do women owned businesses have equal access to angel capital abstract women owned businesses are the fastest growing sector of new venture ownership in the united states although women s access to and use of debt and venture capital financing have been explored comparatively little is known about women s access to capital from private equity investors in this paper we examine the equality of women s access to angel capital the research suggests that women seek angel financing at rates substantially lower than that of men but have an equal probability of receiving investment we also document that women are more likely to seek and to a lesser extent receive financing from women angels

gender bias and the availability of business loans abstract social structure values and gender socialization have undoubtedly disadvantaged women in the process of preparing for a career in business and there is a widely held view that women are subject to discrimination by financial institutions however the evidence to verify this belief has largely been from studies where women have claimed that they were subject to discrimination in the loan situation without either supporting evidence or control data from a sample of male loan applicants two experiments were carried out using a goldberg type procedure to test the belief that women are unfairly discriminated against when seeking a loan to establish a business venture carefully constructed scenarios of an application for loan finance to purchase a commercial enterprise were mailed to loan officers of major trading bank branches the scenarios were identical in all respects except for the sex and education level of applicants loan officers were asked whether or not they would approve loan finance for the proposed business purchase and to indicate factors that contributed to their decisions significant differences in response to female and male applicants were observed in both experiments in experiment i university education both sexes were equally likely to obtain a loan but education was considered a more important factor for the female applicant than for the male in experiment ii high school education the female applicant was less likely to obtain a loan than the male applicant the results support the widely held perception that women can experience gender discrimination when seeking start up capital such discriminatory behavior by loan officers may not be and probably is not intentional rather the pervasiveness of the social construction of differential gender roles in western culture is such that it is more likely that discrimination is unconscious and consequently more difficult to change

women business owners and terms of credit some empirical findings of the canadian experience abstract most previous studies of this topic have followed a methodology of selecting a sample of women business owners and then questioning them on their experience with their own business es although financing frequently is noted as a major problem previous studies suffer from the absence of a control group a corresponding group of male business owners with whom to compare experiences furthermore previous studies have tended to ask the respondent if she believes that she was treated any differently because she was a woman a leading question which could potentially bias the conclusions previous work reveals a pervasive perception that there is discrimination by bankers against women business owners a conclusion based on a widespread but subjective perception by some women owners however there also appears to be a lack of real statistical evidence moreover it is not clear that personal feelings of apparent reluctance displayed by some bankers carry over to professional judgements and to systematically different terms of credit one of the contributions of this paper is that a comparison of the actual experiences of both female and male business owners in their relationship with financial institutions are compared over a fixed period of time every attempt has been made to carry out these comparisons in a rigorous statistical manner another contribution arises because the findings to be described here are based on a broad and comprehensive study of the small business banking relationship and did not exclusively focus on the male female issues thus any bias that could have occurred in other studies by focusing on women business owner problems is likely to be minimized the findings described in this study are based on a total of 3 217 business principals responses to a national survey the number of women business owners in the sample was 153 in aggregate it was found that the financing conditions for women principals are less favorable than those for male business owners however it was also found that female owned firms tend to be both younger and smaller than male owned firms in the sample moreover woman business owners were more likely to be proprietors than their male counterparts and were less likely to be incorporated businesses in addition a statistically significant tendency for businesses owned by women to be characterized by lower rates of sales growth than those owned by men was also identified these differences between patterns of small business ownership between men and women allow alternative explanations of what might at first seem to be an apparent gender bias in order to separate the effects of ownership patterns from potential gender bias it was necessary to focus on the effect of the gender of the owners by holding constant those factors which provide alternative explanations of the aggregate results this was accomplished by creating benchmark subsamples of male respondents by matching women respondents with male respondents on the basis of age size industry growth rate and organization form of the businesses when this was done one area was identified in which statistically significant gender related differences remained that of collateral requirements for a line of credit apparent gender related differences in the other aspects of banking practices rates of loan approvals cosignature requirements requirements for loan collateral and interest rates on loans and lines of credit can be accounted for by the differences in the characteristics of male and female owned businesses the difference in the collateral required of men and women owners is an important difference collateral requirements were identified as a major concern by a high proportion of all survey respondents in fact collateral requirements appear to be the major banking related concern of small businesses the line of credit is viewed to be essential to growth and survival yet a lower proportion of women owners than men owners report having a line of credit thus it seems that development of the banking relationship including the establishment of a line of credit has proven more difficult for women than for men

