Subsidized and Unsubsidized Housing Stocks 1935 to 1987: Crowding out and Cointegration

Crowding out arises in many economic contexts, from the macro concern that deficit spending might crowd out investment to the micro concern that increased employment of women might result in fewer jobs for men. Here I ask whether subsidized housing crowds out unsubsidized housing in the United States, applying the econometric tools of cointegration analysis. Such crowding out proves to require stringent restrictions on the coefficients of the cointegrating relationships that link housing stocks with one another and with other economic variables. These restrictions also apply to testing for other crowding out phenomena.I find that public housing has steadily added to the total stock of housing since its inception in 1935. In contrast, I find that moderate-income, conventionally financed, subsidized housing, such as the Section 235 and 236 programs that accounted for more than 1.5 million new units between 1960 and 1987, most likely adds little or nothing to the total housing stock. These findings speak against recent proposals to provide subsidies to developers who build dwellings for moderate income Americans but offer qualified encouragement to those who advocate expansion of the conventional public housing program.     

Marktversagen auf dem geförderten Pflegezusatzversicherungsmarkt?

This study analyzes the supply side of the private German long term care insurance market. It compares loads and comprehensiveness of subsidized and unsubsidized insurance policies for three age groups. The results show that subsidized insurance policies are less comprehensive than unsubsidized insurance policies. In addition the premiums of subsidized policies are marked up substantially above expected benefits compared to unsubsidized policies. All in all these results indicate market failure due to adverse selection within the subsidized private long term care insurance market. Furthermore, the results show that due to unisex pricing, private long term care policies are in general more attractive to women than to men. As this is not reflected in demand, other factors than supply side failure seem to contribute to an overall low demand for private long term care insurance policies.     

The economic effects of long-term rent control: The case of New York City

This article presents a simple model of rent control in which the costs and benefits can be analyzed in terms of Hicksian consumer and producer surpluses. Data from New York City are then used to examine the effect of the long-term rent control in that city. Estimates are presented which suggest that the program provided tenants with benefits amounting to about 5 percent of their income in the years 1965 and 1968. Additional evidence shows that tenant benefits declined rather sharply between the two years, and that in each of the years benefits were higher for older tenants, richer tenants, and white tenants than for their counterparts. Finally, evidence presented here suggests that, due to the in-kind nature of the program, the cost to landlords exceeded the benefits to tenants by about 75 percent.     

A Comparison of Federal Government Office Rents with Market Rents

This study examines Federal Government office leases using data from Texas and Oklahoma during the 1981–1991 time period. The lease indifference model presented here indicates that landlords may be willing to accept lower rents from government tenants due to reduced tenant risk, but that such discounts may be offset by other premiums implicit in the lease contract. The data collected for this study reveal that rents paid by the government are significantly higher than average market rents during this time period. A time-series, cross-sectional regression analysis of the spread between market rents and office rents to government tenants in nine metropolitan markets suggests that the difference is affected in part by expense pass-throughs, lease period, amount of space leased, and local market conditions.     

Tenant Quality and REIT Liquidity Management

Property values depend upon quality tenants and consistency (Smith: The RMA Journal 50-60, 2009). REIT firms are only as strong as their properties. In this research I examine how tenant quality affects REIT firm liquidity management (i.e. cash holdings and utilization of line of credit). I find that 1) tenant Altman Z-score and size are inversely related to total liquidity (cash plus unused credit line) and unused credit lines of REIT firms; 2) tenant size is inversely related to the total corporate liquidity and unused credit lines of REIT firms, but has no affect on REIT cash holdings; 3) tenant credit ratings are negatively related to total credit available and unused credit lines; 4) tenant book-to-market ratio and tenant profitability are negatively related to REIT cash holdings, but positively correlated to the total available credit lines and unused credit lines of REIT firms; 5) these effects vary across different property types. These results suggest that the analysis of tenant quality can offer insights into the firm policy and decision makings of REIT firms.     

Controlling the incentive problems in real estate leasing

This paper develops a formal model that characterizes potential conflicts of interest between real-estate landlords and tenants. The model demonstrates a tenant's incentive to undermaintain or overuse (i.e., abuse) a leased property while highlighting the moral hazard problem as a cause of the failure of the lease irrelevance proposition. As a consequence, the lease irrelevance proposition's faiure implies that if tenant abuse incentives are left unrestricted, the market for leased real estate may cease to function.The efficacies of various lease arrangements suggested by Smith and Wakeman (1985) and other researchers in controlling the tenant abuse incentives are evaluated in this framework as a means of counteracting the inherent problems. Our analysis supports the greater use of variable lease schemes (e.g., security deposits and penalty clauses), which peg real-estate lease rates to the level of property abuse rather than more traditional fixed payment contracting arrangements.     

