Parental transfer of financial knowledge and later credit outcomes among low- and moderate-income homeowners

It is well established that acquiring financial skills during childhood is linked with better savings in adulthood. Little is known, however, about the relationship between parental teaching of money management early in life and children's financial outcomes in adulthood. This is particularly true for low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. Using data from Community Advantage Program survey data for 2,389 LMI homeowners, we find that adults who report receiving high levels of money-management teaching in childhood from their parents are associated with higher credit scores and lower credit card debt in adulthood. We also find that the level of parental financial teaching influences the relationship between children's later educational attainment and credit scores. These findings suggest implications for initiatives promoting financial capability for parents and children.     

国有企业的产权制度分析

国有企业改革的核心问题是最终形成法律意义上的产权制度。国有企业产权所有关系的确定性、产权结构的有效性和产权保护的强制性是产权制度改革的题中应有之义。国有企业的产权属于公共产权 ,公共产权的代理采取国有制的方式。完备的产权制度可以解决国有企业委托 -代理关系失效、财产组织形式效率不高、外部效应和法人治理结构难以建立等问题。国有企业产权制度改革宜采取分类施治的途径。国有企业只有明晰界定产权的所有关系 ,才能保障产权功能的发挥。产权所有关系确定之后 ,国有企业即成为法律上的民事行为主体和市场主体 ,其法人资产制度即具备了与企业产权相关的特征     

Risk aversion and expected-utility theory: A calibration exercise

Rabin (Econometrica 68(5):1281–1292, 2000) argues that, under expected-utility, observed risk aversion over modest stakes implies extremely high risk aversion over large stakes. Cox and Sadiraj (Games Econom. Behav. 56(1):45–60, 2006) have replied that this is a problem of expected-utility of wealth, but that expected-utility of income does not share that problem. We combine experimental data on moderate-scale risky choices with survey data on income to estimate coefficients of relative risk aversion using expected-utility of consumption. Assuming individuals cannot save implies an average coefficient of relative risk aversion of 1.92. Assuming they can decide between consuming today and saving for the future, a realistic assumption, implies quadruple-digit coefficients. This gives empirical evidence for narrow bracketing.

Firms,Destinations, and Aggregate Fluctuations

This paper uses a data base covering the universe of French firms for the period 1990–2007 to provide a forensic account of the role of individual firms in generating aggregate fluctuations. We set up a simple multisector model of heterogeneous firms selling to multiple markets to motivate a theoretically founded decomposition of firms' annual sales growth rate into different components. We find that the firm‐specific component contributes substantially to aggregate sales volatility, mattering about as much as the components capturing shocks that are common across firms within a sector or country. We then decompose the firm‐specific component to provide evidence on two mechanisms that generate aggregate fluctuations from microeconomic shocks highlighted in the recent literature: (i) when the firm size distribution is fat‐tailed, idiosyncratic shocks to large firms directly contribute to aggregate fluctuations, and (ii) aggregate fluctuations can arise from idiosyncratic shocks due to input–output linkages across the economy. Firm linkages are approximately three times as important as the direct effect of firm shocks in driving aggregate fluctuations.     

Price Setting With Menu Cost for Multiproduct Firms

We model the decisions of a multiproduct firm that faces a fixed “menu” cost: once it is paid, the firm can adjust the price of all its products. We characterize analytically the steady state firm's decisions in terms of the structural parameters: the variability of the flexible prices, the curvature of the profit function, the size of the menu cost, and the number of products sold. We provide expressions for the steady state frequency of adjustment, the hazard rate of price adjustments, and the size distribution of price changes, all in terms of the structural parameters. We study analytically the impulse response of aggregate prices and output to a monetary shock. The size of the output response and its duration both increase with the number of products; they more than double as the number of products goes from 1 to 10, quickly converging to the response of Taylor's staggered price model.     

