Analysis of many policy interventions depends on the availability of accurate estimates of price, income and other elasticities. Economists typically use revealed preference data to estimate these elasticities ex-post. We propose a simple survey-based contingent behavior (CB) approach for estimating ex-ante (expected) elasticities as well as their distributions in the population. Ex-ante and ex-post estimates of elasticities may differ for legitimate reasons; both are relevant to policymakers. We illustrate this CB approach using data from seven Global South countries. Results show that it is possible to develop contemporaneous country-specific estimates of ex-ante elasticities quickly and inexpensively in data-poor environments. We also discuss how these ex-ante elasticities may inform policy acceptance.

The interrelationship between housing and land prices has long been a puzzle in China. Using a panel dataset of 286 prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2020, we construct a spatial simultaneous-equations model and estimate it with the feasible generalized spatial three- stage least squares (FGS3SLS) approach. Results show significant mutual causality and spatial spillovers between housing and land prices. A 1% rise in local housing prices increases local land prices by about 0.71%, with a comparable effect from neighboring housing markets. Regional heterogeneity is evident: the housing-to-land price effect is strongest in western cities (0.93%) and weaker in eastern cities (0.53%), reflecting differences in local government incentives and market structures. By capturing both bidirectional causality and spatial-temporal variation, this study offers new evidence on the mechanisms linking housing and land markets and provides insights for regionally differentiated housing and land policies in China.

This paper studies the role of county-level social connections on the refinancing activities across U.S. counties. Using loan-level data aggregated at the county level and Facebook social network data, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in the refinancing experiences of a county's peer counties in the past year increases its refinancing rate in the current year by 1.03 percentage points, which is equivalent to a 16.5% increase in the likelihood of refinancing. The peer effect on refinancing is time-varying and correlates positively with the fall in the market mortgage rate. In addition, the marginal impact of the peer effect is non-linear: it is much stronger for counties less exposed to the refinancing experiences of their peer counties. Moreover, there is no evidence that the peer effect persists in the long run. Finally, we find that the peer effect tends to be stronger for counties with older and more educated populations. Our results imply multiplier effects whereby the social network amplifies regional refinancing activity.

This paper introduces the “financing purposes (FP) channel”, a new channel through which uncertainty affects the effectiveness of monetary policy. Using U.S. bank-firm-loan-level data from 1990 to 2019, we examine how firms adjust FP in response to monetary policy shocks and how this response varies with the level of macroeconomic uncertainty. We find that firms demand more bank loans for investment-related purposes during monetary expansion, but this tendency diminishes notably when uncertainty spikes. A counterfactual analysis suggests that heightened uncertainty explains almost half of the decline in the share of productive loans during the Great Recession. Our results are not driven by banks’ credit supply and are more pronounced for more financially constrained firms and those with a higher degree of investment irreversibility, aligning with the real options theory and financial frictions channel. We also show that FP positively predicts real activities such as investment and employment growth, indicating that high uncertainty weakens the monetary policy transmission via the financing purposes channel.

This study investigates whether and how FinTech influences retail banking and the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission, with a focus on the competition between FinTech companies and banks in the deposit market. Using proprietary data from a leading Chinese FinTech company, we study a money market fund with deposit-like features, available through a widely-adopted payment platform in China. With a Bartik-style instrumental variable approach, we document several novel findings: (i) In the short run, FinTech competition induces negative deposit demand shocks and crowds out bank deposits. In response, banks more exposed to Fintech competition do not cut their lending, but reduce liquid assets and financial investments and issue more bonds, (ii) After the removal of the deposit rate ceiling in 2015, more exposed banks experience higher deposit and loan growth because they are more likely to offer innovative deposit products and raise deposit interest rates higher in the long term, (iii) Banks’ endogenous responses to attract more depositors due to intense FinTech competition lead to smaller declines in loan and deposit growth during monetary tightening, mitigating the effects of monetary contraction. Further mechanism tests rule out alternative channels that can explain the muted monetary policy transmission, including the risk-shifting channel, the funding substitution channel, and the lending competition channel.

