RMB Undervaluation and Appreciation

The bilateral real exchange rate between Chinese renminbi (RMB) and the US dollar is studied. The panel data Penn effect model shows that the RMB was overvalued in 1980–1991 but later undervalued in 1992–2010. In 2010, it was undervalued by 36.7%. Econometric analysis and an examination of the appreciation of seventeen currencies belonging to countries and areas under the same economic development stage show that the RMB should appreciate at an annual speed of 3.2%. At this rate, the RMB misalignment in 2010 will be corrected by 2020. In the future, RMB appreciation should be realized totally from the nominal exchange rate, not partly from the nominal exchange rate and partly from the relative price level. This appreciation path satisfies the interests of both China and the US

Muriel Anderson: an appreciation

A tribute to the late Muriel Anderson, former Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.Preprint of an article by Jules Winterton, Associate Director and Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

The Value of Foreclosed Property

This paper examines the expected price appreciation of distressed property and compares it to the prevailing metropolitan area appreciation rate. Whether due to individual property or local area heterogeneity in appreciation, the results show that foreclosed property appreciates less than the area average appreciation rate. The magnitude of the deviation is sensitive to loan characteristics, legal restrictions, housing market conditions and marketing time

Fear of appreciation

In recent years the term"fear of floating"has been used to describe exchange rate regimes that, while officially flexible, in practice intervene heavily to avoid sudden or large depreciations. However, the data reveals that in most cases (and increasingly so in the 2000s) intervention has been aimed at limiting appreciations rather than depreciations, often motivated by the neo-mercantilist view of a depreciated real exchange rate as protection for domestic industries. As a first step to address the broader question of whether this view delivers on its promise, the authors examine whether this"fear of appreciation"has a positive impact on growth performance in developing economies. The authors show that depreciated exchange rates appear to induce higher growth, but that the effect, rather than through import substitution or export booms as argued by the mercantilist view, works largely through thedeepening of domestic savings and capital accumulation.Currencies and Exchange Rates,Emerging Markets,Debt Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Macroeconomic Management

The Motivational Structure of Appreciation

On a widely held view in aesthetics, appreciation requires disinterested attention. George Dickie famously criticized a version of this view championed by the aesthetic attitude theorists. I revisit his criticisms and extract an overlooked challenge for accounts that seek to characterize appreciative engagement in terms of distinctive motivation: at minimum, the motivational profile such accounts propose must make a difference to how appreciative episodes unfold over time. I then develop a proposal to meet this challenge by drawing an analogy between how attention is guided in appreciation and how practical action is guided in ‘striving play’—a mode of game play recently foregrounded in the philosophy of games. On the resulting account, appreciation involves an ‘inverted’ motivational structure: the appreciating agent's attention is guided by cognitive goals taken up instrumentally, for the sake of the cognitive activity that results from attending under the guidance of those goals

The Dynamics of Metropolitan Housing Prices

This article is the winner of the Innovative Thinking ‘‘Thinking Out of the Box’’ manuscript prize (sponsored by the Homer Hoyt Advanced Studies Institute) presented at the 2001 American Real Estate Society Annual Meeting. This study examines the dynamics of real housing price appreciation in 130 metropolitan areas across the United States. The study finds that real housing price appreciation is strongly influenced by the growth of population and real changes in income, construction costs and interest rates. The study also finds that stock market appreciation imparts a strong current and lagged wealth effect on housing prices. Housing appreciation rates also are found to vary across areas because of location-specific fixed-effects; these fixed effects represent the residuals of housing price appreciation attributable to location. The magnitudes of the fixed-effects in particular cities are positively correlated with restrictive growth management policies and limitations on land availability.

Conceptualizing gratitude and appreciation as a unitary personality trait

Gratitude and appreciation are currently measured using three self-report instruments, the GQ6 (1 scale), the Appreciation Scale (8 scales), and the GRAT (3 scales). Two studies were conducted to test how these three instruments are interrelated, whether they exist under the same higher order factor or factors, and whether gratitude and appreciation is a single or multi-factorial construct. In Study 1 (N = 206) all 12 scales were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis. Both parallel analysis and the minimum average partial method indicated a clear one-factor solution. In Study 2 (N = 389) multigroup confirmatory factor analysis supported the one-factor structure, demonstrated the invariance of this structure across gender, and ruled out the confounding effect of socially desirable responding. We conclude gratitude and appreciation are a single-factor personality trait. We suggest integration of gratitude and appreciation literatures and provide a clearer conceptualization of gratitude

Manufactured Housing Appreciation: Stereotypes and Data

Consumers Union assessed the financial appreciation of manufactured- housing units, by examining the relative appreciation rates of manufactured housing and site-built housing, as well as the factors affecting the appreciation rate of manufactured housing. Our analysis includes an extensive literature review of previous work in the field, as well as primary research using data from the 1985–1999 American Housing Survey Panel and county appraisal data from several counties in Texas. The stereotypes of manufactured housing are built upon very real differences in appreciation experienced by the people who own them. The large proportion of manufactured homes in rental parks contributes greatly to the lower appreciation experienced by manufactured home owners as a whole, as land ownership is an important driver of appreciation. High variation in the individual appreciation rates of manufactured homes also causes a higher proportion of manufactured homes, even packaged with land, to lose value over time. Even so, average appreciation rates of manufactured homes packaged with owned land are statistically in line with the site built market, and there are few inherent reasons that a home built in a factory should perform differently than one built on site. Our analysis suggests that consumers can make decisions which can improve the appreciation of a manufactured home. Land ownership, location, purchase price and maintenance expenditures are among the factors that predict appreciation, and should be considered when attempting to increase appreciation in a particular unit.manufactured housing mobile home appreciation