Life Cycle Price Trends and Product Replacement: Implications for the Measurement of Inflation

The paper explores the extent to which products follow systematic pricing patterns over their life cycle and the impact this has on the measurement of inflation. Using a large U.S. scanner data set on supermarket products and applying flexible regression methods, we find that on average prices decline as items age. This life cycle price change is often attributed to quality difference in the construction of CPI as items are replaced due to disappearance or during sample rotations. This introduces a systematic bias in the measurement of inflation. For our data we find that the life cycle bias leads to the underestimation of inflation by around 0.30 percentage points each year for the products examined.     

ICP 2005 Construction Prices: Are They Underestimated in Developing Countries?

Construction prices are lower in developing countries in ICP 2005, which has raised these countries' capital/output ratio in Penn World Tables 7 and 8 and affected growth analyses. We estimate the Colombia/U.S. price ratio for office and apartment buildings in 2005 as a test of the validity of the ICP 2005 methodology for estimating these prices. Our estimate of the Colombia/U.S. price ratio is almost twice the ICP 2005 estimate. We confirm the validity of our results by estimating the cost of constructing office and apartment buildings using 2005 prices for construction materials, equipment, and labor in both countries.     

Forecasting US consumer price index: does nonlinearity matter?

The objective of this article is to predict, both in sample and out of sample, the consumer price index (CPI) of the US economy based on monthly data covering the period of 1980:1–2013:12, using a variety of linear (random walk (RW), autoregressive (AR) and seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA)) and nonlinear (artificial neural network (ANN) and genetic programming (GP)) univariate models. Our results show that, while the SARIMA model is superior relative to other linear and nonlinear models, as it tends to produce smaller forecast errors; statistically, these forecasting gains are not significant relative to higher-order AR and nonlinear models, though simple benchmarks like the RW and AR(1) models are statistically outperformed. Overall, we show that in terms of forecasting the US CPI, accounting for nonlinearity does not necessarily provide us with any statistical gains.     

Estimating fundamental and affordable housing price trends: a study based on Singapore

Policy-makers often impose some cooling measures on the housing market when housing prices rise fast. Such policies yield limited success if housing prices are driven up by fundamentals. Estimating a fundamental price trend from observed price data is a challenge. We present an empirical methodology to separate housing price trends into fundamental and affordable components. Deviating from the common practice, we replace current income by a long-run income measure constructed from household incomes at different quantiles. This income measure provides a more suitable basis for constructing affordable house price levels. It also serves as a better fundamental variable, especially for segmented housing markets like that of Singapore. These price trends provide policy-makers with useful information to intervene into property markets to achieve desirable outcomes. Analysing Singapore data using this methodology shows the magnitudes of the price gaps between actual and fundamental prices and how housing affordability fluctuates over price cycles.     

The role of price risk in China’s agricultural and fisheries exports to the US

This article explores the effect of price risk on the US importers’ optimal allocation of agriculture imports between the major supplier, China, and other competing countries. We first modify a demand system to account for the impacts of own-price risk and cross-price risk, and then apply the model to 16 agricultural and fisheries commodities exported to the US. The estimation results show that importers are sensitive to price risks of 14 Chinese commodities. Comparisons between price risk–trade relations of agricultural and fisheries products and between trade effects of cross-price risk on Chinese goods and substitutes provide strong evidence for explaining the observed trade patterns. Our study highlights the importance of price stability in promoting international trade, especially from developing countries to developed countries.     

Evaluation of the profitability of quality labels in rural tourism accommodation: a hedonic approach using propensity score matching

In recent years, quality labels for the Spanish tourism sector have been developed as part of a competitive strategy focused on the differentiation of the product. Given this development, it is interesting to analyse the profitability of quality labels for the accommodation owners and managers. In particular, this article calculates the profitability of a rural tourism quality label. Through the use of the hedonic price approach, the market valuation of the quality label for rural self-catering cottages is obtained. This valuation is subsequently compared with the expenses incurred by establishments in achieving the quality label. In order to address the usual methodological problems associated with the endogeneity, prior to application of the hedonic approach, the propensity score matching is used. The results indicate that possessing a quality label has a positive impact on the profitability of rural tourism.     

Offset carbon emissions or pay a price premium for avoiding them? A cross-country analysis of motives for climate protection activities

This article contributes to the economic literature on pure and impure public goods by considering two alternatives for contributing to the public good climate protection: offsetting carbon emissions from conventional consumption or paying higher prices for climate-friendly products. We empirically examine a wide range of motives and their impact on individuals’ choice in favour of these two alternatives relying on data from representative international surveys. Our results indicate that environmental awareness, warm glow motives and the desire to set a good example have the most robust effects on both climate protection activities in Germany and the United States. However, some motives differ considerably between both alternatives and the two countries. A green identity enhances the willingness to pay a price premium for climate-friendly goods or services in Germany, while social norms seem to be of much higher relevance in the United States. Our results further suggest that the choice of climate protection activities, especially of carbon offsetting, entails a high degree of uncertainty.     

地方官员更替、企业辖区知名度与股价同步性

以2009～2013年我国A股上市公司为研究样本,实证分析地方官员更替、辖区企业知名度与股价同步性的关系,结果表明:地市级政府官员变更所带来的政治不确定性会显著降低辖区企业的股价同步性,并且相对于新任官员来源于本地而言,新任官员来源于异地更能够显著地降低辖区内企业的股价同步性.进一步研究还发现,当地市级政府官员发生变更时,相对于辖区知名度较高的企业而言,辖区知名度较低的企业会披露更多的企业私有信息以应对政治不确定性风险,从而其股价同步性有了更大程度的降低.研究的结论证实了政治不确定风险的增加能够显著降低辖区内企业的股价同步性,客观上有助于提高股价的信息含量.     

人民币跨境流动与金融失衡——基于VAR和门限模型的经验分析

基于2010~2014年月度数据,从汇率波动、资本流动以及资产价格波动等渠道,利用 VAR 模型和门限模型研究人民币跨境流动对金融失衡的影响机制。研究表明：从冲击效应看,人民币国际化背景下,金融失衡对汇率波动、资本流动和资产价格波动的反应程度显著,其中,对资产价格的反应程度最强;人民币跨境流动程度和汇率波动程度对金融失衡存在显著的门限效应。因此,为推动人民币跨境流动,应强调在推进汇率市场化改革和加强国际资本流动监管的基础上,加大稳定国内资产价格的力度,防范金融失衡。