the internationalisation of stock markets and the abolition of u k exchange control this paper aims to assess the impact of the abolition of u k exchange control on the degre of integration of u k and overseas stock markets using cointegration techniques we find that although there is no significant increase in the correlation of short run stock market returns for the united kingdom and certain overseas markets post 1979 there does appear to be a marked increase in the degree to which these markets move together in the long run after this date there appears to be no long run gain from diversification since cointegration of two variables implies that at least one of them can be used to help forecast the other our findings also imply the inefficiency of a number of stock markets

the importance of comprehensiveness in renewable electricity and energy efficiency policy based on extensive research interviews and supplemented with a review of the academic literature this article assesses the best way to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency it begins by briefly laying out why government intervention is needed and then details the four most favored policy mechanisms identified by participants eliminating subsidies for conventional and mature electricity technologies pricing electricity accurately passing a national feed in tariff and implementing a nationwide systems benefit fund to raise public awareness protect lower income households and administer demand side management programs drawing mostly from case studies in the united states the article also discusses why these policy mechanisms must be implemented comprehensively not individually if the barriers to renewables and energy efficiency are to be overcome

european schemes for promoting renewables in liberalised markets abstract the paper describes possibilities and problems for penetration of supply systems based on renewable energy sources in liberalised markets the analysis is based on recent development in eu with different models for support of installations based on renewable energy these include feed in models with guaranteed minimum tariffs tender models for different bands of technologies and green certificates trading models with obligatory consumer quota the paper describes the market situation in selected european countries including germany the uk holland and denmark an eu directive from september 2001 has postponed the decision on a possible harmonisation of promotional models until at least 2005 in order to obtain more practical experience with the different support schemes a critical evaluation is given in this paper of the different models with proposals for a balanced development between environmental and trading concerns it is argued that too much emphasis is presently given to the side of free trade at the expense of long range planning for a sustainable energy development

viewpoint climate impacts on agriculture searching for keys under the streetlight abstract this paper provides a critical assessment of the literature estimating the consequences of climate impacts in agriculture and the food system this literature focuses overwhelmingly on the impact of elevated co2 concentrations in the atmosphere higher temperatures and changing precipitation on staple crop yields while critically important for food security we argue that researchers have gravitated to measuring impacts under the streetlight where data and models are plentiful we argue that prior work has largely neglected the vast majority of potential economic impacts of climate change on agriculture a broader view must extend the impacts analysis to inputs beyond land including the consequences of climate change for labor productivity as well as for purchased intermediate inputs largely overlooked is the impact of climate change on the rate of total factor productivity growth and the potential for more rapid depreciation of the underlying knowledge capital underpinning this key driver of agricultural output growth this broader view must also focus more attention on non staple crops which while less important from a caloric point of view are critically important in redressing current micronutrient deficiencies in many diets around the world the paper closes with numerical simulations that demonstrate the extent to which limited input and output coverage of climate impacts can lead to considerable underestimation of the consequences for food security and economic welfare of particular significance is the finding that humans in the humid tropics are likely more vulnerable to heat stress than are many of the well adapted crops such as rice by omitting the impact of heat stress on humans most studies of climate impacts greatly understate the welfare losses in the world s poorest economies

one security many markets determining the contributions to price discovery when homogeneous or closely linked securities trade in multiple markets it is often of interest to determine where price discovery the incorporation of new information occurs this article suggests an econometric approach based on an implicit unobservable efficient price common to all markets the information share associated with a particular market is defined as the proportional contribution of that market s innovations to the innovation in the common efficient price applied to quotes for the thirty dow stocks the technique suggests that the preponderance of the price discovery takes place at the new york stock exchange nyse a median 92 7 percent information share although most of the classic paradigms in market microstructure concern a security that trades in a single centralized market such situations are becoming increasingly rare in practice fragmentation the dispersal of trading in a security to multiple sites has emerged as a dominant institutional trend this process is of concern to financial economists and regulators because price information and price discovery the impounding of new information into the security price arguably the most important products of a security market have many attributes of public goods as the process of fragmentation accelerates it may be important to determine where the price information and price discovery are being produced 1 this paper suggests a practical econometric approach to this problem the technique is illustrated with an application to u s equity markets many stocks listed on the new york stock exchange nyse trade concurrently on the regional exchanges and the national association of securities dealers national market system nasd nms since a share of ibm stock is the same security whether purchased on the midwest or pacific exchange this is a particularly clear instance of multiple markets nevertheless the expres

temperature shocks and establishment sales combining granular daily data on temperatures across the continental united states with detailed establishment data from 1990 to 2015 we study the causal impact of temperature shocks on establishment sales and productivity using a large sample yielding precise estimates we do not find evidence that temperature exposures significantly affect establishment level sales or productivity including among industries traditionally classified as heat sensitive at the firm level we find that temperature exposures aggregated across firm establishments are generally unrelated to sales productivity and profitability our results support existing findings of a tenuous relation between temperature and aggregate economic growth in rich countries

