A structural VAR business cycle model for a volatile small open economy

New Zealand is a small economy exposed to a volatile climate, relatively volatile international trade prices, and its exposure to international financial markets has increased markedly since economic reforms in the 1980s. This paper applies identification techniques suggested by Cushman and Zha [Cushman, D.O. and Zha T.A., 1997. Identifying monetary policy in a small open economy under flexible exchange rates, Journal of Monetary Economics, 39, pp. 433–448.], Zha [Zha, T.A., (1999). Block recursion and structural vector autoregression, Journal of Econometrics, 90, pp. 291–316.] and Dungey and Pagan [Dungey, M. and Pagan, A., 2000. A structural VAR model of the Australian economy, The Economic Record, 76, pp. 321–342.] to develop a large four block structural VAR model of the New Zealand business cycle to capture these features. The model reveals that climate and international trade price shocks have been more important sources of business cycles fluctuations than international or domestic financial shocks. Furthermore, the model does not encounter the price and exchange rate puzzles that have bedevilled attempts to identify monetary policy shocks in small open economy SVAR models.     

陕西中部地区粮食发展潜力与增产途径探讨

农业是国民经济的基础,粮食是基础的基础。陕西中部地区是重要的商品粮基地,探索其发展规律,分析其障碍因素,寻求其发展潜力,采取“一靠政策,二靠科技,三靠投入”的战略措施,对同类地区的粮食发展具有重要意义。     

Forest policy for sustainable commodity wood production: an examination drawing on the Australian experience

This paper presents a policy framework aimed at sustainability in Australia's wood-based industry. It commences with a historical overview to illuminate how culture and environment combined to fast-track Australia's plantation establishment. This maturing estate is now generating new choices about meeting wood needs and the future for native forests. The essence of the forest problem lies in the nature of commodity production where cost reduction, essential for the firm's survival, comes at the expense of native forest ecological integrity. The framework explicitly includes Australia's plantation wood resource that, by definition, is excluded from the ‘multiple use’ approach to managing native forests for wood production. Three systems are identified—native forests as self-regenerating ecosystems, wood production systems to meet human material needs and rural socio-economic systems—and a dual strategy developed to enhance their persistence capacity. This strategy combines shifting commodity wood production from native forests to plantations and adding value by domestic processing. The strategy works in a complementary way across the three systems, meaning that trade-off is avoided at this level. Native forest ecosystems cease to be threatened by the intensification pressures inherent in commodity production and relatively labour-intensive wood products manufacturers enhance their competitiveness by processing agriculturally grown wood. A highly integrated regional industry can enhance the economic viability of wood growing that helps buffer agricultural land against the price-cost squeeze of commodity production. The policy framework may not be economically efficient if, after removing government subsidies and props to the older and less competitive native forest based sector, further measures are required to stimulate investment in plantation processing. Under these conditions, a specific wood industry policy can be argued on environment grounds. Trade-off is between market interventionist industry policy and general economic efficiency—fundamentally different to the native forest conservation versus industry trade-off commonly understood.     

商品期货合约定价问题研究

在终期效用最大化约束条件下,参与商品期货市场的标的商品的生产商、加工商和投机者等三类交易主体存在最优期货头寸持有量.通过联立证券、商品期货和现货三个市场,一个商品期货合约定价的两期静态模型得以确立.商品期货合约价格由资本市场系统风险溢价和非市场风险溢价两个部分构成,其绝对值与参与商品期货交易的投机者数量呈反比,投机者数量越多,商品期货合约价格的绝对值越小,表明商品期货交易风险越小,商品期货价格越平稳,价格发现功能越突出.     

Trends in international commodity prices: Panel unit root analysis

The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavior of international commodity prices within the context of the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis. To this end, I utilize a panel unit root approach which is able to account for multiple structural breaks and cross-section dependency. The unit root analysis for 24 international commodity prices during the period 1900–2003 shows evidence in favor of the trend stationary process in the commodity prices. The results thereby imply that shocks to commodity prices are temporary in nature and tend to be corrected over time. The estimation of the trend stationary models indicates that the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis is not a universal phenomenon.     

Evidences for a structural change in the oil market before a financial crisis: The flat horizon effect

There are growing evidences that the commodity bubble in the 2000s had a major impact in the 2007–08 financial crisis. A salient feature of this commodity bubble was the dramatic increasing in the correlation of indexed commodities with oil price following the financialisation of the oil market. In this paper we suggest that, besides the growing demand from emerging economies and the following inflow of money from speculative traders, the introduction of the electronic platform could have had an important and underestimated effect on the oil market. Our analysis of the spot and futures oil prices at the NYMEX based on the Generalized Hurst Exponent confirms that the period 2004–2007 is pivotal in the oil market and corroborates the hypothesis that a structural change occurred in both markets. The evident decrease in multifractality suggests a flattening of the time horizon in financial oil markets and the coexistence of long-termism and short-termism. This structural change could partially explain the observed increase of correlations between commodities and oil price.     

Multiscale information transmission between commodity markets: An EMD-Based transfer entropy network

In the context of the growing financialisation of commodity markets, debate on how they interact with each other has returned to centre stage. The main motivation of this study is to research the price interactions of international commodities from the perspective of information transmission by proposing an innovative transfer entropy network based on empirical mode decomposition. We also identify core commodities with the strongest transmission intensity in information transmission networks at different time scales. The empirical results demonstrate that the network transmission structure and core varieties change based on the time scale. In the short term, metals have the strongest transmission intensity, whereas, in the medium and long term, the energy sector has the strongest transmission intensity. These findings should allow regulators and market participants to better understand the essential characteristics and internal structures of international commodity markets.     

Testing the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis since 1650: Evidence from panel techniques that allow for multiple breaks

In this paper, we re-examine two important aspects of the dynamics of relative primary commodity prices, namely the secular trend and the short run volatility. To do so, we employ 25 series, some of them starting as far back as 1650 and powerful panel data stationarity tests that allow for endogenous multiple structural breaks. Results show that all the series are stationary after allowing for endogenous multiple breaks. Test results on the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis, which states that relative commodity prices follow a downward secular trend, are mixed but with a majority of series showing negative trends. We also make a first attempt at identifying the potential drivers of the structural breaks. We end by investigating the dynamics of the volatility of the 25 relative primary commodity prices also allowing for endogenous multiple breaks. We describe the often time-varying volatility in commodity prices and show that it has increased in recent years.     

众筹融资与科技型企业成长契合性研究

众筹平台通过机制设计实现了信息、资金等要素供给和需求的契合，为化解科技型企业融资难题提供了一种新选择。对该契合机理进行分析，并运用离散选择模型，检验机制设计对项目成败的影响程度。研究结果表明：合理设置融资目标、有效控制信息质量能显著提高众筹成功机率。最后，为保证众筹融资能够持续为科技型企业服务，从平台、监管和政府3个层面提出了对策建议。     

Do exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects on the trade balance? Evidence from U.S.–Korea commodity trade

Previous studies of the effects of exchange rate changes on Korea’s trade balance have assumed symmetry between currency depreciation and appreciation. In this paper, we distinguish between the two to show that the effects at the industry level are in fact asymmetrical in most industries for Korea’s bilateral trade with the U.S. We employ an auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach using quarterly data for the period 1989–2014 for the 79 3-digit industries in which trade between Korea and the U.S. took place. Overall, our model incorporating differentiated responses for appreciation versus depreciation reveals a more significant impact of the exchange rate on commodity trade between Korea and the U.S. than a more standard model that imposes symmetry.