Can Tightness in the Housing Market Help Predict Subsequent Home Price Appreciation? Evidence from the United States and the Netherlands

This article assesses the predictive power of variables that measure market tightness, such as seller's bargaining power and sale probabilities, on future home prices. Theoretical insights from a stylized search‐and‐matching model illustrate that such indicators can be associated with subsequent home price appreciation. The empirical analysis employs listings data on residential units offered for sale through a real estate broker in the Netherlands and for certain U.S. regions. Individual records are used to construct quarterly home price indices, an index that measures seller's bargaining power and (quality‐adjusted) home sale probabilities. Using conventional time‐series models we show that current sale probabilities and bargaining power can significantly reduce home price appreciation forecast errors and help to predict turning points in local area housing markets. The measures and approaches in this article help to demonstrate ways in which researchers and practitioners can leverage listings data to gain knowledge about the current and future state of the housing market.     

Do Unions Help or Hinder Women in Training? Apprenticeship Programs in the United States

Trade unions are frequently criticized for excluding women from skilled crafts by denying them training. This article examines this argument by eestimatin the retention and attrition probabilities of men and women in the joint union‐management and the unilateral employer‐sponsored apprenticeship programs. While men, on average, have higher retention and lower attrition rates than women, joint sponsorship raises women's graduation probability above (and lowers their quit probability below) those of men or women apprentices in unilateral programs.     

What is driving increases in dietary quality in the United States?

Over 1994–2010, adult dietary quality in the United States increased by 10 percent. We find a shift in consumption between at-home and away-from-home food played a relatively minor role as compared to changes in demographics and educational attainment. The two largest contributors we identify include an increased usage of nutritional information and a shift away from relying heavily on price, taste, storability and ease of preparation when shopping for food. Our findings suggest nutrition policy discussions could focus on further shifting attitudes/preferences towards healthier diets while allowing consumers to better extract nutrition information when making food choices.     

Is the share of agricultural maintenance research rising in the United States?

Public research is a major contributor to agricultural productivity growth, but if research investments are not maintained, agricultural productivity can decline over time. Maintenance research replaces deteriorated research knowledge to forestall a productivity decline. Knowledge of the magnitude of maintenance research can facilitate a more complete assessment of the value of agricultural research programs. Trends in maintenance research and sources of change in those trends are investigated. Results indicate that overall, about 40% of US agricultural research is devoted to maintenance, up from about a third 25 years ago. A model is developed and estimated to explain maintenance research expenditures. Research funding, climatic conditions, insect and pathogen control, and agricultural production choices influence maintenance research expenditures. Increased reliance on out-of-state funding sources may skew agricultural research away from maintenance research, while climate change may increase the need for such research.     

Shareholders of the World United? Organized Labour's Preferences on Corporate Governance under Pension Fund Capitalism in the United States,United Kingdom and France

This article considers whether organized labour's engagement with shareholder activism represents a shift in unions’ traditional stakeholder preferences on corporate governance under pension fund capitalism. It does so in light of recent critiques of the class power thesis of corporate governance which suggest greater fluidity and fragmentation in labour's approach. Adopting a diverse case study strategy to compare organized labour's actions in the United States, United Kingdom and France, the article explains these activities as innovative strategies, similar to other revitalization initiatives, designed to advance traditional agendas by alternative means. The article thus concludes that, while organized labour's shareholder activism is unexpected under the class power thesis, its core preferences remain largely unchanged.     

Never Say Never? Uncovering the Never‐Unionized in the United States

This paper analyses individuals who never hold a unionized job and are never represented by a union ('never-unionized'). Using 21 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data to track individuals starting at age 15 or 16, we show that by the time workers are 40 or 41 years old, one-third of them are never-unionized, and a convex never-unionization trajectory suggests that most of them will remain never-unionized. An analysis of the demographic and labour market characteristics of the never-unionized further suggests two types of never-unionized workers — those who lack opportunities for obtaining unionized jobs and those who lack the desire to obtain unionized jobs.     