experimental comparison of impact of auction format on carbon allowance market abstract carbon allowances auctions are a good way to achieve the carbon allowance allocations under international agreements to address global climate change based on an economic experiment this paper compares three possible carbon allowance auction formats uniform price auction discriminatory price auction and english clock auction with heterogeneous bidders coal power plants and gas power plants from four perspectives carbon price auction efficiency demand withholding and fluctuations in power supplies possibilities of collusion among bidders and impacts of allowance banking and penalty price on bidders behaviors under different auction formats are also examined the results show that 1 when there are relatively more bidders and there are no obvious communications between them despite there being some tacit collusion efficiency of english clock auction is greater than the other two formats 2 when there are relatively fewer bidders and there are obvious communications between them explicit collusions are observed under english clock auction in this case discriminatory price auction helps prevent collusion to some extents 3 in the banking scenario more speculations are observed while penalty price exacerbates price volatility

efficient selection of insured currency positions protective puts vs fiduciary calls we examine the empirical results from implementation of portfolio insurance strategies employing currency spot and futures options hypotheses are generated from ogden and tucker s 1988 generalizations concerning the relative values of american spot currency options and currency futures options we find that protective puts using futures options are generally dominated by both protective puts that use options on spot currencies and by fiduciary calls on futures contracts this suggests that the prices of puts on foreign currency futures contracts are too high relative to foreign currency futures calls and to puts on spot currencies

hedging index exchange traded funds this paper presents an empirical comparison of the out of sample hedging performance from naive and minimum variance hedge ratios for the four largest us index exchange traded funds etfs efficient hedging is important to offset long and short positions on market maker s accounts particularly imbalances in net creation or redemption demands around the time of dividend payments our evaluation of out of sample hedging performance includes aversion to negative skewness and excess kurtosis the results should be of interest to hedge funds employing tax arbitrage or leveraged long short equity strategies as well as to etf market makers

decoupling economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions in china a sectoral factor decomposition analysis china is facing the dilemma of how to coordinate economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions reduction this paper investigates the decoupling effect of economic growth from co2 emissions in china during the period 1992 2012 using the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method we decompose the driving forces of the decoupling of economic growth from co2 emissions in china s five major economic sectors into several factors and measure the contribution of each factor to the decoupling of china s overall economy from co2 emissions the results show that china performed the weak decoupling of economic growth from co2 emissions during 1992 2012 and so did all its five major sectors such a state did not occur smoothly and presented five different stages energy intensity and economic activity level were the most important factors affecting the decoupling in china energy intensity decreased in all sectors indicating a large acceleration for the sectoral decoupling states this finding is applicable to process carbon intensity in industrial sector and energy emission factor in agricultural industrial construction and service sectors in terms of sectoral effects on the decoupling in china industrial sector played a dominant role while construction sector had the most marginal influence the economic activity level and economic share of industrial sector exerted the most negative effects on the decoupling the energy intensity of industrial sector played a key role in promoting the national decoupling state while the energy emission factor of agricultural sector contributed the least

is china s economic growth decoupled from carbon emissions abstract a comprehensive understanding of the interdependence between china s economy and carbon emissions can better serve china s transition towards a low carbon economy and can also provide reference for other developing countries the purpose of this paper was to investigate the dependence of china s economy on co2 emissions i the tapio decoupling model was applied to quantify the decoupling elasticity between china s economy and co2 emissions ii the structure decomposition technique was utilized to quantity the contribution of china s economic structure to the decoupling elasticity iii the combined decomposition model which combined cobb douglas c d production function with logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi technique and was solved the residual problem was employed to identify more driving factors labor input investment carbon coefficient energy structure energy intensity economic structure and technology state affecting the decoupling elasticity the main results were as follows i the decoupling elasticity showed a downward trend during the whole period and the decoupling state was characterized by two types expansive negative decoupling 2002 2005 and weak decoupling 2000 2002 and 2005 2014 ii the industry sector played the most negative effect on the decoupling process expect 2013 2014 from the cumulative effect the contribution of six sectors to promote decoupling effect was ranked as follows construction agriculture trade other transport industry iii the most critical factor driving the increased co2 emissions was the investment effect accounting for 145 34 of the cumulative total co2 emissions while the energy intensity effect contributed to a cumulative reduction in co2 emissions of 1443 72 mt finally some policy recommendations were offered to achieve the decoupling of china s economic growth and carbon emissions

