On the welfare cost of rare housing disasters

This paper examines the welfare cost of rare housing disasters characterized by large drops in house prices. I construct an OLG general equilibrium model with recursive preferences and housing disaster shocks. The likelihood and magnitude of housing disasters are inferred from historical housing market experiences in the OECD. The model shows that despite the rarity of housing disasters, Canadian households would willingly give up 6 percent of their non-housing consumption each year to eliminate the housing disaster risk. The welfare evaluation of this risk, however, varies considerably across age groups. The risk translates into a welfare loss of as much as 16 percent of annual non-housing consumption for the old, but a welfare gain of 2 percent for the young. This asymmetry stems from the fact that, compared to the old, younger households suffer less from house price declines in disaster periods, due to smaller holdings of housing assets, and benefit from lower house prices in normal periods, due to the negative price effect of disaster risk.     

Real estate collateral value and investment: The case of China

Previous research on the United States and Japan finds economically large impacts of changing real estate collateral value on firm investment that amplified the business cycles of those countries. Working with unique data on land values in 35 major Chinese markets and a panel of firms outside the real estate industry, we estimate investment equations that yield no evidence of a collateral channel effect. Further analysis indicates that China’s debt is not characterized by the frictions that give rise to collateral channel effects elsewhere. Essentially, financially constrained borrowers appear able credibly to commit to repay debt in China. While there is no impact on investment via the collateral channel, our results should not be interpreted as implying there will be no negative fallout from a potential real estate bust on the Chinese economy. There likely would be, but through different channels.     

Towards a ‘Post‐Neoliberal’ Mode of Housing Regulation? The Israeli Social Protest of Summer 2011

In the summer of 2011, after decades of virtually uncontested neoliberalization, Israel was swept by unprecedented protests against the rising cost of living, social inequality and, most particularly, escalating housing prices. Within two weeks, a small protest camp established on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv had grown into a mass movement involving hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Given an ambivalent sense of the significance of urban movements in bringing about social change, the aim of this article is to analyze whether the Israeli social protest was able to push forward a post‐neoliberal mode of housing regulation. Building on a framework developed by Brenner, Peck and Theodore to grasp transformations in the landscape of regulatory restructuring, this article argues that the movement has indeed achieved a far‐reaching hegemonic shift in public discourse and also become an important driver in promoting regulatory experiments. Despite its achievements, however, the movement was unable to challenge the Israeli ‘rule regime' of neoliberalization, on account of two structural constraints that were shielded by the most powerful state apparatuses: the commodity character of housing; and a neoliberalized land regime, where state‐owned land is treated as a profit machine for public finance.     

Modeling the short-run costs of changes in water availability in a desert city: a modified input-output approach

This paper investigates the impact of change in sectoral water supply on employment, value-added output, and indirect business tax, in Maricopa County, Arizona using input–output model. We developed extended modified input–output approach that incorporates each source of water as a separate sector, and that allows for substitution between water sources, and estimated the economic impact of a change in surface water supplies under two scenarios. Scenario I assumes that total water supply/use decreases by 1%, but the reduction comes only from surface water use, holding groundwater use constant. Scenario II assumes that surface water supply/use in all industries decreases by 1%, and the reduction in surface water use is replaced by the exact amount of more expensive groundwater. We found that the magnitude of economic impact depends on consumer’s responsiveness to water price change. When price elasticity of water demand is relatively low (≤0.2), the economic impact of a 1% reduction in surface water supplies was smaller than under the first scenario. However, the more water users in all industries are responsive to a change in water price, the bigger are economic impacts in terms of reductions in jobs, value added, and indirect business taxes.     

经济高质量发展阶段的中国货币调控方式转型

中国经济已由高速增长阶段转向高质量发展阶段,中国货币政策调控方式应该从以货币数量调控为主转向货币价格调控为主。对货币调控方式理论、国际经验和中国间接货币调控转型的全面梳理表明,随着利率市场化的加速推进和基本完成,由于金融创新和脱媒迅猛发展,我国传统数量为主货币调控有效性日益下降,亟须转向价格型调控方式。西方国家和西方经济学有关货币数量与货币价格调控方式的争论,都是针对相对成熟和稳定的经济体系而言的,而我国仍属于转型过程中的不发达经济体,经济结构也不稳定,货币调控方式选择和转型须服从和服务于高质量发展转变,属于全新实践而且更为复杂。中国二十多年间接货币政策实践始终面临着政府过度关注经济增长和预算软约束部门、金融监管体制不健全、金融市场深度不够等因素制约,仍需深化发展金融市场微观基础、制度保障和产品功能等金融市场体系。为及时有效应对流动性冲击和利率扰动,货币价格调控下中央银行的利率决策空间和政策操作自主性也亟待提高,并在制度上予以保证。今后应在协调改革、发展和稳定关系基础上,加快各项深化改革措施,有效缓解各项约束条件,大力培育金融市场基准利率体系,推进货币价格调控方式转型,更好地促进新常态下经济金融的高质量发展。     

