in joint examination of mean return and volatility. The participants dynamically adjust their predictions to the observed series and switch from momentum riding to contrarian extrapolation when recent trends get extreme. The implicit tuning of predictions to specific series captures variabilities that could not be inferred by schematic statistical forecasting.     

孟子思想政治教育理论探析

孟子思想政治教育理论是一种伟大的思想资源,它以独有的本质特色证明了其在历史发展过程中的存在价值.通过阐述孟子思想政治教育理论的形成背景、目标、内容,特别是将《孟子》的“推施仁政,保民而王”的理念用于当前的思想政治教育,分析了孟子思想政治教育理论对现代社会思想政治教育和伟大中国梦实现的历史和现实意义.