energy comes home the growth in private energy consumption is an increasing problem in western countries from an environmental point of view this consumption has to be reduced on the basis of two norwegian case studies this article discusses private energy consumption and possibilities for reduction with a special focus on the home it argues against a rational economic view of the consumer and emphasizes the significance of a more subtle understanding of private energy use the article approaches the challenges of reducing private energy consumption by analysing the domestication of the home and discusses everyday life activities as well as the phenomenon of rebuilding and redecorating by using the concept of domestication the article challenges the linear understanding of technological as well as behavioural change private energy consumption is part of a complex network and it is necessary to understand this network in order to achieve a more permanent reduction

international transmission of inflation among g 7 countries a data determined var analysis abstract we investigate the international transmission of inflation among g 7 countries using data determined vector autoregression analysis as advocated by swanson and granger swanson n granger c 1997 impulse response functions based on a causal approach to residual orthogonalization in vector autoregressions journal of the american statistical association 92 357 367 over the period 1973 2003 we find that unexpected changes in us inflation have large effects on inflation in other countries although they are not always the dominant international factor similarly shocks to some other countries also have a statistically and economically significant influence on us inflation moreover our evidence indicates that us inflation has become less vulnerable to foreign shocks since the early 1990s mainly because of the diminished influence from germany and france

the international crash of october 1987 causality tests the paper analyzes lead lag relationships for six major stock market indexes new york s p 500 tokyo nikkei london ft 30 hong kong hang seng singapore straits times and australia all ordinaries for time periods before during and after the october 1987 market crash unidirectional and bidirectional causality tests are conducted by means of the granger methodology practically no lead lag relationships are found for the pre crash and post crash periods however important feedback relationships and unidirectional causality are detected for the month of the crash there is also an increase in contemporaneous causality during and after the month of the crash in general our findings suggest that the october 1987 market crash probably was an international crisis of the equity markets and that it might have begun simultaneously in all the national stock markets

energy production system optimization evidence from pakistan abstract the ongoing energy crisis in pakistan and the dependency on thermal electricity generation has contributed to the necessity to optimize energy production system the expensive thermal electricity and inability to recover its cost gives unprecedented rise to the electricity tariffs in this study optimization of the energy production system has been performed using linear programing model as the high cost of electricity generation has been found as the root cause of energy crises the objective function of the proposed model is cost minimization that will also reduce the circular debt specifically it has examined the optimum proportion of energy production from each available source under two different scenarios the first scenario considers that the existing system should be used at its maximum capacity in the second scenario seventy percent utilization of power plants has been examined the second scenario summarizes the optimum mix of energy production which minimizes the cost of electricity production the differential cost that is payable by the government as a subsidy is also compensated similarly it reduces circular debt that is a bottleneck between power generation companies and oil supply companies thus the proposed model has a tendency to minimize the cost of energy production and further reduce circular debt as well as the burden of a subsidy on the government the study specifies the problems confronting pakistan s energy sector and identifies the key elements of a potential policy response to address the country s severe power crisis

the response of worker effort to piece rates we measure the elasticity of worker effort with respect to changes in the piece rate using panel data collected from the payroll records of a british columbia tree planting firm our data contain information on daily worker productivity and the piece rate received over a five month period using a structural model to control for the endogeneity of the piece rate we estimate this elasticity to be approximately 2 14 we also calculate a nonstructural lower bound to this elasticity equal to 0 77 structural estimation also allows us to perform policy experiments and to compare firm profits under alternative compensation systems our results suggest that profits would increase by at least 17 percent were the firm to implement the optimal static contract as predicted by principal agent theory this increase in profits would be due to capturing worker rents after the revelation of private information over ability yet only a negligible proportion of these rents could be captured while inducing workers to reveal ability truthfully suggesting that dynamic considerations were important in determining the firm s actual choice of contract

pollution and politician productivity the effect of pm on mps applying methods of textual analysis to all 119 225 speeches made in the canadian house of commons between 2006 and 2011 we establish that air pollution reduces the speech quality of canadian members of parliament mps exposure to fine particulate matter concentrations exceeding 15 g m3 causes a 2 3 reduction in the quality of mps speech equivalent to a 2 6 month decrease in education for more difficult communication tasks the decrement in quality is equivalent to the loss of 6 5 months of schooling our design accounts for the potential endogeneity of exposure and controls for many potential confounders including individual fixed effects

international stock market linkages evidence from the pre and post october 1987 period abstract this paper uses recent developments in the theory of cointegration to provide new methods of testing the linkage and dynamic interactions among stock market movements our findings are in sharp contrast with previous research which discovered strong interdependence among national stock markets prior to october 1987 for the post october 1987 period however our results show that the degree of international co movements among stock price indices has increased substantially with the nikkei index the only exception furthermore the us stock market is found to have a considerable impact on the french german and uk markets in the post crash period we also find the response of the french german and uk markets to us stock market innovations to be consistent with the view of cross border informationally efficient stock markets finally we find the japanese equity market performance to have no links with both the us stock market and the stock markets in france germany and uk during the pre and post october crash period

