mutual fund performance an analysis of quarterly portfolio holdings this article employs the 1975 84 quarterly holdings of a sample of mutual funds to construct an estimate of their gross returns this sample which is not subject to survivorship bias is used in conjunction with a sample that contains the actual net returns of the mutual funds in addition to allowing the authors to estimate the bias in measured performance that is due to the survival requirement and to estimate total transaction costs the sample is used to test for the existence of abnormal performance the tests indicate that the risk adjusted gross returns of some funds were significantly positive copyright 1989 by the university of chicago

understanding systemic analysis in the governance of sustainability transition in renewable energies the case of fuel cell technology in iran abstract considering the complex and evolutionary process of renewable energy development it is imperative to have a framework for its governance the governance of transition toward renewable energies can be divided conceptually into two phases namely systemic analysis and policy making this paper focuses on identifying different methodological steps in the systemic analysis phase these steps provide requisite inputs for the second phase policy making by attaining a concrete understanding of the current status in the first step the boundaries of the transition process are defined by specifying the unit of analysis and identifying the system s components and relations in the second step and in order to have a big picture of the system s transformation the dynamism of technological development is mapped through time in the third step an approach for analyzing and policy making of sustainability transition is chosen by comparing various approaches and selecting the most fitted one all of these methodological steps are finally applied in the case of the iran fuel cell technology development program to show the practicality of the proposed conceptual framework in a real case problem and to provide some insights for practitioners

approaches to risk and uncertainty in the appraisal of new technology capital projects abstract an important issue raised in the literature is that of management s attitude to risk and the somewhat subjective nature of taking risk into account in the investment appraisal of capital projects especially investments in new technology although managers are not completely ignorant of what the future holds investment decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty and as a result the cash flows used in the appraisal calculations are in themselves uncertain and present an element of risk this paper considers the nature and acceptable level of risk together with management s personal attitude to risk the state of the art techniques used in the identification and assessment of project risk are identified from current research

renewable energy partnerships in development cooperation towards a relational understanding of technical assistance abstract recent decades have witnessed a surge in international programmes established to assist the adoption of renewable energy technologies rets in low and lower middle income countries so far such programmes have yielded mixed success while partnerships between international national and local organisations have become the pre eminent model for ret programmes we know relatively little about their contribution this article traces the role of renewable energy partnerships in development cooperation shifting the analytical emphasis from barriers and drivers to key actors and their relationships it presents a relational approach for the analysis of development assistance for renewable energy drawing on theories concerning the role of strong and weak ties in inter organisational networks through an analysis of seven empirical cases from central america the article provides insights into how different forms of inter organisational relationships can facilitate implementation of ret programmes but do not necessarily enhance the capacities of local organisations in a way to support a more sustainable adoption of rets on the basis of this analysis theoretical and policy implications are given concerning the potential of relational approaches for researching technology diffusion processes and the role of strong and weak ties for the success or failure of renewable energy partnerships

values in the smart grid the co evolving political economy of smart distribution investing in smart grid infrastructure is a key enabler for the transition to low carbon energy systems recent work has characterised the costs and benefits of individual smart investments the political economy of the uk electricity system however has co evolved such that there is a mismatch between where benefits accrue and where costs are incurred leading to a problem of value capture and redeployment further some benefits of smart grids are less easy to price directly and can be classified as public goods such as energy security and decarbonisation this paper builds on systemic treatments of energy system transitions to characterise the co evolution of value capture and structural incentives in the electricity distribution system drawing on semi structured interviews and focus groups undertaken with smart grid stakeholders in the uk this leads to an identification of municipal scale values that may be important for business models for the delivery of smart infrastructure municipalities may thus pursue specific economic opportunities through smart grid investment this supports recent practical interest in an expanded role for municipalities as partners and investors in smart grid infrastructures 2014 the authors published by elsevier ltd this is an open access article under the cc by license

incentives and efficiency in the market for management services a study of canadian mutual funds this paper examines the incentives offered managers of canadian equity mutual funds when their compensation is based upon the market value of the assets they manage although this method of compensation supplies a very weak direct link between performance and the remuneration of managers we show that competition

technological discontinuities and the challenge for incumbent firms destruction disruption or creative accumulation the creative destruction of existing industries as a consequence of discontinuous technological change is a central theme in the literature on industrial innovation and technological development established competence based and market based explanations of this phenomenon argue that incumbents are seriously challenged only by competence destroying or disruptive innovations which make their existing knowledge base or business models obsolete and leave them vulnerable to attacks from new entrants this paper challenges these arguments with detailed empirical analyses of the automotive and gas turbine industries we demonstrate that these explanations overestimate the ability of new entrants to destroy and disrupt established industries and underestimate the capacity of incumbents to perceive the potential of new technologies and integrate them with existing capabilities moreover we show how intense competition in the wake of technological discontinuities driven entirely by incumbents may instead result in late industry shakeouts we develop and extend the notion of creative accumulation as a way of conceptualizing the innovating capacity of the incumbents that appear to master such turbulence specifically we argue that creative accumulation requires firms to handle a triple challenge of simultaneously a fine tuning and evolving existing technologies at a rapid pace b acquiring and developing new technologies and resources and c integrating novel and existing knowledge into superior products and solutions

towards improved policy processes for promoting innovation in renewable electricity technologies in the uk this paper analyses recent current and potential future relations between policy processes and substantive outcomes in uk low carbon innovation policy focussing on policies relating to renewable electricity generation technologies it examines the development of policy processes relating to the adoption and implementation of the renewables obligation and how these may affect the current and likely future success of the obligation in promoting low carbon innovation it examines the new policy and institutional processes put in place in the 2003 energy white paper and argues that these are unlikely to provide the strategic long term framework needed to realise the ambitious goals for uk energy policy set out in the white paper finally it outlines some suggestions for further development of policy processes to facilitate improved delivery of these goals based on guiding principles for sustainable innovation policy processes developed by the authors and their colleagues

