Flood Hazards and Urban Housing Markets: The Effects of Katrina on New Orleans

This study examines the impacts on consumers’ willingness to pay for certain characteristics of housing in greater New Orleans before and after the flooding of Hurricane Katrina. Single-family home sales from January 2004 to August 2006 are collected and used in a hedonic price function to estimate the changes in the value of amenities, and structural, neighborhood and geographic characteristics, including the mean elevation of each property. Elevation, which buyers did not know for certain prior to the storm, but may now be inferred from water level marks in most neighborhoods, is found to have a positive relationship with selling prices. Results indicate that pre-Katrina, there was a premium of only 1.4% per foot in flood-prone areas, and was insignificant in areas not subject to flooding. This increased to 4.6% for flooded areas after Katrina. These findings are attributed to not only the perceived risk of flooding, but also to the potential of higher compliance costs associated with rebuilding under more stringent National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) guidelines.     

The Strategy of Going Public: How UK Firms Choose Their Listing Contracts

Abstract:   UK firms going public have a choice between public offers and placings. This choice has important implications in terms of who bears the risk of the issue failing and of its costs. We find that firms with higher ex ante uncertainty choose a placing contract. Highly reputable sponsors and creditor screening serve as signals of firm quality, enabling such firms to choose a public offer. Large and multinational firms usually choose a public offer whereas there is some evidence that very small issues choose a placing. Finally, the 'hotness' of the IPO market increases the probability of placings.     

The Financial Accelerator: Evidence from International Housing Markets

This paper shows novel evidence on the mechanism through which financial constraints amplify fluctuations in asset prices and credit demand. It does so using contractual features of housing finance. Among agents whose housing demand is constrained by the availability of collateral, those who can borrow against a larger fraction of their housing value (achieve a higher loan-tovalue, or LTV, ratio) have more procyclical debt capacity. This procyclicality underlies the financial accelerator mechanism. Our study uses international variation in LTV ratios over three decades to test whether (a) housing prices and (b) demand for new mortgage borrowings are more sensitive to income shocks in countries where households can achieve higher LTV ratios. The results we obtain are consistent with the dynamics of a collateral-based financial accelerator in international housing markets.We wish to thank an anonymous referee, Adam Ashcraft, Long Chen, Luigi Guiso (CEPR discussant), Steve Malpezzi, Walter Novaes, Marco Pagano (the editor), Raghuram Rajan, Luigi Zingales, and participants at the CEPR conference on Financial Structure and Monetary Policy Channels (Barcelona, July 2003) for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Olimpia Bover, Maria Chiuri, Nathalie Girouard, Tullio Jappelli, Steve Malpezzi, Felipe Morande, Marco Pagano, and Shiawee Yang for kindly providing us with data. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Price Rigidity and Vacancy Rates: The Framing Effect on Rental Housing Markets

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - This paper proposes a new explanation for housing rent price rigidity. When high inflation or low inflation occurs, the bargaining process for new...     

The Effects of Banking Mergers on Loan Contracts

This paper studies the effects of banking mergers on individual business borrowers. Using information on individual loan contracts between banks and companies, I analyze the effect of banking consolidation on banks' credit policies. I find that in-market mergers benefit borrowers if these mergers involve the acquisition of banks with small market shares. Interest rates charged by the consolidated banks decrease, but as the local market share of the acquired bank increases, the efficiency effect is offset by market power. Mergers have different distributional effects across borrowers. When banks become larger, they reduce the supply of loans to small borrowers.     

风险管理、内部控制与国有商业银行海外上市

本文探讨了风险管理、内部控制与国有商业银行海外上市的关系。共分四个部分:一、关于银行风险的几个基本问题;二、关于银行风险的监管要求;三、关于公司治理和内部控制的监管要求;四、关于国有商业银行完善风险管理、内部控制制度的几点建议。第一部分是本文的分析框架;第二、第三部分是从该分析框架的角度对上市监管要求进行的阐述;第四部分是结合分析框架和监管要求,对国有商业银行风险管理改革提出的建议。本文的基本论点是,满足海外上市监管要求是国有商业银行海外上市需达到的最低要求;制定并实施与自身业务战略相适应的风险战略,将直接影响国有商业银行的股票投资价值。     

Agent Change and Seller Bargaining Power: A Case of Principal Agent Problem in the Housing Market

