房产和金融资产对家庭消费的影响:中国的微观证据

利用最新的中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据,研究资产对家庭消费的影响。在区分耐用品消费和非耐用品消费的基础上,分析房产和金融资产及扣除债务后的净资产在消费中的作用。实证结果显示:在房产拥有者中,房产的消费弹性在0.07～0.09之间,即房产增加100元,消费将增加7～9元;而金融资产的消费弹性比房产的消费弹性要小得多,当金融资产增加100元时,消费只增加2元左右;老年家庭房产的消费弹性低于年轻家庭;城市家庭的房产消费弹性高于农村家庭;借贷能力对资产的消费弹性没有影响。     

Credit card usage and consumer debt burden of households

The primary objectives of this study were to examine changes in credit card usage and the amount of debt between 1982 and 1986 and to identify factors influencing the amount of and changes in consumer debt held by households. Personal interviews were completed in 1982 and again in 1986 with the money managers of households in a small midwestern town in the U.S.A. The sample consisted of the 123 households that were represented both in the 1982 and 1986 surveys. Paired-samples t-tests were used to identify changes over time. Significant differences were found between 1982 and 1986 total household assets and total amount of debt. Regression analysis indicated that significant predictors of the amount of consumer debt burden were age, net income, total assets, and the degree to which managers felt comfortable with debt. Younger money managers were more likely to make larger monthly debt payments and have more consumer debt. Households with larger incomes and higher levels of assets also had higher total debt. Significant predictors of change in debt burden over the 4-year period were change in net income and total assets, with year-end savings being negatively correlated with consumer debt.     

Determinants of the Demand for Home Equity Credit Lines

From the Survey of Consumer Finances conducted in 1989 and 1992 a logit model was tested for demographic and financial influences on household decisions to utilize home equity line credit. Results indicate that among households with credit lines other than credit card lines or business lines, the choice of a home equity credit line in lieu of another type of check credit line is influenced principally by percentage of equity in the home, income, net worth, age of the borrower, and credit price. Several implications may be derived from this study. As the markets reflect more complete information about the low-risk attributes of this credit, the convenience as a payment mechanism, and the tax subsidy to homeowners, it is expected that home equity credit lines users will be distributed more evenly across income and wealth categories.     

New Dimensions of Financial Liberalization in Japan

This article contrasts the development of Japanese financial institutions over the past 50 years to that of the United States and compares the two countries’ household savings behavior. Although reform and liberalization is driving the Japanese financial sector to become more open and more sophisticated, there are powerful reasons for the Japanese system and Japanese asset-holding behavior to remain divergent from that of the United States. One major factor is that income and wealth in Japan are distributed much more evenly than in the United States. Since wealthy households are more sophisticated and better able to accommodate risk, the concentration of wealth in the United States means that, compared to Japan, there are more high income/high wealth households that are willing to take on risk from equity and bond holdings. In Japan, in contrast, there is a much heavier reliance on bank deposits. Even though financial institutions in the two countries are becoming more similar, the persistent differences in income distribution are likely to lead to persistent differences in asset holding and the composition of capital markets in the two countries. JEL Classification G2, O53     

The Energy Paradox Revisited: Analyzing the Role of Individual Differences and Framing Effects in Information Perception

In the ongoing debate about the “energy paradox”, a recent stream of literature highlights the importance of behavioural anomalies such as bounded rationality and self-control problems. However, the role of individual-level factors in explaining the energy paradox is still not fully understood. Combining literature on behavioural anomalies and consumer heterogeneity, the current paper analyses how individual differences influence the perception of energy-related information and susceptibility to choice-framing effects. A choice-based conjoint experiment about energy-saving home improvements was conducted with 363 homeowners in Switzerland. Results show that numeracy and energy literacy have no influence on how much attention individuals pay to energy cost savings. However, impulsivity and risk aversion are found to significantly impact homeowners’ weighting of future energy cost savings. Further, it is found that impulsive homeowners are significantly more susceptible to energy cost-framing effects. A key implication for consumer policy is that general educational programs targeted at enhancing citizens’ knowledge and cognitive abilities are unlikely to increase energy conservation investments. The findings further suggest that consumer policies and business models aimed at reducing impulsiveness and influencing risk perception might foster the uptake of energy-saving measures in the residential housing sector.     

Protecting Minority Homeowners: Race,Foreclosure Counseling and Mortgage Modifications

Millions of minority homeowners are at risk of losing their homes as a result of the housing crisis due to mortgage foreclosure and home repossession. One consumer‐oriented policy response to this crisis is mortgage default counseling for borrowers. This study examines the rate at which minority borrowers seek default counseling and the resulting correlation between counseling and the probability that a borrower obtains a modification of his/her original mortgage contract terms. The results suggest that African Americans are more likely to be counseled, relative to Whites. However, Latinos or other non‐White groups are no more or less likely to be counseled. The probability of loan modifications among counseled African Americans is also higher than other counseled borrowers. These results suggest that counseling policies and the public subsidy of default counseling may be one approach for promoting consumer financial well‐being of these households, but also suggest counseling efforts might be better designed for other minority groups. These results also have implications for the application of counseling to other mortgage decisions, such as refinance .     

