clustering and competition in asset markets economists financial commentators regulatory agencies and the legal community have recently criticized the nasdaq stock market inc because there is greater clustering of stock quotations on even eighths on nasdaq than on the new york stock exchange or the american stock exchange a phenomenon which critics attribute to collusion or some other defect in nasdaq market structure however as this article demonstrates clustering occurs in varying degrees in many other incontestably competitive financial markets including the nyse the amex the london stock exchange the london gold market and the international foreign exchange market this article provides a competitive theory of clustering that emphasizes the effect of uncertainty the size of transactions volatility and the informational and transactional roles of quotations on the degree of clustering in addition the article examines how market structure can affect the degree of clustering and considers the relation between clustering spread

market structure and the intraday pattern of bid ask spreads for nasdaq securities this article examines the intraday pattern of bid ask spreads among nasdaq stocks we find that spreads are relatively stable throughout the day but narrow significantly near the close this contrasts with the u shaped pattern for nyse stocks reported by brock and kleidon and mcinish and wood we attribute these divergent patterns to structural differences between specialist and dealer markets the wider spreads for nyse stocks near periods of market closure may reflect the market power of specialists the decline in spreads near the close for nasdaq stocks is consistent with inventory control by individual dealers copyright 1995 by university of chicago press

limit orders and the alleged nasdaq collusion abstract different methods are used by the nyse amex and the nasdaq to accomodate limit orders received from investors this accounts for at least part of the excess of nasdaq spreads over nyse spreads adjusted for trading volume and is a factor in determining this excess that is independent of collusion on the nasdaq the spread comparison evidence given by others to support their belief that there is collusion among market makers on the nasdaq therefore overstates the probability of collusion and its significance if it exists

costly arbitrage evidence from closed end funds arbitrage costs lead to large deviations of prices from fundamentals using a sample of closed end funds i find that the market value of a fund is more likely to deviate from the value of its assets 1 for funds with portfolios that are difficult to replicate 2 for funds that pay out smaller dividends 3 for funds with lower market values and 4 when interest rates are high these factors are related to the magnitude of the deviation as opposed to the direction i e whether discount or premium and explain a quarter of cross sectional mispricing variation these findings are consistent with noise trader models of asset pricing

where does price discovery occur for stocks traded in multiple markets evidence from hong kong and london using a sample of hong kong listed stocks that are also traded on the london stock exchange we document the following results first london market makers use hong kong s closing prices as the benchmark for setting the opening prices in london second trading in the london market plays only a limited role in price discovery in the hong kong market third the stock returns from london trading are closely correlated with those of the hong kong market the above findings are consistent with the explanation that london trading is predominantly liquidity driven but not information driven

spatial sustainability trade and indicators an evaluation of the ecological footprint the search for frameworks and indicators of sustainable development has taken a prominent place in this journal however some specific aspects have received little or no attention notably the spatial dimension and the role of international trade in indicator development moreover many sustainable development indicators comprise implicit valuations weighting schemes and policy objectives which are insufficiently recognised as such this contribution tries to highlight these issues by means of a review of a recently proposed indicator for ecological economic analysis namely the ecological footprint that has been developed by wackernagel and rees its concept and calculation procedure are criticised on a number of points and it is concluded that the ecological footprint is not the comprehensive and transparent planning tool as is often assumed in explaining our position we will argue that spatial sustainability and regional sustainable development have not been precisely discussed so far neither in the literature on trade and environment nor in that on sustainable development we will defend the view that trade can contribute positively and negatively to environmental unsustainability consequently indicators and models are needed that allow for analysing interactions and trade offs between such opposite effects 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

third market reforms the overlooked goal of the sec s order handling rules in 1997 the securities and exchange commission enacted significant reforms in u s markets several studies document that the new order handling rules increased competition for nasdaq stocks but the reforms were designed with an additional goal in mind to increase quote competition for the trading of nyse listed securities on nasdaq i e third market trading an evaluation of the reforms in the third market indicates that they did not achieve this objective instead both quote quality and quoting frequency were diminished due primarily to elimination of the excess spread rule this suggests that more significant changes are needed to increase inter exchange competition

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

a first empirical comparison of energy footprints embodied in trade mrio versus plum abstract the ecological footprint as an indicator that accounts for human demand on global bioproductivity sets out to quantify the impacts associated with consumption in a given country including the impacts associated with trade the national footprint accounts nfa by global footprint network gfn calculate trade embodied footprints by multiplying yield and embodied energy factors with mass volumes of traded goods in a product land use matrix plum this article compares energy footprints embodied in trade from and to the united kingdom in 2002 as calculated by the nfa plum with the results from a recently developed multi region input output model mrio for the uk although totals for imports and exports are comparable breaking down the results by economic sectors reveals large differences and hardly any correlation between the two methods the omission of trade in services especially transport services and upstream impacts of energy goods fossil fuels and the use of inappropriate embodied energy factors in the nfa plum method are identified as the main reasons for these differences in the light of the results it seems that a comprehensive footprint account of trade can better be achieved with an input output based approach i conclude that mrio models once fully developed will be particularly suitable in the future to estimate the ecological footprints of imports and exports of nations with the possibility to track their origin via inter industry linkages international supply chains and multi national trade flows

revisiting the home bias puzzle downside equity risk deviations from normality in financial return series have led to the development of alternative portfolio selection models one such model is the downside risk model whereby the investor maximizes his return given a downside risk constraint in this paper we empirically observe the international equity allocation for the downside risk investor using nine international markets returns over the last 34 years the results hold for both daily and monthly data and also from an international perspective due to greater downside risk investors may think globally but instead act locally the model s results therefore provide an alternative view of the home bias puzzle

predisclosure information firm capitalization and security price behavior around earnings announcements several studies on the relationship between earnings reports and security price behavior provide evidence suggesting that a significant portion of the information revealed through earnings reports is reflected in security prices prior to the report month e g ball and brown 1968 and brown and kennelly 1972 this has been attributed at least partly to the existence of other more timely sources of information which allow market agents to forecast earnings prior to their release the evidence above reflects an average finding across all firms one question of interest is whether there are significant systematic crosssectional differences in the security price reactions to earnings announcements of firms which are associated with specific firm characteristics that lead to differential amounts of predisclosure information this study focuses on firm size capitalization as one such characteristic a firm