When a seller hires an agent to sell his/her property, a successful outcome depends on the list price, marketing time, unobserved relative bargaining power of the buyers and sellers, and the effort levels of the seller and the seller’s agent. A divergence with respect to the list/transaction prices and the expected effort levels between seller and agent will create a principal-agent interest conflict. This conflict in some cases results in an agent change before the house is sold. The change will reduce the relative bargaining power of the seller, affecting the observed marketing time and transaction price. This study estimates the effects of an agent change on marketing time and transaction price after controlling for degree of overpricing, list-price revisions, marketing time, and endogenous selection bias. Our results show that: (1) on average, an agent change increases the marketing time by about 3 months and adversely affects the transaction price by about 2.7 %. Furthermore, we found that an agent change before the expiration of the listing contract, compared to that of after the expiration, has a smaller effect on the marketing time (2.3 vs. 3.8 months) and has a smaller transaction price discount (2.1 % vs. 4.2 %).     

Housing Prices and Maturing Real Estate Markets: Evidence from Uganda

Uganda, a less developed but rapidly growing East African nation, continues to correct the economic mismanagement of past governments. One important legacy of this mismanagement is the Land Decree of 1975, issued by then President Idi Amin Dada. This decree nationalized all land and made illegal all private real estate market transactions. This paper uses a rich, but little known, dataset to show that real estate markets appear to have continued operating reasonably efficiently in spite of the 1975 Decree. The Land Act of 1998 repealed the 1975 Decree. Our results suggest the recent Act has a high likelihood of success because its primary goal is to codify guarantees of security, transparency, and enforceable property rights in private real estate markets that appear to already exist.     

The Impact of Housing Markets on Consumer Debt: Credit Report Evidence from 1999 to 2012

We estimate the response of consumer debt portfolios to pronounced housing market swings from 1999 to 2012 using Equifax‐sourced credit report data and a variety of identification approaches. We find: (i) the extraordinary climb in home equity debt from 2002 to 2006 is an expression of a stable, longer‐term relationship between house price growth and home equity borrowing; (ii) all preboom homeowners, and older and prime postboom homeowners, demonstrate near dollar‐for‐dollar substitution between (expensive) credit card and (cheap) home equity debt in response to home equity changes; and (iii) little evidence of substitution between home equity and student loan debt.     

A Tale of Two Countries: Comparing the US and Chinese Housing Markets

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - The recent surge in property values in China has been similar to the surge in the U.S before the crash in 2007. This raises concerns about whether...     

试析国外住房抵押贷款合同设计

本文运用非对称信息经济学原理,研究国外住房抵押贷款合同设计,以此提出我国开发固定利率住房抵押贷款合同以及在合同中设定点数的重要性。     

The Effects of Unanticipated Macroeconomic News on Debt Markets

We examine the effects of unanticipated macroeconomic news on two interest rate futures using intraday data. The surprises are identified on the basis of their potential effects on debt markets (positive or negative) and by their size (large, medium, or small). The results show distinct ex‐post return patterns associated with different categories of news surprises. For example, large surprises have the strongest immediate effects whereas negative surprises have the longest persisting effects. Tests that examine the separate effects of each announcement suggest that debt responses vary with the size and potential effect of the news surprise in each announcement.     

The Economics of Stock Exchange Listing Fees and Listing Requirements

This paper investigates the once and future role of listing fees. We consider the theory of listing fees and why such a pricing structure initially evolved. We show how capital market developments have changed the desirability, and even viability, of this pricing structure. We then analyze the economics of listing fees. While providing revenue to the exchange, listing fees impose large (opportunity) costs, and we analyze this trade-off, presenting evidence from the New York Stock Exchange. We also discuss what types of listing requirements make economics sense for exchanges (or perhaps regulators) to impose on companies. Finally we consider whether listing fees will continue to survive. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: G10, G18, K22, K23.     

揭开保险合同准备金计量的面纱——对IASB保险合同会计准则征求意见稿的述评

国际会计准则理事会(IASB)于今年7月30日发布了保险合同会计准则征求意见稿,提出了履约现金流现值加剩余边际的保险合同准备金计量模式。本文系统介绍了该模式的主要内容及相关研究观点,分析了该模式存在的问题,并提出了改进建议。本文认为,该模式虽然能够提高保险公司准备金信息的有用性,但依然受到了传统精算理论的影响,没有完全遵循会计基本原则和方法。只有彻底摆脱精算理论的束缚,才能揭开保险合同准备金计量的面纱。     

