State‐Led Financial Regulation and Representations of Spatial Fixity: The Example of the Spanish Real Estate Sector

This article offers a bottom‐up contribution to the fixity–motion literature. It aims to unravel the apparent contradiction of real estate spatial fixity in Spain, which is portrayed both as a barrier to accumulation and as a unique source of investment by different capitalist actors. Empirically, it describes the shifts in real estate ownership and changes in profit‐making strategies that have taken place across the real estate sector during the crisis years, and the role of the state in these shifts. The article asserts that the idea of spatial fixity representing a spatial barrier for accumulation does not necessarily apply in the Spanish case. It further claims that the tensions in capital circulation through real estate are not only to be found in the action of time, but in different state strategies pursued by various actors. The opposing representations of fixity are the result of state regulation of interest rates, taxation and risk weighting. The state also increasingly promotes land rents as a source of liquidity creation.     

Effect of Energy Prices on Economic Growth in the ECOWAS Sub-Region: Investigating the Channels Using Panel Data

The article empirically examines the effect of energy prices on economic growth within the Economic Community of West African States sub-region by acknowledging that the effect of energy prices on growth is quintessentially indirect and hence can be tracked through some channels. Exploiting the System Generalized Methods of Moments estimation technique for the period spanning 2002–2015, the results indicate that the overall effect of energy prices on economic growth is significantly negative. This effect propagates mainly through government consumption expenditure and investment, albeit its effect through real interest rate is positive. However, its negative effects on government consumption, investment, and exchange rate significantly overwhelm the positive effect from real interest rate.     

家庭承包地“三权”分置的制度逻辑探究 ——基于制度需求与供给的视角

研究目的:阐明"三权"分置的制度逻辑,为制度供给的增量调整提供一种思路。研究方法:文献分析法、政策文本分析法。研究结果:当下农民、新型农业经营者出现新的制度诉求,既有土地承包经权营制度不足以满足该需求。承包地制度供给创新要做实承包权,辨明"三权"分置下经营权所处的位置。土地经营权的权利塑造过程应坚持物债二分法,实现物权法、合同法双重法制途径的并重。研究结论:承包地"三权"分置本质上是理论创新问题,辨清"三权"分置的制度逻辑,仍需以实践需求为出发点,新的制度供给是一个增量调整与立法跟进问题。对经营权性质的探讨有必要融入物债二分逻辑,对于短期限的土地经营权,应按照契约自由原则,实行意思主义,权利类型、权利内容经双方自由创设,对长期存续的土地经营权可实现物权化,实行物权法定主义,按照法定规格与程序流转。     

Hedonic pricing and the spatial structure of housing data – an application to Berlin

Housing prices are largely determined by physical location. By applying the outsample prediction accuracy of rental prices as evaluation criteria, we examine whether the choice of the hedonic model additionally depends on the spatial structure of housing data, i.e. accounting for locational effects by either district fixed effects or spatial econometric modelling. Our results show that a generalised spatio-temporal model outperforms a district fixed effects model only if the spatial density – the weighted mean distance to nearest neighbours – is relatively small. Moreover, we use the required density thresholds to deduce a pseudo indifference curve, thereby showing that the ratio of the weighted spatial distance-to-the mean district diameter increases with the mean sample size per district. This emphasises the role of data structure and district choices for model selection. Differences in data can thereby serve as an explanation for contradictory findings in literature, whether spatial econometric methods or simple district fixed effects are used.     

