the value of corporate voting rights and control a cross country analysis this paper measures the value of corporate voting rights specifically of the control block of votes in a sample of 661 dual class firms in 18 countries in 1997 a consistent measure across countries is proposed the measure is adjusted for takeover probability block holding costs and dividend and liquidity differences between the share classes the value of controlblock votes varies widely across countries it is close to half of firm market value in south korea andclose to zero in finland the value of control block votes is interpretedas a lower bound for actual private benefits of the controlling shareholder the legal environment law enforcement investor protection takeover regulations andpower concentrating corporate charter provisions explain 68 of the cross country variation in the value of control block votes

energy distribution and economic growth an empirical test for china abstract in this paper we consider whether economic growth in china could be constrained by the physical development of the energy distribution network specifically we structurally test the network theory of electricity distribution of dalgaard and strulik 2011 using city level data for china in their paper they argue that the relationship between the size of the economy measured by capital per capita and electricity consumption per capita is governed by a simple power law with capital having an exponent bounded between and depending on the efficiency of the network we use data for 224 cities in china between 2002 and 2007 to observe whether structural estimates match those of dalgaard and strulik 2011 for 50 us states where they find the exponent in the power law connecting capital with electricity to be 2 3 our results provide an estimate of the power law component to a little higher than the 2 3 found for the us which provides broad support for the model when we look at different time periods we observe what appears to be a fall in the efficiency of the energy distribution network towards the end of our period

strategic price complexity in retail financial markets abstract there is mounting empirical evidence to suggest that the law of one price is violated in retail financial markets there is significant price dispersion even when products are homogeneous also despite the large number of firms in the market prices remain above marginal cost and may even rise as more firms enter in a non cooperative oligopoly pricing model i show that these anomalies arise when firms add complexity to their price structures complexity increases the market power of the firms because it prevents some consumers from becoming knowledgeable about prices in the market in the model as competition increases firms tend to add more complexity to their prices as a best response rather than make their disclosures more transparent because this may substantially decrease consumer surplus in these markets such practices have important welfare implications

clearly irrational financial market behavior evidence from the early exercise of exchange traded stock options this paper analyzes the early exercise of exchange traded options by different classes of investors over the 1996 to 1999 period a large number of exercises are identified as clearly irrational without invoking any model of market equilibrium customers of discount brokers and customers of full service brokers both engage in a significant number of irrational exercises while traders at large investment houses exhibit no irrational early exercise behavior rational and irrational exercise is triggered for discount and full service customers by the underlying stock price attaining its highest level over the past year and by high returns on the underlying stock it is well known that in the absence of market frictions it is irrational to exercise american call options early except in some circumstances just before the underlying stock goes ex dividend even in the presence of market frictions it is possible to identify without the imposition of any model of market equilibrium call exercises that are clearly irrational in this paper we employ a previously unavailable data set to analyze the rationality of early exercises of chicago board option exchange cboe calls over the 1996 to 1999 period by customers of discount brokers discount customers customers of full service brokers full service customers and traders at large investment houses trading for their firms own accounts firm proprietary traders our first main finding is that there are a large number of early exercises that can be definitively identified as irrational and irrational exercise activity is not evenly distributed across the investor classes discount customers and full ser

internal governance mechanisms and operational performance evidence from index mutual funds we provide new evidence linking board characteristics and performance using manually collected governance data from the mutual fund industry we find an inverse relation between board size and fund performance we also find evidence that organizational form plays an important role in determining operational performance overall the results are consistent with the notion that there may not be a single optimal board structure that is applicable to all funds that attempts to regulate board attributes should be considered with caution and that sponsor level factors are important board structure considerations the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