particulate matter and labor supply the role of caregiving and non linearities this paper examines the effect of air pollution on labor supply in lima peru it focuses on fine particulate matter pm2 5 an important pollutant for health according to the medical literature and shows that moderate levels of pollution reduce hours worked for working adults the research design takes advantage of rich household panel data in labor outcomes to address omitted variables and allows investigation of whether the response to air pollution is non linear the analysis finds that the effect of moderate pollution levels on hours worked is concentrated among households with susceptible dependents that is small children and elderly adults while the highest concentrations affect all households this suggests that caregiving is likely a mechanism linking air pollution to labor supply at moderate levels further evidence of this mechanism is provided using dhs data on children morbidity for the same time period finally no evidence is found of intra household attenuation behavior for instance there is no re allocation of labor across household members and earnings decrease with air pollution

clearing the air the effects of gasoline content regulation on air quality this paper examines the effects of u s gasoline content regulations on groundlevel ozone pollution these regulations are costly and have been shown to fragment gasoline markets and raise prices paid by consumers we provide the first comprehensive empirical estimates of the regulations air quality benefits we exploit the fact that gasoline regulations vary by time and place of introduction using both difference in difference and regression discontinuity designs we show that federal regulations targeting the emissions of volatile organic compounds vocs one of the two main precursors to ozone do not substantially improve air quality this outcome is driven by the response of refiners to the regulation minimizing the cost of abatement involves removing a type of voc from gasoline that is not an important determinant of ozone pollution in california however we show that precisely targeted regulations requiring the removal of vocs particularly prone to forming ozone caused a significant improvement in air quality

environment health and human capital in this review we discuss three major contributions economists have made to our understanding of the relationship between the environment and individual well being first in explicitly recognizing how optimizing behavior particularly in the form of residential sorting can lead to nonrandom assignment of pollution economists have employed a wide range of quasi experimental techniques to develop causal estimates of the effect of pollution second economic research has placed a considerable focus on the role of avoidance behavior which is an important component for understanding the difference between biological and behavioral effects of pollution and for proper welfare calculations lastly economic research has expanded the focus of analysis beyond traditional health outcomes to include measures of human capital including labor supply productivity and cognition our review of the quasi experimental evidence on this topic suggests that pollution does indeed have a wide range of effects on individual well being even at levels well below current regulatory standards given the importance of health and human capital as an engine for economic growth these findings underscore the role of environmental conditions as an important factor of production jel i12 i31 j24 q51 q53

the value of air quality in chinese cities evidence from labor and property market outcomes using a dual market sorting model of workers location decisions this paper studies the capitalization of air pollution in wages and property prices across chinese cities to account for endogeneity of air pollution in the determination of wages and property prices we exploit quasi experimental variation in air quality induced by a policy subsidizing coal based winter heating in northern china and document a discontinuity in average air quality for cities located north and south of the policy boundary using data for all 288 chinese cities in 2011 we estimate an equilibrium relationship between wages and house prices for the entire system of chinese cities and specify a regression discontinuity design to quantify how variation in air quality induced by the policy affects this relationship locally our preferred estimates of the elasticity of wages and house prices with respect to text pm 10 concentration are 0 53 and 0 71 respectively at the average of our sample the willingness to pay for a unit reduction in text pm 10 concentration is cny 261 28 simeq usd 40 50 with a significant share reflected in labor market outcomes

hours of work labor productivity and environmental conditions a case study l ivelihood measures of foregone and compensating earnings are frequently used as measures of economic losses due to realized or potential damages to the health of labor inputs both measures as they have been used are incomplete though for quite different reasons the narrowness of the foregone earnings measure is widely acknowledged as set forth in smith 1974 thaler and rosen 1976 and viscusi 1979 the compensating earnings measure with its emphasis upon the earnings premia workers require to be willing to be exposed to job hazards they perceive certainly has broader analytical appeal however as empirically implemented these studies too are incomplete they deal with worker and time aggregates allowing only crude measures of differences in reward structures mixes of complementary inputs work day lengths risk aversions worker effort and other dissimilar factors across individuals firms and industries in this paper the productivity changes and consequent earnings adjustments that occur under differing work conditions for 17 individual citrus pickers in southern california are assessed interest is centered upon the acute effects of two environmental factors ambient ozone 03 and ambient temperature upon the daily work performances of these individuals 2 since each individual is separately analyzed the host of plausible confounding influences e g experience biological endowments health histories etc to which one must devote attention when dealing with the fictional representative individual are relevant here only insofar as they change within the short time periods being considered

water works the economic impact of water infrastructure abstract billions of hours are spent each year on water collection in developing countries this paper explores whether improvements in water technologies which decrease household distance to drinking water source and the time intensity of home production enable changes in household time allocation and thereby productivity gains in kyrgyzstan adults reallocate time to leisure and labor on the household farm average yearly household cereals production increased significantly results imply a rate of return to labor equaling 0 11 hour approximately half the hourly farm wage absent evidence of improved adult health results suggest that productivity gains were realized primarily through increased farm labor