is decoupling economic growth from fuel consumption possible in developing countries a comparison of china and india abstract a better understanding the coupling decoupling of economic growth from energy demand in china and india can serve both countries and other developing countries to achieve the goal of gaining higher economic growth with less energy demand to demonstrate the relationship between coupling decoupling economy and energy in china and india better this work has made following contributions i analyzes the decoupling elasticity between economic growth and energy consumption by using the tapio model ii explores the five key effects labor input investment energy structure energy intensity technology level of decoupling elasticity by combining the cobb douglas c d function and log mean divisia index lmdi method and iii evaluates the decoupling efforts by applying decoupling efforts model in china and india between 1990 and 2015 the decoupling elasticity results show china s decoupling elasticity curve is in an inverted u shaped trend and the decoupling elastic value is concentrated between 0 and 0 8 in most years showing a weak decoupling state furthermore the decoupling state is strong decoupling during 2014 2015 indicating china has initially achieved the decoupling of economy and energy consumption while india s decoupling elasticity presents irregular fluctuations indicating that india s decoupling status is not very satisfactory the decomposition results uncover that major effects of decoupling in china and india are similar i e the investment effect is the biggest driver which contributed to a cumulative increasing impact in energy consumption in china and india by 3017 10 million tonnes oil equivalent and 675 18 million tonnes oil equivalent respectively whereas the energy intensity effect is the greatest inhibiting factor which contributed to a cumulative reduction in energy consumption in china and india by 1437 81 million tonnes oil equivalent and 139 21 million tonnes oil equivalent the decoupling efforts results show decoupling effort in china is better than that in india improving energy efficiency is the leading contributor to china s decoupling efforts while advancing technology is the major contributor to india s decoupling effort

what determines the level of informal venture finance investment market clearing forces and gender effects we undertake the first research to move analysis beyond estimating the propensity for a person to become an informal investor and onto the core concern which is the total volume of venture finance we find that a 1 increase in entrepreneurial activity increases the number of informal investors by 1 7 however the average invested amount declines by 0 8 leading to a net positive total increase of about 0 9 this result indicates that to a considerable extent demand for informal investment creates its own supply as a result the research finds that market forces help solve finance constraints for new ventures and hence lessen the need for public policy intervention this effect is stronger for males than females

gender biases in bank lending lessons from microcredit in france the evidence on gender discrimination in lending remains controversial to capture gender biases in banks loan allocations we observe the impact on the applicants of a microfinance institution mfi and exploit the natural experiment of a regulatory change imposing a strict eur 10 000 loan ceiling on microcredit descriptive statistics indicate that the presence of the ceiling is associated both with bank mfi co financing and with harsher treatment of female borrowers to investigate causal links we develop an econometric approach that addresses the concerns of selection biases multicollinearity and endogeneity our empirical findings suggest that the change in the mfi s gender related attitude was triggered by banks through co financing hence we speculate that co financing pushes ceiling constrained mfis to import whatever biases in loan granting that the banks are prone to overall this paper stresses that apparently benign regulations such as loan ceilings can significantly harm the women s empowerment efforts made by mfis