the transformation of technological regimes abstract this article explores how the transformation of technological regimes is enabled and constrained by sectoral patterns of innovation four innovation patterns are distinguished the supplier dependent the user driven the mission oriented and the r d dependent innovation pattern on the basis of a multiple case it is shown that there are distinct differences between how these four innovation patterns enable and constrain the transformation of technological regimes and in the degree to which they do so it is further shown that innovation patterns sometimes enable the development and acceptance of innovations that radically deviate from existing regimes and may help to transform such regimes the implications for the management of technology are discussed

a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy this paper proposes a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy based on the coevolution of ecosystems technologies institutions business strategies and user practices within a multi level micro meso macro perspective this builds on and develops previous coevolutionary analyses of long term technological and industrial change and recent renewed interest within ecological economics on coevolutionary approaches previous work has analysed how the coevolution of technologies and institutions has led to the lock in of current high carbon energy systems and how the coevolution of physical and social technologies and business strategies has brought significant material and welfare benefits to the minority of the world s population living in industrialised countries the coevolutionary framework proposed here may be used to undertake 1 detailed empirical analyses at a micro meso level of the challenges relating to the innovation and adoption of particularly low carbon technologies 2 as a framework for analysing the multi level interaction of social and technological elements within potential transition pathways to a low carbon energy system 3 to assess the implications for economic growth and prosperity of a transition to a low carbon economy and 4 to assist in the development of more formal multi level evolutionary economic models

identifying barriers in the diffusion of renewable energy sources abstract rapid diffusion of renewable energy sources res in the electricity power sector is crucial if the eu wants to fulfill its 2050 co2 reduction commitments for this reason identifying and alleviating all barriers that hinder the development of res is necessary to the successful deployment of these technologies this paper discusses the main barriers in the diffusion of wind and photovoltaic pv solar power in the greek electricity sector by drawing on the literature of technological innovation systems and system functions furthermore we provide an explanation of the different diffusion rates between the two technologies inadequate financial resources low grid capacity delays in the issuance of building permits opposition from local communities to the construction of wind farms and the lack of a stable institutional framework are among the most important barriers that inhibit the diffusion of the wind and pv solar power the nature of the barriers identified in this study calls for policy intervention

regulating technological change the strategic reactions of utility companies towards subsidy policies in the german spanish and uk electricity markets abstract this paper focuses on how incumbent electric utilities strategically react to subsidy schemes supporting renewable energy technologies in the uk germany and spain firms coordinate the development of their technological capabilities and their political activities to shape their regulatory environment analysing the diffusion of wind power in these countries we show that the different ways in which firms coordinate their technological and political strategies lead to very different market outcomes both for the firms market share and the size of the overall market although incumbents are usually seen as being resistant to change in energy systems we show that spanish utilities proactively drive the diffusion of wind power we speculate about the relation between the ownership structure of the energy system and its inertia with respect to the integration of new technologies we derive novel policy implications that explicitly take into account the strategic actions of incumbent firms shaping the technological and regulatory system

the role of intermediaries in low carbon transitions empowering innovations to unlock district heating in the uk abstract the literature on socio technical transitions considers how technological innovations can be established within the context of an incumbent regime that is often resistant or inflexible to change strategic niche management is an approach to catalysing a transition to a new regime using protected niche spaces to enable development and experimentation with an innovation intermediary actors play an important role in establishing these niches as they facilitate knowledge sharing and build the wider networks and systems needed to support an innovation the influence of intermediaries within socio technical transitions and strategic niche management is still an under researched area in this paper we use a decision theatre research process to collect empirical evidence from a range of local stakeholders involved in establishing new district heating projects in the united kingdom uk this method carried out in a group workshop format enables understanding of the interactions between stakeholders throughout the stages of the district heating development process the study suggests that intermediaries can play a role in supporting niche empowering processes the existing institutional framework surrounding intermediary actors and the geographical scale at which they work within that framework are shown to be influential on actors agency to choose their approach to empowering an innovation the work highlights the potential for intermediaries to support the restructuring of this institutional framework to enable more radical stretch and transform empowering activities

risks and tensions in water industry innovation understanding adoption of decentralised water systems from a socio technical transitions perspective abstract globally centralised urban water systems are under pressure to respond to environmental and economic pressures in australia high infrastructure costs and variable rainfall have prompted governments end users and property developers to begin investing in more decentralised systems that use alternative water sources rainwater stormwater and wastewater this trend is based on a fit for purpose principle and is part of a global shift toward sustainable urban water management these developments suggest that australia s urban water sector may be in the early stages of transition and represent a multi decadal shift from centralisation of water supply and sanitation to partial decentralisation based on local conditions much of the scholarship on decentralised systems focuses on drivers and barriers to adoption which implies a static and mechanistic process of change and overlooks the complex interplay between exogenous pressures innovation multiple actors and industry reform this paper addresses this gap by analysing temporal processes of australia s urban water sector using a regionally based case study comprising an historical review and interview study that analyses the multi level decadal and actor developments at the nexus between water service provision and property development the analysis revealed emerging tensions between incumbent water utilities property developers and end users and an inherent conflict between neo liberal and environmental policy agendas such tensions and conflicts are missing from urban water policy and research discourse

entrapment in large technology systems institutional commitment and power relations abstract large technology systems cannot be developed without social commitments usually including legal especially in the form of contracts organisational involving producers users and financiers and political involving various actors associated with the state commitments without such commitments there can be no innovation and no investment given the high risks that are entailed however embedded commitments can create inertia causing inferior technologies and technology paths to survive long after they should have been abandoned this form of technological lock in may be reinforced when there are close relations between producers and states which prevent markets and democratic processes from operating effectively these phenomena are illustrated through study of the thermal oxide reprocessing plant thorp a nuclear reprocessing plant in the uk the lesson for technology policy is that much more attention needs to be given to the maintenance of reversibility and adaptability in infrastructural development

