Monetary policy and food inflation in South Africa: A quantile regression analysis

Although optimal monetary policy stabilizes food inflation theoretically, empirical studies remain limited not only in the context of volumes and the estimation approaches, but are focused on selected advanced and emerging countries to the neglect of Africa where poverty and dominance of food in the consumption basket are more pronounced. We provide empirical evidence in the context of South Africa using quantile regressions. Rising food prices are destabilized even further by restrictive monetary policy; a finding that has ramifications for inflation targeting, especially given that a quarter of the country’s population is food poor.     

Catching up with the Americans

This paper develops an international version of the consumption-based capital asset pricing (CCAPM), which we refer to as “catching up with the Americans.” Previous CCAPM research develops the concept of “catching up with the Joneses,” where a representative economic agent exhibits higher marginal utility of consumption as a result of higher past per capita consumption in his own country. Catching up with the Americans, on the other hand, is an international habit-preference hypothesis. It extends the idea of catching up with the Joneses by stating that consumers of non-U.S. countries gain higher marginal utility of consumption as a result of higher past American consumption growth. Contrary to much of the CCAPM literature, we test this version of the model using long bond rates rather than equity returns. However, like most of the previous research on the CCAPM, the catching up with the Americans model fails to explain the relationship between consumption and asset returns.     

An analysis of option pricing under systematic consumption risk using GARCH

An issue in the pricing of contingent claims is whether to account for consumption risk. This is relevant for contingent claims on stock indices, such as the FTSE 100 share price index, as investor’s desire for smooth consumption is often used to explain risk premiums on stock market portfolios, but is not used to explain risk premiums on contingent claims themselves. This paper addresses this fundamental question by allowing for consumption in an economy to be correlated with returns. Daily data on the FTSE 100 share price index are used to compare three option pricing models: the Black–Scholes option pricing model, a GARCH (1, 1) model priced under a risk-neutral framework, and a GARCH (1, 1) model priced under systematic consumption risk. The findings are that accounting for systematic consumption risk only provides improved accuracy for in-the-money call options. When the correlation between consumption and returns increases, the model that accounts for consumption risk will produce lower call option prices than observed prices for in-the-money call options. These results combined imply that the potential consumption-related premium in the market for contingent claims is constant in the case of FTSE 100 index options.     

跨局部属排空车走行系数测算方法探讨

在阐述跨局部属排空车走行系数定义的基础上,分析了合理测算跨局部属排空车走行公里对铁路局经济效益的影响,提出了跨局部属排空车走行系数测算方法和经济效果评价。     

Household Surveys,Consumption, and the Measurement of Poverty

Household surveys are playing an increasingly important role in the measurement of poverty and well-being around the world. The Living Standards Measurement Study, which was begun in the World Bank under the guidance of Graham Pyatt in 1979, has played an important role in this movement. Its surveys are widely used within the Bank to measure consumption-based poverty, and survey data are now the exclusive basis for the global poverty counts. This paper discusses a number of unresolved issues in using consumption-based surveys for measuring well-being, including the choice of a money-metric versus welfare-ratio approach, the collection of suitable price information, the effects of measurement error on estimation, and methods for correcting per capita consumption for the demographic structure of the household.     

Costs of financial instability, household-sector balance sheets and consumption

Extant work on costs of financial instability focuses on fiscal costs and declines in aggregate GDP following banking crises. We estimate effects of banking and currency crises on consumption in 19 OECD countries, showing consumption plays an important role in the adjustment following a crisis, and effects are not captured solely by the impact of crises on standard consumption determinants, income and wealth. Additional effects, attributable to factors such as time-varying confidence, uncertainty and credit rationing, are aggravated by high and rising leverage, despite financial liberalisation easing liquidity constraints. High leverage implies that banking crises taking place now could have greater incidence than in the past.     

Got milk? The rapid rise of China’s dairy sector and its future prospects

This paper synthesizes recent research and new empirical findings to build a more comprehensive understanding of developments in China’s dairy sector. China’s tremendous rise in dairy demand has been driven by several mutually reinforcing factors: including rapid income growth, promotion by the government and dairy industry, changes in urban lifestyles, and the development of new, more sophisticated marketing channels. Domestic milk output has grown to satisfy rising demand largely by increasing the dairy herd. Substantial increases in productivity have been achieved through technology adoption, but there is evidence that the torrid growth has created inefficiencies because adaptations to marketing rules, infrastructure, and institutions have not kept pace with the changing environment. These results suggest there is ample room for future growth in both domestic milk production and dairy demand, but multinational firms and imported products will likely play and increasing role as China’s dairy market continues to develop.     

Turbo码解码过程中的加权算法

本文通过调整迭代解码过程中系统位接收值的加权系数，提出了一种Turbo码加权迭代解码算法。该算法改变了迭代运算后Turbo码解码器输出软值中系统位接收值信息和它的外部估计信息的比重，使Turbo码无论在低信噪比或是在高信噪比时均具有优良的纠错性能。仿真结果显示，采用Turbo码加权迭代解码算法，不仅能提高Turbo码的收敛速度，而且能进一步降低Turbo码解码时的地板值，使Turbo码的比特误码率在高、低信噪比时都能够得到进一步改善。     

A new continuous distribution and two new families of distributions based on the exponential

Recent work on social status led to derivation of a new continuous distribution based on the exponential. The new variate, termed the ring(2)-exponential, in turn leads to derivation of two closely related new families of continuous distributions, the mirror-exponential and the ring-exponential. Both the standard exponential and the ring(2)-exponential are special cases of both the new families. In this paper, we first focus on the ring(2)-exponential, describing its derivation and examining its properties, and next introduce the two new families, describing their derivation and initiating exploration of their properties. The mirror-exponential arises naturally in the study of status; the ring-exponential arises from the mathematical structure of the ring(2)-exponential. Both have the potential for broad application in diverse contexts across science and engineering. Within sociobehavioral contexts, the new mirror-exponential may have application to the problem of approximating the form and inequality of the wage distribution.     

Environmental standards as barriers to trade

This paper examines the case of a good, polluting in consumption, whose pollutive content is restricted by a government with strong environmental policies. When foreign producers are unable to comply with the restrictive environmental standard of such a country, to which they wish to export, they often allege that those standards constitute illegal barriers to free trade. An example of such a good is gasoline, excessively pollutive formulations of which are prohibited from importation into the United States by the 1970 Clean Air Act. Rather than banning them, such imports should be taxed, along with the domestically produced substitute good, according to their respective pollutant contents. This would foster economic efficiency and should be more acceptable to foreign producers than the outright prohibition mandated by the Clean Air Act. The results of this paper reaffirm the argument in a previous article in this journal (Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 29 (1995) 187), though the countries’ roles in the two papers are reversed, that free trade and Pigouvian environmental policies increase international welfare.