Post-euro EU and US interest rates and foreign exchange rates: Are they in harmony or in disarray?

This paper focuses on: (1) how a select set of financial and economic factors could set the path for interest rates and foreign exchange rates, and (2) whether the resultant realized interest and exchange rates would be in harmony or in disarray. Using post-euro data for the EU and the US, an array of monetary rules is examined. In particular, the paper investigates whether the original and the extended Taylor rules provide an explanation of the dynamics of the EU monetary system since the inception of the euro. Our findings indicate that the EU and the US monetary responses are not the same and that exchange rates play a significant role.     

Across-the-Curve Credit Spread Indices

We design a novel across-the-curve credit spread index, AXI, a measure of the recent cost of wholesale unsecured debt funding for publicly listed US bank holding companies and commercial banks. AXI, a benchmark for bank lending and risk management, is the weighted average of credit spreads for unsecured debt instruments with maturities ranging from overnight to five years, with weights that reflect both transaction and issuance volumes. We provide illustrative output of the bond-based component of AXI. By widening coverage to include all corporate debt issuers, we also build a financial conditions index (FXI).     

资本渐进开放下我国与国际利率的联动分析——基于中国和美国的比较

一般来说,利率在国家间的传导主要有两条渠道:国际贸易间的传导和资本自由流动下的利率平价机制。本文采取分阶段考察,通过建立计量经济学模型,利用单位根检验和协整分析加以验证,发现在资本项目部分开放后,中美利率开始具有联动效应,作用方式又具有自身的特点。目前资本项目开放度不够高是阻碍我国同世界利率联动的主要原因。     

What lies beneath—Negative interest rates and bank lending

We study the transmission of negative interest rates to bank lending around an unexpected policy rate cut into deep negative territory by the Swiss National Bank (−0.75%). We exploit a rich data set on transaction-level corporate loans matched with bank balance sheet data. We find that banks more affected by negative interest rates offer looser lending terms and lend more than other banks. This result is consistent with the risk-taking channel, where a lower policy rate spurs bank risk-taking to maintain profits. The result implies that, even in such deep negative territory, the reversal rate has not yet been hit.     

中国A股市场规模溢价与价值溢价成因研究

金融理论界对规模溢价与价值溢价现象的困惑与争论由来已久，对上述现象的理论解释可以归纳为传统范式与行为范式。前者认为，溢价是对高风险的补偿，后者则认为，溢价源是对过度反应的纠正。为了弄清溢价形成的真正原因，本文对1993——2003年中国深沪A股进行了实证分析，研究发现：中国A股市场存在规模与价值溢价现象，但上述两种范式的解释均存在一定的局限性。本文借鉴展望理论的参照依赖原理，提出相对盈利的概念，并对溢价现象予以新的解释。     

新古典生产函数的质疑与货币量值的生产函数

新古典理论以生产函数和效用函数为基础,建立了技术关系的稀缺资源有效配置理论,其核心是表明商品和要素稀缺性的相对价格.生产函数在微观尚可应用,但并不能用于解释总量经济和经济增长与波动问题.尤其是总供给完全取决于实物生产函数的投入产出关系,这与总需求分析所采用的货币支出是不协调的.货币量值的生产函数的推导表明,总供给只是企业的货币成本函数而不联系到技术上的投入产出关系,而所有的国民收入核算中的货币量值都只是表明人们经济关系的名义变量而与实物的技术关系或生产函数是完全无关的.     

上市公司主业鲜明率的修正方法

指出了常用的主业鲜明率在实际使用中遇到的问题,主要问题是计算值会出现无意义的结果,并且对真实主营业务比率的反映会有不真实的情况,提出了修正的方法,即通过修正企业经营总体规模的方法进行修正,最后通过实际计算证明修正结果消除了无意义的结果,也更加真实地反映了主营业务的比率.     

试析我国金融资产收益变动对寿险保费的影响

在金融资产选择理论框架下，利用时间序列研究了金融资产长期、短期波动对寿险保费的主要影响。并从居民投资角度建立了寿险与部分金融资产间的ECM模型，结果发现：储蓄增长对保费短期贡献大于长期贡献，加息会在短期内刺激保费增加但长期内有抑制作用；国债和股票受结构性因素影响未表现出与寿险保费有长期均衡关系。寿险公司在短期内应把部分储蓄转化为保费；在长期内应拓展新营销渠道，加快寿险产品和保障型产品的开发。     

Declining Discount Rates: The Long and the Short of it

The last few years have witnessed important advances in our understanding of time preference and social discounting. In particular, several rationales for the use of time-varying social discount rates have emerged. These rationales range from the ad hoc to the formal, with some founded solely in economic theory while others reflect principles of intergenerational equity. While these advances are to be applauded, the practitioner is left with a confusing array of rationales and the sense that almost any discount rate can be justified. This paper draws together these different strands and provides a critical review of past and present contributions to this literature. In addition to this we highlight some of the problems with employing DDRs in the decision-making process, the most pressing of which may be time inconsistency. We clarify their practical implications, and potential pitfalls, of the more credible rationales and argue that some approaches popular in environmental economics literature are ill-conceived. Finally, we illustrate the impact of different approaches by examining global warming and nuclear power investment. This includes an application and extension of Newell and Pizer [‘Discounting the benefits of climate change mitigation : how much do uncertain rates increase valuations?’ Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 46 (2003) 52] to UK interest rate data.     

The Effects of Public Ownership and Regulatory Independence on Regulatory Outcomes

We examine the effects of public ownership and regulatory agency independence on regulatory outcomes in EU telecommunications. Specifically, we study regulated interconnect rates paid by entrants to incumbents. We find that public ownership of the incumbent positively affects these interconnect rates, and suggest that governments influence regulatory outcomes in favor of incumbents in which they are substantially invested. However, we also find that the presence of institutional features enhancing regulatory independence from the government mitigates this effect. In order to study regulatory independence, we introduce a new cross-country time-series database—the European Union Regulatory Institutions (EURI) Database. This database describes the development of institutions bearing on regulatory independence and quality in telecommunications in the 15 founding EU member states from 1997 to 2003 *We thank Laurent Pipitone for superb research assistance. Geoff Edwards thanks the Sasakawa Foundation and the Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization at the Haas School of Business for generous financial assistance, and London Business School for non-financial support. Leonard Waverman thanks the Global Communications Consortium for support