discontinuance among new firms in retail the influence of initial resources strategy and gender abstract women owned businesses represent one of the fastest growing segments of the u s economy their rate has increased more than six fold since 1970 despite this growth rate the number of firms owned by women still lags behind that of men and the sales and income of women owned firms are significantly lower than those of men owned firms the discrepancy between the number of businesses owned by women and men and their economic success has been a popular theme among researchers some have suggested that performance differentials result from disparate structural positions women and men occupy in work and society whereas others attribute the differences to deep rooted interpersonal orientations this study examines whether the performance differences can be explained by variations in initial resources and founding strategy we test whether women have fewer start up resources and if they do whether they can compensate for these deficiencies through their founding strategy recent work in social psychology argues that strategic choice is shaped by experiences to which individuals have been subjected and that women and men have fundamentally different socialization experiences we test the assumption that if the strategy that women owners adopt exploits the unique capabilities they derive from their socialization they can improve the performance of their firms and ward off discontinuance we examine the discontinuance pattern of 203 new firms in the retail industry this industry was selected because women entrepreneurs often choose to operate in this industry giving us a basis for comparing women owned and men owned firms we classify the firms into six strategy archetypes the arche types range from a broad focus where founders emphasize multiple strategic foci simultaneously to narrowly targeted differentiation strategies we assume that the experiential base of women entrepreneurs limits their successfully executing pricing strategies we hypothesize that women led firms decrease the odds of discontinuing by adopting one of two strategy types 1 narrow differentiation strategies that seek to satisfy a narrow segment of the market and that do not rely on pricing or 2 broad generalists strategies that emphasize service and quality but not pricing and take advantage of women s capability for handling multiple stakeholders simultaneously the results offer support for using an integrative model to explain the performance of women owned firms women owned firms have higher odds of discontinuing than men owned firms and women appear to have fewer resources to start their businesses women owners were less likely to have instrumental experience from working in the retail industry and start their businesses on a smaller scale then men but were no less likely then their male counterparts to have access to credit from formal financial institutions or to be disadvantaged by starting fewer other new businesses despite some apparent situational disadvantage resource deficiencies do not appear to affect the odds of women owned businesses discontinuing as much as they do men owned initiatives the findings indicate support for the supposition that women owners can use founding strategy to decrease the odds of discontinuing business a broad generalists strategy that represents a multi focused approach was found to benefit women owned businesses most overall the results suggest that men use prior business experience and human capital to affect the survival status of their businesses women appear to find strategic choice more beneficial future research is recommended to further elaborate the integrative model special attention should be given to developing alternatives to measures traditionally used in gender research many researchers charge that those typically used reflect male derived measures similarly greater attention should be given to understanding why the scale of women owned businesses at start up is substantially smaller than that of men since scale has been shown to be related to subsequent growth and survival

toward to economic growth without emission growth the role of urbanization and industrialization in china and india abstract the contradiction between economic growth and carbon emissions in china and india is the most prominent in the world both countries have faced tremendous pressures to curb carbon emissions because they are major source of new added emission sources meanwhile both countries have faced greater pressures to achieve industrialization and urbanization in order to eradicate poverty better understanding the decoupling status and its drivers can serve to develop effective policy to achieve economic growth without an increase in emission this paper comparatively analyses the decoupling effect of the economic growth from the carbon emissions as well as its drivers during the period 1980 2014 in china and india the tapio decoupling model was used to analyze the decoupling status and the co integration theory and the impulse response functions were applied to investigate the effects of urbanization industrialization per capita gdp and carbon emission intensity to decoupling the results show that china mainly performed a weak decoupling of economic growth from carbon emissions in 1980 2014 while the decoupling status of india was no regular in china carbon emission intensity is the biggest contributor of decoupling followed by urbanization per capita gdp and industrialization in india the biggest driver of decoupling is also the carbon emission intensity followed by urbanization industrialization and per capita gdp therefore improving energy efficiency is the best policy to toward economic growth without emission growth in china and india

gender borrowing patterns and self employment some evidence for england the purpose of this paper is twofold first we try to identify whether women have different borrowing patterns from men when trying to get into self employment along with the factors that explain these different propensities second we try to quantify the impact of these differences in borrowing propensity on women s willingness to become self employed the empirical analysis is carried out on a sample of individuals drawn from the english household survey of entrepreneurship 2003 our results show that 1 women are less likely than men to seek external finance and that 2 gender differences in access to finance are affecting adversely the transition into self employment

decoupling sectoral economic output from carbon emissions on city level a comparative study of beijing and shanghai china abstract cities do play significant roles in tackling global environmental changes decoupling economic growth from environmental pressures is critical for global sustainable development however few studies pay attention to the decoupling analysis at city level this paper conducts a comparative study of the decoupling performance of economic output from co2 emissions between beijing and shanghai the top two cities in china in this paper the decoupling trends and the decoupling effects are explored from a sectoral perspective by combining the tapio decoupling elasticity and the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model the results show that beijing and shanghai both experienced weak decoupling in construction expansive negative decoupling in transport expansive coupling in trade and weak decoupling in others over the period 2000 2015 moreover agriculture appeared strong decoupling in beijing and recessive decoupling in shanghai industry showed strong decoupling in beijing and weak decoupling in shanghai the decoupling effects showed different magnitudes and patterns in industrial sectors between beijing and shanghai overall per capita gdp and population growth inhibited the decoupling while energy intensity industrial share energy mix accelerated the decoupling process

