Strategic Auditor Behavior and Going-Concern Decisions

This paper analyzes a game-theoretic model in which a client can potentially avoid a going-concern opinion and its self-fulfilling prophecy by switching auditors. Incumbent auditors are less willing to express a going-concern opinion the more credible the client's threat of dismissal and the stronger the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. Similarly, the client is more willing to switch auditors the more likely it is that auditors' reporting judgments will differ and the stronger the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. Further, with greater noise in the auditor's forecast of client viability, the auditor tends to express fewer going-concern opinions.     

Residential Mobility Decisions in Japan: Effects of Housing Equity Constraints and Income Shocks under the Recourse Loan System

This paper draws on six waves of Japanese household longitudinal data (Keio Household Panel Survey, KHPS) and estimates a conditional fixed effects logit model to investigate the effects of housing equity constraints and income shocks on own-to-own residential moves in Japan. By looking at contemporaneous extended Loan-to-Value (ELTV) and extended Debt-to-Income (EDTI) ratios under the recourse loan system, we examine whether housing equity constraints and negative income shocks have any impact on own-to-own residential moves. Taking account of the specific nature of the recourse loan system in Japan, we further investigate whether these effects are different between positive and negative equity households. The estimation results show that housing equity constraints and negative income shocks significantly deter own-to-own residential moves for positive equity households.     

Macroprudential Policies and Housing Prices: A New Database and Empirical Evidence for Central,Eastern, and Southeastern Europe

Several countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe used a rich set of prudential instruments during the recent credit and housing boom and bust cycles. We construct a comprehensive database of these policy measures covering 16 countries at a quarterly frequency. We use this database to investigate whether the policy measures had an impact on housing price inflation. The measures that appeared to be effective were capital measures (minimum capital adequacy ratio, maximum ratio of lending to households to share capital) and nonstandard liquidity measures (marginal reserve requirements (MRRs) on foreign funding, MRRs linked to credit growth).     

Unemployment Risk, the Housing Market and the Effects of Decentralised Redistribution

The paper examines the general equilibrium effects of benefits to the unemployed and the taxes to pay for them in a two country model in which people move to maximise expected utility. Wages are set by unions, and unemployment emerges as an equilibrium phenomenon. Wage setting institutions are found to be important for assessing the welfare effects of redistribution from the employed to the unemployed. The analysis finds that, with monopoly unions, more redistribution tends to repel population from the country increasing redistribution and to reduce welfare in both countries, but the opposite is the case in a model in which wage setting does not depend on unemployment benefits and taxes. These effects are dampened by the combination of risk averse consumers and inelastic housing supply.     

Taxes, Financing Decisions, and Firm Value

We use cross-sectional regressions to study how a firm's value is related to dividends and debt. With a good control for profitability, the regressions can measure how the taxation of dividends and debt affects firm value. Simple tax hypotheses say that value is negatively related to dividends and positively related to debt. We find the opposite. We infer that dividends and debt convey information about profitability (expected net cash flows) missed by a wide range of control variables. This information about profitability obscures any tax effects of financing decisions.     

Housing, Health, and Annuities

Annuities, long-term care insurance (LTCI), and reverse mortgages appear to offer important consumption smoothing benefits to the elderly, yet private markets for these products are small. A prominent idea is to combine LTCI and annuities to alleviate both supply (selection) and demand (liquidity) problems in these markets. This article shows that if consumers typically liquidate home equity only in the event of illness or very old age, then LTCI and annuities become less attractive and may become substitutes rather than complements. The reason is that the marginal utility of wealth drops when an otherwise illiquid home is sold, an event correlated with the payouts of both annuities and LTCI. Simulations confirm that demand for LTCI and annuities is highly sensitive to the liquidity and magnitude of home equity.     

