Why Are Foreclosures Contagious?

This article investigates the mechanism by which foreclosed properties depress neighboring property prices. Using a novel dataset on housing capital expenditure, I verify as accurate the claim of disinvestment theory made in earlier studies. When capital expenditure investment, neighborhood price trends, number of Multiple Listing Service listings and neighborhood fixed effects are controlled for, the negative effect on property prices is significant from nearby foreclosures, real estate owned (REO) listings and REO sales, but not from default and delinquent properties. The effect is larger in a depressed market than in an appreciating market. I argue that the most plausible explanation for these results is that a foreclosure discount drives down the reference prices for nearby properties and depresses neighborhood values. This discount information is revealed to the public through foreclosures, REO listings and REO sales.     

Demand for coffee in Sweden: The role of prices, preferences and market power

There is a widespread belief that consumer coffee prices are high relative to bean prices and that lower consumer prices would lead to substantial increases in bean exports from Third-World countries. This issue is evaluated by analysing how retail prices, preferences and market power influence coffee demand in Sweden. A demand function is estimated for the period 1968–2002 and used, together with information on import prices of coffee beans, to simulate an oligopoly model. This approach gives estimates of the maximum average degree of market power and shows how coffee demand would react to reductions in marginal cost to its minimum level. The maximum level of market power is found to be low, but it generates large spreads between consumer and bean prices because the price elasticity has low absolute values. Moreover, the impact of a price decrease would be small because long-run coffee demand is dominated by changes in the population structure in combination with different preferences across age groups. Hence, a change to perfect competition would only have a negligible effect on bean imports.     

STRATEGIC INFORMATION DISCLOSURE AND COMPETITION FOR AN IMPERFECTLY PROTECTED INNOVATION*

The imperfect appropriability of revenues from innovation affects the incentives of firms to invest, and to disclose information about their innovative productivity. It creates a free‐rider effect in the competition for the innovation that countervails the familiar business‐stealing effect. Moreover, it affects the disclosure incentives such that full disclosure emerges for extreme revenue spillovers (e.g., full protection and no protection of intellectual property), but either partial disclosure or full concealment emerges for intermediate spillovers. I analyze the implications of imperfect appropriability and strategic disclosure for the firms' profits and the probability of innovation.     

Costly Information Disclosure in Oligopoly

We examine the effect of competition on the incentive of firms to disclose quality to consumers before trade when information disclosure is not costless. We demonstrate that no firm will disclose information in the limit, no matter how small the disclosure cost is; that is, the market outcome converges to complete concealment of information as the number of competing firms becomes larger. Nonetheless, it can be shown that under a mild condition, the equilibrium amount of information disclosure is socially excessive for any number of firms, so discouraging information disclosure by levying a tax may increase social welfare.     

Appraisal, Agency and Atypicality: Evidence from Manufactured Homes

The appraisal of the "market value" of homes serving as the collateral for mortgages is a fundamental part of the underwriting process. If a loan should default, however, it is not the retail market value that the lender obtains, but rather the "recovery value." In this research, we show how recovery values differ from market values at origination and explore the reasons for the differences. Using a large sample of chattel mortgages on manufactured homes, we explore the relationship among the selling prices, the book values, and the fitted values from simple hedonic models with spatial autocorrelation. We then address the differences between selling prices at origination and recoveries from repossessed homes. We find that the spread between them varies systematically with home characteristics and especially with "atypicality," that is, with measures of how unusual a home is. Selling prices both at origination and recovery affect borrower defaults.     

Commercial Real Estate Valuation, Development and Occupancy Under Leasing Uncertainty

A model of commercial property valuation is developed where individual property owners are price takers and tenants randomly arrive and depart. Spot lease and tenant reservation prices are stochastic and correlated and can divert from but eventually revert back to market equilibrium. Within this framework we examine built property values and vacancy rates for varying parameter sets representing differing markets and economic conditions. We also examine how potential and existing vacancies, spot lease prices and tenant reservation prices feed back into development decisions. We demonstrate how preleasing acts as a hedge to the developer against the risk of leasing uncertainty.     

