Home purchase restriction,real estate investment,and corporate innovation

It is ubiquitous for non-real estate firms to conduct real estate business in China. Home purchase restriction (HPR) affects corporate innovation by dampening the real estate investment of non-real estate firms. The extant literature has examined the impact of HPR on corporate innovation, but it has not focused on the expectation of HPR and the endogeneity problem. Employing a dataset of 1830 listed non-real estate firms over the period 2009–2016, this research explores the expectation of HPR on corporate innovation based on the motivations for real estate investment in non-real estate firms. We demonstrate that HPR facilitates the enhancement of research and development (R&D) investment in non-real estate listed firms by hindering real estate investment, particularly for non-high-tech firms. The effects of HPR arrive at the crest in the third implementation year and remain steady thereafter. The real estate investment of non-real estate firms rebounds and the R&D investment declines along with the cancellation of HPR. Tackling the selection bias and endogeneity problems, the baseline results are also robust. Hence, HPR should serve as a long-term vehicle to improving corporate innovation, in addition to preventing housing speculation.     

Should we worry about the decline of the public corporation? A brief survey of the economics and external effects of the stock market

In recent years, the number of listed companies has been declining in many countries across the world. This paper provides a selective survey of the literature on the real economic effects of the stock market to assess the potential effects of this decline and determine whether it is likely to continue. The leading economic role of the stock market’s primary market, in which firms raise capital by issuing new shares, is to help growing firms secure financing. We discuss providing and certifying information, coordinating investors, and easing the redeployment of capital as the means through which capital allocation can be efficiently achieved. The main economic roles of the stock market’s secondary market, the trade in existing shares, is to provide liquidity to shareholders, to aid in price discovery and to provide diversification opportunities. Positive external effects from an active stock market may arise for consumers, labor and private firms due to increased corporate investment, more socially responsible business strategies and a more positive business climate. Negative external effects on capital allocation and productivity can arise from short-termism, market mispricing, and increased cross-ownership. Local stock markets can spur innovation and foreign direct investment (FDI) and reduce the risk of early cross-border acquisitions. Given the myriad of useful economic functions the stock market performs, a future entirely absent of public companies is difficult to imagine and the decline is therefore likely at some point to come to an end. Whether we need to worry about the decline depends on the relative importance of the positive and negative external effects, a topic we feel warrants more research.     

The information content of funds from operations and net income in real estate investment trusts

This study compares the information content of funds from operations (FFO) and net income (NI) in the real estate investment trust (REIT) industry. We find that models using FFO explain more of the variance in cumulative abnormal returns around earnings announcement dates than models using NI do. We also find that the information content of FFO differs across REITs of different sizes. FFO does not provide useful information to investors in the case of large REITs. Finally, we show that the gain or loss from sales of property is relevant to valuing large REITs.     

IMPACT ON FIRMS OF THE USE OF KNOWLEDGE EXTERNAL SOURCES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

This study summarizes the main conclusions from a systematic review of the empirical literature regarding the impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources (universities, research institutes and knowledge intensive business services). With the aim to organize the literature, we classify the different works according to the research question addressed: (i) which firms use knowledge external sources?; (ii) Do firms using knowledge external sources achieve better results?; And (iii) which firms benefit the most from using knowledge external sources? Stylized facts are that larger, more R&D intensive and high tech firms are more likely to use knowledge external sources and that use of knowledge external sources is associated to firms higher technical results. Less attention has been paid to the third question and evidence is not conclusive. Several recommendations for future research emerge. First, to take in greater consideration methodological issues so that potential biases in the results caused by sample selection and endogeneity are handled properly. Second, to pay more attention to heterogeneous outcomes. Third, to use continuous indicators of depth and breadth of links allowing for non‐linear relationships and fourth, to extend evidence for developing countries and service industries.     

Upzoning and value capture: How U.S. local governments use land use regulation power to create and capture value from real estate developments

The public sector can harness its authority to control land uses to secure valuable public benefits from real estate developments. This paper investigates how five major U.S. cities—Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle—are using their land use regulation powers to create and capture value for the public benefit. An analysis of the zoning and entitlement processes of the 20 largest real estate development projects in each city reveals that value has been captured from all 100 projects. Furthermore, these cities implicitly differentiated value capture into two distinct components: value creation and value capture. Among the 100 projects, cities created value for 90 projects by allowing greater density and height—a practice often referred to as “upzoning.” Distinguishing such upzoning incidences from traditional land use exaction tools is important because the added value gives local governments greater legitimacy in asking for public benefits. The experience of the five cities further revealed that value capture strategies can be customized to adapt to unique regulatory, political, and cultural contexts. Lastly, despite the fact that the majority of the upzoned projects increased density and height through project-specific negotiations, none of the cities had clear standards or evaluation frameworks for determining: how much value was created, what can be asked for in return, and who should benefit from the value captured. Cross-national scholarship on value capture can be leveraged to address these important questions.     

