Residential Investment, Non-residential Investment and GDP

We examine the causality and influence of residential and non-residential investment with respect to GDP and its components in a multivariate, vector autoregressive context, with some care devoted to the appropriate orthogonalization of the shocks which drive the various components of GDP. We find that residential investment shocks are more important in the determination of GDP than non-residential investment shocks.     

Personal Residential Real Estate Investment in Australia: Investor Characteristics and Investment Parameters

To date our understanding of the factors affecting the housing supply stem from the private provision of new units through real estate development. This article investigates a different aspect of housing supply, the private provision of rental housing through investment in existing properties. Using logistic regression and a series of micro data sets of Australian households, we examine the investment decision of residential rental property investors over the period 1990–2004. The sample period incorporates a full real estate cycle. Our results indicate that wealth-related factors are the dominant factors driving these investments. Life-cycle factors such as marriage and children play a less important role. Most of the determinants of income property investment do not vary with the property cycle. Marriage is an exception. It became more important as house prices rose.     

Hierarchical Zoning, Incompatible Uses and Price Discounts

This study examines an aspect of hierarchical zoning. Hierarchical zoning, unlike mutually exclusive zoning, is uni-directional in that it protects upper-level residential uses from nonconforming, non-residential uses but not vice versa. The result is that the lower-level zones can be a mixture of several nonconforming, incompatible uses. This unique attribute of hierarchical zoning offers a window of opportunity for choices for affordable housing at affordable locations. Using hedonic analysis, empirical evidence shows that huge price discounts (over 15%) are associated with apartments that are situated in nonconforming zones. Arguments here support more flexible zoning.     

Revenue Sharing with Heterogeneous Investments in Sports Leagues: Share Media,Not Stadiums

This study examines revenue sharing in sports leagues where franchises engage in multiple types of investments. Previous literature typically treats revenues and investments as homogeneous, but we add to the literature by differentiating between investment types and revenue sources. This is important because investment in talent leads to winning, which is a zero-sum game for the league and therefore owners have an incentive to limit talent investment. However, other investments, such as stadiums, are not a zero-sum game, and therefore the implications of revenue sharing are different for the league. We provide sufficient conditions under which it is more efficient to share media revenue compared to stadium revenue. We conclude by providing applications of this model.     

我国产业投资与经济增长的静态和动态关系研究

本文通过灰色关联分析和VECM深入研究了我国固定资产总投资、各个产业投资与GDP以及各产业产值的关系。结果发现我国固定资产投资对经济增长的影响很大,第三产业投资对第一产业和第三产业产值的关联程度很大;而第三产业产值对各业投资的依存程度较强。固定资产投资是经济增长的格兰杰原因,经济增长却不是固定资产投资的格兰杰原因。我国经济应该在增强自身内生发展能力下功夫。     

Housing Density and the Effect of Proximity to Public Open Space in Aberdeen, Scotland

We consider whether public recreational open space is a substitute for private open space by testing whether price effects from proximity to an urban park are increasing in housing density. Aberdeen, Scotland features three owner-occupied residential property types: detached housing, nondetached housing and flats. We examine property sales within 800 m of five city parks. We find flat prices increase with additional proximity to parks, but there are generally no price effects from park proximity for lower density housing types. The results suggest that open space policy must consider the scale and density of surrounding urban development.     

Uses and Abuses of Residential Building Permits in Forecasting Private Housing Starts

This paper examines the commonly held view that the Census Bureau's monthly series for residential building permits issued is a leading indicator of the series for private housing starts. A close study of the residential building permits and housing starts series shows that on a quarterly basis the series are coincident, with cyclical peaks and troughts in the seasonally adjusted data occurring in the same period. On the monthly basis for the period 1960 through 1976, the peaks and troughs in the building permits series have usually followed those in the housing starts series. Also, evidence presented in the paper shows that monthly changes in the residential building permits series are not highly correlated with changes in the housing starts series one to five months in the future. Finally, the analysis suggests that changes in the backlog of unused residential building permits are not indicative of future changes in the rate of housing starts. The major implication of these results is that permits data offer little or no information about future month-to-month changes in the rate of housing starts. However, because the building permits series is less irregular than the housing starts series and the cyclical movements of the series are basically the same, permits data can be used to identify irregular monthly movements in the starts series.     

