testing for behavioral objective and aggregation opportunities in u s agricultural data to guide formulation of an aggregate model of u s agricultural production this paper reports nonparametric test results for both behavioral objective and aggregation level nonparametric tests are implemented as heuristics to determine empirical support for simplified analytical structures evidence does not refute the joint hypothesis that producers behave collectively as though they are a price taking profit maximizing firm with a convex technology subject to nonregressive technical change the empirical results also support exhaustive aggregation of input categories but much less aggregation of outputs this paper reports the first known implementation of the nonparametric homothetic separability tests

renewable energy for continuous energy sustainability in malaysia abstract demographic change dramatic population increase and rapid industrial growth are major trends emerging in malaysia climate change and depletion of fossil fuel along with the rise in petroleum prices have forced the malaysian government to rethink strategies to be more in line with other developed countries including the decision to embark on renewable energy re resources as a better source of energy amongst the global energy mix the malaysian government is making frantic efforts to make policies re programmes and incentives more effective so as to promote and develop the use of re malaysia is rich with fossil fuel but these are fast depleting although re is necessary current re resources are still not enough therefore exploration into other resources must be considered in order to meet future energy demands the objective of this paper is to identify the potential of available renewable energy resources in malaysia as well as the country s current implementation strategies this paper also discusses the different re policies in malaysia in order to determine the potential of re various sources and published materials in conferences international journals and information released by relevant government bodies and miscellaneous resources are used this research has revealed that among all the renewable energy sources that are present in malaysia biomass and solar energy are the most prospective ones plus renewable energy re sources are quite advantageous as they are free from greenhouse gas ghg emissions and related global warming effects they can also be applied in off grid electricity generation for rural communities

stock returns before and after calls of convertible bonds ofer and natarajan 1987 report negative statistically significant cumulative average abnormal returns over five years following convertible bond calls we show that these results are obtained only if returns preceding the call dates are used for market model parameter estimation returns preceding calls tend to be positive and unusually large this means that predicted post call returns based on pre call parameter estimates are biased upward consequently the corresponding abnormal returns are biased downward we also discuss a corrected test statistic we conclude that the evidence does not indicate market inefficiency in the stock price reaction to convertible calls

investment and financing activity following calls of convertible bonds abstract the staged financing hypothesis of mayers mayers d 1998 why firms issue convertible bonds the matching of financial and real investment options journal of financial economics 47 83 102 predicts that investment and financing activity will increase following in the money convertible bond calls the prediction for out of the money convertible calls is different no increase is expected we study the rate of both corporate investment and external financing around forced conversions using benchmarks that are analogous to those recommended by barber and lyon barber b lyon j 1996 detecting abnormal operating performance the empirical power and specification of test statistics journal of financial economics 41 359 400 we also examine the cross section of changes in investment and financing activity conversion forcing firms exhibit an increase in both capital expenditures and debt financing around the year of the convertible bond call however the same result holds for the sample firms that conducted out of the money convertible calls further there is no relation between changes in investment activity and changes in debt issuance at the firm level the evidence is inconsistent with the notion that forced conversions serve as a catalyst for staged financing and investment

profit function approximations and duality applications to agriculture monte carlo simulations of profit functions indicate that flexible functional forms may be ranked nearly the same with respect to allen uzawa partial substitution elasticities or price and fixed factor elasticities flexible functional form approximations of output price elasticities are generally worse than approximations of input price or fixed factor elasticities minflex laurent functional forms did not appear to approximate underlying elasticities any better than did their translog and generalized leontief counterparts

empirical evidence on dividends as a signal of firm value the role of dividends in firm valuation continues to be a theoretical puzzle as well as an empirical obsession with economists the pioneering work by modigliani and miller mm 32 29 is the archetype of the theoretical dilemma whereas the authors proved convincingly the irrelevance of dividend policy to firm value within a perfect capital market they tempered their irrelevance proposition with what is usually referred to as the information content of dividends icd hypothesis in a more scientific sense this hypothesis should be labeled as a conjecture since it is essentially an ad hoc observation that dividends may convey information to the capital market concerning a firm s future earnings potential even though the icd hypothesis was not derived from a well specified economic model it has nevertheless been subjected to a plethora of empirical studies in general these studies have focused upon the precise influence of dividend changes upon a firm s common stock price overall the results can be described as being supportive of the notion that stock price movements are positively correlated with cash dividend changes this correlation of course is consistent with the icd hypothesis

renewable energy policies and initiatives for a sustainable energy future in malaysia abstract effective policies and incentive on renewable energy re is critical to promote low carbon economy and society in the future re was first introduced in the country s energy mix through the fifth fuel policy which was formulated under the eighth malaysia plan 2001 2005 to reduce dependency on fossil fuel and to address the rising global concern on climate change this paper addresses the re progress and achievement over the past 10 years and discusses the key policies for re programmes funding schemes and incentives that has been introduced by the government of malaysia to develop and promote the utilisation of re the recent re mechanisms under the tenth malaysia plan 2011 2015 will also be highlighted

review on malaysia s national energy developments key policies agencies programmes and international involvements this paper aims to present a review on malaysia s national energy developments by looking at various angles in terms of renewable energy and energy efficiency energy demand and consumption by sectors are presented as well as the fuel mix in electricity generation key energy policies implemented from the incorporation of malaysia s national oil company petronas in 1974 until the national green technology policy 2009 and a future policy will be addressed the roles of key players as well as important agencies in energy development are briefly presented key programmes in energy development such as malaysian industrial energy efficiency improvement project small renewable energy power programme and building energy efficiency programme are discussed as well as successful initiatives from the programmes malaysia s international involvements towards reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon emissions especially montreal protocol and kyoto protocol are highlighted as a conclusion malaysia is aware of its role in formulating its national energy development policies sensitive towards the country s development towards the environment and utilization of energy resources as well as conscientious and responsive towards the call for sustainable development in promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency

the effect of off farm work on the intensity of agricultural production changes in agricultural production methods have been associated with environmental pressure and a loss of natural habitats this paper explores the extent to which farmer participation in off farm work an increasing phenomenon in most developed countries changes the intensity of agricultural input use focusing in particular on fertilizer and crop protection product use a sample selection model that accounts for both unobserved heterogeneity between farms and the potential simultaneity between farm operations and hours worked off farm is estimated for 2 419 farms in england and wales the econometric evidence indicates that the input intensity of products which have well established links to environmental damage can increase as well as decrease the results suggest that that fertilizer intensity may decline as off farm labor increases while the use of crop protection per hectare increases as off farm work increases

event risk covenants and bondholder returns in leveraged buyouts abstract prebuyout bondholders on average suffer statistically significant wealth losses in leveraged buyouts bonds with strong covenant protection however gain value while those with no protection lose value the disposition of bonds after buyouts e g remained outstanding called tendered defeased is also strongly linked to type of covenant protection we also document that covenant use declines for bonds issued after 1980 finally the losses to bondholders are small compared with the gains accruing to shareholders

estimation of substitution possibilities between water and other production inputs the traditional approach to measuring the demand for water by industries relies upon fixed water use coefficients water supply planners base decisions about system expansion partly upon fixed coefficients applied to projected levels of industrial growth among the restrictive assumptions implied by this approach is that producers are generally unresponsive to the relative price of water compared with other factors earlier studies focused on industry by industry assessments of present and potential water use technologies and the possibilities for substituting other productive inputs for water most of these studies are economic engineering in form thompson and young and russell are analyses of the steam electric generating industry and the petroleum refining and petrochemical industry respectively because they used linear programming techniques their results must be interpreted cautiously the flexible functional forms which have become

acreage decisions under risk the case of corn and soybeans an acreage supply response model is developed under expected utility maximization the resulting framework is used to specify and estimate a system of risk responsive acreage equations for corn and soybeans in the united states particular attention is given to the truncation effects of government price supports on the distribution of corn and soybean prices also a wealth variable is included in the acreage equations the empirical results indicate that risk and wealth variables play an important role in cornsoybean acreage decisions the analysis also shows that cross commodity risk reduction is important in acreage allocation decisions

are shocks to disaggregated energy consumption in malaysia permanent or temporary evidence from lm unit root tests with structural breaks abstract the objective of this paper is to examine whether energy consumption in malaysia disaggregated by sector and type is stationary or contains a unit root to realize our objective we apply the lagrange multiplier lm family of unit root tests with up to two structural breaks depending on the decision rule for selecting between results in the no break one break and two break cases we find that energy consumption is stationary for between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of the disaggregated energy series and between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of sectors implications for the malaysian government s attempts to reduce fossil fuel consumption are discussed

supply and demand functions for multiproduct u s cash grain farms biases caused by research and other policies this study presents new estimates of supply and demand elasticities for u s multiproduct cash grain farms and estimates of input and output bias effects caused by public and private crop research extension and farmers schooling the study also shows that the social rate of return to public crop research is large about 62 percent

the valuation impacts of specially designated dividends this paper examines the valuation impacts of specially designated dividends sdds by analyzing the behavior of stock and bond prices on dates surrounding their announcements the evidence presented here suggests that sdds are considered positive signals by the market with most of the gains associated with their announcements accruing to stockholders in addition we present some evidence that the gain to stockholders is negatively related to the frequency of sdd announcements

ceo turnover and bondholder wealth abstract we examine the impact of ceo turnover announcements on bondholder wealth stockholder wealth and overall firm value using publicly traded data for the period from 1973 to 2000 we find evidence consistent with both the wealth transfer and signaling hypotheses specifically we find that ceo turnover events are associated with lower bondholder values higher stockholder values and that net changes in firm value are a function of turnover type forced vs voluntary and outside vs inside firm replacements and the riskiness of the firm s debt investment vs non investment grade overall the results contribute to the understanding of the effects of corporate governance mechanisms of which ceo turnover is an extreme form on bondholders

feed in tariff outlook in malaysia this paper aims to present the feed in tariff fit outlook in malaysia which is in the process of being enacted through a renewable energy re policy by the government of malaysia gom a brief in policies leading towards the re policy and the potential of each re sources under fit mechanism have been discussed the successful utilisation of re source in electricity generation and the fit implementation globally are positive indicators to implement fit in malaysia potentials of fit on biomass biogas and solid waste energy are currently very promising in malaysia but it is solar energy which is predicted to be the main re of the future surpassing all other res

malaysia s renewable energy policies and programs with green aspects malaysia as a developing country and a member of the association of southeast asian nations asean is looking into inexhaustible and repeatable alternative energy sources such as solar wind mini hydro and biomass the estimated gdp at 2010 is 15 385 per capita and the economic and industrial growth of the country implies that energy demand is growing very fast in addition the growing prices of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas ghg emissions make inevitable renewable energy solutions for the country geographically malaysia is located in a region of tropical and humid climate which provides easy access to a variety of renewable energy sources the government of malaysia has initiated renewable energy policies to encourage industries and individuals to employ renewable energy powered systems in power applications this paper first gives a brief overview of the current status of renewable energy in malaysia then it provides the energy policies specifically the renewable energy policies in malaysia in section 2 the renewable energy programs are reviewed in section 3 the building energy efficiency program with green aspect is provided in section 4 lastly the conclusion and forecasts of this paper are

publics knowledge attitudes and behavioral toward the use of solar energy in yemen power sector abstract this paper presents the information of the public s views on the solar energy use in yemen it examines the public knowledge of attitudes and behavioral intentions that include the variables willingness to pay willingness to change and willingness to invest and then compare them a personal interview with 348 urban household and 258 rural household was performed the descriptive statistics chi square for independence odds ratios mann whitney and kruskal wallis tests were the statistical tools employed in the analysis the results showed that the citizens in both areas have a moderate level of knowledge about renewable energy resources the benefits and drawbacks of solar energy use in the power sector and the solar power technologies despite that they have highly positive attitudes towards the use of renewable energy particularly solar energy and its technologies they also accept to engage in the renewable energy activities which aim to improve the quality of the electrical service provided in the country the findings also indicate 66 55 7 and 78 4 of urban citizens are willing to pay to change and to invest compared to 70 55 4 and 75 6 of rural citizens the place of residence factor affected significantly the citizens knowledge level about renewable energy wind biomass and geothermal energy renewable energy resources the drawbacks of solar energy use in the power sector and the solar power technologies it also affected significantly the citizens attitudes towards the use of solar power technologies at home the implications for the policymakers are that elevating the knowledge and awareness of the citizens by formal and informal education and enacting effective supportive policies assists in encouraging the citizens to use renewable energies in their daily lives would lead to achieve the country s renewable energy targets for 2025

