Resale Externality and the Used Housing Market

The selling prices of used houses may not fully reflect the maintenance spending of current owners when prospective buyers are unable to conduct a thorough inspection before purchase. This article investigates how this resale externality problem affects the maintenance expenditures of homeowners. After considering both observable and unobservable repair expenses, the analysis shows that the resale externality reduces not only maintenance expenditures, but also household mobility. A treatment effects model is used to estimate the simultaneous relationship between mobility and maintenance in the Japanese resale housing market. The results indicate that the resale externality has a significant negative impact on maintenance expenditures.     

Is the share of agricultural maintenance research rising in the United States?

Public research is a major contributor to agricultural productivity growth, but if research investments are not maintained, agricultural productivity can decline over time. Maintenance research replaces deteriorated research knowledge to forestall a productivity decline. Knowledge of the magnitude of maintenance research can facilitate a more complete assessment of the value of agricultural research programs. Trends in maintenance research and sources of change in those trends are investigated. Results indicate that overall, about 40% of US agricultural research is devoted to maintenance, up from about a third 25 years ago. A model is developed and estimated to explain maintenance research expenditures. Research funding, climatic conditions, insect and pathogen control, and agricultural production choices influence maintenance research expenditures. Increased reliance on out-of-state funding sources may skew agricultural research away from maintenance research, while climate change may increase the need for such research.     

Effects of Housing Codes on Local Housing Markets

Housing codes are typically instituted in order to raise the average level of housing quality in a community. However, in doing so, the institution of a housing code likely has effects on other housing characteristics. Using data from municipalities in North Carolina, this study finds that municipalities with housing codes have higher average occupancy densities among all households and lower homeownership rates among low-income households, but housing codes have no statistically discernible effect on housing values and expenditures. The results suggest that housing codes are not costless; most importantly, codes force consumers to trade housing quantity for quality.     

The Improvement Expenditures of Urban Homeowners: An Empirical Analysis

This paper presents evidence on the factors influencing the housing improvement expenditures of urban homeowners. In comparison to prior work, a more completely specified model was estimated. In particular, variables measuring the price of inputs and neighborhood quality were included and found to have a statistically significant impact on the maintenance and improvement expenditures of central city homeowners.     

Reverse Mortgages and Borrower Maintenance Risk

This paper develops a theoretical model of the problem of maintenance risk in reverse mortgages (RMs) and home equity conversion instruments generally. By maintenance risk, we refer to the incentive homeowners will have to reduce maintenance expenditures as their equity in the house falls during the term of the RM. The underlying reason for this tendency is the limited liability feature of RMs, given that a borrower's obligation to the lender at. maturity is limited to the value of the house.
The results of the model show that lenders will respond to this problem either by limiting the amount of RM loans to guarantee that maintenance risk is not a threat, or by charging an interest rate premium to cover the expected cost of default. Unfortunately, there do not exist data to test the importance of maintenance risk as a possible limitation on the extent of the RM market.     

First of the month effect: Does it apply across food retail channels?

In this study we use detailed daily scanner data on household food purchases to examine monthly food expenditure patterns across food retail channels. We compare food expenditure patterns in high and low-income households comparing those where Supplementary Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) is received in the first 10 days of the month versus households which receive SNAP over the first 15 days of the month. We find that food expenditure patterns vary systematically across the month within different retail channels by income and SNAP payment schedules. Low-income households in early SNAP distribution areas decrease their grocery and mass/club/superstore expenditures at the end of the calendar month and supplement this decrease with increased food expenditures in convenience stores and food away from home. Households in staggered SNAP payment areas show far fewer systematic patterns given the more distributed payment system.     

Estimating willingness-to-pay for broadband attributes among low-income consumers: Results from two FCC lifeline pilot projects

Recent studies have confirmed that broadband adoption (as opposed to simply having access to broadband infrastructure) is positively linked with economic growth. In light of this, federal policy efforts have switched from focusing mainly on the provision of infrastructure to more explicit adoption-oriented efforts. One of those efforts was the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Low-income Broadband Lifeline Pilot Projects, which ran from 2013 to 2014. The program worked with 14 private telecommunications firms to subsidize household broadband adoption for low-income households by providing discounted monthly and equipment costs. Low-income households are an important component of the broadband adoption puzzle: between 2003 and 2013, the adoption gap between low-income and high-income households actually increased by 5% points. This paper focuses on two specific FCC Broadband Lifeline Pilot projects that allowed consumers to make choices among different options, such as data allowance, speed, and wireless vs. wired connections. Conditional logit models are used to develop estimates of consumer’s willingness-to-pay for specific broadband attributes. The results indicate that low-income consumers have a preference for smartphone connections (versus aircards) – and that this effect is even more pronounced for those households earning less than $20,000; that low-income consumers have a preference for wired connections (versus wireless); and that there is evidence that low-income consumers are willing to pay for an extra GB of data each month – but not for the speed of their connection.     