CEO career horizon,corporate governance,and real options: The role of economic short‐termism

Research Summary: Combining studies on real options theory and economic short‐termism, we propose that, depending on CEOs’ career horizons, CEOs have heterogeneous interests in strategic flexibility, and thus, have different incentives to make real options investments. We argue that compared to CEOs with longer career horizons, CEOs with shorter career horizons will be less inclined to make real options investments because they may not fully reap the rewards during their tenure. In addition, we argue that long‐term incentives and institutional ownership will mitigate the relationship between CEOs’ career horizons and real options investments. U.S. public firms as an empirical setting produced consistent evidence for our predictions. Our study is the first to theoretically explain and empirically show that a CEO's self‐seeking behavior will impact real options investments. Managerial Summary: This article helps to explain how a CEO's self seeking‐behavior may shape a firm's real option investment, which could result in different level of strategic flexibility. We argue that CEOs with short career horizons have less time to exercise their firms’ real options, which should lower the investments in the firms’ real options portfolios relative to CEOs with long career horizons. We study a sample of U.S. public firms and find strong evidence that a CEO's expected tenure in the firm is positively related to the real options investments at the firm level. We find that this agency issue can be mitigated by adopting appropriate corporate governance mechanisms such as long‐term incentives and institutional investors.     

Asymmetric effects of housing wealth on college enrolment

We investigate the impact of housing wealth, credit availability and financial distress on college enrolment decisions. We find that housing wealth is negatively related to enrolment in public schools and positively related to enrolment in private schools. This evidence suggests that, on average, students substituted away from private schools towards public institutions during the recent financial crisis.     

Forecasting Bordeaux wine prices using state-space methods

Generic Bordeaux red wine (basic claret) can be regarded as being similar to an agricultural commodity. Production volumes are substantial, they are traded at high frequency and the quality of the product is relatively homogeneous. Unlike other commodities and the top-end wines (which represent only 3% of the traded volume), there is no futures market for generic Bordeaux wine. Reliable forecasts of prices can to large extent replace this information deficiency and improve the functioning of the market. We use state-space methods with monthly data to obtain a univariate forecasting model for the average price. The estimates highlight the stochastic trend and the seasonality present in the evolution of the price over the period 1999 to 2016. The model predicts the path of wine prices out of sample reasonably well, suggesting that this approach is useful for making reasonably accurate forecasts of future price movements.     

Oil prices and economic activity: evidence for G-7 economies based on a wavelet approach

This study examines the relationship between oil prices and economic activity in the G-7 economies during the period 1960M1–2014M07 using a wavelet approach. The results show significant differences in the relationship between these two variables depending on the frequencies. Furthermore, we find that oil price shocks affect economic activity at low frequencies (long run) in all G-7 countries, while the effect at high frequencies (short run) is limited to a few countries.     

中国改革开放40年经济发展态势与新时代转型升级展望

中国改革开放40年来，创造了世界经济发展的奇迹。这是中国对世界作出的贡献。经过40年的高速增长，党的十九大作出了重要论断，指出中国经济已经进入新时代。在这一现实背景下，准确把握中国未来发展态势尤其重要。改革开放以后的中国能够实现长达39年的平均9.5%的增长，并高出“常态化增长”的2倍水平，其根源在于，作为发展中国家，中国拥有“后来者优势”。在中国经济的总体发展态势下，作为一个中等发达的经济体，新时代中国经济发展的关键在于发展实体经济。设立直辖市以后，重庆的发展即使有各种波折，仍然是领先于全国。重庆应继续抓住这个发展机遇，继续领跑全国，对中华民族的伟大复兴作出贡献。     

Stock market dependence in crisis periods: Evidence from oil price shocks and the Qatar blockade

This paper examines the correlation and the dependence patterns of the Qatar stock market with other markets using copula statistical theory and exploiting new datasets covering the period August 1998 to June 2018. To examine the crisis –specific change in the average degree of dependence we decomposed the data into the time periods before and after oil price shocks and the 2017 political crisis among the Gulf Cooperation Council members (i.e. the Qatari blockade). Our findings from the static copula modelling show that the correlations between the Qatari and the other stock markets significantly change after the oil price and the blockade crisis as well. The degree of change in the correlation is time varying and differs from county-group to another. Moreover, our findings reveals that the 2008 global financial crisis has a stronger impact than the price shocks and political crisis. The findings of the paper are of interest and allow for formulating a reliable and dynamic portfolio design framework for investors and risk managers.