House prices and consumer welfare

We develop a new approach to measuring changes in consumer welfare due to changes in the price of owner-occupied housing. In our approach, an agent's welfare adjustment is defined as the transfer required to keep expected discounted utility constant given a change in current house prices. We demonstrate that, up to a first-order approximation, there is no aggregate change in welfare due to price increases in the existing housing stock. This follows from a simple market clearing condition where capital gains experienced by sellers are exactly offset by welfare losses to buyers. We show that this result holds (approximately) even in a model that accounts for changes in consumption and investment plans prompted by current house price changes. There can, however, be changes in welfare due to additions to the stock of housing, or to changes in the price of renovating and upgrading the existing stock of housing. For the United States, we estimate the welfare cost of house price appreciation to be an average of $127 per household per year over the 1984–1998 period.     

House prices,collateral constraint,and the asymmetric effect on consumption

This paper investigates the asymmetric effect of house prices on various categories of consumption under constrained and unconstrained regimes. We first present a simple theoretical model based on Iacoviello (2004) and Luengo-Prado (2006), explicitly considering the dual role of housing and linking credit constraints to the behavior of consumption in a pair of aggregate Euler equations. We then estimate a threshold regression model and find that LC-PIH holds only under the unconstrained regime. More importantly, durable consumption exhibit a very strong asymmetric effect in response to changes in house prices, while other categories of consumption do not exhibit this asymmetry.     

当前的宏观经济走势和未来中国经济发展前景

常常说土地是财富之母,作为土地系统的代表自然很关心当前的经济形势,我想借这个机会,谈三个问题.第一,经济发展的基本背景,这有助于大家加深对今后中国经济发展的认识;第二,当前中国经济发展的态势;第三,未来中国经济发展的前景.     

House prices and rents in Spain: Does the discount factor matter?

We estimate alternative price-to-rent ratios in the Spanish housing market by considering different stochastic discount factors in present value models similar to those used in the financial literature but where the higher rigidity that characterises this market is taken into account. We identify three robust across-model regularities: (i) the increase in the price-to-rent ratio since the late 1990s helped at first to restore equilibrium, (ii) further increases in house prices raised the ratio between 24% and 32% above equilibrium by 2004, although (iii) at that time the ratio was only around 2% above its short-term adjustment path towards a (new) long-run equilibrium.     

通过供求机制影响房价的因素研究

经济学中,需求和供给的许多影响因素都是密切相关,互相作用的。房地产市场的供给和需求共同决定了房价,这表明了影响需求和供给的因素也都是间接的通过供需影响房价。本文研究了几种主要的通过供求机制影响房价的因素,分析了其影响机制和影响程度。     

Impact of electronic road pricing on real estate prices in Singapore

Since 1998, Singapore has had an Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system set up with a network of toll gantries to tax vehicles entering designated areas in the city center during peak hours. Using the congestion rate hike with effect from November 1, 2010 as an exogenous shock, we test the effects of the ERP rate hike on retail, office and residential real estate prices. The results show that the November 2010 congestion toll rate increases cause a 19% drop in retail real estate prices within the cordon ERP areas relative to retail real estate prices outside the cordon ERP areas. The results are statistically and economically significant. However, the toll rate hike has no significant impact private office and residential real estate within cordoned ERP areas. The robustness and falsification tests could not reject the negative effects associated with the toll rate hike on retail real estate prices.     

Bank capital and the macroeconomy: Policy considerations

We develop a macroeconomic model in which the balance sheet condition of financial institutions plays an important role in the determination of asset prices and economic activity. The financial intermediaries in our model are required to make investment commitments before a complete resolution of idiosyncratic funding risk that can be addressed only by costly refinancing, forcing them to behave in a risk-averse manner. The model shows that the balance sheet condition of intermediaries can drive asset values away from their fundamentals, causing aggregate investment and output to respond to shocks to intermediaries. We use this model to evaluate several public policies designed to address balance sheet problems at financial institutions. With regard to short-run policies, we find that capital injections conditioned upon voluntary recapitalization can be a more effective tool than asset purchases. With regard to long-run policies, we demonstrate that higher capital requirements can have sizable short-run effects on economic activity, and that a long transition period helps avoid undesirable side effects. Finally, we show that the marginal effects of policies can be larger during “crises” because of the nonlinear interactions between some financial frictions and policy actions.     

