西部地区财政科技支出的经济增长效应

科学技术是第一生产力,科技投入无论是在推动经济增长还是促进社会发展方面,都有着举足轻重的重要作用。通过协整检验、格兰杰因果检验等方法,研究2006年-2020年西部地区财政科技支出对区域经济增长的作用。实证结果表明,西部地区的财政科技支出与经济增长之间存在着长期的均衡关系。因此,应进一步加大及合理安排政府财政科技资金的投入,加强资金监管,提高资金使用效率,更好地促进经济发展与社会进步。     

The growth of patenting in New Zealand, 1860–99

Patent applications by male New Zealand inventors sharply increased in the early 1880s after initial official fees were reduced, and the requirement to advertise applications in newspapers abolished. Increasingly, however, applications lapsed, while applications by unskilled workers remained low. Non-fee costs were crucially important, with the 1870 reduction in fees failing to increase patenting, as hoped, because the doubling of mandatory advertising costs negated the fees reduction. Patenting by overseas inventors was less affected by fees, and steadily grew. Only one application was by an indigenous Māori person, while even in 1899 women made just 2.5% of applications.     

Differing behaviours of forecasters of UK GDP growth

The literature suggests that the dispersion of agents’ forecasts of an event flows from heterogeneity of beliefs and models. Using a data set of fixed event point forecasts of UK GDP growth by a panel of independent forecasters published by HM Treasury, we investigate three questions concerning this dispersion: (a) Are agent’s beliefs randomly distributed or do agents fall into groups with similar beliefs? (b) as agents revise their forecasts, what roles are played by their previous and consensus forecasts? and (c) is an agent’s private information of persistent value? We find that agents fall into four clusters, a large majority, a few pessimists, and two idiosyncratic agents. Our proposed model of forecast revisions shows agents are influenced positively by a change in the consensus forecast and negatively influenced by the previous distance of their forecast from the consensus. We show that the forecasts of a minority of agents significantly lead the consensus.     

Does US news impact Asian emerging markets? Evidence from nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test

This paper aims to analyze whether US news on inflation and unemployment causes returns and volatility of seven emerging Asian stock markets from 1994 to 2014, by employing the causality-in-quantile approach. We find evidence that US news affect returns and/or volatility of all the seven stock markets considered, with these effects clustered around the tails of the conditional distribution of returns and volatility when they are either in bear or bull modes. In general, our results highlight the importance of modeling nonlinearity and studying entire conditional distributions of stock returns and volatility to draw correct inferences.     

Public or Private Sector Wage Leadership? An International Perspective*

Whether a government acts as a wage leader, placing pressure on private‐sector wages (more open to competition), or whether it plays a passive role and merely follows wage negotiations in the private sector, there are important implications for macroeconomic development, particularly in small open economies and/or countries that are members of a monetary union, such as those of the European Monetary Union. With the notable exception of the case of Sweden, opinion on this issue is still divided. In this paper, we look at public‐ and private‐sector wage interactions from an international perspective (18 OECD countries). We focus on the causal two‐way relationship between public and private wage setting, confirming that the private sector, on the whole, appears to have a stronger influence on the public sector, rather than vice versa. However, we also find evidence of feedback effects from public wage setting, which affect private‐sector wages in a number of countries. When the private sector takes the lead on wages, there are few feedback effects from the public sector, while public wage leadership is typically accompanied by private‐sector feedback effects.     

A sneeze in the U.S., a cough in Japan,but pneumonia in Taiwan? An application of the Markov-Switching vector autoregressive model

This paper examines the lead–lag relationships among the output of Taiwan, Japan and the U.S. Three testing methods are employed: the traditional linear Granger causality test, Hiemstra and Jones' [Hiemstra, C., Jones, J.D., 1994. Testing for linear and nonlinear Granger causality in the stock price-volume relation. Journal of Finance 49, 1639–1664] nonlinear Granger causality test and Warne's [Warne, A., 2000. Causality and regime inference in a Markov-S switching VAR, Working Paper no. 118, Sveriges Riksbank, Stockholm.] Granger causality test under the Markov-Switching model. We find that the causal ordering is unclear and depends on the model we used. Because Markov-Switching model imposes few restrictions in estimation, we tend to use its estimated results but bear in mind that the evidence is sensitive. First, the common shock hypothesis is found that most probably exists between Taiwan and the U.S. Next, we conclude that Japan tends to lead Taiwan's output, to a certain extent. Last, there is no causal ordering between the U.S. and Japan economies.     

基于VAR模型的我国铜锌期货价格引导关系实证研究

铜、锌期货是大宗金属期货的重要品种,在期货投资市场上广受追捧。研究通过构建VAR模型,运用格兰杰因果检验,分析了近远月铜、锌期货价格之间相互引导关系,模型实证结论认为远月期铜、锌期货价格之间具有显著的相互引导关系,为期货市场上各类型投资者提供政策指引。     

Information flow between prediction markets,polls and media: Evidence from the 2008 presidential primaries

Are the forecast errors of election-eve polls themselves forecastable? We present evidence from the 2008 Democratic Party nomination race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton showing that the answer is yes. Both cross-sectional and time series evidence suggests that market prices contain information about election outcomes that polls taken shortly before the contests do not. Conversely, election surprises relative to polls too Granger cause subsequent price movements. We then investigate whether the additional information in prices could come from the media coverage of these campaigns, and uncover a set of complex relationships between pollster’s surprise, price movements, and various aspects of media coverage. Prices anticipate the balance and content of media coverage, but not the volume. On the other hand, it is the volume of media coverage, not the balance or content, that anticipates the surprise element in election outcomes. Moreover, Granger causality between prices and election surprises barely changes after controlling for media coverage, and causality from media volume to surprises persists too after controlling for price movements. Taken together, the results suggest that both prices and the volume of media coverage contain independent election-relevant information that is not captured in polls.     

江苏自主创新能力与经济增长关系的实证研究

在分析江苏自主创新现状的基础上,运用协整检验、误差修正模型和Granger因果检验等计量方法,对江苏自主创新能力与经济增长之间的关系进行了实证研究。结果表明:二者之间存在长期稳定的均衡关系,自主创新能力是江苏经济增长的Granger原因。江苏应采取相关对策,促进自主创新能力的提升。     

Public Revenue‐Expenditure Nexus in South Africa: Are there Asymmetries?

This paper re‐examines the government revenue and expenditure relationship in South Africa using Enders and Siklos' Threshold adjustment and Granger causality tests. The paper allows for structural breaks in the unit root and cointegration tests. The results indicate the absence of any asymmetries in both the threshold autoregression and momentum threshold autoregression specifications of adjustments in the South African's budgeting process. The estimated symmetric error‐correction models provide support for the fiscal synchronization hypothesis of government revenues and expenditures for long‐run and short‐run dynamic equilibrium. These findings indicate that the South African fiscal authorities should try to maintain or even improve the control of their fiscal policy instruments to sustain the prudent budgetary process.