COVID-19, stock market and sectoral contagion in US: a time-frequency analysis

We assess the conditional relationship in the time-frequency domain between the return on S&P 500 and confirmed cases and deaths by COVID-19 in Hubei, China, countries with record deaths and the world, for the period from January 29 to June 30, 2020. Methodologically, we follow Aguiar-Conraria et al. (2018), by using partial coherencies, phase-difference diagrams, and gains. We also perform a parametric test for Granger-causality in quantiles developed by Troster (2018). We find that short-term cycles of deaths in Italy in the first days of March, and soon afterwards, cycles of deaths in the world are able to lead out-of-phase US stock market. We find that low frequency cycles of the US market index in the first half of April are useful to anticipate in an anti-phasic way the cycles of deaths in the US. We also explore sectoral contagion, based on dissimilarities, Granger causality and partial coherencies between S&P sector indices. Our findings, such as the strategic role of the energy sector, which first reacted to the pandemic, or the evidence about predictability of the Telecom cycles, are useful to tell the history of the pass-through of this recent health crises across the sectors of the US economy.     

Exchange rates and bertrand oligopoly

The impact of exchange-rate changes on industrial prices seems ambiguous. Incomplete and even perverse pass-through has been observed: the import prices in the depreciating country decrease while those in the appreciating country increase. To explain these counterintuitive price reactions we consider a situation of international Bertrand competition: two firms, based in different countries, are selling in both countries simultaneously. The profit-maximizing duopolists set the prices for their products in each of the two markets which are segmented on the demand side. We then study the qualitative effect of an exogenous exchange-rate change on the Bertrand-Nash equilibrium. Under the strong assumption of linear demand and cost functions we have normal exchange-rate pass-through. However, allowing for more general cost structures in this simple static model enables us to show that the import prices in both countries might move in counterintuitive directions.     

The interest rate pass-through in the Euro area during the global financial crisis

This paper uses panel vector autoregressive (VAR) models for euro area member countries to explore the widening of retail bank interest rate spreads that emerged in the course of the global financial crisis. We find that the interest rate pass-through was generally complete on impact before the outbreak of the financial crisis, but became significantly distorted in the period thereafter, which hampered the effectiveness of monetary policy. Empirical evidence suggests that the decrease in the interest rate pass-through can be related to a change in the structural parameters characterizing the economies and a substantial increase in the average size of structural shocks. DSGE model simulations show that an increase in the frictions that banks are subject to can explain the decrease in the retail bank interest rate pass-through.     

Asymmetric exchange rate pass-through in an emerging market economy: The case of Mexico

This paper applies a nonlinear Autoregressive Distribute Lag to examine the exchange rate pass-through into consumer price inflation in Mexico. Overall, the evidence confirmed that ignoring the asymmetric (sign) effect of exchange rate movements on inflation may lead to incorrect inferences and policy conclusions. Exchange rate fluctuation is transferred to prices level more during currency depreciation than appreciation. We compare the macroeconomic performances between pre- and post-inflation targeting, and our findings reaffirmed that the pass-through has weakened significantly after launching inflation targeting in 2001. This result implies that low inflation in the sample period examined is good for Mexico because exchange rate pass-through declines after 2001. Consumer prices have become less responsive to exchange rate movements. We further observe a revival (strengthening) of oil price pass-through to domestic inflation in the post- inflation targeting period.     

Protection for sale under monopolistic competition: Beyond the CES

We extend the protection for sale model of Grossman and Helpman (1994) by introducing a general model of monopolistic competition with variable markups and incomplete pass-through. We show that the structure of protection emerging in the political equilibrium not only depends on the weight attached by the government to consumer welfare when making its policy decision, but also on the degree of market power of firms and on the terms-of-trade variations due to the degree of pass-through. Our results highlight the importance of preferences in shaping the structure of protection and are consistent with the occurring of protectionism also in unorganized industries.     

Exchange rate pass-through in emerging countries: Do the inflation environment,monetary policy regime and central bank behavior matter?

