Land price diffusion across borders – the case of Germany

ABSTRACT

Land market regulations are often justified by the assumption that activities of foreign and non-agricultural investors drive up prices in domestic land markets. However, empirical knowledge about the dynamics of agricultural land prices across borders is sparse. Using the German reunification as a natural experiment, we study the effect of the former inner German border on the dynamics of agricultural land prices in East and West Germany. We apply a land price diffusion model with an error correction specification to analyse spatial agricultural land markets. A novel feature of our model is its ability to distinguish price diffusion within states and across state borders. We provide evidence for a persistent border effect given that the fraction of spatially integrated counties is larger within states than across the former border. Moreover, we observe non-significant error correction terms for many counties along the former border. From a policy perspective, it is striking to realize that even 25 years after German reunification, pronounced land price differences persist. It is quite likely that price diffusion through existing borders within the EU would take even more time given language barriers, different institutional frameworks, and information asymmetries between domestic and foreign market participants.     

Modelling with flexibility through the business cycle: using a panel smooth transition model to test for the lipstick effect

ABSTRACT

Consumer spending typically declines during periods of economic distress, but observers have noted that lipstick purchases appear to increase during recessions, which is often referred to as the lipstick effect. However, the existence of such effect has remained empirically unconfirmed. Using weekly retail scanner data on lipstick sales from 2006 to 2016 in the United States, we applied a Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) demand model to test the relationship between economic distress and lipstick sales. This flexible demand specification allows regression coefficients to vary as a function of an exogenous macroeconomic variables and fluctuate asymmetrically, non-linearly, and time-varyingly across an unlimited number of regimes. Empirical results show the income elasticity of demand for lipstick decreased rapidly from 0.31 to 0.05 during the 2007–2009 recession, then slowly rebounded to 0.31 by the second quarter of 2014, thus first empirically confirming the existence of the lipstick effect.     

The effects of exchange rate pass-through and cost channel on price level: The case of fragile five countries

ABSTRACT

In this study, we investigated whether the exchange rate and the interest rate had an effect on the inflation rate in the fragile five countries between the years of 1996Q4 and 2015Q4. In this context, a model was created to estimate the effect of interest rate and exchange rate on the inflation rate. The methods used in the study take into account cross-section dependence and heterogeneity. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that there was an exchange-rate and interest-rate pass-through effect in the fragile five countries. Moreover, it was found out that the cost channel and price puzzle were effective in Indonesia and South Africa but were not effective in Turkey, Brasil and India.     

John R. Commons and Government as Employer of Last Resort: Three Paths to a Progressive Right to Work

Abstract:

Today in the United States, a number of congressional Democrats endorse proposals that would establish a job guarantee for all Americans seeking work. Arguments for such a policy can be traced back at least to the work of John R. Commons, one of the first institutional economists. This article demonstrates that there are actually three arguments in Commons’s scholarship that provide a case for government to hire the unemployed by serving as employer of last resort. These arguments, each highlighted at a different point in Commons’s career, can be viewed in turn as legal, financial, and historical paths to public provision of work for the jobless—government employment that Commons considered part of “the right to work.” The article traces each path, highlighting insight that remains relevant and calling for greater attention to Common’s writings as a way to reclaim the right to work as a progressive cause.     

基于声誉效应的工程监理激励机制模型研究

为了提高工程监理工作积极性,基于Holmstrom-Milgrom模型,引入声誉效应,建立声誉效应和显性激励机制相结合的动态委托代理激励模型。分析声誉效应发挥激励机制作用条件,并与未考虑声誉效应的委托代理模型进行比较。结果表明:声誉效应在满足一定的条件下,引入声誉激励机制能够增加业主的期望收益,并且能提高监理的努力水平。最后,通过数值仿真模拟验证引入声誉效应的合理性。     

Comparing Compliance Behaviour of Students and Farmers. An Extra-laboratory Experiment in the Context of Agri-environmental Nudges in Germany

Increasing popularity of economic experiments for policy impact analysis has led to an on-going debate about the suitability of students to substitute professionals as experimental subjects. To date, subject pool effects in agricultural and resource economics experiments have not been sufficiently studied. In order to identify differences and similarities between students and non-students, we carry out an experiment in the form of a multi-period business management game that is adapted to an agri-environmental context. We compare the compliance behaviour of German agricultural students and German farmers with regard to water protection rules and analyse their responses to two different green nudge interventions. The experimental results reveal that the direction of the response to the policy treatments is similar. Even unexpected behaviour could be reproduced by the student sample. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the treatment effects differed between the two samples. This implies that experimenters in the field of agricultural and resource economics could use the subject pool of students to analyse the direction of nudge policies. If predictions should be made about the magnitude effects, we suggest using a professional subject pool.     

Trading behaviour connectedness across commodity markets: Evidence from the hedgers’ sentiment perspective

This paper analyses the connectedness network for commercial traders’ sentiment across agriculture, energy, metals and livestock futures markets. The findings find that: (a) producer/merchant/processor/user (PMPU) in agricultural and energy markets are mainly engaged in cross-hedging in the futures market, and most of them would avoid risks in these markets by operating in the metal markets, which can be considered safe for PMPU traders, and that the cross-hedging strategies may play the role of PMPU sentiment spillover across futures markets; (b) as index traders, the swap dealers operate more in two markets, namely between the agricultural and metal markets, or between the agricultural and energy markets; (c) the influence of geopolitical risks in some countries can affect the stability of energy markets, which in turn can cause PMPU system-wide connectedness.     

Estimating the potential impact of requiring a stand-alone board-level risk committee

Motivated by the requirement under the Dodd-Frank Act that all large bank holding companies create a stand-alone, board-level risk committee, this paper investigates the association between such a committee and regulatory risk both before and during the financial crisis. I focus the analysis on the set of banks that did not have a risk committee in place prior to the Dodd-Frank Act, as these are the banks that were most affected by the regulation. I find that matched control banks with a risk committee in place had higher capital ratios during the financial crisis, but lower capital ratios during more stable economic conditions relative to the banks without a risk committee. This paper contributes to the literature by narrowly investigating the effects a board-level risk committee, by focusing on a risk measure that is of interest to the regulators who implemented the new regulation, and by documenting that this association changes over time which highlights the importance of estimating the effects of new regulations across different economic conditions.     

演化变迁视阈下新生代大学生职业价值观研究

基于演化变迁视域，文章梳理了20世纪80年代以来大学生职业价值观发展脉络和变化规律，发现我国大学生职业价值观演化变迁基本可以分为四个阶段。在此基础上，文章重点探讨了新生代大学生“目的性/手段性职业价值观模型”，报告了新生代大学生职业价值观的现状。运用计量的研究方法，通过对全国范围2533份样本数据的分析发现，新生代大学生职业价值观与之前各时代是一种继承和发展关系，同时表现出鲜明的时代特征。研究得出：“自我实现、地位追求、家庭维护”是其择业最深层次的驱动力，“匹配相容、薪酬声望、福利待遇、轻松稳定”是其择业的具体标准。研究最后探讨了新生代大学生职业价值观背后的成因并对其发展趋势进行分析，文章的研究结论能够为大学生就业指导部门以及用人单位开展相关工作提供了一定参考和借鉴。