中国货币政策传导机制分析——利率渠道的实证分析

市场经济条件下，在发达的货币市场和有效的金融机制基础上，货币政策主要通过利率、汇率、非货币资产和信贷传播四条途径影响宏观经济总量。本文重点通过对利率传导渠道的实证分析，说明中国由于利率管制等方面对货币政策传导的阻滞作用，中央银行的货币政策意图不能有效地指导实体经济，进而对疏导货币政策的传导机制提出对策建议。     

全球贸易自由化下的环境问题与环境政策

在全球贸易自由化的进程中，对环境既产生了正的影响，也产生了负的影响。但贸易不是产生环境问题的根源，所以不能靠制定与贸易有关的环境政策来解决，而应当在环境污染的发生地实施有关的环境政策，使“外部化”了的费用，纳入生产者的成本中，这才是真正的贸易比较优势。     

西方产业竞争政策的体系和目标

本文讨论美国、欧共体和日本的竞争政策的方法和体系的差异问题。美国的竞争政策侧重于追求消费者剩余和生产者剩余最大化 ,强调通过竞争的作用来达到这一经济效率目标。欧共体的竞争政策则强调在消费者福利的基础地位 ,通过协调竞争规则来促进欧共体经济一体化的进程。日本的反垄断法原本从西方吸收过来的 ,经过半个世纪的发展和演变 ,已经具有明显的日本特色 ,其基本功特征是对价格机制的运作缺乏信任 ,对规模经济神话的盲目崇拜和信任 ,结果是经常提倡和鼓励那种必然会导致寡占市场结构的兼并活动。     

Externalities,Cross-Sectoral Spillovers and Productivity Growth

We provide an interpretation of the productivity dynamics in the manufacturing sector based on the idea of the thick market externality à la Diamond. An econometric model has been estimated which allows to disentangle the long run effects of these trading externalities from those of internal economies of scale and of aggregate industry-level economies. The results obtained—based on a cointegrated system of non-linear-error-correction equations—confirm the hypothesis that the trading externality matters. Moreover, our findings point out that the emphasis generally posited both on internal and external economies of scale is not justified.     

Capital mobility,wage bargaining,and social insurance policies in an economic union

In a two-country model with mobile capital we analyse decentralized social insurance policies. These policies are a compromise between the preferences of workers and capital owners. Due to wage bargaining, worker-based social insurance contributions are borne by capital owners. These contributions affect the profitability of investment, and consequently the direction and size of capital flows. Countries will take account of these effects in determining social insurance policy. Noncooperative decision making results in tax competition and an underprovision of social insurance. In addition, increasing economic integration, represented by increasing capital mobility, could imply a divergence of social insurance levels in the two countries.     

The Determinants of Corporate Trade Credit Policies in a Bank‐dominated Financial Environment: the Case of Finnish Small Firms

This paper examines trade credit policies of small firms operating in a bank‐dominated environment (Finland). We find that creditworthiness and access to capital markets are important determinants of trade credit extended by sellers. The level of purchases is positively correlated with the level of accounts payable. Larger and older firms and firms with strong internal financing are less likely to use trade credit, whereas firms with a high ratio of current assets to total assets, and firms subject to loan restructurings use it more. Negative loan decisions by financial intermediaries increase and a close bank‐borrower relationship decreases the probability that a firm does not take advantage of trade credit discounts.     

Alternatives to blanket guarantees for containing a systemic crisis

This paper seeks to explain how policy actions undertaken at the outset of recent crises—particularly the issuance of extensive liquidity support and government guarantees—absorb off-budget fiscal resources and inappropriately constrain officials’ subsequent options for restructuring their country’s troubled financial and corporate sectors. Empirical evidence supports the commonsense view that the damage a crisis works on a country’s financial sector and on its real economy is lessened by taking market-mimicking actions that promptly estimate and allocate losses during the early stages of a crisis. The most important steps are to plan to call a timeout to separate hopelessly insolvent institutions from potentially viable ones and to provide haircuts, guarantees, and liquidity support in ways that protect taxpayers and avoid subsidizing insolvent institutions’ longshot gambles for resurrection.     

Zombie Board: Board Tenure and Firm Performance

We show that board tenure exhibits an inverted U‐shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance. The quality of corporate decisions, such as M&A, financial reporting quality, and CEO compensation, also has a quadratic relation with board tenure. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors’ on‐the‐job learning improves firm value up to a threshold, at which point entrenchment dominates and firm performance suffers. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a sample of firms in which an outside director suffered a sudden death, and find that sudden deaths that move board tenure away from (toward) the empirically observed optimum level in the cross‐section are associated with negative (positive) announcement returns. The quality of corporate decisions also follows an inverted U‐shaped pattern in a sample of firms affected by the death of a director.     

Analysing job creation effects of scaling up infrastructure spending in South Africa

In a first for South Africa, this article draws on literature on infrastructure productivity to model dynamic economy-wide employment impacts of infrastructure investment funded with different fiscal tools. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model, the South African investment plan is modelled, given the infrastructure externality. Alternative fiscal scenarios to finance the policy are modelled in the article. In the long run, unemployment decreases for all types of workers under one of the scenarios. In the short run, only elementary occupation workers benefit from a decrease in unemployment; for the rest, unemployment rises.