消费税调节居民收入差距效果测度——基于ELES模型方法

基于ELES模型,对消费税影响城镇居民家庭不同收入群体的八大类商品消费支出效果进行测度,结果显示:消费税导致税后家庭可支配收入的基尼系数增大,说明现行消费税对中国大陆居民收入差距整体上不具有正向调节效果。消费税改革方向是在借鉴传统经典"最优商品税理论"思想基础上更多地关注公平目标,主要基于再分配目标调整消费税范围和提高边际税率。     

Ungleiche Verteilung der Einkommen bremst das Wirtschaftswachstum

In Germany in the last decade, corporate incomes have increased much more sharply than private household incomes. At the same time, the inequality of household incomes has increased. High-income households have profited particularly from investment income and self-employment. The income gap has not widened further in recent years, but the high level of inequality already reached in 2005 has resulted in a sustained reduction of consumer spending. What is needed now is a level of income and wealth distribution that will strengthen domestic demand.     

A cross-sectional analysis of asset holdings

This article introduces cross-sectional data on asset holdings derived from a survey of Australian households. We use the data to estimate asset Engel curves which are shown to fit the data extremely well. The findings indicate that cash and bank deposits and insurance are necessities, with wealth elasticities less than unity, own home has an elasticity of one and the other four assets [1) other property, 2) shares and securities, 3) superannuation, and 4) unincorporated business] are luxuries with wealth elasticities greater than unity. The Engel curve estimates are used to explain differences in the dispersion of the portfolio across households and to compute a measure of the substitutability complementarity between the individual assets. The results indicate that 1) housing is a substitute for all other assets and 2) business related assets are all pairwise complements.     

Save or (over-)spend? The impact of hard-discounter shopping on consumers' grocery outlay

An increasing number of consumers have come to patronize a hard discounter (HD) to save on their grocery budget. Given the HDs' rock-bottom prices, a complete switch from the traditional supermarket (TS) to the HD format would, indeed, substantially reduce grocery spending. However, consumers typically visit the HD on top of a TS, leading to a more complex purchase allocation and decision process. In addition to limiting the potential savings to part of the basket, these multiple store shopping patterns may therefore result in depletion of self-control resources and to self-licensing, consumers using realized savings to justify additional indulgent purchases. In this study, we explain and empirically analyze the effect of HD patronage on consumer spending, taking the selected shopping pattern (single versus multiple stores, visited on separate versus combined shopping trips) into account. To this end, we use scanner panel data on households' actual weekly purchase behavior. We also examine household differences in these effects, and relate them to household characteristics.Our results show that shifting the entire basket to the HD entails substantial savings. Yet, for the majority of consumers, adding a HD to the store set does not reduce grocery outlay: visiting the HD and TS on separate shopping trips leads to a “status quo”, and visiting them on combined shopping trips even enhances weekly spending. While consumers pay less per unit bought at the HD, this is (more than) offset by the purchase of larger quantities across a broad range of product categories, and of more expensive items at the TS. Especially older consumers or larger households, and consumers who shop more frequently or are easily enticed by promotions, are bound to overspend.     

Do stock prices undervalue investments in advertising?

Under the efficient market hypothesis, the stock price incorporates the full value of a firm’s advertising. If so, advertising spending should not be associated with future abnormal stock returns. Nevertheless, from 1995 to 2015, advertising spending often leads to abnormal stock returns the following year. The strongest results surface for consumer goods and services where advertising used to build brand equity can carryover from one year to the next. No significant differences arise for healthcare, industrial goods, or retailer advertising. Healthcare and industrial goods advertising is often modest. Retailer advertising that builds traffic should have little if any carryover into the following year. These results may help marketing managers defend an advertising budget whose benefits carryover into the following year, but hurt current profits. Having more investment analysts on Wall Street with a marketing background should help reduce this overly conservative “wait and see” discount for carryover advertising.     

How push messaging impacts consumer spending and reward redemption in store-loyalty programs

Retailer loyalty programs (LPs) are pervasive in grocery retailing. However, participant spending and redemption typically wear off over time and traditional communication has not revealed very effective at maintaining program engagement. We study the impact of in-app mobile push notifications on consumer participation and reward collection in store-loyalty programs. Using a unique data set covering consumer spending before and during such a program, we estimate the effect of push messaging on expenditure and reward redemption during the program. We report positive effects of push messages on spending, and even stronger effects on redemption, relative to a control group not receiving such messages. Due to the savings dynamics, the total spending impact is larger for messages sent early on rather than late in the program, while the opposite holds for the total number of stamps redeemed. Conditioning on observable consumer characteristics, we allow for heterogeneous treatment effects and find that the spending and redemption effects of push messaging increase with high levels of pre-program spending. Our findings reveal which loyalty-program stakeholders benefit the most from mobile marketing campaigns, and help to formulate rules for campaign scheduling and targeting.     