prepayment and the valuation of mortgage backed securities this paper puts forward a valuation framework for mortgage backed securities rather than imposing an optimal value minimizing call condition we assume that at each point in time there exists a probability of prepaying this conditional probability depends upon the prevailing state of the economy to implement our valuation procedure we use maximum likelihood techniques to estimate a prepayment function in light of recent aggregate gnma prepayment experience by integrating this empirical prepayment function into our valuation framework we provide a complete model to value mortgagebacked securities given an optimal value minimizing call policy a mortgage should never be called when its market value is less than its call price similarly a mortgage should be called if it is worth more than its call price however mortgagors often call their loans when the prevailing refinancing rate exceeds the contract rate on the loan dunn and mcconnell 1981 in addition some mortgagors do not call their loans when the loan s contract rate exceeds the prevailing refinancing rate the purpose of this paper is to put forward a valuation framework for mortgagebacked securities consistent with these stylized facts associated with mortgage prepayments the mortgagor s prepayment decision is integral to our valuation framework however we do not impose an optimal value minimizing call condition to price these securities rather we assume that at each point in time there exists a probability of prepaying this conditional probability depending upon the prevailing state of the economy by integrating this prepayment function into our valuation framework we provide a complete model to value mortgage backed securities to implement our valuation procedures we estimate a prepayment function given recent gnma prepayment experience we follow green and shoven 1986 by using a proportional hazards model to estimate the influence of various explanatory variables or covariates on the mortgagor s prepayment decision distinct from green and shoven we explicitly model the effects of seasoning as well as investigating the influence of interest cost savings from refinancing in addition we also consider the effects of lagged refinancing rates heterogeneity

behavioral biases of mutual fund investors we examine the effect of behavioral biases on the mutual fund choices of a large sample of us discount brokerage investors using new measures of attention to news tax awareness and fund level familiarity bias in addition to behavioral and demographic characteristics of earlier studies behaviorally biased investors typically make poor decisions about fund style and expenses trading frequency and timing resulting in poor performance furthermore trend chasing appears related to behavioral biases rather than to rationally inferring managerial skill from past performance factor analysis suggests that biased investors often conform to stereotypes that can be characterized as gambler smart overconfident narrow framer and mature

reprint of investors distraction and strategic repricing decisions abstract in this paper i analyze investors reactions to changes in the expense ratios of equity mutual funds i show that investment flows response to fees cannot be fully explained by looking at investors performance sensitivity while performance sensitivity monotonically increases with past performance price sensitivity does not investors who buy top past performers seem to be distracted by the fund s previous return and pay relatively little attention to the expense ratios moreover price sensitivity increases with fund visibility while performance sensitivity decreases and while looking at data from 1986 to 2006 no discernible trend can be observed in the average performance sensitivity price sensitivity strongly increases due to the dramatic increase in the availability of mutual funds information for retail investors finally i show that investment companies strategically time their repricing decisions in order to exploit time variations in price and performance sensitivities and that fund governance quality affects the degree to which investment companies engage in this opportunistic behavior

money liquidity and monetary policy in a market based financial system banking and capital market developments are inseparable and funding conditions are closely tied to fluctuations in the leverage of market based financial intermediaries offering a window on liquidity the balance sheet growth of broker dealers provides a sense of the availability of credit contractions of broker dealer balance sheets have tended to precede declines in real economic growth even before the current turmoil for this reason balance sheet quantities of market based financial intermediaries are important macroeconomic state variables for the conduct of monetary policy

competition reach for yield and money market funds abstract do asset managers reach for yield because of competitive pressures in a low rate environment i propose a tournament model of money market funds mmfs to study this question when funds care about relative performance an increase in the risk premium leads funds with lower default costs to increase risk taking while funds with higher default costs decrease risk taking without changes in the premium lower risk free rates reduce the risk taking of all funds i show that these predictions are consistent with mmf risk taking during the 2002 2008 period and that rank based performance is a key determinant of money flows to mmfs

modeling international trends in energy efficiency article i nfo article history i use a stochastic production frontier to model energy ef ciency trends in 85 countries over a 37 year period differences in energy ef ciency across countries are modeled as a stochastic function of explanatory variables and i estimate the model using the cross section of time averaged data so that no structure is imposed on technological change over time energy ef ciency is measured using a new energy distance function ap proach the country using the least energy per unit output given its mix of outputs and inputs de nes the global production frontier a country s relative energy ef ciency is given by its distance from the frontier the ratio of its actual energy use to the minimum required energy use ceteris paribus energy ef ciency is higher in countries with inter alia higher total factor productivity undervalued currencies and smaller fossil fuel reserves and it converges over time across countries globally technological change was the most impor tant factor counteracting the energy use and carbon emissions increasing effects of economic growth