a dimensionally consistent aggregation framework for biophysical metrics abstract we develop a formal representation of the economy ecosystem interaction problem by distinguishing between stock flow and fund flux spaces georgescu roegen 1971 we then define dimensionless quantities in both the cardinal stock flow space and the ordinal fund flux space this leads to analytic definitions of natural capital and natural income in the fund flux space we show that a stock fund representation of the economy ecosystem interaction problem helps investigate aggregation properties of biophysical metrics in particular we show how a metric that is dimensionally consistent in the stock flow space can have dimensional problems in the fund flux space ecological footprint is used as an illustrative example finally we argue that dimensionally consistent metrics are keys to further the development of biophysical assessments as a tool for practical environmental policy

money and the welfare cost of inflation in an r d growth model this study analyzes the effects of inflation on r d and innovation driven growth in the theoretical section we incorporate money demand into a quality ladder model with elastic labor supply and derive the following results if the elasticity of substitution between consumption and the real money balance is less greater than unity then r d and output growth are decreasing increasing in inflation if either labor supply is inelastic or the elasticity of substitution between consumption and the real money balance is unity then social welfare monotonically increases as the nominal interest rate approaches zero i e the friedman rule quantitatively decreasing inflation in the us to achieve price stability improves welfare equivalent to a permanent increase in consumption of at least 0 5 in the empirical section we use cross country data to establish a negative and statistically significant relationship between inflation and r d

r d and internal finance a panel study of small firms in high tech industries since joseph schumpeter economists have argued that internal finance should be an important determinant of r d expenditures yet almost without exception previous empirical studies have not found evidence of such a relation using newly available data the authors investigate this puzzle with a panel of 179 small firms in high tech industries under each estimation strategy they employ the authors find an economically large and statistically significant relationship between r d investment and internal finance their results are consistent with the view that because of capital market imperfections the flow of internal finance is the principal determinant of the rate at which small high tech firms acquire technology through r d copyright 1994 by mit press

a note on the calculus for physical input output analysis and its application to land appropriation of international trade activities abstract in a recent paper in this journal embodied land appropriation in international trade activities was analysed using a physical input output table piot ecological economics 44 2003 137 the authors stated that there are significant differences between the physical and the monetary input output tables in their results which the authors argued to be due to the fact that the results from the monetary table are determined mainly by the monetary structure of final demand while the structure of a physical table more closely resembles the physical realities of an economy in the present paper it is argued that the methodological foundation that the authors based their analysis on is misleading and does not satisfy the overall material balance requirement it is shown that the differences in the results between the monetary and physical tables presented by the authors have nothing to do with the resemblance to the physical realities i also tried to further clarify a number of critical issues in applying physical input output tables related to double counting treatment of wastes and the effect of closing the system toward direct material inputs a number of consistent but different approaches to cope with these issues are presented including their proofs the embodied land appropriation of international trade activities is calculated and compared by applying those approaches there are many advantages of using physical input output tables however their superiority should not be exaggerated nor be regarded as absolute depending on how it is constructed and used it is also possible that the results from a physical input output table do not tell us more than that indeed some commodities are cheaper or more costly per unit of their mass

constructing physical input output tables for environmental modeling and accounting framework and illustrations abstract a physical input output table piot provides a framework in which all the physical flows associated with an economy can be recorded this makes it a valuable tool for environmental economic modeling and accounting during the 1990 s piots were constructed for a number of countries subsequently the piot and related physical supply and use tables have been taken up in the system of environmental and economic accounting un united nations 2003 system of environmental and economic accounting united nations new york this paper reviews piots for the netherlands germany denmark italy finland and the european union these studies applied the basic and extended piot frameworks this paper elaborates these frameworks with packaging residuals wastes and emissions recycling and stock changes in order to create a full piot the production process of the extended and full piot is split into structural and auxiliary production processes modeling applications and ways of deriving environmentally relevant information from the full piot are illustrated using a numerical example

the optimal inflation rate under schumpeterian growth abstract to analyze the relationship between inflation and economic growth we construct an endogenous growth model with creative destruction incorporating sticky prices due to menu costs price changes reduce the reward for innovation and thus lower the frequency of creative destruction central banks can maximize the growth rate by setting their inflation target at the negative of a fundamental growth rate while the optimal inflation rate may be greater than the growth maximizing inflation rate our calibrated model shows that the optimal inflation rate is close to the growth maximizing inflation rate and that a deviation from the optimal level has sizable impacts

the initiation and withdrawal of odd eighth quotes among nasdaq stocks an empirical analysis christie and schultz 1994 journal of finance 49 1813 1840 nd that market makers in many active nasdaq stocks avoid odd eighth quotes this paper studies 67 58 nasdaq stocks whose market makers initiate withdraw odd eighth quotes these regime shifts are often completed within the span of a day and coincide with dramatic changes in dollar percentage and e ective spreads in most cases we are unable to identify comparable changes in the costs of making markets we do identify long run changes in average prices that may provide a partial explanation however we also nd

new methodology for the ecological footprint with an application to the new zealand economy abstract sustainable development has become a primary objective for many countries throughout the world since the late 1980s a major difficulty associated with sustainable development objectives however is the absence of reliable indicators to measure progress towards the goal of sustainability the ecological footprint provides an estimate of the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption for a given population on an aggregate basis the ecological footprint may be compared with the amount of ecologically productive land available to give an indication of whether consumption patterns are likely to be sustainable this paper proposes the use of a modified form of input output analysis to calculate the ecological footprint the input output approach provides a consistent means of calculating an ecological footprint using data collected as part of the system of national accounts in most developed countries in addition it makes explicit the link between the level of economic activity in a country and its corresponding impact on the environment an application of this methodology to new zealand indicates that it takes 3 49 has of ecologically productive land per year to sustain the average new zealander s current level of consumption