As a crucial determinant of urban livability, the importance of access to high-quality green spaces has long been recognized for achieving sustainable urbanization. In urban areas, higher values are usually placed in residential properties with higher accessibility to green spaces. Using housing transaction data from as many as 3388 residential communities in Shanghai coupled with high-resolution satellite data of urban green spaces, we comprehensively examine the relationship between residential property values and the accessibility of both community-owned and public green spaces. We find, in instrumental-variable estimations, that: (1) home prices, on average, increase by 0.17% if the overall green space accessibility rises by 1%; and that (2) a 1% increase in the green ratio within a community raises property values by 0.46%. Moreover, the number of accessible green spaces, area of accessible green spaces, and distance to the nearest green spaces have positive impacts on home values separately. We also find strong spatial dependence in urban green spaces and unobserved price determinants, as well as heterogeneity by location, property value, and housing type. Our empirical findings provide valuable guidance for real estate developers and local governments in valuing environmental amenities and urban planning in the context of a residential housing market.

This study investigates whether and how FinTech influences intermediation and stability of banks with a focus on the competition between FinTech companies and banks in the deposit market. Using proprietary data from a leading Chinese FinTech company, we study a money market fund with deposit-like features, available through a widely-adopted payment platform in China. With a Bartik-style instrumental variable approach, we exploit cross-sectional variation in banks’ exposure to FinTech and document several novel findings: (i) In the short run, FinTech competition induces negative deposit demand shocks and crowds out bank deposits. In response, banks more exposed to Fintech competition do not cut their lending, but reduce liquid assets and financial investments and issue more bonds, (ii) After the removal of the deposit rate ceiling in 2015, more exposed banks experience higher deposit and loan growth (i.e., expand bank intermediation) because they are more likely to offer innovative deposit products and raise deposit interest rates higher in the long term, (iii) The positive effects of FinTech on bank intermediation are stronger during monetary tightening, (iv) There is no evidence that FinTech competition stimulates banks to take more risks and switch to less stable wholesale fundings, mitigating the financial stability concerns.

This paper examines the spatial relationship between the ambient air pollution level of an apartment and its property value in the housing market of South Korea. Using detailed transaction data for 2015-2018, we construct the air pollution index and estimate a two-stage spatial Durbin error model that controls for both direct and spillover effects. We find that, holding other factors equal, a 1% increase in the air pollution level can, on average, cause a decrease in the value of a local real property by 0.32% ($879). Spatially heterogeneous effects of air pollution on housing prices are investigated, and air pollution is found to have a more significant direct impact on the urban housing market than in rural areas. Moreover, rising air pollution levels in urban centers can raise housing prices in suburban and rural areas, suggesting a strong spillover effect of air pollution and potential migration towards better air quality. The findings in this paper have profound implications for analyzing the spatial impacts of air pollution on housing prices and urban development.

As an important environmental amenity, sunlight brings us a large number of benefits and improves the quality of our daily lives, and its welfare measurement depends on concrete living conditions. The purpose of this article is to empirically document the non-marketed value of sunlight in light of the view orientation of an apartment in the context of the housing market. Using a hedonic pricing model estimated with the real estate transaction data over 40,000 housing units in 2019–2021 in Shanghai, it is found that: (1) homeowners, on average, are willing to pay an extra 7.2% to choose the apartments with a high level of sunshine (facing south), relative to those with no direct access to sunlight (facing north); (2) the value of sunlight shrinks with pollution and becomes larger if living in a higher apartment; (3) residents living in higher units have a larger willingness to pay for the sunlight and environmental quality improvement. These empirical findings shed light on the welfare measurement of sunlight and have profound implications for the capitalization of environmental amenities reflected in housing prices.

