The value of a neighborhood street with reference to the cul-de-sac

This article provides empirical evidence from Halifax, Nova Scotia, confirming the view that the type of neighborhood street can affect home values. The study identifies two categories of streets-the cul-de-sac and the grid-and measures their impacts on home value. The hypothesis that the cul-de-sac would attract premium values was supported by the study. In this study, the cul-de-sac generated a 29 percent price premium over the grid street pattern. The study concludes with a discussion of planning and development implications.     

On the first passage time processes of brownian motion with positive drift

Abstract

The first passage time processes of Brownian Motion with positive drift are of considerable importance, particularly in life-testing or life-time situation as a natural consequence. It has been used in sequential analysis, e.g. finding the best test for testing the hypothesis of no drift versus the alternative of positive drift in a Brownian Motion. Various properties of the first passage time process of Brownian Motion with positive drift are reviewed and several new properties are investigated. In short, γ-variation properties, characterization, and behaviour at infinity are discussed.     

Multiple Listing Service Subsidies and Economic Efficiency

In an earlier article in this journal, Sefton and Yavas (1995) concluded that subsidizing a monopoly multiple listing service (MLS) can be efficient when the curvature of the representative consumer's demand function leads to overshifting. This paper extends their analysis to a multiple-consumer demand model. It shows that, for the generalized demand configuration considered here, in general, there is no Pareto superior MLS subsidy supportable by nondiscriminatory MLS consumer taxes when the Pareto ranking is imposed without the Hicks–Kaldor compensation principle.     

Product market competition and cost stickiness

Extant literature on cost stickiness has focused on how firm-specific characteristics affect the asymmetric cost behavior. In this paper, we explore how a firm’s operating environment affects the firm’s cost stickiness. Specifically, we examine the effect of product market competition on cost stickiness since a firm’s investment and cost retention decisions partly depend on how the firm interacts with its rival firms in the product markets. Using two firm-level text-based product market competition measures extracted from management disclosures in firms’ 10-K filings (Li et al. in J Account Res 51(2):399–436, 2013; Hoberg and Phillips in Rev Financ Stud 23(10):3773–3811, 2010; J Polit Econ, 2015), we find strong evidence consistent with cost asymmetry increasing in competition after controlling for known economic determinants of cost stickiness. In additional analyses, we also find that the effect of product market competition on the degree of cost stickiness increases in firms’ financial strength, likely because management in financially stronger firms has more resources for investment expenditures in spite of a sales fall. We also find that cost stickiness is increasing in competition if management is optimistic about future demand, whereas competition is not associated with cost asymmetry if management is pessimistic about future demand. Finally, we find that the relationship between competition and cost stickiness, although statistically insignificant at conventional levels, is more pronounced for single-segment firms relative to multi-segment firms.     

On the asymptotic normality of some unbiased estimates

Abstract

Let X _m(n) =(X _j , n, ..., X _{j m,n} ) be a subset of observations of a sample X_n = (X_1n X _2n ... , X _nn ). Here the X_jn 'S in Xn are not necessarily independent or identically distributed, and m(n) mayor may not tend to infinity as n tends to infinity. Suppose the joint density function h_n =h_n (x _m (n); θ) of the X _jn 's in Xm(n) is completely specified except the values of the parameters in the parameter vector θ = (θ1 θ2, ... , θ _k ), where θ belongs to a non-degenerate open subset H of the k-dimensional Euclidean space Rk and k?m(n).     

Value versus Growth: The International Evidence

Value stocks have higher returns than growth stocks in markets around the world. For the period 1975 through 1995, the difference between the average returns on global portfolios of high and low book-to-market stocks is 7.68 percent per year, and value stocks outperform growth stocks in twelve of thirteen major markets. An international capital asset pricing model cannot explain the value premium, but a two-factor model that includes a risk factor for relative distress captures the value premium in international returns.     

Investor protection and the Coasian view

The corporate charters of a sample of Mexican firms show that private firms often significantly enhance the legal protection offered to investors, but public firms rarely do so. We construct a model that endogenizes the degree of investor protection that firms provide, using as a springboard the assumption that legal regimes differ in their ability to enforce precisely filtering contracts that provide protection only in those cases where expropriation can occur. Our model generates predictions about the types of contracts that would be employed and the levels of investor protection that would prevail across different legal regimes in both private and public firms.