a fundamental law relating stock and end of life flow in cyclic manufacturing abstract cyclic manufacturing cm emerges as a sine qua non for sustainability consumer product stocks of today are the end of life flows eolf of tomorrow in circular economy enacted legislation fosters reuse recycle of eol consumer products of chemicals raw materials and hazardous products and components batteries brake fluids printed circuit boards cellular phones computers but when is tomorrow and how much of the stock will appear as eolf efficient cm operations depend on cognizance of eolf and accumulating stock the pool from which eolf emanates consumer uncertainty personal income economic cycles advent of technology social and health reasons stricter eco standards and random early product losses during use render eolf and product stock uncertain and unobservable conventional identification methods based on regression sequential least squares or actuary science methods presuming specific residual life distributions may not provide reliable estimates under uncertainty and non stationarities an appealingly simple constitutive law is revealed relating the mean stock and eolf in terms of stock mean age and eolf mean age which are scaled readily and reliably monitored variables even from relatively small decentralized samples valid under random lifetime early losses the law encompasses any eol exit distribution enabling stock and eolf identification data consolidation and assessment being a linear algebraic expression between stock and eolf the law reduces computational burden and evades presumption of any survival or exit probability distribution or cognizance of early loss history or ex post fitting of stochastic parameters the results may prove useful in planning sizing eol facilities and recycling operations and in environmental policy or compliance assessment

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

exchange and condom use in informal sexual relationships in urban kenya abstract this article investigates whether a market for unsafe sexual activity exists among nonmarital noncommercial sexual relationships in a high hiv aids environment the exchange of money for sex without a condom is well known within commercial sexual partnerships but it is unclear from the previous evidence whether markets can emerge among noncommercial relationships as well i use data on nonmarital sexual partnerships and transfers from kisumu kenya to investigate this question i define and measure transfers as material items given by a male to his female sexual partner including money and nonmonetary items such as gifts meals and rent i find a strong negative relationship between the level of transfers and condom use after controlling for male fixed effects and other important female and partnership characteristics i also find that nonmonetary transfers have the same relationship with condom use as monetary transfers furthermore i test the assumption that adolescent girls are particul

sustainability in electrical and electronic equipment closed loop supply chains a system dynamics approach abstract in this paper we examine the impact of ecological motivation and technological innovations on the long term behavior of a closed loop supply chain with recycling activities ecological motivation manifests through legislation and green image factor whereas technological innovations manifest through design for environment we adopt system dynamics methodology applied to many environmental systems seeking long term gains the developed model is implemented to a real world supply chain of electrical equipment in greece numerical analysis illustrates the factors concerned like the delay of the legislation enforcement to achieve a sustainable future through non renewable resources and landfill preservation

income shocks and gender gaps in education evidence from uganda abstract this paper uses exogenous variation in rainfall across districts in uganda to estimate the causal effects of household income shocks on children s enrollment and academic performance conditional on gender i find negative deviations in rainfall from the long term mean to have negative and highly significant effects on female enrollment in primary schools and the effect grows stronger for older girls i find no effect of rainfall variation on the enrollment of boys and young girls moreover i find that when schooling is free of charge and both marginal boys and girls are enrolled a negative income shock has an adverse effect on the test scores of female students while boys are not affected the results imply that households respond to income shocks by varying the amount of schooling and resources provided to girls while boys are to a large extent sheltered a finding consistent with a model where parents values of child labor differ across sexes

a cross country comparison of rural income generating activities summary this paper uses a newly constructed cross country database composed of comparable income aggregates to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households the analysis paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space in countries on all four continents though less so in the included african countries for most countries the largest share of income stems from off farm activities and the largest share of households has diversified sources of income diversification not specialization is the norm nevertheless agricultural sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries

