Deregulation as (Welfare Reducing) Trade Reform: the Case of the Australian Wheat Board

State trading enterprises are distinguishable from private, commercial firms by the nature of their exclusive rights and objectives. Deregulation of the Australian Wheat Board is used to illustrate the effects of these rights and objectives on trade and welfare. Theoretical models are specified and the effects measured through calibrated, partial equilibrium models. It was found that the successive deregulations of the Australian Wheat Board caused it to switch from being equivalent to an export subsidy to, today, being equivalent to an export tax. At the same time, deregulation has not necessarily been welfare enhancing.     

Airline fleet composition and deregulation

Airline responses to deregulation have been analyzed using a variety of models. This paper presents and empirically tests a model of airline behavior which explicitly treats hub-and-spoke route structures which emerged after deregulation. The change to hub-and-spoke route structure implies an alteration of airline fleet use and acquisition of aircraft after deregulation. The empirical section of this paper investigates the nature of these changes using a data panel for airlines from 1970 to 1989. The changes observed in airline fleet use and composition indicate that the primary distortion of regulation on aircraft was inhibiting their use over efficient networks.This paper has benefited from the suggestions of Kenneth Boyer, Bruce Allen, Charles Ballard, and Stephen Martin at MSU, my colleagues Djeto Assane and Bernard Malamud at UNLV, and an anonymous referee. Any errors remaining are my own.     

Noninterest Income and Financial Performance at U.S. Commercial Banks

Noninterest income now accounts for over 40% of operating income in the U.S. commercial banking industry. This paper demonstrates a number of empirical links between bank noninterest income, business strategies, market conditions, technological change, and financial performance between 1989 and 2001. The results indicate that well‐managed banks expand more slowly into noninterest activities, and that marginal increases in noninterest income are associated with poorer risk‐return tradeoffs on average. These findings suggest that noninterest income is coexisting with, rather than replacing, interest income from the intermediation activities that remain banks' core financial services function.     

The Relationships Between Mortgage Rates and Capital-Market Rates Under Alternative Market Conditions

Mortgage interest rates have become more integrated with other capital-market interest rates over recent decades, apparently as a result of the deregulation of financial markets. The link is both imperfect and time-varying. Mortgage rates during some time periods appear to be sticky with respect to their adjustment to changes in capital-market rates. We examine the relationship between weekly conventional mortgage rates and the interest rates on treasury and corporate securities under differing market conditions. We draw three conclusions based on the analysis. First, deregulation changed the link between mortgage rates and riskless interest rates, which confirms the findings of Goebel and Ma (1993). Second, mortgage rates were cointegrated with risky interest rates even before deregulation. Third, the link between mortgage rates and the risky bond rate can be associated with the behavior of the risk premium in the bond rate. The observed relationship is consistent with the stickiness observed by Haney (1988) and causes a more pronounced stickiness when rates are falling than when they are rising.     

放开-管制提高了审计收费风险敏感性吗？

如何提高审计市场的有效性一直是审计理论研究的热点。以审计收费风险敏感性测度审计市场有效性,选取2010—2019年沪深A股上市公司作为样本,研究放开审计服务价格管制对审计市场有效性的影响,以及会计师事务所规模与客户所在地市场化程度对上述关系的调节作用。研究发现,放开审计服务价格管制提高了会计师事务所整体的审计收费风险敏感性;相较于非“十大”所,国内“十大”所在放开审计服务价格管制后,审计收费风险敏感性提升更显著;客户所在地市场化程度越高,放开审计服务价格管制后,审计收费风险敏感性提升越显著。经过安慰剂检验,结论依然成立。     

我国上市公司违规信息披露的影响因素研究

上市公司违反监管强制披露基本要求进行的违规信息披露加剧了市场信息不对称,是证券市场健康发展的严重阻碍。本文从财务状况、控制人动机、公司治理结构、环境与制度等方面系统地分析了影响上市公司违规信息披露的主要因素,并以被监管者查处的违规信息披露的上市公司为样本进行实证检验,研究表明在一定的环境和制度下,财务状况和控制人动机是影响目前我国上市公司违规信息披露的主要方面,但公司治理结构时违规披露的约束和影响力较小。     

Japanese Housing Tenure Choice and Welfare Implications after the Revision of the Tenant Protection Law

A new mode of housing tenure in Japan, rental housing with fixed rental terms, was introduced in March 2000 with the revision of the Japanese Tenant Protection Law. This paper examines the implications of this new system by analyzing the determinants of the choices by households among the three types of housing tenure in Japan: owned housing, general rental housing, and rental housing with fixed rental terms, and calculates the estimated compensating variation. Our micro-data is based on the three waves of Japanese household longitudinal data (Keio Household Panel Survey, KHPS) covering all of Japan. The difference between general rental housing and rental housing with fixed rental terms is reflected in the length of the contract term and the level of rent. We carefully eliminate potential sample selection bias introduced to the conditional logit housing tenure choice model through the estimation of the hedonic price regression of each housing tenure alternative. We find that households with a smaller number of family members, those who moved from outside the local housing market, those headed by an unmarried household head, and those with plans to own a house in the near future tend to select rental housing with fixed rental terms. The estimated mean compensating variation by introducing rental housing with fixed rental terms for all households selecting that tenure is 1,205 JPY per month or 1.96% of their monthly rent. Moreover, younger and/or lower income households derived the greatest benefit from the revised law in the form of lower rents.

Post-crisis regulatory reforms and bank performance: lessons from Asia

Based on a large dataset from eight Asian economies, we test the impact of post-crisis regulatory reforms on the performance of depository institutions in countries at different levels of financial development. We allow for technological heterogeneity and estimate a set of country-level stochastic cost frontiers followed by a deterministic bootstrapped meta-frontier to evaluate cost efficiency and cost technology. Our results support the view that liberalization policies have a positive impact on bank performance, while the reverse is true for prudential regulation policies. The removal of activities restrictions, bank privatization and foreign bank entry has a positive and significant impact on technological progress and cost efficiency. In contrast, prudential policies, which aim to protect the banking sector from excessive risk-taking, tend to adversely affect banks’ cost efficiency but not cost technology.     

保险公司具有信息优势下的保险市场均衡问题研究

本文应用博弈论的方法,分析了当保险公司拥有信息优势时,在完全竞争、垄断经营和销售渠道垄断等不同竞争条件下的市场均衡状况,并通过航意险业务的实际发展过程说明从保险业长远发展角度看,应着力培养市场竞争环境,推动保险费率市场化,丰富保险销售渠道,提高投保人理性购买保险的意识,促使市场实现公平、有效的均衡。     

城市公用事业的放松管制与管制改革

滥觞于竞争性产业的中国经济体制改革 ,一直以实现竞争性产业的政企分离、企业间相互竞争并建立与之相适应的制度框架为重点 ,与此形成鲜明对照的是具有垄断结构的城市公用事业的改革则严重滞后 ,原有体制下的许多僵化和扭曲现象继续存在 ,经营绩效距消费者和所有者的要求相去甚远。经济体制改革在竞争性产业和垄断性产业的不平衡正在严重地阻碍中国经济的市场化进程 ,城市公用事业的放松管制、管制改革及竞争性结构的形成已经成为中国经济体制进一步改革不可回避的焦点问题。