Expropriation risk and housing prices: Evidence from an emerging market

This paper examines the microeconomic determinants of residential real estate prices in Caracas, Venezuela, using a private database containing 17,526 transactions from 2008 to 2009. The particular institutional characteristics of many countries in Latin America, and Venezuela in particular, where land invasions and expropriations (with only partial compensation) have been common threats to property owners, provide us with an opportunity to test the effects of these risks on housing prices using a unique database. The effect of these risks on property prices is negative and significant. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to quantify these impacts in the Hedonic pricing literature applied to real estate. Size, the number of parking spaces, the age of the property, the incidence of crime, and the average income in the neighborhood are significant determinants of prices. Finally, this paper analyzes the microeconomic determinants of housing prices at the municipal level.     

Persistent poverty and informal credit

This paper explores the consequences of nonlinear wealth dynamics for the formation of bilateral credit arrangements to help manage idiosyncratic risk. Using original data on expected wealth dynamics, social networks and informal loans among southern Ethiopian pastoralist households, we find that the threshold at which expected wealth dynamics bifurcate serves as a focal point at which lending is concentrated. Informal lending responds to recipients' losses but only so long as the recipients are not “too poor”. Our results suggest that when shocks can have long term effects, loans are best understood as providing a safety net rather than a scale-neutral insurance mechanism. Furthermore, the persistently poor are excluded from social networks that are necessary to obtain loans given in response to shocks.     

Further simulation evidence on the performance of the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator

We extend the simulation results in Santos Silva and Tenreyro (2006, The log of gravity, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 88, 641-658) by considering a novel data-generating process. Our results confirm that the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator is generally well behaved, even when the proportion of zeros in the sample is very large.     

The influence of green practices on supply chain performance: A case study approach

The main objective of this exploratory paper is to investigate the relationships between green practices of supply chain management and supply chain performance. This relationship is investigated in the context of the automotive industry. Five research propositions are suggested and tested with empirical data derived from five case studies taken from the Portuguese automotive supply chain. The data analysis identifies the most important green practices considered by managers, as well as the performance measures that are most appropriate and most widely used as means to evaluate the influence of green practices on supply chain performance. A conceptual model was derived from the data analysis and it can be used to assess the influence of green practices on supply chain performance. This model provides evidence as to which green practices have positive effects on quality, customer satisfaction and efficiency. It also identifies the practices which have negative effects on supply chain performance.     

The Usage of Electronic Data Interchange in the Hotel Industry

This study investigates the major factors that can influence electronic data interchange (EDI) within the hotel industry. Results illustrate that some profile, channel, and task variables can influence EDI usage in the areas of purchasing, financing, and strategy. By identifying and testing relevant intraorganizational variables, this study offers insights to academics and practitioners regarding the usage of EDI within the hotel industry. Indications are EDI could become an important tool for hotels to use in conducting business in both an interorganizational and intraorganizational manner.     

Applicability of global value chains analysis to tourism: issues of governance and upgrading

Tourism firms are increasingly integrated in value chains that often operate across many different countries. As a result, the concepts and the methodology of the global value chains begin to be applied to the tourism industry. This paper aims to explore the applicability of this methodological approach for a specific service industry, such as tourism. It pays particular attention to the impact of different patterns of governance within global tourism value chains on the possible forms of upgrading. First, a set of regional case studies carried out on this subject leads us to identify the main patterns of governance in the Andalusian tourism industry. Secondly, an empirical analysis allows us to consider in which way upgrading can vary according to the governance patterns.     

Monetary policy shocks and productivity measures in the G-7 countries

An implication of two-country international real business cycle models is that total factor productivity should be an exogenous stochastic process. Economic theories which feature labor hoarding, variable capacity utilization, and increasing returns predict that measured productivity shifts are not exogenous; instead, expansionary aggregate demand shocks should lead to an increase in measured productivity. For each of the G-7 countries, this paper measures quarterly aggregate total factor productivity for the domestic country and its rest-of-world (G-6) counterpart. In each case the domestic productivity measures are not strictly exogenous: expansionary U.S. monetary policy shocks, as well as other G-6 monetary policy shocks, lead to productivity expansions. The evidence indicates that international business cycle models are misspecified unless they feature endogenous productivity mechanisms.Received: June 2001, Accepted: December 2001, JEL Classification: E5, F4Correspondence to: Charles L. EvansFor their helpful comments, we thank Mario Crucini, Patricia Reynolds, and Steve Strongin. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago or the Federal Reserve System.     

The value of money in a dynamic equilibrium model

Summary. This paper studies the pricing of money in an infinite-horizon economy with heterogeneous agents, incomplete financial markets and arbitrary borrowing restrictions. Purchases of the consumption good are subject to a cash-in-advance constraint. Under general conditions I show that the price of money is equal to its fundamental value, where this value is defined over all state-price processes that are compatible with the existence of no-arbitrage opportunities. This equality implies that the cash-in-advance constraint is binding infinitely often for all agents in the economy. The analysis highlights certain differences in the determination of the price of money with respect to models with money in the utility function that bear on the optimal implementation of economic policies.Received: 23 October 2003, Revised: 26 August 2004 JEL Classification Numbers: D52, E44, G12.M.S. Santos: This paper is an outgrowth of an earlier collaboration with Michael Woodford. I have also benefitted from various discussions with Eduardo Gimenez, Alejandro Hernandez, and Miguel Iraola. Some very useful comments by an anonymous referee are greatly appreciated.     

巴西的非凡之旅

2005年3月，巴西宣布不再续整与国际货币基金组织的协议。与国际货币基金组织连续进行规划合作6年后的此项决定，成为一个重要的里程碑，标志着巴西的非凡经济之旅。