technical allocative and economic efficiencies in swine production in hawaii a comparison of parametric and nonparametric approaches abstract technical allocative and economic efficiency measures are derived for a sample of swine producers in hawaii using the parametric stochastic efficiency decomposition technique and nonparametric data envelopment analysis dea efficiency measures obtained from the two frontier approaches are compared firm specific factors affecting productive efficiencies are also analyzed finally swine producers potential for reducing cost through improved efficiency is also examined under the specification of variable returns to scale vrs the mean technical allocative and economic efficiency indices are 75 9 75 8 and 57 1 respectively for the parametric approach and 75 9 80 3 and 60 3 for dea while for the constant returns to scale crs they are 74 5 73 9 and 54 7 respectively for the parametric approach and 64 3 71 4 and 45 7 for dea thus the results from both approaches reveal considerable inefficiencies in swine production in hawaii the removal of potential outliers increases the technical efficiencies in the parametric approach and allocative efficiencies in dea but overall contrary to popular belief the results obtained from dea are found to be more robust than those from the parametric approach the estimated mean technical and economic efficiencies obtained from the parametric technique are higher than those from dea for crs models but quite similar for vrs models while allocative efficiencies are generally higher in dea however the efficiency rankings of the sample producers based on the two approaches are highly correlated with the highest correlation being achieved for the technical efficiency rankings under crs based on mean comparison and rank correlation analyses the return to scale assumption is found to be crucial in assessing the similarities or differences in efficiency measures obtained from the two approaches analysis of the role of various firm specific factors on productive efficiency shows that farm size has strong positive effects on efficiency levels similarly farms producing market hogs are more efficient than those producing feeder pigs based on these results by operating at the efficient frontier the sample swine producers would be able to reduce their production costs by 38 46 depending upon the method and returns to scale considered

costly search and mutual fund flows this paper studies the flows of funds into and out of equity mutual funds consumers base their fund purchase decisions on prior performance information but do so asymmetrically investing disproportionately more in funds that performed very well the prior period search costs seem to be an important determinant of fund flows high performance appears to be most salient for funds that exert higher marketing effort as measured by higher fees flows are directly related to the size of the fund s complex as well as the current media attention received by the fund which lower consumers search costs

spatial allocation and the shadow pricing of product characteristics abstract the paper considers an industry transforming primary commodities farm products into processed commodities food products it focuses on the allocation of embedded characteristics carbohydrate protein etc both across space and among commodities the approach generates a spatial competitive market equilibrium of production consumption transformation and trade for both primary and processed commodities along with the spatial distribution of shadow prices for the product characteristics the model provides a basis for analyzing the allocation and pricing of agricultural products food products and characteristics in spatial markets the empirical usefulness of the model is illustrated in the context of regional resource allocation in the u s dairy sector

the value of voting rights to majority shareholders evidence from dual class stock unifications we study 84 dual class stock unifications where superior vote shareholders gave up their superior voting status all firm stocks became one share one vote and received in most cases compensation in the form of additional shares unifications are essentially intrafirm transactions of voting rights and afford observation of the intrafirm assessed price of vote the price of vote in unifications 1 increases with the percentage vote lost by the majority shareholders 2 is higher in family controlled firms 3 decreases with institutional investor holdings and 4 is similar to the outside price of vote implicit in the market prices of stocks the value of voting rights is an intriguing topic that has attracted extensive academic and practitioner interest before most of the existing evidence comes from examinations of dual class stocks in the dual class stock system the firm issues two classes of common stock superior and inferior vote stocks previous research documents a price premium of superior vote over inferior vote stocks which illustrates the positive value of voting rights 1 inrecent years manydual classfirmsdecidedtorecapitalizetheirequity into single class stocks this was done by transforming all common stock classesinto oneshareonevote the unification ofstockclassestrendis evidenced in canada amoako adu and smith 2001 and is gaining momentum in europe as well nokia and lufthanza are recent examples we examine 84 dual class share unifications on the tel aviv stock exchange unifications are essentially sales of voting power from one class of investorstoanother bymonitoringtheprices ofthesetransactions thatis by examining the compensation paid for the loss of the superior vote status we hope to provide relatively direct inferences on the value of vote

