The Announcement Effect of an Airport Expansion on Housing Prices

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the announcement of a new airport hub on housing prices near the airport. While numerous studies of airport noise have found that high noise levels reduce property values, few have been able to measure the announcement effect on values. The results indicate that after controlling to extraneous influences, housing property prices in a 2.5 mile band from the Greensboro/High Point/Winston Salem metropolitan airport declined approximately 9.2% in the post-announcement period. In the next 1.5-mile band, house prices declined approximately 5.7% in the post-announcement period.     

The Impact of COVID-19 on Share Prices in the UK*

The spread of COVID-19, and international measures to contain it, are having a major impact on economic activity in the UK. In this paper, we describe how this impact has varied across industries, using data on share prices of firms listed on the London Stock Exchange, and how well targeted government support for workers and companies is in light of this.     

经济集聚、人口流动与住宅价格空间溢出效应研究

基于省级面板数据,利用空间计量模型考量经济集聚、人口流动和住宅价格间的空间溢出效应关系.结果发现:中国省际住宅价格间存在着显著的正向空间相关性,即某一地区住宅价格的波动会受到周边地区或经济特征类似地区住宅价格波动的影响;人口流动在经济集聚和房价的关系中发挥着中介作用;经济集聚与住宅价格在空间上存在着显著的相关关系,经济集聚不仅会推高集聚中心住宅价格,还会通过"虹吸效应"和"涓滴效应"对周边住宅价格产生影响,而经济集聚对周边住宅价格的影响取决于人口净流入率的大小.     

The Impact of House Prices on Consumer Credit: Evidence from an Internet Bank

This paper shows that house price fluctuations can have a significant impact on credit availability. Data from Prosper.com, a peer‐to‐peer lending site that matches borrowers and lenders to provide unsecured consumer loans, indicate that homeowners in states with declining house prices experience higher interest rates, greater credit rationing, and faster delinquency. We find especially large effects for subprime borrowers whose balance sheets are likely most exposed to asset price declines. This evidence suggests that asset price fluctuations can play an important role in determining credit conditions and are thus a potentially significant mechanism for propagating macroeconomic shocks.     

A Proposal to Improve the VAT Treatment of Housing in the European Union*

The treatment of housing is one of the most difficult issues under the VATs in the EU. Ideally, rents and rental values should be taxed just like other consumer goods and services, but doing so would present formidable practical and political difficulties. Under a second‐best approach, the value of newly created residential (and other) property is taxed as a proxy for the VAT that should be payable on the flow of housing (building) services. This implies, however, that future increases (and decreases) in the value of the exempt property are left out of the VAT base. To remedy this defect, this paper recommends taxing the increases (refunding the tax related to decreases) realised at the time of sale of the exempt used property. This VAT should replace the current transfer, registration and stamp duties, which are highly distortionary. Beyond that, the VATs in various member states can be improved by limiting the exemption for all used immovable property to housing, by taxing land and by applying the standard rate more widely than is currently the case.     

The Effective Tax Burden of Companies and of Highly Skilled Manpower: Tax Policy Strategies in a Globalised Economy*

Company taxes and taxes on highly skilled labour both influence the attractiveness of a particular region as a location for investment. We measure the effective tax burden on capital investment and on highly qualified labour in 33 locations across Europe and the United States. We then correlate both types of tax burden in order to study the different tax policy strategies applied in different countries. We find that effective tax rates on companies and on highly skilled employees are closely correlated for a number of countries. Ireland and most new EU Member States impose relatively lower taxes on capital investment than on highly skilled manpower. Conversely, in the US, companies are taxed heavily but the effective tax rate on highly skilled employees is moderate.     

The Dynamic Impact of Macroeconomic Aggregates on Housing Prices and Stock of Houses: A National and Regional Analysis

This article analyzes the dynamic effects of four key macroeconomic variables on the housing prices and the stock of houses sold on the national and regional levels using a nonstructural estimation technique. The impulse response functions derived from the VAR suggest that macroeconomic variables produce cycles in housing prices and houses sold. The housing market was found to be very sensitive to shocks in the employment growth and mortgage rate at both the national and regional levels. In particular, regional housing prices reflect regional employment growth, as well as national mortgage rates. The study also reveals that the economic variables have a different impact on the dynamic behavior of housing prices and the number of houses sold in different regions at different time periods and that these economic aggregates alone cannot explain the fluctuations in real estate values and construction levels that occurred in some regions.     

