A Behavioral Life-Cycle Approach to Understanding the Wealth Effect

The somewhat surprising strength in consumer spending in recent years has focused renewed attention on the much-debated wealth effect, the notion that when individuals feel wealthier, they consume more. This study utilizes survey data to examine the wealth effect within the context of the behavioral life-cycle model of savings. The results indicate that the likelihood of households spending more when their assets increase in value decreases with the portion of assets held in home equity. This unexpected finding is due to homeowners responding to the perceived wealth gain from increased home values by cashing out their equity. The likelihood increases with the portion of assets held in stock outside of retirement accounts, but is not significantly related to the portion of assets held in stock overall. Moreover, households that have a full-time income earner, are homeowners, have more education, have a younger household head, or expect economic growth, are more likely to report a wealth effect. Households that utilize savings “rules of thumb” are less likely to report a wealth effect. These results can be used to improve the wealth effect specification in consumer demand models and assist firms to target consumer markets.     

An Overview of the U.S. Regulated Fund Industry

The largest segment of the asset management business in the United States is registered investment companies (regulated funds). This article focuses on U.S. regulated investment companies—mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, and unit investment trusts. These funds manage more than $17 trillion of assets, largely on behalf of U.S. investors. The industry has experienced strong growth over the past quarter century from asset appreciation and strong demand from households due to rising household wealth, the aging of the U.S. population, and the evolution of employer-based retirement systems. Price competition and supply-side product innovations and efficiencies have reduced the average price that investors pay for fund services.     

Optimal portfolio composition and the CAPM

It is commonly assumed that the CAPM implies that all investors hold a balanced portfolio, “the market portfolio,” and investors just determine the proportion of their wealth held in the market portfolio and the risk-free asset. That this is patently at odds with observed investor behavior is sometimes used to justify rejecting the CAPM. However, by assuming that substitute securities exist, in this paper we still obtain the CAPM, although investors neither hold all of the assets in the market nor a balanced shareholding in the assets they do hold.     

Money management practices influencing household asset ownership

The purpose of this research is to describe the types and amounts of assets owned by households, and to determine socio-demographic variables and money management practices that influence the household's total asset ownership. The data used for this study are from a survey conducted during the winter of 1982. Definite patterns of financial asset ownership emerged. A majority, 70% or more, of the households owned current and savings accounts, and cars and real estate. A minority, 30% or less, owned certificates of deposit, mutual funds, stocks, bonds and individual retirement accounts. Age, net income and housing tenure were significant socio-demographic variables in explaining variation in total asset ownership among households. Only two money management practices, i.e. number of credit cards owned and the amount the manager felt comfortable charging on these cards, were significant in explaining variations in the amount of total assets owned by a household.     

International comparison of household asset allocation: Micro-evidence from cross-country comparisons

Asset allocation, an important part of household finance, attracts constant attention across countries. Due to the differences between countries, asset allocation presents different characteristics in various countries. This paper compares and analyzes the differences in household asset allocation around the world based on the data of 23 developing and developed countries, such as China, the United States, 20 EU countries, and Australia, at the micro-level. This paper finds that in all of these countries, except for the United States, housing assets often occupy a large proportion of household total assets, which we give the name ‘Valuing Housing’, mainly attributed to the high housing value-to-income ratios (especially in developing countries). Further analysis shows that, with the increase in household income, the proportion of housing assets in most countries presents an inverted ‘U' shape, which first increases and then decreases, and where the inflection point appears in the top 20% of households. Also, with increases in income, China, the United States, and some other countries see an increasing proportion of financial assets. The top 20% of households tend to invest in financial assets. In addition, as the ages of household heads increase, the proportion of housing assets tends to first rise and then level off, and that of financial assets tends to first decrease and then level off. The conclusions of this paper help to better understand the differences in the allocation of household assets across countries and explain the underlying causes.     

