Incentives at the counter: An empirical analysis of surcharging card payments and payment behaviour in the Netherlands

In card payment systems, no-surcharge rules prohibit merchants from charging consumers extra for card payments. However, such rules are prohibited in the Netherlands. Dutch retailers are allowed to surcharge consumers for debit card use. This setting permits an empirical analysis of the impact of surcharging card payments on merchant acceptance and consumer payment choice. Based on consumer and retailer survey data, our analysis shows that surcharging steers consumers away from using debit cards towards cash. Half of the observed difference in debit card payment shares across retailers can be explained by this surcharge effect. Removing debit card surcharges may induce cost savings of more than EUR 50 million in the long run.     

The Role of Tax Subsidies in the Market for Health Insurance

This paper investigates the role of tax subsidies in linking the market for health insurance to the employment relationship. Using both American and Canadian data, it investigates how these subsidies influence whether health insurance coverage is offered in different sized firms and whether it is offered through an employer versus the individual private market. The findings indicate that tax subsidies encourage the provision of insurance in smaller firms. Removal of the subsidies would cause the level of insurance in small firms to decline significantly, but would not cause a large change in the level of insurance in larger firms. Part of this decline would be offset by increases in the market for individually purchased insurance.     

Political Connections and Government Subsidies: Evidence from Financially Distressed Firms in China

Previous studies report mixed evidence regarding the effect of political connections on firm value. We seek new evidence in China, an important emerging market with a hallmark of a relationship-based economy. Using financially distressed firms (special treatment or ST firms) as a unique sample, we identify a direct channel through which political connections enhance firm value by showing that politically connected firms receive more government subsidies. Moreover, such effect becomes stronger for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), for firms with a better chance of survival, and after the government implemented a new policy to more strictly enforce the delisting in 2012.     

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.     

Scale Economies in Credit Unions: Accounting for Subsidies Is Important

In 1998, the Credit Union Services Corporation Australia Limited (CUSCAL) recommended that Australian credit unions with assets below $5 million should consider merging with larger credit unions. This industry position is at odds with empirical studies, which find little evidence of increasing returns to scale in credit unions. However, an important bias in previous studies of scale economies in credit unions has been the omission of credit union subsidies. This paper shows that the failure to account for subsidies biases the results toward finding diseconomies of scale. After correcting for the subsidy bias, there is very strong evidence of increasing returns to scale in a sample of New South Wales credit unions, supporting the industry recommendation.     

Simplicity versus Fairness in Means Testing: The Case of Civil Legal Aid

For most state financial benefits, the making of any payment, or its level, depends upon a means test to assess the applicant's income or wealth. Attempts to make such tests fair often lead to procedures that are complicated to administer and confusing for the applicant. This paper describes the analysis underlying a review of means testing for civil legal aid in England and Wales, to achieve considerable simplification without sacrificing fairness.     

Point and Figure charting: A computational methodology and trading rule performance in the S&P 500 futures market

This paper empirically contributes to the existing trading rule literature by providing a methodology for the calculation of Point and Figure charts using ultra-high-frequency data and tests trading rules using eight objective, pre-defined trading rules on S&P 500 futures contracts traded between 1990 and 1998. To assess the robustness of reported profits, a bootstrapping adjustment was conducted to determine the forecasting power of the PF trading rules. The results producing mixed statistical significance with some rules proving significant while many others were not.     

政府R&D资助与企业技术创新——基于效率视角的实证分析

应用1998～2007年中国大中型工业企业分行业面板数据,采用柯布-道格拉斯(C-D)生产函数形式的随机前沿模型,基于效率的视角,实证考察了政府R&D资助等因素对企业技术创新的影响。研究发现:政府R&D资助对提升企业的技术创新效率有显著的正向影响;企业自身R&D投入的提高有利于其吸收和利用政府的R&D资助,但企业规模和产权类型对政府R&D资助效果的影响并不显著。     

