Jensen's alpha and the market‐timing puzzle

Theory predicts that market‐timing activities bias Jensen's alpha (JA). However, empirical studies have failed to find consistent evidence of this bias. We tackle this puzzle in a nested model analysis and show that the bias contains an exogenous market component that is unrelated to market‐timing skill. In a comprehensive empirical analysis of US mutual funds, we find that the timing‐induced bias in JA is mainly driven by this market component, which is uncorrelated with measured timing activities. Measures of total performance that allow for timing activities are virtually identical to JA, even if timing activities are present in the evaluated fund. Hence, we conclude that JA is a sufficient measure of total performance.     

Finite lifetimes,long-term debt and the fiscal limit

The U.S. faces exponentially rising entitlement obligations. I introduce a fiscal limit—a point where higher taxes are no longer a feasible financing mechanism—into a Perpetual Youth model to examine how intergenerational redistributions of wealth, the average duration of government debt, and entitlement reform impact the consequences of explosive government transfers. Three key findings emerge: (1) Growing government transfers cause more severe and more persistent stagflation than in representative agent models that do not capture intergenerational transfers of wealth; (2) A longer average duration of government debt pushes the financing of government liabilities into the future and reduces the short-run impacts of explosive transfers; (3) The time it takes the economy to rebound from a period of growing transfers increases exponentially with the number of years it takes to pass entitlement reform.     

Political budget cycles revisited: Testing the signalling process

A widespread view in the ‘political budget cycles’ literature is that incumbent politicians seek to influence voters’ perceptions of their competence and/or preferences by using the composition of the fiscal budget as a signalling tool. However, little is known about whether voters actually receive and perceive the signal in that way. To empirically assess the relevance of the signalling channel at the municipal level, we conducted a survey among 2000 representative German citizens in 2018. Only a small fraction of voters feel well-informed about the fiscal budget signal and use the information it contains to decide whether to vote for the incumbent politician. Persons paying more attention to the signal sent by local politicians live in smaller municipalities, are more satisfied with their economic situation, are more educated, and do not feel that they are being electorally manipulated. Our analysis raises doubt about the relevance of budget composition as a signalling mechanism for voters at the local level.     

住房公积金导致了不平等吗*——来自中国家庭金融调查的证据

住房公积金制度作为一项政策性住房金融制度，能够缓解家庭购房金融约束、稳定住房金融市场，成为实现“房住不炒”的重要政策工具。本文以2015年实施的住房公积金信贷宽松政策作为外生冲击，从财富效应的角度研究了住房公积金制度对不同家庭购房行为的影响。利用双重差分的实证研究方法，本文发现目前住房公积金主要促进了缴存家庭的多套房需求，加大了缴存家庭与非缴存家庭的住房财富差距。住房信贷政策的针对性与多样性急需提升。     

How much does tax erode fund excess returns?

We model the tax drag from active fund management based on reported monthly holdings of active equity funds. Tax drag erodes 65 percent of the 0.74 percent excess return in Broad Market funds, but only 21 percent of the 1.80 percent excess return in Small-Cap funds for Australian superannuation (pension) fund investors. Tax drag varies with investment style; market state, which is most detrimental during bull markets; and fund turnover. For high-income individual investors, tax drag is exacerbated to the extent that active management only generates meaningful after-tax excess return for Small-Cap funds of certain styles.     

Do fiscal rules cause better fiscal balances? A new instrumental variable strategy

This paper estimates the causal effect of fiscal rules on fiscal balances in a panel of 142 countries over the period 1985–2015. Our instrumental variable strategy exploits the geographical diffusion of fiscal rules across countries. The intuition is that reforms in neighboring countries may affect the adoption of domestic reforms through peer pressure and imitational effects. We find that the mere existence of fiscal rules correlates with lower deficits, but the positive link disappears when endogeneity is correctly addressed. However, when considering the strength of rules through a continuous index of fiscal rules’ design, we show that well-designed rules have a statistically significant impact on fiscal balances. We conduct several robustness tests and show that our results are generally robust and not affected by weak instrument problems.     

混合型基金绩效评估及驱动因素分析——基于DEA-Tobit模型

将随机选出的混合型基金作为研究样本,采用DEA-Tobit二阶段模型进行研究.首先利用数据包络模型对样本进行绩效评估,在此基础上,利用Tobit模型研究相关指标对于基金绩效的影响机制.结果表明,基金本身所面临的风险收益因素以及基金经理团队稳定性对于基金绩效均具显著影响.最后结合实证结果就提升中国基金绩效提出相关的建议.     

Pension plan solvency and extreme market movements: a regime switching approach

We develop and test a new approach to assess defined benefit (DB) pension plan solvency risk in the presence of extreme market movements. Our method captures both the ‘fat-tailed’ nature of asset returns and their correlation with discount rate changes. We show that the standard assumption of constant discount rates leads to dramatic underestimation of future projections of pension plan solvency risk. Failing to incorporate leptokurtosis into asset returns also leads to downward biased estimates of risk, but this is less pronounced than the time-varying discount rate effect. Further modifying the model to capture the correlation between asset returns and the discount rate provides additional improvements in the projection of future pension plan solvency. This reduces the perceived future risk of underfunding because of the negative correlation between interest rate changes and asset returns. These results have important implications for those with responsibility for balancing risk against expected return when seeking to improve the current poor funding positions of DB pension schemes.     

FINANCING URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE: KNOWNS,UNKNOWNS, AND A WAY FORWARD

Improved urban infrastructure is widely believed to be essential in facilitating economic growth and in improving the lives of urban dwellers, both in developed and in developing countries. This paper focuses on several dimensions of urban infrastructure finance: finance for major infrastructure improvements in major economic centers, finance for expansion of basic municipal services in secondary cities and towns, and intergovernmental systems for financing investments with impacts beyond jurisdictional limits. It reviews what is “known” about current practices in these areas, using international evidence and case studies and summarizing international best practices. It also indicates areas in which knowledge gaps remain. Despite these “unknowns,” there are avenues by which our understanding of infrastructure schemes can be enhanced, and some suggestions for a research agenda on financing urban infrastructure are offered in the concluding section.     

Fiscal and monetary policies in complex evolving economies

What is the most appropriate combination of fiscal and monetary policies in economies subject to banking crises and deep recessions? We study this issue using an agent-based model that is able to reproduce a wide array of macro- and micro-empirical regularities. Simulation results suggest that policy mixes associating unconstrained, counter-cyclical fiscal policy and monetary policy targeting employment is required to stabilise the economy. We also show that “discipline-guided” fiscal rules can be self-defeating, as they depress the economy without improving public finances. Finally, we find that the effects of monetary and fiscal policies become sharper as the level of income inequality increases.