the enactment of socio technical transition pathways a reformulated typology and a comparative multi level analysis of the german and uk low carbon electricity transitions 1990 2014 abstract this paper aims to make two contributions to the sustainability transitions literature in particular the geels and schot 2007 res policy 36 3 399 transition pathways typology first it reformulates and differentiates the typology through the lens of endogenous enactment identifying the main patterns for actors formal institutions and technologies second it suggests that transitions may shift between pathways depending on struggles over technology deployment and institutions both contributions are demonstrated with a comparative analysis of unfolding low carbon electricity transitions in germany and the uk between 1990 2014 the analysis shows that germany is on a substitution pathway enacted by new entrants deploying small scale renewable electricity technologies rets while the uk is on a transformation pathway enacted by incumbent actors deploying large scale rets further analysis shows that the german transition has recently shifted from a stretch and transform substitution pathway to a fit and conform pathway because of a fightback from utilities and altered institutions it also shows that the uk transition moved from moderate to substantial incumbent reorientation as government policies became stronger recent policy changes however substantially downscaled uk renewables support which is likely to shift the transition back to weaker reorientation

exploring the dynamics of water innovation foundations for water innovation studies the urgent need for innovation to address multifaceted and intertwined water related challenges is becoming increasingly clear acknowledged and responded to with cumulating sources and amounts of funding nevertheless the water sector has been claimed to be less innovative than other sectors this special volume on the dynamics of water innovation is based on the realization that in general there is a striking absence of academic studies on the dynamics of water innovation this sv is therefore designed to lay the foundations for the field of water innovation studies in an effort to integrate the emerging insights together the contributions in this sv capture the current understanding of the dynamics of water innovation and provide insights into how the water innovation process can be fostered the purpose of this introductory article is threefold namely to frame the discussion on water innovation dynamics in order to contextualise the contributions of this sv to provide systematic guidance for studying water innovation dynamics and to suggest the way forward for water innovation studies it captures the extent of the field of water innovation studies with a review of the literature of the last three decades and frames water innovations based on five decades of innovation research and drawing on three areas management strategy and policy we provide an innovation studies taxonomy that consists of four organising dimensions type of innovation stage of innovation level of analysis and measurement this taxonomy enables researchers to study the dynamics of water innovation from different combinations of conceptual and thematic angles drawing on the field of innovation studies in a systematic fashion finally we reflect on the way forward for water innovation studies with suggestions for future research 2017 the authors

the verticality of policy mixes for sustainability transitions a case study of solar water heating in china abstract climate change and sustainable development are the defining challenges of the modern era the field of sustainability transitions seeks systematic solutions for fundamental transformations of socio technical systems towards sustainability and exploring the role of policy mixes has been a central research agenda within the field in the extant literature there exists a lack of both conceptual and empirical research on the vertical dimension of policy mixes for sustainability transitions this study provides a multilevel and evolutionary interpretation of the vertical interactions of policy mixes in the process of industrial path development towards sustainability transitions an exemplary case of solar water heating swh technology in shandong province in china is presented capturing both the bottom up and top down processes of interactions on the one hand urban level policy initiatives can inform higher level policymaking on the other hand national level priorities can greatly configure policy strategies for lower level governments moreover as the industry matures the interactions of multilevel policy mixes evolve from simpler unidirectional patterns to more complex bidirectional ones through a vertical policy learning feedback mechanism this study generates two important policy implications that extend beyond the chinese context first dynamic vertical interactions between multilevel governments indicate the need to develop more nuanced perspectives on the design of policy mixes second policy makers need to hold a more dynamic view of policy mixes by recognizing their temporal and coevolutionary nature through the policy learning process

the governance of sustainable socio technical transitions a quasi evolutionary model of socio technical transitions is described in which regimes face selection pressures continuously differentiated transition contexts determine the form and direction of regime change in response to these pressures the articulation of pressures and the degree to which responses are coordinated and based on resources available within the regime define the transition context four alternative contexts are described endogenous renewal re orientation of trajectories emergent transformation and purposive transitions agency and power in the governance of regime transformation are analysed power to affect change depends on regime membership the distribution of resources for change and expectations

market timing and mutual fund performance an empirical investigation the evaluation of investment performance is of importance for allocating investment funds efficiently and setting appropriate management fees because actively managed mutual funds are an important form of investment in the united states a valid question is whether the active management has achieved a sufficient increase in returns to offset the associated costs of information and transactions as well as the management fees charged as a corollary the ability to earn superior returns based on superior forecasting ability would be a violation of the efficient markets hypothesis and would have far reaching implications for the theory of finance 2 henriksson and merton 1981 present statistical techniques for testing forecasting ability with a particular emphasis on the market timing ability of investment managers the tests are derived from the basic model of market timing developed by merton 1981 where the forecaster predicts when stocks will outperform riskless securities and when riskless securities will outperform stocks but does not predict the magnitude of the relative returns the evaluation of the performance of investment managers is a topic of considerable interest to practitioners and academics alike using both the parametric and nonparametric tests for the evaluation of forecasting ability presented by henriksson and merton the market timing ability of 116 open end mutual funds is evaluated for the period 1968 80 the empirical results do not support the hypothesis that mutual fund managers are able to follow an investment strategy that successfully times the return on the market portfolio