economic determinants of land invasions this study estimates the effect of economic conditions on redistributive conflict we examine land invasions in brazil using a panel data set with over 50 000 municipality year observations adverse eco nomic shocks instrumented by rainfall cause the rural poor to invade and occupy large landholdings this effect exhibits substantial heterogeneity by land inequality and land tenure systems but not by other observable variables in highly unequal municipalities negative income shocks cause twice as many land invasions as in municipalities with average land inequality cross sectional estimates using fine within region variation also suggest the importance of land inequality in explaining redistributive conflict i introduction c onflict over land is endemic to many rural econo mies in environments marked by a highly skewed distribution of property incomplete land and credit markets poorly or unevenly enforced property rights and weak political institutions agents often resort to extralegal means to improve their economic positions the poor frequently invade private properties and occupy them until either forcibly expelled or granted official titles land conflict which is prevalent in many countries such as brazil south africa uganda and venezuela may distort the allocation of resources in the agricultural sector away from productive uses and thereby contribute to the persistence of rural poverty how do economic conditions affect this redistrib utive conflict this paper explores this question using a rich municipal level data set of 5 299 land invasions from 1988 to 2004 in brazil we follow miguel satyanath and sergenti 2004 by using rainfall as a source of exogenous variation to study the relationship between income and conflict and we find that adverse economic shocks cause the rural poor to invade large landholdings this effect exhibits considerable het erogeneity by land inequality and land tenure systems in highly unequal municipalities negative income shocks cause twice as many land invasions as in municipalities with average land inequality the effect of income shocks is even stronger in highly polarized municipalities as measured by the degree of bimodality in the land distribution cross sectional estimates using fine within region variation also suggest the importance of land inequality in explaining redistributive conflict we also find that income shocks cause significantly more land invasions in municipalities with a greater proportion of land under fixed rent contracts by contrast we find no evidence of heterogeneity on a range of other political and socioeconomic variables including political competition sharecropping police expenditures and social welfare spending recent microeconometric studies have examined two

integrating behavioral choice into epidemiological models of aids increased hiv risk creates incentives for people with low sexual activity to reduce their activity but may make high activity people fatalistic leading them to reduce their activity only slightly or actually increase it if high activity people reduce their activity by a smaller proportion than low activity people the composition of the pool of available partners will worsen creating positive feedbacks and possibly multiple steady states early public health efforts may allow societies to reach more favorable steady states excerpt

testing theories of consumption behavior using information on aggregate shocks income seasonality and rainfall in rural india we develop an integrated framework for testing theories of consumption behavior by examining how agricultural households in rural india respond to anticipated and unanticipated seasonal income fluctuations using information on village level rainfall surprises we estimate idiosyncratic unanticipated income shocks by allowing weather risk to impact households differently depending on observable characteristics in applying our methodology to unique panel data on consumption debt and intrahousehold gift exchanges we address a number of shortcomings in previous tests of theories of consumption behavior yet we find no evidence against the hypothesis that households smooth idiosyncratic fluctuations in their income our approach also uncovers several interesting features of rural credit and insurance markets

climate shocks and exports this paper uses international trade data to examine the effects of climate shocks on economic activity we examine panel models relating the annual growth rate of a country s exports in a particular product category to the country s weather in that year we find that a poor country being 1 degree celsius warmer in a given year reduces the growth rate of that country s exports by between 2 0 and 5 7 percentage points with no detectable effects in rich countries we find negative effects of temperature on exports of both agricultural products and light manufacturing products with little apparent effects on heavy industry or raw materials the results confirm large negative effects of temperature on poor countries economies and suggest that temperature affects a much wider range of economic activity than conventionally thought this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

sexually transmitted infections sexual behavior and the hiv aids epidemic forty million people are infected with hiv worldwide twenty five million of them are in sub saharan africa this paper addresses the question of why africa has been so heavily affected by hiv and what explains the variation within africa i present a model that decomposes epidemic level into differences in sexual behavior and differences in viral transmission rates i argue using evidence drawn from the existing medical literature that africa has very high hiv transmission rates likely due to high rates of other untreated sexually transmitted infections while transmission rates in the united states are low the difference in transmission rates is large enough to explain the observed difference in prevalence between the united states and sub saharan africa the model also provides a good fit to cross country data within africa and suggests that in contrast to the intracontinental results differences within that continent can be attributed to differences in sexual behavior and epidemic timing the results suggest that cost effective policy interventions would focus on decreasing transmission rates within africa possibly by treating other untreated sexually transmitted infections authors