Housing,Illiquidity, and Wealth

This article develops a model of asset allocation relevant for the representative consumer. Consumption is composed of two items: housing, and other goods and services. The representative household's balance sheet consists largely of a house and a mortgage. Its income statement is dominated by labor earnings, constraining cash expenditures. Housing-market behavior thus underlies intertemporal wealth and consumption allocation. With a housing-dominated portfolio and a maximizing plan, a plausible bound on the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution in consumption can be estimated for a typical household. The model takes account of idiosyncratic characteristics of housing returns and finance. Underwriting standards oblige borrowers to secure mortgage debt with a housing asset and with cash flow, usually from labor income. Access to the mortgage market depends on the loan-to-value ratio, or leverage and debt size, and the debt-coverage ratio, or cash solvency. If there are seasonals or predictable patterns in house returns, their magnitude is amplified for the typical liquidity-constrained household. Empirical results for the aggregate U.S. market confirm predictability and serial correlation in house capital gains. There are seasonals in housing returns. While there is no January effect, above-average returns are obtained during the summer months.     

Current Wealth,Housing Purchase,and Private Housing Loan Demand in Japan

Japanese households accumulate wealth for down payments at a high rate. Therefore, current wealth plays an important role in home acquisition as well as public loans whose direct mortgage lending is a strong support for home purchasers. We estimate the wealth effect on private mortgage debt as well as housing consumption by applying a model where mortgage-debt demand is derived from house-purchase decisions and is determined jointly with housing consumption. We use a simultaneous equation Tobit estimation method. Wealth effects on private mortgage debt, likelihood of borrowing, and housing consumption are not elastic. On the other hand, a change in housing consumption affects the likelihood of borrowing elastically much more than the private mortgage amount of borrowers. Housing and private mortgage markets fluctuate very closely with the number of participants in the mortgage market. Therefore, the number of housing starts is linked strongly to the private mortgage market.     

The Effects of Guidance Frequency and Guidance Goal on Managerial Decisions

We conduct an experiment to examine the effects of guidance frequency (frequent vs. infrequent) and guidance goal (accuracy vs. meet/beat vs. truthful) on managers’ operating decisions. We find that frequent guiders sacrifice total earnings for quarterly earnings predictability irrespective of their guidance goals. Furthermore, when guidance is infrequent, guiders with accuracy goals opt for quarterly earnings predictability over total earnings more often than do guiders with either meet/beat goals or truthful goals. These findings have implications for regulators and investors in terms of the unintended consequences of requesting frequent earnings guidance. Further, while managers may perceive that accuracy goals can help their firms establish forecasting and reporting reputations, we show that accuracy goals may result in dysfunctional internal managerial decisions, particularly when guidance is issued infrequently.     

Tax Rate Uncertainty, Investment Decisions, and Tax Neutrality

This article deals with the effects of tax rate uncertainty (TRU) on individual investment behavior. We show that under risk neutrality as well as under risk aversion, increased TRU has an ambiguous impact on investment, depending on the investment project's structure of cash flows and depreciation deductions. Although the investment effects are small the popular view that tax policy uncertainty depresses real investment is rejected. Further, tax neutrality in the light of tax policy uncertainty is defined more precisely. Neutrality results for the Johansson-Samuelson tax and the cash flow tax that are known from certainty are confirmed under TRU.     

Housing,consumption and asset pricing

This paper considers a consumption-based asset pricing model where housing is explicitly modeled both as an asset and as a consumption good. Nonseparable preferences describe households’ concern with composition risk, that is, fluctuations in the relative share of housing in their consumption basket. Since the housing share moves slowly, a concern with composition risk induces low frequency movements in stock prices that are not driven by news about cash flow. Moreover, the model predicts that the housing share can be used to forecast excess returns on stocks. We document that this indeed true in the data. The presence of composition risk also implies that the riskless rate is low which further helps the model improve on the standard CCAPM.     

Irreversibility,Uncertainty and Housing Investment

Housing represents a form of “irreversible” investment. Theoretically, increased uncertainty should lower housing investment. Empirically, finding a proxy for uncertainty has proven problematic. Some recent papers have investigated the effect of uncertainty on real estate investment, with varying proxies for uncertainty and mixed results. This paper employs a technique used in modern macroeconomic studies, the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity-in-Mean model, which has been shown to correspond as closely as any known measure to theoretical concepts of uncertainty. Results indicate that uncertainty indeed has a negative impact on housing starts.     