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION

High technology investments are a rapidly growing segment of business capital expenditures. The questionnaire responses presented in this paper provide information on the capital investment decision processes currently being used for high technology projects. Respondents indicate that the capital evaluation techniques used to justify high technology investments are similar to those used for other types of capital projects and that high-tech projects must meet normal requirements for project acceptability. Respondents specified that a wide variety of factors, some quantified and some not quantified (such as quality control and reduced lead time), are included in their decision process. While there is general satisfaction with the procedures used for project justification, the relative newness of these investments suggests that there is a need to gather more detailed information about this type of capital decision.     

The Implications of Demand Instability for the Behavior of Firms: The Case of Residential Construction

The position of the new residential construction sector as a large but very volatile component of total investment has provoked much study of the causes of that volatility and of its relation to the stability of the economy as a whole. There has never been, however, serious analysis of the assertion that this same volatility of housing starts, by creating an unstable environment for firms operating in the industry, serves to increase the cost of producing and marketing housing.
This paper will focus on the phenomenon of demand instability as it affects firm behavior. It approaches the demand instability problem from two distinct but complementary perspectives. The first part sets forth a theoretical conception of the manner in which demand instability should influence any firm's organization and operations. The second part presents an analysis of interviews conducted with representatives of a number of firms which supply materials for residential construction. This analysis provides a partial test of the theory and offers insights into areas on which theory alone sheds little light.     

TIMING AND INTENSITY EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTMENTS

This paper examines the investment timing and intensity conditions under which advantages may exist for first movers in environmental investments. The potential advantages on which the paper focuses are timing and intensity of investments in recent pollution-reducing manufacturing technologies that produce salable product at the same time that they reduce pollution. The data come from 50 chemical bleached paper pulp manufacturers in eight countries. The model measures the impact of the independent variables on growth in profits from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, controlling for national differences in environmental regulations, among other variables. Results indicate a positive relationship between timing of investments and profit growth. There is also evidence that more intense investment patterns, when not tempered by sufficient time to absorb the investments, may lead to lower profit growth.     

基于城镇化背景的地方政府融资平台产生原因实证分析——来自1978～2011年的时间序列数据

通过单位根检验、协整检验、建立误差修正模型、格兰杰因果关系检验,我国城镇化率增长是人均国内生产总值增长的格兰杰原因,从长期来看,我国城镇化率增长对人均国内生产总值增长有显著促进作用.地方政府的政绩考核制度促使政府官员追求GDP并进行城市基础设施建设,但分税制造成地方政府财政的收支矛盾,地方政府融资平台产生.     

FDI对区域经济增长、就业影响研究——基于丝绸之路经济带我国西北段省区

本文基于丝绸之路经济带我国西北段区域1985～2014年的时间序列数据,采用VAR模型分析FDI 、经济增长与就业三者之间的动态关系。结果表明：FDI是经济增长和就业的格兰杰原因, 但经济增长不是FDI的格兰杰原因;FDI对经济增长有明显的促进作用,对就业的促进作用不 明显,经济增长未明显带动FDI流入。丝绸之路经济带我国西北段区域应牢牢抓住“丝绸之 路经济带”战略机遇,因地制宜地制定符合科学发展的引资策略,优化投资环境以吸引跨国 公司进驻该区域,并鼓励企业加大对研发、设计等价值链高端的投资。     

Beyond invention: the additive impact of incubation capabilities to firm value

Incubation is a process whereby the firm nurtures breakthrough discoveries and inventions to test their potential as new business platforms. The recent emergence of organizational roles associated with innovation incubation shows that internal incubation is becoming recognized as an important organizational capability. This development also suggests that firms that invest in discovery for competitive advantage recognize a need to leverage that investment more fully. While case studies describe incubation activities and note their importance, empirical research linking this capability to firm performance is limited. The current study represents an initial attempt at exploring the relationship empirically. Our main finding is that financial markets have difficulty valuing a firm's exploratory discovery investments and that the presence of an incubation capability positively moderates the impact of such investments on firm market valuation. The implication of this result is that investments in certain types of R&D may be suboptimized if there is not a parallel investment in a capability to incubate the opportunities that arise from potentially breakthrough inventions.     