a theory of prostitution prostitution is low skill labor intensive female and well paid this paper proposes a marriage market explanation to this puzzle if a prostitute compromises her marriage market prospects she will have to be compensated for forgone marriage market opportunities we discuss the link between poverty and prostitution and show that prostitution may decrease with male income if wives and prostitutes are drawn from the same pool of women we point to the role of male sex ratios and males in transit in sustaining high levels of prostitution and we discuss possible reasons for its low reputation and implications for marriage patterns

the effect of capital structure on a firm s liquidation decision abstract a firm s liquidation can impose costs on its customers workers and suppliers an agency relationship between these individuals and the firm exists in that the liquidation decision controlled by the firm as the agent affects other individuals the customers workers and suppliers as principals the analysis in this paper suggests that capital structure can control the incentive conflict problem of this relationship by serving as a pre positioning or bonding mechanism appropriate selection of capital structure assures that incentives are aligned so that the firm implements the ex ante value maximizing liquidation policy

do voters demand responsive governments evidence from indian disaster relief abstract using rainfall public relief and election data from india we examine how governments respond to adverse shocks and how voters react to these responses the data show that voters punish the incumbent party for weather events beyond its control however fewer voters punish the ruling party when its government responds vigorously to the crisis indicating that voters reward the government for responding to disasters we also find evidence suggesting that voters only respond to rainfall and government relief efforts during the year immediately preceding the election in accordance with these electoral incentives governments appear to be more generous with disaster relief in election years these results describe how failures in electoral accountability can lead to suboptimal policy outcomes

dynamic substance flow analysis the delaying mechanism of stocks with the case of pvc in sweden abstract today s stocks are tomorrow s emissions and waste flows as a result of the time lag introduced by the buffering function of the stock of materials and products in society environmental problem flows which seem to be under control can easily rebound in this paper an example is given of how signal processing can be used in dynamic substance flow analysis for estimating the future generation of waste and emissions from present societal stocks an approach is outlined to estimate the outflow of waste products from stocks on the basis of assumptions on the shape of the distribution describing the inflow of new products the average life span of the products and the life span distribution to exemplify the approach we used a theoretical case of pvc in sweden it was found that the delaying mechanisms of the stocks can make the outcome counterintuitive furthermore the chosen shape of the input distribution function has the most influence on the predicted outflows especially in the case of possible fashion type exponentially increasing markets the choice of the shape of the inflow distribution could therefore be based on qualitative knowledge of the market of the different products the life span distribution appears to have a more subtle influence on the height of the peaks and the time that they occur so far only a normal distribution has been considered more research is recommended into other types of distribution

is the allocation of resources within the household efficient new evidence from a randomized experiment i study whether households make pareto efficient intrahousehold resource allocation decisions combining randomized variation in women s income generated by the evaluation of the mexican progresa program with variation attributable to localized rainfall shocks as distribution factors in the collective model i find evidence favoring pareto optimality more specifically female specific income changes have positive effects on children s goods expenditures whereas changes due to rainfall shocks have a smaller influence on household public goods expenditures the evidence is consistent with female partners having greater sensitivity to own income changes and norms that oblige women to devote their earnings to meet collective consumption needs

an instrumental variables approach to estimating tax revenue elasticities evidence from sub saharan africa this paper exploits the significant response of real gdp growth of sub saharan african countries to exogenous international commodity price and rainfall shocks to construct instrumental variables estimates of the tax revenue elasticity iv estimates yield that a 1 increase in gdp increases tax revenues by up to 2 5

how do mergers create value a comparison of taxes market power and efficiency improvements as explanations for synergies there is little evidence in the literature on the relative importance of the underlying sources of merger gains prior literature suggests that synergies could arise due to taxes market power or efficiency improvements based on value line forecasts we estimate the average synergy gains in a broad sample of 264 large mergers to be 10 03 of the combined equity value of the merging firms the detailed data in value line projections allow for the decomposition of these gains into underlying operating and financial synergies we estimate that tax savings contribute only 1 64 in additional value while operating synergies account for the remaining 8 38 operating synergies are higher in focused mergers while tax savings constitute a large fraction of the gains in diversifying mergers the operating synergies are generated primarily by cutbacks in investment expenditures rather than by increased operating profits overall the evidence suggests that mergers generate gains by improving resource allocation rather than by reducing tax payments or increasing the market power of the combined firm