Expenditure patterns on food and non food items of Khayelitsha households,Western Cape,South Africa

Food insecurity or lack of access to adequate and nutritious food is a major determinant of under‐nutrition. Expenditure patterns accompanied by unemployment, low level of education, inflation and high food prices have a direct negative impact on food availability within households (Moller, 1997). Ghany and Schwenk (1993) found that as household income increases, the proportion of expenditures on food decreases, the proportion of expenditures on clothing, rent, fuel, and light stayed the same and that of sundries increased. The aim of this study was to investigate household expenditure patterns on food and non‐food items in Khayelitsha. A total of 20 households (10 from the formal and 10 from the informal settlements) were randomly selected from those willing to participate in the study. A questionnaire with open ended and closed questions was used to collect data. The questionnaire comprised four sections namely: biographical information, socio‐economic information which used wealth quintiles to assess households’ social economic status, total expenditure information and a food/hunger scale was used to assess households’ food availability. The findings revealed that households from informal settlements spent more money (62.2%) as a proportion of their income on food compared to households from the formal settlement (39%). There was higher unemployment rate (100%) at the informal settlement compared to the formal settlement (40%). Wealth quintiles scales did not reflect the social status of the households as equipment and assets owned by households were only used as fallback position during times of economic hardships. Households used different purchasing strategies; food and non‐food items were mainly purchased from outside the township (60%). Forty percent of the households bought their items from local shops and spazas because they allowed them to buy items whenever little money was available or to take items on credit. All the respondents preferred to buy bread and small items from spazas and local shops. Prices of items in the spazas and local shops were higher compared to prices of items in bigger shops outside the townships. The food/hunger scale and wealth quintiles showed that informal settlement households were more food insecure (as they were all unemployed and about 50% of the households ran out of food always) and had fewer assets compared to the formal settlement households. The implications of these findings underscore the need to improve socio‐economic conditions of low resource households through empowerment programs. These programs can be in the form of training in management/decision making, work related skills/literacy (to help them access formal employment), business management/income generation skills (to help them to be self‐employed), budgeting, and food gardening. This approach can help to increase the resource base and alleviate food insecurity in low resource households.     

The Business of Business is the Human Person: Lessons from the Catholic Social Tradition

I describe an ethic for business administration based on the social tradition of the Catholic Church. I find that much current thinking about business falters for its conceit of truth. Abstractions such as the shareholder-value model contain truth – namely, that business is an economic enterprise to manage for the wealth of its owners. But, as in all abstractions, this truth comes at the expense of falsehood – namely, that persons are assets to deploy on behalf of owners. This last is “wrong” in both senses of the word – it is factually wrong in that persons are far more than business assets, they are supernatural beings, children of God; and it is morally wrong in that it is an injustice to treat them as the former when they are the latter. I draw upon the social tradition of the Catholic Church to recognize that the business of business is not business, but is instead the human person. Following Church teachings, I describe a person-centered ethic of business based upon eight social principles that both correct and enlarge the shareholder-centered ethic of much current business thinking. I discuss implications of this person-centered ethic for business administration.     

Distributional effects of environmental taxes on transportation: evidence from Engel curves in the United States

Indirect taxes on transportation activities that pollute can correct externalities and close the gaps between private and social costs. However, policy makers often find such Pigou taxes difficult to implement because of political resistance due to possibly adverse affects on equity. For this reason it is important to assess the distributional aspects of environmental levies. This article estimates properties of the demand for transportation in parametric and non-parametric analyses of Consumer Expenditure Surveys for the United States and finds patterns in the resulting set of Engel curves. Private transportation using air flights and new cars has Engel elasticity above unity while public transportation via mass transit has Engel elasticity below unity. The findings can be interpreted in an important way since they show that a differentiated scheme of environmental taxes on transportation may function progressively. A Pigou scheme with larger taxes on modes of transportation that pollute more appears to coincide with larger levies on luxury modes preferred by richer households.     