Interdependent capital structure choices and the macroeconomy

This study shows that capital structure choices of US corporations are interdependent across time. We follow a two-step estimation approach. First, using a large cross-section of firms we estimate year-by-year average capital structure choices, i.e., the average firm’s percentage of new funding that is secured through debt, its term composition, and the percentage of new equity represented by retained earnings. Second, these time series are included in a Factor Augmented Vector Autoregressive model in which three factors representing real economic activity, expected future funding conditions, and prices, are included. We test for the interdependence between optimal capital structure decisions and for the influence exerted by macroeconomic conditions on these decisions. Results show there is a hierarchical order in which firms make capital structure decisions. They first decide on the share of debt out of total new funding they will hire. Conditional on this they decide on the term of their debt and on their earnings retention policy. Of outmost importance, macroeconomic factors are key for making capital structure decisions.     

The wealth effects of unethical business behavior

This study examines the shareholder wealth effects of specific unethical conduct involving bribery, illegal payments, employee discrimination, environmental pollution, and insider trading based on announcements in theWall Street Journal. It is hypothesized that the high costs of such reported acts would result in a negative shareholder wealth effect because of increases in monitoring costs and risks to stakeholders of the firm. The results show that the significantly negative abnormal returns were not short-term, but were persistent and cumulative for approximately one month following the announcement of unethical business conduct. Therefore, contrary to some earlier studies, unethical business behavior, as defined in this study, is not compatible with the goal of shareholder wealth maximization.     

A study on the wealth effects of irish takeovers and mergers

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study on the share-price effects of takeovers and mergers on the Dublin Stock Exchange. The population under study consists of all acquisitions during the period 1965–83, and it is limited to those instances in which both partners were quoted and traded on the exchange. The Market Model has been adapted to take account of market inefficiencies. Any findings are evaluated in the light of other reported research.     

Endogenous network efficiency,macroeconomy, and competition: Evidence from the Portuguese banking industry

Although performance analysis has become a vital part of the banking industry, research on the efficiency of Portuguese banking remains scarce and focused on discussing rankings to the detriment of unveiling its productive structure relative to its competition. This issue is of utmost importance considering the relevant transformations in the Portuguese economy over the last ten years. In this study, we developed a network productive structure comprising two paradigms (the production and intermediation approaches, respectively) to assess how market competition and other macro-economic variables impact bank efficiency and their feedback effects in Portugal. Unlike previous research, an integrated multi-layer perceptron (MLP)/hidden Markov model (HMM) was used for the first time to unveil endogeneity among banking competition, macro-economic variables, and the efficiency levels of the production and intermediation approaches in banking. The findings illustrate the pattern of interaction among these variables and verify that the production efficiency is the cornerstone of endogeneity in Portuguese banks. Policy makers will find the results helpful.     

Self-reinforcing effects between housing prices and credit

The financial crisis has brought the interaction between housing prices and household borrowing into the limelight of the economic policy debate. This paper examines the nexus of housing prices and credit in Norway within a structural vector equilibrium correction model (SVECM) over the period 1986q2–2008q4. The results establish a two way interaction in the long-run, so that higher housing prices lead to a credit expansion, which in turn puts an upward pressure on prices. Interest rates influence housing prices indirectly through the credit channel. Furthermore, households’ expectations about the future development of their own income as well as in the Norwegian economy have a significant impact on housing price growth. Dynamic simulations show how shocks are propagated and amplified. When we augment the model to include the supply side of the housing market, these effects are dampened.     

