Nationalised industries and sponsoring departments

A market‐oriented approach to housing, if consistently applied, can lead to more efficiency, wider choice, and greater equity. But the Government's obsession with home‐ownership is leading them to ignore the function and importance of the public housing sector even within such a market‐based system.     

建立我国公共住房制度的财税政策研究

在公有制土地上建设的住房产品作为具有外部性的混合公共产品,属于广义的财政范畴,需要公共政策的干预。我国房地产领域现行财税制度对公共住房制度建设支持力度严重不足,导致住房产品过度市场化,普通商品房市场价格飞涨。这是公共决策行为严重失误的必然结果。解决高房价问题的关键在于解决中低收入阶层的住房困难问题,其根本解决之道在于市场机制之外正确的公共政策干预。必须改革我国现行财政分配制度,建立适应我国房地产业健康发展的财税制度,促进房地产业健康可持续性发展。     

PPP融资模式在我国公共租赁房建设中的应用研究

我国公租房建设面临着较大的资金缺口,而由于公租房项目存在资金回报率低、回收周期长的特点,传统的融资方法无法吸引私营资本的进入。本文通过对PPP（Public—Private-Partnerships）融资管理模式的分析,结合公租房项目建设的特点,探讨了PPP融资模式在我国公租房建设项目中的应用。     

Delivering Public Services Under the New Public Management: The Case of Public Housing

One of the biggest changes in public sector housing practice in recent years has been the introduction of New Public Management techniques. Housing associations, promoted by successive governments to supplement local authority provision of social housing, have readily taken on the new management agendas of performance indicators and business disciplines in service delivery. The author identifies a conflict between the social purposes of public funding for housing and the business practices of housing associations. The limited accountability of housing associations allows for practices that lead to social exclusion. For local authorities, a parallel conflict arises because of government emphasis on 'what works' in public housing management, rather than on 'what matters'.     

SHELTER STRATEGIES FOR THE URBAN POOR IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Rapid growth in many developing-country cities is strainingthe capacity of their shelter delivery systems. Governmentshave chosen a variety of implicit and explicit policies to amelioratethese strains. However, these policies are not always consistentwith their objectives, often because of a lack of knowledgeof how housing markets actually work and how policies affectand are constrained by market behavior. This paper reviews recentresearch on housing market behavior in developing countries,including the demand for housing and the pattern of housinginvestment across countries, the financing of housing by low-incomehouseholds, and the willingness to pay for secure tenure. Commonhousing policies are then examined, including public housing,sites and services projects, and slum clearance versus upgrading.Rent controls, measures to improve the supply of finance andinfrastructure, and building codes and standards are also discussed.      

Conference on Housing,Stability, and the Macroeconomy: International Perspectives

This article provides an introduction to the JMCB special issue on housing bubbles, the global financial crisis, and the ensuing recessions in countries that experienced housing busts. We focus on five themes that are important for policymakers and researchers alike: the domestic and international factors driving housing booms and busts, the relevance of the housing sector for the real economy, how monetary policy should react to housing booms and busts, how housing and mortgage finance reform could affect financial stability, and the broad lessons learned for macroeconomics and macroprudential policy.     

Care in the community: Professional Ethics and the paradox of pro bono

This study is primarily concerned with accounting's claim to be a profession and aims to stimulate further discussion on the kind of education that one would imagine should be commensurate with this claim. In particular, the study reports on a seminar that was designed to introduce students to the concept of a profession. The study describes a visit to one of Glasgow's toughest housing estates. The visit concluded at Ruchill Unemployment and Community Centre where the managing director of a local development agency discussed how some local accounting practices occasionally provided pro bono services in the area. The study picks up on some of the issues discussed during this seminar in order to explore the potential of pro bono publico and Service Learning as ways of educating accounting professionals in the wider concept of public interest. The study concludes by considering the critical educational potential of service learning in undergraduate education and pro bono publico within the area of continuing professional development.     

Political economy of prudent budgetary policy

The principles of tax smoothing and public debt management with stochastic shocks to future national income are extended for prudence. A prudent government deliberately underestimates future national income and the tax base, especially if the variance and persistence of shocks hitting the tax base are large and the tax rate is high. As a precaution the tax rate is thus set higher and public spending lower to build precautionary buffers. This leads to gradual reductions in debt and debt service over time and thus, depending on political preferences, cuts in taxes or increases in public spending. Prudence offsets the intertemporal spending, tax and debt biases resulting from common-pool distortions. Appointing a strong finance minister with as many voting rights as the spending ministers combined ensures that the intratemporal common-pool distortions of an excessively large public sector are eliminated. A strong and prudent minister of finance can thus offset the impatient profligacy of squabbling spending ministers. However, if voters care about outcomes on election eve, finance ministers are tempted to build excessive precautionary buffers early on to dish out tax cuts and boost spending on election eve. Too much prudence may thus be abused for short-run electoral gains.     

