ISSUES IN FINANCE: CREDIT, CRISES AND POLICIES – AN OVERVIEW
综述了2007年金融危机前后宏观经济学与金融学的研究进展，涵盖巴塞尔协议、主权债务、抵押品与信贷配给、财富效应及价格水平目标等议题，适合希望了解危机相关学术脉络的读者。
The last 2 years have been interesting times for economists and economics. In much the same way as doctors and medicine can be stimulated by and thrive on the outbreak of a major epidemic, economists and economics can be spurred by crises and recession. The latest financial crisis, which began in 2007 in the US subprime market, spread to broader credit and funding markets and led into a severe recession, is no exception. Macroeconomics, which in some quarters had come to be seen as boring, following years of relative stability, no longer seems so dusty and dull. The revival of interest in macroeconomics and its interplay with finance and credit is arguably for the good. Far from being boring, there are many deep, challenging and important questions, for which we have yet to find adequate answers. The macroeconomic cognoscenti have long been aware of this and were continuing to work away at these questions throughout the period of relative quiescent and stable macroeconomic performance preceding the recent crisis. It is largely this work that is reflected in the surveys gathered together in this special issue. Most of the research surveyed was carried out and even published prior to the onset of the crisis in 2007. Moreover, this volume is by no means a comprehensive survey of the rich stream of relevant research being conducted throughout the 1990s and 2000s. There are plenty of other topics and research papers that might have been included, for example, the series of papers by John Moore and Nobuhiro Kiyotaki on liquidity, credit, systemic risk and cycles (for example, Kiyotaki and Moore, 1997, 2002, 2005). Despite the evidence provided by this literature, some eminent commentators argue that much, if not all, of the mainstream macroeconomics and finance academic scribblings (particularly of the ‘salt-water’ variety) from the last three decades should be consigned to the dustbin of history. While there are lessons to be learnt from the current financial crisis and recession, this reaction is extreme and in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It may be conceded that some strands of the macroeconomic and finance literature suffered from a form of ‘irrational exuberance’ of their own, encouraging an unwarranted belief in the efficiency of more or less frictionless markets populated solely by rational actors, but there is plenty of work (including much of that surveyed in this issue) which does not suffer from this form of strong fundamentalism. Economics, including macroeconomics and finance, has made considerable progress over the last three or four decades. Much would be lost if we were to simply cast this aside. For any reader who doubts that, it can be salutary to take a look at the macroeconomic and finance literature of the 1950s and 1960s. Although it is far from my intention to whitewash mainstream economics and exempt it from any responsibility for the recent turmoil in markets, it is worth noting that the broad body of academic economics is all too readily misinterpreted and misrepresented in the media and the political arena. Paul Samuelson's remark on the selection of economic advisers, although made in the early 1960s, still seems relevant: ‘The leaders of the world may seem to be led around through the nose by their economic advisers. But who is pulling and who is pushing? And note that he who picks his own doctor from an array of competing doctors is in a real sense his own doctor. The Prince often gets to hear what he wants to hear’. (Samuelson, 1962). As the literature surveyed in this issue indicates, there were and are doctors who might have helped to prevent or at least mitigate our current sickness, and can suggest treatments that could help to prevent a recurrence. The opening paper by Ines Drumond provides a timely survey of the literature assessing the pro-cyclicality of Basel II and, in this context, also gives a valuable short review of the important theoretical literature on the bank capital channel. Michael McAleer, in the first of two “Ten Commandment” contributions, which are fast becoming something of a trademark1, provides guidance on optimizing value at risk, in a context of market risk management such as the Basel II Accord, arguing, inter alia, that the Basel II Accord appears to encourage excessive risk taking. In a second closely related piece, McAleer, along with co-authors Juan-Ángel, Jiménez-Martín and Teodosio Pérez-Amaral, provides a further Ten Commandments aimed at providing a simple explanation and set of prescriptions for managing value at risk under Basel II. In the first of two surveys on sovereign debt problems, Kathrin Berensmann takes a comparative look at a range of selected proposals to introduce statutory procedures for sovereign insolvency. The second related survey, by Sönke Häseler, focuses on collective action clauses in international sovereign bond contracts, reviewing why market practice was slow to adopt collective action clauses, despite their promotion by academics and international agencies. Tensie Steijvers and Wim Voordeckers explore the developing empirical literature on collateral and credit rationing, a literature that appears to have been fuelled by the growing importance of collateral in bank lending. As the authors describe, the work to date tends to produce divergent results, but their review points to a number of potentially valuable refinements, which should help to add greater clarity and precision to future research on this topic. Monica Paiella reviews the time-series and microeconometric evidence on the relationship between stock and house prices and consumer spending. She finds that the evidence indicates that the relationship between wealth and consumer spending is strong, though there are some differences over its size and nature, as well as important cross-country differences. Lastly, Steve Ambler provides a valuable survey of the costs and benefits of price level, as opposed to inflation, targeting. Inter alia, he considers how price-level targeting can affect the short-run trade-off between output and inflation variability by influencing inflation expectations and how an explicit price-level target can improve economic performance for a central bank that is unable to commit to future policies. As all the papers in this issue indicate, the economics literature of the last three decades does have much to say that is relevant to understanding events in and post 2007 and to the design of new and more robust regulatory and policy frameworks for the future. Despite the gibes of some commentators, there is a valuable and recent literature on which to build.