Housing Wealth,Financial Wealth and Consumption Expenditure: The Role of Consumer Confidence

The objective of this paper is to examine the role of consumer confidence on the relationship between two forms of wealth—housing and financial—and four categories of consumption expenditure, which include total consumption, service, durable goods and nondurable goods consumption. This paper uses U.S. quarterly data from 1978 to 2012 for its analysis. Applying the FMOLS estimation method, the results show that consumer confidence has a positive effect on the association between housing wealth and consumption expenditure, whereas its effect on the association between financial wealth and consumption expenditure is negative. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Wealth transfer,signaling and leverage in M&A

Merger activity amplifies the conflict of interest between a bidder's different classes of security holders. This study examines how equity returns and credit default swap spreads are affected by acquisition-driven changes in firm leverage. We develop an improved proxy for predicted leverage changes which includes transaction financing and find it has a positive relationship with both equity returns and credit spreads. Using data for North American firms that made acquisition announcements between 2008 and 2014, we find that in leverage increasing mergers, bidding firm shareholders gain while bondholders lose. While these results are consistent with the wealth transfer literature we show that the gains to bidders' shareholders and losses to bidders' bondholders are caused by the change in leverage, not the form of payment or its signaling effect as is commonly documented.     

Real Estate Mergers: Corporate Control &; Shareholder Wealth

This study contributes new evidence to distinguish why mergers occur in the real estate industry by quantifying the combined firm return for nearly three decades of real estate mergers. As a measure of the overall change in shareholder wealth created by a merger, the combined firm return plays a key role in differentiating competing merger theories and is quantified for the real estate industry for the first time. Findings from this study are consistent with the notion that real estate mergers occur because firms with superior management acquire other firms that possess unexploited opportunities to cut costs and increase earnings (the inefficient management hypothesis). Furthermore, the results indicate that real estate mergers generally create wealth, as shareholders at best realize modest gains and at worst break even.     

In Old Chicago: Simons,Friedman, and the Development of Monetary‐Policy Rules

This paper examines the different policy rules proposed by Henry Simons, who, beginning in the mid‐1930s, advocated a price‐level stabilization rule, and by Milton Friedman, who, beginning in the late‐1950s, advocated a rule that targeted a constant growth rate of the money supply. Although both rules shared the objective of eliminating the policy uncertainty emanating from discretion, they differed because of the different views of Simons and Friedman about the stability of secular relationships. Simons’ rule relates to modern rules that emphasize the pursuit of price stability as representing optimal monetary policy.     

Household Wealth and Macroeconomic Activity: 2008–2013

This paper provides estimates of the effects of the fall in financial and housing wealth in 2008–09 on overall macroeconomic activity. When the wealth losses are run through a structural macroeconometric model, it is estimated that the fall in wealth contributed about 2.1 percentage points to the rise in the unemployment rate in 2009 and about 3.3 points in 2010. The contribution to the fall in real GDP was 4.5% and 5.4% in the 2 years. These estimates account for most—but not all—of the recessionary increase in unemployment. The remaining increase in unemployment may have resulted more directly from financial stresses, but little evidence is found for this in this study.     

古老智慧的启示: 财商、财富与幸福

理财之道,名正言顺 何以聚人?曰财.理财正辞,禁民为非,曰义.——《易经.系辞.下》 这是我国古书中第一次出现"理财"一词,这句话的意思是管理财物、匡正言辞、禁止民众为非作歹,用的是"义"."理财"包括聚财和用财,聚财就是向百姓收取税赋,用财就是蓄养民众.聚财和用财都要讲"义",即聚之有理,用之有道."禁民为非",也要用"义",而不是靠武力、刑罚.     

Re-Examining the Consumption–Wealth Relationship: The Role of Model Uncertainty

This paper discusses the consumption–wealth relationship. We use data on consumption, assets, and labor income and a vector error correction framework. This framework defines a set of models that differ in the number of co-integrating vectors, the form of deterministic components and lag length. Further models can be defined through parametric restrictions and, in particular, interest centers on a weak exogeneity restriction that says that the co-integrating residuals do not affect consumption and income directly. Key results in previous work relate to the roles of permanent and transitory shocks in driving wealth and how consumption responds to these shocks. We investigate the robustness of these results to model uncertainty and argue for the use of Bayesian model averaging. We find that there is a large degree of model uncertainty. Whether this uncertainty has important empirical implications depends on the researcher's attitude toward the theory used to motivate a co-integrating relationship between consumption, assets and income. If we work with models consistent with this theory and impose the weak exogeneity restriction, we find precisely estimated results that show that permanent shocks have only a small role in driving assets and that the predominant transitory shocks have little effect on consumption. These findings are consistent with the previous literature. However, if we work with a broader set of models and let the data speak, we find that the exact magnitude of the role of permanent shocks is hard to estimate precisely. Thus, although some support exists for the view that their role is small, we cannot rule out the possibility that they have a substantive role to play.     

Borrowing Constraints,Home Ownership and Housing Choice: Evidence from Intra‐Family Wealth Transfers

We study the impact of borrowing constraints on home ownership and housing demand by comparing the tenure choice and housing quality of consumers who receive intra‐family wealth transfers to those that do not. Our analysis is based on household‐level panel data providing information on the receipt of wealth transfers, changes in tenure status as well as changes in the size and quality of housing. On average we find that the receipt of a wealth transfer increases the propensity of consumers to transition from renters to home‐owners by 6–8 percentage points (35% of the sample mean). Additional analyses suggest that this effect is unlikely to be driven by wealth effects and can thus be attributed to the relaxation of borrowing constraints. By contrast, wealth transfers do not increase the likelihood that existing homeowners “trade‐up” to larger homes in better locations.     

主权财富基金:现状、争议及监管方向

近年来,主权财富基金不断快速增长的规模及对全球金融市场的潜在影响力,使其成为发达国家政府关注的焦点.本文通过对主权财富基金现状及引发的争议进行描述,分析其对国际金融市场的影响,最后提出符合各方利益的、能为各方所接受的监管体系的发展方向.