Choice of Mortgage Contracts: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances

This study revisits the empirical question of the determinants of the choice between fixed‐ and adjustable‐rate mortgages using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances that overcome some of the data limitations in previous studies. The results from a logit model of mortgage choice indicate that pricing variables and affordability are important considerations. We also find that factors, such as mobility expectations, income volatility and attitudes toward financial risk largely influence mortgage choice, with more risk‐averse borrowers preferring fixed‐rate mortgages. For households that are less risk averse, the mortgage type choice decision is less sensitive to pricing variables and income volatility, and affordability factors are not significant. These findings provide empirical support that underscores the importance of attitudes toward risks in mortgage choice.     

An econometric analysis of the European Commission's merger decisions

Using a sample of 96 mergers notified to the European Commission and logit regression techniques, we analyse the Commission's decision process. We find that the probability of a phase-2 investigation and of a prohibition of the merger increases with the parties' market shares. The probabilities increase also when the Commission finds high entry barriers or that the post-merger market structure is conducive to collusion. We do not find significant effects of “political” variables, such as the nationality of the merging firms.     

基于主成分分析的我国房地产业周期波动研究

运用主成分分析法构造房地产业景气综合指标（主成分）,第一主成分贡献率为0．96829,说明它保留了原始变量96．829％的信息,在房地产业周期波动分析中就可以把其他主成分舍弃。第一主成分与原始变量的相关系数p称为因子负荷量为0．70632,表明第一主成分反映了商品房销售额指标70．632％的信息。选择商品房销售额指标作为代表,来研究房地产业周期变动的特征和规律性是可行的。运用时间序列加法模型和乘法模型分析了我国房地产业周期波动的特征和规律性,我国房地产业循环波动的周期为12-13年。     

Short term financial success in large business organizations: The environment-strategy connection

This study examines the interrelationships of environmental changes and strategic action variables with each other and with short term success, for 358 large business firms over a 45 year period. Success (Fortune ratings and ROA) is found to be related to two strategic decision segments. Several strategy-environment relationships are also found. Some methodological problems are noted in the attempt to move policy research from case analysis to statistical explanation.     

The Demand for Housing Additions: An Empirical Analysis

Little is known of a household's decision to make a housing addition despite the large and growing size of these expenditures. This paper examines this decision in a two-step empirical process: first, those factors that influence the probability of a housing addition are determined, and second, the value of the addition made is analyzed. Preliminary results indicate that unmet housing consumption needs, but not the investment potential of housing additions, have a significant impact on both the probability of an addition and the value of an addition made. Furthermore, ceteris paribus, non-white households have a greater probability of making a housing addition, and on average, spend more on housing additions than do white households.     

Consumer willingness to pay for traditional food products

Reflecting the growing interest from both consumers and policymakers, and building on recent developments in Willingness to Pay (WTP) methodologies, we evaluate consumer preferences for an archetypal traditional food product. Specifically we draw on stated preference data from a discrete choice experiment, considering the traditional Hungarian mangalitza salami. A WTP space specification of the generalized multinomial logit model is employed, which accounts for not only heterogeneity in preferences but also differences in the scale of the idiosyncratic error term. Results indicate that traditional food products can command a substantial premium, albeit contingent on effective quality certification, authentic product composition and effective choice of retail outlet. Promising consumer segments and policy implications are identified.     

Housing Rental Contracts and Adverse Selection with an Application to the Rent-Own Decision

A model of rental housing is developed in which landlords cannot observe the utilization rate of their tenants. As a result of this imperfect information, an adverse selection problem exists where high utilization households have an incentive to conceal their type in order to obtain more favorable contract terms. Consequently, the market equilibrium must satisfy a self-selection constraint, which imposes certain restrictions on the set of contracts that will be offered by landlords. These restrictions are examined in detail, and their implications for a household's decision to rent or own its housing are derived.     