Macroeconomic interdependence under incomplete markets

This paper uses a two-country, flexible-price model with overlapping generations of infinitely lived households to study the role of net foreign asset dynamics in the propagation of productivity shocks. Absence of Ricardian equivalence ensures existence of a unique steady-state level of net foreign assets, to which the economy returns following temporary shocks. Model dynamics are significantly different from those of a setup in which terms of trade movements perform all the international adjustment and net foreign assets do not move. The difference relative to a complete markets economy in which net foreign asset movements play no role in shock transmission is smaller. It is amplified if the substitutability across goods rises and if shocks are permanent.     

Time‐Varying Linkage of Possible Safe Haven Assets: A Cross‐Market and Cross‐asset Analysis

This paper contributes to applying the time‐varying symmetrized Joe–Clayton copula to study the dynamic linkage among possible safe haven assets (SHAs) in the major international markets over the past 34 years. We re‐examine four major asset types (long‐term government bonds, equity indices, oil, and gold) and test whether they are qualified individually as a safe haven asset against when paired against each other in a specific market. The empirical analyses indicate that: (1) Government bonds are generally confirmed SHAs. (2) Gold and oil are overwhelming SHAs against government bond across the markets. (3) US and East Asian markets (Japan, Australia and New Zealand) have more SHA options than the other regions against equity index.     

New Dimensions of Financial Liberalization in Japan

This article contrasts the development of Japanese financial institutions over the past 50 years to that of the United States and compares the two countries’ household savings behavior. Although reform and liberalization is driving the Japanese financial sector to become more open and more sophisticated, there are powerful reasons for the Japanese system and Japanese asset-holding behavior to remain divergent from that of the United States. One major factor is that income and wealth in Japan are distributed much more evenly than in the United States. Since wealthy households are more sophisticated and better able to accommodate risk, the concentration of wealth in the United States means that, compared to Japan, there are more high income/high wealth households that are willing to take on risk from equity and bond holdings. In Japan, in contrast, there is a much heavier reliance on bank deposits. Even though financial institutions in the two countries are becoming more similar, the persistent differences in income distribution are likely to lead to persistent differences in asset holding and the composition of capital markets in the two countries. JEL Classification G2, O53     

资产减值会计相关概念的探析

资产减值准则对资产减值的确认、计量和披露作了系统、明确和严格的规定，作为我国会计准则体系的一项重要内容在充分体现我国国情的基础上进一步与国际会计惯例接轨，本文主要探讨了与资产减值会计相关的基本概念与核算，目的是提高会计信息的可比性。     

房产和金融资产对家庭消费的影响:中国的微观证据

利用最新的中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据,研究资产对家庭消费的影响。在区分耐用品消费和非耐用品消费的基础上,分析房产和金融资产及扣除债务后的净资产在消费中的作用。实证结果显示:在房产拥有者中,房产的消费弹性在0.07～0.09之间,即房产增加100元,消费将增加7～9元;而金融资产的消费弹性比房产的消费弹性要小得多,当金融资产增加100元时,消费只增加2元左右;老年家庭房产的消费弹性低于年轻家庭;城市家庭的房产消费弹性高于农村家庭;借贷能力对资产的消费弹性没有影响。     

广东宝丽华新能源股份有限公司资产结构现状及优化建议

企业的资产结构与企业的经营成果、获利能力和财务状况的稳定息息相关。以广东宝丽华新能源股份有限公司为例,利用流动资产率、资产负债率等财务指标对该公司近三年财务报表的资产结构现状进行分析,该企业要合理优化资产结构,应结合能源类行业的特殊性进行流动资产和固定资产的合理分配,增加经营范围的同时要注意流动资产内部的合理配置,发展扩张型资产结构时注意规避企业风险。     

浅析货币资金的审计途径

货币资金是企业资产的重要组成部分,是企业资产中流动性最强的一种资产,所以企业必须加强货币资金的管理．同时对货币资金的审计也提出了新的要求。结合审计工作的实践,从现金的盘查、银行账户核查、其他货币资金审计、固定资产的审查、举报线索等方面,分析了资金安全性的审计途径。     

PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION WITH DOWNSIDE CONSTRAINTS

We consider the portfolio optimization problem for an investor whose consumption rate process and terminal wealth are subject to downside constraints. In the standard financial market model that consists of d risky assets and one riskless asset, we assume that the riskless asset earns a constant instantaneous rate of interest,   r > 0  , and that the risky assets are geometric Brownian motions. The optimal portfolio policy for a wide scale of utility functions is derived explicitly. The gradient operator and the Clark–Ocone formula in Malliavin calculus are used in the derivation of this policy. We show how Malliavin calculus approach can help us get around certain difficulties that arise in using the classical "delta hedging" approach.     

