土地价格、土地财政与宏观经济波动

本文在一个包含金融加速器的新凯恩斯动态一般均衡模型中引入土地财政和政府隐性担保融资机制,借此考察在土地财政体制下土地价格的波动特征、驱动因素和对宏观经济的影响机制,同时使用2004Q1到2016Q1的中国宏观经济数据对模型进行贝叶斯估计。方差分解的结果表明,在样本期间,土地需求冲击、土地供给冲击和货币政策冲击是驱动中国土地价格变动的主要因素,货币政策冲击和土地供给冲击是引起短期土地价格波动的主要因素,土地需求冲击在长期中驱动了土地价格波动。数值模拟结果发现,土地财政对宏观经济波动具有放大效应,正向的土地需求冲击将推高土地价格,并通过抵押约束机制引起宏观经济波动,地方政府对土地财政的依赖将放大该效应,并进一步对土地价格形成正向反馈,从而引起宏观经济更大的波动;在土地财政体制下,正向的土地供给冲击有助于抑制土地价格上涨,并减少宏观经济波动。     

Firm adoption of international standards: evidence from the Ethiopian floriculture sector

Global trade in agriculture and food products is increasingly governed by an array of standards. In order to continue exporting, developing countries have little choice but to comply with the new requirements. This study uses a census based panel data set from the nascent floriculture industry in Ethiopia to empirically examine the determinants of firms’ adoption of international private standards in fresh horticulture produce in large‐scale estate farms. The econometric analysis shows that larger size, older, and foreign owned firms are more likely to adopt the private standards. Moreover, this study analyzes the overall industry level efforts and public–private partnership to launch and implement a national scheme GAP and build a firm's capacity to comply with the standards.     

Competition in the stock market with asymmetric information

We build a game theoretical model to examine how the level of information advantage of insiders and the competition between insiders and sophisticated investors affect stock price movements and traders’ trading strategies and profits. We show that the competition between insiders and sophisticated investors can reduce the losses of less sophisticated investors, and thus alleviates the disadvantaged position of the less sophisticated investors. Further, traders’ profits are affected by the accuracy of insiders’ private information, and the number of days that insiders have obtained the information in advance. These findings show the importance of information transparency and the role of sophisticated investors in limiting insiders’ trading advantages and mitigating the expropriation of investors by insiders.     

A theory of collusion with partial mutual understanding

Unlawful collusion is when firms have a mutual understanding to coordinate their behavior for the purpose of achieving a supracompetitive outcome. Given the legal focus on mutual beliefs, this paper explores the role of mutual beliefs in producing collusion. Focusing on price leadership, firms are assumed to commonly believe that price increases will be at least matched but lack any shared understanding about who will lead, when they will, and at what prices. Sufficient conditions are derived which ensure that supracompetitive prices emerge. However, price is bounded below the maximal equilibrium price.     

Real exchange rates: are they dominated by fundamental factors?

Using Bayesian model averaging, we determine which fundamental pair-wise differences suggested by the literature on optimum currency areas give the best explanation of medium-term variability of bilateral real exchange rates. The intercept in the best specification is statistically insignificant, implying that for a hypothetical pair of economies for which the differences were zero, the bilateral real exchange rate would not move. Thus, the ‘non-fundamental’ element of the medium-term real exchange rate variability is, in our sample at least, negligible on average. In other words, floating exchange rate does not in itself imply, on average, more real exchange rate variability in the medium term than an exchange rate peg.     

Consumers' reaction to fair trade motivated price increases

Consumer perception of price increases and their reactions are a topic of great relevance for marketing research and practice. We investigate consumers' acceptance of price increases justified by higher costs due to company's corporate socially responsible activities by conducting two experimental studies. In the first study we examine perceived fairness and intentions following a price increase justified by a fair trade commitment. To assess the green attitude–behavior gap in consumer behavior our second study incorporates a real world experiment to explore actual consumer behavior against stated intentions. Our investigation adds nuance to our understanding of the effects of corporate social responsibility on consumer response to price increases. Our results reveal that a price increase due to a fair trade commitment is perceived as fair and does not have a negative impact on purchase behavior. We contrast our findings with a price increase due to higher taxes and due to profit increase. Our results demonstrate that fair trade justified price increases can skim twice the amount compared to tax justified increases. Furthermore, consumers' actual buying behavior reveals no difference to their stated intentions. Hence, prior research proclaiming an attitude–behavior gap in the context of consumers' socially responsible buying behavior has to be called into question.     

The Effect of Probabilistic Selling on the Optimal Product Mix

Determination of the merchandize assortment is an important decision for retailers since the composition and depth of the product mix greatly impact both unit sales and costs. This paper considers how Probabilistic Selling (PS), an emerging marketing strategy, impacts the type and number of products a retailer should carry. We find that adopting PS can alter the optimal number of products (i.e., encourage the retailer to offer more or fewer products), depending on demand- and supply-side factors. Furthermore, introducing probabilistic goods sometimes increases the optimal degree of product differentiation and sometimes reduces it. Specifically, less differentiated products are warranted if there are either few or many consumers with extreme tastes, but more differentiation is needed otherwise. Our analysis reveals that PS can serve either as a substitute to new product introduction (because it enables a retailer to serve a diverse market at a lower cost) or as a complement to new product introduction (since, under PS, a new product enables a retailer to offer additional probabilistic goods that utilize this new product as one of its components). In sum, our results indicate that a retailer must adjust its merchandize assortment appropriately in order to fully benefit from probabilistic selling.     

The expected real yield and inflation components of the nominal yield curve

The term structure of real yields and expected inflation are two unobserved components of the nominal yield curve. The primary objectives of this study are to decompose nominal yields into their expected real yield and inflation components and to examine their behaviour using state-space and regime-switching frameworks. The dynamic yield-curve models capture three well-known latent factors – level, slope, and curvature – that accurately aggregate the information for the nominal yields and the expected real and inflation components for all maturities. The nominal yield curve is found to increase slightly with a slope of about 120 basis points, while the real yield curve slopes upward by about 20 basis points, and the expected inflation curve is virtually flat at slightly above 2 per cent. The regime-switching estimations reveal that the nominal yield, real yield and expected inflation curves have shifted down significantly since 1999.     

Financial returns to collecting rare political economy books

Rare books of political economy are eminently collectable. Using historical prices, I employ hedonic regressions to estimate financial returns to collecting the works of ten eminent political economists and develop a price index for this corpus of collectables. For the observation period 1975–2019, I find that in those 45 years investing in rare political economy books yielded an average annual real rate of return of 2.8%, which is well in line with the returns to collecting rare books of classical literature. Compared with other collectibles such as fine art, investing in rare books turns out to be financially more profitable.     

Effects of perceived product quality and Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) on consumer price preferences for children's furniture in China

The effects of perceived product quality and orientation toward Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) on consumer price preferences were studied with the use of survey data of the children's furniture market in two metropolitan cities of China: Shanghai and Shenzhen. Based on the results from a factor analysis and logistic regression, consumers’ perceived product quality of children's furniture was identified as a four-dimensional construct: ‘supplier attributes’, ‘extended product attributes’, ‘basic product attributes’ and ‘environmental quality attributes’. Consumer price preferences were discovered to be negatively influenced by ‘basic product attributes’, but positively influenced by consumer orientation towards LOHAS, gender and education level. In conclusion, China's children's furniture market presents a high-end niche segment with growth potential for both furniture producers and wood material suppliers.