Commodity house prices

This paper studies how commodity price movements have affected the local house prices in commodity-dependent economies, Australia and New Zealand. We build a geographically hierarchical empirical model and find that the commodity prices influence local house prices directly and also indirectly through macroeconomic variables. The impacts of commodity price changes are analogous to “income shocks” rather than “cost shocks”. Regional heterogeneity is also observed in terms of differential dynamic responses of local house prices to energy versus non-energy commodity price movements. The results are robust to alternative approaches. Directions for future research are also discussed.     

The Influence of Destination-Country Image on Prospective Tourists’ Visit Intention: Testing Three Competing Models

The concept of destination-country image (DCI) in tourism context is an integration of two constructs from different fields: country image from international marketing and destination image from tourism. Based on the concept of attitude in the theory of reasoned action and halo effect view, this study explains the macro and micro structures that support DCI, and tests the influence of the original DCI on visit intention of prospective tourists through three competing models. The results show that the macro DCI includes four dimensions: country character, country competence, people character and people competence; the micro DCI is composed of three dimensions: natural attraction, cultural attraction and service facility. Full mediating model is supported, which indicates that macro DCI has an indirect effect on visit intention through micro DCI. This study proposes an integrated construct of the DCI and full mediating model, which adds knowledge of the relationship between original image and potential tourist's visit intention.     

The role of private information in dynamic matching and bargaining: Can it be good for efficiency?

We consider a private information replica of the dynamic matching and bargaining model of Mortensen and Wright (2002). We find that private information typically deters entry. But, the welfare can actually be higher under private information.     

A note on globalization and urban residential rents

We present evidence on the impact of international economic openness upon residential real estate, consistent with the well-known Balassa–Samuelson effect, which suggests that increasing openness raises relative prices of non-tradable goods and services. Using a data set for 46 cities in different countries, we find that urban rents are positively affected by the openness of the economy and by city size.     

Is Perceived Creativity‐Reward Contingency Good for Creativity? The Role of Challenge and Threat Appraisals

To address the complex effect of perceived reward for creativity on creative performance, we examined the role of cognitive appraisal as an individual difference variable. An individual's appraisal of reward for creativity, including challenge appraisal (perceived potential for recognition, growth, or mastery) and threat appraisal (perceived potential for revealing incompetence and damaging self‐respect), is hypothesized to shape the effects of perceived reward for creativity. We further expect creativity‐related intrinsic motivation to play a mediating role in the perceived reward‐creativity relationship. The results of a three‐wave field study showed that when challenge appraisal was high, perceived reward was positively related to creative performance through creativity‐related intrinsic motivation, whereas when threat appraisal was high, perceived reward was negatively related to creative performance through creativity‐related intrinsic motivation. A similar analysis showed that intrinsic task motivation was not able to channel the moderating effect of perceived reward and individual appraisal on creative performance. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Effect of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act on Analyst Forecast Properties: The Impact of Firm Size and Growth Opportunities

Abstract:  We provide evidence that the effect of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (the Act) of 1995 on analyst forecast properties is conditional on firm size and growth opportunities. We show that analyst coverage, frequency of forecast revisions, forecast errors and dispersion after the Act decreased for large firms and for firms with low growth opportunities but increased for small firms and for firms with high growth opportunities. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the Act results in additional high quality disclosures in large firms, which face higher litigation risk and tighter scrutiny from investors but not in smaller firms. Our findings of increases in analyst coverage and revision but deterioration in accuracy and precision of analyst forecasts for firms with high growth opportunities after the Act suggest that in spite of increased corporate disclosures, the information environment for analysts deteriorated in those firms.     

Profit opportunities with the American put-call parity when dividends are not expected

The objective of this research is to study borrowing and lending profit opportunities with the put-call parity of American options when dividends on the stock are not expected. Studying profit opportunities embedded in the put-call parity is intriguing because of their relative simplicity. The only assumptions necessary for the parity to hold are that option markets are frictionless and generate efficient prices of puts and calls around the underlying stock price. For this reason alone (parsimony of postulates) the put-call parity is a tempting vehicle for studying option market efficiency. In this work it is shown that both synthetic lending and borrowing parities (before and after transaction costs), on average and ex post, have negative expected profits (i.e. put-call parity implied rates are inferior to the observed riskless rate). When certain trading rules are established, however, empirical evidence of substantial profit opportunities with both lending and borrowing with the American parity (even after considering transaction costs) is observed. It is also shown that these opportunities are greater for some stocks than for others. The existence of these disparities might be an indication that the pricing mechanism of the respective options is not always in sync. The duration of disequilibrium between the options market and the stock market suggests that such occurrences are not just random bursts.     

Changes in REIT Structure and Stock Performance: Evidence from the Monday Stock Anomaly

It is well documented that REITs in the 1990s experienced significant changes in their structure and attracted greater institutional participation. This article finds that REIT stocks with higher institutional holdings perform better on Monday than REITs with lower institutional holdings during the 1990s, but not in the 1980s. Furthermore, REITs that went public in the 1990s are the ones associated with the shift in the Monday return pattern. Our study supports the claim that the change in REIT structure and the increase in institutional participation in the REIT market in the 1990s make REIT stocks behave more like other equities in the stock market.     

Redistribution through education and other transfer mechanisms

Educational subsidies are frequently justified as a method of altering the income distribution. It is thus natural to compare education to other tax-transfer schemes designed to achieve distributional objectives. While equity-efficiency trade-offs are frequently discussed, they are rarely explicitly treated. This paper creates a general equilibrium model of school attendance, labor supply, wage determination, and aggregate production, which is used to compare alternative redistribution devices in terms of both deadweight loss and distributional outcomes. A wage subsidy generally dominates tuition subsidies across a wide range of fundamental parameters for the economy. Both are generally superior to a negative income tax. With externalities in production, however, there is an unambiguous role for governmental subsidy of education, because it both raises GDP and creates a more equal income distribution.     

科技和全球化如何在二十一世纪驱动中国发展

每当谈起中国，我总不禁提起那次和一个做股票经纪的美国朋友吃饭的故事。他说他在华尔街获利颇丰，且忙得不亦乐乎，因此不需要跟中国打交道，谢谢你的美意。我随后跟他讲述了中国对能源和金属价格，海运，美国债券市场的冲击，以及这些冲击对美国乃至全球利率，甚至房地产价格的影响，更无需强调，“中国价格”正在导致某些人群失业和部分企业倒闭，这些和其他更多的因素无疑会对华尔街产生影响。他无言以对了。