discounting and underpricing in seasoned equity offers abstract expected discounting in seasoned equity offers is a cost of uncertainty about firm value marketing new shares and acquiring information that raises the offer price stockholders incorporate predictable discounting in stock prices when equity offers are first announced the surprise component of discounting reflecting the lead bank s final adjustment to the offer price releases information that often causes economically large price swings on the offer day disparities between the issuer s closing price and the price suggested in the lead bank s final order book are a primary source of information the discount surprise appears to be used by lead banks to update capital suppliers with that eleventh hour information before they commit their funds

issuing costs to existing shareholders in competitive and negotiated underwritten public utility equity offerings abstract this paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of whether there is any difference in the cost incurred by public utilities if they issue new equity through a negotiated or competitive underwriting we conclude that the expected cost of a competitive offer is less than the expected cost of a negotiated offer but that the variance of the cost is substantially greater with a competitive offer these results are interesting because most public utilities use negotiated underwriting unless forced by regulation to use competitive offers this paper is also an addition to the growing agency theory literature

speculative prices and popular models t he rational expectations revolution in economics was born of the recognition that the expectations people hold for future economic variables are fundamental to their behavior thus our economists economic models require their those who make up the economy economic models models which they use to generate their expectations the key idea of rational expectations models is to collapse the two models into one to assume that people know or behave as if they know the true model that describes the economy this idea allows economists to construct simple and elegant models of the economy models that are appealing theoretically and that can be studied without collecting any data about the models in the minds of economic actors the problem with the rational expectations models is that collapsing the two kinds of models into one is a gross oversimplification obviously the popular models the models that are used by the broad masses of economic actors to form their expectations are not the same as those held by economists once one accepts the difference economic modelling cannot proceed without collecting data on the popular models themselves this paper reports on such a data collection effort on popular models using questionnaire survey methods with the purpose of understanding speculative markets i will report here on my research to understand the u s stock market crash of october 1987 research fumiko konya yoshiro tsutsui and i undertook to understand the japanese stock market crash of october 1987 research karl case and i undertook to understand recent real estate booms and research john pound and i undertook to understand the periodic hot markets for initial public offerings ipo s of common stock

economic development and the family structure from the pater familias to the nuclear family we provide a theory that is able to account for the observed comovement between the shift in intergenerational living arrangements from coresidence to non coresidence and economic development our theory is consistent with the diminution in the status of the elderly documented by some sociologists the results from our analysis show that when technical progress is fast enough the economy experiences a shift from stagnation to growth there is a transition from coresidence to non coresidence and the social status of the elderly tends to deteriorate

scenario analysis on co2 emissions reduction potential in china s electricity sector abstract with the approach of the year 2012 a new round of international negotiations has energized the entire climate change community with this analyses on sector based emissions reduction and mitigation options will provide the necessary information to form the debate in order to assess the co2 emissions reduction potential of china s electricity sector this research employs three scenarios based on the long range energy alternative planning system leap model to simulate the different development paths in this sector the baseline scenario the current policy scenario and the new policy scenario seek to gradually increase the extent of industrial restructuring and technical advancement results imply that energy consumption and co2 emission in china s electricity sector will rise rapidly in all scenarios until 2030 triple or quadruple the 2000 level however through structural adjustment in china s electricity sector and through implementing technical mitigation measures various degrees of abatement can be achieved these reductions range from 85 to 350 million tons co2 per year figures that correspond to different degrees of cost and investment demand side management and circulating fluidized bed combustion cfbc ranked in order are employed prior to use to realize emissions reduction followed by supercritical plants and the renovation of conventional thermal power plants in the long term nuclear and hydropower will play the dominant role in contributing to emissions reduction it is also suggested that a self restraint reduction commitment should be employed to help contribute to the reduction of emission intensity an avenue that is more practical for china in light of its current development phase setting the year 2000 as the base year the intensity reduction target could possibly range from 4 2 to 19 4 dependent on the implementation effectiveness of various mitigation options

