Rent control: The citizen,the market,and the state

The paper is a positive and normative public choice analysis of rent control. The positive public choice section hypothesizes that differences in rent control regimes across countries emerge out of differences in the political power of tenants and landlords, out of differing attitudes to security of tenure and the fairness of gains from property ownership, and out of differing values regarding equality of opportunity versus equality of result. The normative public choice analysis evaluates rent control by asking whether rent control would be allowed under a unanimously approved constitution. It is argued control would not be allowed; not because the objectives of control are outside the sanctioned domain of government but because control is horizontally inequitable.     

Corporate performance and firm perception: The British experience

Previous academic research has presented a theoretical basis for a relationship between attributes of a firm's reputation and its financial performance. For the United States, researchers have analysed the correspondence between market and accounting based measures of US firm performance and external evaluators' perceptions of the qualitative attributes of US firms. In this study, expert surveys on the qualitative performance of British firms conducted by the British publication, the Economist, which are similar in content to surveys conducted by Fortune magazine for US firms, are used to determine the correspondence between qualitative and quantitative measures of British firms' performance. Results indicate that differences may exist between US and Britain in the use of qualitative survey data on a firm's strategic attributes as a forecast of a firm's future quantitative performance measures. Results also indicate that for small firms, certain qualitative factors (e.g. capacity to innovate) may be of greater importance in forecasting accounting and security market returns.     

Futures research and policy formulation : The Spanish experience

The expectation that futures research will contribute to the formulation of policy is increasing, in an environment characterised by growing complexity and uncertainty about the future. In this paper the role of a public institute for futures studies in Spain is briefly described, and the participation of the institute in the policy-making process is discussed. A particular example of its role, in the area of long-term economic policy, is outlined. A methodological aspect of a recently completed study of Spain in the 1980s is presented; this methodology is derived from Interpretative Structural Modelling and from Qualitative Analysis (signed directed graphs) and is used to portray a possible structure of policy objectives.     

COVID-19, policy interventions and credit: The Brazilian experience

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global health and economic crisis to which governments responded with massive policy interventions. Using Brazil as a testing ground, we investigate the influence of the pandemic and ensuing policy interventions on local credit markets. First, we find that the pandemic has a significantly negative impact on local credit. Second, using a novel manually collected database on the staggered municipal government policy interventions, we show heterogenous effects of interventions: positive effects of soft interventions (e.g., social distancing and mass gathering restrictions) and late reopening, and negative effects of hard interventions (e.g., closure of non-essential services) and early reopening. Third, we find that state-owned banks grant more local credit than privately owned banks during the COVID-19 crisis but this difference is less pronounced than it was in the 2008 Financial Crisis. We confirm our results using pre-pandemic local political preference as instrument for policy interventions and orthogonalized policy intervention indicators, and in placebo tests.     

Rent control with rationing by search costs: A note

This note derives the long-run implications of rent controls when rent-controlled apartments are implicitly rationed to tenants who are more efficient in searching for apartments in the controlled sector. Rent controls are shown to involve transfers that essentially are from some to other tenants, as well as dead-weight losses due to higher search costs that are borne by tenants. Key to this analysis is the condition that, at the margin, rent plus the higher cost of search for a rent-controlled apartment must equal rent in the noncontrolled sector.     

Innovation in monetary policy: Challenge and response

This paper presents some relatively non-technical thoughts on the changing rôle of money under the pressure of declining transactions costs and the innovations in monetary policy-making it induces or requires. In the first part, recent British experience is interpreted as a serious warning about the special rôle of money among financial assets under present-day circumstances and the high cost of disregarding it. While this may please the ‘monetarists’, the remainder of the paper argues, as a counterpoint, that this may not remain so forever. In particular, as argued in the second part, the evolution of the Eurodollar market suggests that the rôle of bank money and the significance of the money multiplier are declining. The third part visualizes the outlines of an economy in which the decline in transactions costs has made money stocks generally obsolete.     

Money market microstructure and monetary policy: the Indian experience

Money market microstructure has recently started drawing attention in the empirical literature on financial markets of emerging market economies. In the Indian context, a GARCH(1, 1) model shows that policy instruments impact bid–ask spreads in the money market. Volatility of bid–ask spreads seems to be more persistent in the overnight market than in longer maturity segments. The results also suggest the dominance of policy interventions over the market microstructure across the term structure of the Indian money market. Unanticipated policy actions can delay mean reversion and, therefore, the return to stability.     

