发展我国农村社会养老保险制度的几点思考

长期以来,我国城乡养老社会保障呈现了明显的二元化特征.笔者认为,应该从我国家庭户规模的变化、未来人口发展趋势、经济体制改革以及非经济因素等方面来全面考虑发展农村养老社会保险制度的意义、面临的挑战及改革思路.要根据各地经济发展水平不同建立分地区、分层次的农村养老社会保障制度,必须尽快将农村养老社会保障制度建设纳入法制化轨道,并且应推广发达地区的成功经验,继续进行试点工作.     

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.     

The Political Economy of Deposit Insurance

This paper uses a political economy framework to analyze cross-country differences in deposit insurance coverage. It finds supporting evidence of the significance of private interest theories in explaining coverage of deposit insurance. Deposit insurance coverage is significantly higher in countries where poorly capitalized banks dominate the market and in countries where depositors are poorly educated. The analysis does not find that coverage is significantly related to political-institutional variables, such as the degree of democracy or restraints on the executive, or to proxies for the general level of institutional development, such as per capita income or property rights. These results provide evidence in support of the private interest view, according to which risky banks lobby for extensive coverage.     

A multilateral approach to examining the comovements among major world equity markets

This study investigates the comovement in stock indices among major developed markets, where Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices are employed for the purposes of the study. We employ a model that accommodates multilateral international impacts on equity index movements. The empirical results reveal the existence of significant international transmission effects among these major world markets, both in terms of returns and volatility, and mostly in a positive direction. The U.S. market, as expected, is the leading market in the sense that it has the most pervasive and significant impact on all markets across continents. However, the U.S. market exhibits a different relationship with European markets from that with Asia-Pacific markets. The evidence also suggests that strong regional transmission effects exist. A further investigation using the extended model reveals that the linkages between U.S. and European markets are driven by positive global common forces and by negative international competitive effects. On the other hand, the U.S. and Asian markets are linked through positive global common forces and positive international contagion effects. The United States, Canada, and the U.K. are the three markets that still demonstrate contagion influence over countries outside its own region. The Asia-Pacific markets are more susceptible to contagion effects. Finally, it is interesting to find that Japanese market performance became more contagious toward other markets during the Asian financial crisis period.     

Social networks in the global banking sector

We show that banks with shared social connections partner more often in the global syndicated loan market and that central banks in the network play dominant roles in various interbank transactions, indicating that social connections facilitate business connections. However, more centralized banks in the network also contribute significantly to the global systemic risk. Moreover, we find the soft information generated by social networks is particularly valuable when potential partners operate under different accounting and regulatory standards. Finally, we show that the recent banking crisis significantly limited the positive soft information effects of social networks in the global banking system.     

The Landscape of Economic Growth: Do Middle-Income Countries Differ?

We review the growth experience of middle-income countries. Economic factors associated with growth appear to differ between middle-income and other countries. The efficiency of the financial system is importantly related to the growth rate in low- and middle-income countries, but appears to matter less as one moves up the income scale. Demographic variables also matter importantly in low-income countries. In middle-income countries, in contrast, measures of the financial system no longer appear to matter as importantly, as if inefficiencies in banking and financial systems are no longer as binding a constraint as at earlier stages of financial development; nor are demographic variables as important as before. At this point, other variables gain a growing role: these include whether the country experiences a banking or currency crisis, the extent of non-foreign direct investment capital inflows, and government debt as a share of gross domestic product.     

Can Insurance Activity Act as a Stimulus of Economic Growth? Evidence from Time-Varying Causality in China

This article investigates the nexus between insurance and economic growth in China with a dynamic interactive mechanism to study different time periods. Using quarterly data from 1999 to 2015, the rolling-window causality test provides evidence of bidirectional causality between insurance activity and economic growth. However, the “supply-leading” pattern tends to dominate the “demand-following” pattern, which implies that in China insurance acts as a stimulus of economic growth during most of the period. Property insurance is more effective than life insurance in stimulating economic growth. Some temporary negative impacts from the development of the insurance sector show that China is in the midst of a transition from a closed economy to a more open economy and policy interventions by the government to liberalize the insurance sector. These findings offer several useful insights for policy makers in transition economies and developing countries.     

美国次按贷危机剖析

随着美国住房价格逐渐回落,利率不断上升,次贷的借款人越来越难以按期偿付贷款,导致次贷及相关的证券投资产品损失严重,一些贷款机构、投资银行、对冲基金纷纷出现巨额亏损,甚至倒闭,由房价引发次按贷危机的爆发。次按贷危机暴露出评级机构对结构性金融产品信用评估体制上的缺陷和中间人的道德风险严重。次按贷危机对全球各种金融产品价格产生很大的冲击．并从各个方面都对全球经济产生了深远的影响。     

现代林业集约化森林经营的思考

实行森林经营集约化是缓解森林资源危机的科学途径;反思林业机构设置对现代林业建设的影响;提出森林经营的关键在于把林况和经营措施落实到山头地块,编好和严格执行森林经营方案;小班林木经营的好坏,决定集约化森林经营的成败。     

TRAMO/SEATS在危机事件中对旅游影响研究的应用

国内外对旅游危机事件的研究集中于管理方面,近年相关热点转向对旅游影响的研究.以往定性研究多,从经济数量模型进行定量分析研究的较少.本文使用在经济金融领域使用广泛的ARIMA改进版--TRAMO/SEATS方法评估危机事件,如疾病、地震等突发事件对中国旅游业的影响.作为欧盟各国统计局主要统计方法,TRAMO/SEATS方法能够最大程度地反映旅游业季节性波动的特点.通过该方法对2003年在中国内地和香港地区爆发的SARS进行实证研究,分析评估该危机事件的长期影响.在此基础上提出,国家短期内应当通过提高产品质量和拓展高质量的细分市场实现旅游效益型增长;恢复后期才可以推出更为直接的促销手法实现旅游数量型增长,采取刺激旅游人数快速增长的政策和措施.