Passing the food and agricultural R&D buck? The United States and China

The global geographical balance of food and agricultural R&D spending is shifting, characterized by a declining U.S. share and a rising middle-income-country share, propelled heavily by the rapid rise of spending in China. Based on our newly compiled data, we estimate that China now outspends the United States on both public and private food and agricultural research on a purchasing power parity basis. The public-private orientation of the research has also changed markedly, with the private sector now accounting for around two-thirds of the food and agricultural R&D spending total in both China and the United States. Our estimates indicate that China’s private sector tilts heavily towards post-farm R&D activities, whereas the U.S. private sector is split more evenly between on-farm and post-farm spending. While the intensity of Chinese investment in food and agricultural R&D (relative to agricultural GDP) is beginning to grow, it still lags well behind the food and agricultural R&D investment intensities of the United States and other higher-income Asian countries (e.g., Japan and South Korea). The development regularities we reveal in the longer-run trends are indicative of future R&D investment patterns with potentially profound long-run implications for the size, shape and accessibility of the global stocks of scientific knowledge that underpin food and agricultural sectors worldwide.     

Total and per capita value of food loss in the United States – Comments

There seems to be high interest in the question of food loss and food waste. The comments take up the article in Food Policy on “Total and per capita value of food loss in the United States”. It is argued that the methodology of calculating the food loss is questionable. Consequently, the estimates are highly inflated; therefore the authors do not provide accurate information for policy makers as intended.     

How do networks and learning drive M&As? An institutional comparison between China and the United States

What drives mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in different institutional environments? This article builds on the resource dependence perspective and argues that networks, learning, and institutions represent three building blocks that can enhance our understanding of the drivers behind M&As. Specifically, we consider firms as learning actors embedded in network relations and influenced by institutional development, and compare and contrast firms' acquisition activities across the United States and China. Our findings show that there are indeed important learning and network factors that lead to M&As. More interestingly, the impact of such learning and network factors varies sharply across countries with different market‐based institutions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Do Consumer Characteristics Affect the Bias in Measuring Willingness to Pay for Innovative Products?

Getting the price right is essential for successful new product introductions. An accurate estimate of consumers' willingness to pay is a crucial part of this task. Measurement of willingness to pay for innovations, however, often yields biased results. In this paper, we investigate consumer‐related characteristics and motives that might underlie this bias. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, we develop a conceptual model to identify consumer characteristics relevant for preference measurement for innovative products. In doing so, two main factors that potentially influence hypothetical bias are distinguished: ability and motivation. Our conceptual discussion and empirical results demonstrate that the validity of willingness to pay statements is higher among consumers who show a high ability to assess the new product's utility and who are truly interested in purchasing the new product. Counter to intuition, willingness to pay statements from innovators, consumers with good product category knowledge, or consumers who perceive the new product to be highly innovative are relatively more biased and should be interpreted with caution. This research is among the first to look at consumer characteristics rather than methodological issues when it comes to measuring consumer willingness to pay for innovative products. Our conceptual discussion and empirical examination of the drivers of hypothetical bias can be used to refine the validity of the results of the direct willingness to pay approach. These findings should help improve new product pricing surveys and open new avenues for research in measuring consumer preferences.     

Why Do Sellers Hold Out in the Housing Market? An Option‐Based Explanation

In the residential housing market, home owners are reluctant to sell in a declining market. We build a model which focuses on the embedded call option associated with home ownership that allows owners to delay the (irreversible) sale. When prices are low, the (opportunity) cost of a sale, i.e., a higher implied gain from a future sale, likely exceeds its immediate trade benefit and an owner is better off waiting for market conditions to improve. The model also highlights the importance of supply conditions: a more constrained supply is associated with a longer delay. Using state‐level residential housing data, we find evidence consistent with the model. Transaction volume is increasing (decreasing) in the rental growth rate (volatility) in the cross section; their effects are amplified in areas with low supply elasticities, and in times with low market prices. Overall, this paper provides a rational explanation for delayed trading decisions in the housing market.     