The Economics of a Reduction in VAT*

We explore the effects of a temporary cut in VAT, identifying three possible effects: an income effect as people benefit from a lower cost of living during the period of the reduction, a substitution effect as people bring their consumption forward and an arbitrage effect as people buy non‐perishable goods before the end of the period of low VAT for consumption after the VAT rate has been raised. International evidence suggests a clear overall impact on consumption, although the nature of the pattern depends on the way in which the data are analysed. However, the key policy issue is the impact of the VAT change on output and, to examine that, a simulation model of the whole economy is needed. Evidence from the National Institute's Global Economic Model suggests that the impact of the recent VAT reduction is likely to build up during the course of 2009. The reduction in VAT from 17½ per cent to 15 per cent is likely to result in consumption being augmented by less than 1 per cent by the fourth quarter of 2009. However, GDP is likely to be raised by less than half a per cent relative to what would have happened without the VAT increase. After the temporary reduction is over, both consumption and GDP are depressed as a result of the policy.     

The Effect of Demand on Stock Prices: Evidence from Index Fund Rebalancing

I examine the effect of demand on stock prices by analyzing the conversion of the TIPs 35 and TIPs 100 exchange‐traded funds into the i60 Fund. This conversion occurred at the Toronto Stock Exchange on March 6, 2000. Forty stocks of the TIPs 100 Fund that were not members of the new units of the i60 Fund were sold to complete this conversion. I find that a decrease in demand produced a permanent stock price decline, which was accompanied by significant abnormal trading volume. The results provide support for the downward‐sloping demand curve hypothesis.     

The Economics of a Temporary VAT Cut*

This paper analyses the likely implications of the temporary cut in VAT in the UK to 15 per cent, with a return to 17.5 per cent in place for the end of 2009. We distinguish between the income effect of the cut and the (intertemporal) substitution effect. The former is likely to be small because the change in lifetime income is minimal. The second effect is likely to be much more important because the reduction in the price of goods bought in 2009 compared with 2010 gives an incentive to increase consumer spending this year. With an elasticity of intertemporal substitution of about 1, we would expect the cut in VAT to boost consumer spending by about 1.2 per cent over what it would otherwise be. The distributional consequences of the VAT cut are regressive because goods subject to VAT tend to be luxuries. Unlike a cut in interest rates, there is no difference in the distributional consequences for borrowers compared with savers.     

The Effect of Bank Credit on Asset Prices: Evidence from the Japanese Real Estate Boom during the 1980s

This paper studies whether bank credit fuels asset prices. Financial deregulation during the 1980s allowed keiretsus to obtain finance publicly and reduce their dependence on banks. Banks that lost these blue-chip customers increased their property lending, and serve as an instrument for the supply of real estate loans. Using this instrument, I find that a 0.01 increase in a prefecture's real estate loans as a share of total loans causes 14–20% higher land inflation compared with other prefectures over the 1981–91 period. The timing of losses of keiretsu customers also coincides with subsequent land inflation in a prefecture.     

The Elasticity of Marginal Utility of Consumption: Estimates for 20 OECD Countries*

In social project appraisal, the policy profile of both distributional welfare weights and the social discount rate has risen considerably in recent years. This fact has important implications for the allocation of funds to social projects and policies in countries, and in unions of countries such as the EU. A key component in the formulae for both welfare weights and the social discount rate is the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption, e. A critical review of existing evidence on e suggests that the UK Treasury's preferred value of unity is too low. New evidence presented in this paper, based on the structure of personal income tax rates, suggests that, on average, for developed countries e is close to 1.4. This particular approach to the estimation of e has previously been under‐utilised by researchers.     