上市公司成长性与财务指标的相关性研究

成长性是检验企业生存和发展潜力的最基本、最客观的标准,及衡量公司经营状况和发展前景的一项非常重要的指标。本文用总资产增长率、主营业务收入增长率和净资产收益率增长率三者的加权平均数代表公司的成长性,并选取了38家上市公司2007-2009年3个会计年度的财务数据,通过建立多元回归方程进行回归分析,检验财务指标(总资产周转率增长率、资产负债率以及销售净利率增长率)与企业成长性的相关性,结果证明财务指标与公司成长性有极强的相关性。     

上市公司终极控制权特征对定增标的资产估值的影响

标的资产“高溢价”导致上市公司业绩下滑、资产承诺业绩未达标事件激增,其中尤以定增并购标的资产与上市公司终极控制人关联交易最为突出。本文以我国沪深A股2007-2018年对终极控制人及其关联方实施过定向增发资产注入的上市公司为样本,分析终极控制权特征对标的资产估值的影响。结果表明:终极控制人的控制权与定增标的资产评估增值率呈“U”型关系,现金流权与定增标的资产的资产评估增值率负相关,两权分离度、控制权复杂度、定增前后终极控制人控制权的分离程度与定增标的资产评估增值率正相关;终极控制人在董事会占据席位的比例越大,经理人由终极控制人任命或担任的,定增标的资产评估增值率更高;民营性质的相较于国有性质的终极控制人,定增标的资产评估增值率更高,反映了机会主义行为动机下终极控制人的控制权地位显著影响定增标的资产估值,虚增的注入资产价值加剧了定增并购中的业绩承诺风险。终极控制人借助定增并购资产估值转移上市公司财富行为更具隐蔽性,投资者和监管部门需关注定增并购资产估值环节,有效预防业绩承诺风险。     

企业商业模式转型模型构建

商业模式自身的周期性及传统产业链的不断细分、拆解、重构、融合甚至与其他行业的交织、渗透,使商业模式转型成为必然。在商业模式转型中,收入模式是核心,价值链分析是基础,资产配置是支撑。收入模式有三个关键词,即主营业务、锁定客户、赢利点,主要有出租模式、分销模式、服务模式、代理模式、股权模式等,收入模式转型就是要提出新的价值主张;价值链覆盖范围包括产品型、代工型、服务型、一体化型,价值增值伴随着成本与费用的发生,问题的关键是实现每一项活动的净值最大化,并占据高利润的活动区间;核心资产主要包括金融资产、实物资产、人力资产、无形资产,不同模式四种资产比例各不相同。     

The demand for risky assets under uncertain inflation : An examination of some widely used assumptions

This paper examines the effect of the following commonly used methods of incorporating random inflation into discrete-time models of the demand for risky assets: 1) the use of a multivariate normal probability distribution for nominal asset returns and the random inflation rate, and 2) the approximation of real asset returns by the difference between nominal returns and the rate of inflation. The combination of these assumptions results in a deceptively simple version of the inflationary capital asset pricing model (CAPM). However, in an approximation-free version of this model the expected value of real wealth does not exist. While it is obvious that mean-variance analysis is not applicable in such models, we also find that the model does not satisfy Ohlson's weakened conditions for a quadratic approximation to the portfolio selection problem. Furthermore, this model is neither a member of the generalized Pareto-Levy nor log-stable class of portfolio models analyzed by Fama, Samuelson, Ohlson, and Struck.