Risk adjusted discount rates and the present value of risky costs

In capital budgeting the correct risk adjusted discount rate for future cash flows is independent of whether the flow is a cost or a revenue. Contrary to a widely disseminated view in some popular textbooks and elsewhere, costs are not especially safe (nor risky), and accordingly costs should not be discounted at especially low risk adjusted discount rates. This paper analyzes capital budgeting within a portfolio model in which revenues and costs appear as “long’ and “short’ portfolio positions, respectively, and proves that costs are neither more nor less intrinsically risky than revenues.     

Product market advertising and corporate bonds

Research shows that by enhancing visibility, advertising improves stock liquidity and returns. Unlike stock holders, bond holders may view advertising skeptically. Without proven effectiveness in improving revenues, large pre-interest advertising expenditures can be seen as eroding a firm's ability to meet its debt service obligations. We find that although greater advertising by a firm improves liquidity of its bonds in the market, it does not lower the firm's cost of debt. However, firms with ineffective advertising experience reduced bond market liquidity and a higher cost of debt. Without a real positive economic impact, advertising has little or no value for bond investors.     

Bank Performance around the Introduction of a Section 20 Subsidiary

As of 1987, commercial banks in the United States were allowed to establish Section 20 subsidiaries to conduct investment-banking activities. A concern of regulators was that these activities would result in a decrease in performance of commercial banks relative to the risk being undertaken. This paper examines the performance of commercial banks around the establishment of a Section 20 subsidiary. We find that Section 20 activities undertaken by banks result in increased industry-adjusted operating cash flow return on assets, due mainly to revenues from noncommercial-banking activities. Further, risk measures for the sample banks do not change significantly.     

Rent Control with Matching Economies: A Model of European Housing Market Regulation

Housing markets are thin, and consumer search for housing is costly, time consuming, and risky. Mismatches between tenants and dwellings are common in a laissez-faire market. There are scale economies in accumulating tenants and houses and then matching them up to improve welfare. In many European countries, some housing is rent controlled and rationed by public centralized matching. Waiting time, risk in rationing, and risk in matching are costs that arise from such regulation. We show that welfare improvements over laissez-faire occur if gains from centralized matching can offset the decrease in housing quality, the possible increase in waiting times, and the risks in rationing induced by rent controls. Under regulation, there is a welfare maximizing partition of the stock into free and controlled markets; and contrary to observed practice, it is often welfare improving to set controlled rents above (not below) laissez-faire, which increases the supply offered for centralized matching and the opportunity for a better match.     

Bailouts,the incentive to manage risk,and financial crises

A firm's termination leads to bankruptcy costs. This may create an incentive for outside stakeholders or the firm's debtholders to bail out the firm as bankruptcy looms. Because of this implicit guarantee, firm shareholders have an incentive to increase volatility in order to exploit the implicit protection. However, if they increase volatility too much they may induce the guarantee-extending parties to “walk away.” I derive the optimal risk management rule in such a framework and show that it allows high volatility choices, while net worth is high. However, risk limits tighten abruptly when the firm's net worth declines below an endogenously determined threshold. Hence, the model reproduces the qualitative features of existing risk management rules, and can account for phenomena such as “flight to quality.”     

Taxpayer resistance,guarantee uncertainty,and housing finance subsidies

In the absence of external guarantees, a private firm's debt trades in the market at rates reflective of its private default risk. Not all firms go it alone, however. There are entities, government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), whose debt obligations enjoy federal guarantees. Federal guarantees affect housing finance indirectly in that they tend to enhance the creditworthiness of the debt obligations of the housing intermediary which lessens the debtholder's exposure to default. The market investor then becomes a willing buyer of GSE debt at a lower (subsidized) rate as a result of the government guarantee.Due to the fact that the subsidy rests on the presumption that the GSE debt will be bailed out by the government it can be seen that the subsidy in turn rests upon the presumption by the GSE debtholder that the taxpayers will honor the guarantee in the event of a GSE default. Hence, government subsidies to the housing intermediaries rest not on ongoing government outlays but rather on the confidence that the taxpayers will be willing, if called upon, to cover GSE losses, i.e., the confidence of a bailout.This article analyzes the effects on the GSE subsidy and on the taxpayer, if the debt markets charge for bailout risk. Bailout risk pricing is an economic event. When debtholders seek to protect themselves by pricing for bailout risk, this increases GSE borrowing costs and cuts into both GSE borrowers' subsidies and stockholder earnings. Higher borrowing costs leave the GSE in a weakened condition and increase the ex ante bailout cost to the taxpayer. When bailout risk premiums become priced by the market, it substantially lessens the government's ability to subsidize housing finance or other GSE activities.     

The Value of Corporate Risk Management

We model and estimate the value of corporate risk management. We show how risk management can add value when revenues and costs are nonlinearly related to prices and estimate the model by regressing quarterly firm sales and costs on the second and higher moments of output and input prices. For a sample of 34 oil refiners, we find that hedging concave revenues and leaving concave costs exposed each represent between 2% and 3% of firm value. We validate our approach by regressing Tobin's q on the estimated value and level of risk management and find results consistent with the model.     