The Q Theory and the Swedish Housing Market—An Empirical Test

We argue that major changes in economic policy have resulted in a more market driven demand for housing investment in Sweden, due to policy changes at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Tobin’s transparent Q theory is the investment theory used. For the last period of the sample (1993–2003 quarterly data), our results indicate that there exists a high degree of correlation between the Q ratio and the (logarithm of) two different variables for housing investment. An error correction regression model, controlling for structural breaks, also indicates that a stable long-run relationship could be detected for the logarithm of building starts and the Q ratio between 1993–2003, but not between 1981–1992.      

Public Pensions and Public Rental Housing

It is possible for the Chinese public pension and public rental housing to finance each other in the long term. Employing an overlapping generations (OLG) model, I examine the effects of the individual contribution rate, firm contribution rate, rent rate of public rental housing, and population growth rate on the capital-labor ratio, per capita consumption, per capita acreage of public rental housing, and per capita public rental housing property. According to economic goals, their effects, and their intensities, it does more good than harm to raise the individual contribution rate, reduce the firm contribution rate and rent rate of public rental housing, and restrict population growth rate.     

“租补分离”模式下中国公共租赁住房的定价模型设计

2014年起公租房和廉租房两类租赁型保障房开始并轨运行,使得定价工作变得相对复杂。原“公租房”保障对象是收入跨度大、身份复杂的“夹心层”群体,定价以市场为导向;原“廉租房”保障对象是本地城镇户籍的低收入住房困难家庭,发挥“兜底”作用,定价以收入为导向。两者并轨以后,需要综合成本、市场、收入三个基本要素,该兜底的还是要兜底,该盈利的还是要盈利。结合学界的理论探索和各地的实践经验,按照“租补分离”的模式设计了定价模型,首先以成本和市场两个要素确定公租房的基准定价,然后根据“剩余收入法”确定政府对低收入家庭的补贴额,从而实现政府财政的可承受性,社会资本的可盈利性,低收入家庭的可支付性三个基本目标。     

Greenspan's Retrospective of Financial Crisis and Stochastic Optimal Control

Alan Greenspan argues that the crisis was unpredictable and inevitable, given the ‘excessive’ leverage of the financial intermediaries. I focus upon the housing sector, which has been at the origin of the financial crisis because the value of the financial derivatives ultimately depended upon the ability of the mortgagors to repay their debts. The uncertainty concerns the capital gains – housing price appreciation – and the rate of interest. I explain why the application of stochastic optimal control (SOC) is an effective approach to determine the optimal degree of leverage, the optimum and excessive risk and the probability of a debt crisis. I show that the theoretically derived early warning signal of a crisis is the excess debt ratio, equal to the difference between the actual and optimal ratio. The excess debt of households starting from 2004‐05 indicated that a housing crisis was most likely.     

Housing Collateral, Consumption Insurance, and Risk Premia: An Empirical Perspective

In a model with housing collateral, the ratio of housing wealth to human wealth shifts the conditional distribution of asset prices and consumption growth. A decrease in house prices reduces the collateral value of housing, increases household exposure to idiosyncratic risk, and increases the conditional market price of risk. Using aggregate data for the United States, we find that a decrease in the ratio of housing wealth to human wealth predicts higher returns on stocks. Conditional on this ratio, the covariance of returns with aggregate risk factors explains 80% of the cross‐sectional variation in annual size and book‐to‐market portfolio returns.     

A welfare analysis of the site value taxation model

This study is a short-run version of Brueckner's (long-run) analysis of graded tax systems. Brueckner assumes a long-run market equilibrium that allows for changes in the market value of the land with a zero profit condition. It is our contention that it is more realistic to solve for the short-run conditions with fixed value of land. Under these conditions, we find that if land is relatively inexpensive, the graded tax system leads to superiority in terms ofk (capital improvement per unit of land),Q (initial housing output), andCS (Consumers' Surplus). With steeper inverse demand curves and greater marginal product and initial housing output, the land tax has a more negative impact on profit with graded tax systems.     