Why Do Payday Lenders Enter Local Markets? Evidence from Oregon

This study analyzes payday lenders’ entry strategies in the state of Oregon in order to look for changes in the nature of the industry and its relationship to traditional financial institutions. The results of fixed-effects logit regressions suggest that payday lenders have started to enter areas already being served by banks. Furthermore, the presence of “incumbent advantage” in entry decisions may also have implications concerning the level of competition in the industry. Finally, since payday lenders also enter areas with large Hispanic populations, it is still possible that payday loans represent the sole source of credit for certain segments of the population.     

The bullwhip effect in capacitated supply chains with consideration for product life-cycle aspects

This paper presents an analysis of the bullwhip effect and net-stock amplification in a three-echelon supply chain considering step-changes in the production rates during a product's life-cycle demand. The analysis is focused around highly complex and engineered products (e.g., automobiles), that have relatively long production life-cycles and require significant capital investment in manufacturing. Using a simulation approach, we analyze three stages of the product life-cycle including low volumes during product introduction, peak demand, and eventual decline toward the end of the life-cycle. Parts of the simulation model have been adopted by a major North-American automotive OEM as part of a scenario analysis tool for strategic supply network design and analysis. The simulation results show that performance of a system as a whole deteriorates when there is a step-change in the life-cycle demand. While restriction in production capacity does not significantly impact the bullwhip effect, it increases the net stock amplification significantly for the supply chain setting under consideration. Furthermore, a number of important managerial insights are presented based on sensitivity analysis of interaction effect of capacity constraints with other supply chain parameters.     

Corporate Headquarters Relocation: Evidence from the Capital Markets

This paper assesses the stock market reaction to announcements of corporate headquarters relocations and examines financial and geographical factors related to wealth effects and factors that influence the decision to relocate corporate headquarters. The results indicate that announcements of relocations are associated with significant positive stock price effects. On average, the stock price of relocating firms increases by 1.29% during the two-day period around the announcement. Abnormal returns are positively related to the availability of labor and negatively related to the cost of living in the new location and the change in employment levels. A logit analysis indicates that the probability of a firm relocating is partially determined by the firm size and the rental expenses/sales ratio. The results also indicate that firm size, the employment/asset ratio levels, and listing in the NYSE/AMEX affect the decision to relocate to a Fortune-ranked city. Finally, firms relocating to Fortune -ranked cities are characterized by a high level of insider ownership relative to firms moving to non-ranked cities.     

Unobserved Heterogeneity in Models of Competing Mortgage Termination Risks

This article extends unobserved heterogeneity to the multinomial logit (MNL) model framework in the context of mortgages terminated by refinance, move or default. It tests for the importance of unobserved heterogeneity when borrower characteristics such as income, age and credit score are included to capture lender-observed heterogeneity. It does this by comparing the proportional hazard model to MNL with and without mass-point estimates of unobserved heterogeneous groups of borrowers. The mass-point mixed hazard (MMH) model yields larger and more significant coefficients for several important variables in the move model, whereas the MNL model without unobserved heterogeneity performs well with the refinance estimates. The MMH clearly dominates the alternative models in sample and out of sample. However, it is sometimes difficult to obtain convergence for the models estimated jointly with mass points.     

A Research Note on Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

This paper examines the hypothesis that mortgage lenders rank applications from better to worst and encourage the better ones to apply. A second ranking occurs when the application is ranked by the loan committee and funds are approved from the top of the list until exhausted. A theoretically correct procedure for analyzing the resulting multivariate ordinal data is the little known rank multiple discriminant analysis. Preliminary results have revealed that this technique produces a "best" model with fewer variables and a higher classification rate than the commonly known multiple discriminant analysis, logit, or probit.     

Exploring Correlates of Product Launch in Collaborative Ventures: An Empirical Investigation of Pharmaceutical Alliances

