Search costs and apartment rents

Differences in apartment rents are explained with a hedonic equation that includes property management variables omitted in prior studies. Our joint hypotheses are that differences in contributions to rent exist among property managers as a function of their ability to reduce search costs to renters and that the manager's fee for providing search-cost-reducing information is reflected in the amount of rent paid. Two proxies for the level of search costs are found to be positively and significantly related to the rent level.     

A note on refinancing costs,prepayment assumptions,and the value of mortgage-backed securities

This article analyzes the effect and timing of the FHA's streamline refinance program on the value of GNMA 15s. The program announced in March 1989 reduced the refinancing costs for those mortgages of 15 percent and above. The program is expected to reduce the value of GNMA's. The authors find a reduction of .47 to 3.40 points in the value of GNMA 15s during the 3-week to 13-week period following the announcement of the plan. The drop in value translates into a wealth loss for GNMA 15 holders of about $20 million over this time.     

解读中小企业贷款难理论谜团的新框架——租值耗散与交易费用视角

本文详细梳理了国内中小企业贷款难理论,并把这些理论归纳为银行市场结构论、所有制歧视(摩擦)论、企业规模歧视论和外环境缺陷论。虽然这些理论均能在一定程度上解释中小企业贷款难,但大多不够全面又相互割裂,这似乎是一个理论谜团。对此,文章站在租值耗散与交易费用的视角构建了一个分析中小企业贷款难的新框架,并在这一框架下重新解读国内中小企业贷款难理论,分析发现,这些理论大多可以由新框架导出。     

A note on transaction costs and the interpretation of dividend drop‐off ratios

In a recent edition of this Journal, Bartholdy and Brown (1999) presented an analysis of the ex‐dividend share price behaviour of shares listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange. The authors conclude that their results are consistent with the tax clientele effect (driven by long‐term investors) and that there is little or no support for the short‐term trading hypothesis. Our purpose is to highlight the importance of transaction costs in analyses such as Bartholdy and Brown's. We argue that their results have an alternative interpretation because their analysis excludes the impact of transaction costs. We extend their model to include transaction costs and show that their results are not necessarily inconsistent with the short‐term trading hypothesis. A critical point of our analysis is that, in the presence of transaction costs, the equilibrium drop‐off ratio for dividend strip traders will be less than one, and, in some cases, can be less than the equilibrium drop‐off ratio for long‐term investors.     

Portfolio optimisation with strictly positive transaction costs and impulse control

One crucial assumption in modern portfolio theory of continuous-time models is the no transaction cost assumption. This assumption normally leads to trading strategies with infinite variation. However, following such a strategy in the presence of transaction costs will lead to immediate ruin. We present an impulse control approach where the investor can change his portfolio only finitely often in finite time intervals. Further, we consider transaction costs including a fixed and a proportional cost component. For the solution of the resulting control problems we present a formal optimal stopping approach and an approach using quasi-variational inequalities. As an application we derive a nontrivial asymptotically optimal solution for the problem of exponential utility maximisation.     

Inflation dynamics with search frictions: A structural econometric analysis

The New Keynesian Phillips curve explains inflation dynamics as being driven by current and expected future real marginal costs. In competitive labor markets, the labor share can serve as a proxy for the latter. In this paper, we study the role of real marginal cost components implied by search frictions in the labor market. We construct a measure of real marginal costs by using newly available labor market data on worker finding rates. Over the business cycle, the measure is highly correlated with the labor share. Estimates of the Phillips curve using generalized method of moments reveal that the marginal cost measure remains significant, and that inflation dynamics are mainly driven by the forward-looking component. Bayesian estimation of the full New Keynesian model with search frictions helps us disentangle which shocks are driving the economy to generate the observed unit labor cost dynamics. We find that mark-up shocks are the dominant force in labor market fluctuations.     

Asymptotic analysis for optimal investment and consumption with transaction costs

We consider an agent who invests in a stock and a money market and consumes in order to maximize the utility of consumption over an infinite planning horizon in the presence of a proportional transaction cost . The utility function is of the form U(c) = c^1-p/(1-p) for p > 0, . We provide a heuristic and a rigorous derivation of the asymptotic expansion of the value function in powers of , and we also obtain asymptotic results on the boundary of the no-trade region.Received: July 2003, Mathematics Subject Classification (1991): 90A09, 60H30, 60G44JEL Classification: G13Work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants DMS-0103814 and DMS-0139911.     

