Information and adjustment in a local housing market

Existing studies on bubbles have been mainly concerned with investigating the stationarity properties of stock prices and market fundamentals. We develop a new method of testing for bubbles that relates the bubble component of stock prices to the probability of bursting in the context of the Weibull distribution. There were several eruptions and subsequent collapses of seeming bubbles over the past three decades: 1987 (Black Monday), 2000 (information technology (IT) boom) and 2007 (housing market boom). Using US monthly data for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ series, we have found that the S&P 500 series contained an explosive bubble only during the boom of the housing market that occurred before the 2007 global economic crisis, and the NASDAQ market contained an explosive bubble during the surge of stock prices peaking in 1987 and 2007, although our stationarity tests fail to detect the bubbles. No bubble was found in both the S&P and NASDAQ series during the 2000 IT boom. Our evidence corroborates the criticism that the traditional unit root and cointegration tests may not be able to detect some important class of bubbles.     

冰冻圈直接影响区综合发展水平研究以三江源区为例

目的 评价三江源区综合发展水平,明晰时空格局变化、剖析主控因子,可为三江源区绿色高质量发展提供决策参考。方法 文章从生态环境、经济和社会3个层面构建了三江源区综合发展水平评价指标体系,使用熵值法与综合指数评价模型相结合的方法,综合评价了2008—2017年三江源区综合发展水平;在此基础上,运用因子分析法揭示了影响三江源区综合发展水平的主控因子,并对主控因子与综合发展水平进行空间可视化分析,最后针对分析结果提出了发展对策与建议。结果 （1）2008—2017年整体上三江源区综合发展水平不断提高,增幅为42.55%,但发展实力依然偏弱,主要以低质量发展水平为主,面积占比总计达42.72%,总体呈现黄河源区综合发展水平高于长江源区和澜沧江源区,三江源区东部综合发展水平高于中、西部的分布格局。（2）在地区层面,称多、若尔盖、阿坝等县发展水平显著提高,而达日、甘德、玛沁等县发展缓慢,雪灾害频发是其发展缓慢的主要原因。（3）人均GDP、农村常住居民人均可支配收入、人均全社会消费品零售总额、交通运输能力、社会保障能力、信息通达指数、积雪持续日数、积雪深度是影响三江源区综合发展水平的主控因子。结论 三江源区在未来发展中,不仅要考虑区域内生态环境的保护,还要促进源区內经济、社会、生态保护等相关制度的完善,不断促进三江源区的绿色、可持续发展。     

发展深圳具有中国文化特色的金融市场

本文结合我国当前金融市场对文化层面的需求,通过文化对金融影响的三种途径分析,结合深圳的城市及金融市场特点,提出了发展深圳具有中国文化特色的金融市场构想。经过改革开放30年的发展,我国逐渐形成了银行为主导并且是行政管制为特征的金融体系以及具有中国特色的社会主义市场经济;但在发展的过程中,我们必须把文化、金融、市场统一起来考虑,才能真正形成有中国文化特色的市场经济,才能真正达到"和谐"的境界。本文结合深圳的内在特点,提出从宏观层面和微观层面进行具有中国文化特色的金融市场的建设及可行性,强化文化在金融市场中的作用。     

THE INFORMATIONAL ROLE OF BANK LOAN RATINGS

We analyze the relatively new phenomenon of credit ratings on syndicated loans, asking first whether they convey information to the capital markets. Our event studies show that initial loan ratings and upgrades are not informative, but downgrades are. The market anticipates downgrades to some extent, however. We also examine whether public information reflecting borrower default characteristics explains cross‐sectional variation in loan ratings and find that ratings are only partially predictable. Our evidence suggests that loan and bond ratings are not determined by the same model. Finally, we estimate a credit spread model incorporating bank loan ratings and other factors reflecting default risk, information asymmetry, and agency problems. We find that ratings are related to loan rates, given the effect of other influences on yields, suggesting that ratings provide information not reflected in financial information. Ratings may capture idiosyncratic information about recovery rates, as each of the agencies claims, or information about default prospects not available to the market.     

The NBA, Exit Discrimination, and Career Earnings

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it complements the many wage discrimination studies by examining exit discrimination in the NBA using a decade's worth of data (the 1980s). White players have a 36 percent lower risk of being cut than black players, ceteris paribus , translating into an expected career length of 7.5 seasons for an apparently similar player who is white and 5.5 seasons for the same player who is black. Second, the career earnings effect of exit discrimination in the 1980s is larger ($808,000) than the career earnings effect of wage discrimination ($329,000). Third, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that customer racial discrimination is the reason for the observed exit discrimination.     

