WORLD OUTLOOK

Events in the Gulf have finally brought an end to the world economic boom of the last eight years. The oil price shock itself is only partly responsible for the downturn. The previous tightening of monetary policy in the face of inflationary pressures and the end of a rapid period of credit and asset price expansion had severely weakened the ability of some economies to respond to the shock. This is reflected in the diversity of response, most obviously in the United States where Fed fine tuning and the credit crunch have already weakened the economy. The rise in oil prices has led to a sudden collapse in consumer confidence and a swift cutback in output. Although we do not expect the recession to be deep, the financial problems will delay recovery. The Japanese economy was already in financial difficulties before the shock, although the real economy was stronger and here we expect a sharp deceleration from almost 6 per cent growth last year to around 3.5 per cent. In contrast the German economy, partly shielded by the substantial appreciation of the DM over the last year, has been affected less by the oil price shock and we expect the consumer and investment boom to continue this year as the economies merge. This provides a welcome boost to other European economies.     

WORLDOUTLOOK

German monetary unification is expected to result in a major expansion in autonomous demand from East Germany. In economic terms this is equivalent to a fiscal shock to West Germany broadly similar to that experienced in the US in the early years of Mr. Reagan's Presidency. Led by the Bundes bank, the monetary authorities' response is again likely to be a tightening of policy, leading to several years of high real interest rates. Overall, the combined monetary-fiscal shock should strengthen growth with only moderate increases in inflation. Germany is expected to grow very rapidly in the -per cent range for several years, with only a slight upturn in inflation. Japan, after a pause over the next year, should be able to return to its under lying growth path fairly quickly. However the US situation is more precarious. FUN adjustment from the previous Reagan shock has not yet taken place, leaving the US vulnerably dependent on increasingly scarce imported capital. In the absence of a significant *peace dividend: the result is the necessity of continued tight policy and sluggish growth in the American economy. US growth stays around 2 per cent, but this allows a substantial reduction in the current account deficit.     

Asymptotic efficiency of the pivotal mechanism with general project space

It is shown that the government surplus generated by applying the pivotal mechanism is generically small per capita if the number of participants is sufficiently large. The result is valid whether the project space is finite or infinite. It also implies that the pivotal mechanism is asymptotically efficient in most cases, for the amount of surplus is a measure of inefficiency in the economic environments to which the mechanism is applicable.     

An adjustment process defined on a constraint surface with an application to Ramsey pricing

This paper considers a gradient method algorithm which locates a local optimum of an objective function on a constraint surface. The adjustment process is applied to the problem of searching for a Ramsey optimal price vector for a monopoly firm.     

PROFIT,SURPLUS PRODUCT,EXPLOITATION AND LESS THAN MAXIMIZED UTILITY: A NEW EQUIVALENCE PROPOSITION ON THE FUNDAMENTAL MARXIAN THEOREM

Morishima's Generalized Fundamental Marxian Theorem (GFMT) is an extended form of Okishio's Fundamental Marxian Theorem, which showed the equivalence between positive profit and the exploitation of labor. GFMT is not developed as a system of equivalence proposition between five conditions, which I call ‘The Strong System of Exploitation Theory’. But by the definition of this system, there remains the possibility of positive profit without exploitation. In this paper, I demonstrated an alternative system of equivalence proposition, naming it ‘The Weak System of Exploitation Theory’, in which positive profits always mean exploitation. Here I introduced workers' utility function to define the exploitation concept. Then I could also show that the exploitation is equivalent with the situation where workers' utilities are under‐maximized.     

Empirical Study of Nikkei 225 Options with the Markov Switching GARCH Model

This paper investigates the pricing of Nikkei 225 Options using the Markov Switching GARCH (MSGARCH) model, and examines its practical usefulness in option markets. We assume that investors are risk-neutral and then compute option prices by using Monte Carlo simulation. The results reveal that, for call options, the MSGARCH model with Student’s t-distribution gives more accurate pricing results than GARCH models and the Black–Scholes model. However, this model does not have good performance for put options.     

Vietnam's State Enterprise Reform; What Phase has it Reached?

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -     

WORLD OUTLOOK

The rise in the oil price since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in early August does not radically alter prospects for the world economy; rather it exacerbates existing trends. The US economy was, in any case, heading towards recession and a sizeable overshoot of its budget deficit targets. Japan, especially, but also continental Europe had still not reached the peak of the economic cycle so that inflation and interest rates were still rising. While the higher oil price adds to costs and prices in all countries, the policy response is unlikely to be unborn. In the US the adverse effects on output are being emphasized while elsewhere the inflationary implications are to the fore. In Japan, where acute labour shortages are emerging, the monetary authorities have already raised interest rates and we expect a similar response from the Bunds bank In the US such a move is unlikely; indeed once an agreement on the budget deficit is obtained between President and Congress, we would effect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. Despite this view on policy, the forecast offers little prospect of the US avoiding a pronounced slowdown and takes a gloomy view on US growth in the medium term. In Japan and Germany on the other hand the short-term inflation outlook appears containable and growth prospects over the medium term robust. The central forecast is based on a $25 oil price; we explore in a simulation what might happen if the price rose to $45 a barrel for a limited period.     

Redistribution Policies under Capital Market Imperfection

We establish the existence and stability of the long‐run wealth distribution in a credit constrained economy by applying the monotonicity condition developed by H. Hopenhayn and E. Prescott. There should emerge an egalitarian society in which all families experience upward and downward mobility, although a society of persistent inequality may occur in which rich entrepreneurs and poor lenders remain immobile between classes. The speed of transition from the latter to the former is shown to depend on the design of redistribution policies. Simulation results show that this occurs more rapidly when the government favours relatively rich lenders. JEL Classification Numbers: D31, G33, O12.