Ethnicity, Endogeneity, and Housing Tenure Choice

Home ownership rates for New Zealanders of European descent aged twenty five to fifty four are 16 percentage points higher than for Maori in the same age group. This article explores the relative attainment of home ownership of the two ethnic groups by estimating a series of tenure choice models and decomposing the difference in rates into endowment and residual effects. Particular attention is given to the endogeneity of current income and wealth relative to the tenure choice decision and to the methods for decomposing group mean differences. The article also applies more appropriate methods for estimating incomes and wealth than have been used in most previous studies of tenure choice. The study concludes that only a small proportion of differences in home ownership rates is explained by household endowments. It is shown that controlling for the endogeneity of income and wealth has a substantial impact on the tenure choice and decomposition results.     

Learning from Coworkers: Peer Effects on Individual Investment Decisions

Using unique data on employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs), we examine the influence of networks on investment decisions. Comparing employees within a firm during the same election window with metro area fixed effects, we find that the choices of coworkers in the firm's ESPP exert a significant influence on employees’ own decisions to participate and trade. Moreover, we find that the presence of high-information employees magnifies the effects of peer networks. Given participation in an ESPP is value-maximizing, our analysis suggests the potential of networks and targeted investor education to improve financial decision-making.     

Housing vacancies,thin markets,and idiosyncratic tastes

This paper presents a model with rental housing vacancies in equilibrium. Because of the indivisibility and multi-dimensional heterogeneity of housing units, the housing market is thin. As a result, a typical household entering the market is willing to pay a premium for its most-preferred over its second most-preferred available (vacant) unit. This confers monopoly power on landlords, which they exploit by setting rents above costs. Free entry and exit force profits to zero, with vacancies as the equilibrating mechanism. A nice feature of the model is that housing vacancies are socially useful in expanding the choice set of entering households, though there is no presumption that the market vacancy rate is socially optimal. Thin markets are modeled by assuming an idiosyncratic component to households' tastes over housing units.The positive and normative properties of the basic model, which assumes costless search, are investigated. Then the model is extended to treat costly search. Finally, directions in which the model could usefully be extended are discussed.     

Housing Vouchers,Tenant Quality,and Apartment Values

Landlords face unique concerns in maximizing profits when they accept subsidized as well as unsubsidized tenants. Subsidized tenants come with lower rental collection risk because part or all of the rent is paid by a public agency and accepting subsidized tenants may widen the potential tenant market. But subsidized tenants tend to reduce overall tenant quality and to impose higher operating costs. By accepting subsidies, landlords may also subject themselves to periodic site inspections that may increase capital costs. Further, subsidized tenants may eventually crowd out unsubsidized tenants, lowering the average quality of the resident mix. Tests from Washington, DC apartments on accepting and advertising for Section 8 tenants support these qualitative predictions. Accepting Section 8 tenants enhances revenues, but advertising for them lowers revenues. More aggressive solicitation of subsidized tenants leads to a crowding out or displacement risk that dominates over any diminished collection risk.     

Effects of Personal Characteristics on Materiality Decisions: A Multivariate Analysis

In an effort to contribute to improved audit efficiency and quality, an experiment was administered to 596 CPAs to study the potential effects on materiality judgments of auditors' personal characteristics. A multivariate analysis indicates that age and place of employment can affect materiality decisions, while years of external auditing experience, place of employment, frequency of materiality decisions, and gender may affect confidence in materiality decisions.     

One-Period Model of Individual Consumption, Life Insurance, and Investment Decisions

This article studies individuals' optimal decisions on consumption, life insurance, and stock purchases in a one‐period framework. With exponential utility functions, individuals' life insurance and stock purchases are independent of each other; life insurance purchases are affected only by individuals' future income, bequest intensity, risk attitude, survival probability, and the insurance risk premium; stock purchases are affected only by individuals' risk attitude, the risk‐free rate of return, the stock return, and stock volatility. With power utility functions, life insurance and stock purchases are positively related with each other and are affected by all the factors.     

外商直接投资、经济波动与宏观调控政策

外商直接投资与人民币汇率、国内外经济增长、劳动成本、资本市场收益率当中某一个变量之间的长期均衡关系受制于其它变量。与国内因素相比较,国际因素对外商直接投资长期趋势的影响更大。与人民币汇率的短期变动相比较,外商更加重视人民币汇率的长期趋势。另外,只有当经济系统失衡较小时,外商直接投资增长率才会在短期内对系统失衡做出显著反应。所以,宏观调控政策必须把握时机,尽量避免经济系统出现较大偏差。