correlations in price changes and volatility across international stock markets the short run interdependence of prices and price volatility across three major international stock markets is studied daily opening and closing prices of major stock indexes for the tokyo london and new york stock markets are examined the analysis utilizes the autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic arch family of statistical models to explore these pricing relationships evidence of price volatility spillovers from new york to tokyo london to tokyo and new york to london is observed but no price volatility spillover effects in other directions are found for the pre october 1987 period article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

interest rate linkages in the eurocurrency market contemporaneous and out of sample granger causality tests abstract this paper examines linkages among major eurocurrency interest rates during 1994 2002 eurocurrency interest rate causal linkages are found to be much stronger with additional allowance for contemporaneous causality test results than the inference based solely on granger causality tests the impact of u s interest rates is clearly not dominant in the eurocurrency markets while the japanese interest rates are found to be quite influential german interest rates both cause and are caused by several other eurocurrency interest rates by contrast interest rates on the new currency the euro do not have a substantial influence on other eurocurrency interest rates which underscores its emerging status

negotiating housing deal on a polluted day consequences and possible explanations abstract the topic of air pollution has drawn considerable attention globally in this paper we examine the immediate effect of air pollution on a substantial decision that is a housing purchase by linking housing purchasing behavior with the air quality in beijing we document market participants behaviors unexplained by rational economic theories our main result suggests that the transaction prices on a severely polluted day are 0 65 higher than those of the days without pollution other things being equal this translates into approximately 3 51 million yuan daily increase based on the average transaction volume and price on a typical day in beijing the heterogeneity analysis further suggests that this effect is mostly driven by non local and low income buyers after ruling out rational explanations we demonstrate that our empirical results are consistent with salience theory under weak assumptions

time use and labor productivity the returns to sleep abstract we investigate how the largest use of time sleep affects productivity time use data from the united states allow us to test a model in which sleep improves productivity consistent with t

sustainable energy policy for asia mitigating systemic hurdles in a highly dense city abstract greenhouse gas emission ghg has been increasingly a sensitive issue that is across border and impacting global public interests while the use of renewable energy technology is perceived as a means to enable delivery of emission free solutions its penetration into the energy market has not been timely and significant enough as projected in prior studies this article aims to illustrate some of the critical hurdles as the policy makers start formulating environmentally friendly energy consumption means for the public in asian economies in particular through analyzing the characteristics in the case of hong kong the authors unveil the challenges for this highly dense city to reach a landscape of alternative energy resources for its transition into a sustainable economy education and engagement with the public about a sustainable future alignment of stakeholders economic interests and absorption capacity of emerging technologies are argued as the three main challenges and initiatives in mitigating the underlying systemic hurdles that remain to be overcome observing the current responses to the externalities by the policy makers in hong kong this study articulates the critical challenges to mitigate these specific systemic hurdles embedded in the existing infrastructure of a highly dense city possible mitigating measures to enable deployment of integrative sustainable energy solutions in dealing with climate change are discussed

the temporal price relationship between s p 500 futures and the s p 500 index this paper empirically examines the intraday price relationship between s p 500 futures and the s p 500 index using minute to minute data three stage least squares regression is used to estimate lead and lag relationships with estimates for expiration days of the s p 500 futures compared with estimates for days prior to expiration the results suggest that futures price movements consistently lead index movements by twenty to forty five minutes while movements in the index rarely affect futures beyond one minute

recover overnight work interruption and worker productivity this paper investigates the effect of work interruption on workers subsequent productivity we employ a data set of individual productivity and machine conditions in which each worker faces the chance on a daily basis that her machine will break down randomly our analysis finds that compared to a workday with smooth production experiencing a machine breakdown is associated with a 3 3 percentage point decline in the worker s productivity the following day we discuss possible explanations for the observed effect including negative emotions increased cautiousness in operating the machine and proficiency loss our findings shed light on the importance of understanding and managing interruptions in the workplace and contribute to a growing literature on the determinants of productivity at the micro level data and the online appendix are available at https doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2017 2792 this paper was accepted by john list behavioral economics

measuring environmental inequality abstract this study presents alternative measures of environmental inequality in the 50 u s states for exposure to industrial air pollution we examine three methodological issues first to what extent are environmental inequality measures sensitive to spatial scale and population weighting second how do sensitivities to different segments of the overall distribution affect rankings by these measures third how do vertical and horizontal inter group inequality measures relate to each other we find substantive differences in rankings by different measures and conclude that no single indicator is sufficient for addressing the entire range of equity concerns that are relevant to environmental policy instead multiple measures are needed

arsenic mitigation in bangladesh a household labor market approach rural families in bangladesh one of the poorest countries in the world face financial risks from major illness both from the cost of medical care and from the loss of income associated with reduced labor supply and productivity chronic exposure to arsenic in drinking water has often been associated with the development of skin cancers and internal cancers especially of the bladder liver and lungs and a wide variety of other health conditions such as diabetes respiratory problems cardiovascular diseases hyperpigmentation hypopigmentation and keratosis a condition in which painful nodules grow on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet most of the economic work on arsenic contamination in bangladesh has had an epidemiological focus that has tried to effectively monetize a dose response relation using either a cost of illness or a willingness to pay approach