This paper tests the asymmetry in government spending multipliers using the panel data in the US postwar states. Empirical results show that output and employment rate respond asymmetrically to military procurement spending shocks with different signs and magnitudes. Our findings suggest that expansionary multipliers are much larger than contractionary multipliers, and that small-scale spending shocks tend to have a greater impact than large-scale ones.

The sustainable development of a modern equity market heavily relies on an effective IPO system that can properly reflect the underlying risk, demand, and supply in the IPO market. Recently, China has implemented an unprecedented IPO reform that transforms the previous approval-based IPO system to a registration-based one. Despite its importance, the impacts of the reform still remain unexplored. Using firm-level data from the Chinese A-shares market, we show that the recent IPO reform significantly increases IPO cost and reduces the degree of IPO underpricing. We also investigated the impacts of the reform on the market structures in different IPO service markets. Overall, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the registration-based IPO reform makes the IPO system in China more market-oriented. To our best knowledge, this is the first empirical study that sheds light on the short-term impacts of the adoption of a registration-based IPO system.

This paper explores how perceptional changes in exposure to air pollution impact the values of real assets in a housing market. Given a revised air pollution standard due to an environmental policy shock in South Korea, the existing indicators show air quality generally gets lower than before, guiding people to perceive more of the seriousness of the surrounding air pollution. Using data on nearly 1.5 million transactions of residential properties during 2016-2018, we employ a modified difference-in-difference (DID) and comprehensively examine the effects of changes in perceived risks of air pollution on home prices. Our empirical results suggest that an additional labeling change from ``normal" to ``bad" lowers the average housing price by nearly 0.27%, controlling for the actual air pollution levels. Moreover, these label-related impacts are consistent with varying periods during which air pollution is perceived. It is also found that the impacts remain significant for different types of housing contracts. The empirical findings advance the understanding of how public information on air pollution could be capitalized in the housing market and have profound implications for long-term urban planning.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused huge losses and massive damage to socio-economic development around the globe, which might even potentially evolve into a humanitarian crisis as it continues to spread. In response to the further resulting public threats, collaborative research, rapid production, and efficient and just distribution of vaccines have been given a top priority. However, there exists a serious inefficiency and injustice in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines among different countries, regions, and social classes currently. Richer countries and regions have acquired far more vaccines than needed, further exacerbating the severity of the epidemic in underdeveloped and marginalized countries and regions. From a perspective of critical global justice, we explore the causes of the inefficient and unjust global distribution of vaccines and comprehensively examine the shortcomings of the current distribution frameworks, such as COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX). Then, under the framework of critical global justice, we propose a multi-phase fair priority model that improves the existing proportional distribution mechanism. This solution to the global injustice reoptimizes the cross-border and domestic vaccine distribution and aims to resolve the pandemic more efficiently. The proposed framework and methodology of vaccine distribution could be taken as an opportunity to consistently promote the development of the global socio-economic structure towards global justice more broadly and systematically.

The paper examines the relationship between climate amenities and locational choices in retirement. Using data from 2017 release of the American Community Survey, I construct a household residential location choice model and value climate amenities from the trade-offs among housing cost, climate amenities, and other locational attributes in a metropolitan statistical area (MSA). On average, a retired household is willing to pay $1209 for a 1 degrees C drop in average summer temperature, $1114 for a 1 degrees C increase in average winter temperature, and $486 for a 1 degrees C decrease in temperature variability. The values of climate amenities vary with household demographic characteristics, and older households with a higher retirement income and disability have a higher marginal willingness to pay for a favorable climate. Moreover, among the retired population, there exists a positive preference-based sorting across MSAs, where those favoring the preferred temperatures more than the average live in places with a more friendly climate. Using the estimated preference parameters, I compute the values of projected climate amenities and find that retired households would be willing to pay nearly 3.3% of their annual income to avoid a standard future projected climate scenario. Simulation results suggest that over 2% of retired households would relocate in response to this level of climate change, resulting in an overall northbound shift in the retired population.

