Factor Heterogeneity,Factor Market Imperfection and Trade

This paper develops a tractable model of examining how factor heterogeneity and imperfect factor market interact for determining a pattern of trade. Institution plays a crucial role for the interaction. In my work, firm productivity is defined as a composition of factor productivity and technology. Thus, input selection should affect the pattern of Melitz’s intra-industry allocation due to the incurring transaction cost. For a simple model, I assume two factors (labor and capital) and two sectors, which are relatively less institution-dependent and relatively more institution-dependent. When the economy is open, effect of the transaction cost on income distribution is more drastic for an institutionally underdeveloped country. Depending on institutional quality, the economic openness reallocates resource across countries through job creation or job destruction. The job turnovers redistribute income between heterogeneous labors within countries. The income redistribution is catalyzed by international mobility of capital. As a result, income disparity is widened between the institutionally developed country and the institutionally underdeveloped country. This paper can contribute to the literature of institution and international trade.     

Investor behaviour and reaching for yield: Evidence from the sterling corporate bond market

We provide evidence on how corporate bond investors react to a change in yields, and how this behaviour differs in times of market‐wide stress. We also investigate ‘reaching for yield’ across investor types, as well as providing insights into the structure of the corporate bond market. Using proprietary sterling corporate bond transaction data, we show that insurance companies, hedge funds and asset managers are typically net buyers when corporate bond yields rise. Dealer banks clear the market by being net sellers. However, we find evidence for this behaviour reversing in times of stress for some investors. During the 2013 ‘taper tantrum’, asset managers were net sellers of corporate bonds in response to a sharp rise in yields, potentially amplifying price changes. At the same time, dealer banks were net buyers. Finally, we provide evidence that insurers, hedge funds and asset managers tilt their portfolios towards higher risk bonds, consistent with ‘reaching for yield’ behaviour.     

Outward foreign direct investment by Polish state-owned multinational enterprises: is ‘stateness’ an asset or a burden?

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are commonly associated with undue advantages due to preferential treatment by the state. Simultaneously they are often quoted as handicapped given the notorious state interference, management problems and agency tensions. They used to be regarded as a mainly domestic issue but in the context of globalisation and the fact that states enter treaties with new obligations, SOEs’ performance ceased to be solely a domestic problem, increasingly so as state-owned multinational enterprises (SOMNEs) emerge. This article presents the results of research on Polish SOEs’ outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). It offers an overview of overseas activities of nine major Polish firms with a state stake and aims to contribute to the conceptual literature on foreign investments conducted by SOMNEs. We distinguish between FDI by SOMNEs as specific – privileged (facilitated) or discriminated (hampered) – investments subject to the home country’s state power and the host country’s state perception.     

Factors driving embodied carbon in international trade: a multiregional input–output gravity model

ABSTRACT

Concerns about the effects and consequences of climate change have notably increased in recent decades. Despite large advances in the understanding of this phenomenon, further research into the determinants of gas emissions is necessary, to shed light on the responsibilities of producers and consumers, and their potential contribution to mitigation strategies. This paper studies the trajectories and determinants of carbon embodied in world trade during a period of 15 years. Our methodology relies on a multiregional input–output model, environmentally extended. Drawing on data from the World Input–Output Database, we estimate embodied emissions in bilateral flows. Then, we assess the determinants of CO₂ emissions embodied in trade, combining input–output modelling with trade gravity panel data analysis. This paper offers a methodological approach that explains and quantifies the underlying factors of carbon trade, integrating the production and consumption perspectives and considering the geographical, structural and institutional context of countries.     

Assessing the effects of policies on China’s outward foreign direct investment

This paper discusses the determinants of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) with a special focus on the role of government policy. In particular, we investigate the types of policies that are most influential in promoting OFDI. Our main contribution is to analyse, for the first time, China’s OFDI policies by means of quantitative indicators. We refine policies definitions and distinguish between Regulation Policies, Service Policies, Promotion Policies and Supervision Policies, and we develop a methodology for collecting, screening and coding policies; then we create new indices to capture different types of policies. We find that Regulation Policies, Service Policies and the general attitude of the government have significant effects on China’s OFDI at the national level.     

Varieties of paternalism and the heterogeneity of utility structures

A principal source of interest in behavioral economics has been its advertised contributions to policies aimed at ‘nudging’ people away from allegedly natural but self-defeating behavior toward patterns of response thought more likely to improve their welfare. This has occasioned controversies among economists and philosophers around the normative limits of paternalism, especially by technical policy advisors. One recent suggestion has been that ‘boosting,’ in which interventions aim to enhance people’s general cognitive skills and representational repertoires instead of manipulating their choice environments behind their backs, avoids the main normative challenges. A limitation in most of this literature is that it has focused on relatively sweeping policy recommendations and consequently on strong polar alternatives of general paternalism and strict laissez faire. We review a real instance, drawn from a consulting project we conducted for an investment bank, of a proposed intervention that is more typical of the kind that economists are more often actually called upon to offer. In this example, the sophistication of current tools for preference attribution, combined with philosophical externalism about the semantics of preferences that makes it less plausible to attribute their literal self-conscious representation to people as propositional attitude content becomes more tightly refined, blocks applicability of the distinction between nudging and boosting. This seems to call for irreducible, context-specific ethical judgment in assessing the appropriateness of the forms of paternalism that economists must actually wrestle with in going about their everyday business.     

INTERNATIONAL RESERVE MANAGEMENT: A DRIFT‐SWITCHING REFLECTED JUMP‐DIFFUSION MODEL

We study the cost of shocks, that is, jump risk, with respect to reserve management when the reserve process is formulated as a drift‐switching jump diffusion with a reflecting barrier at 0. Inspired by the Brownian drift switching model, our model results in a more realistic dynamic behavior of international reserves than the buffer stock model. The new model can capture both the jump behavior in reserve dynamics and the leptokurtic feature of the increment distribution which has a higher peak and two asymmetric heavier tails than the normal distribution. Through the selection of an initial distribution that reflects certain steady state behaviors, the reserve process becomes a regenerative process. This selection enables us to derive a closed‐form expression for the total expected discounted cost of managing reserves, thus helping us to numerically find management strategies that minimize costs. The numerical results show that shocks at the reserve level have a significant effect on reserve management strategies and that model misspecification can result in nonnegligible additional costs.     

The influencing factors of satisfaction and lending intention in online lending investment: an empirical study based on the Chinese market

This paper develops a platform‐based influencing factors model which considers value perception, risk prevention measure, non‐default experience, trust and incentive gap, to better examine the impact of platforms on investors’ satisfaction and lending intention based on the Chinese market. The results reveal that the first four factors positively influence the satisfaction of the investors, while the incentive gap has a negative impact, and there is a positive association between investors’ satisfaction and lending intention. Some specific features of China’s online lending market are identified, which provides valuable insights for online lending platforms and the government.     

货币政策、企业家信心与上市公司投资效率*

企业、企业家等微观主体对货币政策的反应，在较大程度上影响货币政策的效果。货币政策可通过对企业家信心的影响，进而对公司投资效率产生作用。基于中国2007—2016年40个季度A股上市公司样本的实证研究表明：企业家信心在货币政策传导过程中有不可忽视的作用。企业家信心增强或者货币政策宽松时会加剧过度投资，减轻投资不足；企业家信心减弱或者货币政策紧缩时可以有效抑制过度投资，但会加剧投资不足。其中，国有企业对企业家信心和货币政策松紧的敏感性更强。进一步，货币政策对企业投资效率的影响，也会通过货币政策和企业家信心的交互作用而发挥作用。这种作用在国有企业和非国有企业之间无显著差异。