The Impact of LEED Neighborhood Certification on Condo Prices

The U.S. Green Building Council offers LEED certification for existing and new neighborhood developments that meet sustainable urban development standards. Features of sustainable urban development have been found to positively affect residential sales prices. We investigate whether the intangible labeling effects of LEED neighborhood certification add a premium to the sales prices of LEED and non‐LEED–certified condos. Using a quasi‐experiment, transaction data from Portland, Oregon, and a spatio‐temporal autoregressive (STAR) model, we find no evidence that the intangible labeling effects of LEED neighborhood certification directly or indirectly affect sales prices. Our results suggest that, contrary to LEED building certification, which we find adds a premium to condo sales prices, the LEED neighborhood label by itself fails to add value for condo buyers. Explanations for our findings include market acceptance, neighborhood delineation issues and the free rider problem as it relates to public goods.     

Modeling Spatial Variation in Housing Prices: A Variable Interaction Approach

The absolute location of each real estate parcel in an urban housing market has a unique location-value signature. Accessibility indices, distant gradients and locational dummies cannot fully account for the influence of absolute location on the market price of housing because there are an indeterminable number of externalities (local and nonlocal) influencing a given property at a given location. Furthermore, the degree to which externalities affect real estate values is not only unique at each location but highly variable over space. Hence, absolute location must be viewed as interactive with other determinants of housing value. We present an interactive variables approach and test its ability to explain price variations in an urban residential housing market. The statistical evidence suggests that the value of location, as embodied in the selling price of housing units, may not be separable from other determinants of value. It is recommended that housing valuation models, therefore, be specified to allow site, structural and other independent attributes to interact with absolute location—{ x , y } coordinates—when accounting for intraurban variation in the market price of residential housing. This approach is especially useful when estimating the value of housing for geographic areas where very little is known a priori about the neighborhoods or submarkets.     

The Impact of Accounting Earnings Disclosures on Stock Prices in Singapore

This paper reports the relationship between earnings and share prices. The results show that unexpected earnings changes are significantly associated with share price changes. However, the strength of the earnings effect is not as pronounced as those reported in the more analytically-intensive developed stock markets. The results are adjusted for risk differences by using a non-synchronous correction procedure to remove thin-trading bias.     

Economic Effects of Racial Integration: An Analysis of Hedonic Housing Prices and the Willingness to Pay

This study evaluates household economic effects stemming from neighborhood racial integration in Oakland, California. To that end, housing market data are applied to estimate hedonic price and willingness-to-pay functions for neighborhood racial composition. Results of the analysis indicate the problematic nature of the constant willingness-to-pay assumption and suggest this standard method may underestimate the household economic effects of racial integration. The paper concludes with implications for neighborhood integration policy.     

The Impact of Growth Control Regulations on Housing Prices in California*

This paper examines the impact of growth controls on the price of new single-family homes. Four types of growth controls are discussed and each is found to have a significantly different impact on housing prices. Regulations that are imposed by one locality only are first compared to those that are imposed by a locality whose neighbors also control growth. In California, increases in house prices in communities with only local growth controls cannot be distinguished from communities that do not control growth. However, the 1969 to 1976 housing price increase in growth control jurisdictions located in extensively regulated housing markets is significantly higher than in local-only or no-control jurisdictions. In addition, controls that restrict the rate of development are compared to those that specify the quality of development. In the extensively regulated San Francisco Bay area, the 1969 to 1976 housing price increase was 35% higher in rate-controlled communities and 20% higher in quality-controlled communities than in no-control communities.     