microcredit an answer to the gender problem in funding microfinance institutions mfis target people excluded from the traditional banking system by providing start up capital to these under financed individuals they enable a greater number of women to start their own business particularly in sectors where initial capital requirements are high our study follows a portfolio of 3 640 microcredit applicants in france over the 2000 2006 time period identifying mfi client profiles and bringing to light gender differences in borrowers compared to a wider sample of entrepreneurs this study shows that the male female gap found amongst company creators is also maintained amongst the clienteles of mfis empirical results also suggest that gender is a decisive factor regarding the amount of credit provided to borrowers when comparing with other factors in the borrower and firm profile thus to a certain extent mfis are found to reinforce gender inequalities in france

gender disparity in angel financing this study uses unique hand collected data from a televised entrepreneurial pitch competition to examine gender differences in obtaining angel financing results indicate that while the yield rates between male and female teams do not differ a gender disparity in the amount of angel funding does in fact exist female teams receive less capital and provide more equity relative to their male counterparts even when controlling for typical determinants of investment such as industry and prior company success further we find that female teams receive investments with lower valuations than their male counterparts largely because they initially offer higher equity stakes for less capital thus this suggests that limitations to angel financing of female entrepreneurial ventures may be partly self imposed

start up capital does gender matter female and male entrepreneurs differ in the way they finance their businesses this difference can be attributed to the type of business and the type of management and experience of the entrepreneur indirect effect female start ups may also experience specific barriers when trying to acquire start up capital these may be based upon discriminatory effects direct effect whether gender has an impact on size and composition of start up capital and in what way is the subject of the present paper the indirect effect is represented by the way women differ from men in terms of type of business and management and experience the direct effect cannot be attributed to these differences and is called the gender effect we use of a panel of 2000 dutch starting entrepreneurs of whom approximately 500 are female to test for these direct and indirect effects the panel refers to the year 1994 we find that female entrepreneurs have a smaller amount of start up capital but that they do not differ significantly with respect to the type of capital on average the proportion of equity and debt capital bank loans in the businesses of female entrepreneurs is the same as in those of their male counterparts

