Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous rural–urban migration to analyse the provision of rural and urban government services in China, with special emphasis on the role of the household registration (hukou) system in shaping its urbanization process. It argues that China's urban bias policy, which is enabled by the hukou system restricting rural–urban migration, did not necessarily reduce economic efficiency. Rather, it might have only raised urban welfare at the expense of rural residents. As the hukou system also ties people to particular geographical locations, this paper argues that China's continuous bias towards coastal and big cities has started to cause economic inefficiency as well as inequality. It suggests that progressive hukou reform reducing barriers to cross‐region migration would improve economic efficiency and welfare.

AbstractWhile the residential and commercial property markets in Hong Kong are extensively discussed, little attention is paid to the carpark market. This work contributes to fill the research gap in three ways. First, it provides a simple empirical model to explain carpark ratios in residential buildings. Second, it hand collects transaction‐level data and constructs a price index for the carpark market in Hong Kong. Third, it shows that changes in stamp duties increase the volatility in the carpark market. This research may shed light on the current debate on the effectiveness of the stamp duty in stabilizing the real estate market.

AbstractThere has been remarkable growth in the number of studies using data envelopment analysis (DEA) in research on higher education. Heterogeneous DEA models have been applied in assessing the performance of higher education institutions (HEIs), and the multi‐faceted production process of higher education has further motivated the extension and improvement of the DEA approach. The present study conducts a meta‐regression analysis of 109 published DEA applications in higher education at different levels of analysis to provide a better understanding of the relationship between the efficiency results and the attributes of the studies implemented in different nations.

AbstractThis study investigates the quality of Japanese and US stock markets from the viewpoints of efficiency and fairness. We design a new Internet survey and develop a simple model that can quantitatively explain stock market quality by those data. Our estimation shows that the Japanese stock market is of lower quality with respect both to efficiency and fairness than the US stock market. This suggests that the quarter‐century‐long stagnation of the Japanese economy since the early 1990s might be attributable to the lack of high quality stock markets in Japan.

AbstractWe provide a theoretical framework to discuss the relation between market size and vertical structure in the railway industry. The framework is based on a simple downstream monopoly model with two input suppliers: the labour force and the rail infrastructure firm. The operation of the downstream firm (i.e. the train operating firm) imposes costs on the rail infrastructure firm. We show that the downstream firm with a larger market size is more likely to integrate with the rail infrastructure firm. This is consistent with the phenomenon in the railway industry.

AbstractThis paper studies a two‐period model of advance selling with experienced and inexperienced consumers. It concludes that advance selling weakly dominates no advance selling, and the optimal advance selling price may be at a discount, at a premium or at the regular selling price. Conditions for each possible advance selling strategy to prevail are characterized. However, without experienced consumers in the market, there are no incentives for the retailer to implement an advance selling price premium. How the consumer composition affects the retailer's optimal pricing strategy and profit is also examined.

AbstractWe examine how fluctuations in financial and housing markets in the United States affect asset returns and GDP in Hong Kong. In contrast to studies using linear specifications, which find that the United States and Hong Kong are virtually delinked in terms of the asset markets, our regime‐switching models indicate that an unexpected change in US stock returns, followed by the TED spread, has the most significant effect on Hong Kong asset returns and GDP, typically in a regime of high return and low volatility. For in‐sample one‐step‐ahead forecasting, the US term spread is the best predictor.

AbstractWe apply the Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes market equilibrium model to data from 30 brands of beer sold in 12 US cities over 20 quarters (1988–1992) to estimate consumers' preference for beer characteristics as well as for their cultural regions of origin. Consumer heterogeneity is accounted for with respect to age and income. Overall, our data is comprised of 7200 beer brand observations and 13 920 hypothetical consumer observations. Empirical results indicate that there is, indeed, home bias with respect to foreign beers, although it varies with consumer age and income.

AbstractPrevious published studies have estimated the long‐run cointegrating relationship to infer the price elasticity of imports, but a stable long‐run cointegrating relationship might not be detected in the data, especially in the case of sectoral data. This paper develops a method to estimate the price elasticity of imports based on a vector autoregression model, which can be applied when a stable long‐run cointegration relationship does not exist. The methods developed in past studies and our method are applied to Korean sectoral imports data to illustrate the usefulness of our method.

AbstractThe present paper evaluates macroeconomic adjustment in Hong Kong with an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model under a fixed exchange rate regime. We find that exports and world inflation shocks are the dominant sources of GDP volatility, with the risk premium taking on importance during the Asian crisis after 1997. A counterfactual simulation, assuming a flexible exchange rate regime with inflation targeting, shows that inflation would have decreased slightly, but interest‐rate volatility would have increased significantly. The welfare gains from switching out of the currency board system appear to be marginal.

AbstractGlobal imbalances remain a key challenge for the world economy. In this regard, it has often been argued that insufficient exchange rate adjustment prevents their dissolution. Obviously, such a line of reasoning crucially depends on the methodologies used for assessing the 'fair value' of a currency. This paper looks specifically at estimates of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEER) and shows that these are highly sensitive to the chosen assumptions. The present study cautions against using such models too mechanistically and giving too much confidence to the precision of obtained magnitudes of misalignment.

AbstractThis paper estimates the effect of China's fiscal stimulus package on output and employment. The input–output analysis shows that the package has a multiplier of approximately 0.84 in the short run, generating 18–20 million new jobs in non‐farming sectors in the first year. A dynamic structural model shows that the multiplier is around 1.1 in the medium run as fiscal spending leads to higher household consumption and corporate investment over time. The size of the fiscal multiplier also depends on the cyclical conditions of the economy, the policy environment and the distribution of funds across sectors.

Abstract.  The neoclassical growth model is used to compare an economy with growing per capita income with an economy with stationary per capita income, in terms of equity in distribution of consumption. The economies have the same initial conditions including the same initial wealth distribution. The outcome of the comparison depends on the nature of structural differences between the economies. Even with convergence in wealth distribution in the growing economy, the consumption distribution there may be less equitable and dynasties with least initial levels of wealth may be worse off than dynasties with same initial wealth levels in the stationary economy.

Abstract.   This paper presents a simple model to investigate the effectiveness of foreign aid. It shows that foreign aid is most effective if it is given to a market economy with relatively high transaction efficiency. If transaction efficiency in a market economy is low due to, for instance, bad institutions or policies, then foreign aid will either be largely dissipated as transaction costs or can even lead to retrogression of market activities. In either case, it will be more effective to give foreign aid to poor primitive economies with no developed markets.

Abstract.  This paper presents a Ricardian trade model in which the quality of intermediate inputs affects the productivity of labour at the final production stage. The role of contracting frictions is shown by comparing the chain of comparative advantage obtained with full information with that resulting when the quality of inputs is affected by actions that are not verifiable in court. Conditions are derived under which parties can use the potential for repeat business (relational contracts) to sustain efficient production choices. These results yield predictions for how country and industry characteristics will affect the level of contracting frictions.