股利政策的股东财富效应:来自中国股市的经验证据

Based on the special separated equity management structure of the listed companies in China and using a sample of the listed companies with distributed dividend in 2003 and 2004, this paper tests the shareholder wealth effects of dividend policy in Chinese separated equity market. Results show that shareholders of non-circulating stock get a high return rate by cash dividends, and circulating shareholders obtain a high short-term return rate by stock dividends. Translated from Nankai Guanli Pinglun 南开管理评论 (Nankai Business Review), 2006, 9(2): 4–10     

How federally insured reverse mortgages affect the credit outcomes of older adults

This study examines how the extraction of home equity through the federally insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) affects the credit outcomes of older adults. We use data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, supplemented with a unique credit panel data set of reverse mortgage borrowers. Using matched sample difference-in-differences with individual fixed effects, we estimate credit outcomes for older adults who borrowed through a HECM between 2008 and 2011, relative to older homeowners not borrowing from home equity. Our results indicate that the HECM is associated with a short-term reduction in revolving credit card debt, as well as a reduction in the probability of bankruptcy. We find some evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects, where older adults with higher levels of consumer debt prior to originating a HECM experience larger subsequent declines in debt, increases in credit score, and steeper reductions in bankruptcy rates.     

Causality Between Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance: Evidence from Canadian Firms

This study assesses the causal relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and financial performance (FP). We perform our empirical analyses on a sample of 179 publicly held Canadian firms and use the measures of CSP provided by Canadian Social Investment Database for the years 2004 and 2005. Using the “Granger causality” approach, we find no significant relationship between a composite measure of a firm’s CSP and FP, except for market returns. However, using individual measures of CSP, we find a robust significant negative impact of the environmental dimension of CSP and three measures of FP, namely return on assets, return on equity, and market returns. This latter finding is consistent, at least in the short run, with the trade-off hypothesis and, in part, with the negative synergy hypothesis which states that socially responsible firms experience lower profits and reduced shareholder wealth, which in turn limits the socially responsible investments.     

The Consumer-Driven Economy at a Crossroads

Personal consumption expenditures accounted for some 70 percent of GDP prior to the Great Recession. The normal role of consumers in U.S. economic modeling was as recipient of all practical consumer goods and services production. Much of the increase in consumer spending was fueled by greater use of debt, through new forms of leverage such as low cost loans secured by home equity. During the recent recession, two forces combined for a perfect storm: the first was untested financial innovation (subprime mortgages) leveraging the second, an asset bubble (housing markets). In addition, revolving credit card borrowing peaked in mid-2008. This paper uses an innovative Retail Employment Index to help describe recent consumer behavior and presents a simple means of representing consumer retail spending within the constraints of the “new normal.”     

Why Consumers Choose Managed Mutual Funds Over Index Funds: Hypotheses from Consumer Behavior

Much evidence exists which suggests that the vast majority of equity mutual fund managers do not possess differential information (or skills) which allow them to achieve above average market returns for their investors. Thus, when investors pay fees to equity mutual fund managers for investment advice and management, the very probable outcome is that they are reducing the return that they would otherwise achieve by investing in a nonmanaged index fund that tracks the total stock market (e.g., Wilshire 5000) or some significant portion of it (e.g., the Standard & Poor's 500). The long-term negative consumer welfare implications are large, very possibly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for individual consumer investors. Drawing largely on insights from the psychology, consumer behavior, and behavioral finance literatures, we offer a series of hypotheses that may partially account for such consumer choices. We conclude with a call for increased government- and employer-sponsored education programs aimed at creating a more informed consumer investor.     

Saving for Retirement: Understanding the Importance of Heterogeneity

A large number of households spend much of their working lives not engaged in saving for retirement, in contrast to the basic proposition that motivates the lifecycle model of consumption. This article discusses the relationship between this observed savings behavior and three specific areas of heterogeneity in the household consumption problem: budget constraints, savings motives, and preferences. Using the Surveys of Consumer Finances, the article shows that saving for liquidity (precautionary motives) and saving for specific purchases (like housing and education) compete with saving for retirement and may explain why the median household approaches the last years of its working life with only a year’s worth of income in financial assets. Another part of the explanation is shown to be high discount rates or rates of time preference, which cause households to engage in “buffer-stock” saving over the earliest years of their working lives. Heterogeneity in motives and preferences for saving present a challenge to financial professionals and policy makers who hope to encourage more people to save actively for retirement. JEL Classification D910     

Determinants of Fresh and Frozen Fruit and Vegetable Expenditures in Turkish Households: A Bivariate Tobit Model Approach

In this study, we have identified the effects of socio-demographic and economic factors of household heads and households on monthly expenditures of fresh and frozen fruit and vegetable in Turkey using the bivariate Tobit model. The results show that both the probability and monthly spending levels of household fruit and vegetable consumption increase with increasing in age of household heads, educational levels of household heads, married household heads, household income, and the number of adults in a family, while male-headed households, working household heads, the households that receive in-kind help from the government or private sector, and the use of internet at home decrease both the likelihood and spending levels of fruit and vegetable consumption in Turkey. The results in the study may contribute to the stakeholders to identify and implement effective marketing strategies and also develop more effective policies for the government to improve nutritional levels for certain dwellings for which the government include them in the certain state-initiated benefit program.