环境规制对区域技术创新的影响研究

本文基于2000～2014年省际面板数据,实证考察了三大区域环境规制对技术创新的直接与间接影响。研究表明：东部的环境规制强度高抑制了技术创新,中部与西部地区环境规制强度越高越有助于提高技术创新,而且各地区核心技术创新指标不同,东部地区最突出的技术创新是实用新型与发明型,中部地区是外观设计型与发明型,西部是实用型与外观设计型;环境规制的间接作用在东、中两地区表现为正向作用,在西部表现为负向作用。其他因素的影响在各地区表现不同。最后综合研究结论,针对如何提高地区技术创新水平提出了相关政策建议。     

The Effects of Charm Listing Prices on House Transaction Prices

As is the case for many different goods and services, it is common practice in many real estate markets for sellers to offer properties for sale at listing prices just below some round number price ( e.g. , $99,900 instead of $100,000). The academic marketing literature refers to this practice as "charm" pricing and suggests that this strategy is an attempt by sellers to take advantage of buyers' cognitive processes in which charm prices affect buyers' perceptions about the seller or the item being offered for sale. Although numerous papers in the housing economics literature have addressed the impact of the magnitude of listing price on observed house transaction prices, no prior published study has considered the impact of the design of listing prices in housing markets. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the effects of charm pricing on house transaction prices using sample data. The results provide some evidence that houses listed at certain charm prices sell for significantly greater transaction prices than those listed at round number prices.     

Empirical Evidence on the Impact of Reserve Prices in English Auctions

We study the impact of reserve prices on the revenue of English auctions using a unique hand‐collected database of virtual football players from the online football management game Hattrick. As theoretically predicted, setting a reserve price entails a trade‐off between the cost of setting it too high and having the good go unsold, and the benefit associated with a higher revenue should the reserve price successfully extract surplus from the highest bidder. Overall, we find the net benefit of setting a higher reserve price to be negative, regardless of the value of the reserve price. This is a novel result insofar as previous literature has generally found an insignificant or positive effect of the reserve price on unconditional auction revenue.     

The Impact of Private Label Introduction on Assortment,Prices, and Profits of Retailers*

We study how introducing private-label brands (PLs) affects retail prices and profits, accounting for assortment adjustments of national brands (NBs). We employ an event-study framework and scanner data on the US beef market. When a PL is added to the low-priced market segment, we find that retail stores further differentiate NBs from the PL and remove same-segment NBs. When a PL is added to the high-priced segment, however, NB assortment changes are limited. PL introduction and PL-driven NB assortment changes impose small price effects on NB, but strongly cannibalize NB demand and steer consumers toward PLs, likely increasing store profits.     

考虑结构突变的大宗商品价格波动对中国经济的影响分析

本文从结构突变的视角,考察国际大宗商品价格波动对中国经济的影响规律。首先,运用内生多重结构突变的Bai-Perron检验,发现从1990～2015年的国际原油价格指数、工业投入品（包括金属和农产品）价格指数、中国工业增加值增长速度、消费物价指数等4个指标均存在结构突变现象。然后,利用退势处理方法去除这4个指标的结构突变影响,并运用结构向量自回归（SVAR）模型,建立了这4个指标之间的动态关系系统。脉冲响应分析表明,国际原油价格上升,短期内会减缓我国经济增长速度,但中期内反而会对经济有小幅刺激作用,同时会逐渐拉升我国物价水平;工业投入品价格上升也会减缓我国经济增长速度,但会先拉升后降低物价水平。本文通过考虑结构突变这一重要因素,能更精确地揭示国际大宗商品价格波动对中国经济的影响情况。     

The Effect of Bid Rigging on Prices: A Study of the Highway Construction Industry

This paper examines the effect of multimarket contact in afirst price sealed bid government procurement auction market. It investigates whether bidprices in the highway construction industry are related to conditions that favor the formation of a cartel.Repeated contacts among firms are found to have a significantly positive effect on the winning low bidwhich leads to higher profit. Further, rivalry among few firms tends to exacerbate the multimarket effect.The results in this study additionally support the recent theoretical predictions that collusion isbetter sustainable during economic downturns.     

