影子价格两种定义的统一性及其经济学含义

通过应用库恩-塔克定理,本文论证了线性规划对偶解和一般数学规划的拉格朗日乘子这两种影子价格定义的统一性。由于非线性规划比线性规划更具有普遍性,本文的结论为深入讨论影子价格的经济学意义提供了极大方便。完全竞争是影子价格等于机会成本和市场价格的充分条件。但在不完全竞争条件下,影子价格一般不等于机会成本和市场价格,也不代表资源的最优配置价格,它反映的只是企业的资源利用效率。     

公允价值计量模式研究

财务会计的核心问题之一是会计计量问题。从国际财务会计的发展动向看,由于对金融工具、特别是衍生工具的计量需要,公允价值计量模式备受关注。我国也高度关注公允价值理论和实务的发展,财政部颁布的新会计准则中,已将公允价值作为计量属性之一。但应用中出现的问题和阻力使公允价值计量成为财务会计的难题之一,本文对此进行了探讨。     

90年代以来劳动力价值问题研究述评

文章概述了90年代以来理论界在劳动力价值的构成范围、劳动力价值的实现与按劳分配、智力劳动力工资的理论解释问题上提出的许多新的观点并作出了简要的评论。随着社会主义市场经济的发展，还有许多问题，如：劳动力价格背离价值的理论问题，劳动力价格高于价值的现实问题，劳动力的特殊性对劳动力价值的影响等值得深入探讨，以使劳动价值论更好地指导社会主义市场经济实践。     

Asymmetric volatility in the foreign exchange markets

We examine the presence or absence of asymmetric volatility in the exchange rates of Australian dollar (AUD), Euro (EUR), British pound (GBP) and Japanese yen (JPY), all against US dollar. Our investigation is based on a variant of the heterogeneous autoregressive realized volatility model, using daily realized variance and return series from 1996 to 2004. We find that a depreciation against USD leads to significantly greater volatility than an appreciation for AUD and GBP, whereas the opposite is true for JPY. Relative to volatility on days following a positive one-standard-deviation return, volatility on days following a negative one-standard-deviation return is higher by 6.6% for AUD, 6.1% for GBP, and 21.2% for JPY. The realized volatility of EUR appears to be symmetric. These results are robust to the removal of jump component from realized volatility and the sub-samplings defined by structural-changes. The asymmetry in AUD, GBP and JPY appears to be embedded in the continuous component of realized volatility rather than the jump component.     

The amenity value of woodland in Great Britain: A comparison of economic estimates

Forests produce benefits over and above the revenue yielded from timber and other wood based products. Most important among these may be the recreational benefits for visitors, which have been examined in several studies. Total benefits for residents are perhaps more accurately captured in property values since, ceteris paribus, the price of a house reflects willingness to pay to live near an environmental amenity such as a forest to gain access to it, and also the amenity (non-use) value of the forest in so far as it creates a pleasant landscape. However, the total non-priced value of forestry is not the sum of HPM and ITCM benefit estimates. Recreational benefits will typically be less, and will be subsumed in the HPM estimates, since the hedonic price is partly induced by the value of recreational access.     

Forecasting Stock Index Futures Price Volatility: Linear vs. Nonlinear Models

The study examines the relative ability of various models to forecast daily stock index futures volatility. The forecasting models that are employed range from naïve models to the relatively complex ARCH-class models. It is found that among linear models of stock index futures volatility, the autoregressive model ranks first using the RMSE and MAPE criteria. We also examine three nonlinear models. These models are GARCH-M, EGARCH, and ESTAR. We find that nonlinear GARCH models dominate linear models utilizing the RMSE and the MAPE error statistics and EGARCH appears to be the best model for forecasting stock index futures price volatility.     

Initial Margin Requirements, Volatility, and the Individual Investor: Insights from Japan

Initial margin requirements represent: (1) a cost impediment to the wealth constrained investor and (2) a potential way of mitigating excessive volatility. However, prior empirical research finds that margins are not an effective tool in reducing volatility. We consider the possibility that margins primarily affect certain stocks and investors. Specifically, we test whether margins affect individuals who, as a group, we believe to be the investors most affected when margin requirements change. Our initial empirical tests, however, do not support this contention.     

Price Rigidity and the Selection of the Exchange Rate Regime

We evaluate and qualify Friedman's, 1953, “case for flexible exchange rates” in the presence of sticky prices in a two country model. We find that a flexible regime performs indeed better when the degree of nominal price rigidity is high while a bilateral peg does better when prices are fairly flexible. This result obtains independent of whether monetary policy is activistic or not and is mostly due to the negative relationship between employment and productivity shocks when prices are relatively sluggish (Gali, 1999). A unilateral peg tends to produce the lowest level of world welfare but it sometimes represents the best monetary arrangement for the pegger. JEL Classification Numbers: E32, E52, F33, F42     

Likelihood-based specification analysis of continuous-time models of the short-term interest rate

An extensive collection of continuous-time models of the short-term interest rate is evaluated over data sets that have appeared previously in the literature. The analysis, which uses the simulated maximum likelihood procedure proposed by Durham and Gallant (2002), provides new insights regarding several previously unresolved questions. For single factor models, I find that the volatility, not the drift, is the critical component in model specification. Allowing for additional flexibility beyond a constant term in the drift provides negligible benefit. While constant drift would appear to imply that the short rate is nonstationary, in fact, stationarity is volatility-induced. The simple constant elasticity of volatility model fits weekly observations of the three-month Treasury bill rate remarkably well but is easily rejected when compared with more flexible volatility specifications over daily data. The methodology of Durham and Gallant can also be used to estimate stochastic volatility models. While adding the latent volatility component provides a large improvement in the likelihood for the physical process, it does little to improve bond-pricing performance.     

Measuring Hospital Performance in the Presence of Quasi-Fixed Inputs: An Analysis of Québec Hospitals

This research proposes an approach to measure hospital performance based on a generalization of Banker and Morey (1986) and Førsund (1996). This approach considers quasi-fixed inputs explicitly, calculates their implicit cost, and quantifies returns to scale. The performance measure is decomposed into allocative and technical inefficiencies. Based on a very complete data set of Québec hospitals, we find that significant inefficiencies of up to 17% ($700 CAN million) could have been saved through improved performance. Postestimation analyses that include qualitative measures of care suggest that differences in performance are attributable to differences in management or unobservable quality of care rather than patient case mix.