Alternative Land-Price Indexes for Commercial Properties in Tokyo

The System of National Accounts (SNA) requires separate estimates for the land and structure components of a commercial property. Using transactions data for the sales of office buildings in Tokyo, a hedonic regression model (the “builder’s model”) was estimated and this model generated an overall property price index as well as subindexes for the land and structure components of the office buildings. The builder’s model was also estimated using appraisal data on office building real estate investment trusts (REITs) for Tokyo. These hedonic regression models also generated estimates for net depreciation rates, which can be compared. Finally, the Japanese government constructs annual official land prices for commercial properties based on appraised values. The paper compares these official land prices with the land prices generated by the hedonic regression models based on transactions data and on REIT data. The results reveal that commercial property indexes based on appraisal and assessment prices lag behind the indexes based on transaction prices.     

How fast has Chinese industry grown? – The upward bias hypothesis revisited

This study addresses two potential problems when single-benchmark price weights are applied to commodity indicators to assess the official estimates of China’s industrial growth, i.e., the substitution bias and the constant value-added ratio given by a fixed input–output table. It introduces the 2002 and 2007 input–output tables and price weights in order to capture changes in a more market-based pricing and more liberal policy environment following China’s WTO entry. My new findings have not only lent a further and stronger support to the upward-bias hypothesis but also confirmed the Maddison–Wu conjecture (2008) that official estimates tend to smooth out high-growth volatility. By the alternative index, the impact of external shocks to Chinese industry appears to be more pronounced than the official index.     

Quality-corrected price indices: the case of the Dutch new passenger car market, 1990–1999

Market dynamics and technological developments constitute a major challenge to the proper measurement of the price evolution of durable goods. In this study, hedonic methods are used to estimate quality-corrected price indices of new passenger cars in the Netherlands, 1990–1999. Use is made of a huge set of price, quantity and quality information about 11,000 car models, obtained from different sources. During the observation period the nominal price level of all available car models increased about 20% on average, while the shares of car models with airbags, tinted glass and power steering increased from almost nothing to about 90%. Matched model price indices and the official CPI for new passenger cars, which partially account for quality-adjustments, estimate the price increase to be equal to 10.6–14.2% respectively 11.2% for the 1990–1999 period. By contrast, the hedonic Fisher-like price indices based on the preferred annually estimated brand-weighted semi-log hedonic model, lead to price changes varying from +?2.3% to ??3.4% (depending on the choice of weight variable, and the use of fixed or varying reference periods in the index construction) and thereby fall 8.9 to 14.6 percentage points below the official figures, over the period 1990–1999. The pooled adjacent-years model holds an intermediate position with a predicted quality-corrected price decrease of 1.8% over the observation period, which is 13.0 points below the CPI.     

Information And Communication Technology And The Measurement Of Volume Output And Final Demand - A Five-Country Study

Information and communication technology (ICT) products have undergone rapid technical change. Where quality improvements occur, they should be reflected in official price and quantity indices, otherwise there is a tendency to over-estimate price movements and under-estimate volume changes of ICT products. Statistical offices deal with this issue but the degree and nature of quality-adjustment of price indices of ICT products varies considerably between OECD countries. The present study simulates measurement effects on key economic variables (real output, private final consumption, government expenditure, investment, exports and imports) and productivity, under the assumption that the price indices of ICT products are fully quality-adjusted. The paper draws on a large selection of empirical studies to identify differences between quality-adjusted and unadjusted price changes and uses detailed information from input-output tables to assess their weights in final demand. Effects on GDP and its components are quantified for five selected OECD countries.     

Using food prices and consumption to examine Chinese cost of living

This paper considers two approaches to examining potential bias in China's consumer price index: (i) inferring true changes in cost of living from consumer behaviour; and (ii) creating alternative price indices to compare with official indices. For (i), our semi‐parametric estimates agree with the recent finding of a large understatement in increases to the true cost of living. For (ii), we focus on food prices and explore potential causes of bias. We find some evidence of a new‐good bias. China's large‐scale migration also causes changes in the cost of living that are not reflected in the consumer price index.     

Is there a quality bias in the Canadian CPI? Evidence from microdata

Rising consumer prices may reflect shifts by consumers to new higher‐priced products, mostly for durable and semi‐durable goods. I apply Bils’ (2009) methodology to newly available Canadian consumer price data for non‐shelter goods and services to estimate how price increases can be divided between quality growth and price inflation. I find that less than one third of observed price increases during model changeovers should be attributed to quality growth. This implies overall price inflation close to inflation measured by the official index. I conclude that, according to Bils’ methodology, the quality bias is not an important source of potential mismeasurement of CPI inflation in Canada.     