Estimating Bargaining Effects in Hedonic Models: Evidence from the Housing Market

Bargaining is common in markets for heterogeneous goods and differences in bargaining power between buyer and seller affect the negotiated transaction price. Previous research has found systematic evidence in the housing markets that weak buyers pay higher prices and weak sellers receive lower prices for their homes. Earlier work has modeled the bargaining effect as a parallel shift in the hedonic function, implicitly assuming that attribute shadow prices were unaffected by the bargaining process. In this paper, we use a sample of home sales where the seller's bargaining power is weakened by the fact that the home is vacant at the time of sale to test whether the effect of bargaining is best captured by a shift in the hedonic constant or whether the attribute shadow prices vary as well. The question is significant for property valuation where estimation of the marginal value of an attribute is commonly used to adjust comparable sales data. We find strong confirmation that bargaining power influences the negotiated price. We also find evidence that bargaining power alters attribute prices, although we do not find a consistent pattern across markets.     

信息披露的有效性对地方经济的影响分析——基于上市公司证券发行信息披露有效性研究

在信息不对称的证券市场中,投资者和筹资者以公平合理的交易价格实现证券的发行,必将依赖于双方都掌握关于公司价值的充分信息。而对于企业外部的投资者,主要是通过公司在招股说明书上所披露的基本财务信息,了解关于公司资产盈利能力、短期偿债能力、净资产收益水平、资产盈利构成状况和债务偿付状况等方面的状况。所以本文主要通过研究目前我国上市公司证券发行信息披露制度的有效性实施效果,来分析信息披露有效性对吉林省地方经济的影响作用。     

The Foreclosure–House Price Nexus: A Panel VAR Model for U.S. States, 1981–2009

Despite housing's economic importance, little has been written on how foreclosures and home prices interact in a framework that includes macroeconomic and housing variables such as employment, permits or sales. Panel VAR results for quarterly state‐level data indicate that price–foreclosure linkages run both ways. Foreclosures negatively impact home prices. The negative impact of prices on foreclosures, however, is much larger. These results suggest the low‐frequency association observed between foreclosures and prices is mostly driven by the endogenous adjustment of foreclosures to prices via the strategic choices of homeowners and lenders, rather than through the effects of foreclosures on home prices.     

Do global firms increase their environmental disclosure and performance? Symbolic versus effective operations and the moderating role of liability of origin. Legitimation implications

This paper analyzes the debate regarding the implications of international firms' strategies for their environmental approaches across multiple regions by distinguishing between symbolic and effective environmental operations. Furthermore, we extend previous literature by considering the relevant moderating role of a firm's liability of origin on these relationships. Using panel data of 292 firms in the period from 2011 to 2018 in the energy and utility sectors, our results show that a firm's progressive globalization increases its environmental disclosure but does not affect its environmental performance. Interestingly, our results demonstrate that a weak home country institutional context reinforces a global firm's interest in gaining legitimation through both its environmental disclosure and performance; however, a strong level of home country institutional development reduces its interest in environmental sources of legitimation. Our results contribute to previous literature on how global firms may gain environmental legitimacy using diverse strategies.     

Empirical tests of information aggregation

This paper proposes tests to empirically examine whether auction prices aggregate information away from the limit. These tests are applied to a unique data set containing winning bids and measures of the value and dispersion of information signals in eBay auctions for computers. Results suggest that prices partially aggregate information but do not converge to the common value. Even away from the limit, more bidders and stronger information have a significant effect on the convergence of prices and information aggregation. Even partial information aggregation may represent a potential efficiency gain over one-to-one trade of used goods with uncertain common values.     

系族企业信息披露行为研究：基于民营上市公司的经验分析

利用2009年民营上市公司的数据,从强制性信息披露、自愿性信息披露、信息披露真实性和信息披露及时性等几个方面分析了系族企业与非系族企业信息披露行为的差异。发现其差异主要体现在自愿性信息披露上,系族企业的自愿性信息披露水平明显低于非系族企业的自愿性信息披露水平。另外,对于系族企业来说,两权分离度越大,自愿性信息披露水平越低。这说明系族企业的两权分离度越高,利益侵占情况越严重,终极产权所有者越倾向于对其他投资者隐瞒信息。     

A Note on Quality Disclosure and Competition

Competitive pressure is lower in markets where goods are more differentiated. I analyze how a change in the degree of horizontal product differentiation affects the incentives of duopolists to disclose quality information. If disclosure is costly, then a firm discloses high qualities but conceals low qualities in equilibrium. The higher the disclosure cost, the higher the equilibrium threshold below which firms conceal quality information. I show that the effect of product differentiation on quality disclosure depends on the cost of disclosure. For low (high) disclosure costs, a firm discloses more (respectively, less) quality information if goods become more differentiated.     