towards sustainable household consumption exploring a practice oriented participatory backcasting approach for sustainable home heating practices in ireland current attempts to encourage sustainable consumption are failing to make significant advancements and consumption by households in daily practices continues to grow interventions in this area are often based on simplistic behavioural assumptions which overlook the embeddedness of daily consumption practices and fail to challenge escalating consumption demands and expectations against this background there is a need to consider more radical socio cultural technological and organisational innovations that may fulfil the goals of daily practices more sustainably in the future taking the case of home heating the most energy intensive practice in irish households this paper reports on a participatory backcasting study that developed future scenarios and action plans for sustainable heating in contrast to conventional behavioural change models and forecasting techniques this study adopted a social practice orientation this paper focuses on the operationalisation of the social practice approach with special reference to the iterative processes around scenario development and the resultant backcasting outputs participant evaluations of the procedure are presented which indicate that despite significant operational complexity the process was strongly valued and provided significant opportunity for learning amongst stakeholders involved whether such approaches can be integrated into governing systems however will depend on a willingness amongst stakeholders to embrace a radical reconceptualisation of behaviour

differential information and performance measurement using a security market line an uninformed observer using the tools of mean variance and security market line analysis to measure the performance of a portfolio manager who has superior information is unlikely to be able to make any reliable inferences while some positive results of a very limited nature are possible e g when there is a riskless asset or when information is restricted to be security specific in general anything is possible in particular a manager with superior information can appear to the observer to be below or above the security market line and inside or outside of the mean variance efficient frontier and any combination of these is possible mean variance theory predicts that if we plot expected returns against beta coefficients all securities plot on a single line known as the security market line sml since fpi the beta coefficient for security i is interpreted as a measure of the riskiness of security i the market line is a graphical representation of the linear relationship between risk and return what are we to make of deviations from the sml i e of securities or managed portfolios that do not plot on such a line if we can retain our intuitive interpretation of fj as the riskiness of asset i and the market line as the appropriate expected return needed to reward agents taking on various degrees of risk then vertical deviations from the market line represent abnormal returns that differ from what is merited this paper and the companion piece dybvig and ross 10 explore in detail the validity of this intuition and the question of what sml deviations really measure the companion piece analyzes sml deviations caused by the choice of an inefficient market or reference portfolio in this paper we analyze sml deviations caused by superior performance based on superior information the intuitive explanation of deviations from the sml has motivated many

emerging innovation niches an agent based model the creation of an innovation niche depends on the interaction of three mechanisms involving converging expectations networking among the innovation actors and learning about the novelty through efficient knowledge creation and diffusion such mechanisms define the key characteristics of a network of firms i e the innovation niche and the interaction among them guides the development and diffusion of a new technology in this paper we propose an agent based model to investigate the dynamics characterising such interactions and the role that policy intervention can have in governing the niche development process specifically we consider and assess the impact of two policy actions 1 increasing actors expectations towards the new technology by means of information spreading and 2 providing subsidies aimed at stimulating technological switch our results confirm the importance of policy intervention and show the dominance of information spreading activities over subsidies the former policy action in fact preserves a broad consensus around the new technology a fact which turned out to be fundamental in order to promote efficient knowledge diffusion and the effective use of individual and network resources

decarbonising the power sector via technological change differing contributions from heterogeneous firms abstract in the power sector technological change is a key lever to address the decarbonisation needed to avoid dangerous climate change policy makers aim to accelerate and redirect technological change by targeting relevant firms via climate policy e g the european union emissions trading system eu ets and climate relevant technology policies e g feed in tariffs changes in firm s behaviour i e their research and development r d as well as diffusion activities are at the heart of technological change however firms are heterogeneous actors with varying attributes which perceive policy differently hence they can be expected to react very heterogeneously to these new policies based on an original dataset of 201 firms we perform a cluster analysis grouping firms along their r d and diffusion activity changes we then compare these clusters with regards to the characteristics of the contained firms our analysis results in seven clusters showing very diverse contributions to low carbon technological change suggesting potential for policy to become more effective a comparison of the firms characteristics allows us to derive indicative recommendations on how to adjust the policy mix in order to induce contributions from most firms in the power sector

efficiency with costly information a study of mutual fund performance 1965 1984 if information is costly to collect and implement then it is efficient for trades by informed investors to occur at prices sufficiently different from full information prices to compensate them for the cost of becoming informed this notion is tested by evaluating investment performance in the mutual fund industry over a 20 year period the study finds evidence that is consistent with optimal trading in efficient markets risk adjusted returns in the mutual fund industry net of fees and expenses are comparable to returns available in index funds and portfolio turnover and management fees are unrelated to fund performance

measuring investment performance in a rational expectations equilibrium model much research has been concerned with evaluating the performance of managed portfolios e g mutual funds and examining whether portfolio managers display in some sense superior performance superior performance would seemingly turn on the possession of superior information that is utilized in managing portfolios in general a fund s asset holdings or portfolio weights might not be observable to an outsider whether they are or not however they are likely to change over time this happens especially when better performance is a result of superior information since managers will change their portfolio composition on obtaining private information since such changes must be taken into account the problem of measuring performance of managed portfolios is inherently different from that of evaluating the performance of individual assets groups of assets or generally portfolios with constant and known composition

on relative performance contracts and fund manager s incentives abstract for pension schemes mutual funds banks and other financial intermediaries large portfolio decisions are increasingly delegated to fund managers recently there has been growing concern that these managers seem to adopt extremely similar investment strategies one possible explanation for this phenomenon may be found in reward schemes based on relative performance we show how relative performance reward schemes may arise as optimal contracts our focus is the fund owners fund manager relationship in which the manager before making a portfolio decision on behalf of the owners may acquire at some cost information that is not available to the owners payment schemes based on relative performance afford the owners tighter control of their manager s activities however if two managers of different funds both accept contracts that depend on their relative as well as absolute performances then there may exist equilibria in the managers subgame that result in undesirable outcomes for the owners