Roy’s Safety‐First Portfolio Principle in Financial Risk Management of Disastrous Events

Roy pioneers the concept and practice of risk management of disastrous events via his safety‐first principle for portfolio selection. More specifically, his safety‐first principle advocates an optimal portfolio strategy generated from minimizing the disaster probability, while subject to the budget constraint and the mean constraint that the expected final wealth is not less than a preselected disaster level. This article studies the dynamic safety‐first principle in continuous time and its application in asset and liability management. We reveal that the distortion resulting from dropping the mean constraint, as a common practice to approximate the original Roy’s setting, either leads to a trivial case or changes the problem nature completely to a target‐reaching problem, which produces a highly leveraged trading strategy. Recognizing the ill‐posed nature of the corresponding Lagrangian method when retaining the mean constraint, we invoke a wisdom observed from a limited funding‐level regulation of pension funds and modify the original safety‐first formulation accordingly by imposing an upper bound on the funding level. This model revision enables us to solve completely the safety‐first asset‐liability problem by a martingale approach and to derive an optimal policy that follows faithfully the spirit of the safety‐first principle and demonstrates a prominent nature of fighting for the best and preventing disaster from happening.     

International transmission of monetary and global commodity price shocks to Turkey

This paper explores the international transmission mechanisms on the macroeconomic and monetary variables of Turkey and hence proposes some particular policy implications. The effects of monetary shocks stemming from the U.S. and the European area, and global commodity price shocks are investigated using a structural vector auto-regression (SVAR) approach. For the analysis, we use monthly data from 2002M01 to 2016M06 and we analyze the transmission mechanism in Turkey using two different SVAR model specifications. Our results reveal that shocks coming from the U.S. and the Euro area lead to significantly different responses on industrial production, consumer prices, real effective exchange rates, and the domestic interest rate, with the Euro area monetary expansion having more explicit and positive effects on the real economy. The global commodity price shocks affect the Turkish macroeconomic variables in a similar but much less powerful fashion than that of the U.S. monetary expansion. As our empirical findings point out that the Turkish economy is vulnerable to global monetary and commodity price shocks. This vulnerability necessitates moving to a sustainable growth path consistent with a sustainable current account balance and a sustainable private and government debt coupled with a strengthened macroprudential regime and comprehensive structural reforms.     

从“收入维持”到“资产建设”：我国最低生活保障制度的完善

我国的最低生活保障制度实行多年以来,在缓解贫困、保持社会稳定等方面发挥了积极作用。但是以收入为基础的现金和财务补贴只能维持基本的生活而无法摆脱贫困,并且出现了诸多的问题。资产建设已经成为扶贫政策新的走向,通过资产视角分析最低生活保障制度的弊端,探讨在巩固收入补贴政策基础上,将资产建设嵌入最低生活保障制度是对该制度的完善。     

外部冲击、需求管理与经济增长——基于中国数据的实证研究

通过建立外部冲击指数,研究外部冲击对中国宏观经济的影响。结果发现,外部冲击比国内政策能更好地解释中国宏观经济波动,且具有较强持续性;外部冲击对中国经济增长的影响主要表现在滞后1期和2期。当中国经济受到外部冲击时,采取货币政策和财政政策刺激需求,对于稳定宏观经济可以起到显著效果。     

石油价格冲击与中国实际经济波动研究——基于开放RBC模型的分析

中国的石油对外贸易依存度较高,国际油价波动这种外部冲击对经济可能产生各种影响。本文构建了开放经济条件下的RBC(真实经济周期)模型,通过引入石油价格冲击和技术冲击,解释了中国实际经济波动的特征事实,并探讨了石油价格冲击对于中国实际经济波动的作用机制。相较于已有研究,该模型更好地模拟了中国主要宏观经济变量的波动特征。同时,研究发现,除贸易余额冲击外,石油价格冲击对经济也产生负向影响。因此,能源价格改革应遵循循序渐进的原则,防范石油价格波动对实际经济产生较大冲击。