Linear and nonlinear dynamic relationships between housing prices and trading volumes

This study applied linear and nonlinear causality tests and estimation models to investigate the efficiency of housing prices and volumes in the United States and its four major regions. The results of this study confirm that housing volumes can function as a price-discovery indicator. According to the nonlinear volatility of housing prices, this study verified numerous hypotheses. Housing returns can also influence housing volume. The results of this study imply that housing price efficiency can vary based on market conditions. Consequently, estimating the behavior of housing prices through a linear model can result in underestimating the information reflected by housing returns.     

The Structure and Growth of the Credit Union Industry in the United states: Meeting Challenges of the Market

A bstract . Credit Unions in the United States have grown significantly in recent years. This paper identifies and analyzes the unique characteristics of the credit union industry contributing to this growth. The consolidation of smaller institutions and product diversification among larger credit unions in the environment of financial deregulation in recent years has resulted in enhanced services for credit union members. The industry is expected to continue its growth in membership and assets relative to other depository intermediaries.     

Statistical Causality and Strategic Behavior in Industrial Markets

This paper proposes a simple test of the leader-follower model of strategic behavior. This test relates the temporal notions of leadership central to such models to the empirical methods of statistical causality. This test is performed using data from the US softwood plywood industry of the last three decades. Others have productively explored the spatial pricing practices of this industry by applying a leader-follower model. Similarly, we find that a leader-follower model explains well the temporal relations between key strategic variables (prices) in the industry. We conclude that the leader-follower model imposes meaningful restrictions on observable time-series data and that statistical causality is a useful method for testing these restrictions.     

雇主视角下的高级技工短缺问题探析

针对我国高级技工短缺问题,从雇主视角出发,构建"委托—代理"模型对专业技能培养的投资行为进行数理推导,并在此基础上对雇佣双方的行动策略作单次动态博弈与重复动态博弈分析。结果表明由于存在技工离职的风险,企业会选择放弃对高级技工培养进行投资。为此,建议企业实施有利于雇佣双方在技能培养中采取合作行为的管理措施,为培养高级技工创造良好的博弈环境。     

基于“企业人”假设的“软要素”研究

随着经济学的进一步发展，原来的经济学假设体系已经不再适合新的经济学理论的构建。现代经济学提出的如“社会资本”“文化”等“软要素”对经济学的影响越来越大，但是“软要素”网络化特征与原来的“经济人”个人本位主义等假设并不相容。为此，构建“企业人”假设，作为“软要素”的研究平台，“企业人”假设能够很好的解释“软要素”的特征如网络化、嵌入性等等。     

It Ain't Broke: The Past,Present, and Future of Venture Capital

This article presents a selective history of the U.S. venture capital (VC) industry, a discussion of the current state of the market, and some predictions about where the market is going. There is no doubt that the U.S. venture capital industry has been very successful. The VC model has provided an efficient solution to a difficult problem—that of enabling people with promising ideas but often limited track records to raise capital from outside investors. A large fraction of IPOs, including many of the most successful, have been funded by venture capitalists, and the U.S. VC model has been copied around the world. Armed with this historical perspective, the authors view with skepticism the recent claims that the VC model is broken. In the past, VC investments in companies have represented a remarkably constant 0.15% of the total value of the stock market; and commitments to VC funds, while more variable, have been consistently in the 0.10% to 0.20% range. Both of these percentages have continued to hold in recent years. And despite the relatively low number of IPOs, the returns to VC funds this decade have largely maintained their historical relationship to the overall stock market. To be sure, VC investment and returns continue to be subject to boom-and-bust cycles. But if the recent period has most of the features of a bust, the authors view today's historically low level of commitments to U.S. VC funds as a fairly reliable indicator of relatively high expected returns for the 2009 and (probably) 2010 vintage years. Perhaps the most promising future role for venture capital, as the authors suggest in closing, is to increase the productivity of the corporate research and development function through various kinds of partnerships and outsourcing arrangements.     

Currency Denomination of Intercompany Debt and Multinational Taxes

For multinational companies (MNCs) with foreign subsidiaries, the currency denomination of intercompany debt can have important effects on both taxes and financial statements. This paper analyzes the choice between an intercompany loan denominated in the home currency and one denominated in the subsidiary's functional currency. Using U.S. rules for financial accounting and taxes, the author demonstrates the expected impact of the loan's currency denomination on the expected level and variability of an MNCs overall taxes in the case where it has excess foreign tax credits.
The author's analysis shows that the foreign currency loan denomination leads to lower expected tax if the foreign withholding tax rate on interest is higher than the parent's home income tax rate. At the same time, the parent currency denomination leads to lower expected taxes if the parent's home income tax rate is higher than the foreign withholding tax rate on interest. Moreover, if an MNCs excess foreign tax credits are attributable to the subsidiary, the foreign currency loan denomination leads to lower variability in overall taxes. But in cases where the excess foreign tax credits arise from other foreign operations, the parent currency denomination leads to lower variability of overall tax.