Optimal Policy Intervention and the Social Value of Public Information

Svensson (2006) argues that Morris and Shin (2002) is, contrary to what is claimed, pro-transparency. This paper reexamines the issue but with an important modification to the original Morris and Shin framework. Recognizing that central banks impact the economy not only indirectly via public announcements, but also directly through policy actions, we consider the social value of public information in the presence of active policy intervention. Our results strengthen Morris and Shin's conclusions considerably: in particular, we find that public disclosure of the central bank's information is unambiguously, i.e., regardless of parameter values, undesirable. (JEL D82, D83, E52, E58)

La chronobiologie et la Brain Gym

Ce mémoire professionnel tisse des liens entre les rythmes biologiques de l’enfant, la Brain Gym et l’école, plus particulièrement le degré 3H. Son objectif est de voir, dans le cadre d’un projet, si les exercices de Brain Gym aident les élèves à utiliser leurs capacités d’attention et de vigilance aux périodes indiquées par la chronobiologie comme étant non appropriées à l’apprentissage. Dans un premier temps, les connaissances de la science qu’est la chronobiologie et particulièrement les rythmes biologiques sont présentées. Ensuite, la Brain Gym et ses exercices, inventés en Amérique par le couple Dennison, seront détaillés. Alors que la chronobiologie donne des informations sur les rythmes de vie des êtres humains et leurs impacts à l’école, les créateurs de la Brain Gym expliquent l’utilité de leurs exercices pour la scolarité. Pour évaluer les effets du projet de Brain Gym, des données seront récoltées dans plusieurs classes de 3ème Harmos à l’aide de questionnaires à choix multiples. Finalement, dans l’analyse, les données récoltées sont triées et fusionnées sous forme de diagrammes, afin d’être mises en lien avec la problématique. Le but étant de voir l’impact des exercices en lien avec la chronobiologie et les capacités d’attention et de vigilance des élèves

The Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies picture-scroll by Hironobu Kohara

An edited translation of Kohara Hironobu’s 2000 revision of his study, ‘Joshi shin zukan’ 〈女史箴図巻〉, about the painting attributed to Gu Kaizhi (c. 344-c. 406) in the British Museum, originally published Kokka 《国華》 nos 908 (Nov 1967), 17-31 (part 1) & 909 (Dec 1967), 13-27 (part 2)

Essays on financial frictions, misallocation and development dynamics

This dissertation consists of three chapters on financial friction, misallocation and development dynamics. The first chapter considers how financial frictions and mobility distortions generate the persistence of post-reform development dynamics. I build a general equilibrium model and calibrate it to China. The mobility distortion is an occupation distortion that restricts a proportion of agents to the low-productive sector. A removal of distortions triggers the transition of the economy. Using a calibrated version of the model, the transition path displays slow convergence and mimics the patterns observed in data. The mobility distortion creates high-ability, but poor, agents before the reform. This provides a channel for financial frictions to have longer effect after the reform. Compared with the literature that uses tax distortions, the economy with mobility distortions generates slower convergence. The second chapter is a welfare analysis of the well-documented depressed migrant wage in China from a dynamic perspective. The depressed migrant wage per se attracts fewer migrant workers and lowers the migrants' consumption and the aggregate output. However, it encourages urban entrepreneurs to substitute capital for labor, relaxing the effect of financial frictions. The net effect on output and consumption depends on the stage of development. Initially, it benefits the economy by speeding up TFP growth and capital accumulation in the urban sector. In the later stage, owing to low consumption of migrants, policy intervention can increase aggregate consumption and output. The third chapter investigates why the intergenerational income mobility decreases and the inequality increase for China over the past 30 years. I propose a theoretical overlapping generation model with missing capital markets, increasing the return to human capital and increasing education cost to explain these facts. After the economic reform happens, all levels of wages go up and all families accumulate and update human capital. However, the increasing education cost and credit constraint prevent the children from rural families from accumulating human capital quickly. The urban families accumulate human capital faster than the rural families. These predictions from the model are verified in the census data. Whether this process continues or not depends on the subsidy of education. Government education policy can improve the allocation of education in the economy