putting sustainable investing into practice a governance framework for pension funds this article presents a framework intended to provide pension funds with practical guidance for the successful implementation of a sustainable investing strategy the framework is developed with respect to the uk and us pension funds as these share certain common legal characteristics and focuses on the changes that pension funds adopting such a strategy should make to their investment strategies and governance particularly through the formulation and articulation of clear investment mission and strong investment beliefs the article proceeds with a review of socially responsible investment sri and more recent responsible investment ri literature in the context of growing public awareness but not necessarily understanding of the concept of sustainability literature review of sri field sri ri and sustainable investing section it then examines the literature on pension fund governance arguing the need for more detailed practical guidance for funds moving towards sustainable investing especially for those implementing a sustainable investing strategy anglo american pension fund governance section it presents the framework for the practical implementation of sustainable investing in the sustainable investing framework section finally we review the relevant anglo american legal backdrop outlining how pension funds adopting our framework should approach their fiduciary obligations and then discussing potential regulatory enablers of sustainable investment legal context barriers to and enablers of sustainable investing section

jump risk of presidential election evidence from taiwan stock and foreign exchange markets this article employs jump diffusion models including the arji model and the garch jump model to examine jump intensity and volatility of taiwan stock and foreign exchange markets during a presidential election period the empirical results indicate that firstly the arji model fits data better than the garch jump model secondly the presidential election events enhance the jump intensity of both markets and the jump induced variance is higher than diffusion induced variance it reveals the importance of the discrete jump process during a presidential election period and might provide some implications for option pricing or hedging strategy due to the intervention of the central bank in the foreign exchange market during a presidential election period the results indicate that jump intensity and volatility of jump size are more moderate

will you purchase environmentally friendly products using prediction requests to increase choice of sustainable products research shows that commitment based interventions are among the most effective strategies to encourage pro environmental behaviors but methods to elicit commitments from a large number of individuals i e door to door or phone campaigns are often costly and unrealistic predictions requests a commitment type strategy are an effective mass communication strategy and have the potential to influence pro environmental behavior among large audiences this research is the first to demonstrate that prediction requests in a consumer behavior context influence preference for environmentally friendly products in addition this research examines the role of individual and contextual factors in influencing the efficacy of prediction requests study 1 shows that exposure to an advertisement with a prediction request leads to increased preferences for environmentally sustainable vs traditional household cleaning products compared to a control advertisement and that this effect is greater when the prediction request is paired with an audience cue vs prediction request only study 2 indicates that the effect of prediction requests on preference for sustainable products is greater for individuals with interdependent vs independent self construal substantive implications and directions for future research are discussed

electoral information in developed stock market testing conditional heteroscedasticity in the market model this investigates the influence of major electoral information on abnormal returns around the announcement date in the developed stock market and examines whether these explanatory variables are associated with observed cumulative abnormal returns using a regression analysis the analytical results demonstrate that average abnormal returns are significantly negative before the date of the announcement of the results of a general election on days 6 and 3 and after that announcement date on days 4 6 and 10 this phenomenon can be attributed to hedging activity of the investors to reduce risk

measuring country event risk compensation on brics international portfolio management the brics nations brazil russia india and china have a strong relative economic growth pattern in the world among economic powers the allure of globalization has made the analysis and assessment of national critical component of international portfolio management in recent years we construct the model from comparing the relative sd of stock return whereby higher sds are generally associated with more risk this relative sd forms a principle component in the change of the weights on the international portfolio choice the result shows that event jump risk not only makes the investor s allocation more conservative overall but also it can be compensated on brics event risk

the impact of party alternative on the stock market the case of japan this paper tries to clarify whether change in political regime has an effect on the behaviour of the stock market in japan the empirical study finds that the transition of ruling party effect is not a crucial variable to the nikkei 225 the alienation felt by the japanese about the political environment resulting in a succession of prime ministers does not influence the nikkei 225 stock market behaviour therefore former prime ministers who have resigned have become scapegoats for the poor performance of financial and economic policies

ethical ideologies and older consumer perceptions of unethical sales tactics demographic differences among consumer groups have become increasingly important to the development of marketing strategies marketers depend heavily on the sales force to implement strategies at the consumer level and not surprisingly different groups may view the salesperson s role differently unfortunately unethical sales practices targeted at various consumer groups and especially at seniors have been utilized as well the purpose of this study is to provide initial empirical evidence of the ethical ideological make up of four age segments outlined by strauss and howe 1991 generations the history of america s future 1584 2069 morrow new york and to examine the propensity for these groups seniors in particular to respond differentially to potentially unethical sales tactics data were collected from 179 respondents representing the four generational age groups manova revealed that the seniors in this study were distinct with respect to ethical ideology and less accepting of unethical sales tactics managerial implications are discussed for sales organizations to maximize their effectiveness across consumer groups