modeling supply response in a multiproduct framework the paper models multiproduct supply response in agriculture and tests key assumptions traditionally maintained in supply response studies the technology is approximated by a restricted profit function the properties of the restricted profit function are imposed during estimation the hypothesis that maintains the existence of output price and quantity indexes that satisfy the adding up property is rejected the existence of individual production functions for each output is also rejected unless joint production is permitted the estimates of responsiveness of a particular commodity to changes in own price or prices of competing outputs are likely to be considerably understated

usefulness of pretests for estimating underlying technologies using dual profit functions translog and generalized linear approximating forms are used to estimate dual profit functions from stochastically simulated data generated from a known relatively complex technology under profit maximizing conditions the hypotheses of monotonicity convexity and equality of parameters common to the profit function and demand equations are tested this last hypothesis is always rejected and monotonicity is never rejected convexity is rejected for about a third of the translog models and fewer than 5 percent of generalized linear models neither approximating form strongly dominates the other for accuracy in estimating the underlying elasticities of substitution copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

nonparametric estimates of the components of productivity and profitability change in u s agriculture recent theoretical advances in total factor productivity tfp measurement mean that tfp indexes can now be exhaustively decomposed into unambiguous measures of technical change and efficiency change to date all applications of this new methodology have involved decomposing indexes that have poor theoretical properties this article shows how the methodology can be used to decompose a new tfp index that satisfies all economically relevant axioms from index theory the application is to state level data from 1960 to 2004 in most states the main drivers of agricultural tfp change are found to have been technical change and scale and mix efficiency change

bond and stock market response to unexpected earnings announcements this study examines whether earnings changes convey information in bond markets and finds a significant positive negative reaction to unexpected earnings increases decreases the results are consistent whether earnings announcements precede or follow dividend announcements thus earnings surprises convey information to bond markets and changes in firm value are split among bondholders and stockholders this is in contrast to evidence from studies examining unexpected dividend announcements where bond price reaction is asymmetric cross sectional analysis reveals that bond excess returns are positively related to earnings surprises i introduction stock market reaction to earnings announcements has received significant attention in the finance and accounting literature ball and brown 1968 brown 1978 watts 1978 aharony and swary 1980 and fried and givoly 1982 are some ofthe studies that observe a revision of stock prices associated with the release of earnings information lev 1989 provides a survey of research in this area the explanation for the above empirical findings is that unexpected earnings provide new information about future cash flows furthermore the classical discounted cash flow model predicts a revision in firm value that is the present value of expected future cash flows whether this increased firm value accrues to stockholders and bondholders is an empirical issue past research on the information content of earnings has focused solely on stock price behavior and finds at least part of the benefits accrue to stockholders in this study we examine the bond market reaction to unexpected quarterly earnings announcements the study is unique for several reasons first dividends repurchases and earnings are eonsidered primary mechanisms used by manage ment to convey information about future cash flows to securityholders recent

how reliable is duality theory in empirical work the neoclassical theory of production establishes a dual relationship between the profit value function of a competitive firm and its underlying production technology this relationship commonly referred to as duality theory has been widely used in empirical work to estimate production parameters such as elasticities and returns to scale we generate a pseudo dataset by monte carlo simulations which starting from known production parameters yield a dataset with the main characteristics of u s agriculture in terms of unobserved firm heterogeneity decisions under uncertainty unexpected production and price shocks endogenous prices output and input aggregation measurement error in variables and omitted variables production parameters are not precisely recovered when performing econometric estimation based on the duality approach and the elasticity estimates are inaccurate deviations of own and cross price elasticities from initial median values given our parameter calibration range between 6 and 690 with an average of 90 also own price elasticities are as imprecisely recovered as cross price elasticities sensitivity analysis shows that results still hold for different sources and levels of noise and sample size used in estimation

a parametric estimation of total factor productivity and its components in u s agriculture the present study aims at improving our understanding of the individual contribution of the components of total factor productivity tfp change to u s agricultural productivity a novel sequential primal dual estimation routine to calculate tfp change is proposed using a multi output input distance function in the first stage followed by a cost minimization routine in the second stage tfp change is estimated as the direct sum of the estimates of technical change technical efficiency change allocative efficiency change input price effects changes in output markup and changes in returns to scale in each state the validity of the proposed methodology is supported by the remarkable overlap and high correlation of our annual estimates of tfp change with the usda s measures of change in tfp by state although technical change tends to be the largest contributor to productivity change it bears a low and statistically insignificant correlation with tfp change on an annual basis whereas annual changes in the markup effect and returns to scale are highly and significantly correlated with tfp changes this is the first study to find a slowdown of technical progress in the u s farm sector in the 1990s and 2000s and technical regress during the farm crisis of the 1980s while technical efficiency shows a positive overall trend allocative efficiency shows a negative overall trend and their combined effect i e the overall cost efficiency slows down tfp growth the policy recommendations from previous studies on the drivers of tfp should be revised in light of these findings

a vision on the opportunities policies and coping strategies for the energy security and green energy development in malaysia abstract energy security management remains a complex and fragmented interplay between the population growth urbanization economical development and the living environment today green technology application has been the prime contributor and an indispensable factor to preserve the long term reliability of energy supply this agenda has called for an integrated adaptive coordinated environmentally oriented and participatory approach to the protection of renewable resources malaysia endowed with its rich natural resources and diversity recognizes the need to adopt a sound developmental framework to transform the country s energy management landscape into a high quality and excellent level parallel to this development both government and non governmental organizations continue to advocate national efforts to explore alternative energy and improve the dynamic energy growth in a cost effective manner the plan espouses the establishment of ocean energy geothermal power hydropower wind power hydrogen fuel cell nuclear energy biodiesel and bioethanol processing industries the impetus is accompanied by the integration of environmental protection rules and boosted by the implementation of new energy policies the present work attempts to address the opportunities dynamic pressure and coping strategies of energy security and green energy development in malaysia the present and future outlooks of renewable and non renewable energy are elucidated besides the research breakthroughs and joint co operations for the promotion of green energy management are outlined

