Have SFAS 166 and SFAS 167 improved the financial reporting for securitizations?

Critics have alleged that securitization accounting prior to 2010 was among the causes of the recent financial crisis. In response to this criticism, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) implemented two new accounting standards, SFAS 166 and SFAS 167, to improve the financial reporting for securitizations. Bank regulators have stated their belief that SFAS 166/167 will result in a consolidated balance sheet (and risk-based capital ratios based thereupon) that better reflects a bank's exposure to risk related to securitized assets. We document that, by ceding retained power or influence through the servicing/special servicing functions to third parties, SFAS 166/167 resulted in real effects to the extent that banks (particularly those that were weakly capitalized) achieved their accounting objectives in the post-SFAS 166/167 period through legitimate transaction structuring in line with the intent of the new rules. Further, we use capital market participants’ assessments of risk retention by sponsoring banks as a benchmark, and provide evidence consistent with bank regulators’ beliefs. In particular, following SFAS 166/167, equity investors of sponsoring banks do not consider (consider) as risk relevant securitized assets that receive off-balance sheet (on-balance sheet) treatment. Securitized assets that are consolidated under SFAS 166/167 exhibit the same risk relevance as assets that are not securitized, despite contractual provisions that would seem to imply substantial risk transfer.     

中药方剂浸浴联合外用钙泊三醇倍他米松软膏治疗寻常性银屑病患者的临床效果

目的探讨中药方剂浸浴联合外用钙泊三醇倍他米松软膏治疗寻常性银屑病患者的临床效果。方法选取2018年2月至2019年4月于沈阳市第七人民医院就诊的寻常性银屑病患者114例作为研究对象,以随机数字表法将其分为观察组和对照组,每组57例。对照组患者外用钙泊三醇倍他米松软膏进行治疗,观察组患者通过中药方剂浸浴联合外用钙泊三醇倍他米松软膏治疗。比较两组患者临床疗效、银屑病面积严重程度指数(PASI)评分以及不良反应发生率。结果观察组患者治疗有效率为82.46%,显著高于对照组的63.16%(P<0.05)。两组患者治疗2周、4周后的PASI评分均显著低于治疗前(P<0.05);观察组患者治疗2周、4周后的PASI评分均显著低于对照组(P<0.05)。观察组患者的不良反应发生率为14.04%,低于对照组的21.05%,但差异无统计学意义(P>0.05)。结论中药方剂浸浴联合外用钙泊三醇倍他米松软膏治疗寻常性银屑病能有效改善患者的临床症状,效果显著,且不良反应少。     

瑞舒伐他汀与替格瑞洛联合用药方案治疗非ST段抬高型急性冠脉综合征患者的临床效果及不良反应

目的探讨瑞舒伐他汀与替格瑞洛联合用药方案治疗非ST段抬高型急性冠脉综合征(ACS)患者的临床效果及不良反应。方法选取2018年1月至2019年7月沈阳积水潭医院收治的70例非ST段抬高型ACS患者作为研究对象,依据随机数字表法分为对照组和观察组,每组35例。对照组采用替格瑞洛治疗,观察组采用瑞舒伐他汀与替格瑞洛联合用药方案治疗,比较两组临床疗效、心肌损伤指标、炎症介质水平、不良反应发生率。结果观察组治疗有效率高于对照组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05);观察组肌酸激酶同工酶、肌钙蛋白水平低于对照组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05);观察组炎症介质水平、不良反应发生率低于对照组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05)。结论瑞舒伐他汀与替格瑞洛联合用药方案治疗非ST段抬高型ACS临床效果显著,不仅可以改善临床相关指标、心肌损伤,还可减轻炎症反应,且不良反应发生率低。     

Shipping cost and development of the landlocked developing countries: Panel evidence from the common correlated effects approach

We estimate the impact of shipping cost on development for landlocked developing countries (LLDCs). Since container trade is important to them, we construct a country-specific measure of shipping cost, called HarpexCost, which combines the global cost of container shipping with information on how exposed to container shipping each LLDC is. We employ the common correlated effects (CCE) estimator of Pesaran (Econometrica, 2006; 55: 967) to first estimate the impact of HarpexCost on the LLDCs’ development, and then recover the actual impact of shipping cost from these estimates. Overall, we observe that shipping cost has large negative effects on the LLDCs. Building upon these results, we provide new estimates on the cost of landlockedness and how trade benefits their development.     

Time-varying inter-urban housing price spillovers in China: Causes and consequences

The spatial spillovers of housing prices across regions are well documented by a large body of previous studies. This paper tries to investigate the dynamic (time-varying) evolution of spatial interactions and their underlying driving factors intensively. Using a recently developed Generalized Autoregressive Score (GAS) model, this paper examines the time-varying spatial spillovers of housing prices in 70 major and median cities of China from 2006 to 2019. We find that the GAS model can well capture the impact of time-varying critical events of Chinese real estate market on the whole. However, different regions display heterogeneous variation patterns over time. Further investigation shows that inter-regional labor mobility and trades are two major channels, accounting for 1.25% and 2.58% of the monthly standard deviations of spatial spillover effects from one city to another, respectively. We also characterize and distinguish between three time-varying patterns of spatial spillovers within different regions of China. Our results shed lights on the understanding of spatial spillovers across regional real estate markets across different city network structures within China.     