world war ii events and the dow jones industrial index abstract this paper investigates which events of world war ii wwii the us investors at that time considered as turning points structural breaks of the war the empirical study employs daily dow jones industrial average stock index and volatility from january 1939 to december 1945 and applies structural shift oriented test to determine endogenously the structural breaks during the wwii period results show that the majority of the wartime events on and off the battlefield labelled important by historians did result in structural breaks in both price movement and stock returns volatility risk these results have major implications for investors of the present and future

the heterogeneity of socially responsible investment many writers have commented on the heterogeneity of the socially responsible investment sri movement however few have actually tried to understand and explain it and even fewer have discussed whether the opposite standardisation is possible and desirable in this article we take a broader perspective on the issue of the heterogeneity of sri we distinguish between four levels on which heterogeneity can be found the terminological definitional strategic and practical whilst there is much talk about the definitional ambiguities of sri we suggest that there is actually some agreement on the definitional level there are at least three explanations which we suggest can account for the heterogeneity on the other levels cultural and ideological differences between different regions differences in values norms and ideology between various sri stakeholders and the market setting of sri discussing the implications of the three explanations for the sri market we suggest that there is reason to be sceptical about the possibilities of standardisation if not standardisation is imposed top down whether this kind of standardisation is desirable or not we argue depends on what the motives for it would be to the extent that standardisation may facilitate the mainstreaming of sri it could be a good thing but we entertain doubts about whether mainstreaming really requires standardisation

jump dynamics with structural breaks for crude oil prices this study investigates the joint phenomena of permanent and transitory components in conditional variance and jump intensity along with verification of structural breaks for crude oil prices we adopt a component arji model with structural break analysis utilizing daily data on west texas intermediate crude oil spot and futures contracts the analytical results verify the existence of permanent and transitory components in conditional variance with the permanent component of conditional variance increasing with the occurrence of a sudden major event such as the iraqi invasion of kuwait operation desert storm and the war between the us and iraq and a relatively greater increase in the transitory component over the same period notably jump intensity fluctuates with an increase in the transitory component of conditional variance in response to abnormal events it is the transitory component which serves as the primary influential factor for jumps in returns therefore speculators are willing to take large risks particularly with respect to anticipating future price movements or gambling in the hopes of rapidly making substantial gains thus speculators prefer the temporary volatility component and engage in trade activities however investors prefer the permanent volatility component because they may well be better off relocating their assets into more stable portfolios to outperform the market portfolio over the long run

the impact of political risk on the volatility of stock returns the case of canada this paper examines the impact of political risk in canada on the volatility of stock returns our results suggest that political news associated with the possible separation of quebec from canada plays an important role in the volatility of stock returns however our evidence indicates that investors do not require a risk premium supporting the idea that political risk is diversifiable we also show that stock return volatility varies with the degree of a firm s exposure to political risk namely the structure of assets and the extent of foreign involvement which indicates that firms most exposed to political risk bear the burden of diversification

output stock volatility and political uncertainty in a natural experiment germany 1880 1940 why does stock volatility increase when output declines the theory of investment under uncertainty implies that political uncertainty may simultaneously increase volatility and reduce output though cause and effect are typically hard to separate the transition from imperial to weimar germany offers a natural experiment because major political events left clear traces on stock prices current and past increases in volatility are associated with output declines consistent with u s experience however political events are more clearly the source of volatility and the results support the view that the relationship between volatility and output ref lects the joint effects of political factors why does stock volatility change over time and why is it higher in recessions though the basic facts are well established huang and kracaw 1984 schwert 1989a romer 1990 pindyck 1991a the causal link between volatility and business slumps is unclear slumps may cause volatility volatility may cause slumps or both may be the consequence of some other more clearly exogenous factor political uncertainty may represent such an exogenous factor consider the great depression in the united states major changes in economic policy occurred in the 1930s and even larger changes were a possibility the highly volatile stock market of the 1930s may very well have ref lected a nonnegligible f luctuating probability that the united states would go socialist the same uncertainty about economic policy may also have caused a slump in business investment and reduced consumer spending though the explanation has appeal political uncertainty was not clearly exogenous a critic could say that higher volatility and the radical nature of policy debate were consequences of the decline in output and the depression itself had other causes as schwert 1989b points out in a more general context we can easily construct links between volatility and the business cycle but causation is hard to pin down this paper looks at stock volatility and output in a case marked by a clear exogenous political shock until the start of world war i in 1914 imperial germany had a stable limited government weimar germany after the war

on jump processes in the foreign exchange and stock markets exchange rates exhibit systematic discontinuities even after allowingfor conditional heteroskedasticity in the diffusion process the results are much more significant in theforeign exchange market than in the stock market which suggests differences in the structure of these markets finally this jump component is shown to explain some of the empirically observed mispricings in the currency options market the objective of this article is to analyze and compare the empirical distribution of returns in the stock market and in the foreign exchange market there are a number of reasons why a better understanding of the stochastic processes driving prices in these markets would be useful many financial models rely heavily on the assumption of a particular stochastic process while relatively little attention is paid to the empirical fit of the postulated distribution as a result models like option pricing models are applied indiscriminately to various markets such as the stock market and the foreign exchange market when the underlying processes may be fundamentally different the foreign exchange market for instance is characterized by active exchange rate man

