Chung Yi Tse

Estimating the commuting cost and commuting time property price gradients

Abstract In this paper, we estimate the property price gradients in Hong Kong. We distinguish our effort from previous studies on the subject by directly measuring the economic distance, i.e., the monetary commuting cost and commuting time, instead of merely the physical distance. Our results are generally supportive of the prediction of a negative property price gradient. In one specification, the estimated capitalization of the savings of commuting cost in property prices appears to be just right. The expected negative effect of commuting time on property values, however, can only be detected among observations with larger commuting times. Nevertheless, over the range where the effect of commuting time has the expected negative sign, the values of time implied by the estimates agree well with the results reported in the transportation economics literature.

The Spatial Origin of Commerce

Although dispersion raises productivity by relieving crowding, concentration promotes trade. The participation of specialist middlemen, who tend to cluster around the regional center, in the trading process would mitigate such tensions, for it becomes less urgent for others to scramble for central locations then from the increase in the density of economic activities around such locations. A city, populated by a cluster of middlemen, that serves as a platform for intermediate trade among producers in surrounding areas can exist without any increasing returns in production, transportation, and exchange. Indirect trade and pure commerce may, thus, have a spatial origin.

Unemployment and vacancy in the Hong Kong labour market

This paper combines unemployment and vacancy data to analyse the efficiency of the Hong Kong labour market for the period 1976 to 1997. It is confirmed that the negative relationship between unemployment and vacancy, commonly known as the Beveridge curve, applies to the Hong Kong labour market. There was an inward shift of the Beveridge curve around 1982, which implies falling match frictions since then. Systematic evidence is also found that Hong Kong has been close to full employment, for on average, around 80% of unemployment in the period was due to structural and frictional unemployment with only 20% attributable to cyclical unemployment.

Increasing Wealth and Increasing Instability: The Role of Collateral

In development economics, growth in credit is generally associated with faster long-run growth as financial intermediation improves the efficiency of channeling capital to productive investment. Yet, among developing countries high growth in credit almost always guarantees the outbreak of a financial crisis. The authors attempt to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory facts with an endogenous growth model in which entry to international borrowing entails some significant fixed cost. The poorest countries are excluded from international borrowing because of the fixed cost. The higher-income developing countries will find it optimal to sink the fixed cost to borrow internationally, growing faster as a result, but also become prone to fluctuations arising from shocks to the international financial market.

Technology Choice and Saving in the Presence of a Fixed Adoption Cost

This paper explores the relationship between technology choice and saving in the presence of fixed costs of technology adoption. While richer agents adopt the more productive technology immediately it is available, poorer agents optimally choose to wait before switching to the better technology. In the interim, they save more than others and more than in the absence of the prospect of switching to the new technology. The paper thus provides an explanation for the phenomenon that the saving rate and the growth rate of output increase over time in the transition.

The distribution of demand, market structure, and investment in technology

In a quality-ladder growth model, the dispersion in the demand for quality influences the prices innovators may charge for their innovations and the number of such firms that may obtain market shares at any one time. Under a more dispersed distribution, the innovator may only charge a lower price to cover the entire market. The payoff to innovation declines, causing investment to fall. When the dispersion has reached a critical level, the innovator will no longer price out the incumbents, turning the market into a natural oligopoly with firms selling different grades co-existing at any one time, even if it is optimal for all consumers to buy the highest grade available. Any further increases in dispersion raise the payoff to innovation, inducing greater investment.

Search frictions, market power, and long-run growth

Abstract This paper embeds product market search in an Ak growth model to study the effects of search frictions on market structure, capital accumulation, and long-run growth. The basic hypothesis is that search frictions, in giving rise to market power, result in higher prices and lower output levels. The falling demand for capital stemming from firms cutting back output then lowers the interest rate, dampening capital accumulation and slowing down growth. A decline in search frictions sets the process in reverse, eventually speeding up growth through the change in market structure. In the meantime, the stock market values of firms could fall.

The diffusion of knowledge and the productivity and appropriability of R&D investment

Abstract This paper studies an endogenous growth model where the diffusion of productive knowledge takes time, and is more rapid within firms than between firms. A longer diffusion lag, while improving the appropriability of R&D investment, lowers the productivity of R&D. There is thus a fundamental conflict between the productivity and appropriability of R&D investment. More rapid diffusion of knowledge across firms and the availability of greater cross-product spillovers could reduce the scope of the firm and this may explain the recent decline in the concentration of R&D among large firms in the U.S.

Risky quality choice

Abstract In vertical product differentiation with a stochastic research technology, firms should target their research at different quality levels for efficiency. In a natural monopoly where the top firm finds it most profitable to sell to the whole market, the incentives for risk-taking and for firms to differentiate their targeted qualities are optimal. In a natural oligopoly (which results when there is sufficient dispersion of tastes), the relationship between a firm’s payoff and its quality improvement over other firms is weakened. This diminishes the firms’ incentives to differentiate and the targeted qualities are too low and too close together.

Flipping the Housing Market

We add arbitraging middlemen -- investors who attempt to profit from buying low and selling high -- to a canonical housing market search model. Flipping tends to take place in sluggish and tight, but not in moderate, markets. There is the possibility of multiple equilibria. In one equilibrium, most, if not all, transactions are intermediated, resulting in rapid turnover, a high vacancy rate, and high housing prices. In another equilibrium, few houses are bought and sold by middlemen. Turnover is slow, few houses are vacant, and prices are moderate. Moreover, flippers can enter and exit en masse in response to the smallest interest rate shock. The housing market can then be intrinsically unstable even when all flippers are akin to the arbitraging middlemen in classical finance theory. In speeding up turnover, the flipping that takes place in a sluggish and illiquid market tends to be socially beneficial. The flipping that takes place in a tight and liquid market can be wasteful as the efficiency gain from any faster turnover is unlikely to be large enough to offset the loss from more houses being left vacant in the hands of flippers. Based on our calibrated model, which matches several stylized facts of the U.S. housing market, we show that the housing price response to interest rate change is very non-linear, suggesting cautions to policy attempts to “stabilize” the housing market through monetary policy.