COMMERCIAL PROPERTY PRICE INDEXES AND THE SYSTEM OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

This paper studies the problems associated with the construction of price indexes for commercial properties that could be used in the System of National Accounts (SNA). Property price indexes are required for the stocks of commercial properties in the Balance Sheets of the country. Related service price indexes for the land and structure input components of a commercial property are required in the Production Accounts of the country if the Multifactor Productivity of the Commercial Property Industry is calculated as part of the SNA. The paper reviews existing methods for constructing an overall Commercial Property Price Index (CPPI) and concludes that most methods are biased (due to their neglect of depreciation) and more importantly, not able to provide separate land and structure subindexes. A class of hedonic regression models that is not subject to these problems is discussed.     

Nonresponse in panel data: The impact on estimates of a life cycle consumption function

If missing observations in a panel data set are not missing at random, many widely applied estimators may be inconsistent. In this paper we examine empirically several ways to reveal the nature and severity of the selectivity problem due to nonresponse, as well as a number of methods to estimate the resulting models. Using a life cycle consumption function and data from the Expenditure Index Panel from the Netherlands, we discuss simple procedures that can be used to assess whether observations are missing at random, and we consider more complicated estimation procedures that can be used to obtain consistent or efficient estimates in case of selectivity of attrition bias. Finally, some attention is paid to the differences in identification, consistency, and efficiency between inferences from a single wave of the panel, a balanced sub-panel, and an unbalanced panel.     

Downward sloping demand for environmental amenities and international compensation: elephant conservation and strategic culling

Conventional wisdom holds that monetary compensation for positive transboundary externalities will promote conservation of resource amenities. We demonstrate that, in the case of elephant conservation, international transfers may also result in strategic behavior by host countries, with adverse implications for global welfare and in situ stocks.     

To live or let die? An empirical analysis of piecemeal voluntary corporate liquidations

This paper is an in-depth investigation of 61 publicly-traded firms that chose to liquidate voluntarily on a piecemeal basis during the 1970s and 1980s. In comparison with their industry peers, these firms have lower Tobin's Q, a higher percentage of equity ownership by management and the board, a higher incidence of a member of the corporation's founding family in a key executive position or on the board, and a higher incidence of asset sales and prior attempts to transfer control of the firm. The average excess stock return of 20% around liquidation announcements is positively correlated with the fraction of stock owned by management and the board. These results suggest that firms that make the value enhancing decision to voluntarily liquidate confront low future growth opportunities, but the absence of future growth opportunities is not sufficient to bring about this decision. It is also necessary that decision makers have a vested interest in the outcome, either because of their ownership stake or because of their family affiliation with the business, and that the valuation consequences of the decision are greater, the more closely aligned are managerial and shareholder interests.     

Growth,budget deficits,and fiscal policies in an overlapping generations model

Analyzing an overlapping generations model with growing endowments and a government sector that is permitted to have a budget deficit forces the real interest factor to deviate from Samuelson's biological interest factor. Fiscal policies then affect the real interest factor, which in turn has consequences both for the direction and the effectiveness of those fiscal policies. These consequences depend upon the borrowing position of the young.We would like to thank Jo Ritzen, Marcel Peeters, Casper de Vries, Georg Tillmann, Richard Gigengack, an anonymous referee, and the participants of workshops at Erasmus University and the University of Groningen for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. We owe a special debt to Claus Weddepohl for stimulating our interest in this subject. The paper was presented at the 5th annual meeting of the European Economic Association, Lisbon 1990.     

Zur Geschichte der Theorie des „Deficit Spending“: Der Spätphysiokrat Germain Garnier

Ohne ZusammenfassungDie Übersetzung der im Text enthaltenen Zitate aus Garniers Abrégé élémentaire des principles de l'économie politique habe ich selbst nach dem französischen Original vorgenommen. Alle übrigen Zitate, einschließlich der Kommentare Garniers zu Smiths Reichtum der Nationen, sind im Original wiedergegeben.Für wertvolle Literaturhinweise bin ich Prof. T. W. Hutchison und R. L. Meek zu tiefem Dank verpflichtet, desgleichen Sir R. F. Harrod für Anregungen und P. Sraffa für Informationen betreffend den literarischen Nachlaß und die private Bibliothek von J. M. Keynes. Selbstverständlich bin ich für die in der vorliegenden Arbeit vertretenen Ansichten allein verantwortlich.     

Empowerment and intimate partner violence: Domestic abuse when household income is uncertain

Intimate partner violence is an important global health problem that remains ill understood. Several studies have documented that female empowerment may increase violence against women—the so‐called “male backlash.” We propose a utilitarian explanation for this phenomenon, based on the assumption that violence may be used as an instrument to affect the distribution of the household surplus between the spouses. Our main result is that promoting norms of gender equity (or otherwise enhancing the prospects of divorced women) may inadvertently promote violence against women in settings where production outcomes are uncertain.     

A SURVEY OF U.S. CORPORATE FINANCING INNOVATIONS: 1970–1997

In the past 30 years, major changes have occurred not only in the kinds of securities issued, but also in the way securities are issued and in the national markets where they are issued. Traditional registered offerings have been partly displaced by shelf registered offerings and Rule 144A private offerings. And once exclusively domestic U.S offerings are increasingly being supplemented by foreign market offerings by U.S. companies, and by simultaneously domestic and foreign offerings. In 1997, for example, 11% of all proceeds raised by U.S. corporations were issued in one or more foreign markets. Of the $105 billion raised in these offerings, $31 billion was denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar.
While traditional securities still dominate the market, the authors' research indicates that the pace of innovation in the design of securities also increased markedly during the 1980s and has continued strong throughout the 1990s. In 1997, for example, innovative securities accounted for almost 30% of total domestic offerings. Three of the most common objectives of such securities have been (1) to manage the interest rate (and other financial price) risk faced by investors and issuers; (2) to reduce information costs faced by investors when buying securities from issuers with better information about their own prospects (a condition known as "information asymmetry"); and (3) to increase the tradability of financial assets.     

THE INTRA-INDUSTRY EFFECTS OF OPEN MARKET SHARE REPURCHASES: CONTAGION OR COMPETITIVE?

We examine the extent to which announcements of open market share repurchase programs affect the valuation of competing firms in the same industry. On average, although firms announcing open market share repurchase programs experience a significantly positive stock price reaction at announcement, portfolios of rival firms in the same industry experience a significant and contemporaneous negative stock price reaction. This suggests that perceived changes in the competitive positions of the repurchasing firms occur at the expense of rival firms and dominate any signals of favorable industry conditions. Thus, the competitive intra-industry effects of open market repurchases outweigh any contagion effects. In addition, cross-sectional tests indicate that these competitive effects are more pronounced in industries characterized by a lower degree of competition and less correlation between the stock returns of the repurchasing firm and its rivals.