ethically questionable behavior in sales representatives an example from the taiwanese pharmaceutical industry recent corporate disgraces and corruption have heightened concerns about ethically questionable behavior in business the construct of ethically questionable behavior is an under portrayed area of management field research and deserves further studying especially in sales positions this study uses four variables from the human resource management field to explain the ethically questionable behavior of sales representatives in the pharmaceutical industry these variables include frame pattern commission structure behavior control type and marketing norm perceptions this work uses a 2 2 2 2 subject experimental design and 328 fully completed questionnaires for logistic regression analysis results suggest that a medical representative in a loss frame compared with a gain frame in a high commission structure compared with a low commission structure in loose behavior control compared with strict behavior control and in a low perception of marketing norm compared with a high perception of marketing norm is more likely affected by heuristic biases and make an ethically questionable choice

analyzing the impacts of foreign exchange and oil price on biofuel commodity futures abstract this paper employs an arji trend model that combines the autoregressive jump intensity arji and component models to analyze the effects of the u s dollar index and oil prices on the dynamic properties of biofuel related commodity futures the results show that the arji trend model not only provides a better fit for the data on the volatility dynamics of corn soybean and wheat futures but also performs better in terms of out of sample forecasting the u s dollar index and oil prices both generate significant impacts on the returns of the futures since the coexistence of permanent component transitory component and time varying jumps are observed in those futures the arji trend model is beneficial for acquiring a better understanding of the differential attributes among corn soybean and wheat futures

what makes the stock market jump an analysis of political risk on hong kong stock returns abstract this paper employs a components jump volatility filter to investigate the possible market impact of political risk the filter operates by identifying jump return dates which are then associated with political events allowing us to measure the market return and volatility effects of political announcements our empirical results show that political developments in hong kong have a significant impact on its market volatility and return the results have some interesting implications for option pricing and political risk management

effects of us interest rates and news on the daily interest rates of a highly indebted emerging economy evidence from turkey it has been widely demonstrated that asset prices react sensitively to macroeconomic news releases both in the industrialized countries and emerging markets however there are contradicting results on the effects of changes in interest rates of industrialized countries on asset prices of emerging markets in heavily indebted economies in addition to these factors political news and announcements from international institutions that may increase or decrease concerns about debt sustainability can affect asset prices as well this potential notwithstanding there has been relatively limited empirical work on the effects of such variables the objective of this study is to quantify the impact of all of these factors on interest rates of a highly indebted emerging economy using daily post crisis data of the turkish economy we show that both good and bad political news international monetary fund announcements and european union related news significantly affected secondary market government securities yi

impact of customer orientation inducements and ethics on loyalty to the firm customers perspective customer orientation co and the development of long term relationships with customers are known conditions for growth and profit sustainability businesses use special treatments inducements and personal gestures to show their appreciation to customers however there are concerns about whether these inducements really create the right perceptions in customer s mind this study suggests that when customers believe that the firm is ethical the inducements and special treatments received are seen in a positive light and can help develop loyalty the hypotheses were tested with responses from 299 customers of financial institutions in chile results support the hypotheses that firm s ethical reputation helps in retaining customers managerial implications are provided

turning points in the civil war views from the greenback market in early 1862 the united states government began issuing greenbacks a legal tender currency that was not convertible into gold the government promised to redeem the greenbacks in gold eventually but speculators understood that the probability of redemption depended on union army military fortunes and political developments that affected the total cost of the war to serve the speculative interest in gold a market emerged for the purpose of trading greenbacks for gold dollars because the market price of a greenback reflected the public s perceptions of future war costs the movement of these prices provides unique insights into how people at the time perceived various events we use daily quotations of the gold price of greenbacks to identify a set of dates during the civil war that market participants regarded as turning points in some cases these dates coincide with events familiar from conventional historical accounts of the war in other instances however market participants reacted strongly to events that historians have not viewed as very significant this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

socially responsible investing in the united states socially responsible investing sri has emerged in recent years as a dynamic and quickly growing segment of the u s financial services industry involving over 2 trillion in professionally managed assets its conceptual origins can be found in the early history of civilization with it s modern roots in the 1960s this paper provides an overview of the breadth and depth of the concept and practice of socially and environmentally responsible investing describes the investment strategies that together define sri as currently practiced in the u s offers several observations about some of the factors fueling its dramatic growth and presents data showing that investors who choose to invest in a socially and environmentally responsible manner can do so without giving up investment returns sri has matured to a point where virtually any investment need can be met through portfolio design that integrates an investor s personal values institutional mission and or social priorities the socially responsible investment industry in the unitedstates is a young phenomenon even referring to it as an industry ten years ago may have been a bit of a stretch while it has grown dramatically in recent years it is an area of work of study and of practical application that continues to evolve in many significant ways one intriguing example of the ongoing development of the field can be found in the analysis of the language used to describe it the terms social investing socially responsible investing ethical investing socially aware investing socially conscious investing green investing values based investing and mission based or mission related investing all refer to the same general process and are often used interchangeably