using composition of land multiplier to estimate ecological footprints associated with production activity abstract ecological footprint ef a measure of sustainability represents the areas of land and water required to produce the goods and services for satisfying the consumption of a defined human population or economy and to provide environmental assimilation capacity for keeping its environmental quality at a given level production land footprint a main component of the ef represents the lands used by production sectors for producing the goods and services for the final consumption of a given human population there have been at least two alternatives in estimating the production land footprint one is based on the estimates of apparent consumption of each type of resource along the line of the methodology proposed by wackernagel and rees wackernagel m rees w e 1996 and its later refinement the other suggested by bicknell et al 1998 is based on the monetary values of products that are delivered to domestic final demand the information recorded in an input output table the former faces the challenge of distinguishing the commodities used as intermediate input from those as final consumption although its recent development has tried to calculate the raw materials used directly in traded manufactured products wackernagel m lewan l hansson c b 1999a it is not an easy job because the indirect input requirements are also involved using input output analysis which has been widely used to consider the direct and indirect input requirements of supporting final demand may alleviate this difficulty bicknell et al 1998 adopted input output analysis to estimate the footprint of new zealand in their calculation they used land multipliers to obtain the production land areas required to produce the outputs for domestic final consumption directly and indirectly and presented the estimates under three land categories agricultural land forest land and degraded land however this presentation causes errors in the concept and calculation this is because that the area requirement of sector j s production land is obtained by multiplying sector j s land multiplier with its output for domestic final consumption the result would contain not only sector j s own production land but also those of other sectors whose outputs sector j uses as inputs thus the ensuing estimates on sectoral production lands cannot be presented by land category using the hypothetical data in the article of bicknell et al 1998 this paper explains the reasons for using the composition of land multipliers instead of land multipliers in estimating the production land footprint so that the calculated areas can be expressed by land category the revised calculation is then applied to taiwan for estimating her two footprint components production land and energy land in 1991

market making with costly monitoring an analysis of the soes controversy we develop a model of price formation in a dealership market where monitoring of the information flow requires costly effort the result is imperfect monitoring which creates profit opportunities for speculators who pick off stale quotes externalities associated with monitoring give rise to multiple equilibria in which dealers earn strictly positive expected profits we obtain various policy implications a switch to automatic execution can improve or worsen spreads and price discovery depending on the specific equilibrium a reduction in the minimum quoted depth tightens the spread but it reduces price efficiency our analysis is relevant for the soes controversy given that speculators in our model behave as the real world soes bandits our model predicts that soes bandits should trade in stocks with small spreads and that soes bandit activity should widen the spread we provide empirical evidence consistent with these predictions

competition and collusion in dealer markets this article develops a game theoretic model to analyze market makers intertemporal pricing strategies we show that dealers who adopt noncooperative pricing strategies may set bid ask spreads above competitive levels this form of implicit collusion differs from explicit collusion where dealers cooperate to fix prices price discreteness or asymmetric information are not required for collusion to occur rather institutional arrangements that restrict access to the order flow are important determinants of the ability to collude because they reduce dealers incentives to compete on price public policy efforts to increase interdealer competition should focus on such restrictions

applying physical input output analysis to estimate land appropriation ecological footprints of international trade activities in the last few years some studies have been presented which link land use accounting and input output analysis based on monetary input output tables miots for the calculation of direct and indirect land appropriation of production and consumption activities the compilation of the first comprehensive physical input output tables piots for some western european countries in the 1990s opened new possibilities for linking physical accounting and input output analysis using a physical multiplier for this kind of calculation is more appropriate as the most land intensive sectors are also the sectors with the highest amounts of material flows physical input output analysis illustrates land appropriation in relation to material flows of each of the sectors which is more appropriate from the point of view of environmental pressures than land appropriation in relation to monetary flows of a miot physical input output analysis has so far not been applied for any land related studies based on a physical input output model of the eu 15 physical input output analysis is applied in this paper in order to calculate direct and indirect land requirements for the production of exports from eu 15 to the rest of the world

ecologically unsustainable trade abstract international trade although balanced in monetary terms may be unequal in terms of the exchange of biomass and sink capacity it may also be unilaterally or mutually unsustainable if it implies the overuse of the biocapacity in either one or both of the trading partners in this article the ecological footprint concept is used to distinguish different types of ecologically unsustainable trade but the issue of the possible effects of trade on the ecological footprints is also raised we distinguish four such effects an allocative effect an income effect a rich country illusion effect and a terms of trade effect since international trade can be a subtle mechanism by which ecological sustainability is preserved locally by means of importing biomass and sink capacity from other countries it can also blur the view of responsibility for the ecological effects of production and consumption at the end of this article some ethical and political dilemmas related to these issues are raised

execution costs and their intraday variation in futures markets we consider trading costs in the transparent competitive open outcry markets of the chicago mercantile exchange cme in which market makers have no affirmative obligation to trade we document that while cme spreads are similar in magnitude to those in other markets realized spreads are often negative a plausible explanation is that cme market makers are able to employ more complex trading strategies than their equity market counterparts because they are not bound by affirmative obligation the evidence suggests that market transparency and market maker obligations are important determinants of intraday variation in trading costs copyright 2001 by university of chicago press

allocating ecological footprints to final consumption categories with input output analysis we present and discuss a method that allows the disaggregation of national ecological footprints by economic sector detailed final demand category sub national area or socio economic group this is done by combining existing national footprint accounts with input output analysis calculations in the empirical part are carried out by using supply and use tables for the united kingdom covering the reporting period 2000 ecological footprints are allocated to detailed household consumption activities following the coicop classification system and to a detailed breakdown of capital investment the method presented enables the calculation of comparable ecological footprints on all sub national levels and for different socio economic groups the novelty of the approach lies in the use of input output analysis to re allocate existing footprint accounts in the detail of disaggregation by consumption category and in the expanded use of household expenditure data this extends the potential for applications of the ecological footprint concept and helps to inform scenarios policies and strategies on sustainable consumption the method described in this paper can be applied to every country for which a national footprint account exists and where appropriate economic and environmental accounts are available the approach helps to save time in data collection and improves the consistency between ecological footprint estimates for a particular human society from different researchers for these reasons the suggested methodology includes crucial steps on the way towards a standardisation of ecological footprint accounts

dividend distributions and closed end fund discounts abstract empirical support for the hypothesis that closed end fund discounts are related to overhanging tax liabilities has been mixed we introduce a new approach to testing this hypothesis by examining changes in discount levels following distributions of dividends and capital gains since distributions reduce future shareholder tax liabilities the tax liability hypothesis implies that closed end fund discounts should decline following distributions focusing on changes in discounts isolates this tax effect by eliminating the impact of other fund specific factors on discount levels our results support the tax liability hypothesis showing that short run fluctuations in discounts are directly affected by taxable distributions

