Lessons from Over 30 Years of Buy versus Rent Decisions: Is the American Dream Always Wise?

Homeownership is touted as the “American Dream.” It is credited with enhancing wealth; increasing civic pride; and improving self‐esteem, crime prevention, child development and educational outcomes, among other benefits. This article does not dispute any of these claims. Instead, this study hypothesizes that crowding toward homeownership raises the price of homes above their fundamental value resulting in the purchase of a home becoming a contraindicative action. After setting the holding period to the average American's tenure in a residence, renting (not buying) proves to be the superior investment strategy over most of the study period.     

The relative importance of project success dimensions

Traditionally, the success of a project is assessed using internal measures such as technical and operational goals, and meeting schedule and budget. More recently, it has been recognized that several other measures should be used to define project success. These measures reflect external effectiveness: the project's impact on its customers, and on the developing organization itself.
In our study of 110 defense projects performed by Israeli industry, we used a multidimensional approach to measure the success of defense projects. Based on previous studies, we defined four dimensions of success: meeting design goals ; benefits to the customer ; benefits to the developing organization ; and benefits to the defense and national infrastructure . For each project, we asked three different stakeholders (the customer, the developing organization, and the coordinating office within the Ministry of Defense) for their views on the relative importance of these dimensions of success. Analysis of the data revealed that the dimension benefits to the customer is by far the most important success dimension. The second in importance is meeting design goals . The other two dimensions are relatively unimportant.     

The Short Sale Stigma

Despite a recent upturn, housing prices remain in flux in most cities nationwide. Lenders are still left dealing with a glut of distressed properties. They can choose to foreclose on the property or allow the owner/mortgagor to attempt to sell the property for less than the outstanding balance of the mortgage in a short sale agreement. The best way to clear the market of distressed properties is an important policy question. This is the first study to examine not only the price and time on market effect of being a short sale but also whether the short sale process itself creates a market stigma.     

Implications of a TAF program stigma for lenders: the case of publicly traded banks versus privately held banks

Term auction facility (TAF) was created during the financial crisis as a substitute for the Federal Reserve’s discount window, the lender of last resort. We hypothesize if TAF borrowing is viewed as a bailout then publicly traded banks would borrow relatively fewer TAF funds to avoid a bailout stigma. We find publicly traded banks did borrow less (as a percent of total assets) in the TAF program than privately held banks. Further, too-big-to-fail banks and investment banks borrowed relatively less than other publicly traded banks indicating greater levels of public scrutiny reduces borrowing under emergency government liquidity programs. We also find that publicly traded banks pledged lower quality and less liquid collateral than private banks when borrowing under the program. Our results suggest TAF provided more benefit to traditional privately held banks with strong balance sheets that were able to borrow relatively greater amounts in anticipation of either future liquidity needs as suggested by Ivashina and Scharfstein (J Financ Econ 97:319–338, 2010) or increased lending as found by Berger et al. (The Federal Reserve’s discount window and TAF programs: “pushing on a string?” Working paper, University of South Carolina, 2014).     

The Economic Consequences of Banks’ Derivatives Use in Good Times and Bad Times

In a sample of 335 commercial banks, we do not detect a systematic effect on bank values from derivatives use in either the high growth period of 2003–2005 or the low growth period of 2007–2009. These findings apply to all types of derivatives including credit default swaps. Our results suggest that banks take a more balanced approach and restrict their derivative activities to providing derivative services for customers and risk management. We also find that the market disciplined banks significantly for taking TARP funds, indicating that receiving TARP funds was a signal that the banks were financially distressed. Lastly, we cannot discern valuation effects resulting from derivatives use even in large and poorly capitalized banks that are more likely to take risk-shifting opportunities. Collectively, we find no compelling evidence supporting the widespread allegation that derivatives use increased banks’ speculating behaviors and significantly contributed to the loss of value during the subprime mortgage crisis.     

Minimum Service Requirements, Limited Brokers and Menuing of Services

In the past few years, many states have responded to the increasing number of limited service brokers by passing minimum service requirements. Limited service brokers can be viewed as those brokers who are offering their marketing and representative services A La Carte as opposed to the more traditional full-services brokers offering of a Table D??h?te (one size fits all) for their services. Supporters claim the legislation is necessary to protect consumers who are otherwise hurt by limited service brokers, but critics assert that this legislation is anti-competitive and not necessary. This study provides empirical evidence that sellers using limited service brokers experience a trade-off between a higher selling price and longer marketing spans with accompanying lower probabilities of finding a buyer during a given marketing period.     

Triangulation of audit evidence in fraud risk assessments

Drawing on the triangulation framework of audit evidence ( and ), we experimentally test for the conditions, if any, under which financial-statement auditors alter their fraud-risk assessments based on whether external evidence provides positive or negative news about underlying business performance. We focus on the condition in which two kinds of management-controlled audit evidence – evidence from the financial statements and evidence from internal data depicting performance of a key business process – is contradicted by external evidence suggesting that a key business objective has not been attained. According to the triangulation framework, such contradictory external evidence should heighten auditors’ skepticism about the veracity of management-controlled evidence and increase their assessment of fraud risk.     

Bank bailouts and corporate insider trading during the financial crisis of 2007–2009

Jagolinzer et al. (The information content of insider trades around government intervention during the financial crisis. Working paper, 2014) examine insider trading at banks that were bailed out by the U.S. taxpayers. They provide evidence that insiders of bailed-out banks profitably purchased their banks’ shares over a 9 month period after the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was announced in October 2008. They find that the purchases were profitable for up to 12 months after the purchases. However, Liu et al. (J Bank Finance 37:5048–5061, 2013) find that shareholder gains at the bailed out banks occurred only after the banks paid back the TARP funds, which in most cases occurred after 2010. In this paper we extend Jagolinzer et al.’s (2014) analysis to financial institutions that did not receive TARP funding as well as to non-financial firms. We find that insiders of the non-TARP financial and the non-financial firms traded their shares profitably after the TARP program was announced. Insider share purchases at these firms were highly profitable for up to 12 months after the purchases. However, insider purchases at the bailed-out banks were slightly profitable only for a month after the purchases, after which the shares that were bought declined in value. Our results for the TARP banks do not corroborate Jagolinzer et al.’s (2014) results, but are consistent with the evidence in Liu et al. (2013) and several other papers that examine the wealth effects of TARP program announcements and fund repayments.

     

How Productive Are Economics and Finance PhDs?

This article analyses the research productivity of more than 200 individuals in academe with a PhD in economics and finance from (mostly) Australian universities. We find the number of publications accumulates linearly with experience, while citations increase exponentially, pointing to network effects. Panel regressions indicate: (1) the key role of experience in determining research outcomes; (2) the usual quadratic approach substantially under-estimates the role of diminishing returns to experience; (3) the university where an individual works is mostly unimportant for publications and citations. ‘Prime academic age’, when research has maximum impact, is attained about 11 years after the PhD.     

The Market for Economics and Finance PhDs

This paper presents new information about the post-graduation activities of those with a PhD in economics and finance from an Australian university. Approximately 40 per cent have an academic job, while the other 60 per cent work elsewhere or engage in other activities. The analysis includes origin‒destination networks for both the academic and non-academic markets, the determinants of earnings and measures of overqualification and underemployment. The findings of the paper can provide guidance for those completing or contemplating PhD studies.