tobin s q and the gains from takeovers this paper analyzes the relation between takeover gains and the q ratios of targets and bidders for a sample of 704 mergers and tender offers over the period 1972 1987 target bidder and total returns are larger when targets have low q ratios and bidders have high q ratios the relation is strengthened after controlling for the characteristics of the offer and the contest this evidence confirms the results of the work by lang stulz and walkling and shows that their findings also hold for mergers and after controlling for other determinants of takeover gains in a recent paper lang stulz and walkling lsw 1989 document that the abnormal returns in tender offers are related to the tobin s q ratios of the targets and the bidders in particular they find that target bidder and total returns are higher when takeover targets have high q ratios and bidders have low q ratios where one is used as a cutoff point to separate high q firms from low q firms in fact bidders with high q ratios have significant positive abnormal returns when they engage in a takeover while bidders with low q ratios have significant negative abnormal returns the best takeovers in terms of value creation are those where a high q firm takes over a low q firm the opposite scenario holds for the worst case takeovers low q firms taking over high q firms if q is interpreted as a measure of managerial performance these findings imply that better performing firms also make better acquisitions and that more value can be created from taking over poorly performing companies while the results of lsw are insightful they leave a number of questions unanswered their sample consists only of tender offers several studies have documented that the returns to targets in mergers are smaller than those in tender offers see jensen and ruback 1983 and huang and walkling 1987 it would therefore be useful to see whether the lsw 1989 results hold for a larger sample which includes both mergers and tender offers previous research has also shown that the characteristics of the takeover hostile versus friendly and single versus multiple bidder the form of payment cash versus securities the time period before 1968 1968 1980 1981 and later and the relative size of target and bidder are important determinants of the magnitude of takeover gains and their distribution

income shocks and hiv in africa we examine how variation in local economic conditions has shaped the aids epidemic in africa using data from over 200 000 individuals across 19 countries we match biomarker data on individuals serostatus to information on local rainfall shocks a large source of income variation for rural households we estimate infection rates in hiv endemic rural areas increase by 11 for every recent drought an effect that is statistically and economically significant income shocks explain up to 20 of variation in hiv prevalence across african countries suggesting existing approaches to hiv prevention could be bolstered by helping households manage income risk better the relationship between income and health has long been of interest to economists and a lengthy literature documents strong linkages between economic conditions and many important health outcomes currie 2009 there has been much less progress however in understanding the economic foundations of the hiv aids epidemic one of the most important global health challenges such an understanding might yield particular dividends in sub saharan africa ssa where over a million people continue to become newly infected with the disease each year unaids 2010 in this article we explore the role of negative income shocks in shaping the

the rationale behind interfirm tender offers information or synergy this paper investigates the rationale behind interlirm tender offers by examining the returns realized by the stockholders of lirms that were the targets of unsuccessful tender offers and lirms that have made unsuccessful offers our results suggest that the permanent positive revaluation of the unsuccessful target shares documented by dodd and ruback 1977 and bradley 1980 is due primarily to the emergence of and or the anticipation of another bid that would ultimately result in the transfer of control of the target resources we also find that the rejection of a tender offer has differential effects on the share prices of the unsuccessful bidding firms depending upon whether the tender offer process results in a change in the control of target resources on the basis of these results we conclude that acquisitions via tender offers are attempts by bidding firms to exploit potential synergies not simply superior information regarding the true value of the target resources

on corporate governance a study of proxy contests abstract this paper examines a sample of firms experiencing proxy contests for seats on their board of directors dissident shareholders usually fail to obtain a majority of board seats nevertheless they capture some seats via mechanisms such as cumulative voting in over half of the sample contests regardless of proxy contest outcome positive and statistically significant share price performance is associated with the contest that finding is predicted by the standard economic analysis of proxy contests in which the challenges benefit shareholders by improving corporate performance the finding runs counter to the claim of berle 1962 that the economists view of proxy contests is a wholly imaginary picture a portion of the positive share price changes taking place in the early stages of some proxy contests is not permanent however and as suggested by manne 1962 is at least partially attributable to temporary increases in the market value of the vote attached to corporate shares