physical and monetary input output analysis what makes the difference abstract a recent paper in which embodied land appropriation of exports was calculated using a physical input output model ecological economics 44 2003 137 151 initiated a discussion in this journal concerning the conceptual differences between input output models using a coefficient matrix based on physical input output tables piots in a single unit of mass and input output models using a coefficient matrix based on monetary input output tables miots extended by a coefficient vector of physical factor inputs per unit of output in this contribution we argue that the conceptual core of the discrepancies found when comparing outcomes obtained using physical vs monetary input output models lies in the assumptions regarding unit prices and not in the treatment of waste as has been claimed ecological economics 48 2004 9 17 we first show that a basic static input output model with the coefficient matrix derived from a monetary input output table is equivalent to one where the coefficient matrix is derived from an input output table in physical units provided that the assumption of unique sectoral prices is satisfied we then illustrate that the input output tables that were used in the original publication do not satisfy the assumption of homogenous sectoral prices even after the inconsistent treatment of waste in the piot is corrected we show that substantially different results from the physical and the monetary models in fact remain finally we identify and discuss possible reasons for the observed differences in sectoral prices faced by different purchasing sectors and draw conclusions for the future development of applied physical input output analysis

water pollution in the spanish economy analysis of sensitivity to production and environmental constraints abstract in this paper we discuss the relationships between production processes and water pollution based on the recent satellite water accounts swa ine spanish national statistics institute 2002 and the 1997 input output tables for the spanish economy the study focuses on four pollutants biological oxygen demand bod metals nitrogen and phosphorus and seven sector blocks firstly we identify the roles of the various sector blocks as generators and consumers of each type of pollution secondly we examine how pollution responds to changes in unit coefficients of pollution and final demand patterns to obtain the shadow prices for the different pollutants the results obtained provide a sound basis for the design of improvements in environmental policy

competition among trading venues information and trading on electronic communications networks this paper explores the competition between two trading venues electronic communication networks ecns and nasdaq market makers ecns oier the advantages of anonymity and speed of execution which attract informed traders thus trades are more likely to occur on ecns when information asymmetry is greater and when trading volume and stock return volatility are high ecn trades have greater permanent price impacts and more private information is revealed through ecn trades than though market maker trades however ecn trades have higher ex ante trading costs because market makers can preference or internalize the less informed trades and oier them better executions technological innovations that enable high speed low cost electronic trading systems are dramatically changing the structure of nancial markets exchanges and markets around the world are merging or forming alliances to improve liquidity and reduce costs in the face of increased competition from each other and from these computerized trading systems trading volume on electronic communications networks ecns has grown rapidly over the past several years ecns are now involved in more than a third of nasdaq trading volume and are attempting to increase their market share in nyse listed

consumer and producer environmental responsibility comparing two approaches abstract two different indicators of environmental responsibility were independently proposed by rodrigues et al rodrigues j domingos t giljum s schneider f 2006 designing an indicator of environmental responsibility ecological economics 59 3 256 266 and lenzen et al lenzen m murray j sack f wiedmann t 2007 shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice ecological economics 61 27 42 these indicators are both supposed to reflect the indirect effects of consumer and producer behavior in the generation of environmental pressure in this paper we compare their mathematical properties and interpretation we conclude that they have different implications for environmental policy

sharing resources the global distribution of the ecological footprint abstract this paper examines how the human demand on bioproductive lands as measured by the ecological footprint is distributed across the globe using methods commonly used to measure the distribution of income measuring the distribution of natural resource use will be necessary to achieve an economy that is sustainable just and efficient currently different nations place different demands on the environment i e the ecological footprint is not evenly distributed across the globe calculation of the gini coefficient for total ecological footprint and its components explains the sources of inequality in overall resource use calculation of the atkinson index shows how inequality in the ecological footprint is related to the inequality of income and environmental intensity

preferencing internalization of order flow and tacit collusion evidence from experiments this paper examines preferencing arrangements and tacit collusion in laboratory asset markets in the experiments dealers may internalize by matching the best quote or by passing orders to the dealer posting the best quote although some markets were highly competitive several markets reached a collusive equilibrium with wide spreads and near complete intemalization of order flow the paper further examines the role of market transparency and passed order flow on quote setting behavior and suggests that these affect the mechanism leading to tacitly collusive equilibria

downscaling material flow analysis the case of the cereal supply chain in france the spatial reconstruction of the production trade transformation and consumption flows of a specific material can become an important decision help tool for improving resource management and for studying environmental pressures from the producer s to the consumer s viewpoint one of the obstacles preventing its actual use in the decision making process is that building such studies at various geographical scales proves to be costly both in time and manpower in this article we propose a semi automatic methodology to overcome this issue we describe our multi scalar model and its data reconciliation component and apply it to cereals flows namely using ocial databases insee agreste franceagrimer sitram as well as corporate sources we reconstructed the supply chain flows of the 22 french regions as well as the flows of four nested territories france the rhone alpes region the isere departement and the territory of the scot of grenoble we display the results using sankey diagrams and discuss the intervals of confidence of the model s outputs we conclude on the perspectives of coupling this model with economic social and environmental aspects that would provide key information to decision makers

why nasdaq market makers avoid odd eighth quotes recent studies argue that implicit collusion explains the tendency of nasdaq market makers to avoid odd eighth price quotes this paper focuses on the role that preference trading plays in determining quoted spreads under the postulated effects of preference trading an analysis of the relation between spreads and price fractions explains the paucity of odd eighth quotes on nasdaq empirical results from a comprehensive data set show that exogenous economic characteristics explain the distribution of price fractions across securities and illustrate the stability of that distribution over time these results contradict empirical results offered as support for the collusion hypothesis

cross border listings and price discovery evidence from u s listed canadian stocks we examine the contribution of cross listings to price discovery for a sample of canadian stocks listed on both the toronto stock exchange tse and a u s exchange we nd that priceson the tse and u s exchange are cointegrated and mutually adjusting the u s share of price discovery ranges from 0 2 percent to 98 2 percent with an average of 38 1 percent the u s share is directly related to the u s share of trading and to the ratio of proportions of informative tradeson the u s exchange and the tse and inversely related to the ratio of bid ask spreads with the enhanced globalization of nancial markets the number of non u s rms cross listing shares on a u s exchange has substantially increased attracting non u s listings is now a top priority of the u s stock exchanges at the end of 2000 420 non u s rmswere listed on the new york stock exchange nyse the number of foreign rmslisted on nasdaq waseven higher the popularity of international cross listings has prompted many academic studies on the topic 1 most of these studies focus on the bene ts of international cross listings including the reduced cost of capital and the enhanced liquidity of a rm s stock studiessuch asalexander eun and janakiramanan 1987 1988 and foerster and karolyi 1993 suggest that the cost of capital declines because the portion of the risk premium that compensates for cross border investment barriers dissipates miller 1999 and foerster and karolyi 1999 propose increased investor recognition as another possible explanation several studies examine changes in trading volume and costs due to international cross listing foerster and karolyi 1998 nd that the bid ask spreads in canada decrease after the cross listing of canadian stocks in the united states domowitz glen and madhavan 1998 suggest that the impact of cross listing is complex and depends on the degree of quote transparency that is the extent to which price information is observable in the two markets smith and so anos 1997 examine if cross listing is a zerosum game with increased trading in the united states being oiset by reduced