the reform of electricity power sector in the pr of china deregulation was launched as a concept in the united states more than a decade ago the european union commission has also formally announced that electric deregulation must be completed by the end of 2005 deregulation or reform has already been a popular topic on the electricity power sector this paper will discuss the restructuring and regulatory reforms in the pr china s power sector it begins with a discussion of the characteristics of electricity reform or deregulation in other countries including the us the united kingdom and so on it will be followed by the industry structure and regulatory framework that characterized china s power industry during the latter part of the 20th century and the history of china s reform to restructure the power industry to competitive suppliers of generating services in recent years it discusses the role of the state power corporation in the reform and gives a detailed description of the latest electricity reform in the year 2002 the paper concludes with some thoughts regarding future challenges and trends on the reform for china s power sector

testing for liquidity constraints in euler equations with complementary data sources previous tests for liquidity constraints using consumption euler equations have frequently split the sample on the basis of wealth arguing that low wealth consumers are more likely to be constrained we propose alternative tests using different and more direct information on borrowing constraints obtained from the 1983 survey of consumer finances in a first stage we estimate probabilities of being constrained which are then utilized in a second sample the panel study of income dynamics to estimate switching regression models of the euler equation our estimates indicate stronger excess sensitivity associated with the possibility of liquidity constraints than the sample splitting approach

democratizing access to higher education in russia the consequences of the unified state exam reform this is the first paper that evaluates the effects of a reform requiring russian universities to make admission decisions based on the results of a national high school exam we show the reform led to a threefold increase in geographic mobility rates among high school graduates from small cities and towns to start college this is robust to different techniques samples and specifications the reform was also accompanied by increases in students expectations to attend university parental transfers and educational expenditures there is no evidence the reform affected parental labor supply divorce and employment outcomes of graduates who did not move

the optimal spread and offering price for underwritten securities abstract the paper develops the net proceeds maximization theory explaining how the spread and offering price are determined in all underwritten offerings in the u s the theory yields solutions for the optimal spread and offering price for all underwritten securities and it yields comparative statics that explain the cross sectional variation in actual spreads and initial returns across different types of underwritten securities the theory also suggests two alternative explanations to the ones offered by chen and ritter j finance 55 2000 1105 for the clustering of unseasoned equity offerings spreads at 7

moving back home insurance against labor market risk this paper demonstrates that the option to move in and out of the parental home is a valuable insurance channel against labor market risk which facilitates the pursuit of jobs with the potential for high earnings growth using monthly panel data i document an empirical relationship among coresidence individual labor market events and subsequent earnings growth i estimate the parameters of a dynamic game between youths and parents to show that the option to live at home can account for features of aggregate data for low skilled young workers small consumption responses to shocks high labor elasticities and low savings rates

anorexia body image and peer effects evidence from a sample of european women excessive preoccupation with self image or identity is regarded as a factor contributing to the proliferation of food disorders especially among young women this paper models how self image and peer effects influence health related behaviours specifically food disorders we empirically test our claims using data from the eurobarometer survey our findings suggest that the larger peers body mass the lower the likelihood of being anorexic self image is correlated with body weight we use several definitions of peers body mass and find that all are negatively associated with the likelihood of women being thin or extremely thin

signalling and the pricing of new issues this paper develops a signalling model with two signals two attributes and a continuum of signal levels and attribute types to explain new issue underpricing both the fraction of the new issue retained by the issuer and its offering price convey to investors the unobservable intrinsic value of the firm and the variance of its cash flows many of the model s comparative statics results are novel empirically testable and consistent with the existing empirical evidence on new issues in particular the degree of underpricing which can be inferred from observable variables is positively related to the firm s post issue share price

an empirical examination of models of contract choice in initial public offerings this study examines initial public offering contract choice decisions in best efforts offerings minimum sales constraints allow issuers to precommit to withdraw the offering if a fixed minimum number of shares is not sold in firm commitment offerings the over allotment option allows the underwriter to increase sales when demand is strong two theories of contract choice benveniste and spindt 1989 and ritter s 1987 extension of rock 1986 offer predictions about the role of these contract features we find that the 1977 1982 evidence is consistent with benveniste and spindt 1989 the evidence is less supportive of the ritter 1987 hypothesis that minimum sales constraints serve to reduce the winner s curse of the riskier issuers