Online shoppers in Australia: dealing with problems

Although the Internet is a convenient platform to conduct commercial transactions, consumers are disadvantaged in the online marketplace due to insufficient information about goods and services as well as business and transaction process, lack of access to redress and several other problems. The number of complaints regarding online transactions increased in Australia from 2001 to 2005, and the number of Internet‐fraud related complaints reported to Consumer Sentinel (USA ) also increased from 2003 to 2006. This, in turn, has undermined consumer trust and impeded the growth of e‐retailing as well as added to the fear among e‐consumers of falling prey to online fraud. In spite of this, the nature and effectiveness of e‐consumer protection has not been adequately studied, notwithstanding extensive research into other aspects of e‐retailing. This article examines (i) the level of awareness of the respondents in the survey in Australia of the current policy framework for addressing consumer protection about online shopping in terms of redress; and (ii) the behaviour of the two groups of respondents in this survey who have and have not encountered problems with online purchases. The findings suggest that most respondents are not aware of the following issues, namely (i) which organizations are involved in e‐consumer protection; (ii) government regulations and guidelines; (iii) industry codes of conduct; (iv) self‐regulatory approaches adopted by business; and (v) the activities of consumer associations to protect consumers in the online marketplace. The findings also show that most respondents would seek redress if they were unhappy with their online purchases and if they knew how to proceed, and that most of them would settle disputes directly with e‐retailers. Also, online shoppers who had encountered problems were more likely to continue purchasing via the Internet than online shoppers who had not encountered any problems. This suggests that respondents find that the benefits offered by e‐retailing outweigh the risks associated with it.     

如何减小全球经济失衡的纠正对中国的冲击

全球经济失衡的根本原因 全球经济失衡的明显特征是经常账户的失衡和长期利率偏低导致许多国家房地产价格的"泡沫性"上涨.对于这一现象的解释分为两个阵营.以即将成为美联储主席的伯南克为首的经济学家认为亚洲国家的高储蓄率导致全球性储蓄过剩,压低了长期实际利率.他们中有不少人把矛头指向中国,认为人民币缺乏灵活性使中国经常账户顺差近年来大幅上升,在固定汇率制下中国大量购买美元资产,为美国的贸易逆差"买单".但是,也有一些经济学家包括不少中国经济学家认为,美国财政赤字的恶化和前期的低利率政策大大降低了美国政府和家庭储蓄,是导致全球经济不平衡的根本原因.但是这种观点无法解释全球利率偏低这一现象,因为美国对于资本流入需求的增长应当推高而不是降低全球利率水平.     

Rice Production,Trade and the Poor: Regional Effects of Rice Export Policy on Households in Vietnam

Analysing Vietnam's rice export policy and recent export ban in the context of rising food prices, this study combines insights from a regionally‐disaggregated or ‘bottom‐up’ CGE model and a micro‐simulation using household data. Three main conclusions are drawn. First, although there is little impact on GDP, there are substantial distributional impacts across regions and households from different export policies and market conditions. Second, both rural and urban households, including poor households, benefit from free trade, even though domestic rice prices are higher. Finally, under free trade, relatively large gains accrue to rural households, where poverty is most pervasive in Vietnam.     

Measuring scale efficiency from a parametric hyperbolic distance function

This paper shows how scale efficiency can be measured from an arbitrary parametric hyperbolic distance function with multiple outputs and multiple inputs. It extends the methods introduced by Ray (J Product Anal 11:183–194, 1998), and Balk (J Product Anal 15:159–183, 2001) and Ray (2003) that measure scale efficiency from a single-output multi-input distance function and from a multi-output and multi-input distance function, respectively. The method developed in the present paper is different from Ray’s and Balk’s in that it allows for simultaneous contraction of inputs and expansion of outputs. Theorems applicable to an arbitrary parametric hyperbolic distance function are introduced first, and then their uses in measuring scale efficiency are illustrated with the translog functional form.     

The impact of regulation FD on the information environment: evidence from the stock market response to stock split announcements

This paper examines the information environment effects of regulation fair disclosure (Reg FD). We investigate the stock market response to stock splits in the pre- and post-regulation periods. We find that abnormal returns around split announcement are positive in both periods, but the magnitude of the returns is smaller in the post-FD period relative to the pre-FD period. The difference between the pre- and post-FD period abnormal returns persists even after we control for factors that may affect split announcement returns. We also find that the magnitude of the association between announcement returns and the unexpected portion of the split factor has increased post-regulation. Our analysis of performance trends for split firms reveals that patterns of profitability and changes in profitability in the years around stock splits are similar in the pre- and post-FD periods. However, we find that announcement returns are associated with lagged profitability changes in the pre-FD period, but with future profitability changes in the post-FD period. Collectively, our results imply that Reg FD has reduced information asymmetry and improved price efficiency.