stabilizing a previously centrally planned economy poland 1990 stabilization in poland guillermo a calvo and fabrizio coricelli we examine the dynamics of the january 1990 stabilization programme in poland focusing on the substantial and sudden collapse in industrial output and inflation persistence we discuss three non mutually exclusive explanations of these phenomena 1 excessive initial stocks of inventories 2 an exogenous fall in household demand and 3 tight credit we conjecture that tight credit was at centre stage it helped to magnify the fall in output and to coordinate such a fall across sectors we base such a conjecture on the existence of substantial credit segmentation and on the underdevelopment of private credit markets the latter may explain the substantial shrinkage of interenterprise credit compounding the initial contraction of bank credit they argue that credit tightness is reflected in firms offering wages below the programme s ceilings especially given that firms are controlled by workers councils this conjecture is further strengthened by the fact that wages increased and even went beyond the programme s ceilings as credit expanded during the year we argue that the wage hike may be the reason why credit expansion did not result in a major output recovery and inflation persisted during the year

money demand and quantity constraints evidence from the soviet interview project i introduction there are more than 500 studies of money demand that use time series or pooled data but less than twenty studies that use cross section data time series studies use a limited number of aggregate variables such as income and wealth cross section studies supplement income and wealth with socioeconomic and demographic variables to provide insights that cannot be detected in aggregate data most studies of money demand are for capitalist countries only a few studies exist for socialist countries there are no cross section studies of the demand for money for socialist countries due to lack of data population censuses of the former soviet union did not provide information on household money and wealth pickersgill 1970 and millar 1987 however the soviet interview project sip survey conducted in 1983 provides a large cross section data set of former soviet citizens sip is a retrospective survey of 2793 former soviet citizens who left the soviet union for the united states during the late 1970s and early 1980s the sip survey asked respondents about their last normal period of life in the soviet union for most respondents this was in the late 1970s a period of normal functioning of the administrative command system sip provides a rich database of conventional variables and includes information on rationing eiar variables and other soviet specific variables eiar variables measure shortages participation in the underground economy and access to privileges we examine the effects of eiar factors on the demand for money in addition to conventional variables to obtain a picture of money demand near the end of the administrative command era this paper makes two contributions it is the first to examine the demand for money in a centrally planned economy using cross section data which tests variables other than income and interest rates second this study empirically investigates the effects of income on the marginal utility of income under rationing by studying how quantity constrained respondents may use trade in convertible foreign currencies or barter when income increases thereby lessening money s role as the medium of exchange the ongoing transformation of the former soviet union to a market economy and political pluralism is not an easy process for policymakers the findings of this study of the behavior of households may be useful in setting monetary policies see also collier and mokhtari 1989 ofer and vinokur 1992 mokhtari and gregory 1993 and mokhtari and asgary 1993 policymakers must know the responses of households to changes in quantity constraints underground economic activity and privileges and to other factors during the transition period and beyond moreover our findings may be useful for researchers who investigate the behavioral differences in the money demand of households in two different economic systems ii past research in the administrative command economy money is held for transaction and precautionary purposes private capital markets are absent investment decisions are made by the government money serves as a medium of exchange and income should be the prime determinant of the demand for money under these conditions money should be a necessity and the income elasticity of demand for money should be positive and less than or equal to one other than income we would expect the demand for money in the soviet union to have different determinants than in capitalist countries first capital markets are absent the interest rate is not the opportunity cost of money second consumer good shortages quantity constraints should affect the transaction and the precautionary demand for money 1 households may substitute money for goods to be able to purchase goods in the future at state prices purchase goods from the underground economy at higher prices or reduce their labor supply barro and grossman 1971 1974 1976

institutional change and the velocity of money a century of evidence we study common features in the income velocity of money income and interest rates for canada the u s the u k sweden and norway using annual data from 1870 the recently developed and refined techniques of testing for cointegration are employed the evidence suggests there is a unique long run relationship in velocity but not in income and interest rates moreover we find that only a model which includes institutional change proxies is properly specified we argue that the evidence is best interpreted in the context of common historical developments in the respective countries financial systems

