Suchergebnisse

We present an incomplete markets model to understand the costs and benefits of increasing government debt when an increased demand for safety pushes the natural rate of interest below zero. A higher demand for safe assets causes the ZLB to bind, increasing unemployment. Higher government debt satiates the demand for safe assets, raising the natural rate and restoring full employment. However, this entails permanently lower investment, which reduces welfare, since our economy is dynamically efficient even when the natural rate is negative. Despite this, increasing debt until the ZLB no longer binds raises welfare when alternative instruments are unavailable. Higher in inflation targets instead allow for negative real interest rates and achieve full employment without reducing investment.

We present an incomplete markets model to understand the costs and benefits of increasing government debt in a low interest rate environment. Higher risk increases the demand for safe assets, lowering the natural rate of interest below zero, constraining monetary policy at the zero lower bound, and raising unemployment. Higher government debt satiates the demand for safe assets, raising the natural rate and restoring full employment. While this permanently lowers investment, a policymaker committed to low inflation has no alternative. Higher inflation targets, instead, permit both full employment and high investment, but allow for harmful bubbles. Aggressive fiscal policy can prevent bubbles.

This paper estimates the effects of peer benchmarking by institutional investors on asset prices. To identify trades purely due to peer benchmarking as separate from those based on fundamentals or private information, the paper exploits a natural experiment involving a change in a government imposed underperformance penalty applicable to Colombian pension funds. This change in regulation is orthogonal to stock fundamentals and only affects incentives to track peer portfolios allowing the authors to identify the component of demand due to peer benchmarking. The authors find that peer effects among pension fund managers generate excess in stock return volatility, with stocks exhibiting short-term abnormal returns followed by returns reversal in the subsequent quarter. Additionally, peer benchmarking produces an excess in comovement across stock returns beyond the correlation implied by fundamentals.

We estimate the effects of peer benchmarking by institutional investors on asset prices. To identify trades purely due to peer benchmarking as separate from those based on fundamentals or private information, we exploit a natural experiment involving a change in a government-imposed underperformance penalty applicable to Colombian pension funds. This change in regulation is orthogonal to stock fundamentals and only affects incentives to track peer portfolios, allowing us to identify the component of demand that is caused by peer benchmarking. We find that these peer effects generate excess stock return volatility, with stocks exhibiting short-term abnormal returns followed by returns reversal in the subsequent quarter. Additionally, peer benchmarking produces an excess in comovement across stock returns beyond the correlation implied by fundamentals.

The equity and inclusion issues are widely observed in Community Based Forest Management (CBFM) and Community Forestry (CF) is not an exception. Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) are portrayed as robust grassroots institutions for forest management and group governance. However, many contemporary researches have shown that CFUGs are still governed by some influential local elites who hardly practice equity and inclusion. In this context, objectives of this paper are: to explore how equity and inclusion issues lead CFUGs fall into internal conflicts; and to demonstrate how CFUGs are able to address such issues locally. The study was carried out in Salghari CFUG of Ratnechaur, Myagdi. Semi-structured interview and focused group discussion were key tools used for data collection. Livelihoods and Social Inclusion Framework and Equity Framework are used for data analysis. The findings of the research revealed that dalits and non-dalits of Salghari fall into internal conflict regarding the use of forest products. The conflict was then managed through amendments in CF provisions and change in CF leadership. This paper concludes that execution of equity and inclusion provisions in CF, secures access to assets for disadvantaged people from CBFM. However, this demands empowerment of these people and facilitating role of external agency.

We study optimal monetary policy in an analytically tractable heterogeneous agent New Keynesian model with rich cross-sectional heterogeneity. Optimal policy differs from a representative agent benchmark because monetary policy can affect consumption inequality, by stabilizing consumption risk arising from both idiosyncratic shocks and unequal exposures to aggregate shocks. The trade-off between consumption inequality, productive efficiency, and price stability is summarized in a simple linear-quadratic problem yielding interpretable target criteria. Stabilizing consumption inequality requires putting some weight on stabilizing the level of output, and correspondingly reducing the weights on the output gap and price level relative to the representative agent benchmark. (JEL E12, E23, E31, E32, E52, E62)

We formalize the idea that the financial sector can be a source of non-fundamental risk. Households' desire to hedge against price volatility can generate price volatility in equilibrium, even absent fundamental risk. Fearing that asset prices may fall, risk-averse households demand safe assets from leveraged intermediaries, whose issuance of safe assets exposes the economy to self-fulfilling fire sales. Policy can eliminate non-fundamental risk by (i) increasing the supply of publicly backed safe assets, through issuing government debt or bailing out intermediaries, or (ii) reducing the demand for safe assets, through social insurance or by acting as a market maker of last resort.