malaysia energy strategy towards sustainability a panoramic overview of the benefits and challenges sustainable energy supply is essential for actualizing malaysia s vision to become a high income country the current power production and demand trends show that malaysia has a reserve margin that will only last for the next few years this calls for further investment research and development in the country s power sector in order to meet the ever increasing energy demand the government s diversification policy and power sector expansion plan emphasizes on the incorporation of renewable energy sources ress and other less co2 emitting sources like nuclear into the national energy mix however the environmental ramifications of this policy should be part of any future expansion plan of national grid this paper presents a panoramic overview of the malaysian energy sector the energy policy revolution and the power sector expansion strategy towards secure sustainability we want to bring into focus the benefits and challenges of malaysia s power sector expansion plan with the aim of stimulating further discussion and research on the environmental ramifications of the plan

parametric estimation of technical and allocative inefficiency with panel data the error components approach to estimating allocative inefficiency imposes restrictive assumptions on the distributions of the errors and functional form the parametric approach does not require special assumptions about the error distribution or technology but typically assumes technical efficiency or restrictive functional forms the parametric approach also allows for systematic firm responses to shadow prices the authors generalize the parametric approach to a panel data setting and show that input and firm specific allocative inefficiency as well as firm specific technical inefficiency can be identified and estimated using a flexible functional form this is demonstrated empirically with an application to u s airlines copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

tax shields sample selection bias and the information content of conversion forcing bond calls the information content of conversion forcing bond calls depends on the after tax cash flow to bondholders if the dividend after conversion exceeds the after tax coupon but is less than the before tax coupon the call reveals unanticipated decreases in dividends and or earnings that reduce the tax shield from interest payments in contrast a call when the dividend is less than the after tax coupon reveals the timing of an anticipated shift from exceptional firm specific positive growth to the industry norm efforts to document properties of convertible calls are subject to sample selection bias because calls are disproportionately associated with positive pre call firm specific growth brennan and schwartz 1977 1980 and ingersoll 1977a show that if capital markets are perfect the optimal policy is to call and force conversion the first time the bond s conversion value exceeds its cash redemption value however ingersoll 1977b 1 and constantinides and grundy 1987 provide evidence that firms delay calling convertible debt and mikkelson 1980 1981 ofer and natarajan 1987 and singh cowan and nayar 1990 document a statistically significant negative return to equity at the call announcement to explain these results which are inconsistent with the optimal call policy and its predicted effect on equity value in a perfect capital market several asymmetric information hypotheses have been put forth mikkelson 1981 1985 hypothesizes that the negative market reaction results from the market inferring that management expects a decline in the present value of the debt s tax shield possibly due to a decline in future earnings this suggests that managers refrain from calling due to the tax shields provided by the debt harris and raviv 1985 present a signaling model in which a

agricultural productivity revisited this paper describes production accounts for agriculture output is defined as gross production leaving the farm as opposed to real value added inputs are not limited to capital and labor but include intermediate inputs as well we derive index numbers of gross output capital labor and intermediate inputs these data are used to construct indexes of total factor productivity we then compare the contributions of input growth and productivity growth to economic growth the important role of productivity growth in agriculture becomes immediately apparent

supply demand and technology in a multiproduct industry texas field crops the purpose of this paper is to examine the structure of agricultural production for six texas field crops cotton grain sorghum wheat corn rice and hay which account for nearly 95 of recent field crop value specific objectives are to a test the structure of technology to determine i if output and input utilization choices for individual products are independent of production decisions about other outputs and ii if products and or inputs can be consistently aggregated b estimate a coherent set of interrelated supply functions for the six commodities and input demand functions for fertilizer and hired labor because the empirical focus of this paper is specific to one state the results will be of limited value for interpreting specific production relationships elsewhere however the problem is of common interest in production agriculture and the techniques used demonstrate an important application of dual modeling

dividend changes and security prices this paper analyzes the effect of unexpected dividend changes on the values of common stock preferred stock and bonds two potential effects are identified a wealth transfer effect and a signalling effect previous studies have shown that positive negative dividend change announcements produce positive negative common stock price changes whereas these findings have been attributed to the signalling aspect of dividends they are also consistent with the wealth transfer hypothesis based on the announcement day returns of common and preferred stock and bond holders it is demonstrated that the primary factor influencing security returns in response to dividend changes is market signalling a wealth transfer effect is not necessarily ruled out but if it exists it is dominated by the signalling effect financial decisions may have at least two distinct effects on the distribution of total firm value among different classes of securities first if claim holders are inadequately protected by me first rules a financing decision may result in wealth transfers among different classes of securities second if the market possesses imperfect information a financing decision may signal information to the market concerning firm value and thereby influence the values of all security classes many recent empirical studies have demonstrated that a significantly positive relationship exists between the direction of dividend changes and announcement day common stock returns in each case the authors attribute this relationship to the information conveyed to the market in dividend change announcements however this relationship is also consistent with the hypothesis that dividend changes under certain conditions may result in wealth transfers between debt and equity holders in this study the information and wealth transfer effects are discussed as they pertain to dividend payments and the influence of dividend decisions on the value of different security classes is investigated empirically

new evidence on the valuation effects of convertible bond calls this study examines the wealth effects of convertible bond call announcements on stock holders straight bondholders and called and non called convertible debtholders we docu ment that forced conversions are associated with a significant loss in firm value the results suggest that convertible call announcements can trigger both negative signal and wealth transfer effects we show that at least part ofthe negative effect on stock prices results from wealth transfer to straight bondholders our analysis also lends empirical validity to the common contention that called convertible bondholders suffer wealth expropriation due to the elimination ofthe premium the wealth effect on non called convertible debtholders is insignificant cross sectional analysis reveals that the negative signal effect is important in explaining bond stock and firm excess returns finally we present evidence that refutes the notion that bonds are called to relieve the firm from restrictive debt covenants