changes in the value relevance of earnings and book values over the past forty years this paper investigates systematic changes in the value relevance of earnings and book values over time we report three primary findings first contrary to claims in the professional literature the combined value relevance of earnings and book values has not declined over the past forty years and in fact appears to have increased slightly second while the incremental value relevance of bottom line earnings has declined it has been replaced by increasing value relevance of book values finally much of the shift in value relevance fiom earnings to book values can be explained by the increasing frequency and magnitude of one time items the increasing frequency of negative earnings and changes in average firm size and intangible intensity across time

the demand for money in secular perspective abstract this paper presents some evidence from norwegian data on some of the long standing empirical issues of money demand the choice of a scale variable and the issue of simultaneous equations bias is subjected to some recently developed statistical tests the outcome favours a permanent income model of money demand no significant simultaneity bias was detected various specifications of explanatory variables like the own yield on money interest rates and price expectations as well as the issues of price level homogeneity and stability between subperiods are also considered in the paper

gradual versus rapid liberalization in socialist economies the problem of macroeconomic control from 1978 to 1992 china experienced gradual liberalization with a fairly stable price level the more rapid liberalization attempted after 1989 in eastern europe and the former ussr generated much higher inflation yet both regions fiscal policies were similar as in formerly socialist europe in china the share of government revenue in gross national product gnp has fallen sharply nevertheless china avoided resorting to the inflation tax the resulting enormous growth in saving and in stock of financial assets allowed the liberalized sector to finance itself the chinese government and the deficits of the slowly reforming state enterprises important aspects of china s dualistic banking and pricing policies could well be adopted in other transitional socialist economies but such incredibly high real financial growth is not feasible in russia or in formerly socialist europe thus to prevent inflation fiscal reforms should come much earlier in their transitions than they did in china s

income velocity and the variability of money growth evidence from less developed countries this paper examines whether the variability of money growth caused changes in income velocity of money in 30 less developed countries time series data show year to year variations in income velocity of money in these countries for the 1961 1990 period empirical results based on causality but complemented by variance decomposition tests show that money growth is the most important determinant in explaining the variability in income velocity in at least 20 of the 30 developing countries examined in this study in addition the causality results show that inflation rate granger causes income velocity of money in 21 countries but the variance decomposition results show inflation rate to be relatively more important in explaining the variability of velocity in eight countries similarly while real income granger causes velocity of money in 18 countries the results of the variance decomposition tests show real income to be relatively more important as a determinant of income velocity in two countries over

a political economy approach to the neoclassical gradualist model of transition a political economy approach to the neoclassical gradualist model of transition requires the exposition of what i define the primary elements of the model which are economic analysis definition of a good society speed political structure ideological structure and whether the initial conditions were incorporated in the model after the identification of the primary elements of the neoclassical gradualist model the next step is to identify secondary elements the desired changes with respect to price liberalization stabilization privatization institutional structure monetary policy and the financial system fiscal policy international trade and foreign aid and social policy the analytical framework developed makes possible to understand the neoclassical gradualist model from a new and more enlightening perspective we are better able to comprehend the complexities involved and the disagreements about the reform process the adoption of a gradual process of transition did not only involve specifying the required policies of a successful transition but also entailed a process a sequence by which the reforms should be introduced as such a process of transition consistent with the policies recommended by the neoclassical gradualists economists is developed the conclusion reveals the inconsistencies in the model copyright blackwell publishers ltd 2005

implications of consumer heterogeneity in time series estimates of us money demand the money demand function has traditionally been estimated with income and interest rates typically employing quite lengthy time series controversy however surrounds the importance of heterogeneous agents in monetary economics and throughout macroeconomics more generally in particular if proportions of agents with different traits and hence different money demands are changing over time ignoring those changes may bias estimated income and interest elasticities this concern as well as that of appropriate functional form is explored here controlling for consumer heterogeneity has surprising effects on the estimated elasticities of traditional variables