competing bids target management resistance and the structure of takeover bids we examine the structure of initial takeover bids and the frequency of observing competing bids and target management resistance we find the use of cash is not consistently correlated with the frequency of competition or resistance and that the cost of acquiring information about a target is associated with the likelihood of competition and resistance a high bid premium appears to deter competing offers and is also associated with a lower likelihood of resistance finally target management resistance is associated with an increased likelihood of a competing offer arising and a larger increase in target shareholder wealth between the initial public announcement and outcome dates relative to the not resisted subsample for both successful and unsuccessful acquisition proposals article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

rumor has it sensationalism in financial media the media has an incentive to publish sensational news we study how this incentive affects the accuracy of media coverage in the context of merger rumors using a novel dataset we find that accuracy is predicted by a journalist s experience specialized education and industry expertise conversely less accurate stories use ambiguous language and feature well known firms with broad readership appeal investors do not fully account for the predictive power of these characteristics leading to an initial target price overreaction and a subsequent reversal consistent with limited attention overall we provide novel evidence on the determinants of media accuracy and its effect on asset prices

poverty and witch killing many observers have noted that poverty and violence go hand in hand there is a strong negative relationship between economic growth and crime across countries as well as across districts in india and a link between low income and the occurrence of civil war 1 yet existing studies are typically unable to resolve the key econometric identification issues of omitted variable bias and endogeneity to illustrate the unobserved quality of local government institutions may affect both income growth and crime rates and poverty could lead to violence if desperate people with nothing to lose commit more crimes but violence itself may in turn affect economic productivity this paper uses local rainfall variation to identify the impact of income shocks on murder in a rural tanzanian district 2 extreme rainfall resulting in drought or floods is exogenous and is associated with poor harvests and near famine conditions in the region and a large increase in the murder of witches there are twice as many witch murders in years of extreme rainfall as in other years the victims are nearly all elderly women typically killed by relatives these econometric results across 11 years in 67 villages provide novel evidence on the role of income shocks in causing violent crime and religious violence in particular and also provide insights into witchcraft an important social phenomenon in africa rarely studied by economists the view that economic conditions are a driving force behind witch murders is bolstered by the fact that most witch killing in tanzania takes place in poor rural areas largely dependent on rain fed agriculture and that most victims in our sample are from poor households however it is difficult to definitively disentangle this income shock theory from alternative socio cultural explanations the concentration of tanzanian witch murders in a region dominated by one particular ethnic group the sukuma and the especially high number of witch murders in villages where indigenous religious beliefs are strong both point to the important role of non economic factors economic theories and cultural theories are perhaps best viewed as complements the empirical findings demonstrate the power of economics to rationalize a phenomenon that has previously been understood almost solely through a socio cultural lens 3

corporate takeover bids methods of payment and bidding firms stock returns this study explores the role of the method of payment in explaining common stock returns of bidding firms at the announcement of takeover bids the results reveal significant differences in the abnormal returns between common stock exchanges and cash offers the results are independent of the type of takeover bid i e merger or tender offer and of bid outcomes these findings supported by analysis of nonconvertible bonds are attributed mainly to signalling effects and imply that the inconclusive evidence of earlier studies on takeovers may be due to their failure to control for the method of payment recent studies on corporate takeovers provide inconclusive results on the valuation effects of acquisitions on the common stock of bidding firms 1 substantial differences are reported between the studies that analyze acquisitions initiated as tender offers and those that confine their samples to merger proposals the existence of mixed empirical findings for the bidding firms makes it difficult to interpret existing evidence and to draw conclusions about the managers acquisition motivations nevertheless the reason for the substantial difference between empirical findings on mergers and tender offers still remains an unresolved issue it is observed however that mergers are usually common stock exchange offers whereas tender offers are usually cash offers given that different methods of financing a project have different signalling implications myers and majluf 39 the differential stock returns of bidders in mergers and tender offers may be due to the method of acquisition financing