sources of production inefficiency and productivity growth in china a global data envelopment analysis abstract the current mode of production in china is extensive and inefficient and has caused great stress on both resources and the environment this paper focuses on analyzing the sources of production inefficiency and productivity growth in china here a developed slacks based measure is utilized to decompose production inefficiency into three components input inefficiency economic output inefficiency and environmental inefficiency furthermore by applying a method based on global data envelopment analysis we take a further step to analyze the key factors responsible for the change of environmental productivity during 2003 2011 from the point of view of technical progress productive scale and management level the results show that redundancy in energy and labor inputs and excessive emission of sulfur dioxide chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen are the main sources of production inefficiency in china during the sample period the efficiency in all inputs and environmental emissions has improved except for capital input efficiency which had a decreasing trend further analysis shows that the overall environmental productivity in china has begun to follow an ascending path technical progress is the most powerful contributor to china s productivity growth while the decreases in scale and management efficiency are the two main obstacles preventing productivity improvement

relative prices of dual class shares empirical studies of dual class shares indicate that superior voting shares svs sell at a premium relative to their counterpart restricted shares rvs this paper uses toronto stock exchange data to show that svs price premium over rvs reflects the expected takeover premium paid to shareholders outside the control block thus marginal shareholders pay a higher svs price in anticipation of receiving a differential takeover bid as suggested by the extra merger hypothesis further analysis indicates that voting power increases the price premium while ownership size and the higher trading liquidity of rvs are inversely related to the premium

measuring eco efficiency based on green indicators and potentials in energy saving and undesirable output abatement abstract nowadays majority of organizations are seeking to achieve sustainable development with respect to green concept one of the main criteria for assessing green performance is eco efficiency to identify all aspects of the eco efficiency inputs should be divided into energy and non energy and outputs should be divided into good and bad outputs to deal with this issue a data envelopment analysis dea model is developed to divide inputs into both energy and non energy and outputs into both desirable good and undesirable bad outputs likewise variables are separated into both discretionary and non discretionary factors accordingly a bounded adjusted measure bam based on green indicators is developed to calculate the eco efficiency of decision making units dmus besides energy saving potentials and undesirable output abatement potentials are calculated to show correlation coefficient between energy consumption and undesirable output finally proposed model is validated by assessing the eco efficiency of some selected members of organization for economic cooperation and development oecd australia finland ireland new zealand and switzerland are recognized as eco efficient countries and the rest of countries are inefficient in terms of the eco efficiency high and positive spearman correlation coefficient between energy consumption and undesirable outputs addresses that the more use of energy inputs the more undesirable outputs

brothers from different mothers how distribution fees change investment behavior abstract we ask whether loads affect investment flows in the us mutual fund industry we argue that sales fees make the investment decision partially irreversible under these circumstances investors await for a stronger signal of managerial ability before committing to a new fund this stronger signal can take the form of a particularly strong performance or a particularly long series of positive performance realizations looking at pairs of fund shares with the same portfolio but different sales fee arrangements we show that investment flows in share classes with front loads react disproportionally to good performances higher convexity in the flow performance relationship and react to performance realizations further back in time longer memory a counterfactual example of fund shares with back end loads allows us to rule out the hypothesis that this behavior is due to the incentive structure of brokers finally we show that these behavioral modifications induced by front loads have a negative and significant effect on investors timing ability

economic evaluation of voting power of common stock this paper presents an economic evaluation of common stock voting rights an index of relative voting rights inequality for different classes of stock of the same corporation is constructed and the empirical relationship between the market premium on a superiorvoting stock and the voting inequality index is examined in only three out of the 25 cases could investors have arbitraged between the two classes of stock although in one case the arbitrage opportunity persisted for several months ownership and control of large corporations are two separate functions each shareholder typically holds a relatively small number of shares and hence lacks significant voting power as a result shareholders interest in the management of the firm is typically limited and a majority of them do not participate in the corporation s general meetings 1 thus the investment and financial decisions of the firm are made by a small group the management which effectively controls the firm the possible conflict of interest between these two groups and other various aspects of the separation of control and ownership are the subject of several studies 2 grossman and hart 5 show that even if the directors of the firm do not act in the best interest of the shareholders 3 it may be impossible for them to be disciplined and replaced by a takeover bid this raises the issue of whether theright to control the firm s activities has any economic value to focus the issue suppose a firm issues two classes of stock one with voting rights and the other with no voting rights and assume further that the two classes are entitled to the same pecuniary payoff in every state of the world according to traditional financial theory that asserts that two assets promising the same payoff in every state of nature must sell for the same price the voting rights would be worthless and we should expect the same market price for the two classes of stock however

