FOOD INSECURITY AND INSUFFICIENCY AT LOW LEVELS OF FOOD EXPENDITURES

In this study we investigate the external validity of the food insecurity and insufficiency measures—specifically, how these measures correlate with food expenditures—using the December 2003 Food Security Supplement of the Current Population Survey. We focus on a special segment of the population—households with low incomes and low food expenditures. If reports of food problems are based on a lack of food, reports should be nearly ubiquitous at the bottom of the expenditure distribution. We find, however, that this is not the case. We define and scale food expenditures several different ways and find that the reported incidence of food insecurity never rises above one‐half anywhere along the corresponding expenditure distributions, leading to concerns about the external validity of the measure.     

FORECASTING WOMEN,INFANTS, AND CHILDREN CASELOADS: A COMPARISON OF VECTOR AUTOREGRESSION AND AUTOREGRESSIVE INTEGRATED MOVING AVERAGE APPROACHES

Under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), each state receives a fixed federal grant for the operation of WIC in the upcoming federal fiscal year. Accurate forecasting is vital because states have to bear the expenses of any underestimation of WIC expenditures. Using monthly data from 1997 through 2005, this paper examined the performance of two competing models, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and vector autoregression (VAR), in forecasting New York WIC caseloads for women, infants, and children. VAR model predicted over $120,000 less per month in forecast errors in comparison to the ARIMA model. (JEL H7, C5)     

THE IMPACT OF STADIUM ANNOUNCEMENTS ON RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY VALUES: EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT IN DALLAS-FORT WORTH

We investigate the impact of a potential new sports venue on residential property values, focusing on the National Football League's Dallas Cowboys' search for a new host city in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We find that residential property values in the city of Dallas increased following the announcement of a possible new stadium in the city. At the same time, property values fell throughout the rest of Dallas County, which would have paid for the proposed stadium. These patterns reversed when the Dallas stadium proposal was abandoned. Subsequently, a series of announcements regarding a new publicly subsidized stadium in nearby Arlington, Texas, reduced residential property values in Arlington. In aggregate, average property values declined approximately 1.5% relative to the surrounding area before stadium construction commenced. This decline was almost equal to the anticipated household sales tax burden, suggesting that the average expected amenity effect of hosting the Cowboys in Arlington was not significantly different from zero. ( JEL L83, R53, H73)     

Liquidity Measurement Problems in Fast,Competitive Markets: Expensive and Cheap Solutions

Do fast, competitive markets yield liquidity measurement problems when using the popular Monthly Trade and Quote (MTAQ) database? Yes. MTAQ yields distorted measures of spreads, trade location, and price impact compared with the expensive Daily Trade and Quote (DTAQ) database. These problems are driven by (1) withdrawn quotes, (2) second (versus millisecond) time stamps, and (3) other causes, including canceled quotes. The expensive solution, using DTAQ, is first‐best. For financially constrained researchers, the cheap solution—using MTAQ with our new Interpolated Time technique, adjusting for withdrawn quotes, and deleting economically nonsensical states—is second‐best. These solutions change research inferences.     

Private Benefits of Control, Ownership, and the Cross-listing Decision

This paper investigates how a foreign firm's decision to cross-list on a U.S. stock exchange is related to the consumption of private benefits of control by its controlling shareholders. Theory has proposed that when private benefits are high, controlling shareholders are less likely to choose to cross-list in the United States because of constraints on the consumption of private benefits resulting from such listings. Using several proxies for private benefits related to the control and cash flow ownership rights of controlling shareholders, we find support for this hypothesis with a sample of more than 4,000 firms from 31 countries.     

Order Imbalances and Stock Price Movements on October 19 and 20, 1987

On October 19, 1987, NYSE stocks in the S&P index declined seven percentage points more than NYSE stocks not in this index. In the first hour of trading on October 20, the S&P stocks virtually recovered to the level of the non-S&P stocks. There is a strong relation between order imbalances and stock price movements, both in analyses of time series and cross-sections. Thus, in addition to the breakdown in the linkage between future prices and the spot index on these two days, there were also breakdowns in the linkage among NYSE stocks.     

How Much Investment Choice is Enough for Members?

In recent years Australians have been given increased responsibility in making investment strategy decisions for their superannuation contributions. The investment choices superannuation funds typically offer include ready-made options with a strategic asset allocation or a "do-it-yourself option where the members choose their own asset allocation. This paper examines a sample of choices by members of a large industry fund which allows members any combination of six ready-made pools and eight asset classes. About one-quarter of these decisions involve choices which suggest a possibly naïve view of diversification unless members are conscious of resulting asset allocations.