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

determinants of satisfaction for entrepreneurs this study considers the extent to which entrepreneurs are satisfied with their businesses in their third year of business ownership entrepreneurial satisfaction might be viewed as a basic measure of performance it may bear upon decisions by individual entrepreneurs about whether to invest more time and money whether to cut back or whether to close down it may also influence whether entrepreneurs work effectively with their customers and employees for researchers the investigation of why in particular settings some entrepreneurs may be more satisfied than others may aid in the interpretation of past research which has used this as a performance measure this research draws upon a theoretical framework used in investigations of employee satisfaction called discrepancy theory it suggests that individual satisfaction is determined in part by whether there is a gap between actual rewards or performance and the individual s goals or expectations in this research it was hypothesized that entrepreneurs emphasizing primarily noneconomic goals such as doing the work they wanted to do would have higher satisfaction when the business was experiencing lower levels of performance for higher levels of performance there would be no difference in essence the satisfaction of those emphasizing economic goals would vary more with economic performance a related hypothesis was that for this sample of start up firms many of which would be experiencing low levels of performance those emphasizing noneconomic goals would have higher average levels of satisfaction this was based upon the expectation that many start up firms would be experiencing marginal performance so that the gap between goals and performance would be greater for economically oriented entrepreneurs the research also focused upon expectations because one aspect of discrepancy theory suggests that satisfaction decreases if there is a gap between expectations and performance accordingly it was hypothesized that controlling for performance entrepreneurs with higher initial expectations would subsequently have lower levels of satisfaction previous research suggests that membership in particular demographic groups may influence expectations this led to hypotheses that older entrepreneurs female entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs would have lower levels of initial expectations this in turn may influence later satisfaction thus it was hypothesized that controlling for performance entrepreneurs in each of these groups would have higher satisfaction because their initial expectations would be lower the study utilized a sample of 287 entrepreneurs who were followed over a 3 year period the data on predictors of satisfaction were gathered in year 1 when the average owner had been in business for 11 months the satisfaction measures were gathered 2 years later by that time there should have been some stabilization in the routines of the business and the entrepreneur could reflect upon historic performance and experiences in judging the extent to which business ownership had been satisfying the data were analyzed primarily using path analysis in which it was hypothesized that certain variables would have both direct and indirect effects upon satisfaction it was found that the satisfaction of entrepreneurs emphasizing economic goals was not more sensitive to economic performance at least within the range of performance considered in this sample for this group of firms many of which appeared to be experiencing marginal performance those emphasizing noneconomic goals did express higher levels of satisfaction it had been expected that those with higher initial expectations would later be less satisfied because they would have a greater expectation performance gap however the opposite was found those who were more optimistic initially were more satisfied later even when controlling for performance demographic influences on initial expectations were examined contrary to expectations none of the demographic traits was significantly related to initial assessment of likelihood of success older entrepreneurs women entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs were just as optimistic as those in other groups the relationship between membership in these demographic groups and later satisfaction was also examined no significant relationships were found for older entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs however there was some evidence p 07 that women entrepreneurs were more satisfied with business ownership two of the most interesting findings were those related to initial expectations and to women entrepreneurs contrary to discrepancy theory those who had higher initial expectations were later more satisfied not less this may suggest as staw and ross 1985 found in a longitudinal study of employee satisfaction that attitudes are in part a function of stable individual traits those who had a positive view of their initial prospects later viewed the experience of business ownership more favorably regardless of subsequent performance for women entrepreneurs the higher levels of satisfaction may reflect a view that they have fewer attractive alternatives it may also be that they discover greater relative satisfaction from the day to day aspects of business ownership for entrepreneurs and their advisors the findings suggest that particular goals attitudes and backgrounds are likely to be associated with greater satisfaction this may influence whether entrepreneurs stay with marginal businesses for researchers the study provides insight into discrepancy theory by considering its application to entrepreneurs rather than the hired employees normally studied in addition subjective measures of performance such as satisfaction have often been used in previous research on entrepreneurial performance this study casts light on why in particular settings some entrepreneurs may be more satisfied than others

why does china s carbon intensity decline and india s carbon intensity rise a decomposition analysis on the sectors abstract as more attention paid to global warming the international community argues that developing countries should take more carbon reduction responsibility china and india the top two developing countries confronted heavy pressure to handle the dilemma of environmental protection or economic increase in this context we switched focus to carbon intensity defined as carbon emission per unit of economic output to investigate carbon performance and economic performance simultaneously in this study we fully considered the impact of sector heterogeneity on carbon intensity that is we decomposed the carbon intensity of the 56 industries which subsequently reclassified into 18 industries in china and india using the data from wiod world input output database the results indicate that 1 india s carbon intensity presented a constant increasing trend while china appeared a stable decreasing trend and the former exceeded the latter since 2009 2 all industries of china exerted efforts to decrease carbon intensity conversely india only had a few industries decreasing carbon intensity 3 energy intensity significantly decreased china s carbon intensity while increased india s carbon intensity surprisingly 4 in general structure effect made negative contribution to carbon intensity improvement in china while positive in india specifically economic structure had a positive impact on china and india though the impact was minor for the former significant for the latter energy structure slightly promoted india s carbon intensity to decrease on the contrary it was the largest inhibitor to china this research will not only promote low carbon economy development of china and india but also provide scientific and practical references to other developing countries