reform of china s electric power industry challenges facing the government abstract china s electrical power industry requires substantial reform if the country s economic growth is to be sustained the 1997 electricity law the creation of a state power company and the abolition of the ministry of electric power are important first steps on the path of reform but it seems that a clear plan is lacking objectives of the reform should include increasing the capacity to deliver power constraining the costs of the power industry increasing end user efficiency and minimising environmental damage efforts should be directed at restructuring the industry in such a way that fair competition may be introduced at least in power generation and at establishing a viable regulatory agency both tasks have the potential to be thwarted by a range of vested interests at different levels of government and industry

electricity consumption and economic growth in china abstract this paper applies the error correction model to examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and real gdp for china during 1971 2000 our estimation results indicate that real gdp and electricity consumption for china are cointegrated and there is unidirectional granger causality running from electricity consumption to real gdp but not vice versa in order to overcome the constraints on electricity consumption the chinese government has to speed up the nation wide interconnection of power networks to upgrade urban and rural distribution grids and to accelerate rural electrification

factors influencing co2 emissions in china s power industry co integration analysis more than 40 of china s total co2 emissions originate from the power industry the realization of energy saving and emission reduction within china s power industry is therefore crucial in order to achieve co2 emissions reduction in this country this paper applies the autoregressive distributed lag ardl co integration model to study the major factors which have influenced co2 emissions within china s power industry from 1980 to 2010 results have shown that co2 emissions from china s power industry have been increasing rapidly from 1980 to 2010 the average annual growth rate was 8 5 and the average growth rate since 2002 has amounted to 10 5 secondly the equipment utilization hour as an indicator of the power demand has the greatest influence on co2 emissions within china s power industry in addition the impact of the industrial added value of the power sector on co2 emissions is also positive from a short term perspective thirdly the granger causality results imply that one of the important motivators behind china s technological progress within the power industry originates from the pressures created by a desire for co2 emissions reduction finally this paper provides policy recommendations for energy saving and emission reduction for china s power industry

intergenerational support and the life cycle incomes of young men and their parents human capital investments coresidence and intergenerational financial transfers this article examines the resource allocations of parents in the form of both shared residence with and financial transfers to their young adult sons based on an overlapping generations model incorporating a game between parents and adult children estimates of the determinants of such transfers are obtained from the kinship linked cohorts of the national longitudinal surveys the estimates suggest that both types of parental assistance are as important as governmental transfers in supporting young men and are responsive to the current and anticipated earnings of their offspring suggesting that young men cannot adequately smooth their consumption without parental help

failure or voluntary exit reassessing the female underperformance hypothesis abstract we reevaluate the female underperformance hypothesis by challenging the assumption that female owned ventures are more likely to fail instead of equating exit with failure we draw on exit literature and feminist theories to argue that female entrepreneurs are actually more likely than males to exit voluntarily we argue for further gender differences by using an even more fine grained conceptualization of entrepreneurial exit failure exit for personal reasons and exit for other professional financial opportunities post hoc analyses also point to within gender heterogeneity depending on family status a sample probe of 219 spanish entrepreneurs who had exited their business supports our overall reasoning

why do most italian youths live with their parents intergenerational transfers and household structure more than 80 of italian men aged 18 30 live with their parents we argue that one contributing factor to this remarkably high rate of cohabitation is parents tastes for co residence in order to investigate the role of parental preferences we estimate the effect of exogenous changes in parental income on rates of cohabitation in italy using shiw micro data from 1989 to 2000 the key econometric issue is the potential endogeneity of parental income in order to identify a source of exogenous variation in parental income we use changes in fathers retirement age induced by the 1992 reform of the italian social security system as an instrumental variable for parental income by raising retirement age this reform forced some fathers to remain in the labour market longer than they would have otherwise therefore raising their disposable income we use a two sample instrumental variable tsiv strategy our tsiv estimates indicate that a rise in parents income significantly raises the children s propensity to live at home a 10 increase in annual parental income results in approximately a 10 rise in the proportion of boys living with their parents although we cannot definitely rule out alternative interpretations these results are consistent with our hypothesis that cohabitation is a normal good for italian parents