Restraints of trade by durable good producers

Whether they face competition or not, durable good producers may have an incentive to impose vertical restraints on their customers in order to protect quasi-rents in the aftermarkets for maintenance and repair. In this paper, we show that these vertical restraints have little to do with the usual antitrust concerns regarding tying arrangements. Nonetheless, imposing such restraints involves antitrust risks. We examine these risks and the associated antitrust policy questions in light of the Supreme Court's recent Kodak decision. We also offer some suggestions for the appropriate antitrust policy.     

Simultaneous control of production, repair/replacement and preventive maintenance of deteriorating manufacturing systems

This paper presents a method to find the optimal production, repair/replacement and preventive maintenance policies for a degraded manufacturing system. The system is subject to random machine failures and repairs. The status of the system is deemed to degrade with repair activities. When a failure occurs, the machine is either repaired or replaced, and a replacement action renews the machine, while a repair action brings it to a degraded operational state, with the next repair time increasing as the number of repairs increases as well. A preventive maintenance action is considered in order to improve the reliability of the machine, thereby reducing the amount of disruptions caused by machine failures. The decision variables are the production rate, the preventive maintenance rate and the repair/replacement switching policy upon machine failure. The objective of the study is to find the decision variables that minimize the overall cost, including repair, replacement, preventive maintenance, inventory holding and backlog costs over an infinite planning horizon. The proposed model is based on a semi-Markov decision process, and the stochastic dynamic programming method is used to obtain the optimality conditions. A numerical example is given to illustrate the proposed model, and a sensitivity analysis is considered in order to confirm the structure of the control policy and to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed approach.     

Impact of off-farm labor supply on food expenditures of the farm household

Farm households diversify their income sources by working off the farm. This is a risk management strategy that is used by farm households in both developed and developing countries. Income diversification via off-farm work is associated with higher incomes and food consumption. However, little is known about the association between off-farm work and farm household food expenditures. In an effort to bridge this gap, this study attempts to assess the impact of off-farm work decisions by the operator and/or the spouse on the food expenditures of the farm household. Using a nationwide farm household survey in the United States and new econometric method, we find that the decisions of the operator and/or the spouse to work off the farm are significantly interrelated (29%). However, these two decisions affect food expenditures in different ways. The operator’s off-farm work decision is positively related to food expenditures, while the spouse’s decision is negatively associated with expenditures on food by the farm household.     

Declared essential patents and average total R&D expenditures per patent family

The sharp increase in SEP declarations and declaring firms emphasizes the necessity for understanding firms’ innovation investment behavior in standardization. This paper empirically investigates whether declared standard-essential patents (SEPs) and the declaring firm’s business model (operationalized as a firm’s location in the value chain) are associated with a firm’s innovation investment behavior. To this end, we measure firms’ innovation investment behavior through average total research and development (R&D) expenditures per filed patent family for publicly listed firms from 1999 to 2018. Our sample mainly includes major SEP family declarants. We rely on a binary business model taxonomy differentiating upstream and downstream firms. Within that setting, total R&D expenditures rise with increasing fragmentation of declared SEP families, suggesting that firms adjust their R&D investments to declaration developments in standard-setting organizations (SSOs). We also show that upstream firms have significantly lower total R&D expenditures than downstream firms, which could indicate structural differences in their intellectual property (IP) and R&D management processes. Our results can help SSOs and regulators better understand firms’ innovation investment behavior.     

A VIRTUAL CLASSROOM EXPERIMENT FOR TEACHING ENGINEERING ECONOMY

The productivity of a two-station production line is determined by the station breakdown and repair rates, and by the capacity of the lncerscaclon buffer. A model which describes the station breakdown and repair rates as functions of the maintenance and repair inputs to the system la presented.The production function is Incorporated Into a profit function. The values of maintenance, repair, and an aggregate materials-labor inputs aa well as the capacity of the interstation buffer which maximize profit are sought.     

