Why Punish? Social reciprocity and the enforcement of prosocial norms

Recently economists have become interested in why people who face social dilemmas in the experimental lab use the seemingly incredible threat of punishment to deter free riding. Three theories with evolutionary microfoundations have been developed to explain punishment. We survey these theories and use behavioral data from surveys and experiments to show that the theory called social reciprocity in which people punish norm violators indiscriminately explains punishment best.JEL Classification: C91, C92, D64, H41 Correspondence to: Jeffrey P. CarpenterWe thank Carolyn Craven, Corinna Noelke and two referees for comments, and Middlebury College for financial assistance. In addition, Carpenter acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation (SES-CAREER 0092953).     

House Price and co-Residence with Older Parents: Evidence from China

Numerous Chinese families choose to reside together with their elderly parents due to the considerable impacts of conventional values such as filial duty in Chinese society. However, as house prices rocketed up in major Chinese cities over the past decade, this arrangement is facing a sizeable challenge, therefore also raising new research question about it. This paper attempts to investigate the phenomenon of co-residence of adult children with their elderly parents in China. Using the 2013 data of China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we document that house price is indeed a significant determinant for the pattern of intergenerational co-residence. Our empirical results can provide interesting insights into the important implication of rising house price for household residential arrangements in this country.     

The 2015 Maastricht-NUS-MIT International Real Estate Finance &; Economics Symposium: Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue

We use an empirical model of commercial mortgage spreads to examine how tenant diversification impacts credit spreads for mortgages on retail properties. We find that mortgages on properties with a highly diversified tenant base have spreads that are up to 7.1 basis points higher than spreads on mortgages for single-tenant properties, but that mortgages on properties with moderate levels of tenant diversification have spreads that are up to 5.2 basis points lower than mortgages on single-tenant properties. The spread discount for mortgages on properties with moderate levels of tenant diversification disappears when the lease of the property’s largest tenant expires before the loan matures. Despite the spread discount that is given to properties with moderate levels of tenant diversification, we find that the likelihood with which a mortgage goes into default increases as tenant diversification increases.     

Hawker centres as tourist attractions: The case of Singapore

Cooked food hawkers are a sometimes neglected part of the tourism and hospitality industries, yet can play a significant role as a visitor attraction which offers both inexpensive food and insights into the contemporary society and heritage of the destination. Hawking is ubiquitous in much of South East Asia where it is integral to the life of local residents and this includes Singapore, the focus of the paper which also comments on the relationship between food and tourism in general. The cooked food hawker sector in the city state is described and the results of a survey of tourists about their experiences of dining at hawker centres are presented. Responses appear favourable on the whole, but some concerns are identified. It seems that hawkers may have unrealised potential as an amenity for tourists, although widening their appeal and use is a challenging task compounded by the threat to the survival of hawker centres from urban development pressures.     

Race and employment dislocation in California’s aerospace industry

This article finds that African American and Latino workers have borne a disproportionate share of employment costs associated with defense cuts in California’s aerospace industry. The data for this analysis come from administrative files, which contain demographic and employment-related information for everyone who collects unemployment-insurance benefits. The analysis shows that African Americans suffered higher displacement rates, longer unemployment spells, and poorer outcomes in new jobs than whites. Latinos were disadvantaged in several ways, but not consistently in all categories. Asian Americans, on the other hand, generally fared better than whites. These results show that economic dislocation, in the form of defense cuts, reinforces racial inequality in the labor market.     

The idiosyncratic risks of a Shariah compliant REIT investor

This paper investigates the impact of Shariah compliant investment principles on the idiosyncratic risks of a Shariah compliant REIT investor. The importance of idiosyncratic risks in explaining cross-sectional returns of a constructed Shariah compliant REIT investor’s portfolio is further examined in this paper. In all constructed portfolios examined, there is a positive and significant relationship between expected idiosyncratic volatility and expected REIT returns of the constructed Shariah compliant portfolio (GCC Shariah compliance standards). This result is consistent and persistent after robustness tests are carried out. As such, idiosyncratic risks are an important factor to consider in the pricing of Shariah compliant REIT stock returns. On further examination, the significant relationship as seen in the constructed Shariah compliant portfolio can be explained from the firm-specific risks of the residential REIT sector which is the most dominant sector during the period of investigation. The implications of these results also point to the importance of Shariah compliance standards and screening methods which is a significant feature associated with the understanding of the relationship of idiosyncratic risks on expected REIT returns of Shariah portfolios. Results show contrasting results between a less-restrictive and restrictive Shariah compliant portfolio. We find a significant relationship between expected returns and the idiosyncratic risks specifically in the restrictive Shariah compliant portfolio.