发展竞争、土地供应策略互动与城市用地增长——基于252个城市数据的空间面板模型实证检验

研究目的：针对发展竞争驱动下产生的地方政府土地供应策略，从空间维度上展开进一步分析，解析城市土地供应行为中存在着怎样的空间互动关系。研究方法：运用2007—2017年的城市层面面板数据和空间计量模型进行了实证检验。研究结果：（1）服务于发展竞争的土地供应策略，对本城市和周边城市的用地增长都会产生影响；（2）工业用地价格波动与商住用地价格波动都会产生空间溢出效应，且前者产生的空间溢出效应更强；（3）工业用地价格存在“竞次式”的城市间互动，其价格增长会显著抑制本城市的用地扩张，但会促进周边城市的用地增长；（4）商住用地价格提升会促进本城市用地扩张，并抑制周边城市用地扩张；（5）作为因变量的城市用地规模，在同省/异省的城市间分别存在着“彼此促进”和“此消彼长”两种互动关系。研究结论：区域协调、用地增长两个方面要紧密结合，针对工业用地价格“竞次式”竞争和商住用地价格高价出让，从城市间关系协调入手进行调控政策的设计与创新。     

Random Effects Misspecification Can Have Severe Consequences for Random Effects Inference in Linear Mixed Models

There has been considerable and controversial research over the past two decades into how successfully random effects misspecification in mixed models (i.e. assuming normality for the random effects when the true distribution is non‐normal) can be diagnosed and what its impacts are on estimation and inference. However, much of this research has focused on fixed effects inference in generalised linear mixed models. In this article, motivated by the increasing number of applications of mixed models where interest is on the variance components, we study the effects of random effects misspecification on random effects inference in linear mixed models, for which there is considerably less literature. Our findings are surprising and contrary to general belief: for point estimation, maximum likelihood estimation of the variance components under misspecification is consistent, although in finite samples, both the bias and mean squared error can be substantial. For inference, we show through theory and simulation that under misspecification, standard likelihood ratio tests of truly non‐zero variance components can suffer from severely inflated type I errors, and confidence intervals for the variance components can exhibit considerable under coverage. Furthermore, neither of these problems vanish asymptotically with increasing the number of clusters or cluster size. These results have major implications for random effects inference, especially if the true random effects distribution is heavier tailed than the normal. Fortunately, simple graphical and goodness‐of‐fit measures of the random effects predictions appear to have reasonable power at detecting misspecification. We apply linear mixed models to a survey of more than 4 000 high school students within 100 schools and analyse how mathematics achievement scores vary with student attributes and across different schools. The application demonstrates the sensitivity of mixed model inference to the true but unknown random effects distribution.     

The Brexit effect: the case of UK ADR performance one year later

In an unexpected outcome, UK voters decided that it was time to exit the European Union based on the results of a vote held on 23 June 2016. Studies of the affects and implication of Brexit include a study showing that the vote was met with a negative short-term wealth effect for UK American depository receipts (ADRs). This study examines the one-year anniversary holding period returns of these ADRs along with the British Pound and the FTSE 100 to discover any lingering effects from the historical vote. Results indicate that the one-year holding period returns for the ADRs averaged 5.8% for the year while the FTSE gained 4.8%, the S&P 500 gained 15.4% and the Pound lost 13.2% of its value.     

Effects of consumer cohorts and age on meat expenditures in the United States

Meat demand is likely influenced by the birth cohort and age of the individual. In this study, we examine the demand for beef, pork, poultry, and other meat in the United States using the 1984–2012 Consumer Expenditure Survey and the almost ideal demand system with the incorporation of age, period, and cohort (APC) effects. We find that the model with APC effects performs better than the models without APC effects. The results indicate that cohorts born in earlier time periods are expected to purchase significantly less poultry compared to cohorts born in later time periods, when they are measured at the same age. Over the life cycle, purchase of poultry is expected to increase with age while the opposite is true for red meat. We also find that the own-price elasticity for beef is highest among the products examined, while the own-price elasticity for other meat is lowest and the inclusion of APC effects increases the absolute value of the own-price elasticities for beef, pork, and poultry, but reduces the own-price elasticity for other meat. Our forecasts indicate that the aggregate poultry purchase will continue to increase until 2022, while the aggregate purchase of red meat will slightly increase until 2017, but will either decrease or stay at same level from year 2017 to 2022.     

Using macro cross‐border trade data to better understand micro‐level country of origin effects

The article adapts an estimation methodology from the border effects literature to reveal consumer ethnocentrism versus cosmopolitanism in each country, and animosity versus nostalgia between country pairs. The measurements rely on actual macro cross‐border trade data rather than individual purchase intentions typically used in the international marketing literature. The results from early 2010s suggest that purchasing intentions against imports found in this literature do not necessarily translate into actual consumption behavior in international trade. It is quite possible that the consumers are unable to assess country of origin of production despite growing ethnocentrism, and base their actual purchases on perceived origin of product brands. Specifically, it is found that most countries are cosmopolitan rather than ethnocentric, particularly developed countries, favoring any foreign product over domestic products. Most countries also have nostalgic purchasing behavior from specific trade partners with historical linkages. Outside the specific traditional animosities between a country pair, a developed country is relatively less open to imports from another developed trade partner, while an emerging country welcomes it more especially from another emerging trade partner.