2006至2010_对外经贸_考研_真题_经济学综合_专业英语部分.docVIP

对外经济贸易大学考研真题经济学综合专业英语 2006 1. At a more general level, the basic idea of the life-cycle/permanent-income hypothesis is a simple insight about saving: saving is future consumption. As long as an individual does not save just for the sake of saving, he or she saves to consume in the future. The saving may be used for conventional their consumption, or bequeathed to the individual’s children for their consumption, or even used to erect monuments to the individual upon his or her death. But as long as the individual does not value saving is driven by preferences between present and future consumption and information about future consumption prospects. This observation suggests that many common statements about saving may be incorrect. For example, if is often asserted that poor individuals save a smaller fraction of their incomes than the wealthy do because their incomes are litter above the level needed to provide a minimal standard of living. But this claim overlooks the fact that individuals who have trouble obtaining even a low standard of living today may also have trouble obtaining that standard in the future. Thus their saving is likely to be determined by the time pattern of their income, just as it is for the wealthy. To take another example, consider the common assertion that individuals’ concern about their consumption relative to other’s tends to raise their consumption as they try to “keep up with the joneses.” Again, this claim fails to recognize what saving is: since saving represents future consumption, saving less implies consuming less in the future, and thus falling further behind the Joneses. Thus one can just as well argue that concern about relative consumption causes individuals to try to catch up with the Joneses in the future, and thus lowers rather than raises current consumption. 2. Inflation targeting is one of the operational frameworks for monetary policy aimed at attaining price stability. In contrast to alternative strategies, notably mon