hedging performance and basis risk in stock index futures in early 1982 trading began at three different exchanges in futures contracts based on stock indexes stock index futures were an immediate success and quickly led to a proliferation of new futures and options markets tied to various indexes one reason for this success was that index futures greatly extended the range of investment and risk management strategies available to investors by offering them for the first time the possibility of unbundling the market and nonmarket components of risk and return in their portfolios many portfolio management and other hedging applications in investment banking and security trading have been described elsewhere1 ranging from use by a passive fund manager to reduce risk over a long time horizon to use by an underwriter to hedge the market risk exposure in a stock offering for one or two days in considering the potential applications of index futures it is clear that in nearly every case a cross hedge is involved that is the stock position that is being hedged is different from the underlying portfolio for the index contract 2 this means that return and risk for an index futures hedge will depend upon the behavior of the basis i e the difference between the futures price and the cash price hedging a position in stock will necessarily expose it to some measure of basis risk risk that the change in the futures price over time will not track exactly the value of the cash position basis risk can arise from a number of different sources and is a more significant problem for stock index contracts than for other financial futures like treasury bills and bonds 3 the most apparent cause of basis risk is the nonmarket component of return on the cash stock position since the index contract is tied to the behavior of an underlying stock market index nonmarket risk cannot be hedged this is the essential problem of a cross hedge however basis risk can be present even when the hedge involves a position in the index portfolio itself and there is no nonmarket risk for one thing returns to the index portfolio include dividends while the index and the index future only track the capital value of the portfolio any risk associated with dividends on the portfolio will become basis risk in a hedged position still dividends are fairly low and also quite stable so this may not be a terribly important shortcoming

estimating the complete co2 emissions and the carbon intensity in india from the carbon transfer perspective abstract with the impacts of climate change causing widespread concerns many scholars had discussed carbon leakage in the international trade which ignored carbon transfer within domestic sectors departing from them this paper took into account energy related co2 emissions embodied in intermediate production processes we used the srio model to calculate and analyze the carbon footprint of economic sectors in india during the period of 1995 2009 and also investigated the changes in the carbon emission intensity of each sector the results showed that from the production perspective the most famous high carbon sector was egw electricity gas and water supply and this sector accounted for 60 of the co2 emissions of the secondary industry from the consumption perspective this ratio was only maintained at between 10 16 in contrast traditional low carbon sector con construction emitted the largest co2 to other sectors in addition more than 90 of the sectors showed a decreasing trend of carbon emission intensity the conclusions of this paper have important policy implications for the correct allocation of co2 emission responsibility establishment of fair and effective emission reduction policies and the transformation of low carbon economy in india

initial human and financial capital as predictors of new venture performance abstract this research seeks to predict the performance of new ventures based on factors that can be observed at the time of start up indicators of initial human and financial capital are considered to determine how they bear upon the probability of three possible performance outcomes 1 failure 2 marginal survival or 3 high growth four categories of initial human and financial capital are examined general human capital represented here by the entrepreneur s education gender and race may reflect the extent to which the entrepreneur has had the opportunity to develop relevant skills and contacts management know how embodied in the entrepreneur or available through advisors or partners reflects management specific skills and knowledge without regard to the kind of business industry specific know how reflects specific experience in similar businesses financial capital is one of the most visible resources it can create a buffer against random shocks and allow the pursuit of more capital intensive strategies which are better protected from imitation the study utilizes a longitudinal study of 1053 new ventures representative of all industry sectors and geographical regions the research departs from most previous studies in considering different measures of performance marginal survival and growth and in considering explicitly whether the factors contributing to marginal survival differ from those contributing to high growth it was found that measures of general human capital influenced both survival and growth except for gender with women owned ventures being less likely to grow but just as likely to survive management know how variables had more limited impact having parents who had owned a business contributed to marginal survival but not to growth number of partners contributed to growth but not to survival management level prior employment in non profit organizations or not having been in the labor force and the use of professional advisors did not have significant effects industry specific know how contributed to both survival and growth amount of initial financial capital also contributed to both the usefulness of the model is enhanced by the fact that the resource variables considered are relatively easy to assess and all can be considered at the time of start up although some of the human capital variables cannot easily be changed the benefits or risks associated with each can be assessed in some cases potential problems can be identified so that plans can be modified to improve prospects overall it appears that using a model based upon the initial human and financial capital of the venture it is possible to predict the performance of new ventures with some degree of confidence