The Effect of Mortgage Rate Buydowns on Housing Prices:

The model developed in this paper analyzes the effect of builder-financed FHA-VA mortgage subsidies or buydowns on the price of housing. Hedonic pricing equations are estimated for a locationally and qualitatively uniform sample of new tract development homes. The explanatory variables are vectors of physical and financial characteristics. The latter include a continuous variable for discount points paid by builders which is indicative of the magnitude of prepaid finance charges. The results indicate that a substantial portion of mortgage subsidy costs are shifted to buyers in the form of inflated housing prices.     

The Agile–Stage‐Gate Hybrid Model: A Promising New Approach and a New Research Opportunity

Agile development methodologies have been widely employed in the software industry, where they have been found to yield positive results. But can these new methods, with their new tools such as sprints, scrums, burndown charts, and backlogs, really be integrated with the traditional and popular Stage‐Gate approach and then applied to physical products? Initial but limited evidence suggests yes: Larger IT firms have already integrated Agile and Stage‐Gate and gained the benefits of both approaches; and most recently, a handful of manufacturing firms have employed this Agile–Stage‐Gate hybrid model for physical new products. And if recent evidence can be trusted, this new approach promises to be the most significant change to our thinking about how new‐product development should be done since the introduction of today's popular gating systems 30 years ago. The benefits of this hybrid model are a faster and more adaptive response to changing customer needs, better integration of voice‐of‐customer, better team communication, improved development productivity, and faster to market. A case example from a toy company, LEGO, is provided as an illustration. But there are negatives as well, and additionally, manufacturers must make modifications to Agile in order to adopt it successfully. Although initial results appear promising, much research is needed to explore this new Agile–Stage‐Gate hybrid model, and many research challenges remain.     

Market Power and/or Efficiency: A Structural Approach

This article separates oligopoly-power and cost-efficiency effects ofchanges in industrial concentration and assesses their impact on output prices in 32 food-processing industries. Empirical results indicate that although concentration inducescost efficiency in one-third of the industries, oligopoly-power effects either dominate cost efficiencyor reinforce inefficiency, resulting in higher output prices in most industries. The articlealso provides fresh econometric estimates of oligopoly power and economies of size for the industriesin question.     

A Note on Inflation and Relative Tenure Prices

This article develops a simplified model of housing costs to analyze the effects of the expected rate of inflation on residential tenure choice. Inflation, working though the Federal Tax Code, affects a number of the components of housing costs in ways which vary between tenure modes. On net, the tax subsidy to owner-occupancy is more positively leveraged with respect to expected inflation than are tax preferences for rental residential real estate. In fact, it is likely that higher expectations of inflation will reduce the after-tax cost of owner-occupied housing.     

A Regime‐Switching Approach to Modeling Rental Prices of U.K. Real Estate Sectors

This article uses regime‐switching models of the threshold type to analyze the adjustment process of rental prices for three U.K. commercial real estate sectors over the period 1974–2008. The nonlinear models outperform their linear counterparts in in‐sample fit. Their out‐of‐sample forecasting ability is better whenever the corresponding linear models contain a significant amount of neglected nonlinearity. Regime switches are triggered when the growth rates of rental price exceed certain threshold levels. For the industrial and retail sectors such regime switches occur in situations of strong excess demand, for the office sector they occur when there is strong excess supply.     

Contact High: The External Effects of Retail Marijuana Establishments on House Prices

Using publicly available data from the city of Denver and the state of Colorado, this study examines the effects of retail conversions (conversions from medical marijuana to retail marijuana stores) on neighboring house values in Denver, CO. The study period reflects a time before and after retail marijuana sales became legal in Colorado in 2014. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach, we compare houses that were in close proximity to a conversion (within 0.1 miles) to those that are farther away from a conversion. We find that single‐family residences close to a retail conversion increased in value by approximately 8% relative to houses that are located slightly farther away. We perform a battery of robustness checks and falsification tests to provide additional support for this finding. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine at a microlevel the highly localized effect of retail marijuana establishments on house prices and hope that it can contribute to the debate on retail marijuana laws.