a network game analysis of strategic interactions in the international trade of russian natural gas through ukraine and belarus abstract natural gas is an important source of relatively low emission low cost non nuclear and abundant energy however the difficulty of storage and transportation adds geopolitical and geostrategic complexity to its international trade much of the global natural gas trade occurs through natural gas pipelines which as an infrastructure is strictly specific to the transportation of natural gas therefore the very structure of natural gas pipeline networks can dictate the strategic relationship among countries involved in its trade this paper applies a network game model where these pipeline networks are modeled as graphs and respective value functions and employs the link based flexible network allocation rule developed by jackson 2005 as a solution concept to measure the relative power structure among these natural gas trading countries the paper analyzes the case of trade between russia ukraine belarus and western europe and compares the results to existing analyses that employ a cooperative game model in characteristic function form and the shapley value as the solution concept whereas the results of the analysis conducted in the previous literature indicate that russia s relative power was significantly stronger than other players both before and after the construction of the nord stream pipeline the results provided in this paper draw a different conclusion ukraine s relative power was already equal to that of russia before the nord stream this may be understood as one of the underlying causes for the prolonged conflicts that occurred repeatedly in this region concerning natural gas trade

when cheaper is better fee determination in the market for equity mutual funds abstract in this paper we develop a model of the market for equity mutual funds that captures three key characteristics of this market first there is competition among funds second fund managers ability is not observed by investors before making their investment decisions third some investors do not make optimal use of all available information the main results of the paper are that 1 price competition is compatible with positive mark ups in equilibrium and 2 worse performing funds set fees that are greater or equal to those set by better performing funds these predictions are supported by available empirical evidence

difference in interim performance and risk taking with short sale constraints abstract absent much theory empirical works often rely on the following informal reasoning when looking for evidence of a mutual fund tournament if there is a tournament interim winners have incentives to decrease their portfolio volatility as they attempt to protect their lead while interim losers are expected to increase their volatility so as to catch up with winners we consider a rational model of a mutual fund tournament in the presence of short sale constraints and find the opposite interim winners choose more volatile portfolios in equilibrium than interim losers several empirical works present evidence consistent with our model however based on the above informal argument they appear to conclude against the tournament behavior we argue that this conclusion is unwarranted we also demonstrate that tournament incentives lead to differences in interim performance for otherwise identical managers and that mid year trading volume is inversely related to mid year stock return

takeover bids and the relative prices of shares that differ in their voting rights the relative prices of shares that differ only in their voting rights are modelled in our model voting rights become valuable when a control contest is decided through takeover bids for outside votes the study shows how the value of the voting right depends on the initial ownership distribution the share structure and the ability of the incumbent manager versus a rival for control empirical support for the model is provided using swedish stock market data

managerial ownership of voting rights abstract managers of firms with dual classes of common stock can choose different quantities of votes for a given cash flow interest by choosing different quantities of the two securities we study managerial stock holdings in 45 dual class firms and find that vote ownership per se is an important motivation for these holdings in that corporate officers and their families hold a median 56 9 of the votes and 24 0 of the common stock cash flows we also find significant family involvement in many sample firms and document four case studies in which explicit acquisition premiums were paid for superior voting shares

energy savings potential in china s industrial sector from the perspectives of factor price distortion and allocative inefficiency abstract china s industrial energy consumption accounted for 70 82 of national and 14 12 of world energy usage in 2011 in the context of energy scarcity and environmental pollution the industrial sector in china faces unsustainable growth problems by adopting the stochastic frontier analysis sfa framework this paper analyzes the factor allocative efficiency of china s industrial sector and estimates the energy savings potential from the perspective of allocative inefficiency this paper focuses on three issues the first is examining the factor allocative inefficiency of china s industrial sector the second is measuring factor price distortion by the shadow price model the third is estimating the energy savings potential in china s industrial sector during 2001 2009 major conclusions are thus drawn first factor prices of capital labor and energy are distorted in china due to government regulations moreover energy price is relatively low compared to capital price while is relatively high compared to labor price second the industry wide energy savings potential resulted from energy allocative inefficiency was about 9 71 during 2001 2009 the downward trend of energy savings potential implies the increasing energy allocative efficiency in china s industrial sector third a transparent and reasonable pricing mechanism is conducive to improving energy allocative efficiency

