Suchergebnisse

Limited dependent variable techniques are used to model the decision-making process in a dual-pricing household water system as employed in Brisbane, Australia. In this system, households could initially choose to remain on a standard ratable value principle of payment for water or to move to a volumetric, user-pays system. Because of uncertainty associated with future household water demand, the option to remain on the existing system has value and is thereby incorporated into the appropriate decision-making model. A number of property and household characteristics are found to influence the choice of water charging system along with the value of the option. These include property size and ratable value, the number of household members, the type of garden vegetation, and the presence of various household appliances.

This paper examines the short and long‐term comovements among UK regional property markets over the period 1976‐2001. The markets examined are London, Outer South East, East Anglia, South West, East Midlands, West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, North and North West. Multivariate cointegration procedures, Granger non‐causality tests, level VAR and generalised variance decomposition analyses based on error‐correction and vector autoregressive models are conducted to analyse relationships among these markets. The results indicate that there is a stationary, long‐term relationship and a number of long‐term causal linkages between the various UK property markets. In terms of the percentage of variance explained, other regional markets are generally more important than innovations in a given region, though this is not the case for the Outer South East. The Outer South East market is segmented from the other regional markets, though also extremely influential in explaining forecast variance in these markets. The overall suggestion is that opportunities exist for portfolio diversification in the UK regional property market, and the Outer South East market should be seen as containing valuable information for forecasting performance in the regional markets.

This paper examines risk, return and the prospects for portfolio diversification among major painting and financial markets over the period 1976-2001. The art markets examined are Contemporary Masters, French Impressionists, Modern European, 19th Century European, Old Masters, Surrealists, 20th Century English and Modern US paintings. The financial markets comprise US Treasury bills, corporate and government bonds and small and large company stocks. In common with the literature in this area, the study finds that the returns on paintings are much lower and the risks much higher than conventional nvestment markets. Moreover, while low correlations of returns suggest that opportunities for portfolio diversification in art works alone and in conjunction with equity markets exist, the construction of Markowitz mean-variance efficient portfolios indicates that no diversification gains are provided by art in financial asset portfolios. However, diversification benefits in portfolios comprised solely of art works are possible, with Contemporary Masters, 19th Century European, Old Masters and 20th Century English paintings dominating the efficient frontier during the period in question.