In this paper, we estimate the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to import and consumer prices for a sample of 14 emerging countries over the 1994Q1-2015Q3 period. To this end, we augment the traditional bivariate relationship between the nominal effective exchange rate and inflation by accounting for monetary stability proxied by the inflation environment, monetary policy regime and central bank behavior. We show that both the level and volatility of inflation, as well as adopting an inflation target or the transparency of monetary policy decisions clearly reduce ERPT to consumer prices. However, uncertainty about domestic monetary policy seems less relevant in explaining the pass-through to the price of imports.     

电力市场效率评估与碳市场价格设计——基于电碳市场关联视角下的传导率估计

厘清并量化电力市场与碳市场间的关联关系,是深化电力市场改革与实现"双碳"目标的重要抓手。本文基于2006—2018年中国100个地级及以上城市的面板数据,使用似不相关回归模型评估了电力市场效率,在此基础上研究了电、碳市场关联条件下碳价对电价的传导率,并对不同场景下全国碳市场的碳价进行了优化设计。研究发现:(1)与非试点地区相比,碳市场试点地区中电力市场的无谓损失率更低,并且市场效率的提高具有更高的碳减排作用。(2)电、碳市场关联条件下,碳价对电力市场中居民电价的传导率高于对工业电价的传导率,但均远低于完全竞争条件下的传导率水平。(3)传导率的提升能够缓解"降电价"与"碳减排"之间的矛盾。当前传导率下电力市场效率目标与碳减排目标的协同实现需要碳价的大幅提升,而在完全传导的理想情况下最优碳价约为40元/吨。(4)长期而言,当前传导率下碳排放总量下降场景、经济增速放缓场景对应的最优碳价分别为255.05元/吨、173.63元/吨,而人口老龄化场景并未对最优碳价的设置形成约束。本文的研究不仅为电力市场与碳市场之间的关联奠定了理论基础,也为全国碳市场价格机制的优化设计提供了政策参考。     

人民币汇率变动与中国的贸易收支——基于汇率传递视角的实证研究

文章从汇率传递视角探讨了人民币名义有效汇率与贸易收支的关系。结论表明:首先,人民币汇率贬值和升值对贸易收支的影响存在非对称性,人民币升值对初级产品贸易收支、工业制成品贸易收支以及贸易总收支几乎没有影响;人民币贬值对工业制成品贸易收支和贸易总收支均存在显著性的影响,但对初级产品贸易收支没有影响。其次,人民币汇率变动对初级产品的净出口基本没有影响,其主要原因在于中国对金属矿砂、煤、焦炭、石油等主要初级产品的刚性需求以及中国在国际市场上对稀缺资源性产品定价权的缺失与不足。再次,人民币贬值不仅不能增加工业制成品净出口,反而恶化了工业制成品的贸易收支,究其原因,在于占较大比重的机械及运输设备类产品的进出口需求弹性较小。最后,本文在以上结论研究基础之上得到了许多有益启示。     

论汇率变动对出口价格的传递效应——中国、日本、东盟、德国经验数据比较研究

文章比较分析了中国、日本、德国和东盟四个国家(地区)汇率变动对以美元计价的对美出口商品价格指数的传递效应,结果显示中国是唯一在当期存在汇率传递影响的国家,但影响显著为正。短期内德国汇率传递效应最高,中国的传递效应最低。由于中国汇率传递的滞后时间较长,中国累计汇率传递效应值高于日本。在实证结果的基础上,文章认为在短期内无法改变出口商品技术含量和竞争力的情况下,人民币保持稳步的升值步伐比汇率上下波动更有利于企业价格的提高。     

Exchange Rate Pass-Through and Monetary Policy: A Cross-Commodity Analysis

This paper investigates how a change in monetary policy affects the degree and the speed of exchange rate pass-through to import prices in the emerging market economy, using a newly constructed data set from Taiwan's trading commodities. First, the analytical framework is set up following Goldberg and Knetter (1997) and Campa and Goldberg (2005). Next, the period-by-period and the multiple-period cumulative effects of monetary policy on the degree of exchange rate pass-through can be traced out. The dynamic panel data model is then estimated by Bun and Carree's (2005) bias-corrected approach, which enjoys easy calculation and robust testing performances, leading to more reliable empirical results. Our cross-commodity evidence strongly supports the partial pass-through in the short run and the complete pass-through in the long run. Moreover, following a change in monetary policy, this pass-through effect increases during several initial periods and declines to zero over time.