the transition according to cambridge mass this paper reviews the nber s the transition in eastern europe this book s 18 essays examine privatization stabilization fiscal policies the nascent private sector bankruptcy foreign trade and investment etc individual country performance occupies six studies these essays which are of high quality provide a cross section of the literature on transition however the book s stronger conclusions are not supported by strong evidence two conclusions unemphasized by contributors emerge expectations which reflect the theories used to design standard reforms are often unfulfilled during reforms a plausible explanation for the misplaced expectations is the ahistorical approach of those theories

cross country estimates of the demand for money and its components the demand for money aggregates m1 m2 and their components currency demand deposits and time deposits are estimated using a sample of 103 countries at two time periods money demand is found to be affected by age literacy industrial development and political structure as well as income and inflation this expanded demand function helps to explain the considerable changes in money demand that have occurred over long periods and the large variation in money demand found across countries the knowledge thus gained is useful for understanding differences in monetary and taxation policies across countries

new institutional economics in the post socialist transformation debate the paper suggests that there is a tension between the basic tenant of new institutional economics nie and the manner in which it has been applied in the debate on post socialist transformation this tension is explored in the context of four main perspectives on nie i property rights ii transaction costs economics iii new economic history and iv evolutionary economics there are two main arguments the first is that the transformation phase should be seen as open ended rather than a closed process where the pure market is the inevitable end result the second is that although the nie literature touches on most of the issues which are relevant to post socialist transformation the insights that it offers are still too general for policy guidance

modeling monetary trends in italy using historical data the demand for broad money 1861 1990 in this paper we estimate a stable demand for money relationship for italy using a long series of historical data we extend previously available data sets to obtain a sample for the years 1861 to 1990 and use cointegration analysis and two stage estimation procedures to obtain a dynamic model for m2 demand by employing a small number of explanatory variables and a nonlinear error correction model we find a stable demand for money relationship our model incorporates significant inflation and interest rate effects in contrast to previous studies of this type

rational herding in financial economics abstract this paper briefly describes recent papers on the economics of rational herding in financial markets some models can predict perfect herding in which rational agents all act alike without any countervailing force such herding typically arises either from direct payoff externalities negative externalities in bank runs positive externalities in the generation of trading liquidity or in information acquisition principal agent problems based on managerial desire to protect or signal reputation or informational learning cascades the paper also provides a few pointers to related literature and suggests issues to be addressed in future research

after state socialism the political origins of transitional recessions transitions from state socialism created a startling range of initial economic outcomes from renewed growth to deep economic crises debates about the causes have largely ignored the political dis

establishing property rights establishing secure property rights in transition economies amounts to solving two problems inefficiency structures of control rights over assets and poor contract enforcement politicians and bureaucrats still wield excessive control over assets which results in inefficient underinvestment by entrepreneurs corruption is one way of getting around political control but the drawbacks are considerable particularly the limited enforceability of corruption contracts more workable strategies for establishing property rights in transition economies are giving equity to the bureaucrats and other parties that have control reforming the civil service and removing bureaucratic control rights through privatization russia s experience shows how privatization combined with equity incentives for enterprise insiders transfers control rights from the bureaucrats and stimulates political and economic pressures to protect private property rights

structural adjustment and manufacturing sector competitiveness lessons from post unification east germany abstract the article analyzes how the particular combination of historical circumstances government policies and institutional structures have shaped the quest for competitiveness of the east german manufacturing sector after unification in 1990 the nature of unification precluded the option of achieving short run competitiveness via declining real wages leaving rapid productivity growth as the only possible avenue to pursue the east german experience underlines the importance of crowding in particularly in the context of adverse initial conditions it suggests that large scale investment does not necessarily bring with it a commensurate build up of research and development with positive spill over effects for growth it also cautions against the blind adoption of institutional arrangements from a different political economical context especially regarding capital labor relations