a hard nut to crack implementing supply chain sustainability in an emerging economy abstract in the last decade sustainable supply chain management has become a key topic in the sustainability literature as well as a buzzword in industry and policy circles although research has made substantial contributions there is a lack of understanding on how focal companies operating in emerging economies can lead the implementation of sustainability into their supply chains this research connects and advances the constructs of cleaner production sustainability and supply chains by exploring a classic case of a focal company operating in an emerging economy that even facing considerable challenges has been able to succeed in transforming its entire supply chain drawing from stakeholder theory and contingency theory this research offers four key contributions to the sustainability and supply chain discourses as follows 1 it proposes an innovation centered approach to sustainable supply chain management by adapting and extending the tcos uncertainty framework 2 it suggests that the way a focal company manages and is influenced by its established network of relationships shape the evolution of the supply chain sustainability trajectories 3 it argues that supply chains are dynamic entities and should then be considered and understood through the lenses of evolutionary approaches and 4 it suggests that the implementation and management of sustainable supply chains are context specific challenges and therefore theoretical managerial and policy generalizations are difficult to be achieved

socio technical analysis of the electricity sector of mexico its historical evolution and implications for a transition towards low carbon development abstract the electricity sector of mexico has been found itself in continuous transitions since its beginning in the 19th century however the historical reform to the sector that recently took place together with new energy market configurations around the globe may pose an important challenge to transitioning towards a low carbon sector the work presented here was aimed at understanding in a qualitative manner the complex interactions between the main social technical and environmental aspects that have guided the sector in the past their influence on the current structure and its future development through the application of the multi level perspective mlp with a governance and agency perspective additionally the work tried to elucidate the implications of the incumbent position of the natural gas industry and the possibilities for low carbon technologies the conclusions remark the importance of previous sector configurations in the present structure the important role of government in promoting low carbon technologies together with investment by market actors and the possible window of opportunity that the natural gas industry in mexico may provide to low carbon energy technologies

sustainable energy projects and the community mapping single building use of microgeneration technologies in london microgeneration technologies offer the potential for distributed energy supply and consumption resulting in reduced reliance on centralised generation adoption of microgeneration for use in community settings is usually understood as having a beneficial contribution to sustainable development this is particularly relevant in urban environments which present specific challenges relating to the heterogeneity of building and land use small scale installations in buildings also appear to offer technological flexibility at the human level necessary for local participation in shaping the direction of sustainable development this paper reports on a project concerned with identifying on site energy generation projects in greater london a database was compiled comprising renewable and energy efficient microgeneration installations in multi occupancy buildings the relationships between each project and its associated organisations are mapped as a social network which illustrates the heterogeneity of technologies and actors involved as well as the flows of funding and expertise the structure of the resulting networks indicates a lack of participation by social or not for profit groups who are traditionally identified as community level actors the findings indicate that large institutional actors on the supply side may become regarded as renewable energy experts hence there is a need to consider how the concept of community level actors in urban microgeneration projects is applicable to local government and commercial organisations

a new pragmatic approach to capital investment appraisal the financial appraisal profile fap model abstract evidence is produced to support the claim that management have not fully accepted the advice of academics in the use of sophisticated capital investment appraisal methods with managers continuing to use the non dcf methods alongside the irr and npv the concern that some managers may even abandon formal financial and project risk assessment altogether has lead to the development of a new profile approach the financial appraisal profile fap model is described in detail and illustrated through the use of an illustrative case study

destination unknown pursuing sustainable mobility in the face of rival societal aspirations abstract a growing volume of scholarship and policy practice focuses on developing societal capacity to guide transitions of socio technical systems toward more sustainable alternatives because several prominent modes of transportation are widely regarded as systemically problematic the notion of sustainable mobility has received considerable attention from the standpoint of system innovation sustainability though constitutes only one of many contemporary political objectives and public commitment to goals consistent with such a future is highly equivocal a related challenge arises from the ambivalence that sustainability champions often harbor on an individual level it is probable that efforts to facilitate sustainable mobility will need to be reconciled with rival societal aspirations such as the pursuit of faster and more convenient forms of travel drawing on insights from the multi level perspective this article contrasts the relatively static automobility system with its more dynamic aeromobility counterpart and explores why evidence of an incipient transition is more apparent within the realm of aviation in particular the diffusion of personal aeromobility involving the use of small airplanes for on demand point to point air travel raises perplexing questions for the governance of sustainable mobility

niche accumulation and hybridisation strategies in transition processes towards a sustainable energy system an assessment of differences and pitfalls this paper assesses two patterns in transition processes for using them as strategies towards a sustainable energy system i e niche accumulation and hybridisation both play important but different roles in transitions the expected success of these strategies depends on the innovation s history and the innovation context the different strategies are illustrated with several examples from the energy domain

implications of the sharpe ratio as a performance measure in multi period settings we study efiects of using sharpe ratio as a performance measure for compensating money managers in a dynamic and frictionless market setting first we demonstrate that with such a performance measure the manager s focus on the short horizon performance is detrimental to the investor s long horizon performance numerical experiments illustrate that when returns are iid the performance loss is signiflcant even when the investor s investment horizon is not much longer than the manager s when expected returns are mean reverting the performance loss is exacerbated second we show that sharpe ratio maximization strategies tend to increase decrease the risk in the later part of the optimization period after a bad good performance in the earlier part of the optimization period as illustrated by a simulation exercise this prediction is in agreement with empirical observations and it presents a rational expectations alternative to the prevalent tournament theory explanation

the payback method of investment appraisal a review and synthesis abstract the payback pb method of investment appraisal has been the subject of considerable comment and criticism in the literature this paper draws together some of those important literature contributions and the results from published uk and usa survey reports over the past twenty five years while many of the surveys have reported an increasing use of the discounted cash flow financial appraisal methods this has not totally been at the expense of the pb which continues to be a popular method used in industry pb has been shown to be a traditional popular primary and important method in both the uk and usa the use of pb has been shown to be positively related to capital budget size however the importance of pb was seen to be inversely related to capital budget size the use of pb has been shown by some researchers to be positively related to firm size while other researchers have reported that its use is inversely related to firm size however it has also been concluded that the use of pb was not significantly influenced by firm size pb has been shown to be less used for strategically important projects than routine replacement projects in moderately sized usa firms while on the other hand it has been shown to be an important method used in the appraisal of advanced manufacturing technology amt projects in both the uk and usa this paper reviews the pb method of investment appraisal as used in industry first as a technique identifying two of its main disadvantages and then commenting on the discounted payback method evidence showing that the pb acts in a supportive role to the sophisticted dcf methods is presented and the following topics are discussed in detail pb and owner manager conflict as a constraint in its communication role as a reciprocal of the internal rate of return as a proxy for a projects duration and pb and amt projects following the conclusions recommendations for further research are proposed