anatomy of initial public offerings of common stock initial public offerings of common stocks ipos are typically underpriced in this paper the author develops and tests the hypothesis that underpricing serves as a form of insurance against legal liability and the associated damages to the reputations of investment bankers the empirical results based on samples of ipos that were brought to the market before and after the securities act of 1933 provide considerable support for the implicit insurance hypothesis specifically gross underpricing and market segmentation between prestigious and fringe investment bankers in originating unseasoned new issues appear to be peculiar to the post 1933 era a number of studies have documented that unseasoned common stocks typically garner large positive abnormal returns during a short period following the initial offering in his recent review of the empirical evidence on the initial returns of common stock offerings smith 36 concluded that the returns from offer price to after market price have exceeded fifteen percent his calculations did not include some of the earlier results obtained by mcdonald and fisher 23 and logue 20 when their samples are combined with those in smith s review the initial returns of unseasoned equity offerings appear even larger over seventeen percent these results imply that underwriters consistently offer the securities at substantial discounts from their values that are set in the after market in other words initial public offerings ipos appear to be underpriced what is even more puzzling is the fact that in some time periods underpricing appears to be systematically larger than in other periods ibbotson and jaffe 15 and ritter 29 have documented that during the postwar era there have been a number of periods in which the initial returns of common stocks have been extremely high ritter for example reported that the average return from the offer price to the first after market price was over forty eight percent for ipos in 1980 and 1981 1 similarly the initial returns of unseasoned issues of common stock brought to the market in 1950 1951 1961 and 1968 were unusually large these periods in which ipos were grossly underpriced are referred to as the hotissue markets why do investment bankers underprice ipos why do issuers

the retirement consumption puzzle evidence from a regression discontinuity approach in this paper we investigate the size of the consumption drop at retirement in italy we use micro data on food and total non durable household spending covering the period 1993 2004 and evaluate the change in consumption that accompanies retirement by exploiting the exogenous variability in pension eligibility to correct for the endogenous nature of the retirement decision we take a regression discontinuity design approach and make the identifying assumption that consumption would be the same around the threshold for pension eligibility if individuals would not retire we check in our data that a non negligible fraction of individuals retire as soon as they become eligible and estimate at 9 8 the part of the non durable consumption drop that is associated with retirement induced by eligibility we show that such fall is not driven by liquidity problems for the less well off in the population and can be accounted for by drops in goods that are work related expenses or leisure substitutes however we also show that retirement induces a significant drop in the number of grown children living with their parents and this can account for most of the retirement consumption drop

parental and public transfers to young women and their children this paper presents estimates of how an increase in welfare benefits for the welfare eligible affects the provision of parental support in the form of both financial transfers and shared residence based on an overlapping generations framework incorporating game theoretic interactions among parents their adult children and the government the empirical results obtained from two longitudinal data sets indicate that the parents view a dollar of income earned by their daughters as equivalent to a dollar increase in welfare benefits however there exists only a small trade off between the generosity of government aid and the incidence of parental aid data are for the united states and are from the national longitudinal survey of young women for 1968 1984 and the national longitudinal survey of youth for 1979 1984 excerpt

signalling by underpricing in the ipo market abstract empirical evidence suggests the existence of hot issue markets for initial public offerings in certain periods and in certain industries new issues are underpriced and rationing occurs this paper develops a model consistent with this observation which assumes the firm itself best knows its prospects in certain circumstances firms with the most favorable prospects find it optimal to signal their type by underpricing their initial issue of shares and investors know that only the best can recoup the cost of this signal from subsequent issues

the pricing of convertible debt offerings abstract we present the first empirical evidence on the pricing of convertible debt offerings using a sample of 91 convertible debt offerings from the period 1988 1992 we show a significant mean initial excess return of 1 11 our underpricing result is invariant to zero nonzero coupons maturity issue size or bond ratings further analysis reveals that various types of risk inherent in the new convertible issues are useful in explaining the cross sectional variation in the initial excess returns we offer an explanation for our results based on the arguments of the differential information model

older or wealthier the impact of age adjustment on wealth inequality differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality however as this finding relies on cross sectional data a concern is that older is confused with wealthier we propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross sections which eliminates wealth inequality due to age yet preserves inequality arising from other factors using a new cross country comparable database we examine the impact of age adjustments on wealth inequality across countries and over time we find that the most widely used method yields a substantially different picture of age adjusted wealth inequality than our method 2011 the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

