A theoretical and empirical analysis of the length of residency discount in the rental housing market

We present an analysis of occupancy discounts and suggest a decomposition of the discount into two components, a “sit” discount and a length of residency discount. Data from the national longitudinal survey of the Annual Housing Survey in which 75,000 housing units from around the United States were followed from 1974 to 1977 are used to obtain consistent and efficient estimates of those discounts. The econometric models account for censoring in the data by endogenously treating the tenant's staying decision. The estimation indicates that neither discount is significant. This result is contrary to the commonly accepted result in the urban literature that landlords offer discounts to their current tenants when contracts are renegotiated.     

Behave yourself. Interview by Gardiner Morse

Executive consultant Marshall Goldsmith tells his CEO clients that he's not the real coach; the people around them are. To change your behavior, he says, quit whining about the past and start asking your colleagues how you can do better. You're not done until they think you are.     

Investor Heterogeneity and the Cross-section of U.K. Investment Trust Performance

We use the upper and lower bounds derived by Ferson and Lin (2010) to examine the impact of investor heterogeneity on the performance of U.K. investment trusts relative to alternative linear factor models. We find using the upper bounds that investor heterogeneity has an important impact for nearly all investment trusts. The upper bounds are large in economic terms and significantly different from zero. We find no evidence of any trusts where all investors agree on the sign of performance beyond what we expect by chance. Using the lower bound, we find that trusts with a larger disagreement about trust performance have a weaker relation between the trust premium and past Net Asset Value (NAV) performance.     

Extending prospect theory cross-culturally by examining switching behavior in consumer and business-to-business contexts

Prospect theory states that an individual in a loss situation is more likely to make a risky financial decision than when they are in a gain frame. Some researchers observe that Asians tend to have a more positive attitude toward risk in financial decisions than Westerners. The first of two studies tests these two phenomena. The study finds Singaporeans and Chinese to be less risk averse than Dutch and New Zealand people over both a gain and a loss frame when making a personal financial decision. A second study extends this finding to individuals in a business relationship switching suppliers, and finds that when switching is framed as a risky decision the same pattern of behavior occurs. New Zealand and American consumers are more risk averse than those from Japan and Singapore, who are more likely to change suppliers under both a gain and a loss frame.     

TRAP abortion laws and partisan political party control of state government

Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (or TRAP) laws impose medically unnecessary and burdensome regulations solely on abortion providers in order to make abortion services more expensive and difficult to obtain. Using event history analysis, this article examines the determinants of the enactment of a TRAP law by states over the period 1974–2008. The empirical results find that Republican institutional control of a state's legislative/executive branches is positively associated with a state enacting a TRAP law, while Democratic institutional control is negatively associated with a state enacting a TRAP law. The percentage of a state's population that is Catholic, public anti-abortion attitudes, state political ideology, and the abortion rate in a state are statistically insignificant predictors of a state enacting a TRAP law. The empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis that abortion is a redistributive issue and not a morality issue.     

The Causes and Consequences of the Misdiagnosis of the Financial Crisis in the United States

Using an analytical framework that divides banking crises into ‘classic’ and ‘secondary’ crises, this article analyzes the banking crisis that broke out in the United States in the summer of 2007 and the response of US authorities. While quite simple in itself, this framework allows for a novel interpretation of the unfolding of the crisis and for evaluating US authorities in the design and implementation of crisis resolution mechanisms. As suggested by the title, the principal hypothesis of the article is that the crisis was fundamentally misdiagnosed, leading to a flawed bailout that all but guarantees its inefficacy in bringing the US financial system back to health at a reasonable fiscal cost.     

New product planning: Lessons from Japanese experience

Japan has derived a reputation as a market that is extremely difficult to enter. However, this belief tends to promote neglect of the study of other factors—important among which is that of the competitive styles of Japanese companies. An issue that is particularly germane is that of product strategy. This article reports on research that was performed among a sample of foreign consumer products' companies in Japan. The article explores the theme that effectiveprodud strategy in Japan requires cultural sensitivity, as well as an ability to cope with the aggressive, technical led approaches of Japanese companies that comprise the competitive set.