A comment on the role of prices for excludable public goods

Blomquist and Christensen [(2005). The role of prices for excludable public goods, International Tax and Public Finance, 12 ,61–79] argue that welfare is initially decreasing in the price of an excludable public good and that the case for a positive price for an excludable public good price is weak. We argue that this result follows from their particular characterization of the public good and that an alternative and equally reasonable characterization overturns their result. Hence, the policy case for a positive price on the public good is stronger than Blomquist and Christiansen suggest. JEL Classification H21 · H41     

Moonlighting: public service and private practice

We study job incentives in moonlighting, when public‐service physicians may refer patients to their private practices. Some doctors in the public system are dedicated, and behave sincerely, but others—the moonlighters—are utility maximizers. Allowing moonlighting always enhances aggregate consumer welfare, but equilibrium public‐care quality may increase or decrease; if quality increases, moonlighting improves each consumer's expected utility. Unregulated moonlighting may reduce consumer welfare as a result of adverse behavioral reactions, such as moonlighters shirking more and dedicated doctors abandoning their sincere behavior. Price regulation in the private market limits such adverse behaviors in the public system and improves consumer welfare.     

Housing Benefit and Financial Returns to Employment for Tenants in the Social Sector

This paper examines the impact of the UK housing benefit system on the financial returns to employment of people in local authority or Housing Association accommodation. It outlines the current structure of housing benefit and examines its effects on the returns to employment using data from the Family Expenditure Survey. It analyses the consequences of a number of reforms to the current system — lowering social rents, increasing the levels of housing benefit received in work and restricting the amount of rent covered by housing benefit payments. This analysis highlights the trade-offs involved in various strategies available for restructuring the present system. JEL classification: H3, H4, J3.     

Weak Links in the Chain II: A Prescription for Health Policy in Poor Countries

In an earlier article, the authors outline some reasons forthe disappointingly small effects of primary health care programsand identified two weak links standing between spending andincreased health care. The first was the inability to translatepublic expenditure on health care into real services due toinherent difficulties of monitoring and controlling the behaviorof public employees. The second was the "crowding out" of privatemarkets for health care, markets that exist predominantly atthe primary health care level. This article presents an approach to public policy in healththat comes directly from the literature on public economics.It identifies two characteristic market failures in health.The first is the existence of large externalities in the controlof many infectious diseases that are mostly addressed by standardpublic health interventions. The second is the widespread breakdownof insurance markets that leave people exposed to catastrophicfinancial losses. Other essential considerations in settingpriorities in health are the degree to which policies addresspoverty and inequality and the practicality of implementingpolicies given limited administrative capacities. Prioritiesbased on these criteria tend to differ substantially from thosecommonly prescribed by the international community.      

Inclusionary Housing Policies,Stigma Effects and Strategic Production Decisions

Inclusionary housing policies enacted by municipal governments rely on a combination of legal mandates and economic incentives to encourage residential real estate developers to include affordable units in otherwise market-rate projects. These regulations provide a means of stimulating the production of mixed-income housing at a minimal cost to the public sector, but have been hypothesized to slow development and put upward pressure on housing prices. The results of the theoretical models presented in this paper suggest that inclusionary housing policies need not increase housing prices in all situations. However, any observed impact on housing prices may be mitigated by density effects and stigma effects that decrease demand for market-rate units. The results additionally suggest real estate developers are likely to respond to inclusionary housing policies by strategically altering production decisions.     

Defining the Reporting Entity in the Not‐for‐profit Public Sector: Implementation Issues Associated with the Control Test

This paper reports the main findings of a research project carried out on behalf of the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) and the New Zealand Financial Reporting Standards Board. The purpose of the research is to inform standard setters about implementation issues that had been encountered in the not‐for‐profit (NFP) public sector when applying the control concept in AASB 127, Consolidated and Separate Financial Statements. The intention is to use the findings to inform proposed implementation guidance for AASB 10, Consolidated Financial Statements. Data were collected via a literature review and meetings with various NFP public sector constituents. Identified issues were either conceptual in nature (for example, who are the relevant users of NFP public sector general purpose financial statements and what are their needs?) or related to implementation concerns (for example, is the power exerted by one NFP public sector entity over another of an ‘ownership’ or a ‘regulatory’ form?). The findings give rise to several suggested actions that standard setters could take in providing useful guidance to NFP public sector constituents.