Efficiency and Incentives in Residential Brokerage

The literature on broker intermediation in residential real estate has shown positive pricing effects associated with the use of a broker and mixed results as far as the pricing effects of nonstandard commission structures. On the premise that real estate broker incentives emanate from two primary sources, factors that increase broker operating efficiency and negotiable features arising from the relationship between the listing broker and the seller, this study assesses the degree to which these incentives affect the marketing time, probability of sale, and selling price of single-family houses. Of particular interest, this study investigates efficiency and broker intermediation effects on residential property associated with a broker concentrating his listings into a service area. Empirical results show that properties within an individual broker??s GIS-determined service area are more likely to sell, sell faster, and sell with an associated price premium. These effects are more concentrated in the market for higher priced homes. Also, additional compensation favorably motivates the broker with higher-priced properties, but has no effect on the sale of lower-priced properties.     

Enhancing the Efficiency of Water Supply—Product Market Competition Versus Trade

In most developed countries, the provision of water is organized at a local level. The costs and tariffs vary significantly, even between adjacent water utilities. Such heterogeneity is an obvious indication of the sector??s overall inefficiency and stresses a need for institutional adjustments. We show that cooperation by water trade and the introduction of competition by common carriage between adjacent utilities are valuable alternatives to improve the industry??s efficiency, even when mergers are not feasible. Because both approaches require the physical connection of neighboring networks, they may have similar effects. This paper analyzes and compares the relevant welfare gains and shows that production efficiency and retail prices may differ depending on the initial cost differential, the application of regulations and the distribution of bargaining power. Using a theoretical model, we show that at higher initial production cost differentials, welfare is higher under competitive conditions, even in a lower-bound benchmark case without any regulation.     

Customer preferences for customized household furniture

In the context of market globalization, furniture manufacturers attempt to differentiate their products to attain competitive advantages. Mass customization is one strategy enabling such differentiation. This study measured, through a choice-based conjoint analysis, the value that US American consumers assign to the availability of customization when buying furniture. Roughly 50% of consumers’ product choice is driven by price, 20% by product customization, 20% by delivery time, and 10% by the time needed to customize the product. Thus, while there is a customer segment driven by price, there also is a segment, consisting mainly of females, that values product customization.     

Evidence of Information Asymmetries in the Market for Residential Condominiums

Previous research (Rutherford et al. 2005; Levitt and Syverson 2005) identify and quantify agency problems in the brokerage of single-family houses. Real estate agents are found to receive a premium when selling their own houses in comparison to similar client-owned houses. Given the homogeneity of the condominium market in comparison to the single-family house market, we use a large sample of condominium transactions to examine if agency problems exist in the condominium market. Controlling for sample selection and endogeneity bias of the data, we find evidence for a similar price premium for agent-owned condominiums. In contrast to the results for single-family houses in the same geographic market, we find that agent-owned condominiums must stay on the market longer to receive a higher price.

Naïve Responses to Kind Delegation

People do not like to delegate the distribution of favors. To explain this reluctance, we disentangle reward motives in an experiment in which an investor can directly transfer money to a trustee or delegate this decision to another investor. Varying the transfer values of the investor and delegate, we find that the trustee's rewards follow a rather simple pattern. In all situations, both investors are rewarded, but the person who ultimately decides gets a higher reward. Unlike studies on the punishment of delegated unkind decisions, our results do not reveal a more sophisticated reward behavior that takes people's responsibility into account. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Financial Misrepresentation and Its Impact on Rivals

This paper examines how the announcement of an accusation of fraudulent financial misrepresentation affects industry rivals of the accused firm. Consistent with the importance of the industry competition effect, we find that rivals in less competitive industries benefit from the event. However, in competitive industries, the information spillover effect dominates the competition effect, resulting in negative returns to rival shareholders following the event. The spillover effect increases in importance with the severity of the accusation and is more important for opaque rivals and for rivals that had positive stock price reactions to past positive earnings surprises of the accused firm.