the old theory of economic policy and the new institutionalism abstract in economics recent emphasis on institutions suggests new policy dimensions for the traditional theory of economic policy which originated with tinbergen and others at the time of the keynesian revolution the paper presents elements of the traditional view instruments targets and policy models and then considers new aspects of policy especially policy for structural change the discussion emphasizes the implications for institutional design of incomplete knowledge and endogenous politics both public and private actors rely on incomplete policy models and the models themselves can become intermediate targets of policy

some aspects of the monetary economics of richard cantillon abstract this article examines several key aspects of the monetary economics in richard cantillon s essai sur la nature du commerce en general 1755 viewed from a modern monetarist perspective with special focus on monetary dynamics after establishing the quantity theory framework of cantillon s analysis the article reviews the following aspects of his work his theory of monetary disequilibrium his analysis of the open economy his treatment of the interest rate his treatment of expectations and information and his analysis of monetary induced business fluctuations and the use of monetary policy

the consequences of endogenizing information for the performance of a sequential decision procedure we analyse the implications of endogenizing information collection and reputational concerns for the performance of a sequential decision structure in this model two agents decide in a sequence whether to implement a public project the cost of gathering information is private we derive two results first endogenizing information replaces the herding problem with a free rider problem second endogenizing information aggravates the distortionary effect of reputational concerns

hayek and socialism friedrich a hayek was a life long opponent of socialism three of his contributions are surveyed and placed within historical context his debates in the 1930s with the market socialists his political critique of socialism in the road to serfdom and his evolutionary arguments against rationalist constructivists recent discussions that use the economics of information to analyze the prospects for socialism are also reviewed it is argued that theorists working in the economics of information have not recognized just how far hayek s conceptualization of the appropriate theoretical constructs for economics deviates from those of mainstream economists as such they have misunderstood what may constitute an independent set of arguments against socialism

the effects of reform on china s bank structure and performance abstract this paper investigates the relationship between market structure and performance in china s banking system from 1985 to 2002 a period when this sector was subject to gradual but notable reform using panel data estimation techniques both the market power and efficient structure hypotheses are tested in addition the model is extended to consider issues such as the impact of bank size ownership and whether the big four banks enjoy a quiet life on average x efficiency declined significantly and most banks were operating below scale efficient levels estimation of the structure performance models lends some support to the relative market power hypothesis in the early period the reforms had little impact on the structure of china s banking sector though the joint stock banks became relatively more x efficient there was no evidence to support the quiet life hypothesis probably because strict interest rate controls prevented the state banks from earning monopoly profits thus the ongoing liberalisation of interest rates should be accompanied by reduced concentration overall to improve competitive structure new policies should be directed at encouraging market entry and increasing the market share of the most efficient banks

do investors herd in emerging stock markets evidence from the taiwanese market abstract this paper has three main contributions to the literature on investor herds first it extends investor herding studies to an emerging yet relatively sophisticated taiwanese stock market at the sector level by using firm level data second it employs different methodologies designed to test the existence of investor herds to better understand the sources of herd behavior third it discusses the implications of different herding measures for investors exposed to systematic and unsystematic risks we find that the linear model based on the cross sectional standard deviation cssd testing methodology yields no significant evidence of herding however the non linear model proposed by chang et al 2000 and the state space based models of hwang and salmon 2004 lead to consistent results indicating strong evidence of herd formation in all sectors we also find that the herding effect is more prominent during periods of market losses our results suggest limited diversification opportunities for investors in this market especially during periods of market losses when diversification is most needed further research is necessary to see whether similar findings hold for other emerging markets