Rent control with rationing by search costs: A note

This note derives the long-run implications of rent controls when rent-controlled apartments are implicitly rationed to tenants who are more efficient in searching for apartments in the controlled sector. Rent controls are shown to involve transfers that essentially are from some to other tenants, as well as dead-weight losses due to higher search costs that are borne by tenants. Key to this analysis is the condition that, at the margin, rent plus the higher cost of search for a rent-controlled apartment must equal rent in the noncontrolled sector.     

Audit Committee Financial Expertise,Litigation Risk,and Auditor‐Provided Tax Services*

The Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) greatly expanded audit committees' oversight responsibilities by requiring that they preapprove all non‐prohibited non‐audit services (NAS). Using data from 2003 to 2011, we find that tax NAS are significantly lower when accounting financial experts (ACT‐FEs) serve on the audit committee, suggesting that ACT‐FEs consider auditor independence risk, perceived and/or real, more than other members, including supervisory experts, to the point of not accepting any tax NAS, not even compliance. However, in firms with higher ex ante litigation risk, ACT‐FEs approve relatively more tax NAS than other members, suggesting that they accept the costs of a perceived lack of auditor independence from tax NAS in return for the potential benefits of increased financial reporting quality arising from tax NAS. Our analysis by subperiod (2003–2006 vs. 2007–2011) shows that this result is significant only in the second period. ACT‐FEs' differential evaluation of the trade‐off between the benefits and costs of joint audit and tax NAS provision between the two periods suggests the need for additional research in later post‐SOX years.     

On the wealth and risk effects of commercial bank expansion into securities underwriting: An analysis of Section 20 subsidiaries

We investigate the abnormal returns and market-based risk effects of four Federal Reserve Board decisions to allow bank holding companies to engage in investment banking through Section 20 subsidiaries. Positive abnormal returns for commercial banks were observed for initial, limited powers granted by the Federal Reserve. However, authorization to engage in underwriting corporate debt and equity and subsequent expansion of potential revenues from underwritings produced negative abnormal returns and increases in risk.     

Delegation to Encourage Communication of Problems

We study a principal's choice to centralize or delegate decisions to an agent when delegation can be used to encourage the agent to communicate potential problems. We find that the principal may choose centralization either to exercise better control over the agent's actions or to provide stronger incentives. Delegation emerges in equilibrium only if the costs of effort to acquire information for both the principal and the agent are sufficiently high. We find that increases in the principal's penalties for an incorrect decision may increase the principal's expected payoff, owing to optimal organizational responses. In addition, catastrophic risk, the risk of incorrectly accepting a defective audit (or product), may be greater under centralization than under delegation. Furthermore, catastrophic risk can be increased by well-intentioned legislative efforts to decrease such risk by, for example, increasing the agent's penalties for failing to take a corrective action, because the organizational structure may change.     

Incentive-compatible advertising on nonretail platforms

Nonretail platforms enable users to engage in noncommercial activities, while generating user information that helps ad targeting. We present a model in which the platform chooses a personalized ad-display rule and an advertising fee (which depends on the targeted user group). The policy that maximizes the platform's advertising revenues creates an incentive for advertisers to strategize targeting. We provide a condition for incentive-compatibility of the first-best policy, and highlight the forces that make it harder to satisfy. We apply our result to examples of platforms. Our analysis of social networks turns out to be related to the “community-detection” problem.     

Targeting in advertising markets: implications for offline versus online media

We develop a model with many advertisers (products) and many advertising markets (media). Each advertiser sells to a different segment of consumers, and each medium is targeting a different audience. We characterize the competitive equilibrium in the advertising markets and evaluate the implications of targeting. An increase in targeting leads to an increase in the total number of consumer‐product matches, and hence in the social value of advertising. Yet, targeting also increases the concentration of firms advertising in each market. Surprisingly, we then find that the equilibrium price of advertisements is first increasing, then decreasing, in the targeting capacity. We trace out the implications of targeting for competing media. We distinguish offline and online media by their targeting ability: low versus high. As consumers’ relative exposure to online media increases, the revenues of offline media decrease, even though the price of advertising might increase.     

Entry,exit, and the determinants of market structure

This article estimates a dynamic, structural model of entry and exit for two US service industries: dentists and chiropractors. Entry costs faced by potential entrants, fixed costs faced by incumbent producers, and the toughness of short‐run price competition are important determinants of long‐run firm values, firm turnover, and market structure. In the dentist industry entry costs were subsidized in geographic markets designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA) and the estimated mean entry cost is 11 percent lower in these markets. Using simulations, we find that entry cost subsidies are less expensive per additional firm than fixed cost subsidies.