What Do Rental Contracts Reveal About Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in Rental Housing Markets?

This article examines the pricing of rental contracts for two types of renter households: those who are able to amass a large, up-front security deposit and those with little, or no, security to offer. Empirical tests are presented to suggest that, in dealing with renter households who have little, or no, security to offer, landlords earn at a similar rate of return as lenders who make riskier loans at a high interest rate to borrowers of dubious credit. The analysis suggests that this situation occurs in large part because of the problem of asymmetric information and moral hazard between landlords and renter households regarding the latter's use of the premises.     

The riskiness of outstanding mortgages in the United States, 1999–2019

This article introduces measures of credit risk for all outstanding mortgages in the United States between 1999 and 2019. Terminations play a fundamental role in offsetting risk introduced by new originations because of refinance activity and the often dual nature of home buyers as concurrent sellers. To illustrate these concepts in a policy setting, I show that the Home Affordable Refinance Program increased origination risk metrics but reduced overall risk due to associated terminations of even riskier loans. In addition to these flow dynamics, amortization, loan age, collateral appreciation, and prior selection drive changes to portfolio-level risk.     

Pay and Job Rank among Academic Economists in the UK: Is Gender Relevant?

This article presents and explores a rich new data source to analyse the determinants of pay and job rank among academic economists in the UK. Characteristics associated with individual productivity and workplace features are found to be important determinants of the relative wage and promotion structure in this sector. However, there is also a substantial unexplained gender pay gap. Men are considerably more likely to work in higher paid job ranks where there are also substantial within-rank gender pay gaps. We show that the nature of the gender pay gap has changed over the last two decades; but its size has not, suggesting a role for suitable policy intervention.     

Do Tenants Capture the Benefits from the Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit Program?

This article compares the rent savings accrued by recipient households over the life cycle of Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) projects to their allocated tax credits. A simple two‐stage empirical procedure is developed and implemented for a selected medium‐sized metropolitan statistical area. Using hedonic pricing parameters estimated in the first stage, LIHTC ceiling rents are compared to predicted market rents. The findings indicate rent savings constitute a relatively small fraction of the programs costs, suggesting developers and investors may capture some of the program's benefits. As this finding characterizes only one potential source of benefits of the LIHTC program, a brief discussion of other potential benefits to low‐income households supplements the analysis.     

Does subnational region matter? Foreign affiliate performance in the United states and China

This study examines the extent to which subnational regions can explain foreign affiliate performance in two host country settings, the United States and China, the world's two largest economies at polar ends of the economic spectrum (i.e., an advanced versus an emerging economy). Our results suggest that the subnational region is significant in explaining foreign affiliate performance, thus confirming its importance as an additional unit of analysis for firm performance. This study also shows that the effects of subnational region are far stronger in China than they are in the United States, thus suggesting that regional differences are more critical in their explanatory power for firm performance in emerging economies than they are in advanced economies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pay Determination in the Republic of Ireland: Towards Social Corporatism?

In Ireland there is a widespread belief that the country is moving towards a 'European model' of industrial relations. One claim is that the industrial relations system can be now described as social corporatist. Advocates of this view invariably point to the substance and the durability of the latest round of centralized wage agreements in support of this claim. This paper assesses the validity of the argument. Because discussions about social corporatism are so diffuse, the first part of the paper develops a framework that sheds light on what the concept means in economic and institutional terms. In the second part of the paper this framework is used to assess the functioning of the recent national pay deals. The conclusion is that these agreements should not be regarded as social corporatist.     

Occupational Licensing in the EU: Protecting Consumers or Limiting Competition?

Occupational licensing regulations require workers in many different professions to obtain a special permit to work legally in their chosen field. Although professional associations argue that the only goal of professional licensing is to protect the public, occupational regulation may also reduce competition: for example, by reducing entry. This paper reviews the recent literature and policy developments on the subject, with a focus on the European Union.