A Note on adding-up restrictions when modelling trade flows

An ad hoc rule is often required when modelling trade in multi-country models to ensure that aggregate imports equal aggregate exports in volumes and values. This paper offers an approach that offers some advantages over current methods.     

CREDIBILITY, MACROECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALS AND MARKOV REGIME SWITCHES IN THE EMS

The main objective of this paper is to use the Markov regime‐switching modelling framework to describe and analyse the credibility of a number of countries participating in the European Monetary System during 1980–1998. Our credibility indicator, based on Hughes Hallet et al.'s (1997) methodology, is subject to discrete regime shifts and is made dependent on macroeconomic fundamentals. We carry out extensive testing to assess the specification of the Markov regime‐switching model and the potential existence of permanent breaks. A contribution of our paper is the specification of a multivariate Markov switching model that allows us to examine whether macroeconomic variables have asymmetric effects on credibility. Another contribution is the specification of a regime‐switching model with time‐varying transition probabilities, which enables us to determine whether changes in macroeconomic variables can trigger switches between the low and high credibility regimes. We find strong evidence of regime switching behaviour in all countries. Both the level of credibility and the transition probabilities display an asymmetric response to changes in macroeconomic variables, with the stance of fiscal policy exerting the most systematic influence in all countries.     

Use of Statistics in the Monetary Policy of the Czech National Bank: The Case of a Country in Transition

In the presented text the authors judge the importance of statistics in the monetary policy of the Czech National Bank (CNB) over the course of the economic transformation process, with particular consideration of changing statistical needs and the possibilities and limits of statistical data exploitation in the monetary analyses. The importance of statistics lies on the level of collection and processing of statistical information and on the level of use of statistical methods to analyse data. Since the start of the 1990s the requirements for statistics were significantly influenced by monetary policy. In the period 1990–1997, monetary targeting was the primary influential factor. Since 1998, the monetary policy is influenced by inflation targeting. Statistical priorities switched from monetary data to economy and financial market data. Much progress has been made in the use of statistical methods for analysing data. Statistics available at present cover the CNB's standard monetary-policy requirements and are on par with those in developed countries. Its further development will reflect the standard changes taking place in the more advanced countries.     

The Bank of England quarterly model of the UK economy

The Bank of England first acquired a macroeconomic model of the UK economy in early 1973, and used it for forecasting in June and July of that year. The initial model was obtained from the London Business School (LBS), but the last 14 years or so have, on the part of both the Bank and the LBS, led to developments which now make the models no closer to each other than to other large scale models of the UK. This article describes the structure and central properties of the current version of the Bank model, which has some 663 variables, 134 of which are modelled by behavioural equations, 153 by technical equations, 212 identities and 164 exogenous variables. In order to provide a transitional step between the kind of models with which most macroeconomists are familiar and the full scale version of the Bank model, one part of the article presents a very simple stylized version of the full model. This is a stepping stone to the full model which is described and analysed on a sectoral basis in Part 3, with a complete listing of equations in Part 4. Some of the simulation properties, and hence full model dynamic responses, are considered in Part 5.     

金融开放视角下宏观经济波动问题研究——以东亚国家(地区)为例

20世纪80年代以来,东亚地区金融市场的开放推动了资本在国际间的大规模流动,大量的国际资本在促进东亚经济增长的同时,也埋下了经济波动的隐患。结合东亚经济体的实际特点,本文采用Aghion等(2004)提出的动态开放经济模型来分析金融开放对东亚不同类型国家(地区)经济波动的影响,并利用东亚国家(地区)的面板数据对模型的结论进行实证检验。研究发现,由于国内金融体系发展程度的差异,金融开放对于东亚不同类型经济体产生的影响不同,金融开放缓解了东亚发达经济体的经济波动,但加剧了发展中国家的经济波动。随着金融开放程度的不断提高,东亚的发展中国家要加快推进国内的金融体系建设,以降低国际资本流动对宏观经济稳定的冲击。     

粮食生产波动影响因素的实证分析——以江西省为例

本文以江西省为例,实证分析了江西省粮食波动状况及其影响因素,结论认为,政府的农业支出支持政策、农业劳动力的投入和粮食播种面积是影响粮食产出的主要因素。最后,本文提出了推动粮食持续、稳定发展的相关政策建议。     

我国股价指数波动与宏观经济关系研究

本文以上证综合指数为研究对象,选取工业增加值、货币供应量、银行间同业拆借利率、居民消费价格指数等宏观经济变量作为解释变量,采用月度数据,对上证综合指数进行协整分析。分析证明上证综合指数与部分宏观经济变量之间存在协整关系,上证综合指数与货币供应量、同业拆借利率之间长期呈正相关关系,与居民消费价格指数负相关;并且上证综合指数与消费价格指数存在因果关系,与其他变量均不存在因果关系。这意味着我国股票市场虽然可以在一定程度上反映宏观经济的发展情况,但效率不高。     

Central banks and macroeconomic policy choices: Relaxing the trilemma

Macroeconomic policy choices in open economies are constrained by the trilemma according to which the objectives of exchange rate stability, monetary independence and capital mobility cannot be attained jointly. This paper shows that foreign exchange interventions provide an effective instrument to relax the trilemma. An active reserve policy allows central banks to pursue independent monetary and exchange rate policies when the capital account is liberalised.We use the framework of the portfolio balance model to show that exchange market interventions may substitute for capital controls. Both allow a country to achieve the other two objectives of the trilemma. Our empirical analysis of a large country panel data set covering the period 1970–2010 confirms this theoretical insight: the weighted sum of the three trilemma objectives increases in the degree of foreign exchange market intervention. The capacity to relax the trilemma constraint has increased over time and has been most effective in emerging markets.     

浅析宏观经济政策对金融市场的影响

近几年来,国内经济的发展可谓势头猛增,国家出台了一系列的宏观经济政策,这些宏观经济政策对我国金融市场的发展具有一定的影响。本文就国家的宏观经济政策对我国的金融市场产生的影响进行浅析评论。     

Linking words in economic discourse: Implications for macroeconomic forecasts

This paper develops indicators of unstructured press information by exploiting word vector representations. A model is trained using a corpus covering 90 years of Wall Street Journal content. The information content of the indicators is assessed through business cycle forecast exercises. The vector representations can learn meaningful word associations that are exploited to construct indicators of uncertainty. In-sample and out-of-sample forecast exercises show that the indicators contain valuable information regarding future economic activity. The combination of indices associated with different subjective states (e.g., uncertainty, fear, pessimism) results in further gains in information content. The documented performance is unmatched by previous dictionary-based word counting techniques proposed in the literature.