FUNCTIONAL ESTIMATES OF JAPANESE GOVERNMENT DOMESTIC EXPENDITURES, FISCAL 1952–1963

The purpose of the paper is to describe current and constant price estimates of Japanese central and local government postwar domestic expenditures by economic type and function recently completed by Miss Yoshiko Kido, International Christian University, Tokyo, and myself. The rationale of the functional classification is to estimate those government expenditures which enhance the economy's productive capacity. Expenditures are divided into four broad functional categories: developmental, disaster repair and prevention, social welfare, and general government. These four categories are subdivided to two levels of disaggregation. We were able to break down government fixed investment, government enterprise inventory investment, current domestic transfers and subsidies into 42 functional components. For constant price series, each functional component by economic type was deflated by separate price indexes. We followed the Economic Planning Agency's procedure for the official national accounts of assuming no productivity change in the provision of government services. Our results are generally comparable to the official national accounts estimates. The major difference is that we attribute considerably more fixed investment to local governments, and correspondingly less to the central level. Government expenditures had the following characteristics. Growth was rapid; in real terms the public sector use of the economy's resources in 1963 was 2.2 times more than in 1952. The elasticity of government expenditures to GNP was unity in current prices, slightly less in real terms. The government postwar share in GNP has been smaller than in European nations and, unlike them, was not rising. This reflects the underlying growth strategy of emphasis upon private business fixed investment. Government consumption expenditures declined relative to GNP, and investment rose. Developmental expenditures comprised the largest share (40–45 per cent) of the government total. The elasticities to GNP of government expenditures by economic and functional categories are provided and discussed. A simple test was made of the cyclical relationship of government expenditures (both total and by category) to GNP. The results suggest that government expenditures, rather than contra-cyclical, were pro-cyclical in effect.     

政企合谋与经济发展

本文采用购买力平价的思想,探讨编制地区间价格指数的方法,进行我国内部地区间的价格水平比较,并且利用地区间价格指数将名义收入转换为实际收入,重新测算基尼系数。地区间价格指数显示,我国的地区间价格水平差异大,可贸易商品地区间价格差异相对较小,不可贸易商品地区间价格差异相对较大;各地价格水平与居民名义收入水平呈正相关关系,因此,各地居民实际收入差距小于名义收入差距,以居民实际收入测算的基尼系数较小。     

Asset pricing theory and the valuation of Canadian paintings

Abstract.  The valuation of Canadian paintings is analysed empirically. Using a sample of auction prices for major Canadian painters for the period 1968–2001, we run hedonic regressions to analyse the influence of various factors, including painter identity, on auction prices, as well as to construct a market price index. This index is used in a second‐stage analysis in which we analyse the properties of Canadian art viewed as an investment asset. We apply standard asset pricing theory, as incorporated in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), to the analysis of price movements in the market for Canadian paintings.     

Scenarios for a redistribution of unpaid work in the Netherlands

The consumer price index (CPI) is used in the United States to measure changes in the cost of living. Since the CPI is used to index the official U.S. poverty guidelines and to establish eligibility criteria for various public assistance programs, a change in the methodology used to calculate the CPI would impact the accuracy of poverty statistics and, more importantly, poor families' access to public assistance. Since the majority of these poor families are headed by women, the CPI becomes a critical issue for feminist economics. In December 1996 the United States Senate Finance Committee's Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index issued its final report which concluded that use of the consumer price index results in widespread substantial overindexing. This paper uses the basic needs budgets (BNB) to evaluate changes in the cost of living for low-income families. The author compares the cost of the BNBs for single-parent families in 1983 and 1996 and finds that the cost of the bundle of goods and services included in the BNBs has increased faster than the CPI. The author finds similar results for two-parent families.     

Equilibrium interest rate and liquidity premium with transaction costs

Summary. In this article we study the effects of transaction costs on asset prices. We assume an overlapping generations economy with two riskless assets. The first asset is liquid while the second asset carries proportional transaction costs. We show that agents buy the liquid asset for short-term investment and the illiquid asset for long-term investment. When transaction costs increase, the price of the liquid asset increases. The price of the illiquid asset decreases if the asset is in small supply, but may increase if the supply is large. These results have implications for the effects of transaction taxes and commission deregulation. Received: December 5, 1997; revised version: March 19, 1998     

International business cycles and the relative price of investment goods

Abstract Is the relative price of investment goods a good proxy for investment specific technology? We model this relative price in a flexible price international economy with two fundamental shocks, namely, the total factor productivity (TFP) shock and the investment‐specific technology (IST) shock. We show that the one‐to‐one correspondence between the IST shock and the relative price of investment goods breaks down in an international economy because of the short‐run correlation between the terms of trade and the relative price of investment goods. The data congruent negative correlation between the investment rate and the relative price of investment goods thus does not necessarily reflect decline in investment frictions (rise in IST), as suggested by many studies. A calibration experiment with the US data demonstrates that such an inverse relation between rate of investment and the relative price of investment goods basically reflects the positive effect of TFP on the terms of trade for a broad range of economies where the home bias in consumption exceeds investment and there is a sizable adjustment cost of investment.     