does environmental pollution affect labor supply an empirical analysis based on 112 cities in china abstract recently some white collar workers in heavily polluted cities in china have begun to either demand higher payment due to serious air pollution or even flee the cities in this study the influence of urban pollution on labor supply is explored for the first time given that pollution and employment occur mainly in urban areas a city level panel data set consisting of 112 chinese cities from 2002 to 2013 is utilized to account for the spatial correlations of pollution a spatial factor that measures the influences of neighboring cities pollution is incorporated to deal with potential endogeneity and to ensure robust estimations the generalized method of moments and piece wise panel regression methods are utilized the estimation results indicate that the impact of pollution on labor supply is nonlinear as the environmental quality deteriorates the labor supply will increase at first and then decrease after the peak is reached moreover income level also affects the impact of air pollution on labor supply at a given pollution level the higher the average income the fewer people will work in the city the spatial correlation is verified to be significantly negative suggesting that air pollution in nearby areas has detrimental impacts on the local labor supply

public transit and air pollution evidence from canadian transit strikes little is known about the causal impacts of public transit on local air pollution exploiting variation in transit availability resulting from transit strikes in 18 canadian cities between 1974 and 2011 this study identifies the short run effect of public transit on air pollution our findings indicate that transit leads to a 3 5 part per billion increase in nitrogen oxides while having no statistically significant effect on carbon monoxide or pm2 5 estimates are robust to a series of specification tests and magnitudes are consistent with a calibrated simulation model overall the results suggest that expanding the current configuration of public transit in north american cities is unlikely to yield improvements in local air quality transports publics et pollution de l air l exemple des greves canadiennes il existe peu d informations sur l effet causal des transports publics sur la pollution de l air a l echelle locale en exploitant les variations au niveau de la disponibilite des transports publics a la suite de greves dans 18 villes canadiennes entre 1974 et 2011 cette etude identifie l effet a court terme des transports publics sur la pollution de l air nos resultats montrent que les transports publics generent une augmentation de 3 5 parties par milliard d oxyde d azote sans avoir d effet statistiquement significatif sur les taux de monoxyde de carbone ou de particules fines type pm2 5 nos estimations sont robustes a une serie de tests de specification et les mesures sont coherentes relativement a un modele de simulation calibre dans l ensemble les resultats suggerent que l expansion des transports publics en amerique du nord dans leur configuration actuelle n ameliorera probablement pas la qualite de l air a l echelle locale

carbon pricing technology transition and skill based development abstract we analyze the impact of carbon prices on human capital accumulation sectoral change and economic growth in our framework output is produced with dirty and or clean technologies using skilled and unskilled labor as inputs carbon policy affects technology selection which transmits incentives for human capital formation we show that a temporary policy may be sufficient for a transition to a clean economy and that such a policy also stimulates economic growth moreover in the presence of inter country knowledge spillovers a carbon policy in the north helps human capital formation in the south and induces south s transition to the clean steady state

international transmission of stock market movements this paper investigates the international transmission mechanism of stock market movements by estimating a nine market vector autoregression var system using simulated responses of the estimated var system we i locate all the main channels of interactions among national stock markets and ii trace out the dynamic responses of one market to innovations in another generally speaking a substantial amount of multi lateral interaction is detected among national stock markets innovations in the u s are rapidly transmitted to other markets in a clearly recognizable fashion whereas no single foreign market can significantly explain the u s market movements also the dynamic response pattern is found to be generally consistent with the notion of informationally efficient international stock markets

the structure of interdependence in international stock markets abstract this study investigates the dynamic structure of nine major stock markets using an error correction model and directed acyclic graphs dag the dag representation provides a structure of causality among these markets in contemporaneous time building on this contemporaneous structure and the estimated error correction model innovation accounting techniques are applied the results show that the japanese market is among the most highly exogenous and the canadian and french markets among the least exogenous in our nine market study the us market is highly influenced by its own historical innovations but it is also influenced by market innovations from the uk switzerland hong kong france and germany the us market is the only market that has a consistently strong impact on price movements in other major stock markets in the longer run

cointegration how short is the long run abstract when testing for cointegration and faced with short sample periods it is common for researchers to turn to more frequently sampled observations that is to move from annual to quarterly or monthly data in order to increase the number of observations we argue that such a gain in the degrees of freedom is more apparent than real essentially cointegration is a long run concept and hence requires long spans of data to give tests for cointegration much power rather than merely large numbers of observations using monte carlo simulations we demonstrate this for four popular tests for cointegration

something in the air pollution and the demand for health insurance we find that daily air pollution levels have a significant effect on the decision to purchase or cancel health insurance in a manner inconsistent with rational choice theory a one standard deviation increase in daily air pollution leads to a 7 2 increase in the number of insurance contracts sold that day conditional on purchase a one standard deviation decrease in air pollution during the cooling off i e cost free cancellation period relative to the order date level increases the return probability by 4 0 we explore a range of potential mechanism and find the most support for projection bias and salience