There is no place like home: Information asymmetries,local asset concentration,and portfolio returns

Using a unique setting with significant cross‐market information asymmetries and a large sample of individual commercial property holdings, we provide robust evidence showing that local information plays a significant role in the linkage between local asset concentrations and return outperformance. We further document a significant positive relation between local asset concentration and portfolio returns in markets where information asymmetry is most severe. Two novel identification strategies that exploit a local lender's ability to price the local investor's information advantage and exogenous variation in sales price disclosure laws across states confirm an information‐based effect that is distinct from risk‐based or behavioral explanations.     

Market Power in the Cheese Industry: Further Evidence

The recent public disclosure of proprietary information providesinsights into the pricing conduct and performance of leadingcheese marketers. Most important, the evidence supports thehypotheses that following its acquisition by Philip Morris in1988, Kraft became particularly aggressive strategically,both byselling on the NCE to drive bulk cheese prices lower and byincreasing the selling prices and gross profit margins on theirfinished cheese. The result was significantly higher prices toconsumers and lower prices to suppliers of bulk cheese, as Kraft'sgross profit margins rose from an estimated $880 million in1989 to $1020 million in 1991.     

Chicago's Office Market: Price Indices, Location and Time

Conventional wisdom holds that overbuilding and high vacancy, coupled with curtailed tax benefits, have led to reduced office property values since the late 1980s. Yet assertions that office real estate values fell between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s are not supported everywhere by convincing evidence. This study offers a hedonic analysis of Chicago area office properties that sold from 1986 through 1993. Whereas earlier office market studies generally have been based on rents, this study focuses on variation in actual sale prices (although the prices were not adjusted for financing differences). The transaction-based index estimated here does not support the existence of a nominal office property price level decline beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s. In fact, the results show an upward trend in office property values after 1986, with nominal declines in office market price levels occurring only in the latter portion of the study period.     

Buyer Brokers: Do They Make a Difference? Their Influence on Selling Price and Search Duration

This study focuses on the role of buyer brokers in the home-buying process by examining the effects of brokerage representation on home selling prices and search duration. The results of this study indicate that real estate brokers, no matter the type, have no independent effect on home prices. The principal effect of broker intermediation is a reduction in buyer search time, compared to for-sale-by-owner transactions. The most important finding, however, is that buyer agents are more effective at reducing search time for their clients than more traditional seller agents or non-agent facilitators.     

REIT and Commercial Real Estate Returns: A Postmortem of the Financial Crisis

In the years surrounding the financial crisis, the share prices of equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) were much more volatile than the underlying commercial real estate prices. To better understand this phenomenon we examine the cross‐sectional dispersion of REIT returns during this time period with a particular focus on the influence of their capital structures. By looking at both the debt ratio and the maturity structure of the debt, we separate the pure leverage effect from the effect of financial distress. Consistent with leverage and financial distress costs amplifying the price decline, we find that the share prices of REITs with higher debt‐to‐asset ratios and shorter maturity debt fell more during the 2007 to early‐2009 crisis period. Although REIT prices rebounded with the bounce back in commercial real estate prices, financial distress costs had a permanent effect on REIT values. In particular, we find that REITs with more debt due during the crisis period tended to sell more property and issue more equity in 2009, when prices were depressed.     

Parking Externalities in Commercial Real Estate

Local governments have employed a variety of strategies to reduce street congestion through an increase in parking supply. These policies have been criticized as an implicit subsidy that shifts costs from drivers to the public at large. Others have noted that parking lots and structures can lead to increased water and air pollution. However, there has not been an examination of whether parking, presumably by reducing congestion, generates external benefits. We measure whether nearby parking availability influences commercial property prices after controlling for property characteristics, including on‐site parking. We find that publicly accessible parking, such as commercial parking garages, generates significant aggregate externalities. We also find evidence of a significant complementary relationship between building and parking area in property values. This suggests that parking regulation could have a significant impact on property development through its effect on the value of the marginal square foot of building area.     

The Substitutability of Real Estate Assets

This paper investigates the degree of substitutability between securitized real estate assets and real estate assets whose prices are appraisal-based. Given the insensitivity of unsecuritized asset's returns to the returns on stock market indices, equilibrium asset pricing models cannot be used to compare these two avenues of investment. Two assets are deemed substitutable if the information sets underlying unbiased, minimum error variance estimates of their pricing parameters are identical. The empirical evidence shows that the prices of the transactions-based assets—real estate investment trusts and the stock price index of the home building industry—follow a random walk while the prices of the appraisal-based assets—FRC/NCREIF indices—do not. The variance decompositions of the vector autoregressions also show that the level of economic activity helps predict the price indices of appraisal-based assets while the stock market index and the term structure of interest rates are better predictors of the prices of transactions-based assets