2013年10月15日火曜日

外為特会の歴史

須田美矢子「外国為替資金特別会計と外国為替政策」
http://www.gakushuin.ac.jp/univ/eco/gakkai/pdf_files/keizai_ronsyuu/contents/3602/3602-33suda.pdf


渡瀬義男「外国為替資金特別会計の現状と課題」
"財務省側に次のような大前提があったことから生じたと思われる。 すなわち、 第一に、 外為特会の外貨は将来の円買い介入の原資であり、 その外貨は輸出入に圧倒的比重を占めるドル建て以外にないこと、 第二に、 ドルが暴落するような事態は当面考えられず、 懸念される評価損が実現する事態も想定しがたいこと、 第三に、 貯蓄超過の日本の方が構造的に米国より金利が低いから、 金利差逆転などは考えられないこと、 の三点である。"

http://www.ndl.go.jp/jp/data/publication/refer/200612_671/067103.pdf

2013年9月30日月曜日

GHH preferences

Greenwood-Hercowitz-Huffman(1988)AER
<quote>
Fluctuations in investment played a key role in Keynes' view of the trade cycle. There, shifts in the marginal efficiency of investment impact on investment, aggregate demand and therefore, given the disequilibrium in the labor market, employment and output. The quintessential case of this type is when there is an increase in the marginal efficiency of newly produced capital that does not affect the productivity of the capital stock already on line. When a shock of this type occurs in a standard neoclassical model, employment and output also tend to rise, but the mechanism is very different. The increase in the rate of return on investment stimulates current labor effort and output through an intertemporal substitution effect on leisure. A potential problem with this mechanism, as discussed by Robert Barro and Robert King (1984), is that intertemporal substitution which induces individuals to postpone leisure, also works to cut consumption. This effect would tend to make consumption move countercyclically, which contradicts the evidence. Labor productivity would tend to move in the " wrong" direction, too. An expansion of labor effort, given the fixed supply of capital in the short run, causes labor's productivity to decline.

In contrast to the intertemporal substitution effect mentioned above, the transmission mechanism of the investment shocks works in the present model through the optimal utilization of capital and its positive effect on the marginal productivity of labor. As will be seen, an important aspect of such a change in labor productivity is that it creates intratemporal substitution, away from leisure and toward consumption, generating procyclical effects on consumption and labor effort. Additionally, average labor productivity responds procyclically to these shocks.

That is, labor effort is determined independently of the intertemporal consumption-savings choice, which is very convenient in obtaining results from the model. As a consequence, the intertemporal substitution effect on labor effort, a central ingredient in many macroeconomic models, is eliminated. Rather than being a drawback, this implication of the utility function has the advantage of emphasizing the alternative transmission of investment shocks being studied here. When analyzing fluctuations in labor effort, this framework stresses shifts in the productivity of labor brought about by changes in the optimal rate of capacity utilization, as opposed to intertemporal substitution effects stressed by others.
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Solow residual correlations across countries and industries

Costello(1993)JPE
<quote>
I find that aggregate output growth is correlated across countries, but aggregate productivity growth is only weakly correlated across countries. At the industry level, productivity growth is significantly correlated across industries within a country but is less correlated across countries for any individual industry. In the error-components framework, the estimated nation effects are as important as, and sometimes more important than, industry effects.

The evidence suggests that short-run productivity growth is more similar across industries in one nation than across countries for a particular industry. The results are consistent with the presence of labor hoarding if labor hoarding is truly a national occurrence. The results are also consistent with observing nation-specific technology shocks to the extent that they represent excluded factors such as human capital or the infrastructure in a country.
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2013年9月28日土曜日

Convergence or non-convergence in output across countries

Cheung and Pascual (2004) Oxford Economic Papers
- it cannot be determined by statistical methods in common use.
- it depends on the null hypothesis of convergence or no convergence.

<quote>
The study of cross-country output dynamics from both viewpoints gives an equal opportunity for both convergence and no convergence to be validated by the data as the null hypothesis.