does air pollution aggravate income inequality in china an empirical analysis based on the view of health abstract given the rapid development of the chinese economy especially its accelerated urbanization air pollution and income inequality as two of the most important global issues have also become hot topics in china however limited attention has been devoted to understanding their joint evolution in the literature in this study we thus investigate the relationship between them using a multi level nested data model which enables us to estimate the long run distribution effect of air pollution on individuals of different socioeconomic statuses based on china s city level pm2 5 emissions and individual level income we further examine the mechanisms behind the evolution using a 3sls model the estimation results reveal that the increase in air pollution concentration has short term positive production effects and long term negative impacts on individual income and will exacerbate the income inequality across socioeconomic statuses individuals of lower socioeconomic status have disadvantages in achieving efficient avoiding knowledge and measures the results of 3sls model confirm the existence of the health channel through which air pollution exerts influence on income inequality these results provide a roadmap for policymakers first a comprehensive assessment of the health burden distribution from air pollution on individuals of different socioeconomic statuses should be considered for environmental policymaking second the regional disparities and differences among income groups should also be considered during this process third equal access to basic public services should be the primary target of environmental regulations moreover compensation and assistance for the health issues caused by environmental pollution could be an important supplement to these regulations future study could do further analysis of the specific level of health burden due to different types of pollutants and their relationship with income inequality

impulse response analysis of cointegrated systems abstract impulse response or dynamic multiplier analysis of vector autoregressive systems with cointegrated variables is considered the asymptotic distribution of the responses estimated with johansen s 1988 maximum likelihood procedure is derived the results are illustrated with an analysis of a west german money demand system the investigation shows that a direct interpretation of the cointegration relations may be difficult or misleading thereby the virtue of impulse response analysis for applied work is illustrated

evolution in dynamic linkages across daily national stock indexes abstract this article investigates how dynamic linkages among the daily rates of return of eight national stock indexes have evolved since 1972 a dynamic simultaneous equations model is estimated to describe the contemporaneous and lead lag relationships across national equity markets over three different years 1972 1980 and 1987 results reveal growing market interdependence within the same geographical region over time while there are many significant intermarket relationships within the same 24 hour period there are few significant lagged responses across markets beyond 24 hours this suggests a high degree of international market efficiency furthermore japan s market influence has been growing to rival that of the usa

piece rates fixed wages and incentive effects statistical evidence from payroll records we develop and estimate an agency model of worker behavior under piece rates and fixed wages the model implies optimal decision rules for the firm s choice of a compensation system as a function of working conditions our model also implies an upper and lower bound to the incentive effect the productivity gain realized by paying workers piece rates rather than fixed wages that can be estimated using regression methods using daily productivity data collected from the payroll records of a british columbia tree planting firm we estimate these bounds to be an 8 8 and a 60 4 percent increase in productivity structural estimation which accounts for the firm s optimal choice of a compensation system suggests that incentives caused a 22 6 percent increase in productivity however only part of this increase represents valuable output because workers respond to incentives in part by reducing quality

truth telling by third party auditors and the response of polluting firms experimental evidence from india in many regulated markets private third party auditors are chosen and paid by the firms that they audit potentially creating a conflict of interest this article reports on a two year field experiment in the indian state of gujarat that sought to curb such a conflict by altering the market structure for environmental audits of industrial plants to incentivize accurate reporting there are three main results first the status quo system was largely corrupted with auditors systematically reporting plant emissions just below the standard although true emissions were typically higher second the treatment caused auditors to report more truthfully and very significantly lowered the fraction of plants that were falsely reported as compliant with pollution standards third treatment plants in turn reduced their pollution emissions the results suggest reformed incentives for third party auditors can improve their reporting and make regulation more effective jel codes q56 m42 d22 copyright 2013 oxford university press

real effects of workers financial distress evidence from teacher spillovers abstract this paper studies the effects of financial distress on workers productivity using detailed data from the public school system in texas we show that the student passing rate in the median sized grade decreases by 1 2 percentage points following a declaration of bankruptcy by one teacher in the grade the effect of financial distress increases with the complexity of the task overall our results suggest a potential feedback effect of worker financial distress on local economic conditions and thus contribute to the understanding of the propagation and potential amplification of shocks through a local economy