the effect of trade between china and the uk on national and global carbon dioxide emissions we estimate the amount of carbon dioxide embodied in bi lateral trade between the uk and china in 2004 developing and applying the method of shui and harriss 2006 tile role of co2 embodiment in us china trade energy policy 34 4063 4068 the most recently available data on trade and co2 emissions have been updated and adjusted to calculate the co2 emissions embodied in the commodities traded between china and the uk it was found that through trade with china the uk reduced its co2 emissions by approximately 11 in 2004 compared with a non trade scenario in which the same type and volume of goods are produced in the uk in addition due to the greater carbon intensity and relatively less efficient production processes of chinese industry china uk trade resulted in an additional 117 mt of co2 to global co2 emissions in the same one year period compared with a non trade scenario in which the same type and volume of goods are produced in the uk this represents an additional 19 to the reported national co2 emissions of the uk 555 mt y in 2004 and 0 4 of global emissions these findings suggest that through international trade very significant environmental impacts can be shifted front one country to another and that international trade can but does not necessarily result in globally increased greenhouse gas emissions these results are additional to the environmental consequences of transporting goods which are not robustly quantified here c 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

delving into the carbon footprints of singapore comparing direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions of a small and open economic system abstract small and open economic systems like cities face specific challenges for greenhouse gas accounting they typically import most of their energy requirements as secondary energy products based on conversion processes which caused emissions elsewhere emission estimates therefore already require attention not only to direct on site activities moreover for a comprehensive approach it is suggested to include upstream and downstream processes of connected socioeconomic systems and the indirect life cycle related emissions of imported and exported goods singapore is used in this longitudinal study as an example of an urban scale economy accounts for direct emissions are compared with trade corrected estimates of indirect emissions results indicate that direct emissions account for only about 20 of the overall upstream emissions necessary to sustain the input side of the economic production process domestic emissions plus indirect emissions embodied in imported goods if indirect emissions embodied in exports are considered and subtracted from the previous figure the trade corrected accounts for direct and indirect emissions still exceed direct emission accounts although by less than 40 given the increasing trends in world trade and urbanisation indirect pressures of urban systems should be included in discussions of effective and fair adaptation and mitigation strategies

structural analysis of material flows in china based on physical and monetary input output models abstract the physical input output pio model has different product flow scopes from the monetary input output mio model using the pio and mio models to analyze the structure of material flows can identify new hotspots for policy decisions over each other however pio models are not well studied in existing studies on the structure of china s material flows this study uses both the pio and mio models to analyze consumption based material flows of chinese sectors and critical supply chain paths leading to china s material flows results show that the pio and mio models validate each other by simultaneously identifying critical sectors and important final demand categories however product prices and the treatment of services lead to different findings based on the mio and pio models compared with the pio model the mio model underestimates the contribution of the construction sector to china s material flows but overestimates that of the equipment and machinery and other services sectors the pio model reveals the higher importance of rural household consumption while the mio model identifies more critical supply chain paths associated with services the pio and mio models can complement each other in the implementation and assessment of environmental measures e g production efficiency improvement

island goes dark transparency fragmentation and regulation responding to a september 2002 regulatory enforcement the island electronic communications network stopped displaying its limit order book in the three most active exchange traded funds etfs where it was the dominant venue island s share of trading activity and price discovery fell fragmenting the market etf prices adjust more slowly when island goes dark and there is substantial price discovery movement from etfs to the futures market trading costs increase on island and decrease off island with higher trading costs overall when island later redisplays its orders market quality improves with transparency and the reduction in fragmentation both playing important roles copyright 2005 oxford university press

total embodied energy requirements and its decomposition in china s agricultural sector abstract humanity faces the important challenge of understanding and integrating human and natural processes including agriculture in china the scarcity of arable land 0 09 ha per capita increasing population and migration of the workforce to cities pose a significant challenge for food security agricultural energy productivity has therefore become a key concern in this study we used input output analysis to measure energy productivity at a national agro ecosystem scale for china using the total embodied energy requirement teer to reveal hidden energy flows we introduced a structural decomposition technique that reveals how changes in teer for the agricultural sector were driven by changes in energy use technology and the inter relationships among two agricultural sectors farming and animal husbandry the results will help both policymakers and farmers to improve the efficiency and environmental compatibility of agricultural production declining teer for both sectors means that china s overall agro ecosystem has increased its energy productivity since 1978 due to improved relationships between the agricultural sectors and increased use of biological energy however the net positive energy income decreased in the farming sector and an increasing proportion of fossil energy use accompanied by increased energy income in the animal sector provide incentives to increase yield and decrease labor by using more fossil energy thus raising more animals in the animal husbandry sector overuse of fossil energy since 1990 has resulted in decreasing fossil energy efficiency requiring immediate measures to improve the use of fossil fuel intensive materials such as fertilizers

virtual land use and agricultural trade estimating environmental and socio economic impacts abstract liberalization has caused an increase in the global trade of goods and services in particular the value and physical volume of agricultural goods traded have largely increased as the environmental and social consequences of trade are complex they are rarely included in the national and international agricultural policies one reason is that there is a lack of concepts and methods for assessing the environmental and social impacts of trade policies in this paper we develop a method for quantifying and assessing the land use hidden in the export and import of agricultural goods for the case of switzerland for our analysis we focus on arable crops the first methodological step of our research illustrates the spatial relationship of switzerland with countries all over the world through the import and export of land use for arable crops the second step links this spatial dimension with a qualitative assessment of the environmental and socio economic impacts of agricultural land use we applied the method to the case of wheat cultivation within switzerland and import to switzerland the major problem we were confronted with was the availability of data which had both to be reliable and available for the countries wheat is imported from the results show that the calculation of land use is credible in spite of the problems related with data availability the assessment results for each indicator are in agreement with the current situation in the respective countries in addition the aggregation seems to accurately reflect the countries agricultural polices the developed method is used to estimate the overall environmental and socio economic impacts of an increase in wheat imports to switzerland we argue that this method could be applied for anticipating potential impacts of trade agreements still further research is required for fine tuning of the utility functions including a weighting procedure in the aggregation procedure for practical applications important aspects like water shortage should enlarge our limited set of indicators in addition the average impact on a country level was assessed to refine that different agricultural systems ranging from intensive to extensive to organic should be considered beyond our scope was to analyze impacts due to other life cycle stages than the agricultural production for informed decision however information on the whole life cycle of agricultural products is required