monetary policy and rational asset price bubbles i examine the impact of alternative monetary policy rules on a rational asset price bubble through the lens of an olg model with nominal rigidities a systematic increase in interest rates in response to a growing bubble is shown to enhance the uctuations in the latter

alpha hunters and beta grazers the search for incremental returns alphas in current parlance has become the holy grail of active investment this article begins by drawing a distinction between two broad classes of alphas 1 allocation alphas that are broadly available on a non zero sum basis by moving the strategic portfolio toward a more balanced return risk structure and 2 truly active skill based return enhancements derived from opportunistic inefficiencies inefficiencies can be hard to discern and even harder to exploit which may help explain both why some investors are able to consistently produce positive alpha and also why they are so few in number

the role of tax bases and collections costs in the determination of income tax rates seigniorage and inflation a growing theoretical literature on optimal taxation predicts that governments will set the tax rates on money holdings and on more traditional tax bases to minimize the deadweight losses of collecting government revenue under the presumption that relative collection costs and tax bases have not changed significantly over time the empirical time series seigniorage literature has focused on the theory s tax smoothing implication finding only weak support we show that changes in collections costs and tax bases played an important role in the determination of tax composition and find stronger support for tax smoothing when this is taken into account

capital market development and mass privatization are logical contradictions lessons from russia and the czech republic the introduction of mass privatization policies in russia and the czech republic depended on the creation of impersonal capital markets to finance the needs of privatized companies and to provide a secondary market for the trading of securities yet mass privatization created the contradictory conditions of generating millions of poorly informed shareholders with no efficient markets for the sale of the shares the absence of financial markets created systematic pressures to move assets by illegal or non transparent means to users who value them more privatization created the incentives to destroy the financial markets critical to its success a comparative case analysis of post privatization market formation in both these countries demonstrates that the functional necessity for these markets does not engender their own creation in the absence of institutional mechanisms of state regulation and trust markets become arenas for political contests and economic manipulation the irony of these policies is that a principal lesson has been that market reforms cannot create viable markets only institutional formation can copyright 2002 oxford university press

informational cascades a mirage abstract experimental research found contradictory results regarding the occurrence of informational cascades whereas anderson and holt anderson l r holt c a 1997 information cascades in the laboratory the american economic review 87 847 862 confirmed the model of banerjee banerjee a v 1992 a simple model of herd behavior the quarterly journal of economics 107 797 817 and bikhchandani et al bikhchandani s hishleifer d welch i 1992 a theory of fads fashion custom and cultural change as informational cascades journal of political economy 100 992 1026 through lab tests huck and oechssler huck s oechssler j 2000 informational cascades in the laboratory do they occur for the right reasons journal of economic psychology 21 661 671 came to contradictory results on crucial issues this article presents experimental evidence supporting further doubts concerning bayesian informational cascades just under two thirds of all decisions are characterized by an excessive orientation towards the private signal and only a small number of the subjects

competitive interest payments on bank deposits and the long run demand for money reply this paper tests two assumptions made in previous demand for money studies the first assumption concerns the role assigned to the interest rate in the demand for money function common practice identifies the rate of interest with the opportunity cost of holding money in section i this formulation is shown to blur an important distinction between the price of money and the price of money substitutes and to implicitly assume that the relevant price variable is the difference between these two distinct prices a second assumption is that the current ban on interest payments on demand deposits is fully effective in section ii i operationally define these price variables and estimate perfectly competitive interest payments on commercial bank deposits this is done by crudely measuring commercial bank marginal costs and assuming that all excess profit is passed on to depositors in indirect ways section iii presents estimates of a more complete longrun demand for money relationship which explicitly includes an own price and a cross price as separate influences and assumes that the prohibition of the payment of interest on deposits is totally ineffective although no firm conclusion is reached concerning the proper functional specification of the demand function the results significantly improve upon previous demand for money estimates which assumed that the interest payment prohibition is totally effective in section iv the results are summarized and implications of the analysis for monetary theory are presented my competitive demand for money formulation leads to a reinterpretation of the existing evidence on what is generally referred to as the interest elasticity of demand for money this estimate is shown to be significantly biased downward it also implies that the demand for and supply of money are more interdependent than is usually assumed