公积金约束、家庭类型与住宅特征需求——来自中国的经验分析

公积金约束正成为分化不同类型家庭住房支付能力和消费偏好的重要因素。本文利用1995年和2002年城市住户调查数据,检验公积金约束对不同类型家庭住宅特征需求的影响。实证结果表明,在住宅特征需求方面,公积金约束的影响效应存在显著的收入差异、单位类型差异、职业类型差异、职称差异和行业收入差异。其中,社会地位较高的家庭在提高住宅结构特征需求方面获得了更多的公积金支持;而在住宅邻里特征需求方面,公积金制度对社会地位较低家庭的贡献度较高。在引入工具变量、检验公积金变量的内生性偏误时发现,城镇家庭在改善型住房需求方面对社会保障体系的完善有较强的依赖性。本文的政策含义是,住房公积金制度定位应向低收入群体倾斜,并根据家庭类型实行有差别的政策。     

城镇廉租住房政策两类配租方式的经济学分析

实物配租和租金配租是城镇廉租住房政策实施过程中主要的两类配租方式,本文通过经济学方式,从消费者效用和市场供求关系两个维度分别对其进行分析,得出在市场低档存量房短缺的情形下,实物配租优于租金配租的结论。在此基础上,本文提出了以下几方面政策建议,短期内以增加市场上廉租住房的存量,增大实物配租的覆盖面为主,结合提高租金配租的保障水平,消除两种配租形式之间存在的待遇不公现象,继而逐步转变为以租金配租为主、实物配租为辅的配租模式。     

Social Capital and Housing Affordability: Evidence from China

This article attempts to examine the problem of housing affordability in China based on a set of household-level survey data. In contrast to the previous studies, our study focuses on the important implication of social capital for households’ house-purchasing decisions in this country. Our results show that household expenditures on the relations with parents and other relatives are important determinants for homeownership in China. We also find evidence that house-purchasing decisions are significantly affected by relatives-related variables such as number of immediate relatives in the same city, distance from parents, educational years of family head’s father, and whether parents are alive. Our research helps shed new light on the high homeownership rates in urban China.     

中国城镇居民住房的需求与供给

本文研究了自1980年代后期中国城镇住房商品化以来城镇居民住房的需求与供给。我们从耐用消费品需求与供给的标准理论出发,在联立方程框架下估计城镇住房的需求与供给方程,得到了需求的收入与价格弹性及供给的价格弹性的估计值。通过对1987～2006年全国城镇总体水平年度数据的分析,我们发现城镇住房价格的快速上涨主要可由需求与供给的作用解释,即人均收入和建筑成本的变化决定了房价的整体趋势。城镇住房需求的(长期)收入弹性约为1,需求的价格弹性在0.5到0.6之间。住房存量总供给的价格弹性约为0.83。     

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.     

Subsidized and Unsubsidized Housing Stocks 1935 to 1987: Crowding out and Cointegration

Crowding out arises in many economic contexts, from the macro concern that deficit spending might crowd out investment to the micro concern that increased employment of women might result in fewer jobs for men. Here I ask whether subsidized housing crowds out unsubsidized housing in the United States, applying the econometric tools of cointegration analysis. Such crowding out proves to require stringent restrictions on the coefficients of the cointegrating relationships that link housing stocks with one another and with other economic variables. These restrictions also apply to testing for other crowding out phenomena.I find that public housing has steadily added to the total stock of housing since its inception in 1935. In contrast, I find that moderate-income, conventionally financed, subsidized housing, such as the Section 235 and 236 programs that accounted for more than 1.5 million new units between 1960 and 1987, most likely adds little or nothing to the total housing stock. These findings speak against recent proposals to provide subsidies to developers who build dwellings for moderate income Americans but offer qualified encouragement to those who advocate expansion of the conventional public housing program.     

Housing and the Macroeconomy: Inflation and the Financial Accelerator

Three themes connecting housing and the macroeconomy are discussed. First, evidence is presented for the property market as one of the drivers of U.S. consumer price inflation. Second, key drivers of house prices are explained to account for the remarkable diversity of international experience. Finally, three potential links between housing, credit, and the financial accelerator are discussed. These are the consumption channel, the investment channel, and feedback between bad loans and risk‐spreads via the financial system—and how institutional differences between countries can explain the presence, absence and magnitudes of these linkages.     