an analysis of the implications of uncertainty and agency problems on the wealth effects to acquirers of private firms abstract extensive empirical work shows that bidders do not gain from the acquisition of publicly traded targets but experience positive excess returns in the acquisition of privately held firms this study investigates how two important differences between private and public firms namely informational uncertainty and ownership characteristics impact the returns to acquirers a sample of targets that were acquired shortly after filing for an ipo was collected to circumvent the lack of information on private firms in spite of the special characteristics of these targets the listing effect is still prevalent in this sample the results of the analysis are consistent with the hypothesis that acquirers gain in the acquisition of private firms because these targets have a relatively weaker bargaining position due to informational and agency problems and costly access to external capital markets to finance growth opportunities

do tender offers create value new methods and evidence abstract conventional techniques of estimating takeover value improvements measure only a fraction of the total gain and include revelation about bidder stand alone value to address these biases we develop the probability scaling method which rescales announcement date returns and the intervention method which uses returns at intervening events perceived value improvements are larger than traditional methods indicate we cannot reject the hypothesis that bidders on average pay fair prices combined bidder target stock returns are higher for hostile offers lower for equity offers and lower for diversifying offers these effects reflect revelation about bidder stand alone value not differences in gains from combination

real time identification of mean retention time and end of life rate in cyclic manufacturing used in predicting demand and new orders for shelf stock replacement and in inventory planning the mean retention time mrt of consumer products is long established as a key production and marketing parameter higher mrts are also associated with enhanced sustainability favoring longer production consumption cycles waste prevention and resource preservation the mrt or the corresponding product stock level and the end of life eol outflow to be collected for disassembly and recycling are useful for planning efficient cyclic operations determination of stock and eol level for cyclic products is challenging however due to random stock losses and to the volatile and distributed nature of returns and eol exit actuary science methods presume specific residual life distributions usually fitted ex post which may become inaccurate when applied to real production consumption cycles anchored on a recent constitutive law in cyclic manufacturing a method is presented for real time mrt and eol identification the law related mean stock and eol levels under random losses and random distributed eol exit via a simple equation without involving residual life or eol distributions or early loss history one degree of freedom still remained for both stock and eol are random and unobservable the work herein ties the remaining degree of freedom it enables sequential identification of stock and eol level using reliable and readily acquired data in a key equation obtained for the production consumption cycle adapting to varying early loss consumer take back and discard volatility it may be useful in proactive policy sizing of disassembly and recycle lines and return inventory control towards cleaner production consumption cycles

using weather variability to estimate the response of savings to transitory income in thailand this paper measures the extent to which farmers are able to use savings and dissavings to smooth consumption in response to unexpected shocks to income time series information on regional rainfall is used to construct estimates of transitory income due to rainfall shocks the relationship between these measures of transitory income and savings indicates that farm households save a significantly higher fraction of transitory income than nontransitory income jel d91 016 the incomes of farm households in developing countries are notorious for being both low and uncertain policies that increase the incomes of farmers may well be different

the hidden costs of political instability evidence from kenya s 2007 election crisis abstract this paper studies the microeconomic impacts of the political crisis and civil conflict that immediately followed the december 2007 presidential election in kenya income expenditures and consumption dramatically declined for a broad segment of the rural population for the duration of the conflict to make up for the income shortfall women who supply transactional sex engaged in higher risk sex both during and after the crisis while this particular crisis was likely too short for these behavioral responses to seriously increase the risk of hiv or other stis for these women such responses could have long term repercussions for health in countries with longer or more frequent crises overall our results suggest that social unrest can be an important channel through which political instability can affect long term outcomes such as health

the gains to bidding firms from merger abstract this study examines the effect of mergers on the wealth of bidding firms shareholders bidding firms gain significantly during the twenty one days leading to the announcement of each of their first four merger bids these results fail to support the capitalization hypothesis that bidders gains are captured at the beginning of merger programs bidders abnormal returns are positively related to the relative size of the merger partners and the gains during the announcement period are larger for mergers which are successful though the gains are larger prior to 1969 merger bids after 1969 also significantly increase the wealth of bidding firms shareholders the results suggest that the inconclusive findings of the earlier studies may be due to methodological deficiencies the findings of this study are consistent with value maximizing behavior by the management of bidding firms