The effect of prime age adult mortality on household composition and consumption in rural Ethiopia

Using panel data from Ethiopia covering 1994–1997, we estimate the impact of prime age adult mortality on household composition, household expenditures and dietary diversity. We employed propensity score matching with a difference-in-difference estimator to control for endogeneity of mortality to the outcomes of interest. Households losing a productive adult did not replenish the lost labor, regardless of economic status, sex or status of the deceased adult. With the exception of non-poor households, adult mortality resulted in increased dependency ratios, but did not adversely affect households’ expenditure patterns (total, food and non-food expenditures) regardless of the sex and position of the deceased and the economic status of the households. Although food expenditures were protected, a decline in dietary diversity, especially among the poorest households, reflected increased nutrition insecurity associated with adult mortality.     

The Economics of Maintenance for Real Estate Investments

We propose a theory of urban decay. Following a negative real estate demand shock, property managers optimally suspend maintenance and the probability that they ever restart can be modest. Because maintenance expenditures are proportionately less risky than are the incremental building profits they generate, managers impose a more demanding profit standard on maintenance than on the initial investment. This differential in profit standards means that rather than maintain existing investments, property managers favor new investments, which, if marginally acceptable, they also leave unmaintained. Contractually required maintenance ( e.g ., for publicly subsidized real estate investments), increases the minimum profit for the initial investment acceptance and discourages subsidized real estate investments in favor of unsubsidized investments. However, the required profit for acceptance of a permanently maintained investment is below the profit boundary for maintenance if maintenance is not contractually required. Consequently, the subsidy that induces the investment is least expensive if maintenance is not required, more expensive if maintenance is permanently required and most expensive if maintenance is induced immediately after initial construction but thereafter is at the discretion of the manager. All of our findings are strongest for poorer quality properties.     

ZGM123中速磨煤机检修优化与改造

介绍了天津大唐国际盘山发电有限责任公司磨煤机的检修优化的实践和研究,磨煤机的检修优化首先是要基于点检定修的深入开展,通过点检定修确定合理、经济的检修周期;其次是通过采用先进的工艺技术对设备进行改造,从而减少磨煤机大修时的检修工作量和备件消耗,达到检修优化。     

保障性住房融资中运用REITs的探讨

目前我国保障性住房面临着资金瓶颈问题,这是制约保障性住房供给的重要因素之一,借鉴房地产投资信托基金(REITs)有助于解决这一问题.文章借鉴中国香港、美国和新加坡等国家的REITs运作经验,探讨了在我国保障性住房建设中运用REITs的可能性和条件,以及运作模式.在此基础上分析了在我国金融和房地产市场现状下发展保障性住房REITs存在的问题,提出了相应的对策.     

Online RPM and MFN Under Antitrust Law and Economics

The legal framing of a firm’s pricing strategy can determine whether it constitutes online resale price maintenance (RPM) or online most favored nation (MFN). Together, cases that involve online RPM and MFN can be viewed as a natural experiment of how antitrust economics and law may adapt to an online world. Thus far, legal theories that have been inconsistent with economic theories have dictated enforcement across jurisdictions, which has led to confusion that thwarts potentially efficient business practices. This paper distinguishes issues of online RPM from traditional RPM and online RPM from online MFN. We apply the economics learning to RPM and analyze the antitrust cases of online RPM and MFN to date in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Finally, we offer policy recommendations that reduce the confusion in current legal doctrine.     

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS IN THE MAINTENANCE,REPAIR, AND OVERHAUL INDUSTRY: AN OPTIONS APPROACH

This paper presents a practical case application of the real options framework to a multi-stage investment in the aerospace maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) industry. With the deregulated commercial airline industry and military procurement reform, the $44 billion MRO sector must implement tools to remain strategically poised. In this case study, the MRO participant values a multi-stage irreversible expenditure in maintenance equipment and processes under air travel demand uncertainty using a real options analysis. The investment scenario is viewed from a delay, growth, and compound options framework, and an appropriate sensitivity analysis is performed. The main contribution of this paper is the detailed real option framing, valuation, and discussion that may be used as an illustration for industry practitioners or classroom instruction.