Learning from housing environments: home economics and home ecology — A Canadian demonstration project

An effective method for providing information to bring about meaningful change and encourage the adoption of innovation is by the use of demonstration projects. This paper examines a specific housing demonstration project based on three design criteria: dynamics, life cycle cost analysis, and nexus. The paper also includes some discussion about housing and society in the future, particularly in terms of environmental stress and social change, and how housing can be responsive to changing human needs.     

The Puzzle in Post-Listing Common Stock Returns

Prior studies indicate that common stocks tend to earn negative returns immediately following listing on the NYSE. The authors document the phenomenon in detail and investigate a number of possible explanations. No full explanation is discovered, although several are ruled out.     

Efficient Signalling with Dividends and Investments

An efficient signalling equilibrium with dividends and investments or, equivalently, dividends and net new issues of stock is constructed, and its properties are identified. Because corporate insiders can exploit multiple signals, the efficient mix must minimize dissipative costs. In equilibrium, many firms both distribute dividends and deviate from first-best investment. Also, the impact of dividends on stock prices is positive. By contrast, the announcement effect of new stock is negative for firms with private information primarily about assets in place and positive for firms with inside information mainly about opportunities to invest.     

The Voluntary Restructuring of Large Firms In Response to Performance Decline

Much of the research on corporate restructuring has examined the causes and aftermath of extreme changes in corporate governance such as takeovers and bankruptcy. In contrast, we study restructurings initiated in response to product market pressures by “normal” corporate governance mechanisms. Such “voluntary” restructurings, motivated by the discipline of the product market and internal corporate controls, will play a relatively more important role in the 1990s due to a weakening in the discipline of the takeover market. Our data suggest that the firms retrenched quickly and, on average, increased their focus. There is no evidence of abnormally high levels of forced turnover in top managers. There is, however, a significant and rapid cut of 5% in the labor force. Further, the cost of goods sold to sales and labor costs to sales ratios both decline rapidly, more than 5% in the first two years after the negative earnings. The firms cut research and development, increased investment, and also reduced their debt/asset level by over 8% in the first year after the negative earnings. We also document the reasons management and analysis reported for the negative earnings. Overwhelmingly the firms blame bad economic conditions and, to a lesser extent, foreign competition.     

A New Approach to Depreciation

This paper presents a new 'matching' based approach to depreciation that incorporates interest adjustments and generates accounting measurements that are consistent with the ex post Net Terminal Values of fixed assets. The method has been developed from the concept of Earned Economic Income by the application of concepts drawn from the existing literature. The calculations and ledger entries involved are illustrated in the appendices.