cyclic manufacturing necessary and sufficient conditions and minimum rate policy for environmental enhancement under growth uncertainty abstract economic development and rising consumption increase pressure on the environment sustainable production and consumption face the challenge of mitigating impacts under uncertainty in economic growth trade raw material availability and prices variable consumer behavior and technological innovation necessary and sufficient conditions and a minimum rate policy for environmental enhancement under uncertainty are presented they take into account variability in sales consumption in net product and material trade and in manufacturing technology and associated impacts three main criteria are considered k1 reduced final wastes k2 reduced extraction of virgin raw materials k3 reduced impacts from manufacturing the conditions are expressed in terms of the cycle rate which is the generalization of the recycle rate and of readily monitored product flows e g overall sales key advantages of the method are discussed a simplicity and flexibility to simulate different growth conditions b a readily determined standardized rate policy leading to reduced impacts in k1 k2 and k3 it is quantitatively established that for lower wastes uncertainty in growth compels increase of the cycle rate larger than a threshold related to sales for lower virgin material extraction the threshold includes net product material trade as well reduction of manufacturing impacts requires intensification of cleaner processes with adequately lower marginal impacts in periods of economic austerity the policy may be relaxed enhancement is achieved via lower rate targets it is concluded that cleaner production becomes all the more important as reuse recycle flows increase and that such innovation may avert environmental degradation from manufacturing even under significant growth

cash or condition evidence from a cash transfer experiment this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled cash or condition evidence from a cash transfer experiment conducted from 2008 to the end of 2009 in malawi the study observed the impact of conditionality in cash transfer programs with two distinct interventions unconditional transfers uct arm and transfers conditional on school attendance cct arm targeted at adolescent girls in malawi on individual level dropout rates declined in both treatment arms however the uct arm is 43 percent as large as the cct arm the fraction of days attended in the cct arm is significantly higher than the uct cognitive ability math and english scores significantly improve for the cct but not for the uct probability of pregnancy and marriage were much lower in the uct arm the delays in marriage and fertility in the uct arm are found entirely among adolescent girls who dropped out of school after the start of the intervention improvements in human capital for the recipients of the cct are achieved at the cost of worse outcomes for people who drop out of school funding for the study derived from the global development network bill and melinda gates foundation national bureau of economic research nber africa project world bank research support budget grant world bank knowledge for change trust fund world development report 2007 small grants fund spanish impact evaluation fund and gender action plan trust fund

on the timing of marriage cattle and weather shocks abstractin this paper we focus on the timing of marriage of women whose marriages are associated with bride wealth payments these payments concern transfers from the family of the groom to the bride s family unmarried daughters could therefore be considered part of the asset portfolio of the household that at times of need can be cashed we investigate both theoretically and empirically to what extent the timing of marriage of a daughter is affected by the economic conditions of the household from which she originates we distinguish household specific wealth levels and two types of shocks correlated weather shocks and idiosyncratic wealth shocks we estimate a duration model using a unique panel survey of zimbabwean smallholder farmers the estimation results support the hypothesis that the timing of marriage is affected by household characteristics girls from households that experienced a negative idiosyncratic wealth shock are more likely to marry

anticipation acquisitions and bidder returns industry shocks and the transfer of information across rivals we document market anticipation of merger bids and show that less anticipated bids earn significantly higher announcement returns subsequent bidders in the industry experience significant and positive abnormal returns around the time of initial industry bid announcements these results suggest that announcement period returns underestimate the wealth effects of bidding after accounting for anticipation bidding activity is on average a significant wealth creating event moreover bidders pursuing public targets increase shareholder wealth and bidders in stock swaps do not lose these results contradict conventional wisdom our results shed light on the correct magnitude of acquisition returns and on the transfer of information throughout an industry around the time of an economic shock the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

the environmental and economic consequences of product lifetime extension empirical analysis for automobile use abstract the present paper develops the product lifetime impact model to estimate the effects of both product lifetime shifts and related consumption pattern shifts on the environment and domestic economy the empirical analysis focused on car lifetime extension reveals that the consumption shifts scenario representing the case in which household consumption patterns shift from the waste intensive car to waste extensive services due to a 1 0 year car lifetime extension contributed to a gdp growth that amounted to approximately 2 billion yen and consequently compensated for the economic loss from a decline in car production the transition from the manufacturing products intensive society to the service intensive society caused by the 1 0 year car average lifetime extension led to a 200 thousand ton decrease in the waste landfill including the car shredder residuals during the five years of the study period 1990 1995