Estimating the sensitivity of state tax revenue to cyclical and wealth effects

In this study, we estimate the elasticities of alternative sources of state tax revenue relative to the economy, as measured by GSP, and to wealth, as measured by the S&P500. Next, efficient tax frontiers are estimated for each state by minimizing the standard deviation, given the current average growth rate of revenues. It is shown how states could attain the same expected growth rate of tax revenues with less volatility by modifying the composition of their existing tax structures. In most cases, corporate income taxes are found to reduce efficiency due to their high volatility without a correspondingly high growth rate.     

Sarbanes-Oxley wealth effects: focus on technology firms

We evaluate the shareholder wealth effects surrounding the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). While other studies have also measured wealth effects, none has separately examined technology firms. We discuss the unique characteristics of technology firms and assess whether technology firms are differentially affected. Our results show the portfolio of 218 technology firms experienced significantly more favorable wealth effects than the portfolio of 940 non-technology firms in response to events indicating stringent reform legislation. The cross-sectional analyses suggest that board independence, growth expectations, and R&D expenditures are influential factors in the differential stock price response of technology firms. Across our full sample of 1,158 firms, we find that wealth effects are less favorable for firms that likely will incur high compliance costs and more favorable for firms that are expected to benefit from improved governance and improved transparency.     

Monetary effects on nominal oil prices

The paper presents a theory of nominal asset prices for competitively owned oil. Focusing on monetary effects, with flexible oil prices the US dollar oil price should follow the aggregate US price level. But with rigid nominal oil prices, the nominal oil price jumps proportionally to nominal interest rate increases. We find evidence for structural breaks in the nominal oil price that are used to illustrate the theory of oil price jumps. The evidence also indicates strong Granger causality of the oil price by US inflation as is consistent with the theory.     

Homeownership, wealth accumulation and income status

This paper examines the extent to which homeownership had an independent effect on the ability of low- and moderate-income (LMI) households to accumulate wealth during the mid-to-late 1990s. Using household data from the PSID, we generate a panel of households whose homeownership we observe over a 15 year period and whose wealth accumulation we observe at three points in time: 1994, 1999 and 2001. We investigate the extent to which homeownership has an independent impact on the wealth accumulation of LMI households, controlling for a host of other variables and unobserved heterogeneity. Accounting for the skewed nature of the wealth distribution, we find that each additional year of homeownership increases total net wealth by $13.7 K on average for the full sample. Interacting income status with years of homeownership indicates that the impact of homeownership varies by income status, with each additional year of homeownership being associated with $15 K more in wealth holdings for high-income households and roughly $6 to 10 K more in wealth holdings for LMI households.     

Housing wealth,liquidity constraints and self-employment

This paper investigates the existence of liquidity constraints facing entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom. Using a household-level panel data set, entry to self-employment is shown to be a function of household net worth. We use inheritances and unanticipated movements in house prices as instruments for shocks to liquidity. Results indicate that inheritances are a poor instrument for liquidity constraints because both past and future inheritances predict entry to self-employment. House prices shocks are a more plausible instrument because self-employed households disproportionately re-mortgage, but our results again indicate little evidence of house price shocks unbinding liquidity constraints facing the would-be self-employed.     

Short-selling restrictions,takeovers and the wealth of long-run shareholders

In this paper we consider a situation in which a firm may be able to influence the investors’ ability to short-sell its stock. We analyze the effect short-selling restrictions have on the market price and the subsequent effect generated on the market for corporate control. More precisely, we argue that short-selling restrictions may lead to exclusion of pessimistic beliefs and may therefore inflate prices. Thus, if a company is poorly managed and has a stock with strong short-selling restrictions, a profitable takeover will not emerge because of the high stock price. The raider may not have the incentives to acquire the company as its price will be above its fundamental value, conditional on takeover, even accounting for the potential benefits of takeover. We then argue that such effects are detrimental to long-run shareholders and that a value-maximizing strategy is to have a stock with no short-selling restrictions.