Nexus between economic sanctions and inflation: a case study in Iran

Conventional studies have applied dummy variables to analyse the relationship between economic sanctions and inflation while we construct an index which is called Trade-Financial Sanctions (TF index). TF Index is a liner combination of indices which includes trade openness and foreign investment by applying the principal component model. Through the TF index and market exchange rate the impact of economic sanctions on inflation is analysed in the three phases of sanctions; free sanctions, heavy sanctions, and light sanctions. The results illustrate that the TF index decreases inflation when the Iran’s economy experiences free sanctions or light sanctions relative to when the economy is in heavy sanctions. Heavy sanctions create instability in the market exchange rates and widening the gap between the market and the official exchange rates. Furthermore, economic sanctions increase expected inflation among the people and drive higher inflation. Therefore, these results suggest that the government should work more seriously to solve the main obstacles of trade and investment inflows imposed by the economic sanctions.     

DO INVESTMENT‐SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES MATTER FOR BUSINESS FLUCTUATIONS? EVIDENCE FROM JAPAN

The observed decline in the relative price of investment goods to consumption goods in Japan suggests the existence of investment‐specific technological (IST) changes. We examine whether IST changes are a major source of business fluctuations in Japan, by estimating a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model using Bayesian methods. We show that IST changes are less important than neutral technological changes in explaining output fluctuations. We also demonstrate that investment fluctuations are mainly driven by shocks to investment adjustment costs. Such shocks represent variations of costs involved in changing investment spending, such as financial intermediation costs. We find that the estimated series of the investment adjustment cost shock correlates strongly with the diffusion index of firms' financial position in the Tankan (Short‐term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan). Therefore, we argue that the large decline in investment growth in the early 1990s was due to an increase in investment adjustment costs stemming from firms' financial constraints after the collapse of Japan's asset price bubble.     

Price Indexes for US Medical Care Spending, 1980–2006

We construct price indexes for medical care spending in the US economy for the period 1980–2006. Our indexes show slower price growth than the official deflator from 1987–2001, consistent with the fact that indexes that improve on the official statistics typically find slower price growth than the official indexes. However, the result is reversed for the 2001–2006 time period. We develop a decomposition that parses out the numerical differences in these indexes into three factors that are held constant in the official price indexes but are not in our indexes: changes in the type of provider supplying care, changes in the type of insurance plan used by the patients, and changes in the bundle of procedures used to treat patients. Our results suggest that using the official price measures may provide misleading conclusions about spending trends and productivity growth in this important sector over this time period.     

The Availability Heuristic and Reversals Following Large Stock Price Changes

The author explores the effect of the availability heuristic on large daily stock price changes and on subsequent stock returns. He hypothesizes that if a major positive (negative) stock price move takes place on a day when the stock market index rises (falls), then its magnitude may be amplified by the availability of positive (negative) investment outcomes. In both cases, the availability heuristic may cause price overreaction to the initial company-specific shock, resulting in subsequent price reversal. In line with the hypothesis, the author documents that both positive and negative large price moves accompanied by the same-sign contemporaneous daily market returns are followed by significant reversals on the next 2 trading days and over 5- and 20-day intervals following the event, the magnitude of the reversals increasing over longer postevent windows, while large stock price changes taking place on the days when the market index moves in the opposite direction are followed by nonsignificant price drifts. The results remain robust after accounting for additional company (size, beta, historical volatility) and event-specific (stock's return and trading volume on the event day) factors, and are stronger for small and volatile stocks.     