growth of business services a supply side hypothesis this paper aims to explain why and how the service sector may grow faster than manufacturing it develops a two sector closed economy model having a manufacturing sector and a service sector accumulation of human capital serves as the basis of growth the analysis focuses on business services while household services are also considered it is argued that differences in returns to scale between the two sectors and employment frictions in manufacturing explain why the growth rate of the service sector may be higher the model also features that within the service sector the business services sub sector may grow faster than household services resume croissance dans les services aux entreprises une hypothese ancree du cote de l offre ce texte vise a expliquer pourquoi et comment le secteur des services peut croitre plus vite que le secteur manufacturier on developpe un modele d economie fermee a deux secteurs un secteur manufacturier et un secteur des services l accumulation du capital humain est a la base de la croissance l analyse met l accent sur les services aux entreprises mais considere aussi les services domestiques on suggere que les differences entre secteurs dans les rendements a l echelle et les frictions dans l emploi dans le secteur manufacturier expliquent pourquoi le taux de croissance du secteur des services peut etre plus eleve le modele suggere aussi qu a l interieur du secteur des services le sous secteur des services aux entreprises peut croitre plus vite que le sous secteur des services domestiques

tick size bid ask spreads and market structure we propose a link between market structure and the resulting market characteristics tick size bid ask spreads quote clustering and market depth we analyze transactions data of stocks traded on the london stock exchange a dealer market we conclude that market charateristics are endogenous to the market structure the london dealer market does not have a mandated tick size and it exhibits higher spreads higher quote clusterings and higher market depth than the nyse auction market clustering of trade prices is similar in london and new york

effects of market reform on the trading costs and depths of nasdaq stocks the relative merits of dealer versus auction markets have been a subject of significant and sometimes contentious debate on january 20 1997 the securities and exchange commission began implementing reforms that would permit the public to compete directly with nasdaq dealers by submitting binding limit orders additionally superior quotes placed by nasdaq dealers in private trading venues began to be displayed in the nasdaq market we measure the impact of these new rules on various measures of performance including trading costs and depths our results indicate that quoted and effective spreads fell dramatically without adversely affecting market quality

tick size and spreads the case of nasdaq s decimalization abstract recent studies by the securities and exchange commission sec and by academics have provided empirical evidence that nasdaq trade execution costs are still higher than for instance on the nyse introducing decimal pricing is one concrete plan to enhance nasdaq s competitiveness however effects of tick size changes are difficult to predict for that reason models have been required for quite a while capital market synergetics is appropriate to investigate the effects of market microstructure changes in this paper we examine the impact of a variation in nasdaq s minimum price increment on quoted spreads first our findings confirm the numerical value of the decline in the average quoted spread in 1997 as an immediate effect of reducing the tick size from 1 8 to 1 16 this strongly affirms the reliability of our calculation results second by applying the same research design again we investigate the impact of a further reduction in the tick size to 1 100 no such study is available at the moment the expected changes in the average quoted spreads due to the reduction in the tick size from 1 16 to 1 100 the change through decimalization range from an increase of 2 82 to a decrease of 15 51 derived by applying the same method again the figures embody a reliable forecast of the real effects and are therefore of eminent importance to academics and to practitioners as well

graduate education in ecological economics abstract interest in graduate education in ecological economics is increasing however no formal plan of study for a phd in ecological economics has been disseminated the lack of a formal plan is problematic as the field of ecological economics matures interest grows and new programs are being developed this paper attempts to fill a void by creating a program of study addressing the proficiencies a graduate student in ecological economics should have upon completion of his her phd based on the us educational system the plan of study presented in this paper has been developed to make the graduate of an ecological economics program as competitive on the labor market as students awarded traditional economics degrees the plan i describe is created to meet the requirements necessary for a phd in ecological economics further fields of specialization are suggested to complement the core of an ecological economics program to enhance the education process and to give the student with an ecological economics degree a higher level of marketability

market maker quotation behavior and pretrade transparency we examine the impact of differing levels of pretrade transparency on the quotation behavior of nasdaq market makers we find that market makers are more likely to quote on odd ticks and to actively narrow the spread when they can do so anonymously by posting limit orders on electronic communication networks ecns from a public policy perspective our findings suggest that making the level of pretrade transparency on nasdaq more opaque by allowing anonymous quotes could improve price competition and narrow spreads further

energy and carbon embodied in the international trade of brazil an input output approach abstract all goods and services produced in an economy are directly and or indirectly associated with energy use and according to the type of fuel utilized with co2 emissions as well international trade is an important factor in shaping the industrial structure of a country and consequently in affecting a country s energy use and co2 emissions this study applies input output techniques to the brazilian economy to evaluate the total impacts of international trade on its energy use and co2 emissions a commodity by industry io model in hybrid units energy commodities in physical units and non energy commodities in monetary units is applied to the brazilian economy in 1995 results show that total energy embodied in the exports of non energy goods of brazil equals 831 pj while total carbon embodied is 13 5 mtc these amounts are larger than the relevant amounts embodied in the imports of non energy goods respectively 679 pj and 9 9 mtc these figures are better understood by contrasting them with the total energy use and the corresponding total carbon emissions of the brazilian economy in 1995 estimated by this work 6781 pj and 99 4 mtc respectively this means that international inflows and outflows of energy embodied in non energy goods are in the order of 10 and 12 of the total energy use while inflows and outflows of carbon embodied in non energy goods are approximately 10 and 14 of the corresponding total carbon emissions of the brazilian economy in 1995 the general picture is that brazil is not only a net exporter of energy 153 pj and of carbon 3 6 mtc embodied in the non energy goods internationally traded by the country in 1995 but also that each dollar earned with exports embodied 40 more energy and 56 more carbon than each dollar spent on imports these findings suggest that brazilian policy makers should be concerned about the extra impacts international trade policy may have on energy use and carbon emissions of the country