知识重叠、知识库特性与创新绩效

以往研究着重探讨重叠/非重叠知识在技术并购中的创新效应，然而在测度知识重叠时仅关注到数量属性而忽略了质量评估。因此，构建一个新的理论框架，利用国家知识产权局2008-2018年专利授权数据，分析217家中国机械制造企业352次国内技术并购案例，探索知识库中重叠、非重叠知识数量和质量属性对并购后创新绩效的影响。结果表明，高质量重叠知识对并购后的企业创新绩效具有正向影响，而高质量非重叠知识则有负向影响。同时，探讨知识数量对并购后创新绩效的影响。研究结果强调了知识重叠对企业获取外部知识的重要性，对企业技术并购实践具有借鉴作用。     

Relationship between city size and firm productivity – A new interpretation using the Chinese experience

This paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between city size and firm productivity by focusing on agglomeration, selection (market competition), and sorting (presence of firms with diverse productivity) effects using Chinese firm-level data for 1998–2013. Contrary to the existing literature, our parametric regression estimates from nearly two million firms show that when the selection effect is controlled, productivity advantage in big cities is reversed. This outcome is explained through a quantile regression showing the existence of left-sided sorting (inefficient firms sort themselves to larger cities) in big cities which is not captured in existing empirical literature. We further find that (1) left-sided sorting is stronger in exporters than non-exporters; (2) is also generated mainly in enterprises with high asset-liability ratios; and (3) selection has a positive effect on firm productivity, suggesting that market competition is key in an explanation of the rapid growth of big cities in China.     

Back to the future. Is industry 4.0 a new tecno-organizational paradigm? Implications for Latin American countries

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to establish a dialogue between the recent ‘Industry 4.0’ (I4.0) literature and evolutionary neo-Schumpeterean studies about techno-organizational paradigms. In that direction, we wonder whether I4.0 constitutes a new paradigm, as it is assumed by the first group of literature, or it represents – until the moment – an intensification of key features of the information and communication technology (ICT) paradigm, following the second group of studies. Some questions are raised about the implications of I4.0 for developing countries (DEC), afterwards. Specifically, we reflect on the possibilities of these countries to identify and take advantage of new windows of opportunity, opened by the development and diffusion of these technologies. In this regard, the review of recent Latin American experience raises strong concerns regarding I4.0 as a new source of intra- and international heterogeneity, linked to the severe difficulties these countries have in appropriating these technologies in the form of productivity gains and quasi-rents. It seems that this is partially derived from weak technological, organizational, and connectivity capabilities paths of accumulation between institutions and actors.     

Expanding airport capacity of cities under uncertainty: Strategies to mitigate congestion

Airport capacity constraints are increasingly challenging the growth of air traffic. At the same time, decision-making about airport capacity investments is extremely complex, involving trade-offs. This paper’s objective is to optimise a privately owned airport system’s capacity investment decision in a city under demand uncertainty. Next to the investment size, our real options model incorporates the timing of the investment, as well as the cost of congestion. The results reveal that the larger a city’s initial airport capacity, the smaller its investment will relatively be and the lower the occupancy rate threshold at which investment will take place. We also show that, in case of a higher demand growth combined with more demand uncertainty, the city will benefit from a significantly larger investment, but made later at a higher occupancy rate. In this case, cities with a small initial capacity will sometimes even more than double current capacity. Higher airport charges and an increase in non-aeronautical revenues both lead to a later investment in more capacity, due to the increased project attractiveness. An increase in congestion costs results in a larger investment made earlier, in order to eliminate delays. Airport operational cost and capacity holding cost increases both lead to smaller investments.     

Impact of macroeconomic surprises on the Brazilian yield curve and expected inflation

This study investigates how unexpected announcements in Brazilian and U.S. macroeconomic indicators affect the term structure of nominal interest rates, as well as implicit inflation expectations and real interest rates. Using daily data from March 2005 to December 2012, we employ an extended Vector Error Correction Model to take into account nonstationarity and the long-term equilibrium among different maturities of those curves. We found empirical evidence that macroeconomic surprises, domestic (Brazilian) and external (U.S. American), which lead the market to believe that there might be a higher risk of inflation or an overheated economy, raise nominal interest rates, implicit expected inflation and real interest rates. Surprisingly, in relation to the efficient-market hypothesis, we found that some macroeconomic surprises have a lagged effect on the yield curves. We also tested the impact of the global financial crisis of 2007–09 and found that the crisis affected significantly the direction and magnitude of the responses to macroeconomic news.