RBA monetary policy communication: The response of Australian interest rate futures to changes in RBA monetary policy

This paper examines the Australian interest rate futures market reaction to changes in Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) monetary policy. Having determined market expectations from 30-day Interbank futures, the study finds evidence that interest rate futures react strongly to target rate announcements across the maturity spectrum, with a stronger reaction evident in short maturity futures. Further, there is evidence of an asymmetric news effect whereby volatility reacts more strongly to bad news. Disaggregation of the market reaction into target- and path-surprise factors demonstrates that the change in market expectations of future target rates plays a significant role in explaining changes in yield, particularly for bond futures. There is strong evidence that monetary policy statements drive the path-factor, while the December 2007 modification in policy communication has improved the ability of the RBA to influence market expectations.     

农业政策性金融国际经验借鉴

为弥补金融市场在农业领域的不足,并引导社会资金回流农村,许多国家设立了农业政策性金融机构,且政策性机构和商业性机构分设,使政策性金融能够及时根据国家宏观政策调整服务范围和领域。在我国金融体制改革和粮棉流通体制改革不断深化的背景下,如何充分发挥农发行的支农职能,有效推进现代农业发展,需要努力探索。国外农业政策性金融的发展经验,对于完善我国农业政策性金融的职能具有重要的借鉴意义。     

自愿性信息披露:信息租金与管制

自愿性信息披露是解决信息问题的重要手段, 对间接信息租金的追逐是经营者自愿披露信息的核心动机。单纯受利益驱使的自愿性信息披露必然存在一些问题, 因而有必要对自愿性信息披露进行有效的管制。建立基于声誉的经理人市场和法律事后惩罚机制, 有助于保障自愿性信息披露的信息质量。     

Monetary policy shocks and stock returns: evidence from the British market

This paper examines the impact of anticipated and unanticipated interest rate changes on aggregate and sectoral stock returns in the United Kingdom. The monetary policy shock is generated from the change in the 3-month sterling LIBOR futures contract. Results from time-series and panel analysis indicate an important structural break in the relationship between stock returns and monetary policy shifts. Specifically, whereas before the credit crunch, the stock market response to both expected and unexpected interest rate changes is negative and significant; the relationship becomes positive during the credit crisis. The latter finding highlights the inability, so far, of monetary policymakers to reverse, via interest rate cuts, the negative trend observed in stock prices since the onset of the credit crisis.     

租金理论及其对资源税的影响

本文从租金的理论回顾入手,简要介绍了西方经济理论中的“经济租”、“稀缺租金”和“霍特林租金”的经济含义和相互关系,并以此为基础论证了我国资源税和矿产资源补偿费的经济性质,进而提出了资源税参与调节经济生活的理论依据和不可或缺的重要作用及其重新定位,即作为社会公共收入而不是作为国有资源租金表现形式的资源税,将以可持续发展为基本立足点,与环境保护政策相配合,专注于校正外部效应、维护代际资源利用公平、调整私人贴现率与社会贴现率的差异以及消除垄断对社会公平的损害和节能降耗等目标,这才应该成为资源税的基本定位和改革方向。     

The Value of the Rent Control Option

In this paper, we combine direct arbitrage arguments and an option-pricing approach to develop a method of pricing the option for rent control. For a lump-sum payment of key money, a tenant acquires the right to rent a real estate unit for an exogenously determined controlled rent, as opposed to paying the free-market rent. The tenant may continue exercising this right as long as he or she lives. Alternatively, the tenant may sell the right to occupy the controlled rent unit and receive a fraction of the key money paid by the subsequent tenant. We value the equilibrium key money, in a representative agents partial equilibrium, while endogenously determining the expected tenure duration in a controlled rent unit. We propose a procedure for valuing rent control options different from the representative agents. Our analysis shows that under real-world levels of conditional life expectancy, the level of the fraction of the key money retained by a departing tenant has an insignificant effect on the expected tenure duration in a controlled rent unit and on the level of key money.     