complementary system perspectives in ecological macroeconomics the example of transition investments during the crisis globally societies are facing a number of interrelated environmental economic and social crises this paper is intended to contribute to the development of an ecological macroeconomics that addresses these multiple crises in combination insights from different research communities will be included in this effort taking an ecological economic understanding of sustainability as the point of departure and inspired by systems thinking it is discussed which economic sub systems should be in focus for sustainability transitions and whether relevant guides for sustainability can be formulated for these systems in particular the focus is on systems that are decisive for resource consumption and pollution although their influence on these is indirect a simple typology of sub systems is suggested and applied in relation to an example that highlights the importance of the interplay between macroeconomic provision and distribution systems the example concerns investments in sustainability transitions of provision systems and demonstrates the complexities of implementing such transformations during the economic crisis it also addresses the need for ecological macroeconomics to develop a third position beyond austerity policies and keynesian approaches

getting round the lock in in electricity generating systems the example of the gas turbine abstract the purpose of this paper is to show how in a situation of lock in in the environment of electricity generation a new technology can succeed in overcoming this situation and become competitive our study will show that it is possible to get round the lock in by bringing into play the increasing returns of adoption in particular production niches where the existence of powerful constraints of techno economic consistency leads to a path of increasing specification then a hybridization of the competing technologies will allow the new technology to emerge from the original niche and take advantage of the increasing returns of adoption which were hitherto the reserve of the former technology we shall then draw lessons from the example of the gas turbine in comparison with the basic model of b arthur

spatial processes in urban energy transitions considering an assemblage of socio energetic nodes urban and energy transitions are increasingly seen as being deeply intertwined the way this relation impacts our approach to energy transition is a current issue for research implementing renewable energy sources in built up areas challenges incumbent supply chains and large technical systems especially for electricity gas and heat approaches to transition such as the multi level perspective mlp highlight the transformation of socio technical regimes but have been criticised for overstating stability of regime and for overlooking spatial and consequently urban processes other concepts are required in order to understand local and non local relationships between niches and regimes this paper suggests a constructivist and pragmatic concept for urban energy transition the socio energetic node sen thanks to which actors and artefacts can be traced within energy networks the sen is a group of elements which collects converts and or supplies energy built by a decision maker interacting with stakeholders and regime rules having identified sens in four french eco districts we observed how they took shape around continuous energy flows and across decision making boundaries highlighting how spatial scale and place specificity impact on energy transition

career concerns of mutual fund managers we examine the labor market for mutual fund managers using data from 1992 1994 we find that termination is more performance sensitive for younger managers we identify possible implicit incentives created by the termination performance relationship the shape of the termination performance relationship may give younger managers an incentive to avoid unsystematic risk direct effects of portfolio composition may also give younger managers an incentive to herd into popular sectors consistent with these incentives we find that younger managers hold less unsystematic risk and have more conventional portfolios promotion incentives and market responses to managerial turnover are also studied

normative contestation in transitions in the making animal welfare concerns and system innovation in pig husbandry previous studies of system innovations mainly focused on historical cases that were driven by commercial motivations of pioneers and entrepreneurs this article investigates a system innovation in the making that is driven by normative concerns such as sustainability or animal welfare initially formulated by outsiders like special interest groups our central research question is how when and why is normative contestation of existing regimes effective in influencing the orientation of transitions in the making the conceptual framework enriches innovation studies and the multi level perspective with insights from social movement theory smt and political science smt is used to analyze the build up of normative pressure through framing resource mobilization and political opportunity structures from political science we use the notion of multiple streams in our analysis a problem regulatory market and technology stream the research design consists of a comparative case study of pig husbandry systems one case analyses the sub sector of pregnant sows where normative pressures after several decades led to the changes advocated by the contestants the second case concerns the sub sector of pig fattening where normative pressure was less successful the difference is partly explained by the normative pressure for pregnant sows being larger than for fattening pigs the other part of the explanation is that in the first case normative pressure aligned better with the three other streams regulatory market and technology to lead to the changes desired by the contestants 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the structuration of socio technical regimes conceptual foundations from institutional theory abstract in recent years socio technical transitions literature has gained importance in addressing long term transformative change in various industries in order to account for the inertia and path dependency experienced in these sectors the concept of the socio technical regime has been formulated socio technical regimes denote the paradigmatic core of a sector which results from the co evolution of institutions and technologies over time despite its widespread acceptance the regime concept has repeatedly been criticized for lacking a clear operationalization as a consequence empirical applications tend to depict regimes as too monolithic and homogenous not adequately considering persistent institutional tensions and contradictions these are however crucial for assessing transition dynamics in this paper we revisit two concepts from institutional theory that enable an explicit identification of socio technical regimes and more generally a specification of the semi coherence of socio technical systems first we will show that levels of structuration can be conceptualized as degrees of institutionalization thereby treating institutionalization as a variable with different effects on actors the stability of the system and thus the potential for change secondly we draw on the institutional logics approach to characterize the content of various structural elements present in a system and to trace conflicts and contradictions between them we illustrate this approach with an empirical in depth analysis of the transformation of the australian urban water sector since the 1970ies

