Are Investors the Bad Guys? Tenure and Neighborhood Stability in Chelsea,Massachusetts

In this article, we examine the role of investors and occupant‐owners in an urban context during the recent housing crisis. We focus on Chelsea, Massachusetts, because it is a dense city, dominated by multifamily housing structures with high rates of foreclosure for which we have particularly good data. We distinguish between occupant‐owners and investors using local data, and we find that many investors are misclassified as occupant‐owners in the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. Then, employing a competing risks framework to study ownerships during the period 1998 through mid‐2010, we find that local investors, who tend to invest more in relation to purchase prices and sell more quickly, experienced approximately 1.8 times the mortgage foreclosure risk of occupant‐owners, conditional on financing. Nonlocal investors have no statistically significant difference in foreclosure risk from occupant‐owners. Nonetheless, those owners with subprime purchase mortgages (most of whom are occupant‐owners) faced the highest foreclosure risk when house prices fell.     

金融危机后资产型通货膨胀与货币政策前沿研究

2008年全球金融危机冲击之后,各国普遍出现了高货币增长下一般价格水平比较稳定而资产价格快速膨胀的现象。传统的通货膨胀理论和现有的货币政策范式难以解释与应对,"资产型通货膨胀"已经成为后危机时代一个亟需研究的问题。鉴于此,本文从货币及资产价格的视角对国外相关研究进行了梳理,力图厘清资产型通货膨胀的特点、资产价格与通货膨胀的关系、预期及货币在促成资产型通货膨胀中的推动作用,以及如何建立新的应对资产型通胀的货币政策新框架等问题。在综述分析的基础上提出未来研究中的挑战性问题。     

基于ADL与ECM模型的出口供给弹性分析

以中国2005年7月到2010年6月间的数据为依托,基于动态模型实证对中国出口供给是否具有无限价格弹性进行研究后发现:中国出口供给的长期价格弹性为1.85;出口价格、产出能力、国内价格水平以及生产成本对出口供给的影响均存在滞后效应,其中产出能力对出口供给的影响最大。     

基于GIS技术的基本农田划定研究  ———以重庆市黔江区金溪镇为例

基本农田的划定是土地利用总体规划中一个极其重要的环节,将高质量的耕地划入基本农田,是土地利用规划的基本要求。作者结合编制重庆市黔江区金溪镇土地利用总体规划实践,运用GIS技术和相关评价体系,通过对耕地图斑的"评分"、"排序",对土地利用总体规划中基本农田的划定方法进行探讨和研究,并依据得出的决策模型划定金溪镇基本农田保护面积共1 586.59hm2,在数量和质量上均已达到上级规划下达的指标,为促使土地利用规划工作更加高效和深入的展开做好基础工作,也为西南丘陵山区土地利用总体规划中基本农田的划定提供参考和借鉴。     

Consumer valuation of safety‐labeled free‐range chicken: results of a field experiment in Hanoi

This article presents results of a field experiment designed to assess willingness to pay for safely produced free‐range chicken in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Improved safety of chicken production and trading is suggested as an important component of avian influenza control strategy, which aims to address the direct costs of avian influenza as well as the global public health externality. However, consumer demand for safely produced free‐range chicken is unknown. Products that have credible food labeling are not common in traditional markets where the majority of free‐range chicken is purchased. Valuing characteristics of products sold in informal markets is a major challenge that our experiment overcomes. As part of the experiment, we provided several vendors from these markets with safety‐labeled free‐range chicken. Consumer valuation of safety labeling was elicited through having experiment participants, who were representative of potential consumers, select between discount coupons for either safety‐labeled chicken or regular chicken. Results indicate that consumers will pay at least $0.50, or a 10–15% premium, per chicken purchase for safety labeling, which emphasizes safe production, processing, and transport conditions. This premium is smaller than the premium currently paid for traditional chicken varieties that are considered to be tastier. Consumers with more education have higher valuation of safety labeling. Hence, safety labeling for high‐quality free‐range chicken can play a role in controlling livestock disease and improving public health.     

