DP6930 The Role of the Annuity's Value on the Decision (Not) to Annuitize: Evidence from a Large Policy Change
Author(s):	Monika Bütler, Stefan Staubli, Maria Grazia Zito
Programme Area:	PP
Programme Area: PP
Keyword(s): Annuity Puzzle, Occupational Pension, Policy Change
Abstract: This paper presents new evidence on how the annuitization decision is affected by changes in the annuity's value. We take advantage of an unprecendented change in policy, which in 2004 moderated the super-mandatory Swiss occupational pension scheme: The 20 percent reduction in the rate at which retirement capital is translated into a life-long annuity equates to a net present value loss of approximately 20'000 SFR (20'000 US$) for the average retiree. Using administrative data and correcting for anticipation effects, we show that due to the change in policy there was an approximately 8 percentage point change in the share of men choosing to annuitize their savings. We also show that the estimated responsiveness of the cash-out decision to variations in a utility based measure for the annuity value is comparable to results of previous studies, which employed completely different sources of variation in the annuity's value.
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DP6932 Housing Bubbles
Author(s):	Oscar Arce, J David López-Salido
Programme Area:	IM
Programme Area: IM
Keyword(s): buy-to-let investment, collateral constraints, housing bubbles, switching
Abstract: In this paper we use the notion of a housing bubble as an equilibrium in which some investors hold houses only for resale purposes and not for the expectation of a dividend, either in the form of rents or utility. We provide a life-cycle model where households face collateral constraints that tie their credit capacity to the value of their houses and examine the conditions under which housing bubbles can emerge. In such equilibria, the total housing stock is held by owners that extract utility from their homes, landlords that obtain rents, and investors. We show that an economy with tighter collateral constraints is more prone to bubbles which, in turn, tend to have a larger size but are less fragile in face of fund-draining shocks. Our environment also allows for pure bubbles on useless assets. We find that multiple equilibria in which the economy moves endogenously from a pure bubble to a housing bubble regime and vice versa are possible. This suggests that high asset price volatility may be a natural consequence of asset shortages (or excess funding) that depress interest rates sufficiently so as to sustain an initial bubble. We also examine some welfare implications of the two types of bubbles and discuss some mechanisms to rule out equilibria with housing bubbles.
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DP6933 Returns to Tenure or Seniority?
Author(s):	Ioan Sebastian Buhai, Miguel Portela, Coen N Teulings, Aico van Vuuren
Programme Area:	LE
Programme Area: LE
Keyword(s): irreversible investment, efficient bargaining, seniority, LIFO, matched employer-employee data, EPL
Abstract: This study documents two empirical regularities, using data for Denmark and Portugal. First, workers who are hired last, are the first to leave the firm (Last In, First Out; LIFO). Second, workers’ wages rise with seniority (= a worker’s tenure relative to the tenure of her colleagues). We seek to explain these regularities by developing a dynamic model of the firm with stochastic product demand and hiring cost (= irreversible specific investments). There is wage bargaining between a worker and its firm. Separations (quits or layoffs) obey the LIFO rule and bargaining is efficient (a zero surplus at the moment of separation). The LIFO rule provides a stronger bargaining position for senior workers, leading to a return to seniority in wages. Efficiency in hiring requires the workers’ bargaining power to be in line with their share in the cost of specific investment, Then, the LIFO rule is a way to protect their property right on the specific investment. We consider the effects of Employment Protection Legislation and risk aversion.
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DP6934 Household External Finance and Consumption
Author(s):	Timothy J. Besley, Neil Meads, Paolo Surico
Programme Area:	FE
Programme Area: FE
Keyword(s): external finance, terms of access, household consumption, birth cohorts, pseudo panels
Abstract: This paper uses mortgage data to construct a measure of terms on which households access to external finance, and relates it to consumption at both the aggregate and cohort levels. The Household External Finance (HEF) index is based on the spread paid by risky borrowers in the mortgage market. There is evidence that the terms of access to external finance matter more for the consumption of young cohorts in U.K. data. Results are robust to a wide variety of specifications.
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DP6935 Ranking Israel's Economists
Author(s):	Dan Ben-David
Programme Area:	LE
Programme Area: LE
Keyword(s): academic economists, rankings, Israel
Abstract: One of the more important measures of a scholar’s research impact is the number of times that the scholar’s work is cited by other researchers as a source of knowledge. This paper conducts a first of its kind examination on Israel’s academic economists and economics departments, ranking them according to the number of citations on their work. It also provides a vista into one of the primary reasons given by junior Israeli economists for an unparalleled brain drain from the country - discrepancies between research impact and promotion. The type of examination carried out in this paper can now be easily replicated in other fields and in other countries utilizing freely-available citations data and compilation software that have been made readily accessible in recent years.
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DP6936 Rhineland exit?