efficiency effects of agricultural economics research in the united states allocations of research funds across programs are often made for efficiency reasons social science research is shown to have small lagged but significant effects on u s agricultural efficiency when public agricultural r d and extension are simultaneously taken into account farm management and marketing research variables are used to explain variations in estimates of allocative and technical efficiency using a bayesian approach that incorporates stylized facts concerning lagged research impacts in a way that is less restrictive than popular polynomial distributed lags results are reported in terms of means and standard deviations of estimated probability distributions of parameters and long run total multipliers extension is estimated to have a greater impact on both allocative and technical efficiency than either r d or social science research

energy efficiency and carbon trading potential in malaysia abstract the damage inflicted by global warming is happening far faster than any experts have predicted or anticipated since the kyoto protocol was signed in 1997 to fight global warming through reducing global greenhouse gases ghgs emission the world climate pattern has worsened at an accelerated rate beyond expectation while developed countries sanctioned by the protocol are committed to achieve their ghg emission targets developing nations play similar roles on a voluntary basis since almost all of the ghgs emissions come from energy sector it is obvious that energy policy and related regulatory frameworks play imperative roles in realizing the kyoto protocol objectives with carbon dioxide co 2 touted as the main remedy in the ghgs emissions it is only reasonable that carbon trading becomes the essential element in the protocol recently a milestone is marked in the kyoto protocol with the 2009 climate summit in copenhagen denmark with all participating countries further committed themselves in fulfilling the protocol s obligations before the commitment period due in 2012 it is worthwhile to review the various energy efficiency efforts and carbon trading potential in malaysia a country which although does not bear any obligation has ratified and lauded the cause of the protocol malaysia as a developing nation is seen as a direct beneficiary from carbon trading and in this paper how the country energy policies have evolved over the years with concerted efforts from the government to minimize its carbon footprint through numerous energy efficiency implementations are discussed in length the impact from the 2009 climate summit on malaysia is also briefed

a review on sustainable power generation in malaysia to 2030 historical perspective current assessment and future strategies abstract this review focuses on energy for grid connected electricity generation for west peninsular malaysia a historical perspective of malaysia s energy policies and energy related initiatives is first provided which sets the scene for an assessment of current situation in the country we recommend a number of sustainable options for addressing the projected energy deficits in malaysia up to year 2030 besides meeting the drive for low carbon systems and technologies the latter is in direct response to an announcement by the prime minister of malaysia on a conditional voluntary target of 40 reduction in the emissions intensity per unit of gdp by 2020 from a 2005 baseline at the cop15 meeting in copenhagen alternative strategies are suggested that promote enhanced roles for renewable energy re as well as energy efficiency and conservation ee c practices based on a review of past and present policies and current developments a greater contribution of re from biomass biogas hydroelectric power and solar photovoltaic is proposed compared to the present less than 1 in concert with continuous more widespread adoption of ee c initiatives strategies are also advocated to improve coal supply reliability and security on top of these measures the malaysian government is urged to moderate energy subsidies while enforcing a common energy regulatory framework that involve all relevant agencies and parties

estimating farm level input demand and wheat supply in the indian punjab using a translog profit function application of the translog profit function to farm level data from punjab india allowed a more disaggregated analysis of the farm production structure compared to the case of cobb douglas formulation the flexibility afforded by translog formulation permitted measurement of the different impacts that exogenous variables have within and across input demand and output supply functions policy relevant elasticity estimates with respect to variable inputs and output prices fixed inputs a few soil related state of nature variables measured by soil analysis and education which are usually considered constraints to farm production were obtained and two examples of policy applications were developed

robust error specification in a production system economists estimating demand and supply systems face the question of using shares or quantities as dependent variables this article finds that inconsistent estimates are obtained if one makes the wrong choice a robust structure is presented to let the data choose the preferred form empirical applications to u s and texas agriculture using the generalized method of moments suggest that shares and quantities are rejected in favor of a more general functional form the texas application provides some evidence for fixed capital but not for labor copyright 2013 oxford university press

solar photovoltaic in malaysia the way forward abstract this paper examines solar photovoltaic pv in malaysia first it analyzes the current energy demand in malaysia and discusses some of the national policies and the installations of solar pv in urban and rural areas in the country next the general feed in tariff fit scheme is explained indicating its potential as one of the investment options for malaysians finally the loan financing option for solar pv is presented providing examples that have been implemented in other countries as well as explaining the green technology financing scheme gtfs for companies and the proposed soft loan scheme for individual households in malaysia it also analyses the impact of the proposed interest rate to household consumers in malaysia in terms of total profit net present value and internal rate of return it is found that the fit scheme could potentially help in increasing renewable energy penetration particularly for solar pv to provide upfront capital for solar pv installation it is shown that the gtfs is a good financial source for companies while for individual home owners a soft loan facility from banking institutions is a feasible source if the interest rate is 5 or less

asymmetric adjustment costs in non linear labour demand models for the netherlands and u k manufacturing sectors the costs of hiring a worker generally differ in size from the firing costs this article investigates optimal labour demand schedules for production and nonproduction workers of firms that operate under uncertainty and face asymmetric costs of adjusting their workforce in the empirical part generalised methods of moments gmm estimates of the structural parameters of the euler conditions for production and nonproduction workers are presented together with specification and structural stability tests using time series data of the netherlands and uk manufacturing sectors we find that asymmetric adjustment costs play an important role in the explanation of unbalanced labour demand between upward and downward movements of the business cycle moreover hiring costs exceed firing costs of production workers whereas firing costs exceed hiring costs of nonproduction workers