Specialization,diversification, and productivity: a panel data analysis of rice farms in Korea

This article examines the microeconomics of productivity associated with specialization/diversification in production activities, with an application to Korean rice farms. Korean rice farms tend to be very small and highly specialized. Our analysis examines the productivity effects associated with both farm size and farm specialization/diversification in Korean agriculture. Relying on farm‐level panel data, the analysis studies farm productivity in a multi‐input multi‐output context, accounting not only for changes in inputs and technical change in rice production, but also for the role of diversification in the production of other crops in current and previous periods. We find positive but small productivity gains from farm diversification. These gains come mostly from complementarity effects across farm outputs, with minimal effect of scale economies. The positive complementarity effects work against nonconvexity effects, which provide strong productivity incentives for rice farms to specialize.     

Coping with drought with innovative pricing systems: the case of two irrigation water management companies in France

In recent years, France has been facing particularly severe drought periods especially in summer. In a country where agriculture is the largest water user, some irrigation management companies have implemented innovative pricing systems to handle this situation. The objective of this article is to analyze the impact of these new management systems on farmers’ incomes, the revenue of the management companies, and the amount of water used. To do that, we develop a methodology using a stochastic model that simulates the representative farmer's optimal behavior in a context of climatic variability. An empirical application is made with a crop growth model and data collected from the Midi‐Pyrenees region. The results show that using these specific nonlinear pricing systems allow irrigation water managers to reduce the impact of drought on production. Moreover, the type of pricing implemented depends on the characteristics and capabilities of the water company. More particularly, these pricing systems can be used to anticipate agricultural water demand in order to avoid imbalance with water availability.     

The Role of Bank Reputation in “Certifying” Future Performance Implications of Borrowers’ Accounting Numbers

We investigate the role played by the reputation of lead arrangers of syndicated loans in mitigating information asymmetries between borrowers and lenders. We hypothesize that syndications by more reputable arrangers are indicative of higher borrower quality at loan inception and more rigorous monitoring during the term of the loan. We investigate whether borrowers with more reputable lead arrangers realize superior performance subsequent to loan origination relative to borrowers with less reputable arrangers. We further examine whether certification by high‐reputation lead banks extends to the quality of borrowers’ reported accounting numbers. Controlling for endogenous matching of borrowers and lead banks, we find that higher bank reputation is associated with higher profitability and credit quality in the three years subsequent to loan initiation. We also show that bank reputation is associated with long‐run sustainability of earnings via higher earnings persistence, and debt contracting value of accounting via a stronger connection between pre‐loan profitability and future credit quality. We further document that the enhanced earnings sustainability associated with higher reputation lead banks reflects both superior fundamentals and accruals more closely linked with future cash flows.     

Have We Underestimated the Likelihood and Severity of Zero Lower Bound Events?

Prior to the financial crisis, most economists probably did not view the zero lower bound (ZLB) as a major problem for central banks. Using a range of structural and statistical models, we find that previous research understated the ZLB threat by ignoring uncertainty about model parameters and latent variables, focusing too much on the Great Moderation experience, and relying on structural models whose dynamics cannot generate sustained ZLB episodes. Our analysis also suggests that the Federal Reserve's asset purchases, while materially improving macroeconomic conditions, did not prevent the ZLB constraint from having first‐order adverse effects on real activity and inflation.     

Cost of Equity and S&P 500 Index Revisions

We examine how the cost of equity changes when firms are added to or removed from the S&P 500 Index during index revisions. Newly added firms experience a significant decline in the cost of equity, while recently removed firms show a significant increase. Liquidity improves for addition firms and declines for removed firms. Addition firms also experience a decline in shadow cost. Changes in cost of equity for included firms are explained by changes in liquidity, shadow cost, and firm size. Finally, included firms with greater investment opportunities benefit more from the reduction in cost of capital.