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

causality and price discovery an application of directed acyclic graphs directed acyclic graphs dag s and error correction models ecm s are employed to analyze questions of price discovery between spatially separated commodity markets and the transportation market linking them together results from our analysis suggest these markets are highly interconnected but it is the inland commodity market that is strongly influenced by both the transportation and commodity export markets however the commodity markets affect the volatility of the transportation market over longer horizons our results suggest that transportation rates are critical in the price discovery process lending support for the recent development of exchange traded barge rate futures contracts

adaptation for mitigation this paper develops a two region north and south dynamic model in which regional stocks of effective labor are negatively influenced by the global stock of pollution by characterizing the equilibrium strategy of each region we show that the regions best responses can be strategic complements through a dynamic complementarity effect the model is then used to analyze the impact of adaptation assistance from north to south it is shown that north s unilateral assistance to south thus enhancing south s adaptation capacity can facilitate pollution mitigation in both regions especially when the assistance is targeted at labor protection pollution might increase in the short run but in the long run the level of pollution will decline the adaptation assistance we propose is incentive compatible and pareto improving

the international price transmission in stock index futures markets i introduction numerous studies have investigated market linkages and price transmission mechanisms in major international equity markets employing the analytical framework of the vector autoregression var or its variant the error correction model ecm 1 studies such as von furstenberg and jeon 1989 eun and shim 1989 and koch and koch 1991 focus on the short run dynamic pattern of price transmission others like taylor and tonks 1989 and francis and leachman 1998 are primarily interested in the long run pattern of price transmission more recently an increasing number of studies explore both long and short run patterns of price transmission included in this last set are the works of malliaris and urrutia 1992 arshanapalli and doukas 1993 masih and masih 2001 and bessler and yang 2003 among others this study extends the examination of international price transmission to stock index futures markets the article contributes to the existing literature in three aspects first a relatively new empirical framework is applied to allow for inferences of price transmission at three different time horizons instantaneous the short run and the long run building on recent advances in statistical analysis of causal modeling using directed acyclic graphs dags as in spirtes et al 2000 pearl 1995 2000 and swanson and granger 1997 this study is able to explore the contemporaneous causal pattern underlying the correlations among market innovations the existence of strong contemporaneous correlations among market innovations has been well documented in the united states and international stock markets by agmon 1972 eun and shim 1989 koch and koch 1991 housbrouk 1995 and bessler and yang 2003 it is also well recognized by agmon 1972 849 and eun and shim 1989 246 that contemporaneous correlations among market innovations reflect the phenomenon that new information in one market is transmitted and shared by other markets in contemporaneous time due to immediate response to price changes between markets however more in depth analysis on exactly how instantaneous price transmission among market innovations is conducted in international equity markets has not yet been well addressed in the existing literature although bessler and yang 2003 touch on the issue the necessity of imposing constraints in the spirit of the block recursive structure noted by koch and koch 1991 in the dag analysis of var innovations is proposed and discussed thoroughly in this study second innovation accounting analysis is more thoroughly explored in the study innovation accounting tools i e impulse response analysis and forecast error variance decomposition have been commonly used to summarize the dynamic pattern of price transmission among international financial markets the importance of the factorization of innovations i e var residuals in yielding sound inference has been well acknowledged theoretically by bernanke 1986 sims 1986 and swanson and granger 1997 the application of the dag technique as discussed in swanson and granger 1997 and explained in the next section is further key to innovation accounting analysis in this study the instantaneous price transmission pattern between market innovations as identified by the dag analysis provides a data determined solution to the basic problem of orthogonalization of residuals from the ecm and thus is critical to impulse response analysis or forecast error variance decompositions swanson and granger 1997 argue that compared to the choleski decomposition the dag based structural decomposition is sensible but not subjective because it allows for the properties exhibited by the data although several recent studies such as those by bessler and yang 2003 bessler et al 2003 haigh and bessler forthcoming and yang 2003 have used the dag based structural decomposition in a similar setting the study is the first attempt responding to the suggestion by swanson and granger 1997 364 of investigating the empirical implications of the dag based contemporaneous causal modeling

analysing the link between environmental performance and sovereign credit risk this study investigates the effects of a country s environmental performance on sovereign credit risk we use sovereign credit default swap cds spreads for a large panel of countries to analyse w

superexogeneity and the dynamic linkages among international equity markets abstract in this article we combine the johansen procedure for cointegration testing with tests of weak exogeneity and invariance in order to ascertain whether a system of equity markets is characterized by superexogeneity superexogeneity is rejected for the system comprised of stock indices of the us uk germany and japan this finding implies that agents participating in these financial markets are forward looking all markets are endogenous in our system and the assumption of stability of the asset demand function is questionable

sustainability performance disclosures the case of independent power producers abstract independent power producers ipps investing across borders represent a crucial sector that produces an adverse impact on greenhouse gas emissions ghg the main purpose of this study is to articulate issues pertinent to sustainability performance among contemporary ipps which seek funding from the capital markets a framework employing a sustainability performance scorecard is developed based on an interdisciplinary literature review that spans the fields of corporate finance financial reporting and sustainability by examining the sustainability performance as disclosed by three cross border ipps from the u s europe and the emerging economy of asia this comparative case study unveils the current weaknesses in comparability relevance and usefulness in disclosures among the ipps it points out potential information asymmetry to decision making of the primary stakeholders who seek to invest in renewable and sustainable energy while countering short termism over financial returns a concerted policy effort on disclosures about sustainability performance would be crucial to channeling effective private investments into the development of renewable and sustainable energy