motives for private income transfers private income transfers are becoming increasingly recognized as a key aspect of the u s economy the majority of private income transfers occur inter vivos i e between living persons but very little is known about this type of transfer behavior this paper tests alternative hypotheses concerning motivation for inter vivos transfers two motives are considered altruism and exchange evidence presented here casts doubt on the altruistic model of transfer behavior observed patterns for inter vivos transfers are more consistent with exchange related motives this finding has important implications for the effects of public transfer programs on the distribution of economic well being

does postponing minimum retirement age improve healthy behaviors before retirement evidence from middle aged italian workers abstract by increasing the residual working horizon of employed individuals pension reforms that rise minimum retirement age can affect individual investment in health promoting behaviors before retirement using the expected increase in minimum retirement age induced by a 2004 italian pension reform and a difference in differences research design we show that middle aged italian males affected by the reform reacted to the longer working horizon by increasing regular exercise with positive consequences for obesity and self reported satisfaction with health

the joint determination of household membership and market work the case of young men except in special cases market work and household membership are jointly chosen a nash bargaining model of family behavior is used to specify stochastic structural relationships two indirect utility functions and a market and a reservation wage function that jointly determine work consumption and household membership the maximum likelihood estimates of the implied trinomial probit model differ sharply from those obtained when either market work or household membership is taken as exogenous this application to white male youths from the national longitudinal surveys shows the insurance function of families parents insure their sons against poor market opportunities

parental altruism and inter vivos transfers theory and evidence this paper uses psid data on the extended family to test whether inter vivos transfers from parents to children are motivated by altruism specifically the paper tests whether an increase by one dollar in the income of parents actively making transfers to a child coupled with a one dollar reduction in that child s income results in the parents increasing their transfer to the child by one dollar this restriction on parental and child transfer income derivatives is derived for the standard altruism model augmented to include uncertainty and liquidity constraints these additional elements pin down the timing of inter vivos transfers the method used to estimate income transfer derivatives takes into account unobserved heterogeneity across families in the degree of altruism the findings strongly reject the altruism hypothesis redistributing one dollar from a recipient child to donor parents leads to less than a 13 cent increase in the parents transfer to the child far less than the one dollar increas

kinship incentives and evolution we analyze how family ties affect incentives with focus on the strategic interaction between two mutually altruistic siblings the siblings exert effort to produce output under uncertainty and they may transfer output to each other with equally altruistic siblings their equilibrium effort is non monotonic in the common degree of altruism and it depends on the harshness of the environment we define a notion of local evolutionary stability of degrees of sibling altruism and show that this degree is lower than the kinship relatedness factor numerical simulations show how family ties vary with the environment and how this a ects economic outcomes

demand side management in china the context of china s power industry reform abstract the reform of china s power industry has lasted for decades while the implementation of demand side management dsm in china is still in its infancy in this paper we present a comprehensive study of the dsm and demand response dr programs in china under the context of china s power industry reform we first present a brief introduction of the background including the socio economic status and geographical location of china the energy policy of china china s power industry the smart grids and microgrid in china and the reform of china s power industry then based on the introduction of dsm and the analysis of dsm practices in some countries we discuss the development status of dsm and the reform of electricity pricing in china finally the main challenges in five aspects for the future development of dsm programs in china are proposed and discussed these challenges include customer understanding and participation advanced metering infrastructure ami and information and communication technology ict pricing mechanisms and optimal scheduling big data analytics based decision support as well as government regulations and market policies

long term electricity demand in china from quantitative to qualitative growth abstract this paper develops scenarios of electricity demand in china until 2010 at a national a sectoral and a regional level it takes into account the recent macroeconomic downturn in the chinese economy and the potential effects of deregulation and price increases in the power sector the medium growth scenario hints at a gross electricity demand of 1500 twh in 2010 should the structural change from agriculture and heavy industry towards light industry and services accelerate electricity demand may be another 10 lower these figures are significantly below the projections fixed in the government s 9th five year plan which forecasts a demand of 2500 twh the aggregate and sectoral scenarios imply that current development plans for generating capacity and coal consumption until 2010 too need to be scaled down the disaggregation at the level of the 13 inter provincial and provincial power grids hints at potential regional discrepancies the large industrial areas in eastern china and the central region are likely to face overcapacity whereas north china and the peripheral regions may face deficits

