DSpace collection: Economics and Business Working Papers Series

Property Titling and Conveyancing

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:05:54 GMT

title: Property Titling and Conveyancing authors: Arruñada, Benito
abstract: This paper analyzes titling institutions and the regulation of supporting conveyancing services. After examining the tradeoff of enforcement benefits and consent costs posed by property rights, it explains how different public titling systems (privacy, recording and registration) try to solve this tradeoff, and what the consequences are for the nature and regulation of private conveyancing services. The paper ends with a discussion of some empirical issues and data which are useful for comparing, designing and managing titling and conveyancing systems.

Efficient Interval Scoring Rules

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:05:51 GMT

title: Efficient Interval Scoring Rules authors: Schlag, Karl H.; Weele, Joël van der
abstract: Scoring rules that elicit an entire belief distribution through the elicitation of point beliefs are time-consuming and demand considerable cognitive e¤ort. Moreover, the results are valid only when agents are risk-neutral or when one uses probabilistic rules. We investigate a class of rules in which the agent has to choose an interval and is rewarded (deterministically) on the basis of the chosen interval and the realization of the random variable. We formulate an e¢ ciency criterion for such rules and present a speci.c interval scoring rule. For single- peaked beliefs, our rule gives information about both the location and the dispersion of the belief distribution. These results hold for all concave utility functions.

A house price index defined in the potential outcomes framework

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:05:47 GMT

title: A house price index defined in the potential outcomes framework authors: Longford, Nicholas T.
abstract: Current methods for constructing house price indices are based on comparisons of sale prices of residential properties sold two or more times and on regression of the sale prices on the attributes of the properties and of their locations. The two methods have well recognised deficiencies, selection bias and model assumptions, respectively. We introduce a new method based on propensity score matching. The average house prices for two periods are compared by selecting pairs of properties, one sold in each period, that are as similar on a set of available attributes (covariates) as is feasible to arrange. The uncertainty associated with such matching is addressed by multiple imputation, framing the problem as involving missing values. The method is applied to aregister of transactions ofresidential properties in New Zealand and compared with the established alternatives.

The emergence of biofuels and the co-movement between crude oil and agricultural prices

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:05:43 GMT

title: The emergence of biofuels and the co-movement between crude oil and agricultural prices authors: Peñaranda, Francisco; Rupérez-Micola, Augusto
abstract: Biofuels are becoming an alternative to non-renewable energy sources but we know little about the economic mechanisms influencing their prices. This paper studies the interrelationships between the spot prices of oil and those of agricultural commodities used as biofuel feedstocks. Using daily data since 1988, we identify a co-movement after 2005 that does not appear for other food-related commodities and is not due to general economic variables. We also find traces of the co-movement in the prices of a large biofuel stock. The results amount to the first systematic piece of empirical evidence linking spot oil and agricultural markets via the emergence of biofuels.