Homeownership as a Constraint on Asset Allocation

Personal preferences and financial incentives make homeownership desirable for most families. Once a family purchases a home they find it impractical (costly) to frequently change their ownership of residential real estate. Thus, by deciding how much home to buy, a family constrains their ability to adjust their asset allocation between residential real estate and other assets. To analyze the impact of this constraint on consumption, welfare, and post-retirement wealth, we first investigate an individual’s optimal asset allocation decisions when they are subject to a “homeownership constraint.” Next, we perform a “thought experiment” where we assume the existence of a market where a homeowner can sell, without cost, a fractional interest in their home. Now the housing choice decision does not constrain the individual’s asset allocations. By comparing these two cases, we estimate the differences in post-retirement wealth and the welfare gains potentially realizable if asset allocations were not subject to a homeownership constraint. For realistic parameter values, we find that the homeowner would require a substantial increase in total net worth to achieve the same level of utility as would be achievable if the choice of a home could be separated from the asset allocation decision. The robustness of the analysis is evaluated with respect to the model’s parameters and initial state variables. We find that changes in the values of the constraint (i.e., the value of the home) and the expected real rate of home value appreciation are the only state variables or parameter that is associated with a large change in asset allocation and/or the burden imposed by the housing constraint. This finding suggests the importance of a detailed examination of the impact of inter-regional differences in home prices and expected rates of appreciation on asset allocation and post-retirement wealth.     

Stakeholder incentives and reforms in China's state-owned enterprises: A common-property theory

We argue that state-owned enterprise reform has failed in China, because incentive mechanisms that confront the key stakeholders did not elicit efficient behavior. Although incentive mechanisms were intended to elicit more effort, incentives became de facto improper because of a number of developments. This paper analyzes alternative sharing or incentive systems and highlights the interdependency among property rights, incentives, and enforcement. A common-property model is put forward to analyze recent reforms and to show that alternative property right assignments have complex and diverse configurations of positive and negative externalities. Incentive mechanisms that favor more equal distribution are the most inefficient, whereas those that differentiate among heterogeneous stakeholders based on effective, rather than actual, effort are more promising. An ideal arrangement that combines equal sharing and proportional effort is proposed.     

Agency cost and the crisis of China's SOEs: A comment and further observations

This paper compares and contrasts our earlier principal–agent analysis of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with that of Zhou and Wang [China Econ. Rev. 11 (2000) 297.]. We argue that the focal principal–agent relationship in these SOEs consists of the manager as the principal and the workers as the agents. In addition, the paper addresses the appropriate representation of the state as principal and the manager as agent when the two top levels of SOEs are the focus. The modeling of collusion in a multilevel organization is also discussed. Other aspects in representing these SOEs are presented.     

Contigent Price Contracts and the Efficiency of Housing Markets

Frequently, the response of housing markets to a large negative demand shock is a period during which the liquidity of housing declines, but the price at which transactions take place changes little. In this paper we show that a decline in liquidity can result from the inabilities of sellers and buyers to insure against post-shock price uncertainty. We conclude, that the introduction of a risk-sharing contingent price contract may increase the post-shock liquidity of housing by providing insurance against post-shock price uncertainty. Finally, we show that a mutually agreeable contingent price contract will always exist, even when sellers are excessively optimistic.     

Rational Delays: The Case of Real Estate

Real estate markets, for both commercial real estate and single family homes, typically respond to a large negative demand shock with a period during which the volume of transactions and liquidity of real estate declines. Explanations for these periods have focused on overly optimistic owners, imperfections in real estate markets and/or minimum down payment requirements. These are important characteristics of real estate markets, but they do not provide a satisfying explanation for the long-term declines in the number of transactions and liquidity of real estate that frequently follow negative demand shocks. This paper presents estimates, for a specific real estate market (Los Angeles single family dwellings), of the option-like value of an owners interest in a property. Our estimates imply that when an owner has little or negative equity, the value of waiting to sell is likely to exceed the net carrying cost. Consequently, the option value of a potential sellers interest may eliminate the possibility of an otherwise mutually advantageous transaction.     

Myopia and R&D/production complementarities

Summary The simple economics of a firm's decision to begin an in-house program of R&D is more complicated than appears at first blush. We utilize a multi-period search theoretic model to consider this decision when the firm's state of technological progress is fully described by a real-valued variable. By investing in R&D at the beginning of a period, the firm obtains an innovation whose value is revealed at the end of the period. Whereas there is a fixed cost of implementing a new innovation, the benefits include not only an increase in the flow rate of profits but also an increase in the efficiency of the firm's R&D efforts. Thus, an explicit complementarity between production and R&D is included. Because of this complementarity, a myopic decision rule—adopt an innovation only if the discounted value of the increase in the flow rate of profits (due to this one innovation) exceeds the fixed cost of adoption—is rarely optimal; furthermore, once begun the firm will not terminate its R&D program. Thus, a failure to account for this complementarity will lead to the oft-mentioned American under investment in R&D.This research was supported in part by the UCLA Price Institute in Entrepreneurial Studies.