House prices, non-fundamental components and interstate spillovers: The Australian experience

Using Australian capital city data from 1984Q3--2008Q2, this paper utilizes a dynamic present value model within a VAR framework to construct time series of house prices depicting what aggregate house prices should be given expectations of future real disposable income - the “fundamental price” - and continues by comparing capital city fundamental prices with actual prices. The extent to which revealed capital city “non-fundamental” components spillover from state to state, as well as their long-term impact is also investigated. Results provide evidence of periods of sustained deviations of house prices from values warranted by income for all state capitals with the greatest deviations arising in the NSW market and starting around 2000. In general NSW is relatively more susceptible to spillovers transmitted from other states while ACT and WA are most isolated from the rest of the country.     

Violation of the iid-normal assumption: Effects on tests of asset-pricing models using Australian data

Financial data are typically not identically, independently and normally distributed (iid-normal). Yet, standard tests of asset-pricing models are based on this assumption, and we have little information on how sensitive the tests are to violations of iid-normality. Recent evidence suggests that test outcomes may be sensitive to these violations. In this paper, we use Australian data to compare the standard test results with those that do not require iid-normality: the GMM-J test and bootstrap-based tests. We find that different tests produce differences in prob values at least as large as those in US studies but that test outcomes are generally robust.     

The effects of fiscal policy in a two-period model

The paper analyzes fiscal policy in a model which differs from the conventional analyses in the following ways: 1) It is based on the intertemporal maximizing behavior of individual agents. 2) The government is assumed to actively balance its budget the long run. 3) Government expenditure is on useful goods and services. The welfare effects of fiscal policy are also examined. The principal conclusions are that fiscal policy is effective in the short run but the effects on both output and welfare may be perverse; and, that with full employment in the long run, fiscal policy still has allocative effects and so influences welfare.     

The Sensitivity of Tests of Asset Pricing Models to the IID-Normal Assumption: Contemporaneous Evidence from the US and UK Stock Markets

Standard tests of asset pricing models are based on the iid -normal assumption. We compare standard test results with those obtained from procedures that do not require iid -normality. Analysing unconditional and conditional asset pricing models, we find that the use of tests that consider departures from the iid -normal assumption affect probability values, sometimes by a considerable amount but that test outcomes are not affected. The results also suggest that issues surrounding the testing of joint hypothesis influence probability values and that the use of appropriate tests may be more important when analysing US data than when analysing UK data.     

UNEMPLOYMENT IN AN EQUILIBRIUM MODEL WITH BARGAINING*

This paper develops a model which embeds the Nash-equilibrium version of McDonald and Solow's (1981) wage-bargaining model into an otherwise standard static equilibrium macro model. Equilibrium unemployment is possible. Real shocks to demand result in pro-cyclical employment and anti-cyclical real wage movements while money shocks are neutral. This is in some contrast to the results obtained by McDonald and Solow.     

Growth Volatility and Technical Progress: A Simple Rent-seeking Model

Recent empirical evidence demonstrates that a higher level of technical progress is associated with a lower level of growth volatility and higher expected economic growth. This paper builds a simple growth model which combines the insights of Angeletos and Kollintzas (2000) and Tse (2000; 2001; 2002) with endogenous productivity growth and rent-seeking behavior to account for these stylized facts. Our model complements the literature that focuses on the heterogeneity of different agents.     

Financial Deregulation And The Relationship Between The Economy And The Share Market In Australia

In this paper we investigate the effect of financial deregulation on the relationship between the macro-economy and the share market within the framework of a VAR using quarterly Australian data for four variables – aggregate share prices, real output, the term premium and the default premium. After an analysis of stationarity and cointegration of the variables, we specify the VAR in the first differences of the logs of share prices and output and the levels of the premia. We identify December 1983 as the most appropriate date for testing for a structural break in our model due to financial deregulation and find strong evidence supporting our hypothesis of a break at this date. We go on to estimate and simulate the model separately over two sub-samples: 1978(1)–1983(4) and 1984(1)–2001(2). While our results are not clear-cut, we find that, if anything, the deregulation of financial markets weakened the relationship between the share market and the rest of the economy.     

The profitability of regression-based trading rules for the Shanghai stock market

This paper uses daily Shanghai A share data to evaluate the profitability of trading rules based on the predictability found in the return series. We find that the value of the trading-rule-based portfolio at the end of our sample is between 2 and 11 times that of an equity-buy-and-hold portfolio. We assess the robustness of the results in various ways: by carrying out various statistical tests, by varying the period over which the evaluation is carried out, by using a recursive estimation procedure for the forecasting equation, by incorporating transactions costs, and by considering weekly and monthly data.     

An experimental study of adaptive behavior in an oligopolistic market game

We consider an oligopolistic market game, in which the players are competing firms in the same market of a homogeneous consumption good. The consumer side is represented by a fixed demand function. The firms decide how much to produce of a perishable consumption good, and they decide upon a number of information signals to be sent into the population in order to attract customers. Due to the minimal information provided, the players do not have a well-specified model of their environment. Our main objective is to characterize the adaptive behavior of the players in such a situation.