Risk sensitive asset management with transaction costs

This paper develops a continuous time risk-sensitive portfolio optimization model with a general transaction cost structure and where the individual securities or asset categories are explicitly affected by underlying economic factors. The security prices and factors follow diffusion processes with the drift and diffusion coefficients for the securities being functions of the factor levels. We develop methods of risk sensitive impulsive control theory in order to maximize an infinite horizon objective that is natural and features the long run expected growth rate, the asymptotic variance, and a single risk aversion parameter. The optimal trading strategy has a simple characterization in terms of the security prices and the factor levels. Moreover, it can be computed by solving a {\it risk sensitive quasi-variational inequality}. The Kelly criterion case is also studied, and the various results are related to the recent work by Morton and Pliska. Mansucript received: July 1998; final version received: January 1999     

Accounting case search: A web-based search tool for finding published accounting cases

The creation of the Accounting Case Search website was motivated by the Pathways Commission Report and inspired by the frustration felt in trying to find cases for courses we have had to develop over the past 17 years. The site updates and extends previously published case search resources such as Weinstein (2005), Lipe (2006), and Miller et al. (2014), as well as resources available at the Management Accounting Section (MAS) and ATA Section sites on the American Accounting Association (AAA) website. The site currently includes all cases published to date in the Journal of Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education and the IMA Educational Case Journal (492 cases). Searching for cases at the site is based primarily on courses (course title), which can then be narrowed by keywords (Accounting Topics). This website will be updated by the authors as new cases are published. The authors will also expand the set of source journals. The website address is http://www.cases.ndacct.com/.     

The causes of misapplied capacity related manufacturing costs and corresponding reporting implications: A conceptual perspective

To meet external financial reporting requirements, fixed (i.e., capacity related) manufacturing overhead costs are typically applied to inventory via the use of a predetermined overhead application rate. However, textbooks do not consider all appropriate conceptual issues regarding the setting of the overhead application rate nor how these issues influence the causes of misapplied capacity costs (under/over-applied fixed manufacturing overhead) typically reported as the Production Volume Variance. Specifically, discussion is lacking related to those misapplied capacity costs potentially caused variously by the presence of capacity that is not explicitly planned to be used, capacity that is currently unused but in the longer-term is planned to be used (due to anticipated growth), and capacity that is currently unused but in the shorter term is planned to be used due to seasonality. Determining if any of these three causes are contributing to misapplied capacity costs is critical, as there are important managerial accounting and financial accounting reporting implications associated with each. And while the relevant literature to be discussed offers support for these causal constructs, this paper extends this literature by developing a parsimonious and conceptually-based approach to permit a simultaneous partitioning of misapplied capacity costs into these causal categories. Further, this paper will identify the important conceptual differences among these three causes, how these differences warrant unique approaches for the managerial and financial reporting of information related to capacity costs and utilization, and needed changes to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to facilitate more appropriate financial reporting in this area.     

Optimal dividend strategy with transaction costs for an upward jump model

In this paper, we consider the optimal dividend problem with transaction costs when the incomes of a company can be described by an upward jump model. Both fixed and proportional costs are considered in the problem. The value function is defined as the expected total discounted dividends up to the time of ruin. Although the same problem has already been studied in the pure diffusion model and the spectrally negative Lévy process, the optimal dividend problem in an upward jump model has two different aspects in determining the optimal dividends barrier and in the property of the value function. First, the value function is twice continuous differentiable in the diffusion case, but it is not in the jump model. Second, under the spectrally negative Lévy process, downward jumps will not cause any payment actions; however, it might trigger dividend payments when there are upward jumps. In deriving the optimal barriers, we show that the value function is bounded by a linear function. Using this property, we establish the verification theorem for the value function. By solving the quasi-variational inequalities associated with this problem, we obtain the closed-form solution to the value function and hence the optimal dividend strategy when the income sizes follow a common exponential distribution. In the presence of a fixed transaction cost, it is shown that the optimal strategy is a two-barrier policy, and the optimal barriers are only dependent on the fixed cost and not the proportional cost. A numerical example is used to illustrate how the fixed cost plays a significant role in the optimal dividend strategy and also the value function. Moreover, an increased fixed cost results in larger but less frequent dividend payments.     

A geometric approach to portfolio optimization in models with transaction costs

We consider a continuous-time stochastic optimization problem with infinite horizon, linear dynamics, and cone constraints which includes as a particular case portfolio selection problems under transaction costs for models of stock and currency markets. Using an appropriate geometric formalism we show that the Bellman function is the unique viscosity solution of a HJB equation.Mathematics Subject Classification (1991): 60G44JEL Classification: G13, G11This research was done at Munich University of Technology supported by a Mercator Guest Professorship of the German Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). The authors also express their thanks to Mark Davis, Steve Shreve, and Michael Taksar for useful discussions concerning the principle of dynamic programming.     