The Demand for Housing Additions: An Empirical Analysis

Little is known of a household's decision to make a housing addition despite the large and growing size of these expenditures. This paper examines this decision in a two-step empirical process: first, those factors that influence the probability of a housing addition are determined, and second, the value of the addition made is analyzed. Preliminary results indicate that unmet housing consumption needs, but not the investment potential of housing additions, have a significant impact on both the probability of an addition and the value of an addition made. Furthermore, ceteris paribus, non-white households have a greater probability of making a housing addition, and on average, spend more on housing additions than do white households.     

Knowledge capital and the private rate of return to R&D in Japanese manufacturing industries

This paper examines the relationship between R&D investment and the rate of increase of labor productivity in Japanese manufacturing industries, and derives the rate of return to such investment through a Cobb-Douglas production function which explicitly includes knowledge capital stock. It is argued that the rate of return to R&D investment has been much higher than those of alternative investments but has declined in recent years as the dependence on imported technologies has been diminishing after the last half of the 1970's.     

我国商品房市场量价关系的实证分析

目前对房地产市场的研究主要集中于房价,而对量价关系的研究较少。鉴于此,文章利用1998～2008年的全国商品房季度数据,对我国商品房市场量价关系进行实证研究,并得出以下结论：从长期来看,我国商品房市场的交易量与价格之间存在协整关系;因果检验显示交易量是价格的格兰杰原因,反之则不成立;通过脉冲响应函数发现外界冲击导致了量价的一致波动且交易量对外界冲击的响应比房价更敏感。     

Competition and investment — A unified approach

Using a simple but general two-stage framework, this paper identifies the circumstances under which increasing competition leads to more cost-reducing investments. The framework can, for instance, capture increasing substitutability for different types of oligopoly models or changes from Cournot to Bertrand competition. The paper identifies four transmission mechanisms by which competition affects investment. For a firm with lower initial marginal costs (higher efficiency), a positive effect of competition on investment is more likely. Positive spillovers support a negative effect of competition on investment. The relation between competition and investment is not affected in an unambiguous way by the level of pre-existing competition.     

Oligopsonistic Cats and Dogs

This paper examines strategic investment behaviour when firms have oligopsony power in the input market. Focusing on the labour market, we study how a firm’s labour supply augmenting investment affects the equilibrium when oligopsonistic firms set wages. Relative to a non-strategic benchmark, optimal investment strategies involve boosting investment that leads rival employers to cut wages, but involves cutting back on investment that causes the latter to increase their wages. Implications of existing labour market policies for strategic investment are also discussed. Finally, the model is generalised to nest wage and employment competition and is extended to include other types of investment.     

Zoning Policy Changes and the Urban Fringe Land Market

This paper examines the effect of a zoning change on the land market in McHenry County, Illinois. One question addressed is whether zoning "follows the market." It is found that, for agricultural land, zoning does tend to follow the market. In addition, the effect of land prices on land use is examined. The results here, however, are mixed. In the initial years after the zoning change, a high relative price of residential land increases the probability that a parcel will be zoned residential. However, several years later, a high relative price of residential land decreases the probability that a parcel is zoned residential. This result suggests that it may take some time for a zoning change to have a significant impact on the local land market.     

当代美国住宅的思考

美国2000年新建住宅投资4251亿美元，占固定资产投资的21．3％；住宅直接消费为9588亿美元，占GDP的9．71％；年存量住宅为1．16亿套(户)，空置率为5．9％。购买新房一般中值价为80美元／ft^2，一套住宅(2000ft^2)中值房价为16万美元；按中值计算贷款购房的支出与收入比为1：4．7；在美国仍有3500万户居民租用住宅。