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis in recent years there have been a number of attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to the issue of measuring resource use and or pollution generation embodied in trade flows including contributions that combine input output techniques and ecological footprint analysis in this two part paper we describe how to enumerate the resource and or pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows part 1 and we present a literature review of recent methodological and empirical developments part 2 it is straightforward in principle to extend the basic input output approach to capture international trade flows however in practice problems of data availability and compatibility and of computability of extended input output matrices mean that simplifying assumptions are generally applied but with the implications of these assumptions often not made fully explicit what appears to be absent from previous applications is an account of the analytical method by which ecological footprints should ideally be estimated in an international input output accounting analysis this allows an explicit analysis of the problems that prevent the application of the full method and identification of the most appropriate short cut methods in a transparent way the objective of this paper is to provide such an account

location matters an examination of trading profits the electronic trading system xetra of the german security exchange provides a unique data source on the equity trades of 756 professional traders located in 23 different cities and eight european countries we explore informational asymmetries across the trader population traders located outside germany in non german speaking cities show lower proprietary trading profit their underperformance is not only statistically significant it is also of economically significant magnitude and occurs for the 11 largest german blue chip stocks we also examine whether a trader location in frankfurt as the financial center or local proximity of the trader to the corporate headquarters of the traded stock or affiliation with a large financial institution results in superior trading performance the data provide no evidence for a financial center advantage or of increasing institutional scale economies in proprietary trading however we find evidence for an information advantage due to corporate headquarters proximity for high frequency intraday trading

a three perspective view of greenhouse gas emission responsibilities in new zealand abstract while responsibility for the environmental impacts of production has been commonly assigned to producers production is driven by consumer demand and it is valid to question whether impacts should instead be assigned to consumers however in each of these approaches producers and consumers either bear the full burden of responsibility or none at all an example of this is the kyoto protocol where all greenhouse gas emissions are assigned to the producer and no consideration is given to where goods are finally consumed rather than taking the conventional producer or consumer responsibility approach a third perspective is possible in which responsibility is shared we use input output analysis to apply all three of these responsibility perspectives to new zealand s domestic greenhouse gas emissions our main findings from the shared responsibility approach are that new zealand producers are responsible for 44 of domestic emissions new zealand consumers take 28 and 27 are exported a shared responsibility approach appears to distribute the burden of responsibility and associated liability between parties more fairly and is likely to be more widely acceptable than pure producer or consumer perspectives

applying input output analysis to scenario analysis of ecological footprints abstract application of input output analysis to ecological footprints efs is shifting from an ex post static calculation toward an ex ante scenario analysis for enhancing the policy relevance of ef analysis this change in application prompts two issues requiring careful examination 1 what is measured by leontief inverses or extended environmental leontief inverses and 2 whether a sector s land multiplier or compositions of land multiplier can appropriately reflect the effect of delivering one unit of the sector s output to final demand on the required area s of production lands used by the sector itself and by other producing sectors whose products are contributed directly and indirectly to its production the underlying message of these two questions is whether the assumed linear marginal relationship between a sector s output and its intermediate inputs input output coefficients a critical assumption made by w leontief to transform a transactions table from an accounting framework into the input output model can be extended to assume that the marginal relationship between a sector s output and the area of production land it uses for generating output is fixed land output marginal coefficient equal to average coefficient by reviewing the literature on input output analysis and its application to environmental issues and by theoretically and empirically examining the relation between sector output and land appropriation this study advises against the use of land multipliers or their compositions in the ef scenario analysis to apply the input output model to ef scenario analysis for enhancing policy relevance with due attention to the relationship between sector output and land appropriation this study suggests a two stage ef calculation procedure in the first stage the input output application estimates only the required raw materials or generated pollutants for meeting a given consumption pattern which is the objective of environmental input output analysis in the second stage the estimated amount of raw materials or pollutants is converted into land water area and a choice of conversion methods is suggested according to the research questions and the availability of conversion methods and required data

payments for order flow on nasdaq we present a model of nasdaq that includes the two ways in which marketmakers compete for order f low quotes and direct payments brokers in our model can execute small trades through a computerized system preferencing arrangements with marketmakers or vertical integration into market making the comparative statics in our model differ from those of the traditional model of dealer markets which does not capture important institutional features of nasdaq we also show that the empirical evidence is inconsistent with the traditional model which suggests that preferencing and vertical integration are important components in understanding nasdaq

an agri environmental assessment of trade liberalization abstract this paper assesses the potential agri environmental impacts on the united states of liberalizing world agricultural trade we examine how the elimination of all agricultural policy distortions in all trading countries might influence agricultural production decisions and subsequently affect environmental quality in the united states the estimated changes in u s agricultural production under the ambitious assumption of full agricultural trade liberalization are well within the bounds of average annual variation for agricultural commodity production fig 2 in this context our results suggest that for the united states as a whole environmental impacts stemming from such hypothesized trade shocks would also fall within the average annual variation this generalization aside we note that the estimated changes in commodity production and subsequent environmental impacts are not uniform across the landscape with increases in agricultural production and the environmental indicators in some regions or sectors and decreases in others

evaluating the effects of embodied energy in international trade on ecological footprint in china based on sub sectoral level of economy and detailed traded items embodied energy ee in international trade flow in china is estimated during 1996 2004 and the effects of ee on sustainability are quantified by using one of the most popular indicators ecological footprint ef a framework of ef method which is more relevant to realism of specific country is proposed in this paper the results show that china is a net importer of ee during the period covered by this study except for the year from 1997 to 1999 imported exported and net imported ee tends to increase sharply along time series net imported energy would increase 38 and energy consumption would increase 2 8 in 2004 if ee were taken into account footprint energy is the most important part of ef components and is significantly affected by ee and the effects of ee on ef are similar to that of footprint energy footprint energy ef and ecological deficit of 2004 will be underestimated about 2 92 1 36 2 83 respectively if ee is not taken into the national energy budget continuous increase of ef and ecological deficit along time series indicates that china is moving away from sustainability 1 47 times chinese territories are accurately occupied by china in 1996 while 1 71 times in 2004 obviously unsustainability procedure of china is accelerated by ee the contribution of ee to ef and ecological deficit is small in absolute terms expressed in per capita but the effects on whole nation are huge if the population of china multiplies them to curb the increase of ef and ecological deficit and to achieve the goal of sustainability some policy and measures are also proposed c 2006 elsevier b v all rights reserved

search in asset markets market structure liquidity and welfare this paper investigates how market structure affects efficiency and several dimensions of liquidity in an asset market to this end we generalize the search theoretic model of financial intermediation of darrell duffie et al 2005 to allow for entry of dealers and unrestricted asset holdings