Culture's consequences in controlling agency costs: Egyptian evidence

This study examines the business environment of Egypt, a nation at the beginning of its transition to a market economy, to determine whether national culture is associated with the use of accounting-based debt covenants in debt agreements. As a country's economy develops, agency problems occur. One method of reducing agency costs is the use of accounting-based debt covenants. While there has been extensive research on agency theory, most of this research has focused on developed nations. We examine three periods of Egyptian economic development using 140 Egyptian debt agreements. The use of accounting-based debt covenants increased significantly during each successive period of development. Proxies for each of (Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences—International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, London: Sage Publications) cultural dimensions are significantly different between the three periods, suggesting that national culture changes with economic development. Three of the four cultural dimensions are significant when regressed on the number of accounting-based debt covenants in debt agreements. This indicates that as a country develops, national culture is associated with the control and understanding of the business process.     

A counter-example to an option pricing formula under transaction costs

In the paper by Melnikov and Petrachenko (Finance Stoch. 9: 141–149, 2005), a procedure is put forward for pricing and replicating an arbitrary European contingent claim in the binomial model with bid-ask spreads. We present a counter-example to show that the option pricing formula stated in that paper can in fact lead to arbitrage. This is related to the fact that under transaction costs a superreplicating strategy may be less expensive to set up than a strictly replicating one.     

No-arbitrage criteria for financial markets with transaction costs and incomplete information

This note deals with criteria of absence of arbitrage opportunities for an investor acting in a market with frictions and having a limited access to the information flow. We develop a mathematical scheme covering major models of financial markets with transaction costs and prove several results including a criterion for the robust no-arbitrage property and a hedging theorem.      

Political costs and corporate tax avoidance: Evidence from sin firms

The products and services of firms operating in sin industries (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and firearms) run contrary to social norms and can produce significant negative externalities for society. As such, we expect that sin firms are at greater risk of incurring political costs in the form of additional regulation, higher excise taxes, or capital market intervention if they come under scrutiny for their income tax avoidance practices. Because of the nature of their products, regulators and policymakers are likely to face less pushback on new regulations or taxes on these firms. Sin firms start with a lower ability to influence the political process than firms in non-sin industries. Consequently, we hypothesize and find that sin firms exhibit less tax avoidance than non-sin firms, particularly through uncertain and more risky tax avoidance strategies. The negative relationship between the status of sin firms and tax avoidance is less pronounced in firms that accumulate political capital via intensive lobbying activities. Exploiting changes in partisan control of the Congress and White House, difference-in-differences tests show that firearm firms engage in less (more) tax avoidance when the Democrats (Republican) control both the Congress and White House. Overall, we conclude that political costs play an important role in corporate tax avoidance decisions.     

Electric utility deregulation: Stranded costs vs. stranded benefits

This study re-examines the electric utility market value-book value relation in light of the changing regulatory climate. The change in the market value-book value relation is examined by comparing the market-to-book ratio in the post-regulatory period to the regulatory period. Additionally, this paper compares the stock market’s valuation of electric utility stranded costs (above market costs) to stranded benefits (below market costs). This paper demonstrates that electric utility market value and book value are no longer aligned. Additionally, this paper extends the research on deregulatory effects by documenting a differential market response to estimated stranded costs versus stranded benefits.     

On option pricing in binomial market with transaction costs

Option replication is studied in a discrete-time framework with proportional transaction costs. The model represents an extension of the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein binomial option-pricing model to cover the case of proportional transaction costs for one risky asset with different interest rates on bank credit and deposit. Contingent claims are supposed to be 2-dimensional random variables. Explicit formulas for self-financing strategies are obtained for this case.Received: March 2004, Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 62P05JEL Classification: G11, G13The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee for numerous helpful comments and to Yulia Romaniuk for final corrections. The paper was partially supported by grant NSERC 264186.     

A note on execution costs for stock index futures: Information versus liquidity effects

This paper examines execution costs and the impact of trade size for stock index futures using price-volume transaction data from the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange. Consistent with Subrahmanyam [Rev. Financ. Stud. 4 (1991) 17] we find that effective half spreads in the stock index futures market are small compared to stock markets, and that trades in stock index futures have only a small permanent price impact. This result is important as it helps to better understand the success of equity index products such as index futures and Exchange Traded Funds. We also find that there is no asymmetry in the post-trade price reaction between purchases and sales for stock index futures across various trade sizes. This result is consistent with the conjecture in Chan and Lakonishok [J. Financ. Econ. 33 (1993) 173] that the asymmetry surrounding block trades in stock markets is due to the high cost of short selling and the general reluctance of traders to short sell on stock markets.