Author(s):	A Lans Bovenberg, Coen N Teulings
Programme Area:	LE
Programme Area: LE
Keyword(s): wagesetting, optimal risk sharing, employment protection, corporate governance
Abstract: We argue in favour of the shareholder model of the firm for three main reasons, First, serving multiple stakeholders leads to ill-defined property rights. What sounds like a fair compromise between stakeholders can easily evolve in a permanent struggle between the stakeholders about the ultimate goal of the company. In many cases, the vague Rhineland principles no longer offer much protection to workers. Second, giving workers a claim on the surplus of the firm raises the cost of capital for investments in jobs, which harms the position of job seekers, including new entrants to the labour market. Third, and most importantly, making shareholders the ultimate owner of the firm provides the best possible diversification of firm- specific risks. Whereas globalisation has increased firm-specific risk by intensifying competition, globalisation of capital markets has also greatly increased the scope for diversification of firm-specific risk. Diversification of this risk on the capital market is an efficient form of social insurance. Reducing the claims of workers on the surplus of the firm can be seen as the next step in the emancipation of workers. Workers derive their security not from the firm that employs them but from the value of their own human capital. In such a world, global trade in corporate control, global competition and creative destruction associated with these developments are more legitimate. Coordination in wage bargaining and collective norms on what is proper compensation play an important role in reducing the claim of workers on the firm’s surplus, thereby protecting workers against firm-specific risks. Indeed, in Denmark, workers bear less firm- specific risk than workers in the United States do. Collective action thus has an important role to play. Politicians, however, also face the temptation to please voters and incumbent workers with short-run gains at the expense of exposing workers to firm-specific risks and reducing job creation. This is why corporate governance legislation that gives moral legitimacy to the claim of insiders on the surplus of the firm is damaging. The transition from the Rhineland model (in which management serves the interests of all stakeholders) towards the shareholder model is fraught with difficulties. While society reaps long-run gains in efficiency, in the short run a generation of insiders has to give up their rights without benefiting from increased job creation and higher starting wages. Whereas the claims of older workers on the surplus of a firm may thus have some legitimacy, younger cohorts should be denied such moral claims. These problems require extreme political skill to solve. In particular, they may require some grandfathering provisions or temporary explicit transfers from younger to older generations.
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DP6937 Oil Prices, Profits, and Recessions: An Inquiry Using Terrorism as an Instrumental Variable
Author(s):	Natalie Chen, Liam Graham, Andrew Oswald
Programme Area:	IM
Programme Area: IM
Keyword(s): Energy prices, Oil shocks, Profitability, Industries
Abstract: Nearly all post-war recessions were preceded by oil-price shocks, but is this because spikes in the price of oil cause economic downturns? At the heart of this question lies an identification problem: oil prices and the state of the world economy are endogenously determined. This paper uses terrorist incidents as an instrumental variable. In an international panel of industries, we show that, after correction for simultaneity bias -- though not before -- the price of oil has large negative effects upon profitability. We test for weak instruments and check sub-sample robustness. Our findings seem to lend support to the claim that oil-price spikes can be a source of recessions.
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DP6938 Competition and quality in regulated markets with sluggish demand
Author(s):	Kurt Richard Brekke, Roberto Cellini, Luigi Siciliani, Odd Rune Straume
Programme Area:	IO
Programme Area: IO
Keyword(s): competition, quality, Regulated markets
Abstract: We investigate the effect of competition on quality in regulated markets (e.g., health care, higher education, public utilities), using a Hotelling framework, in the presence of sluggish demand. We take a differential game approach, and derive the open-loop solution (providers commit to an optimal investment plan at the initial period) and the feedback closed-loop solution (providers move investments in response to the dynamics of the states). If the marginal cost of provision is increasing, the steady state quality is higher under the open- loop solution than under the closed-loop solution. Fiercer competition (lower transportation costs and/or less sluggish demand) leads to higher quality in both solutions, but the quality response to increased competition is weaker when players use closed-loop strategies. In both solutions, quality and demand move in opposite directions over time on the equilibrium path to the steady state.
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DP6939 Buying Online: Sequential Decision Making by Shopbot Visitors
Author(s):	Uwe Dulleck, Franz Hackl, Bernhard Weiss, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer
Programme Area:	IO
Programme Area: IO
Keyword(s): decision theory, e-commerce, heuristics, price comparison, seller reputation
Abstract: In this article we propose a two stage procedure to model demand decisions by customers who are balancing several dimensions of a product. We then test our procedure by analyzing the behavior of buyers from an Austrian price comparison site. Although in such a market a consumer will typically search for the cheapest price for a given product, reliability and service of the supplier are other important characteristics of a retailer. In our data, consumers follow such a two stage procedure: they select a shortlist of suppliers by using the price variable only; finally, they trade off reliability and price among these shortlisted suppliers.
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Total Papers listed: 9