The high-frequency response of exchange rates to monetary policy actions and statements

This paper investigates the impact of US monetary policy on the level and volatility of exchange rates using an event study with intraday data for five currencies (the US dollar exchange rate versus the euro, the Canadian dollar, the British pound, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen). I construct two indicators of news about monetary policy stemming separately from policy decisions and from balance of risk statements. Estimation results show that both policy decisions and communication have economically large and highly significant effects on the exchange rates, with the surprise component of statements accounting for most of the explainable variation in exchange rate returns in response to monetary policy. This paper also shows that exchange rates tend to absorb FOMC monetary surprises within 30-40 min from the announcement release.     

The relationship between risk experience and risk response: a study of farmers and climate change

Within the existing literature, the role of experience of risk on attitudinal and behavioural risk response has been relatively neglected. Recent research that draws on the psychological distance of climate change as a concept notes the importance of local, significant experience as a driver for encouraging appropriate response. The experience of flooding was used as the stimulus in this paper, and emphasis placed on whether direct and/or indirect experience of flood risk is associated with different responses to climate change risk. In order to explore the relationship between climate change risk experience and response in the form of on-farm mitigation and adaptation, this paper draws on a case study of farmers in England, many of whom have experienced flooding. Results from a quantitative survey undertaken with 200 farmers in Gloucestershire, England are discussed. Statistical analysis found experience of flooding to be significantly associated with a heightened concern for climate change. Although also finding an association between experience and behavioural response, the sample were most likely to be taking adaptive behaviour as part of normal practice, with factors such as lack of overall concern for climate change risk and absence of information and advice likely to be the main barriers to action. Risk communication needs to further emphasise the connection between climate change and extreme weather events to allow for farmers to perceive climate change as a relevant and locally salient phenomenon, and subsequent tailored information and advice should be offered to clearly illustrate the best means of on-farm response. Where possible, emphasis must be placed on actions that also enable adaptation to other, more immediate risks which farmers in this study more readily exhibited concern for, such as market volatility.     

Rent seeking and aid effectiveness

We introduce foreign aid and a rent seeking contest for public funds into the Barro (JPE 1990) growth model. We find that aid effectiveness depends on fiscal policies, the level of aid inflows and the quality of institutions that restrict appropriation of public funds by rent seeking agents. These results can be shown to be consistent with the best established findings in the empirical literature on aid effectiveness. Rent seeking may thus indeed be a major determinant of aid effectiveness. We further discuss how aid effectiveness depends on the way foreign aid is disbursed and on the determinants of institutional quality. JEL Classification F35 · D72 · D9 · H2     

Creditor control rights and firm investment policy

We present novel empirical evidence that conflicts of interest between creditors and their borrowers have a significant impact on firm investment policy. We examine a large sample of private credit agreements between banks and public firms and find that 32% of the agreements contain an explicit restriction on the firm's capital expenditures. Creditors are more likely to impose a capital expenditure restriction as a borrower's credit quality deteriorates, and the use of a restriction appears at least as sensitive to borrower credit quality as other contractual terms, such as interest rates, collateral requirements, or the use of financial covenants. We find that capital expenditure restrictions cause a reduction in firm investment and that firms obtaining contracts with a new restriction experience subsequent increases in their market value and operating performance.     

The determinants of CEO compensation: Rent extraction or labour demand?

CEO compensation is topical and controversial and accordingly receiving considerable attention by various stakeholders. We investigate whether rent extraction or labour demand explains CEO compensation level in Australia. We do so by examining the determinants (economic, governance and ownership) of CEO compensation level and explore the relationship between predicted excess compensation and subsequent firm performance. Our results suggest that governance and ownership attributes, in addition to economic attributes, are significant determinants of CEO compensation. However, these attributes differentially determine the various components of CEO compensation. Our evidence is consistent with: (1) the determination of fixed salary and share-based compensation reflecting a firm's demand for a high-quality CEO; and (2) the CEO's ability to extract rent through bonus and options compensation, particularly for smaller firms or firms with above average performance. However, the rent extraction is not economically significant and does not persist beyond one year. This is in sharp contrast to the US evidence where rent extraction through CEO compensation is pervasive, economically significant and persistent [Core, J., Holthausen, R., Larcker, D., 1999. Corporate governance, chief executive officer compensation, and firm performance. Journal of Financial Economics 51, 371–406].