a comparison of centralized and fragmented markets with costly search how does quotation transparency affect financial market performance biais s irrelevance proposition in 1993 shows that centralized markets yield the same expected bid ask spreads as fragmented markets other things equal however de frutos and manzano demonstrated in 2002 that expected spreads in fragmented markets are smaller and market participants prefer to trade in fragmented markets this paper introduces liquidity traders costs of searching for a better quote into the biais model and derives opposite conclusions to these previous studies expected spreads in centralized markets are smaller and liquidity traders prefer centralized markets while market makers prefer fragmented markets

anonymity adverse selection and the sorting of interdealer trades this article asks why london security dealers use more than one trading venue to trade with one another we argue that differences in the exclusivity liquidity anonymity and post trade transparency of each system permit a more efficient sorting of interdealer trades than if there were just one system our evidence comes from detailed data on where london dealers chose to place interdealer trades contrary to intuition we show that uninformed interdealer trades as measured by subsequent price impact tend to migrate to third party brokered systems where trade is anonymous by contrast informed interdealer trades tend to migrate to the direct nonanonymous public market additionally we show that this distribution of trades is supported by differences in the price improvement dealers receive in the direct and brokered markets our findings have implications for three strands of the market microstructure literature first they contribute to our understanding of the importance of anonymity and transparency in securities trading most theoretical models of the effects of anonymity and transparency predict that anonymous trading systems will attract more informed trades

a new approach to modeling waste in physical input output analysis abstract it is important to treat waste properly in physical input output analysis and a series of publications discussed this topic in this journal recently in this paper we propose a new approach to deal with physical input output table piot measured in a single mass unit by which the structure of piot need not be changed the new approach yields consistent and reasonable results it not only is simpler than the existing approaches but also can reflect the physical reality of economic systems we first discuss and clarify the concept of different kinds of inputs and outputs of economic systems we then present the details of the new approach during the process we define a new multiplier which builds a bridge between the total input and the final demand in piot just like the traditional leontief inverse in miot we select the three sector piot for germany 1990 as a case study to show the validity of the new approach finally we prove the equivalence between the new approach suh s approach and dietzenbacher s approach and the equivalence of non waste part and waste part multiplier of the new approach and dietzenbacher s approach

a closing call s impact on market quality at euronext paris abstract the paris bourse currently euronext paris refined its trading system to include electronic call auctions at market closings in 1996 for its less liquid continuous b stocks and in 1998 for its more actively traded continuous a stocks this paper analyzes the effects of the innovation on market quality our empirical analysis of price behavior for two samples of firms 50 b stocks and 50 a stocks for two different calendar dates 1996 and 1998 indicates that introduction of the closing calls has lowered execution costs for individual participants and sharpened price discovery for the broad market we further observe that market quality is improved at market openings albeit to a lesser extent we suggest that a positive spillover effect explains the closing call s more pervasive impact

dealer liquidity in an auction market evidence from the london stock exchange we analyse the trade characteristics and market conditions which determine the market share of a continuous auction trading system at the london stock exchange where a network of broker dealer firms is also available for trade we show that execution and information risks govern the choice of execution venue further we uncover strong commonality in the market share of the order book across stocks and find that variables proxying for market wide liquidity and informational risks also affect the choice of trading venue our results suggest that competing off book liquidity suppliers voluntarily perform at least some of the stabilisation functions normally assigned to designated market makers

trading spaces calculating embodied ecological footprints in international trade using a product land use matrix plum abstract nations import and export biophysical resources with many ecosystems worldwide under mounting stress countries may be increasingly interested in knowing the extent and origin of their ecological imports and dependencies in this paper the ecological footprint is used as a tool to measure the biophysical as opposed to financial value of international trade flows this paper attempts to answer the following question how large of an ecological footprint does a given country exert inside the borders of each of its trading partners records in the un comtrade bilateral trade database are multiplied by a matrix of per product footprint yield coefficients to translate from values in dollars and tonnes to units of hectares the results show that the largest interregional flows are from latin to north america and from north america to asia pacific grouping countries by gdp high and middle income countries appear in footprint terms to trade predominantly with other high and middle income countries and much less with low income countries

the role of co2 embodiment in us china trade abstract this study examines the influence of us china trade on national and global emissions of carbon dioxide co2 the three basic questions are as follows 1 what amount of co2 emissions is avoided in the us by importing chinese goods 2 how much are co2 emissions in china increased as a result of the production of goods for export to the us and 3 what are the impacts of us china trade on global co2 emissions our initial findings reveal that during 1997 2003 1 us co2 emissions would have increased from 3 to 6 if the goods imported from china had been produced in the us 2 about 7 14 of china s current co2 emissions were a result of producing exports for us consumers and 3 us china trade has increased global co2 emissions by an estimated 720 million metric tons we suggest that the export of us technologies and expertise related to clean production and energy efficiency to china could be a win win strategy for both countries for reducing their trade imbalance and mitigating global co2 emissions improved international accounting methodologies for assigning responsibility for co2 emissions must be designed to account for the dynamic nature of international trade

the trading profits of soes bandits1 abstract soes bandits are individual investors who use nasdaq s small order execution system soes for day trading their average profit per trade is small but they trade dozens or hundreds of times per week bandits usually establish a position before most market makers have updated their quotes and lay off the position at favorable prices through instinet or selectnet it is noteworthy that they trade profitably with market makers despite having less information bandits keep the profits and bear the losses from their trades thus they have greater incentives to trade well than the employees of market making firms

the effect of financial development on convergence theory and evidence we introduce imperfect creditor protection in a multicountry schumpeterian growth model the theory predicts that any country with more than some critical level of financial development will converge to the growth rate of the world technology frontier and that all other countries will have a strictly lower long run growth rate we present evidence supporting these and other implications in the form of a cross country growth regression with a significant and sizable negative coefficient on initial per capita gdp relative to the united states interacted with financial intermediation in addition we find that other variables representing schooling geography health policy politics and institutions do not affect the significance of the interaction between financial intermediation and initial per capita gdp and do not show any independent effect on convergence in the regressions our findings are robust to removal of outliers and to alternative conditioning sets estimation procedures and measures of financial development

the shrinking merger arbitrage spread reasons and implications the merger arbitrage spread has declined by more than 400 bps since 2002 this decline which is both economically and statistically significant corresponds to the decline in aggregate returns of merger arbitrage hedge funds as well as increased inflows into merger arbitrage hedge funds part of the decline in the arbitrage spread may be explained by increased trading in the targets stocks following the merger announcement reduced transaction costs and changes in risk related to merger arbitrage these findings suggest that some of the decline is likely to be permanent therefore investors seeking to invest in merger arbitrage hedge funds should focus on returns since 2002