Spillovers of US unconventional monetary policy:quantitative easing,spreads,and international financial markets

This study investigates the international spillover effects of US unconventional monetary policy(UMP)-frequently called large-scale asset purchases or quantitative easing(QE)—on advanced and emerging market economies,using structural vector autoregressive models with high-frequency daily data.Blinder(Federal Reserve Bank of St.Louis Rev 92(6):465–479,2010)argued that the QE measures primarily aim to reduce US interest rate spreads,such as term and risk premiums.Considering this argument and recent empirical evidence,we use two spreads as indicators of US UMP:the mortgage and term spreads.Based on data from 20 emerging and 20 advanced countries,our empirical findings reveal that US unconventional monetary policies significantly affect financial conditions in emerging and advanced countries by altering the risktaking behavior of investors.This result suggests that the risk-taking channel plays an important role in transmitting the effects of these policies to the rest of the world.The extent of these effects depends on the type of QE measures.QE measures such as purchases of private sector securities that lower the US mortgage spread exert stronger and more significant spillover effects on international financial markets than those that reduce the US term spread.Furthermore,the estimated financial spillovers vary substantially across countries and between and within the emerging and advanced countries that we examine in this study.

Policies for Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources in China

Regarding the abundant reserves in China, unconventional oil and gas resources has great potential in exploration and development, and may be the significant complement to conventional oil and gas resources. Based on the summary of the reservoir potential and current situation of exploration and development of unconventional oil and gas resources, such as coalbed methane(CBM), shale gas and oil shale, we analyzed the incentive policies proposed to promote the development of unconventional oil and gas industry, including industrial planning, resource management and related tax policy. These policies played an important role in promoting the exploration, development and utilization of unconventional oil and gas resources.