Sites and Services--and Subsidies: The Economics of Low-Cost Housing in Developing Countries

Sites and services projects represent a major innovation inshelter policy in developing countries and have been sponsoredby international aid agencies for somewhat more than a decade.Such government projects deliver a package of shelter-relatedservices, the standards of which depend on the ability and willingnessto pay of intended beneficiaries. Typically, such projects representa sharp break with preexisting government shelter policies inthat they attempt, in principle, to focus directly on lower-incomegroups and to deliver shelter and services with small or nosubsidies. This article describes the background of the sitesand services concept; reviews recent evaluations of sites andservices projects; presents an analytical model of the sitesand services paradigm (which is used to examine how major projectoutcomes are influenced by project design); summarizes recentresearch on housing demand in developing countries (which isrelevant to designing appropriate sites and services projects);reviews planning assumptions used in World Bank sites and servicesprojects; compares these assumptions with empirical evidenceon willingness to pay for housing; and examines project experiencein light of contrasts between actual planning assumptions andempirical research on demand for shelter. The article concludeswith suggestions for ways to improve the project design processand reform housing sector policies to increase the efficacyof the sites and services paradigm.     

Residential Construction Costs and the Supply of New Housing: Endogeneity and Bias in Construction Cost Indexes

Change in the level of residential construction affects macroeconomic conditions and is an important determinant of movements in house prices. Theory teaches us that increases in the cost of construction should reduce the supply of new housing. Yet empirical research has failed to find a consistent relationship between these costs and housing starts. This article introduces an entirely new set of micro-data on housing construction costs to study this issue. We develop quality-controlled, hedonic construction cost series from these data. Using this series, we estimate housing supply and construction cost functions for new single-family residences. This research demonstrates that bias in the commercial cost indexes used in existing housing supply studies is a likely cause of their poor performance in existing estimates of the supply of new single-family housing. The bias appears to be caused by an incorrect measure of labor costs and a failure to address the endogeneity of construction costs and construction activity. In contrast, starts regressions using the hedonic cost series generate much more sensible results. We find that housing starts are quite cost elastic; construction costs are endogenous in the new housing supply function, and the cost shares of material and labor in the structure of new residences are approximately 65 and 35%, respectively.     

住房投资与家庭创业:促进还是挤出?--基于CFPS面板数据的实证分析

本文基于房价持续增长的现实背景,利用中国家庭追踪调查数据,以家庭住房数量为核心检验住房投资对城镇家庭创业选择的影响及作用机制。研究发现,相比无房家庭,自有住房家庭的创业概率并未显著提高;当家庭有多套住房时,才能显著提高创业概率。同时,对仅有一套住房的家庭,住房价值对家庭创业没有显著影响。但对有多套住房家庭而言,住房价值能显著提高创业概率。本文发现住房投资尽管能够通过缓解信贷约束、增加风险偏好等机制促进创业,但也会对创业产生显著的挤出效应。只有在政府坚持住房去金融化和"房住不炒"的调控政策下,住房投资对家庭创业的促进作用才能逐步占据主导。     

Duration of Residence in the Rental Housing Market

This paper estimates a proportional hazard model of duration of residence in rental housing over 1987–1998 based on a unique dataset from the BLS-CPI housing sample together with American Housing Survey and other metropolitan economic data. The paper employs an innovative semi-parametric estimation approach for group duration analysis of the proportional hazard model. Results of the analysis indicate that the duration of residence in rental housing varies significantly across individual units and market segments, and is effected by tenant, dwelling, and market characteristics. An improved understanding of duration of residence offers new insights as regards fluctuations in tenant turnover, building occupancy, and rent flows, as well as new confidence in pro forma assumptions critical to rental housing development.     

国内外保障性住房研究述评

当前我国中低收入者住房问题严重,如何保障其住房权益成为广大学者研究探讨的热点问题。本文全面梳理国外保障性住房的相关理论和实证研究成果,对国内保障性住房现状、问题和有效对策等一系列研究成果予以综述,以期能为保障性住房的后续研究有所作用。