Economic freedom and bilateral direct investment

Economic freedom (freedom from the intervention of government) is essential for doing business, so economic freedom of both the home country and the host country are important for bilateral foreign direct investment. However, though some literature has investigated the role of host country's economic freedom in bilateral direct investment, no literature has studied the role of home country's economic freedom. This paper has studied this issue in a gravity model with a sample of 155 countries. This paper has also employed some effective estimation techniques of gravity model to incorporate the zero observations and adopted quantile regression method. The findings indicate that economic freedom of both the home country and the host country are positively correlated with bilateral direct investment, and the economic freedom of home country has even stronger explanatory power for foreign direct investment. Hence, promoting the economic freedom may encourage more outward foreign direct investment than inward direct investment.     

Analyst earnings forecast precision and local advantage: evidence from American depositary receipt firms

Prior research has documented a finding that local analysts provide more accurate earnings forecasts than nonlocal analysts in many settings. However, little is known about local and nonlocal analysts’ relative earnings forecast abilities for ADR stocks. In this study, we find that the local advantage disappears for ADR stocks and that nonlocal analysts in fact outperform local ones in this case. We investigate the source of this ‘local disadvantage’ and find evidence against hypotheses based on accounting standards and exchange rates. We document that the local advantage decreases with increased investor interest in foreign firms, consistent with our nonlocal investors’ interest hypothesis.     

Stock exchange competition in a simple model of capital market equilibrium

This paper uses a simple model of mean-variance capital markets equilibrium with proportional transactions costs to analyze the competition of stock markets for investors. We assume that equity trading is costly and endogenize transactions costs as variables strategically influenced by stock exchanges. Among other things, the model predicts that increasing financial market correlation leads to a decrease of transaction costs, an increase in cross-border trading activity, and to a decrease in the home bias of international equity flows. These predictions are consistent with the recent evolution of international stock markets.     

Home Equity,Household Savings and Consumption

The home-owning family’s equity is a piggybank that can be broken open by borrowing. Each borrowing increases liabilities and cash equally, initially leaving net wealth unchanged. When those funds are spent and cash balances fall, consumption increases even as net wealth can decline. In a dynamic optimization, the marginal propensity to consume from net wealth is not always positive and can be positively correlated with housing debt.

Mobile tax base as a global common

If countries anticipate international Bertrand competition in tax rates, they may expend effort that makes some of their taxpayers less mobile or increases the mobility of taxpayers elsewhere. Piecemeal evidence on what activities countries use is provided. Such activities are analyzed that interact with Bertrand tax competition if the size of the groups of loyal and nonloyal citizens or investors is endogenous. Further, the implications of tax harmonization and minimum taxes for these types of nonprice competition are considered. Home attachment reduces the intensity of tax competition, but generates a strategic disadvantage for the country that invests much in such home attachment. Harmonization of taxes and high minimum taxes can intensify countries’ investment in home attachment.      

Strategic interaction between inter vivos gifts and housing acquisition

This paper models the interdependence of parental inter vivos gifts and children’s home purchases when informal care affects decision making. We use data from Japanese households who purchased a detached house in an urban area to test this strategic interaction. Considering both censoring and endogeneity of inter vivos gifts, which are identified by information on formal care, our preferred results demonstrate that inter vivos gifts do not significantly increase the purchase price of housing. Theory suggests that this occurs when informal care tends to be a heavy burden for children. However, subsample analysis of young home buyers indicates that the empirical results are consistent with the literature: children who receive parental gifts tend to purchase a higher-priced dwelling. One potential explanation is that relatively young adult children are less likely to take charge of care obligations, and accordingly, parental gifts are only expected to relax their liquidity constraints. Subsample analysis appears to indicate that the underlying motivation of parental gifts is influenced by the timing of children’s home purchase decisions.     

The interplay between home and host country institutions in an emerging market context: Private equity in Latin America

This study examines how the interplay between home and host country regulatory institutions affects the investment strategy of private equity (PE) firms in an emerging market context. To answer this question, we consider three different mechanisms: (1) the institutional hazard avoidance effect, (2) the institutional escapism effect, and (3) the dysfunctional institutions effect. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we argue that regulatory institutional differences between home and host countries can sometimes have a positive rather than a negative effect on investment likelihood. Our findings show that when a host emerging market has a strong regulatory institutional system relative to other emerging markets, it is more likely that this country will attract PE investments from firms based in home countries with very strong and very weak institutional systems. The empirical analyses, based on a polynomial specification and a dataset covering more than 300 PE firms that made close to 1500 investment transactions in Latin America during 1996–2011, are consistent with our main theoretical arguments.     

瑞士个人产权住宅房屋低拥有率形成机制的深入研究

瑞士作为一个人均收入较高的发达国家,但国民购房的意识却非常淡漠,大部分人宁愿选择以租赁的方式解决居住问题。瑞士人拥有产权房屋的比例在西欧发达国家中所占比例最少,只占所有国民的34%,其中美国为62.5%,法国45%,本文通过对分布在瑞士5个州的1998户居民的抽样调查数据分析来探求该现象的合理解释。通过对众多相关要素的分析来对个人住房拥有率进行剖析,其中,特别对拥有和租赁的相对成本进行了重点研究,因为它与房屋售价、租赁价格与拥有后的使用成本密切相关,在上述影响因素中,产权人的使用成本与所得税政策、预期房屋价格上涨息息相关。本文也综合权衡了按揭贷款现行标准、租赁控制和各种政策对租赁房屋供给量所产生的影响,通过对税收、按揭标准、价格水平等因素进行一系列分析,估算出这些变量对房产拥有率的影响程度。本文得出以下结论:高房价——相对于租金对家庭收入来说是导致瑞士国民拥有住房比例较低的最重要影响因素。     

Home bias and deviations from purchasing power parity

Empirical analysis has produced mixed results in testing for PPP. This note presents a simple model linking home bias towards home-produced tradable goods with deviations from absolute PPP. We show that this bias constitutes a significant determinant of PPP deviations.     

Trade Costs,Trade Balances and Current Accounts: An Application of Gravity to Multilateral Trade

In this paper we test the well-known hypothesis of Obstfeld and Rogoff (NBER Macroeconomics Annual 7777:339–390, 2000) that trade costs are the key to explaining the so-called Feldstein–Horioka puzzle. Our approach has a number of novel features. First, we focus on the interrelationship between trade costs, the trade account and the Feldstein–Horioka puzzle. Second, we use the gravity model to estimate the effect of trade costs on bilateral trade and, third, we show how bilateral trade can be used to draw inferences about desired trade balances and desired intertemporal trade. Our econometric results provide strong support for the Obstfeld and Rogoff hypothesis and we are also able to reconcile our results with the so-called home bias puzzle.