This paper examines collaborative ventures leading toward the launch of new products in the pharmaceutical industry. These collaborative ventures are one of the most underresearched areas in the new product literature, yet the preponderance of these collaborative ventures makes it an area of great importance for scholars and practitioners alike. As such, the purpose of the study is to examine why some collaborative projects produce a favorable outcome (the launch of a product) whereas others do not. That is, what characteristics of partner firms in the collaborative ventures and what characteristics of the partnership lead to a successful launch of a new product in the pharmaceutical industry? Secondary data from the pharmaceutical industry are employed in a multinomial logit model. Data from 128 collaborative ventures from 1980 to 2004 are used in the analysis. The partner firms in the collaborative ventures are from various industries ranging from malt beverages to pharmaceutical preparations to electronic and other equipment among others. Of the 128 collaborative ventures, 66 were successful in leading to a new product launch, whereas 62 did not result in the launch of a new product. The results from the multinomial logit analysis suggest that combined marketing resources of parent companies, combined technological intensity of parent companies, and combined asset bases of parent companies contribute to the likelihood of an eventual product launch in a collaborative venture. However, the results of the analysis show that contrary to expectations, technological complementarity of partners in the collaborative venture is not a significant predictor of successful new product launch. The results of the study suggest certain aspects for managers to consider when establishing collaborative ventures. To maximize the possibilities of the collaborative venture leading to the successful launching of a new product, managers should be concerned with the resources potentially available to partners in the collaborative venture from parent firms. These resources are not only of financial nature but also of technological nature. The existence of these resources does not ensure provision of resources to the collaborative venture; however, without the possibility of these resources it appears that successful launch of a product is less likely.     

An analysis of the determinants of broadband access

This paper extends the analysis of the relative impacts of socioeconomic factors on households’ decision to subscribe to dialup Internet access [Chaudhuri, A., Flamm, K., & Horrigan, J. (2005). An analysis of the determinants of Internet access, presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, Washington, DC, October 1–3] to the decision to subscribe to broadband. A simple cumulative utility (ordered logit) model is rejected in favor of a partial proportional odds model, and the authors found that the decision to purchase any access at all, and the decision to upgrade to broadband, may be affected differently by various socioeconomic factors. The own-price elasticity of broadband demand is statistically significant and has a substantial coefficient value. The cross-price sensitivity of broadband demand with respect to dialup price is also statistically significant, and supports the notion of the two services being substitutes.     

基于主成分分析的经济统计方法及应用

常用的线性回归方法只将因变量视为随机变量,其回归结果随坐标系选取的不同将发生相应改变。受统计分析中主成分分析法的启发,提出了一种新的具有坐标无关性的一元线性回归方法——主成分分析法。用仿真例及实例验证了新方法与常规的最小二乘法相比回归系统偏差小,回归精度高。主成分分析法是数值解,其计算量上的优势使其具有广阔的应用前景。     

管理者过度自信变量的选择和实证分析——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

基于行为公司金融视角,以2007-2010年间中国A股上市公司为样本,运用主成分分析法对中国上市公司高管人员过度自信变量的衡量进行了确定。研究表明:选取所处行业风险、资产负债率、公司的资产规模、净资产收益率、管理者持股比例和管理者薪酬比例这6个指标作为影响管理者过度自信的因素,可以进行主成分分析,并确定权数,得出一个新的衡量高管过度自信的综合指标。     

基于主成分分析的日本市民慢观光意识特征研究

针对日本市民对慢观光的词语认知、兴趣程度、观光需求等,采取经典统计和主成分分析及聚类分析的方法,构建自然嗜好度和慢观光倾向2个特征因子,分组后结合职业、居住地、收入、年龄等个人属性分析评价市民慢观光意识的种类及特征。     

Equity and Nonequity Determinants of FHA Single-Family Mortgage Foreclosures in the 1980s

We examine foreclosures on FHA single-family mortgages insured during the 1975–87 period. The importance of the market value of borrower equity and national house price dispersion support much earlier work emphasizing the key role of negative equity in triggering default. The lower is "mean" market-value equity, and the greater is dispersion, the greater is the fraction of borrowers likely to have negative equity. The unemployment rate and the book value of borrower equity are also shown to be significant determinants of default. Unemployment is one of those events that can force borrowers to move. The moving decision increases the likelihood of default because moving costs no longer deter default, and the costs of selling the house reduce the effective equity in the house. The book value of equity is relevant to this decision because it is what the sellers receive if they move without defaulting. Not only are both of these variables significant determinants of default, but the smaller is book equity, the greater is employment impact (with large book equity, unemployment should not matter because selling the house is preferred to default).