the effect of dividend changes on stock and bond prices this study examines stock and bond price reactions to dividend changes the positive stock market response to dividend increases has several potential explanations two of the more commonly discussed being information content and wealth redistribution between stockholders and bondholders the evidence presented supports the wealth redistribution hypothesis but does not rule out the information content hypothesis typically we find that the bond price reaction to announcements of large dividend changes is opposite to the stock price reaction our results differ from those of handjinicolaou and kalay this paper examines the impact of dividend changes on both the stock and bond markets this topic is interesting because of the possibility of distinguishing between two important hypotheses the information content hypothesis and the wealth redistribution hypothesis although each of these hypotheses is consistent with a positive stock price reaction to a dividend increase the predicted bond price reactions are different information content implies bond prices should increase when dividend increases are announced and wealth redistribution implies bond prices should fall although these two hypotheses have different implications for the bond price reaction to dividend changes they are not mutually exclusive handjinicolaou and kalay 1984 analyze bond returns around dividend changes and report that bond prices are not affected by dividend increases but react negatively to dividend reductions p 59 they argue their data support the information content hypothesis woolridge 1983 gets similar results but since he includes multiple bonds for the same firm the t statistics may be overstated inasmuch as returns will not be independent across bonds jayaraman and shastri 1988 find insignificantly negative bond price

new growth accounting this article opens the black box of total factor productivity by decomposing this all in one index into various input embedded and input free productivities in a new growth accounting framework the new method identifies different channels through which growth drivers affect economic growth and finds the most effective way to boost the economy which is unidentified in standard method this new approach uses a varying coefficient stochastic frontier model which integrates the standpoints of the endogenous growth theory and the induced innovation theory into a reduced form productivity analysis the new growth accounting is then applied to study the impacts and contributions of r d investments international trade and structural transformation to world agricultural growth during the period of 1962 to 2014 the empirical results provide new evidence to support the endogenous growth theory and the induced innovation theory indicating the necessity of using the new growth accounting method

an evaluation of the installation of solar photovoltaic in residential houses in malaysia past present and future abstract this paper examines solar energy development in malaysia particularly in relation to the installation of solar photovoltaic pv in residential houses it analyzes the past activities related to solar energy in malaysia in terms of research and developments r ds the implementations used as well as the national policies for the past 20 years which have pushed the installation of pv in the country the feed in tariff fit scheme is discussed showing comparative cost benefit analysis between the pv installation in houses in the united kingdom uk and malaysia and with other investment schemes available in malaysia to investigate the awareness of renewable energy policies and incentives a preliminary survey of the public opinion in malaysia has been carried out and an evaluation of public willingness to invest in the fit scheme by installing the pv on their houses is presented the cost benefit analysis shows that the proposed fit programme is capable of generating good return on investment as compared to the one in the uk but the return is lower than other investment tools the survey suggests that most malaysians are unaware of the government s incentives and policies towards renewable energies and are not willing to invest in the fit scheme

efficient market tests of the informational content of dividend announcements critique and extension in recent years a major controversy has formed in the finance literature regarding the empirical evidence of the informational content of dividends despite considerable support for the position of dividend nontriviality by various studies the work by watts 13 represents a formidable challenge because of the close proximity of the firm s earnings and dividend announcement dates the major issue of the dispute has centered on the identification and control of contemporaneous earnings information in an attempt to settle this controversy the present study evaluates and extends watts methodology

estimating substitution and expansion effects using a profit function framework this study reports a first attempt to derive all the relevant information with respect to the structure of production of an industry using knowledge of only a profit function using estimates of a profit function for canadian agriculture a procedure to separate substitution and expansion effects for both inputs and outputs was implemented information concerning net input and output substitution and complementarity possibilities were obtained the most important empirical results suggest that the hypothesis of nonjoint production of crop and animal outputs in canadian agriculture cannot be rejected and that hired and operator labor are complements rather than substitutes

multiple input multiple output production choices and technology in the u s wheat region duality theory motivates a translog expected profit function consistent with multiple products price uncertainty preseason climate constraints acreage control policies and possibly nonhomothetic technology although multiple outputs are allowed enterprise specific data is not necessary instead time series measures of output revenues and expected prices input expenses and prices and fixed input flows are employed appropriate measures of elasticities of choice returns to size and biases in technological change are derived results indicated decreasing returns to size rather limited though complementary responsiveness of choices to price changes and the nature of biases in technological changes

capital services in u s agriculture concepts comparisons and the treatment of interest rates this paper begins with a review of the methods and assumptions used to measure capital service flows two data series on capital inputs in u s agriculture are briefly described and compared we show that measures of capital services are sensitive to the treatment of interest rates notably the use of fixed versus variable market rates significantly affects measures of the quantity and productivity of agricultural capital in the united states we conclude that when calculating capital usage in u s agriculture the use of a fixed interest rate generates more plausible estimates than the use of an annual market rate

the structure of u s agricultural technology 1910 78 this paper utilizes 1910 78 time series data and a single product aggregate translog profit function to measure the structure of u s agricultural technology duality relations are used to devise a multifactor measure of biased technical change a measure of nonhomotheticity is introduced which indicates the effects scale change has had on aggregate cost shares the empirical analysis finds that different nonhomothetic technologies characterized the prewar and postwar periods differing technical change biases are consistent with relative price trends during the two periods showing that the long run structure of u s agricultural technology has been consistent with the hayami ruttan induced innovation theory

an empirical investigation of the role of indenture provisions in determining bond ratings abstract this paper documents the occurrence of indenture provisions of newly issued bonds and the relevance of these provisions to a bond s rating a chronicle of the various combinations of restrictive covenants reveals that four covenant combinations account for over 90 of the issues the evidence also suggests that convertibility of an issue vitiates stockholder bondholder conflict because these issues have few if any restrictive covenants also the indenture provisions of low rated subordinated issues appear to reflect a concern about the underinvestment problem while the opposite holds for high rated nonsubordinated issues the addition of indenture provisions to a bond rating model is shown to create a model superior to previous rating models this finding highlights the complex nature of the corporate financial contracting process consistent with past evidence moody s ratings are predicted more accurately than s p s ratings and split rated issues are predicted less accurately than commonly rated issues

testing dynamic specification of factor demand equations for u s manufacturing this paper addresses the question of dynamic specification of empirical models of factor demand for annual u s manufacturing data from 1947 to 1981 frequently used models that treat a subset of factors as variable are shown to be misspecified an error correction model is considered as an alternative specification this model is shown to dominate several more parsimonious models in several respects however like the other models considered the error correction model is unable to generate satisfactory estimates of long run elasticities the issue of dynamic specification remains unresolved copyright 1992 by mit press