the value of the corporate voting right evidence from switzerland abstract this paper analyzes the value of voting power of swiss firms which usually issue high voting rights stock low voting rights stock and non voting stock two variables measuring voting power inequality are constructed they are both useful in explaining the voting rights premia also the allocation of the voting rights is analyzed it is shown that majority shareholders hold the high voting rights stock

the economics of private equity funds this article analyzes the economics of the private equity industry using a novel model and dataset we obtain data from a large investor in private equity funds with detailed records on 238 funds raised between 1993 and 2006 we build a model to estimate the expected revenue to managers as a function of their investor contracts and we test how this estimated revenue varies across the characteristics of our sample funds among our sample funds about two thirds of expected revenue comes from fixed revenue components that are not sensitive to performance we find sharp differences between venture capital vc and buyout bo funds bo managers build on their prior experience by increasing the size of their funds faster than vc managers do this leads to significantly higher revenue per partner and per professional in later bo funds the results suggest that the bo business is more scalable than the vc business and that past success has a differential impact on the terms of their future funds jel g10 g20 g24

investors distraction and strategic repricing decisions in this paper i analyze investors reactions to changes in the expense ratios of equity mutual funds i show that investment flows response to fees cannot be fully explained by looking at investors performance sensitivity while performance sensitivity monotonically increases with past performance price sensitivity does not investors who buy top past performers seem to be distracted by the fund s previous return and pay relatively little attention to the expense ratios moreover price sensitivity increases with fund visibility while performance sensitivity decreases and while looking at data from 1986 to 2006 no discernible trend can be observed in the average performance sensitivity price sensitivity strongly increases due to the dramatic increase in the availability of mutual funds information for retail investors finally i show that investment companies strategically time their repricing decisions in order to exploit time variations in price and performance sensitivities and that fund governance quality affects the degree to which investment companies engage in this opportunistic behavior

are investors rational choices among index funds s p 500 index funds represent one of the simplest vehicles for examining rational behavior they hold virtually the same securities yet their returns differ by more than 2 percent per year although the relative returns of alternative s p 500 funds are easily predictable the relationship between cash flows and performance is weaker than rational behavior would lead us to expect we show that selecting funds based on low expenses or high past returns outperforms the portfolio of index funds selected by investors our results exemplify the fact that in a market where arbitrage is not possible dominated products can prosper

a dynamic multi stage data envelopment analysis model with application to energy consumption in the cotton industry abstract data envelopment analysis dea is a non parametric method for evaluating the relative efficiency of homogenous decision making units dmus with multiple inputs and outputs in this paper we present a dynamic multi stage dea dms dea approach to evaluate the efficiency of cotton production energy consumption in the proposed model the farms which consume resources i e fertilizers seeds and pesticides to produce cotton are assumed to be the dmus inputs not consumed during a planning period are carried over to the next period in the planning horizon initially a dms dea model is used to determine the overall efficiency of the dmus with dynamic inputs next the efficiency score of each dmu is calculated for each time period in the planning horizon we demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method and exhibit the efficacy of the procedures and algorithms with a real life case study of energy consumption in the cotton industry

demand curves and the pricing of money management one reason why funds charge different prices to their investors is that they face different demand curves one source of differentiation is asset retention performance sensitive investors migrate from worse to better prospects taking their performance sensitivity with them in the cross section we show that past attrition significantly influences the current pricing of retail but not institutional funds in time series we show that the repricing of retail funds after merging in new shareholders is predicted by the estimated effect on its demand curve this result is robust to other influences on repricing including asset and account size changes copyright 2002 oxford university press