资源配置和产出效应:金融腐败的宏观经济成本

本文根据对Solow Swan模型和Ramsey模型的修订 ,把金融腐败引入生产函数和效用函数 ,研究金融腐败的宏观经济后果 ,提出四个基本结论。第一 ,金融机构通过寻租制造稀缺 ,从而扭曲了资源价格 ,导致了资源错误配置 ,由此造成金融资源使用效率的低下 ;第二 ,腐败程度与产出水平存在拉弗曲线关系 ,或者说 ,产出水平与融资腐败程度存在多重均衡 (multipleequilibria) ,融资腐败取决于经济发展中的资金需求程度和资金的稀缺性 ;第三 ,融资腐败是一种转移支付 ,是金融机构或监管部门直接或间接攫取实体经济部门的产出收益 ,这似乎是一个零和博弈 ,但是实际情况远较此复杂。由于这种转移支付的存在 ,资金市场面临进一步的短缺 ,出现“利率偏离实体经济需求的反常抬升”。因此 ,金融腐败是制造稀缺的行为 ;第四 ,我们证明了这样一个事实———由于金融腐败的存在 ,一般宏观经济学假定的从储蓄到投资的瞬间平滑过程是不符合实际情况的 ,由此才可以解释我国金融领域一个怪异而又为大家习以为常的现象 :一方面是储蓄存款余额的迅速攀升 ,另一方面是从城镇到农村持续存在的贷款难问题。     

Housing rent dynamics in Italy

In this paper we focus on tenant rents in Italy and compare results from several methods for the rent dynamic estimation. We first document the sources of data available and then introduce quality adjusted techniques, which enable us to separate the price variation due to qualitative changes in housing attributes from pure price changes. Finally, we compare these measures with unconditional and matched-type price indices derived from microdata. Over the period 1998–2006, we estimate a cumulative rent increase ranging between 40 and 80%. The upper bound refers to the average dynamic for a subset of flats entering the market in a given period. Our hedonic estimates point to an average rent increase of approximately 40%, almost 20 percentage points above the one recorded by the rent component of the Italian consumer price index. A simple calibration model suggests that only part of the difference between our estimates and the official ones is due to survey non-response.     

基于评级的投资行为和债券市场分割?

文章阐述了分割的债券市场中评级影响市场价格的新渠道,相对于以往的研究,该渠道建立在非制度约束下资产管理行为的基础上。文章选用2005年雷曼债券指数的重新定义公告作为一项准自然实验,该公告宣布自2015年7月1日起,投资级债券的信用评级认证机构由两家评级机构(标普与穆迪)扩充至三家(第三家为惠誉)。原法则下的债券评级选用标普与穆迪评级的最低值,而新法则下是三家评级机构评级的中位数。新法则的实施使一些原先被认定为垃圾级(高收益)的债券在三大评级机构各自的评级水平保持不变的情况下被“机械升级”为投资级债券,从而债券估值发生了变化,其平均异常到期收益率在事件后下降了21个基点。文章发现这种估值变化主要来源于资产类别敏感型机构投资者的债券购买行为,因为他们认为新法则下这些债券是有投资价值的。信誉、法规、指数化和流动性等方面的假设均不能解释这些债券的价格走势及其交易方式。     

EXCHANGE RATE PROBLEMS IN NATIONAL ACCOUNTING OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES*

Developing countries which typically have import surpluses and inflationary pressures because of insufficient savings are prone to use indirect taxes on imports (Tm) and subsidization of exports (Sx) in order to prevent deterioration of the balance of trade. If these substitutes for devaluation are included in the net indirect tax component of product at current market prices (Ym) the import surplus is likely to be understated, and Ym upward biased. This distortion will be avoided if imports and exports are measured at effective exchange rates (ER), that is, at official rates (OR) plus Tm and Sx respectively, and if (Tm - Sx) is deducted from the net indirect tax component of Ym. Only in this manner become imports and exports consistent with the other uses and resources at market prices and can be articulated with them. At base-year prices the volume index of product at OR diverges from that of ER to the degree that the composition of imports and exports in regard to tax and subsidy rates computed ad valorem significantly changes. Such a case is similar to that of the price indexes of imports and exports moving in diverging proportions: the trade balance at base-year prices will differ from that at current prices. The resulting discrepancies in national accounts have led to proposals of deflating, for example, exports by the price index of imports. Suchlike approaches are incompatible with the principle of national accounting that prices are supposed already to measure substitution values. Deflating exports by import prices means reintroducing substitution values, as does, for example, deflation of incomes by a consumer price index. Correspondingly, since the trade balance at ER conceptually expresses the value of imports at domestic market prices as compared to the corresponding domestic market value of exports, and if at ER the trade balance diverges from that at OR, the former balance has an important meaning (as has the trade balance at base-year prices as compared to that at current prices) and the resulting discrepancy between the two measures should not be removed merely for the sake of accounting smoothness. In contrast to the market price approach, the measurement of product at base-year factor cost is indifferent to the measurement of the trade balance at ER and at OR. It is, therefore, proposed in countries in which part of import taxation and export subsidization substitutes for devaluation, to record imports and exports in the national accounts at effective exchange rates, and to correct the net indirect tax component of product correspondingly. Imports and exports at official exchange rates should be shown within the balance of payments, and the latter separately as a memorandum item.