试论房价波动对商业银行资产的影响

基于次贷危机的启示,本文构建了在不同的金融发展程度下房地产价格波动对商业银行资产影响的理论模型,并在此基础上对中国的现状进行分析,指出当前对中国的影响主要集中于商业银行基于负债业务发放的贷款领域。进一步地,利用向量自回归模型(VAR)及冲击响应函数对中国房地产价格波动对商业银行贷款的影响进行了实证检验。研究表明:金融创新改变了房地产价格波动对商业银行资产的影响模式;中国房价波动对商业银行资产的影响主要集中在源于银行负债发放的贷款领域,但总体影响有限;中国应加快发展银行资产证券化业务,谨慎发展信用衍生产品。     

The Effect of Financial Incentives on Labour Supply: Evidence for Lone Parents from Microsimulation and Quasi‐Experimental Evaluation*

The aim of this paper is to analyse the work incentive effects of a change in the Australian tax and transfer system on lone parents in July 2000. To evaluate the effect of the total change only, microsimulation can be used; but for a subgroup of lone parents, a few components of this policy change can be analysed through two alternative approaches — microsimulation and quasi‐experimental evaluation. Both approaches examine the effects on the probability of employment and on average working hours. The results from microsimulation show that the combined changes introduced in July 2000 — involving reduced withdrawl rates, changed family payments and lower income tax rates — have increased labour supply for lone parents to a moderate extent. The estimated effect on average working hours when using microsimulation is very close to the effect estimated in a quasi‐experimental approach using matching techniques to control for alternative influences.     

The Displacement Effect of Public Pensions on the Accumulation of Financial Assets*

The generosity of public pensions may depress private savings and provide incentives to retire early. While there is plenty of evidence supporting the latter effect, there remains considerable controversy over whether public pensions crowd out private savings. This paper uses international micro‐data sets collected over recent years to investigate whether public pensions displace private savings. The identification strategy relies not only on cross‐country differences in generosity but also on differences in the progressivity or non‐linearity of pension formulas across countries. We estimate that an extra dollar of pension wealth depresses accumulated financial assets around the time of retirement by 22 cents. An extra 10,000 dollars in public pension wealth reduces the average retirement age by roughly one month, which implies an elasticity of years of retirement with respect to pension wealth of 0.15.     

棉花价格暴涨暴跌对棉纺织企业及银行信贷资金的影响——基于纺织工业基地咸阳的个案分析

纺织产业是咸阳市支柱产业之一,其生产经营情况对咸阳市整体经济发展及银行信贷资金安全意义重大。棉花作为咸阳纺织产业的主要原材料,2010年以来的价格大幅波动对棉纺织企业造成了巨大影响,所形成的风险应引起企业经营者及银行的高度重视。     

基于VAR模型下粮食价格、农业生产成本与农民收入的实证研究

通过脉冲响应函数得出农业生产资料价格与粮食价格,同时上涨,部分或者完全抵消了粮食价格上涨以及国家试图提高农民收入、调节收入分配而出台的各项优惠政策对农民收入的增加效应。Granger因果检验说明粮食价格、农民收入分别是农业生产成本的Granger原因。为此,政府必须将农业生产资料价格的上涨幅度控制在合理区间,改善农村物流现状,规范农资市场的经营等。     

人民币汇率变动对我国物价传导效应的分析

本文对汇率传导理论及其效应进行了简要回顾,并在国内外学者研究的基础上,对2005年汇改以来汇率变动对我国价格的传递效应进行实证分析。实证结果表明,汇率变动对国内价格指数存在一定的传递效应,但作用较小,以人民币升值对抗物价上涨并不可行。     

The Effect of Bank Debt Downgrades on Stock Prices of Other Banks

We find that debt downgrades of money center banks elicit negative stock price responses in nondowngraded money center banks. Stock prices of larger regional banks also react to these downgrades. Although downgrades of regional banks evoke negative stock price responses for regional banks in the same geographic region, the importance of geographic region as a factor determining the extent of intra‐industry reactions has diminished since 1989. Our results indicate that the merger and expansion activities triggered by interstate banking have blurred differences between regional and money center banks as interstate banking activity has moved towards nationwide banking     

The Effects of Social Spending on Economic Activity: Empirical Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries*

The aim of this paper is to assess the short‐term effects of social spending on economic activity. Using a panel of OECD countries from 1980 to 2005, the results show that social spending has expansionary effects on GDP. In particular, we find that an increase of 1 per cent in social spending increases GDP by about 0.1 percentage points, which, given the share of social spending in GDP, corresponds to a multiplier of about 0.6. The effect is similar to that of total government spending, and it is larger in periods of severe downturns. Among spending subcategories, social spending on health and on unemployment benefits have the greatest effects. Social spending also positively affects private consumption, while it has negligible effects on investment. The empirical results are economically and statistically significant, and robust.