the hygienic transition from cesspools to sewer systems 1840 1930 the dynamics of regime transformation this article addresses the topic of transition and system change and proposes endogenous regime transformation as alternative transition path to technological substitution using sociological and institutional insights the dynamics of regime transformation are conceptualised two characteristics are pressure from outsider groups and adjustments in cognitions norms and formal rules enacted by regime insiders the transformation perspective is illustrated with a historical case study the hygienic transition from cesspools to integrated sewer systems in the netherlands the case study is used to make additions to the transformation perspective particularly with regard to tactical and strategic games

managing electric power system transition in china abstract this research studies the low carbon transition of the electric power sector in china using a multi level perspective mlp of niches socio technical regime and landscape as well as literature on innovation systems three lines of thought on transition process are integrated in the paper to probe the possible transition pathways in china a mlp analysis is presented to understand the current niches regime and landscape of china s power sector a brief analysis on the future macroscopic socio economic transition in the process of industrialization urbanization and modernization of chinese society and its implication on power landscape are depicted to prove the urgency and magnitude of transition in china and why systematic transition management is needed five transition pathways namely reproduction transformation substitution reconfiguration de alignment re alignment and reconfiguration with their possible technology options are presented the paper goes further to propose an interactive framework for managing the transition to a low carbon energy system in china representative technology options are appraised by employing innovation theory to indicate the logic of policymaking within the framework institutional gaps in realizing the transition are also addressed the work presented in the paper will be useful in informing policy makers and other stakeholders and may provide references for power sector transition management in other countries

deep transitions emergence acceleration stabilization and directionality abstract industrial society has not only led to high levels of wealth and welfare in the western world but also to increasing global ecological degradation and social inequality the socio technical systems that underlay contemporary societies have substantially contributed to these outcomes this paper proposes that these socio technical systems are an expression of a limited number of meta rules that for the past 250 years have driven innovation and hence system evolution in a particular direction thereby constituting the first deep transition meeting the cumulative social and ecological consequences of the overall direction of the first deep transition would require a radical change not only in socio technical systems but also in the meta rules driving their evolution the second deep transition this paper develops a new theoretical framework that aims to explain the emergence acceleration stabilization and directionality of deep transitions it does so through the synthesis of two literatures that have attempted to explain large scale and long term socio technical change the multi level perspective mlp on socio technical transitions and techno economic paradigm tep framework

expense ratios of north american mutual funds the average expense ratio paid by canadian mutual fund investors is 50 higher than that paid in the united states this discrepancy is commonly thought to exist because canadian funds do not take advantage of economies of scale and have less competition a monopolistic competition framework is used to develop a model for the mutual fund industry by allowing each fund to have different attributes the model permits funds to charge different expense ratios in equilibrium and is found to strongly fit the north american mutual fund market empirical analysis indicates that these two common explanations and measurable fund attributes account for 24 of the discrepancy jel classification l11 l13 and g15 les ratios de depenses des fonds mutuels nord americains le taux moyen de depenses payees par les investisseurs canadiens dans les fonds mutuels sont de 50 plus elevees que celles qu on paie aux etats unis cet ecart est attribued habitude au fait que les fonds canadiens ne tirent pas profit des economies d echelle et qu il y a moins de concurrence au canada on utilise un modele de concurrence monopolistique pour analyser l industrie des fonds mutuels en permettant achaque fond d avoir certains attributs le modele permet aux fonds de charger des taux de depenses differents en equilibre il semble que cela corresponde aux caracteristiques du marchedes fonds mutuels americains une analyse empirique montre que les deux explications usuelles et les attributs mesurables des fonds expliquent 24 de l ecart

current challenges of germany s energy transition project and competing strategies of challengers and incumbents the case of direct marketing of electricity from renewable energy sources electricity generated by renewable energies res e already accounts for 25 of germany s electricity supply this has led to recent discussions for a better market integration of res e the paper examines how competing actors and their ideas on market integration developed new services for direct marketing according to their respective origins and tried to shape the regulatory framework the paper analyses this process and explains the current shape of the field of direct marketing medium sized structured actors who favoured res e integration via the conventional wholesale power markets and who formed early close coalitions with res e power producers at the same time have been most successful in terms of market shares moreover they have been very successful for different reasons in building up coalitions with governance units and influencing the field rules and routines based on those findings the paper will conclude with some policy advices for the future adjustment of the current regulative frameworks as long as there is no evidence of how res e can be integrated most effectively and efficiently policies should maintain a competition between different direct marketing strategies to find out which strategies serve the best in terms of achieving a successful energy transition

the two faces of market support how deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry the recent years have seen a strong rise in policies aiming to increase the diffusion of clean energy technologies while there is general agreement that such deployment policies have been very effective in bringing technologies to the market it is less understood how these policies affect technological innovation to shed more light on this important question we conducted comparative case studies with a global sample of 9 firms producing solar photovoltaic pv modules complemented by in depth interviews with 16 leading pv industry experts we propose that on the one hand policy induced market growth serves as an important catalyst for innovative activity as it raises the absolute level of firm investments in technological exploration on the other hand however deployment policies create an incentive for firms pursuing more mature technologies to shift their balance between exploitation and exploration toward exploitation firms focusing on less mature technologies cannot tap the potentials of exploitative learning to the same extent as those with more mature technologies therefore stimulating strong market growth may raise the barrier to market entry for less mature technologies we conclude that when designing deployment policies great care should be taken to avoid adverse effects on technological diversity and a premature lock in into more established technologies

market timing selectivity and mutual fund performance an empirical investigation this article empirically examines market timing and selectivity performance of a sample of mutual funds it uses a very simple regression technique to separate stock selection ability from timing ability this technique first suggested by treynor and mazuy and later refined by bhattacharya and pfleiderer uses a modified security market line approach to produce individual measures of timing and stock selection ability the inputs to the model are only the returns earned on the fund and those earned on the market portfolio the empirical results indicate that at the individual fund level there is some evidence of superior micro and macroforecasting ability on the part of the fund manager copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