quasi fixed inputs and long run equilibrium in production a cointegration analysis this paper proposes a cointegration approach to testing the validity long run equilibrium in production where capital and labour are taken as quasi fixed inputs previous studies consider only capital as the quasi fixed input and do not take account of the time series properties of the variables assuming implicitly that they are stationary the canonical cointegrating regressions ccr procedure is employed to test for cointegration in both the single equation and the seemingly unrelated regressions framework and long run equilibrium conditions are tested the evidence from us manufacturing reveals that capital and labour are not fully adjusted to their long run optimal values casting doubt on the long run equilibrium hypothesis copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

cost functions under production uncertainty we characterize the cost functions which would be consistent with expected utility maximization when production is uncertain it is not generally possible assuming risk aversion to use only expected output as the constraint in a cost minimization problem in some leading cases cost functions consistent with expected utility maximization are particularly useful because they are devoid of risk preferences

multiproduct supply and input demand in u s agriculture two sets of u s agricultural output supply and input demand relationships including cross price effects are reported for five commodity groups and four variable input groups for the 1951 82 period they are obtained by direct econometric estimation on u s data and by geographic aggregation from published econometric estimates for each of ten regions comprising the contiguous forty eight states the supply and demand formulations are specified on the assumptions of competitive behavior and an underlying normalized quadratic profit function the effects of upward sloping input supply curves are examined at the national level

testing asset fixity for u s agriculture two problems which have concerned agricultural economists since the great depression are low farm resource returns and agriculture s tendency to maintain high aggregate production in the face of declining real product prices the latter phenomenon referred to as irreversibility of supply has spawned a significant literature on approaches to estimating and testing irreversible supply curves houck tweeten and quance while there are numerous explanations of these problems it is widely accepted that both are at least partially due to some asset fixity within agriculture that is in the aggregate there are certain productive factors which are trapped in agriculture attempts to explain asset fixity are not new galbraith and black early argued that high fixed costs contribute to a lumpiness of important factors which makes their temporary reduction or reorganization so expensive as to be unprofitable in the short run later g l johnson hypothesized that productive assets are trapped in agriculture because of a divergence between acquisition costs and salvage value formal developments are in edwards hathaway and johnson and quance both explanations have been challenged d g johnson concluded that available empirical evidence did not support galbraith and black s high fixed cost hypothesis he argued instead that the data were consistent with inelastic supply of agricultural inputs johnson and pasour criticized inferring asset fixity from a divergence between acquisition costs and salvage values they argued that the appropriate concept for investigating resource allocation is that of the resource s opportunity cost although they criticized g l johnson s fixed asset theory they still concluded that asset fixity theory can contribute toward an understanding of why the supply function whether firm or industry is not reversible

additive general error models for production cost and derived demand or share systems many empirical studies of production specify a deterministic model of the firm derive the implied behavioral equations input demand or share system and then embed this system in a stochastic framework by tacking on linear error terms in contrast this paper proposes general error models gems in which the error specification is an integral part of the optimization model these models are the statistical embodiment of stigler s view that apparent observed inefficiencies reflect the investigator s ignorance of the true optimization problem additive gems are proposed and interpreted specification tests indicate that a translog additive gem is superior to the standard translog specification

new indices of money supply and the flexible laurent demand system the article begins by surveying the existing results on the new divisia monetary aggregates charts display the differences in behavior between the divisia aggregates and the federal reserve s official simple sum monetary aggregates the article then compares system wide fit for the simple sum and divisia monetary aggregates when used as data in the joint estimation of a system of demand equations the demand system is derived from a new laurent expansion approximation to the reciprocal indirect utility function the laurent expansion provides a better behaved remainder term than that of the more commonly used taylor series the results favor the divisia aggregates

input demands and inefficiency in u s agriculture markov chain monte carlo mcmc methods are used to estimate a seemingly unrelated regression sur system of input demand functions for u s agriculture our demand functions have flexible forms and allow for nonrandom technical inefficiency concavity constraints are imposed at individual data points and the distributions of measures of relative technical efficiency are constrained to the unit interval results are evaluated in terms of characteristics of the posterior distributions of parameters measures of relative technical efficiency and other nonlinear functions of the parameters

theoretical production restrictions and agricultural technology in the united states agricultural production studies are usually conducted using classical econometrics that make it difficult if not impossible to impose conditions derived from economic theory on flexible functional forms therefore such conditions need not hold in estimation we apply bayesian econometrics to estimate a flexible production function using u s agricultural data under alternative restrictions dictated by theory including a fully theoretically consistent model that satisfies all restrictions at each point of the data the probability density functions of parameters output elasticities scale elasticity and productivity gains vary substantially across models output elasticities from the fully theoretically consistent model suggest that agricultural production in the united states has typically been more responsive to land than to other factors of production however output became more responsive over time to changes in materials and less responsive to changes in land and labor by the early 2000s the elasticity of output to materials was very similar to the elasticity of output to land the elasticity of output to capital remained relatively stable over the entire sample the estimates from the fully theoretically consistent model also show a slight increase in the average rate of productivity gains between the 1960s and the 1970s a relative slowdown in the 1980s and 1990s and a relative stabilization afterwards all inputs are substitutes in production all the elasticities of substitution have increased through the decades though at different rates

duality the output effect and applied comparative statics except for kako agricultural production studies using cost functions have analyzed technology via allen elasticities technological change parameters and homotheticity tests kako used a transcendental logarithmic translog cost function to decompose empirically changes in derived factor demand into three separate components output level factor substitution effects and technical change kako s work allows further investigation of technical change on derived factor demands however kako s output effect is different from the traditional concept the production analog of the income effect in consumer theory this note outlines a theoretical and econometric approach for measuring the output effect the output effect is important because it presents a more complete picture of factor employment adjustments than do demand elasticities generated from cost functions elasticities generated from cost functions restrict the producer to a given level of output producers however may also adjust output as factor prices change the output effect captures this adjustment this paper demonstrates a method for deriving the output effect from the cost function first the general assumptions and the model are outlined then the cost function is related to the indirect production function and the output effect obtained results are presented for the special case of a homothetic production function the paper concludes with an empirical application to the u s meat products industry