selling labor low wage responses to productivity shocks in developing countries productivity risk is pervasive in underdeveloped countries this paper highlights a way in which underdevelopment exacerbates productivity risk productivity shocks cause larger changes in the wage when workers are poorer less able to migrate and more credit constrained because of such workers inelastic labor supply this equilibrium wage effect hurts workers in contrast it acts as insurance for landowners agricultural wage data for 257 districts in india for 1956 87 are used to test the predictions with rainfall as an instrument for agricultural productivity in districts with fewer banks or higher migration costs the wage is much more responsive to fluctuations in productivity

toehold strategies takeover laws and rival bidders abstract prior to the announcement of a tender offer the bidding firm is legally allowed to acquire shares in the open market subject to some limitations these pre announcement purchases are known as toeholds this paper presents a simple model that describes the bidder s optimal toehold acquisition strategy within an environment that closely parallels the present legal institutions the model shows that toeholds and bids interact in a complex manner even without the presence of asymmetric information by examining a simple environment the paper provides a useful alternative hypothesis for tests of other presumably more complex models one of the main implications of our model is that if no competing bidders are expected no toeholds should be purchased the paper also demonstrates that the correct specification of an empirical model can be critical for example under some parameter values toehold purchases may exhibit a negative cross sectional correlation with the pre announcement run up in the stock price this occurs even though prices are strictly increasing the size of the toehold several implications concerning various aspects of merger legislation are considered for example we demonstrate that a rule similar to a fair price provision has the desirable property that a second bidder arrives and wins if and only if he places a higher value on the target than the initial bidder

the mode of acquisition in takeovers taxes and asymmetric information we develop a model in which the mode of acquisition conveys information concerning the value of the bidder the model incorporates the possibility that offers containing both cash and stock can be made in a setting consistent with the u s tax code we demonstrate that bidders with unfavorable private information about their equity value choose offers containing some stock to avoid the capital gains tax consequences of cash offers the model yields a number of unique predictions about the construction of acquisition offers we present evidence consistent with the model when one firm acquires another it can pay for the acquisition with cash stock or a combination of the two recent studies find that announcement returns to bidding firms who make cash offers are higher than when stock offers are made models consistent with this evidence note that as in myers and majluf 1984 a bidder with private information about the value of its assets only offers stock when its shares are overvalued by target shareholders recognizing this adverse selection target shareholders reduce their estimate of the bidder s value thus without some benefit in stock over cash as a means of payment a lemons problem arises for stock offers and bidders only choose cash offers our paper advances the use of stock in an offer through its tax advantages in the united states to realize the benefits available in nontaxable offers an offer must contain at least fifty percent stock thus when the bidder has private information about the value of its assets stock off6rs can still occur because of their tax advantage the intuition is as follows target holders can postpone the realization of capital gains when they receive stock in a takeover so other things equal they demand higher prices in cash takeovers while the offer of stock may have tax advantages the shares swapped are valued by the target as if they were offered by the average bidder making a stock offer thus a pool of higher private valuation bidder types choose cash offers in spite of the tax consequences a pool of lower private valuation types

the determinants of bank mergers a revealed preference analysis we provide new estimates of merger value creation by exploiting revealed preferences of merging banks within a matching market framework we find that merger value arises from cost efficiencies in overlapping markets relaxing of regulation and network effects exhibited by the acquirer target matching beyond our findings the revealed preference method has notable advantages that warrant its application beyond the bank merger market notably we show that the method outperforms reduced form alternatives out of sample enables sensible counterfactual experiments and can be used to evaluate private to private mergers which have been understudied because of lack of stock market data data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2015 2245 this paper was accepted by amit seru finance

markup pricing in mergers and acquisitions this paper studies the relation between the premiums in takeover bids involving exchange listed target firms from 1975 91 and the pre announcement stock price runups the evidence shows that the pre bid runup and the postannouncement increase in the target s stock price the markup are generally uncorrelated with little substitution between the runup and the markup the runup is an added cost to the bidder this finding has important implications for assessing the costs of insider trading it also raises interesting questions about the role of information from public capital markets in private takeover negotiations