mobilizing private finance for low carbon innovation a systematic review of barriers and solutions this paper analyses the field of innovation studies regarding barriers to low carbon innovation and consequences for finance investment and divestment and contributes to a more holistic understanding of the underlying mechanisms a combination of technological barriers combined with economic barriers institutional and political barriers contribute to sub optimal low carbon investment all along the innovation cycle policy makers need to take a systemic approach to enable the redirection of diverse private financial sources instruments range from cutting dirty r d subsidies and support for clean technology innovation and diffusion levelling the institutional playing field and making risks of high carbon and low carbon technologies transparent to providing a consistent but adaptive long term transition strategy this would allow financiers to gradually shift their investments away from high carbon mainstream markets and scale low carbon technology niche markets however financiers also need to sharpen their competencies with regard to new clean technologies and markets

socio technical barriers to the use of energy efficient timber drying technology in new zealand abstract this study of industrial energy behaviours identifies barriers to the use of energy efficient drying technology in the new zealand timber industry and explores these barriers through the energy cultures lens vented kiln dryers were preferred by larger firms and heat pump kiln dryers were used by smaller firms although few firms could specify all their costs we found no significant differences in the average operating costs drying costs or commercial success of the larger and smaller firms we found that socio technical barriers create energy cultures at the level of both the firm and the sector supporting the dominance of vented kiln dryers the prevailing technologies practices and norms at the sector level strongly support vented kilns the status quo being embedded in the socio technical context hindering technological learning improved energy efficiency and innovation influential stakeholders in the industry were thus part of and locked into the industry wide energy culture and were not in a position to effect change we conclude that actors external to the prevailing industry energy culture need to leverage change in the industry norms practices and or technologies in order to reap the advantages of energy efficient drying technology assist its continued evolution and avoid the risks of path dependency

sustainability transitions a political coalition perspective in the case of technology transitions to low carbon sources of energy there is growing evidence that even in countries with a strong political consensus in favor of a transition the pace has been slow in comparison with the need to reduce greenhouse gases one factor that affects the slowness of the transition is political resistance from the incumbent industrial regime using data on the mobilization of resistance from the fossil fuel industry in the united states the study builds on the growing literature on the political dimensions of sustainability transitions by drawing attention to the role of incumbent regime coalitions grassroots coalitions in support of green transition policies and countervailing industrial power case studies of political coalitions for ballot propositions in the u s are used to show how countervailing industrial power especially from the technology and financial sector can tip the balance of electoral spending in favor of grassroots organizations

multi regime dynamics in the analysis of sectoral transformation potentials evidence from german utility sectors abstract network bound infrastructure systems as electricity gas water and telecommunications are currently undergoing transformations on various levels and dimensions liberalization technological innovations and socio cultural dynamics are part of this for analyzing these ongoing transformation dynamics as well as exploring future developments of utility systems a theoretical concept is necessary which spans production consumption and governance different levels and also different sectors this paper argues that the multi level perspective is a fruitful starting point allowing the identification of interrelated transformation dynamics in production consumption and governance but that multi regime dynamics need more emphasis particularly in a future oriented analysis

technological regimes and sectoral patterns of innovative activities this paper focuses on the relationships between observed patterns of innovative activities within a sector and the related context and underlying microeconomic processes that might account for them it claims that there are some invariant features with respect to relative prices and incentives mechanisms of learning and knowledge accumulation that greatly affect the rate and structure of innovative activity these features are different across sectors the paper proposes that the specific pattern of innovative activity of a sector can be explained as the outcome of different technological regimes that are implied by the nature of technology and knowledge the notion of technological regime provides a synthetic representation of some of the most important economic properties of technologies and of the characteristics of the learning processes that are involved in innovative activities copyright 1997 by oxford university press

sustainable urban regime adjustments abstract the endogenous agency that urban governments increasingly portray by making conscious and planned efforts to adjust the regimes they operate within is currently not well captured in transition studies there is a need to acknowledge the ambiguity of regime enactment at the urban scale this directs attention to the transformative implications of conscious strategic maneuvering by incumbent regime actors when confronting regime structurations this article provides insight to processes of regime enactment performed by local governments by applying a flow oriented perspective on regime dynamics inspired by actor network theory to demonstrate that regime incumbent actors can induce gradual regime adjustments at the urban scale this is done through a case study of an urban development project where the municipality of egedal in denmark has successfully promoted energy efficient buildings through adjustments in existing planning and building procedures

innovation enabling policy and regime transformation towards increased energy efficiency the case of the circulator pump industry in europe abstract when new energy efficient products are struggling with their commercialisation and diffusion into widespread applications you would typically expect policy makers and green lead users to guide the way this paper examines the case of the hot water circulator pump industry in europe where parts of the industry envisioned and worked for a voluntary energy label bringing technological innovation new business and energy savings of approx 85 for each new circulator pump the case study explores the complexities of innovation processes where technology market actors and policy co evolve over time to transform an existing socio technical regime the paper highlights the importance of policies to reduce barriers towards innovation and energy efficiency and shows that it is not always policy makers that establish the crucial policies that change the innovation dynamics for the benefit of the environment and the industry

meso level factors in technological transitions the development of td scdma in china this paper uses an industry case study of technological transition from second generation 2g to third generation 3g networks in china to unfold how meso level factors drove the development of td scdma china s home born 3g standard in this purposive transitional process under the coordination of a central authority multiple regime actors government agencies engaged in bargaining negotiation and consensus building that determined the developmental directions and outcome of td scdma td scdma proved to be a political success but an economic failure the policy implications are profound in particular as the silo regulatory model of policy making which focuses on a single industry is gradually replaced by a collective model involving interindustry players issues about how to manage the collective model pose a serious challenge to policy makers in china and other emerging countries the paper provides evidence for the importance of meso level factors in the multi level perspective mlp framework of sociotechnical transitions