air pollution as a cause of sleeplessness social media evidence from a panel of chinese cities abstract we provide first evidence of a link from daily air pollution exposure to sleep loss in a panel of chinese cities we develop a social media based city level metric for sleeplessness and bolster causal claims by instrumenting for pollution with plausibly exogenous variations in wind patterns estimates of effect sizes are substantial and robust in our preferred specification a one standard deviation increase in aqi causes an 11 6 increase in sleeplessness and for pm2 5 is 12 8 the results sustain qualitatively under ols estimation but are attenuated the analysis provides a previously unaccounted for benefit of more stringent air quality regulation it also offers a candidate mechanism in support of recent research that links daily air quality to diminished workplace productivity cognitive performance school absence traffic accidents and other detrimental outcomes

will a shrink make you richer gender differences in the effects of psychotherapy on labour efficiency this paper provides a first theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of psychotherapy on individual productivity we build a simple model in which a deterioration of mental health endogenously causes a decrease in productivity which is counterbalanced by psychotherapy we test our hypotheses on the british household panel survey data we find that individuals suffering from mental health problems benefit economically from consulting a psychotherapist moreover we find that the returns are higher for men than for women even though women are more likely to seek help

long and short term dynamic causal transmission amongst international stock markets abstract this paper investigates the dynamic causal linkages amongst nine major international stock price indexes in order to gauge the causal transmission patterns we employ very recent methods of i vector error correction modeling and ii level var modeling with possibly integrated and cointegrated processes advocated by i toda and phillips econometrica 61 1993 1367 and ii toda and yamamoto j econometrics 66 1995 225 respectively the paper illustrates how such methods may be appropriately augmented in a compatible fashion to unearth previously unfounded linkage properties inherent amongst a system of stock price indexes in particular we demonstrate that previous research by using ordinary difference vars ignored an important component of linkages displayed purely over the long run this untapped evidence essentially provides robust and very useful information to international financial analysts and investors at a substantive level results of this study tend to support the contention offered by several studies in the literature of significant interdependencies between the established oecd and the asian markets and also the leadership of the us and uk markets over the short and long run the levels var however illustrate the japanese market s influence as an additional long run leader findings seem to be plausible given that these three markets us uk and japan have consistently contributed over 75 of global stock market capitalization over the major part of the sample under consideration at a methodological level this analysis also provides a primer for the wealth of applied financial econometric research focusing on dynamic causal inference which involve systems containing possibly integrated and cointegrated processes

fostering a renewable energy technology industry an international comparison of wind industry policy support mechanisms this article examines the importance of national and sub national policies in supporting the development of successful global wind turbine manufacturing companies we explore the motivations behind establishing a local wind power industry and the paths that different countries have taken to develop indigenous large wind turbine manufacturing industries within their borders this is done through a cross country comparison of the policy support mechanisms that have been employed to directly and indirectly promote wind technology manufacturing in 12 countries we find that in many instances there is a clear relationship between a manufacturer s success in its home country market and its eventual success in the global wind power market whether new wind turbine manufacturing entrants are able to succeed will likely depend in part on the utilization of their turbines in their own domestic market which in turn will be influenced by the annual size and stability of that market consequently policies that support a sizable stable market for wind power in conjunction with policies that specifically provide incentives for wind power technology to be manufactured locally are most likely to result in the establishment of an internationally competitive wind industry

pricing for the clean air evidence from chinese housing market abstract air pollution is widely believed to cause healthy risks and influence nations economic dimensions this paper investigates the impact of air pollution on housing prices in china s 286 prefectural level cities during 2005 2013 to address the endogeneity problem of pm2 5 concentrations in our regression we propose an instrument variable strategy based on ventilation coefficient the estimation results suggest that a 10 increase in pm2 5 concentrations causes a 2 4 reduction in local housing prices air pollution also hinders the progress of urbanization limits cities human capital formation and changes people s expectations of housing prices that we interpret as three potential mechanisms behind our main findings

contagion around the october 1987 stock market crash abstract this study investigates financial contagion among seven international stock markets around the october 19 1987 crash building on a recent advance in vector autoregression analysis by swanson n granger c w j 1997 impulse response functions based on a causal approach to residual orthogonalization in vector autoregression journal of the american statistical association 92 357 367 data determined historical decompositions are conducted to provide a day by day picture of price fluctuation transmission which is crucial to explore the financial contagion pattern characterized by rich dynamics the results clearly show that the crash originated in the us market and that an upward movement in the japanese market after the crash helped the recovery in the us market which has not yet been empirically documented in the literature

moving up the energy ladder the effect of an increase in economic well being on the fuel consumption choices of the poor in india abstract rising household wealth may potentially impact both total fuel consumption and fuel type composition resulting in significant health and environmental implications using data from a field experiment in india we explore the effects of a transfer program that provided poor rural households with greater levels of assets and cash total fuel consumption rose as a result of the transfers households shifted from using electricity rather than kerosene as their primary form of light but total kerosene consumption also rose in contrast we did not observe a shift to cleaner cooking fuels