This article investigates the response of monetary policy to financial instability in China. We estimate a forward-looking Taylor rule model with a constructed comprehensive financial stress index using the time-varying coefficient method. Empirical results suggest that financial stability has always been a main concern for China's monetary authorities even in periods with low financial pressure. Moreover, China's central bank tends to lower the policy interest rate in response to financial instability, but the size of policy responses varies substantially over time. Although the proportion of policy interest rate change due to financial stability concern is less relative to developed countries, financial stability is increasing in importance for monetary policymaking in China. We also find that banking stress and stock-market stress are two main concerns for China's central bank, while little evidence supports that exchange-market stress can drive the reaction of China's central bank.

The relationship between the view orientation of an apartment and its property value is examined in the context of Shanghai housing market. Using a hedonic pricing model and a unique dataset, comprised of apartment attributes, ambient environmental indicators and urban spatial structure, this paper shows that a south-facing orientation is associated on average with a 14% premium in property value. Among possible view orientations, due south reflects the highest price. A view of one Shanghai's landmark increases property values by 6%, with this premium being boosted a further 4% by south-facing orientation. Dust pollution lowers prices and shrinks the value of a south-facing view, while PM2.5, which is not visible, has little influence on either. Preference for height in apartment buildings is strongly influenced by the presence of elevators. Internal apartment attributes have the expected signs, but magnitudes can be misleading unless the larger set of apartment attributes is controlled for.

According to rational expectation hypothesis, the government will take into account the future capital stock in the process of investment decision. By introducing anticipated capital stock into an economic model with investment delay, we construct a mixed functional differential system including delay and advanced variables. The system is converted to the one containing only delay by variable substitution. The equilibrium point of the system is obtained and its dynamical characteristics such as stability, Hopf bifurcation and its stability and direction are investigated by using the related theories of nonlinear dynamics. We carry out some numerical simulations to confirm these theoretical conclusions. The results indicate that both capital stock's anticipation and investment lag are the certain factors leading to the occurrence of cyclical fluctuations in the macroeconomic system. Moreover, the level of economic fluctuation can be dampened to some extent if investment decisions are made by the reasonable short-term forecast on capital stock. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In the almost short-selling restriction, this paper uses binary Probit regression model and variance analysis method to analyze the listed steel companies which refinanced from January 2005 to December 2011 in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share, and discusses how heterogeneous beliefs impacts on financing instrument selection and financing scale. Empirical results indicate that: 1) The greater the degree of heterogeneity beliefs for investors, listed steel companies more likely choose equity financing; 2) No matter choosing equity or debt financing, financing scales of listed steel companies have a negative relationship with heterogeneous beliefs.

羊群行为是否加剧股票价格波动,已有研究甚至给出截然相反的结论.假定交易者买卖观点的转变主要受其对股票基础价值认知和其他交易者行为的影响,本文构建描述市场平均投资态度和股票价格变化的数学模型,利用离散动力系统的相关理论研究模型的稳定性,并根据金融市场稳定与否对羊群行为程度进行界定.研究结果表明,在轻度羊群效应区间内,股票价格相应地呈现微幅周期波动;在中度羊群效应区间内,股票价格在经历一段时间的阻尼式波动后收敛至均衡价格,并且在此区间中存在最优的羊群行为,它促使股票价格以最快的速度逼近均衡价格;而在重度羊群效应区间,股票价格发生大幅的非理性波动,可以导致股市严重泡沫和金融危机的产生.

Under the assumption of Capital Asset Pricing Model, the expected rate of return of single financial asset bears a linear relation to the absolute deviation of expected return. However, when herd behavior occurs, they don't retain linear relation. According to this theory, we first compile China's metal future price index combined with the details of China's metal future. With reference to this, then we examine whether the expected rate of return of single financial asset bears a linear relation to the absolute deviation of expected return. We therefore investigate herd behavior in China's rebar futures market. The empirical results indicate that herd behavior doesn't occur in China's rebar futures market, which operates well. At last, we deeply analyze the empirical result based on the practical situation of China's rebar futures market.