input output and structural decomposition analysis of singapore s carbon emissions singapore is an island city state it lacks conventional energy resources and is alternative energy disadvantaged in the past decade 2000 2010 its energy related carbon emissions increased from 37 8 to 44 4 million tonnes of co2 this paper analyses the city state s carbon emissions from the demand perspective using the input output i o method and investigate the drivers of emission changes using structural decomposition analysis sda it is the first comprehensive analysis of singapore s emissions using the i o framework the results obtained show that exports accounted for nearly two thirds of its total emissions and growth in its emissions in the last decade was largely export driven emissions increased as export oriented industries and export volume expanded fuel switching and energy efficiency however helped to lower growth in emissions besides exports household related emissions accounted for about a quarter of singapore s total emissions the emissions related to different household groups remained fairly stable as increases in embodied indirect emissions were offset by decreases in direct emissions the high income household group registered the largest increase in direct emissions while the middle income household group registered the largest increase in embodied emissions the policy implications of our findings are discussed

subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs evidence from brazil this paper estimates the impact of loan officer subjectivity on microcredit granting by exploiting an exceptionally detailed database from a brazilian microfinance institution the loan officers collect field data meet with applicants and make recommendations to the credit committee which has the final say on both loan approval and loan size ls the loan officer s subjectivity is captured through gender bias our estimations indeed show subjective gender gap in ls this gap is almost exclusively attributable to loan officers we interpret this finding as evidence that despite monitoring and wage incentivization microcredit officers let their subjective preferences interfere with loan granting we conclude by suggesting alternative means to curb subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs

decoupling analysis of world economic growth and co2 emissions a study comparing developed and developing countries abstract this study discusses decoupling trends in world economic growth and co2 emissions based on decoupling theories the decoupling trends of economic growth and co2 emissions in typical developed and developing countries in 1965 2015 are compared by using an oecd decoupling factor model and tapio elastic analysis tea method and the igtx decoupling model on this basis this study evaluates correlations of these three decoupling models by employing the spearman s rank correlation coefficient the research indicates that owing to the igtx decoupling model being easily affected by other non environmental factors the shorter the research period of interest the more easily the decoupling indices distort while the accuracy of the tea method is not limited by the length of the research period of interest with respect to the overall decoupling trend the research shows that 1 strong decoupling is found in developed countries and slightly increases in the stabilisation thereof the decoupling state in the united kingdom and germany is more stable than that of the united states and france 2 developing countries demonstrate weak decoupling that fluctuates significantly and lacks regularity the stabilisation and optimisation of china in decoupling process are better than those of brazil and india finally according to research conclusions relevant policies and suggestions are proposed in view of energy savings and emissions reduction in developing countries

the effects of energy prices urbanization and economic growth on energy consumption per capita in 186 countries abstract energy is the material basis for the development of national economy however energy shortages become increasingly serious as a result of the growing population and the modernization of the global economy therefore investigating drivers of energy consumption is crucial to coordinate the relationship between energy and national economic growth this study aimed to uncover the effects of energy prices ep urbanization urn and gdp on per capita energy consumption ec with considering the income gaps between countries the paper adopted the granger causality test approach and the impulse response function analysis by using long term time series data on ec ep urn and gdp during 1980 2015 in 186 countries divided into three groups high income upper and lower middle income groups the results indicated a long term co integration relationship among these variables granger causality test showed a bidirectional causality between urn and ec in high and lower middle income countries but no causality in the upper middle income group in all groups there is a bidirectional causal link between gdp and ec the results of irf showed that as urbanization level improves its role in promoting ec become less significant moreover ep affected ec negatively both in high and lower middle income countries but it has a positive impact on ec in upper middle income countries the study supports the finding that urbanization is an important factor affecting energy consumption per capita although its contributions vary across income groups which offers a new pathway to control the excessive growth of energy consumption

reducing volatility with financial futures hedging with financial and currency futures contracts can substantially reduce fluctuations in the value of foreign currency corporate bond gnma security and equity positions the authors tested hedges involving a spot position in corporate bonds and a position in gnma or u s treasury bond futures a futures and a spot position in gnmas a futures and a spot position in each of five broadly traded foreign currencies and a futures aznd a spot position in the value line index the s p 500 and the nyse composite in all cases hedged positions proved significantly less risky in terms of standard deviation than unhedged positions use of the interest rate futures to hedge long term bond positions resulted in 50 per cent reductions in the variability of spot price changes hedging reduced the risk of all but one of the foreign currencies and all of the stock market indexes by over 40 per cent