Our empirical results suggest that the inference about output convergence can be dictated by the choice of a null hypothesis. A conclusion of no output convergence can be reached just because no convergence is considered as the null hypothesis. Further, the no-convergence result reported in previous studies pursuing the time- series definition may be attributed to the low power of the test procedures being used. While short output data series or the use of univariate unit root procedures yields very limited support for the convergence hypothesis, the combination of long sample and efficient panel procedures delivers a more favorable result for the same hypothesis.
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2013年9月26日木曜日

Basic Small Country IRBC Model

Mendoza(1991)AER
- They use Canadian data.
- Basic model has no adjustment costs of capital stock.
- Trade Balance is not negatively correlated with output in case relative risk aversion is high (GAMMA = 2). In case of GAMMA = 1.001, the correlation becomes negative, but the number is small. Further, if including capital adjustment costs, the correlation of them can be close to the actual data.
- Savings is not highly correlated with investments, but if including capital adjustment costs, the correlation of them can be close to the actual data.

Benchmark Model
<quote>
In general, the benchmark model is capable of mimicking the ranking of variability of the actual aggregates, and it is also consistent with some of the coefficients of autocorrelation and correlation with domestic output. Of special interest is the fact that the model mimics the absence of comovement between GDP and foreign interest payments or the trade-balance:output ratio (TB/ Y). This contrasts with the less favorable results obtained in previous empirical studies of intertemporal-equilibrium models of the current account (e.g., Ahmed, 1986; Hercowitz, 1986b).

The low correlation between S and I in the benchmark model is not related to the degree of international capital mobility. Instead, it follows from the low degree of serial autocorrelation of the shocks used to calibrate the model. With RHO = 0.36, the productivity shocks are not persistent enough to cause sufficient divergence between the expected marginal productivity of capital and the world's real interest rate to produce a stronger correlation between S and I. If, for instance, RHO is increased to 0.99, the degree of correlation between savings and investment reaches 0.8. Thus, although the benchmark model cannot mimic simultaneously the stylized facts of GDP and the correlation between savings and investment, it does support the argument presented by Obstfeld (1986) and Finn (1990), claiming that the intensity of the comovement between S and I in economies with perfect capital mobility depends on the degree of persistence of the underlying technological disturbances.
<unquote>

Adjustment Cost Model
<quote>
Perhaps the most significant result produced by these simulations is that the adjustment-cost model is capable of mimicking the two striking empirical regularities of open economies mentioned in the Introduction. Regardless of the value assigned to GAMMA, this model mimics the variability and GDP-correlation of the ratio of the trade balance to output, as well as the correlation between savings and investment. In fact, the comovement between S and I is slightly higher in both artificial economies than in the data, and this occurs without affecting the perfect international mobility of financial capital.

The introduction of moderate adjustment costs increases the persistence of the disturbances needed to calibrate the model, and with more permanent shocks investment tends to move closer together with savings, as Obstfeld (1986) suggested. Moreover, in line with the findings of Dooley et al. (1987), the perfect mobility of financial capital proves to be consistent not only with the correlation between S and I, but also with adjustment costs that prevent fast changes in physical capital.

The model mimics the variability and GDP correlation of TB/ Y because, in the presence of adjustment costs, the shocks that enable the model to mimic the stylized facts are expected to last long enough for the pro-borrowing effect, caused by an expected expansion of future output, to compensate for the pro-saving effect induced by a raise in contemporaneous output. These simulations suggest, therefore, that the intertemporal-equilibrium approach to the current account can be consistent with the empirical regularities of the business cycle.

The simulations also shed some light on a problem confronted by some empirical models of adjustment costs. As pointed out by Sargent (1978), these models generally produce reduced-form autoregressions in which highly persistent shocks cannot be distinguished from significant adjustment costs. Similarly, in the model studied here the variability of investment can be reduced by increasing the serial autocorrelation of the shocks, RHO, instead of introducing the adjustment costs. An increase in RHO reduces the probability of moving to the opposite state of productivity and lessens the chances of adjusting the capital stock, thereby reducing the variability of investment. However, the resulting persistence of the disturbances is too high and causes the model to exaggerate the actual moments. For instance, with GAMMA = 2 and PHI = 0, if RHO is set to 0.9 the variability of I falls to 5.4 percent, but the variability of GDP rises to 5 percent, and its serial autocorrelation is almost perfect. Thus, the simulations establish the relevance of adjustment costs relative to highly persistent shocks by showing that the latter are not consistent with the business cycle.
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Appendix
<quote>
The model studied here also differs from the standard real-business-cycle prototypein its use of an endogenous rate of time preference to determine a well-defined stationary equilibrium for the holdings of foreignassets. This approach was introduced by Obstfeld (1981), following the principles formulated by Hirofumi Uzawa (1968), to analyze current-account dynamics in a deterministic model of a small open economy.
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