Negative externalities on property values resulting from water impairment: The case of the Pigeon River Watershed

The objective of this research was to determine whether willingness to bear the negative externality from water quality impairment differs between those who do and those who do not receive economic benefit from the impairment source. Differences were tested using a hedonic analysis of ambient water quality in two discrete housing markets in the Pigeon River Watershed, which have been polluted by the operation of a paper mill. The results suggest that North Carolina residents residing in subwatersheds with impaired portions of the Pigeon River, who experience economic benefit from the paper mill in addition to its harmful effects on water quality, do perceive the pollution as a negative externality. In contrast, the effects of both the degraded river and its contributing streams on property values are perceived as negative externalities by watershed residents in Tennessee who experience only harmful effects from the pollution. Differences in willingness to bear the water-impairment externality were not indicated by variables representing view of and proximity to impaired water bodies. The results suggest that the perception of water quality to which property owners implicitly apply value should be considered when establishing water-quality regulations.     

Stochastic convergence of the catch-up rate and multiple structural breaks in Asian countries

Allowing for multiple structural breaks and cross-section dependence, we re-investigate the hypothesis that the catch-up rates stochastically converge for 13 Asian countries from 1960 to 2007. Non-rejection of stationarity provides evidence for stochastic convergence, implying that following shocks to the catch-up rate, it will eventually revert to its long-run level.     

The swing voter's curse with adversarial preferences

We analyze voting behavior in a large electorate in which voters have adversarial state-contingent preferences with incomplete information about the state of the world. We show that one type of voter can suffer from the swing voter's curse à la Feddersen and Pesendorfer [The swing voter's curse, Amer. Econ. Rev. 86 (1996) 408-424], and go on to characterize the symmetric Nash equilibria of this model under different parameter values. We prove that unlike settings with nonadversarial preferences, there are equilibria in which in one state of the world, a minority-preferred candidate almost surely wins the election and thus the election may fail to correctly aggregate information. Indeed, we show that the fraction of the electorate dissatisfied with the result can be as large as .     

When do incentives work in channels of distribution?

The incentive dilemma refers to a situation in which incentives are offered but do not work as intended. The authors suggest that, in an interorganizational context, whether a principal-provided incentive works is a function of how it is evaluated by an agent: for its contribution to the agent’s bottom line (instrumental evaluation) and for the extent it is strategically aligned with the agent’s direction (congruence evaluation). To further understand when incentives work, the influence of two key contextual variables—industry volatility and dependence—are examined. A field study featuring 57 semi-structured depth interviews and 386 responses from twin surveys in the information technology and brewing industries provide data for hypothesis testing. When and whether incentives work is demonstrated by certain conditions under which the agent’s evaluation of an incentive has positive or negative effects on its compliance and active representation. Further, some outcomes are reversed in the high volatility condition.     

How credible is the North Korean threat?

We perform event analysis on particular episodes of tension in the Korean peninsula between 2000 and 2008, and investigate the effect of the events on South Korean financial markets (stock markets, bond yield spreads and the exchange rate) given that South Korea would be the first affected by a military aggression from North Korea. Surprisingly, in nearly all cases, these events, which have often been dramatized in the world media, have no significant impact on either of these variables or only a very small one. We also find no significant impact of events on listed firms that would a priori be likely to suffer from increased tension between the two Koreas. Since financial markets often contain better predictions than expert opinions or surveys, these results strongly suggest that the North Korean threat is non‐credible.     

Estimating Willingness to Pay for the Development of a Peace Park Using CVM: The Case of the Korean Demilitarized Zone

Conflicts remain an integral part in shaping the world. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are no exceptions. The Korean DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) World Peace Park has been proposed to help obtain peace by erasing the memories of war and creating new beginnings of trust, cooperation, and unity on the Korean Peninsula. With their ties to geographical space and conflict, peace park research provides an excellent platform for both activism and research in positive peace. Little, however, is known about peoples’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the creation of peace parks, in general, and specifically for the development of the Korean DMZ World Peace Park. Using contingent valuation methods, the weighted average WTP for development of the Peace Park is $49.03 per household per year. It appears South Koreans are willing to pay not only for the conservation of the DMZ, but also for the peace and unification of the Korean Peninsula the Peace Park may bring to the area.     

Relationship between oil price and exchange rate by FDA and copula

This article investigates the relationship between daily crude oil prices and exchange rates. Functional data analysis is used to show the clustering pattern of exchange rates and oil prices over the time period through high dimensional visualizations. We select exchange rates for important currencies related to crude oil prices by using the objective Bayesian variable selection method. The selected sample data exhibits non-normal distribution with fat tails and skewness. Under the non-normality of the return series, we use copula functions that do not require to assume the bivariate normality to consider marginal distribution. In particular, our study applies the popular and powerful statistical methods such as Gaussian copula partial correlations and Gaussian copula marginal regression. We find evidence of significant dependence for all considered pairs, except for the Mexican peso-Brent. Our empirical results also show that the rise in the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price returns is associated with a depreciation of the US dollar.     

Optimal forecast evaluation: fertilizer prices

High fertilizer price volatility makes production planning and inventory management difficult, so accurate fertilizer price forecasts would be beneficial. This article evaluates commercial forecasts for urea and diammonium phosphate (DAP) prices based on forecast accuracy and optimal forecast properties. Most forecasts pass the tests, but forecasts for the US New Orleans urea and the US Gulf DAP markets, in particular, do not and thus show potential to be improved.     

The price effect of allowing non-pharmacy outlets to sell OTC drugs in Korea

By the amendment of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act in 2012, non-pharmacy outlets (confined to 24-hour convenience stores) in Korea were permitted to sell 13 over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. This article empirically examines the effect of the regulatory reform on OTC drug prices. To do so, we use county-level price data of 7 OTC drugs for the years of 2012 and 2013. Among them, 2 OTC drugs are available at non-pharmacy outlets due to the deregulation, and the remaining 5 are still only available at pharmacies. Employing a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find that after the regulatory reform, prices of the 2 OTC drugs increased by only 1.1% while those of the rest 5 increased by 6.5%. This result has implications for the government’s policy of designating non-pharmacy outlets that can sell OTC drugs from the viewpoint of consumer welfare.     

Macroeconomic shocks and stock market returns: the case of Korea

This study examines the effects of macroeconomic shocks on key macro variables, including stock market returns in Korea, using the structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. We suggest a three-variable SVAR model incorporating inflation, output growth and stock returns. We adopt a nonzero z-ratio restriction for the long-run identifying assumption to allow for economically meaningful relationships among variables. While our results support the negative (positive) relation of demand (supply) shocks to stock returns, we also find that demand shocks influence stock market variance more significantly than supply shocks do. The sub-period analysis finds that global market fluctuations during the global financial crisis have relatively little effect on Korean stock market performance. We also examine a generalized five-variable model that includes the foreign exchange rate and interest rate, confirming the results from the three-variable case.