the value of the voting right a study of the milan stock exchange experience i study the large premium 82 percent attributed to voting shares on the milan stock exchange the premium varies according to the ownership structare and the concentration of the voting rights and it can be rationalized in the presence of enormous private benefits of control a case study seems to indicate that in italy private benefits of control can easily be worth more than 60 percent of the value of nonvoting equity a tentative explanation for these findings is provided traditional finance theory disregards the value of voting rights in pricing common stock in most cases this omission does not seem harmful many studies of differential voting stocks in different countries have indicated that voting rights are generally worth between 10 percent and 20 percent of the value of common stock the italian evidence i present differs sharply from this view in italy voting shares that have inferior dividend rights trade at an average premium

the value of creditor control in corporate bonds this paper introduces a measure that captures the premium in bond prices that is due to the value of creditor control we estimate the premium as the difference in the bond price and an equivalent synthetic bond without control rights that is constructed using credit default swap cds contracts we find empirically that this premium increases as firm credit quality decreases and around important credit events such as defaults bankruptcies and covenant violations the increase is greatest for bonds most pivotal to changes in control changes in bond and cds liquidity do not appear to drive increases in the premium

institutional and individual investors saving for old age this paper brings together the academic literature on individual and institutional investors in order to understand the nature of difficulties faced by them and set the background for the special issue this introductory article and the papers in the special issue contribute to the debate on how to support individuals in their savings commitments and investment decision making and whether and how institutional investors have fulfilled their role in supporting the development of the funded pension industry there are three main conclusions i individual investors are not ready for the role that has been assigned to them in the pension industry ii institutional investors are a long way short of establishing healthy relational contracts and trustworthy relationships with their clients and iii more effective regulation may be needed

the market value of corporate votes theory and evidence from option prices this paper proposes a new method using option prices to estimate the market value of the shareholder voting rights associated with a stock the method consists of synthesizing a nonvoting share using put call parity and comparing its price to that of the underlying stock empirically we find this measure of the value of voting rights to be positive and increasing in the time to expiration of synthetic stocks the measure also increases around special shareholder meetings periods of hedge fund activism and m a events the method is likely useful in studies of corporate control and also has asset pricing implications

what determines the value of corporate votes this paper studies the determinants of the value of voting rights in u s corporations results support the hypothesis that the price of a vote is determined by the expected additional payment vote holders will receive for their votes in case of a control contest the size of this differential payment is a function of the probability that a vote is pivotal in a control contest and the magnitude of the private benefits obtainable by controlling the company simple proxies for these two factors explain up to 30 percent of the variation of the voting premium across companies and through time my findings also suggest that the value of managerial perquisites are at least partially reflected in the price of votes

network dea efficiency in input output models with an application to oecd countries we undertake network efficiency analysis within an input output model that allows us to assess potential technical efficiency gains by comparing technologies corresponding to different economies input output tables represent a network where different sectoral nodes use primary inputs endowments to produce intermediate input and outputs according to sectoral technologies and satisfy final demand preferences within the input output framework it is possible to optimize primary inputs allocation intermediate production and final demand production by way of non parametric data envelopment analysis dea techniques dea allows us to model the different subtechnologies corresponding to alternative production processes to assess efficient resource allocation among them and to determine potential output gains if inefficiencies were dealt with the proposed model optimizes the underlying multi stage technologies that the input output system comprises identifying the best practice economies the model is applied to a set of oecd countries

metafroniter energy efficiency with co2 emissions and its convergence analysis for china this paper measures the energy efficiency performance with carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 30 provinces in china during the period of 1997 2011 using a meta frontier framework with the improved directional distance function ddf we construct a new environmental production possibility set by combining the super efficiency and sequential data envelopment analysis dea models to avoid discriminating power problem and technical regress when evaluating efficiency by ddf then it is used in a meta frontier framework to reflect the technology heterogeneities across east central and west china the results indicate that eastern china achieved the highest progress inefficiency relative to the metafrontier followed by western and the central china by focusing on technology gaps we offer some suggestions for the different groups based on group frontier and meta frontier analyses the inefficiency can be attributed to managerial failure for eastern and western china and technological differences for central china the convergence analysis shows that energy and co2 emission governance will produce negative effects on economic growth and it is suitable and acceptable to introduce rigorous environmental measures in eastern china