A theory of collusion with partial mutual understanding

Unlawful collusion is when firms have a mutual understanding to coordinate their behavior for the purpose of achieving a supracompetitive outcome. Given the legal focus on mutual beliefs, this paper explores the role of mutual beliefs in producing collusion. Focusing on price leadership, firms are assumed to commonly believe that price increases will be at least matched but lack any shared understanding about who will lead, when they will, and at what prices. Sufficient conditions are derived which ensure that supracompetitive prices emerge. However, price is bounded below the maximal equilibrium price.     

外汇储备增长对我国物价影响的实证分析

2007年以来,我国物价水平出现持续攀升的势头。2008年1～4月份,居民消费价格水平同比上涨8.2%。与物价上涨相对应的是我国外汇储备水平创出了历史新高,截至2008年6月末,我国外汇储备余额达1.8万亿美元。那么,外汇储备增长与物价上涨之间有没有直接的联系?本文从短期和长期两个视角,理论和实证相结合探讨了我国外汇储备增长对物价上涨的影响及其作用机制。     

递增阶梯定价:一个综述

作为较独特的非线性定价,递增阶梯定价使消费者预算凸边界非光滑,进而导致某些消费者消费决策异度集中而难以甄别。此特征致使递增阶梯定价机制的理论和实证研究非常复杂。鉴于公共资源的特殊性,公共资源定价需要合理地兼顾效率、社会公正和成本完全补偿原则。在多元化目标角度上,本文初步验证了递增阶梯定价机制的最优性,虽然此最优性受制于接入率和特征信息等假定。递增阶梯定价下的需求设定趋于统一但估计方法却趋于复杂化和多样化。关于递增阶梯定价下的(价格和收入)需求效应明显与否的问题存在完全相反的结果,实证研究和理论对其不一致性给出多种解释和探讨。这种差异性可能由于消费者对价格、价格设计者对家庭特征等信息不完全,还可能因为各实证分析结果中的时间、市场或产品特征维度含义差异所致。基于多元化目标和资源特性的递增阶梯定价机制的设计和执行问题,将成为递增阶梯定价理论研究发展的一大方向。     

Pick a card: Price ranges and gift card choice

Gift cards are wildly popular with consumers. Vast assortments of gift cards are available at many regional and national retail stores (e.g., grocery, convenience, home improvement). The present research examines consumer reactions to price range amounts displayed on gift cards (e.g., $20-$100; $25-$250). Commonly affixed to gift cards to convey possible purchase loads, price ranges appear to serve as contextual information for a desired purchase load as a gift that can affect beliefs about the recipient's views of the gift card i.e., metaperceptions. Specifically, these metaperceptions tend to be more negative for a gift card displaying a price range when the desired purchase load is the lower bound rather than the upper bound. These beliefs can, in turn, affect gift card choice, but only when social risk is applicable. Four studies provide support for the theory.     

Information effects of dividends: Evidence from the Hong Kong market

The literature has suggested that earnings and earnings forecasts provide stronger signals than dividends about future performance of a firm. We test the information effects of simultaneous announcement of earnings and dividends in the Hong Kong market, distinguished by three interesting features (concentrated family-shareholdings, low corporate transparency, and no tax on dividends). Our results show significant share price reactions to unexpected earnings and dividend changes, but dividends appear to play a dominant role over earnings in pricing, a result contrary to findings in the literature. The signaling hypothesis works primarily for firms with earning increases, while the maturity hypothesis works mainly for firms with earnings declines.

Variation diminishing property of densities of uniform generalized order statistics

Let f _*,r , r ≥ 1, denote the density function of rth uniform generalized order statistics as defined by Kamps (1995) or Cramer and Kamps (2003). We prove the following variation diminishing property: the number of zeros in (0,1) of any linear combination does not exceed the number of sign changes in the sequence (a ₁, . . . ,a _r ). This result is applied to study monotonicity and convexity properties of f _*,r .     

银行价格竞争、融资约束与企业研发投资——基于“中介效应”模型的实证研究

近年来我国利率市场化改革积极推进,实体经济发展积极向创新驱动转型,一个亟须研究厘清的关键问题是,银行业竞争如何驱动企业创新活动？本文关注银行价格竞争对企业创新的影响,以2013—2018年沪深两市的上市企业为样本,采用“中介效应”因果分析模型,实证检验了银行价格竞争对企业研发投资的影响,并识别出以融资约束为中介渠道的作用机制。研究发现,银行价格竞争不仅会提高银行的风险容忍度,直接增加R&D投资的信贷供给意愿,而且还会通过降低贷款价格和增加贷款可得性来缓解企业整体的融资约束,间接促进企业创新活动。这一机制在解除贷款利率管制之后以及在民营企业层面体现得更加明显。本文的研究结果对于深化金融市场化改革、改善金融服务实体经济效果以及实施经济创新驱动发展战略,具有明确的政策启示。     

国际原油价格波动对中国宏观经济影响的重新考察

本文对国际原油价格波动对中国宏观经济的影响进行了重新考察。研究发现:国际原油价格通过影响采购经理人指数进而影响中国主要宏观经济变量,采购经理人指数的引入,完善了国际原油价格波动对中国宏观经济影响的时序传导机制,从而提高了实证结果的显著性。实证结果显示:国际原油价格上涨对中国消费者价格指数有正向影响,但这一结果并不显著;同时国际原油价格上涨并未改变中国经济增长的总体态势。VEC实证模型的估计结果表明:国际原油价格与中国宏观经济变量之间存在显著的协整关系,而且国际原油价格波动对中国宏观经济的影响存在滞后效应。     

不确定性下的房地产价格波动与货币政策反应:一个文献综述

本文就货币政策如何应对房地产泡沫的研究文献进行述评。国内外学者在该领域的争论集中表现为间接反应观、事后反应观与直接干预观,已有文献对货币政策框架进行修正以应对房价异常波动,并且学者们就金融监管的作用已经达成理论共识。本文的主要结论是:政策环境中的不确定性是影响政策选择的决定性因素,在不确定性条件下,货币政策应该综合运用直接干预与间接反应方式应对房价泡沫;货币政策与金融审慎监管的协调配合有助于实现经济金融稳定的目标;运用房贷政策调控房价泡沫更具政策效力。目前,国内学者的理论研究基础还十分薄弱,缺乏结合中国经济转型背景下特定制度性因素的现实考察,另外,将研究视角拓展为开放经济条件是值得进一步研究的方向。     

通货膨胀与物价目标

针对近年来全国各界对通货膨胀的关切和“物价总水平基本稳定”的提法,本文认为有些认识和思路值得反复理清,包括：如何界定通货膨胀及如何看待通货膨胀;通货膨胀与经济增长如何匹配;中国可能期望的,也是难以避免的通货膨胀率是什么水平。文章提出治理通货膨胀要服从核心任务,应建立现实的通货膨胀观念,并在对保持物价总水平基本稳定的提法进行多视角诠释的基础上,给出了控制物价的几点政策建议。