social security and households saving this paper provides new evidence on the substitutability between private and pension wealth by exploiting the italian pension reform of 1992 we use a difference in difference estimator that exploits the differential effects of the reform on individuals belonging to several yea of birth cohorts and different occupational groups we find convincing evidence that saving rates increase as a result of a reduction in pension wealth by allowing for the possibility that substitutability changes with age we find that substitutability is particularly high and precisely estimated for workers between 35 and 45

a model of the demand for investment banking advising and distribution services for new issues this paper presents a theory of the demand for investment banking advising and distribution services for the case in which the investment banker is better informed about the capital market than is the issuer and the issuer cannot observe the distribution effort expended by the banker the optimal contract under which the offer price decision is delegated to the better informed banker in order to deal with the adverse selection and moral hazard problems resulting from the informational asymmetry and the observability problem is characterized the model demonstrates a positive demand for investment banking advising and distribution services and provides an explanation of the underpricing of new issues an investment banker performs three functions which may be of value to an issuer of new securities underwriting advising and distribution this paper presents a theory of the demand for investment banking advising and distribution services based on an informational asymmetry between an issuer of new securities and an investment banker ultimately a theory of the organization of the financial intermediary industry is required that would predict which firms would use which types of financial intermediaries for which purposes and which firms would raise capital without engaging the services of a financial intermediary only a limited set of such predictions are developed here in the context of a model of a fixedprice offering under a negotiated contract in which the investment banker is

sequential sales learning and cascades when ipo shares are sold sequentially later potential investors can learn from the purchasing decisions of earlier investors this can lead rapidly to cascades in which subsequent investors optimally ignore their private information and imitate earlier investors although rationing in this situation gives rise to a winner s curse it is irrelevant the model predicts that 1 offerings succeed or fail rapidly 2 demand can be so elastic that even risk neutral issuers underprice to completely avoid failure 3 issuers with good inside information can price their shares so high that they sometimes fail 4 an underwriter may want to reduce the communication among investors by spreading the selling effort over a more segmented market consider a scenario in which an issuer is selling a new security of uncertain value for example an ipo initial public offering of stock or high yield debt through an underwriter the s e c has banned variable price sales while the value of this new security is highly uncertain to individual market participants investors hold perfectly accurate information when aggregated moreover there are many potential investors and a small number of these investors can jointly determine the value of the firm or its project with high precision it would seem that in this scenario underpriced offerings would succeed and overpriced offerings would fail nevertheless this paper shows that if the distribution channels of invest ment banks are limited underpriced offerings can fail and overpriced offer ings can succeed with limited distribution channels it takes the under writer time to approach interested investors therefore later investors can observe how well an offering has sold to date or at least how successful it has sold relative to offerings previously undertaken by this underwriter

sectoral crediting mechanism how far china has to go abstract based on the review of the basic design of the sectoral crediting mechanism scm a promising option for developing countries emission reduction commitments this paper analyzes five important practical issues for china to solve before participating in scm which include 1 difficulties in determining a crediting baseline 2 the unsolved over supply problem in the carbon market 3 the very likely carbon credits falling short of mitigation costs problem 4 the immature market oriented price system jeopardizing the success of motivation incentives and 5 inadequate capacity building corresponding suggestions or compromise solutions are given after a discussion of each issue it is also recommended that in order to witness scm come into being researchers and negotiators should endeavor to solve the practical issues that scm meets now bearing in mind the balance of interests of both developing and developed countries finally we believe that scm s political barriers can be overcome when technical economic institutional and capacity problems are solved

