Search

This study analyses consumption in urban China by use of monthly data for the 1990-2007. The error-correction model reveals a long-run relationship between real consumption, real disposable income, inflation and the shortterm interest rate. Inflation is in relative terms more important to the consumption decision in the period after the structural break in September 1996 still with income as the most important variable. As inflation is a more important variable than the 1-year deposit rate, the policy variable for the central bank, an inflation target for the central bank may increase the effectiveness in monetary policy concerning monitoring consumption in urban China. Results suggest important policy implications where prudent monetary stabilization policy in China should recognize the difference in impact on urban consumption from inflation and the 1-year deposit rate. - Questo studio analizza l’andamento del consumo nelle aree urbane della Cina utilizzando dati mensili per il periodo 1990-2007. Il modello error correction evidenzia una relazione di lungo periodo tra consumo reale, reddito reale disponibile, inflazione e il tasso d’interesse a breve termine. Pur risultando il reddito la variabile principale, l’inflazione svolge un ruolo relativamente importante nelle decisioni sui consumi nel periodo successivo alla variazione strutturale del settembre 1996. Essendo l’inflazione una variabile più significativa del tasso di deposito a un anno, cioè la variabile ‘politica’ per la banca centrale, se questa adotta un obiettivo d’inflazione potrebbe accrescere l’efficienza della politica monetaria riguardo al controllo dei consumi nelle aree urbane della Cina. I risultati della ricerca suggeriscono importanti implicazioni. Una prudente politica di stabilizzazione monetaria dovrebbe tener conto della differenza tra gli effetti dell’inflazione e l’effetto del tasso di deposito annuale sui consumi urbani.

This paper tests for equity market integration between Sweden and EU countries represented by Germany and France. A new causality test method developed by Hacker and Hatemi-J (2006) is applied. This method performs better than the other methods because it is robust to non-normality and the presence of ARCH effects in the financial data. The results show that Sweden did not have a significant causal relationship with Germany and France during the period before Swedish membership in the EU. However, for the period after Sweden joined the EU (in 1995), we find that Sweden became significantly linked with both Germany and France. We interpret these empirical findings as supporting the proposition that the Swedish financial market has become more integrated with the EMU area.