Episodes of Exuberance in Housing Markets: In Search of the Smoking Gun

In this paper, we examine changes in the time series properties of three widely used housing market indicators (real house prices, price-to-income ratios, and price-to-rent ratios) for a large set of countries to detect episodes of explosive dynamics. Dating such episodes of exuberance in housing markets provides a timeline as well as empirical content to the narrative connecting housing exuberance to the global 2008 ?09 recession. For our empirical analysis, we employ two recursive univariate unit root tests recently developed by Phillips and Yu (International Economic Review 52(1):201–226, 2011) and Phillips et al. (2015). We also propose a novel extension of the test developed by Phillips et al. (2015) to a panel setting in order to exploit the large cross-sectional dimension of our international dataset. Statistically significant periods of exuberance are found in most countries. Moreover, we find strong evidence of the emergence of an unprecedented period of exuberance in the early 2000s that eventually collapsed around 2006 ?07, preceding the 2008 ?09 global recession. We examine whether macro and financial variables help to predict (in-sample) episodes of exuberance in housing markets. Long-term interest rates, credit growth and global economic conditions are found to be among the best predictors. We conclude that global factors (partly) explain the synchronization of exuberance episodes that we detect in the data in the 2000s.     

Testing the Dividend Discount Model in Housing Markets: the Role of Risk

Tests of the dividend discount model (DDM) applied to housing have studied the trade-off between the capitalization rate (CAP rate) and subsequent house price appreciation. Even allowing for attenuation bias because of actual appreciation does not equal expected appreciation, evidence for the DDM is not strong. This research has included an implicit assumption that risks associated with housing investment are common across housing markets. In addition, many previous tests have used the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Rent Index to construct the CAP rate although recent research by Ambrose et al. (2015) has questioned this data. The American Housing Survey is used to construct estimates of the CAP rate which is then combined with standard appreciation measures to estimate total return and its variance over time for larger Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) in the U.S. Using statistically constructed estimates of the CAP rate and adding variance in total return to conduct tests of the DDM produces far stronger results than those obtained in previous studies of a cross section of cities in the U.S. But, when the BLS Rent Index is used to measure CAP rates and risk, the results are not consistent with DDM.     

Housing Cooperatives in Sweden: The Effects of Financial Deregulation

The article focuses on transaction prices for recent movers in cooperative dwellings during the period 1980–1993. Prices increased by 80% in real terms up to 1990, then fell by 35% between 1990 and 1993. A hedonic analysis is used to analyze the impact of changmg macroeconomics and financial deregulation. The financial deregulation, which took place in 1985, seems to have caused increased loan-to-value ratios on the cooperative housing market. Using 1983 as a point of reference, a Tobit analysis reveals that the average LTV ratio in 1990 was 290% higher that year. After 1990 the LTV ratio fell by 45% due to credit constraints.     

The Asymmetric Wealth Effect in the US Housing and Stock Markets: Evidence from the Threshold Cointegration Model

Previous studies commonly use a linear framework to investigate the long-run equilibrium relationship between the housing and stock markets. The linear approaches may not be appropriate if adjustments from disequilibrium are asymmetric in both markets. Nonlinear adjustments are likely to be observed since the two markets respond rather differently to negative shocks where the stock market is more volatile but price rigidity is found in the housing market. In this paper, we firstly propose two hypotheses on the long-run equilibrium relationship of the US housing and stock markets, and then employ the threshold cointegration model to investigate the potential asymmetric relationships between the two markets. Our empirical results reveal that cointegration exists among the markets, but adjustments toward its long-run equilibrium are asymmetric. Further evidence points out that a rapid mean reversion occurs in one regime where the stock price outperforms the housing price, and no significant reversion is found in the other regime, supporting the hypothesis of the existence of an asymmetric wealth effect among the two markets in the US. Furthermore, evidence from the asymmetric vector error correction model shows that significant error corrections toward the equilibrium exist in the short run only when the stock price exceeds the real estate price by the estimated threshold level, reassuring the finding of the asymmetric wealth effect.     

宏观经济统计数据公布对中国金融市场影响的实证研究

本文分别运用无市场预期和引入市场预期之后的GARCH模型,研究消费者物价指数、固定资产投资增速、消费品零售总额增速、贸易顺差额以及货币供应量这五个宏观经济数据的定期公布对于我国股票市场、债券市场及外汇市场波动的影响。我们发现在股票市场,CPI统计数据的公布加大了日收益率的波动率,而其它经济数据的公布减小了其波动率;债券市场和外汇市场由于市场化程度较低,宏观经济统计数据的公布对其价格行为的影响较小。