House Prices and Replacement Cost: A Micro-Level Analysis

According to housing investment models, house prices and replacement cost should have an equilibrating relationship. Previous empirical work mainly based on aggregate-level data has found only little evidence of such a relationship. By using a unique data set, covering transactions of single-family houses over a 25 years period, we establish strong support for the relationship at the micro level. In the time series context, we find that new house prices and replacement cost align quickly after a shock. In the cross-sectional context, we find prices of old houses and replacement cost are closely related once building depreciation has been taken into account. As to be expected from these results, replacement cost information also proves to be useful for the prediction of future house prices.Tobin's Q, building depreciation, prediction accuracy

Renting versus Owning and the Role of Income Risk: The Case of Germany

In a world with complete markets and no transactions cost, the decision whether to rent or buy a home is separate from a household's professional income risk. If markets are incomplete and have frictions, however, profession- specific income risk, regional house price risk, and mobility needs will interact and should affect the tenure mode choice. Using panel data from West Germany, we establish homogeneous profession groups and estimate their regional net income risk and regional mobility. We then examine the impact of the risk and mobility variables on the tenure mode decision at the aggregate and the individual household level. We find that the diversification potential of renting affects the tenure mode choice as do mobility needs.Tenure mode choice, background risk, household mobility

Coherent Resonat millenial-scale climate transitions triggered by massive meltwater pulses

The role of mean and stochastic freshwater forcing on the generation of millennial-scale climate variability in the North Atlantic is studied using a low-order coupled atmosphere–ocean–sea ice model. It is shown that millennial-scale oscillations can be excited stochastically, when the North Atlantic Ocean is fresh enough. This finding is used in order to interpret the aftermath of massive iceberg surges (Heinrich events) in the glacial North Atlantic, which are characterized by an excitation of Dansgaard–Oeschger events. Based on model results, it is hypothesized that Heinrich events trigger Dansgaard–Oeschger cycles and that furthermore the occurrence of Heinrich events is dependent on the accumulated climatic effect of a series of Dansgaard–Oeschger events. This scenario leads to a coupled ocean–ice sheet oscillation that shares many similarities with the Bond cycle. Further sensitivity experiments reveal that the timescale of the oscillations can be decomposed into stochastic, linear, and nonlinear deterministic components. A schematic bifurcation diagram is used to compare theoretical results with paleoclimatic data

The Accuracy of Long-term Real Estate Valuations

By using a unique data set of single-family house transactions, we examine the accuracy of the cost and sales comparison approach over different forecast horizons. We find that sales comparison values provide better long-term forecasts than cost values if the economic loss function is symmetric. A weighted average of both sales comparison value and cost value can reduce this loss even further. If the economic loss function is asymmetric, however, cost values might provide better long-term forecasts.prediction accuracy, mortgage underwriting, risk management

Transactions That Did Not Happen and Their Influence on Prices

This paper studies data from the wholesale fruit and vegetables market in Marseille. We have details of counteroffers to the prices that were proposed by the seller even when no transaction took place. With a simple heoretical model we analyse the evolution of prices during the day and in particular the relation between the final price struck and the proposals of the two parties. Periods with no buyer refusals, of offers or bargaining with no transaction will lead to a revision of the sellerÕs first price. More importantly the sharing of the surplus moves in the buyerÕs favour during the day. These presumptions are then shown to be confirmed by our data set.bargaining, markets

STATSREP-ML: Statistical Evaluation & Reporting Framework for Machine Learning Results

In this report, we present STATSREP-ML, which is an open-source solution for automating the process of evaluating machine-learning results. It calculates qualitative statistics, performs the appropriate tests and reports them in a comprehensive way. It largely, but not exclusively, relies on well-tested and robust statistics implementations in R, and uses the tests the machine-learning community largely agreed upon

The Car That Hit The Burning House: Understanding Small Scale Incident Related Information in Microblogs

Microblogs are increasingly gaining attention as an important information source in emergency management. In this case, state-of-the-art has shown that many valuable situational information is shared by citizens and official sources. However, current approaches focus on information shared during large scale incidents, with high amount of publicly available information. In contrast, in this paper, we conduct two studies on every day small scale incidents. First, we propose the first machine learning algorithm to detect three different types of small scale incidents with a precision of 82.2% and 82% recall. Second, we manually classify users contributing situational information about small scale incidents and show that a variety of individual users publish incident related information. Furthermore, we show that those users are reporting faster than official sources

A Theoretical and Experimental Study on the Lewis Acid−Base Adducts (P4E3)·(BX3) (E = S, Se; X = Br, I) and (P4Se3)·(NbCl5)

The Lewis acid−base adducts (P4E3)·(BX3) (E = S, Se; X = Br, I) and (P4Se3)·(NbCl5) have been prepared and characterized by Raman, IR, and solid-state 31P MAS NMR spectroscopy. Hybrid density functional calculations (B3LYP) have been carried out for both the apical and the basal (P4E3)·(BX3) (E = S, Se; X = Br, I) adducts. The thermodynamics of all considered species has been discussed. In accordance with solid-state 31P MAS NMR and vibrational data, the X-ray powder diffraction structures of (P4S3)·(BBr3) [monoclinic, space group P21/m (No. 11), a = 8.8854(1) Å, b = 10.6164(2) Å, c = 6.3682(1) Å, β = 108.912(1)°, V = 568.29(2) Å3, Z = 2] and (P4S3)·(BI3) [orthorhombic, space group Pnma (No. 62), a = 12.5039(5) Å, b = 11.3388(5) Å, c = 8.9298(4) Å, V = 1266.09(9) Å3, Z = 4] indicate the formation of an apical P4S3 complex in the reaction of P4S3 with BX3 (X = Br, I). Basal adducts are formed when P4Se3 is used as the donor species. Vibrational assignment for the normal modes of these adducts has been made on the basis of comparison between theoretically obtained and experimentally observed vibrational data