a monte carlo based decision support tool for assessing generation portfolios in future carbon constrained electricity industries abstract this paper presents a novel decision support tool for assessing future generation portfolios in an increasingly uncertain electricity industry the tool combines optimal generation mix concepts with monte carlo simulation and portfolio analysis techniques to determine expected overall industry costs associated cost uncertainty and expected co 2 emissions for different generation portfolio mixes the tool can incorporate complex and correlated probability distributions for estimated future fossil fuel costs carbon prices plant investment costs and demand including price elasticity impacts the intent of this tool is to facilitate risk weighted generation investment and associated policy decision making given uncertainties facing the electricity industry applications of this tool are demonstrated through a case study of an electricity industry with coal ccgt and ocgt facing future uncertainties results highlight some significant generation investment challenges including the impacts of uncertain and correlated carbon and fossil fuel prices the role of future demand changes in response to electricity prices and the impact of construction cost uncertainties on capital intensive generation the tool can incorporate virtually any type of input probability distribution and support sophisticated risk assessments of different portfolios including downside economic risks it can also assess portfolios against multi criterion objectives such as greenhouse emissions as well as overall industry costs

revisiting co2 mitigation potential and costs in china s electricity sector abstract to improve the reliability of sectoral mitigation potential and cost analysis this paper made an in depth exploration into china s electricity sector s thermal efficiency and inner structure it is found that unlike what many literatures portray china is actually among the world s leaders in coal fired power plants generating efficiencies besides although there are still numerous small and inefficient generating units in the current generation fleet many of them are in fact playing important roles in supporting local economic development meeting peak load needs balancing heat and electricity supply and providing job opportunities to the local economy therefore their existence does not necessarily mean low cost mitigation potential given the efficiency and structural characteristics of china s electricity sector it is pointed out that some other mitigation options such as demand side management igcc and renewable energy as well as the break through of ccs technology may play an even more important role in emission reduction considering the significant lock in effects in electricity sector it is warned that china if continues putting majority investment in large and advanced coal fired generating units will face another round of chasing after for the new and advanced renewable generation technologies therefore china should put more efforts in renewable generation technologies now

do you need less money in retirement abstract the literature has documented a one off drop in consumption at retirement in italy we show that respondents subjective evaluation of the minimum amount of money needed to live comfortably but not in luxury drops at retirement as well this finding supports the idea that even if expenditure falls at retirement this may have the same effect on money needed hence no effect on the marginal utility of consumption

litigation risk intermediation and the underpricing of initial public offerings we formally examine the role of litigation risk in initial public offering ipo pricing the underwriter s pricing decision trades off current revenue against expected future litigation costs both of which are increasing in the ipo price given a time consistency constraint and rational expectations on the part of investors however the standard litigation risk argument does not lead to equilibrium underpricing we develop a richer model that provides sufficient conditions under which there is equilibrium underpricing the issuer s choice of employing an underwriter versus floating the ipo on its own is examined and various testable implications of the model are developed article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

the pricing of initial public offerings a dynamic model with information production this paper presents an information theoretic model of ipo pricing in which insiders sell stock in both the ipo and the secondary market have private information about their firm s prospects and outsiders may engage in costly information production about the firm high value firms knowing they are going to pool with low value firms induce outsiders to engage in information production by underpricing which compensates outsiders for the cost of producing information the information is reflected in the secondary market price of equity giving a higher expected stock price for high value firms

an analysis of trade size clustering and its relation to stealth trading abstract nyse and nasdaq trades increasingly cluster on multiples of 500 1 000 and 5 000 shares such clustering varies over time and across stocks and tends to increase with the level of trading activity furthermore rounded trades tend to have more persistence both in occurrence and in trade initiation finally medium sized rounded trades tend to have greater relative price impact than large rounded trades from these observations we surmise that trade size clustering is consistent at least in part with the actions of stealth traders who tend to use medium sized rounded transactions in an attempt to disguise their trades

social interactions in high school lessons from an earthquake after an earthquake hit southern italy in 1980 young men from certain towns were exempted from compulsory military service we show that the exemption raised high school graduation rates of boys by more than 2 percentage points we do this by comparing high school graduation rates of young exempt men and older nonexempt men from the least damaged areas and men of the same age groups from nearby towns that were not hit by the quake similar comparisons show that graduation rates of young women in the affected areas also increased since in italy women are not subject to the draft the findings suggest the presence of spillover effects jel i21 j13