Effects of Price of Gold on Bombay Stock Exchange Sectoral Indices: New Evidence for Portfolio Risk Management

Using daily data, this paper examines the relationship between the returns of gold and seven sectoral indices in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for the period from January 2000 to May 2018. Given the importance of gold in India, there are significant issues in a portfolio selection in that country. By addressing the hedged robust portfolio problems, this paper focuses on three vanilla portfolio problems: the maximum return portfolio allocation, the global minimum variance portfolio problem, and the Markowitz portfolio allocation by using various multiple generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models. The paper finds that gold returns are significantly independent of the returns of the BSE sectoral indices. Besides, gold returns can help predict the future returns of the Consumer Durables and the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods indices as well as the Oil & Gas equity indices. Finally, the findings also show that gold hedges against the information technology stock index and serves as a robust portfolio diversification tool. With these new results, this paper offers several implications for investors and risk management purposes.     

Multiscale information transmission between commodity markets: An EMD-Based transfer entropy network

In the context of the growing financialisation of commodity markets, debate on how they interact with each other has returned to centre stage. The main motivation of this study is to research the price interactions of international commodities from the perspective of information transmission by proposing an innovative transfer entropy network based on empirical mode decomposition. We also identify core commodities with the strongest transmission intensity in information transmission networks at different time scales. The empirical results demonstrate that the network transmission structure and core varieties change based on the time scale. In the short term, metals have the strongest transmission intensity, whereas, in the medium and long term, the energy sector has the strongest transmission intensity. These findings should allow regulators and market participants to better understand the essential characteristics and internal structures of international commodity markets.     

Vertical differentiation and collusion: Pruning or proliferation?

In this paper, we tackle the dilemma of pruning versus proliferation in a vertically differentiated oligopoly under the assumption that some firms collude and control both the range of variants for sale and their corresponding prices, likewise a multiproduct firm. We analyse whether pruning emerges and, if so, a fighting brand is marketed. We find that it is always more profitable for colluding firms to adopt a pricing strategy such that some variants are withdrawn from the market. Under pruning, these firms commercialize a fighting brand only when facing competitors in a low-end market.     

Disciplining building societies by accounting-based regulation,circa 1960

Taking as its point of departure the rules regulating accounting practice, this article focuses on the use of accounting numbers and ratios to regulate the specific behaviour of reporting entities. In particular, the corporatist analysis provides a framework for exploring the use of accounting-based regulation to discipline those depository financial institutions that depart from industry norms. Empirical support built upon the legislation enacted in 1959 and 1960 which set performance parameters for building societies and gave the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies new powers of intervention. These powers and parameters were used together with accounting ratios (which were generally recognised as financially sound within the industry) to discipline building societies. Although only a tiny fraction of the societies were ultimately sanctioned, they all acknowledged important deviations from specified accounting-based criteria. In some cases accounting-based criteria were effective in driving societies to dissolution, while others, which avoided immediate dissolution were forced to improve their governance and systems of internal control. Intervention was further activated under the interdependent relationship formed between the Registrar of Friendly Societies and the Building Societies Association. Together they successfully lobbied state authorities to discipline societies outside the industry association. As a result, the evidence documented in this paper sheds light on the dynamics upon which accounting-based regulation came to be constructed and implemented.     

Trade through endogenous intermediaries

We propose an intermediation core for an economy that explicitly specifies how traders organize themselves into trade cooperatives (intermediaries) and how trade between them gets carried out. The intermediation core allocations are closely related to the equilibrium allocations of a non-cooperative intermediation game in Townsend (1983). We show that the intermediation core contains all subgame perfect equilibrium allocations of the intermediation game, similar to the inclusion of competitive equilibrium allocations in the core usually studied. We identify intermediation core allocations that are also subgame perfect equilibrium allocations of the intermediation game in terms of the supporting intermediary structures. These results help to characterize subgame perfect equilibrium allocations of the intermediation game and to analyze their welfare and stability properties.