The Price Effects of Cash versus Mortgage Transactions

This paper investigates the price effects of cash versus mortgage transactions. Our hypothesis that home sales involving all-cash transactions will sell at discount is borne out by the results of this study. Analyzing a sample of comparable row home dwelling units, we find that all-cash transactions are associated with roughly a 13% price discount relative to transactions involving financing terms that are typical of the market. Cash is King. The findings are consistent with theories regarding buyer—seller behavior.     

New developments in productivity measurement and analysis :

The costs of shortages/rationing are not captured by standard consumer price indices. Thus the change in real GDP per capita is an over-estimate of welfare losses in transition economies. In this study virtual prices are used to calculate new cost of living indices, making it possible to construct more accurate pre-reform and post-reform welfare comparisons. The results for Poland using virtual prices show 62-84% decline in welfare over the transition 1987-92. This welfare loss is approximately one-third of the value obtained using actual prices.     

Re-evaluation of Welfare Changes during the Transition in Poland

The costs of shortages/rationing are not captured by standard consumer price indices. Thus the change in real GDP per capita is an over-estimate of welfare losses in transition economies. In this study virtual prices are used to calculate new cost of living indices, making it possible to construct more accurate pre-reform and post-reform welfare comparisons. The results for Poland using virtual prices show 62-84% decline in welfare over the transition 1987-92. This welfare loss is approximately one-third of the value obtained using actual prices.     

Farm technology and technical efficiency: Evidence from four regions in China

In this paper we fit stochastic frontier production functions to data of Chinese farms grouped into each of four regions—North, Northeast, East, and Southwest—over 1995–1999. These frontier production functions are shown to have statistically different structures, and the elasticities provide some evidence of diminished marginal products of chemical inputs in the East and capital services in the North and Southwest. Labor has a low elasticity except in the North. Standardized technical efficiency scores are estimated for the farms and are shown to have the same structure across regions and to be related to the age of the household head, land fragmentation, and the village migration ratio, controlling for year effects and village or regional fixed effects.     

The impact of settlement period on sales price

This study is an empirical investigation of the impact of settlement period on sales price while controlling for marketing period and standard explanatory variables. The hypothesized positive relationship between settlement period and sales price is confirmed by the results of this study. The estimated coefficient on settlement period is 0.0008 meaning that our market, on average, exacts a premium of 0.08 percent per day of settlement period beyond a norm of 60 days. The estimated coefficient on marketing period (a control variable) is –0.0003 meaning that our market, on average, requires a discount of 0.03 percent per day of marketing period. Our findings show the relative importance of settlement period in making real estate pricing decisions.     

UK Multinationals' Effective Use of Financial Currency‐Hedge Techniques: Estimating and Explaining Foreign Exchange Exposure Using Bilateral Exchange Rates

Using a unique dataset of recently available accounting disclosures, this study examines the relationship between UK multinationals' stock returns and changes in the principal exchange rate to which each firm is most exposed. We find more firms with significant foreign exchange exposure estimates using this firm‐specific principal currency data, compared with those exposure estimates using the broad exchange rate index data prevalent in prior studies. The cross‐sectional variations in such principal‐currency exposure estimates are explained in relation to the financial currency‐hedge techniques that each firm specifically identifies as being used to manage its currency risk. In particular, we provide evidence that firms effectively use foreign currency derivatives and foreign‐denominated debt to reduce the currency risk associated with the bilateral exchange rate to which they are most exposed. This study is important to both the academic and the practitioner communities because it represents the first use of publicly available UK disclosures to improve the estimation and explanation of foreign exchange exposure.     

The Role of Physical Environment in Leisure Service Consumption: Evidence From a Ski Resort Setting

Despite the importance of physical environment in hedonic service consumption, little is known about the extent to which physical environment influences ski resort visitors’ cognition, emotion, and behaviors. This study investigated the relationships among physical environmental stimuli (i.e., layout accessibility, aesthetics, cleanliness, and other visitors), perceived quality of physical environment, excitement, and behavioral intentions in ski resort. This study also attempted to test the moderating role of enduring involvement in the formation of behavioral intentions. Results showed that cleanliness and other visitors significantly and positively influenced visitors’ perceived quality of physical environment and excitement. The results suggest that physical environment is of great importance for the ski resort business. Perceived quality was indeed a significant predictor of excitement, which, in turn, positively influenced behavioral intentions. Finally, the study found that the effect of excitement on behavioral intentions was significant across high and low enduring involvement groups.     

An examination of the relation between asymmetric risk measures,prior returns and expected daily stock returns

We use a sample of individual firm stock returns over the 1988–2009 time period to determine whether: (1) expected daily returns are related to asymmetric risk measures, (2) expected daily returns are related to the directional change of the prior day's price, and (3) our results are robust to the addition of firm size, book-to-market equity and liquidity. We find that investors are compensated for asymmetric risk; however, the positive risk–return relation is present only for our smallest firm quintile. We find a short-term return reversal present in all subgroups, except for the largest firms in our sample. We also document that the low volatility anomaly may be related to firm size and liquidity.     

Adjustments in performance measures: Distributive and procedural justice effects on outcome satisfaction

Adjustments for task difficulty occur regularly in performance evaluations, but their effects on satisfaction with the evaluation process has not been studied. This article reports an experiment examining the procedural and distributive justice effects of making adjustments for task difficulty in performance evaluation. Participants examined territory difficulty and sales‐volume data for a set of salespeople and rated a focal salesperson's performance. Subjects also rated their satisfaction with their performance rating and the fairness of the process. Results show that adjusting for territory (task) difficulty influences satisfaction through an intrapersonal referent effect and through procedural fairness judgments. Results also show that an intrapersonal referent effect occurs even when social‐comparison information is available; the two referents appear to have additive rather than interactive effects. Consistent with the work of van den Bos, Lind, Vermunt, and Wilkie (1997), the procedural justice effect of adjusting for territory difficulty occurs only in the absence of social‐comparison information. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.