Why Do Landlords Include Utilities in Rent? Evidence from the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study (HDS) and the 2002 American Housing Survey (AHS)

This study assesses the decision to include utilities in the rent and the effect of this decision on rents. We utilize individual house-level data from the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study (HDS) and 2002 American Housing Survey (AHS), and determine that the cost of meter installation is not the only reason that utility costs are included in rent. We find evidence that landlords include utilities in the rent to attract more customers. Additionally, our findings demonstrate that utility inclusion behavior differs significantly between old and new building owners. For the hedonic rent estimation, we find that the decision to include the cost of utilities in the rent raises rent.     

Strategic stances and programme performance: assessing outcomes of the US states’ delivery of the child support enforcement programme

Since being added as an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1975, the US child support enforcement (CSE) programme has provided services to both Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and non-TANF families under the name of reducing expenditures on welfare programmes and securing children’s rights to be protected by their parents. The federal government mandates that states collect five performance measures in the CSE programme: (1) paternity establishment, (2) support order establishment, (3) current collection, (4) arrearage collection, and (5) cost-effectiveness. Implementing federal programmes does not give states full discretion, but there exists room for states to exercise discretion in developing their own strategies to effectively deliver services and improve performance. In this paper, using Miles and Snow’s strategic dimensions (1978) and Boyne and Walker’s later studies (2004), states’ strategic stances are categorized into Analyser, Prospector, and Defender, and the effects of states’ strategic stance and their internal implementation factors on the CSE performance are examined using models estimated with ordinary least square (OLS) regression and seemingly unrelated regression (SUR). The strategy classification is widely studied in private organizations, but it has relevance to current public organizations that seek to achieve improvement in performance. The results of the cross-sectional OLS and SUR models suggest that states having an Analyser stance have a positive relationship to two performance indicators (arrearage collection and Cost-Effectiveness) of the CSE programme, and states with Prospector and Defender stances are particularly significant in predicting high paternity establishment in the CSE programme, but no other performance indicator. Past performance is one of the strongest predictors of all five-performance indicators of the CSE programme. State internal implementation factors show mixed impacts in terms of significance and direction on the performance indicators of all the five models.     

Economic and capital market antecedents of venture capital commitments (1960–2010)

Using vector autoregression technique, we examine the interrelation between venture capital flows, economic development, capital market fund-raising activities, and capital market valuation, based on annual data of the United States over the past half-century. We find that venture capital commitments appear to be correlated with GDP and capital market valuation. While capital market fund-raising activities (Initial Public Offerings and Seasoned Equity Offerings) are also correlated with venture capital flows, these effects are subsumed by GDP, indicating that the overall economy drives both venture capital flows and capital market financing activities. Analyses from impulse response functions suggest that shocks to GDP have a permanent effect on venture capital flows, while the impact of capital market valuation (Standard & Poor 500 returns) on venture capital flows is rather short lived. Overall, both economy-wide development and financial market fluctuations seem to impact venture capital flows.     

Investigating the advertising–sales relationship in the Lydia Pinkham data: a bootstrap approach

The dynamic relationship between advertising and sales in the annual Lydia Pinkham data is re-evaluated. Past studies have found a feedback system, although one-way causality from advertising to sales is expected. The bootstrap method is used in this paper as an alternative to the asymptotic method exclusively adopted by past studies. The impulse response analysis based on bivariate autoregressive (AR) model is conducted. Bootstrap-after-bootstrap confidence intervals on impulse responses provide evidence that sales do not cause advertising, contrary to the findings of past studies. Comparison of bootstrap-after-bootstrap prediction intervals calculated from univariate and bivariate AR models further supports this finding. Overall, this paper finds evidence of one-way causality from advertising to sales.