“Fire Sales” in housing market: is the house-searching process similar to a theme park visit?

Three striking empirical regularities have been repeatedly reported: the positive correlation between housing prices and trading volume, between housing price and the time-on-the-market (TOM), and the existence of price dispersion. This short paper provides perhaps the first unifying framework which mimics these phenomena in a simple competitive search framework. In the equilibrium, sellers with heterogeneous waiting cost and buyers are endogenously segregated into different submarkets, each with distinct market tightness and prices. With endogenous search effort, our model also reproduces the well-documented price-volume correlation. Directions for future research are also discussed.housing market, competitive search, price dispersion, trading volume, time on the market

¡§Fire Sales¡¨ in Housing Market: Is the House- Search Process Similar to a Theme Park Visit?

Three striking empirical regularities have been repeatedly reported: the positive correlation between housing prices and trading volume, and between housing price and time-on-the-market (TOM), and the existence of price dispersion. This short paper provides perhaps the first unifying framework which mimics these phenomena in a simple competitive search framework. In the equilibrium, sellers with heterogeneous waiting costs and buyers are endogenously segregated into different submarkets, each with distinct market tightness and prices. With endogenous search efforts, our model also reproduces the well-documented price-volume correlation. Directions for future research are also discussed.Housing market; Competitive search; Price dispersion; Trading volume; Time on the market

Topological Structure of Fractal Squares

Given an integer $n\geq 2$ and a digit set ${\mathcal D}\subsetneq {0,1,...,n-1}^2$, there is a self-similar set $F \subset {\Bbb R}^2$ satisfying the set equation: $F=(F+{\mathcal D})/n$. We call such $F$ a fractal square. By studying a periodic extension $H= F+ {\mathbb Z}^2$, we classify $F$ into three types according to their topological properties. We also provide some simple criteria for such classification.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure

Composition-Dependent Dielectric Properties of DMF-Water Mixtures by Molecular Dynamics Simulations

In this paper, we study the dielectric properties of water-N,N dimethylformamide (DMF) mixtures over the whole composition range using a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The static and microwave frequency-dependent dielectric properties of the mixtures are calculated from MD trajectories of at least 2 ns length and compared to those of available measurements. We find that the short-ranged structural correlation between neighboring water and DMF molecules strongly influences the static dielectric properties of mixtures. In terms of the dynamics, we report time correlation functions for the dipole densities of mixtures and find that their long-time behavior can be reasonably described by biexponential decays, which means the dielectric relaxations of these mixtures are governed by complex multitimescale mechanisms of rotational diffusion. The dipole density relaxation time is a non-monotonic function of composition passing through a maximum around 0.5 mole fraction DMF, in agreement with the measured main dielectric relaxation time of mixtures

Understanding Driver-Automated Vehicle Interactions Through Wizard of Oz Design Improvisation

This paper describes a Wizard of Oz study that was performed to gather insights on how automated vehicles (NHTSA’s Levels of Automation 2 and 3) should interact with human drivers. Twelve design improvisation sessions were conducted inside a driving simulator with interaction and interface design experts. The participants drove through a simulated course with various terrain and road conditions, while the two human operators (wizards) controlled the audio and driving behavior of the car. Through the feedback collected in these sessions, insights in five areas were discovered: drivers’ desire for shared control, transitions in driving mode, response latency, addressing requests, and drivers’ trust in the car. Additional examining yielded potential concepts and ideas that may be implemented and tested in future work

Hypertensive nephropathy treatment by heart-protecting musk pill: a study of anti-inflammatory therapy for target organ damage of hypertension

This study was designed to investigate the protective effect of the heart-protecting musk pill (HMP) on inflammatory injury of kidney from spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR). Male SHRs aged 4 weeks were divided into SHR model group, HMP low-dosage group (13.5 mg/kg), and HMP high-dosage group (40 mg/kg). Age-matched Wistar–Kyoto rats were used as normal control. All rats were killed at 12 weeks of age. Tail-cuff method and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay were used to determine rat systolic blood pressure and angiotensin II (Ang II) contents, respectively. Renal inflammatory damage was evaluated by the following parameters: protein expressions of inflammatory cytokines, carbonyl protein contents, nitrite concentration, infiltration of monocytes/macrophages in interstitium and glomeruli, kidney pathological changes, and excretion rate of urinary protein. HMP did not prevent the development of hypertension in SHR. However, this Chinese medicinal compound decreased renal Ang II content. Consistent with the change of renal Ang II, all the parameters of renal inflammatory injury were significantly decreased by HMP. This study indicates that HMP is a potent suppressor of renal inflammatory damage in SHR, which may serve as a basis for the advanced preventive and therapeutic investigation of HMP in hypertensive nephropathy