The Economics of Style: Measuring the Price Effect of Neo‐Traditional Architecture in Housing

Vintage effects have received considerable attention from economists in the context of house prices. Although strongly related, the impact of architectural building styles on prices has not been studied yet. Using a cross‐sectional hedonic price analysis including building styles of recently developed homes in the Netherlands we find a significant price premium for housing with neo‐traditional architecture. Extensive intervention by local authorities on the supply side of the housing market seems the most probable explanation of this effect. The decreasing price premium over time reflects the impact of supply restrictions on price, but also indicates that style does matter.     

Crisis and recovery in office markets

From 1987 to 1993, U.S. office markets were in a depression similar in length and magnitude to that of the 1930s. Vacancy rates doubled, development nearly halted, and prices and rents fell precipitously. A disaster of this magnitude requires multiple causes. Poor tax policies in Washington were important causes, as was a pervasive tendency of developers and others to overforecast the growth of office employment. However, the difference between this and earlier postwar office recessions appears to be explained mostly by the effects of the microchip revolution, which entered a new phase starting in the mid-1980s. The paper concludes with relatively optimistic notes on the likely demand growth that will result from the new and improved services that the microchip revolution will permit.     

Indicators of Housing Finance Intergenerational Wealth Transfers

This paper sheds light on intrafamilial gifts for housing. By using Austrian intergenerational survey data various questions are addressed. First, is familial aid more or less widespread in given social strata? Second, what are the determinants and motives for family gifts? And third, what are the possible impacts on the choice set of their recipients? Probit estimates show that gifts significantly depend on the parents lifetime financial position, consistent with life cycle permanent income (LCPI) approaches. Gifts to remove liquidity constraints are more difficult to reconcile with LCPI. “Dynastic” gifts that support household formation and ownership acquisition may be interpreted as intergenerational exchange. They occur more frequently than periodical cash transfers where altruistic behavior cannot be ruled out.     

Would China＇s Sovereign Wealth Fund Be a Menace to the USA？

The sovereign wealth club acquired a new member with the official launch of the China Investment Corporation （CIC） on 29 September 2007. The arrival of CIC has further heated up debate regarding sovereign wealth funds （SWFs） and their potential implications for global financial markets. This is because, in carrying out its investments, CIC can tap into China＇s huge official foreign exchange reserves, which by April 2008 had surged to US$1.76tn. CIC＇s initial working capital of US$2OObn makes it the fifth largest SWFs in the world today. This article seeks to analyze CIC＇s investment strategies, as well as their potential economic and political implications for global as well as US financial markets.     

Roger Lowenstein. Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing. New York: Penguin, 2004. ix + 270 pp. ISBN 1-59420-003-3, $24.95 (cloth); 0-14-303-467-7, $15.00 (paper).

What happened on Wall Street from 1997 to 2002 was a financialversion of the perfect storm. Almost everything that could gowrong did go wrong simultaneously. The Securities and ExchangeCommission reforms of the 1930s had closed many of the loopholesfor chicanery, but new paths to questionable practices and debasedprinciples eventually emerged. In his examination of the originsof the "dot.com bubble" and the circumstances of the balloon’sbursting, Roger Lowenstein narrates clearly     

Qualitative discrete multiple criteria choice models in regional planning

The paper provides a concise review of evaluation methods for decision problems in which qualitative data is involved. Special attention is paid to a new qualitative evaluation method: the regime method. An application of the regime method is given in the field of multiregional conflict analysis.