following the pied piper do individual returns herd around the market do equity returns indicate the presence of herd behavior on the part of investors during periods of market stress to test this proposition the cross sectional standard deviation of returns or dispersion is used to capture herd behavior when individual returns herd around the market consensus dispersions are predicted to be relatively low in contrast rational asset pricing models predict an increase in dispersion because individual returns are repelled away from the market return when stocks differ in their sensitivity to market movements the results for both daily and monthly returns are inconsistent with the presence of herding during periods of large price movements for example during extreme down markets when herding is expected to be most prevalent the magnitude of the increase in the dispersion of actual returns is mirrored by the increase in the dispersion of predicted returns that are estimated from a rational asset pricing model

herding behaviour and the declining value relevance of accounting information evidence from an emerging stock market abstractthis article sheds light on the underlying mechanisms behind the changes in the value relevance of accounting information in the karachi stock exchange kse during the 1999 2010 period we find that neither changes in earnings quality nor the earnings lack of timeliness hypothesis can explain the decline in the value relevance of accounting information in the kse based on the stylized facts associated with the growth of the kse and the broader economics literature we argue that the reduction in the explanatory power of accounting information vis a vis stock returns was caused by herding behaviour empirical estimates from state space model of herding behaviour confirm the existence of herding and we find that the value relevance of accounting information is significantly lower in periods characterized by herding behaviour this article is also amongst the first attempts to empirically demonstrate that an expansionary monetary policy and increases in foreign portfolio investment lead to increas

international price behavior and the demand for money oil prices commodity prices and american monetary policy the last operating through a variety of channels have all figured prominently in explanations of the international inflation process in the late 1960s and early 70s out major purpose in this paper is to test these various hypotheses we do so in the context of a reduced form rational expectations price equation which we estimate for the united states and seven other industrial countries using quarterly data for the period 1955 through 1976 the principal conclusion that emerges from this exercise is that movements in domestic money in these countries served as the key link in the inflation process the factors that produced these monetary changes however differed among countries price shocks of various sorts were clearly of secondary importance the other important set of conclusions concerns the demand for money in place of a traditional stock adjustment model we used gls with a second order correction for autocorrelation we believe this produced more plausible estimates of the parameters of the long run demand function and of the adjustment process itself

the long run behavior of the income velocity of money in five advanced countries 1870 1975 an institutional approach the income velocity of money in canada the united states great britain norway and sweden displays a u shaped pattern over the last one hundred years this paper presents and tests empirically an explanation for this secular pattern emphasizing the influence on velocity of institutional changes the inclusion into a simple velocity function of institutional developments such as the process of monetization the spread of commercial banking financial development and the growth of economic stability improves the explanation of long run movements in velocity provided by a regression of velocity on real permanent income per head and the interest rate

have financial statements lost their relevance the authors explore the concern that financial statements no longer have the same relevance to investors that they had in the past they test for value relevance by measuring the total return that could have been earned from prior knowledge of financial statement information and by examining the explanatory power of accounting information on market values and annual market adjusted returns both analyses are applied to a broad sample of exchange listed and nasdaq firms for the 1952 94 period the authors find mixed evidence on value relevance of financial statement reporting during the test period

some qualms about the test of the institutionalist hypothesis of the long run behavior of velocity this paper expresses econometric qualms about bordo and jonung s 1981 analysis of long run velocity they did not recognize that for u s and canadian data the log of velocity has a unit root hence estimation of a log level regression may produce spurious regressions when bordo and jonung s velocity equation is reestimated in rate of change form permanent income is significant contrary to their earlier conclusion moreover using this approach gives a stronger result for one of the institutional variables in the velocity function in the sense that the remaining variables become more significant