Strip Clubs, “Secondary Effects” and Residential Property Prices

Municipalities regulate sexually oriented businesses (SOBs) through the “secondary effects” doctrine, which justifies limiting First Amendment speech protections inside SOBs. Negative effects of SOBs on nearby neighborhood quality are a frequently cited secondary effect. Little empirical evidence exists that SOBs generate such negative externalities. If SOBs generate negative externalities, then nearby property prices should decrease when a strip club opens. We estimate regression models of housing prices to determine the effect of new clubs on nearby residential property prices in Seattle, exploiting the termination of a 17‐year moratorium on openings and find no evidence that strip clubs have “secondary effects.”     

Do Sovereign Re‐Ratings Destabilize Equity Markets during Financial Crises? New Evidence from Higher Return Moments

This study investigates the effects of S&P's sovereign re‐ratings on the higher moments of equity market returns over recent financial crises. Using a set of intraday stock market index prices and sovereign credit ratings for a sample of 36 countries that experienced sovereign rating changes over the period from 1996 to 2013, we find that the higher moments of stock market returns are significantly more responsive to sovereign re‐ratings during financial crises, but the effects on stock markets are not the same across different financial crises. The effects during crises are, however, magnified for large downgrades and those that are associated with a loss of investment grade status. We find that there are asymmetric effects during financial crises in that downgrades are consistently more significant than upgrades in increasing realized volatility and realized kurtosis. Both upgrades and downgrades affect realized skewness in times of crises in the expected direction.     

Cambium non est mutuum: exchange and interest rates in medieval Europe

A major gap in our understanding of the medieval economy concerns interest rates, especially relating to commercial credit. Although direct evidence about interest rates is scattered and anecdotal, there is much more surviving information about exchange rates. Since both contemporaries and historians have suggested that exchange and rechange transactions could be used to disguise the charging of interest in order to circumvent the usury prohibition, it should be possible to back out implied interest rates from exchange rates. The analysis presented in this article is based on a new dataset of medieval exchange rates collected from commercial correspondence in the archive of Francesco di Marco Datini of Prato, c. 1383–1411. It demonstrates that the time value of money was consistently incorporated into market exchange rates. Moreover, these implicit interest rates are broadly comparable to those received from other types of commercial loan and investment. Although on average profitable, the return on any individual exchange and rechange transaction did involve a degree of uncertainty that may have justified their non‐usurious nature. However, there were also practical reasons why medieval merchants may have used foreign exchange transactions as a means of extending credit.     

Detecting hot and cold cycles using a Markov regime switching model—Evidence from the Chinese A-share IPO market

This paper focuses on detecting hot and cold IPO cycles in the Chinese A-share market using a Markov regime switching model. We introduce a set of observations to measure IPO activities, which include numbers of IPOs issued, levels of underpricing, market conditions and duration time from prospectus and listing, and thus establish a model to estimate these activities' average performance in hot and cold periods respectively. It is found that a hot period is related with an abundant supply of IPOs, high levels of underpricing, positive market conditions and short waiting time to listing after prospectus issue. Further, this paper depicts the turning points of hot and cold periods across the period from 1994 to 2005 for each observation. The cycles detected by the number of IPOs per month are the benchmark and then these cycles' robustness is tested by the other observations.     

How Biased are Current Measures of Asian Output Growth and Price Change?

“Rational economic agents” making optimal choices, such as shifting to less expensive products, is a fundamental paradigm for theoretical and applied economics. This requires accurate and unbiased economic information on prices. Since the mid-1990s, several nations have switched to estimation methods for price indices that improve the accounting for the shifting basket of new goods and services produced in the economy. This change required the adoption of “ideal” measures of growth and price change. Nevertheless, many Asian nations continue to prepare non-ideal measures of growth and price change. This paper assesses the bias in current Asian measures of growth and price change and explores how such bias can lead to poor investor and policymaker decisions.     

Trigger happy or gun shy? Dissolving common‐value partnerships with Texas shootouts

The operating agreements of many business ventures include clauses to facilitate the exit of joint owners. In so‐called Texas Shootouts, one owner names a single buy‐sell price and the other owner is compelled to either buy or sell shares at that named price. Despite their prevalence in real‐world contracts, Texas Shootouts are rarely triggered. In our theoretical framework, sole ownership is more efficient than joint ownership. Negotiations are frustrated, however, by the presence of asymmetric information. In equilibrium, owners eschew buy‐sell offers in favor of simple offers to buy or to sell shares and bargaining failures arise. Experimental data support these findings.     

Futures basis,inventory and commodity price volatility: An empirical analysis

We employ a large dataset of physical inventory data on 21 different commodities for the period 1993–2011 to empirically analyze the behavior of commodity prices and their volatility as predicted by the theory of storage. We examine two main issues. First, we analyze the relationship between inventory and the shape of the forward curve. Low (high) inventory is associated with forward curves in backwardation (contango), as the theory of storage predicts. Second, we show that price volatility is a decreasing function of inventory for the majority of commodities in our sample. This effect is more pronounced in backwardated markets. Our findings are robust with respect to alternative inventory measures and over the recent commodity price boom.     

The S&P500 index effect reconsidered: Evidence from overnight and intraday stock price performance and volume

This study focuses on S&P500 inclusions and deletions, examining the impact of potential overnight price adjustment after the announcement of an S&P500 index change. We find evidence of a significant overnight price change that diminishes the returns available to speculators although there are still profits available from the first day after announcement until a few days after the actual event. More importantly, observing the tick-by-tick stock price performance and volume effects on the key days during the event window for the first time, we find evidence of consistent trading patterns during trading hours. A separate analysis of NASDAQ and NYSE listed stocks allows for a detailed examination of the price and volume effect at an intra-day level. We find that index funds appear to cluster their rebalancing activities near to and after the close on the event date, suggesting that they are more concerned with tracking error than profit.     

The Impact of Corporate Social Performance on Financial Risk and Utility: A Longitudinal Analysis

This study focuses on the wealth‐protective effects of socially responsible firm behavior by examining the association between corporate social performance (CSP) and financial risk for an extensive panel data sample of S&P 500 companies between the years 1992 and 2009. In addition, the link between CSP and investor utility is investigated. The main findings are that corporate social responsibility is negatively but weakly related to systematic firm risk and that corporate social irresponsibility is positively and strongly related to financial risk. The fact that both conventional and downside risk measures lead to the same conclusions adds convergent validity to the analysis. However, the risk‐return trade‐off appears to be such that no clear utility gain or loss can be realized by investing in firms characterized by different levels of social and environmental performance. Overall volatility conditions of the financial markets are shown to play a moderating role in the nature and strength of the CSP‐risk relationship.     

Genetic Algorithms and Public Economics

To address common limitations of traditional economic models while maintaining a convenient mathematical framework, some economists have begun to employ genetic algorithms (GAs). GA optimization occurs in a way that may resemble the dynamics of actual decision making. It also alleviates any need for a closed form to the policy problem and can 'decide' between alternative optima. This paper provides a tutorial on the use of GAs in economics and constructs an example application in the area of tax policy formation. It also critically surveys the landscape of current uses, focusing on both the advantages and disadvantages of GAs in public economics contexts.