patterns of state productivity growth in the u s farm sector linking state and aggregate models this article focuses on agricultural productivity growth at both sector and state levels it does so in a way that preserves the economic integrity of national and state production accounts a model accounting for interstate transactions in farm goods links sectorwide and state specific measures of total factor productivity growth an interesting conclusion is that the smooth persistently positive trend typically observed for farm sector productivity growth masks considerable variation across states and regions the results also indicate that farm sector productivity growth is wholly a function of productivity trends in the individual states interstate shifts in production activity and resource reallocations have had little impact

some evidence on the uniqueness of initial public debt offerings debt initial public offerings ipos represent a major shift in a firm s financing policy by both extending debt maturity and altering the public private debt mix in contrast to findings for seasoned debt offerings we document a significantly negative stock price response to debt ipo announcements this result is consistent with debt maturity and debt ownership structure theories the equity wealth effect is negatively related to the offer s maturity and positively related to the degree of bank monitoring we find that firms with less information asymmetry and firms with higher growth opportunities experience a less adverse stock price response the decision to access the public debt market for the first time represents a major change in a firm s financing policy an initial public debt offer alters the firm s debt structure in two significant ways not only does this policy choice affect the firm s debt ownership structure by altering its mix of public relative to private debt but it also extends the average debt maturity of the firm substantially this study provides empirical evidence on the validity of some important debt structure theories by focusing on the information content of initial public debt offers debt ipos two major strands of theories have evolved in the literature the debt ownership choice theories model corporate choice of private and public debt mix see e g fama 1985 diamond 1991a and rajan 1992 while the other set of theories models corporate debt maturity choice easterbrook 1984 flannery 1986 and kale and noe 1990 a number of recent studies empirically test some of the predictions of these models barclay and smith 1995 guedes and opler 1996 houston and james 1996 johnson 1997 and stohs and mauer 1996

testing purchasing power parity under the null hypothesis of co integration this paper analyzes monthly data on the exchange rates and price indices of the eleven major industrial countries over the modern period of floating exchange rates it presents tests that are based upon the null hypothesis of cointegration the paper finds evidence that most country pairs not involving north american currencies have exchange rates and price indices that are cointegrated it estimates the error correction representation for the series that are cointegrated and it shows that the dynamic adjustment of the relationship between exchange rates and prices is accomplished almost entirely in the market for foreign exchange copyright 1991 by royal economic society

primal versus dual methods for measuring the impact of ozone on cash grain farmers a comparison of primal and dual methods for measuring the impact of ozone on the profits and outputs of illinois cash grain farms uses the sample data in mjelde et al after adding an additional year of data and making refinements on the basis of the evidence presented it is not possible to say definitively whether the production or profit function specification is superior both models seem to fit the data well and give plausible results in terms of indicating if an effect is present while ozone has been shown to be deleterious to an individual farmer however this does not imply that reductions in ozone levels throughout the nation would lead to increased farmer profits it could lead to an increase in supply which would likely cause a decrease in price other factors highly correlated with ozone could also be responsible for the observed effect 7 references 1 table

takeover defenses and wealth effects on securityholders the case of poison pill adoptions abstract this is the first study to examine the valuation effects of any antitakeover amendment on both bondholders and stockholders we present new evidence documenting that on average there is a significant wealth loss experienced by bondholders at poison pill adoption announcement while stockholders are unaffected our finding of significant bondholder losses is consistent with the proposed negative signal hypothesis we document results which indicate that bondholders correctly anticipate the degree of leverage increase at the time of the announcement we also show that the proportion of insider ownership is negatively related to bondholder wealth effect at announcement this supports the notion that higher insider manager ownership leads to a greater alignment of manager stockholder interests while increasing the stockholder bondholder agency costs long run analysis of leverage and performance measures reveal that pill adopting firms are not under leveraged as compared to their industry rivals however supporting the negative signal hypothesis the leverage of sample firms rises significantly after the pill adoption performance measures reveal that sample firms significantly underperform their industry cohorts this result suggests that poison pill adoptions are motivated by poor managers attempting to immunize themselves from the disciplinary actions of the corporate control market

substitution possibilities for unpriced natural resources restricted cost functions for the canadian metal mining industry a bstract the effects of resource depletion on economic growth depend critically on the elasticities of substitution between non renewable natural resources and reproducible inputs estimation of the elasticities of substitution for natural resources has been hindered by the absence of data on their prices which results from the prevalence of vertical integration in natural resource industries in this paper we use the theory of restricted cost functions to develop a general procedure for estimating substitution possibilities for unpriced inputs estimation of the model with data for the canadian metal mining industry indicates that the elasticities of substitution for the natural resource metallic ore are equal to unity

convertible call policies an empirical analysis of an information signaling hypothesis abstract this paper tests an information signaling hypothesis as a potential explanation for corporate convertible bond call policies and for the negative share price reaction to the announcement of the calls we test this hypothesis by trying to ascertain whether the information signaled is realized our results show an unexpected decline in the firm s performance subsequent to the call we also find significant negative cumulative returns during a sixty month period following the calls

bayesian efficiency analysis with a flexible form the aim cost function in this article we describe the use of gibbs sampling methods for drawing posterior inferences in a cost frontier model with an asymptotically ideal price aggregator nonconstant returns to scale and composed error an empirical example illustrates the sensitivity of efficiency measures to assumptions made about the functional form of the frontier we also examine the consequences of imposing regularity through parametric restrictions alone

estimation of australian wool and lamb production technologies under uncertainty an error components approach a model of producer behavior which explicitly accounts for both output price and production uncertainty is formulated and estimated if the production technology is multiplicatively separable in its deterministic and stochastic components then the expected utility maximization problem implies cost minimization for planned or expected output consequently our empirical model of three lamb and wool producing sectors in australia involves the estimation of a system of input cost share and cost equations whose disturbances have an error components structure the empirical results are evaluated in terms of input demand elasticities and estimates of the stochastic components of production are presented

confidence intervals for elasticity estimators in translog models this paper examines the distribution fu nctions of elasticity estimators in translog demand models the authors consider the normaland ratio of normals distributions and present confidence intervals for the elasticity estimators the results suggest that only elasticity estimato rs based on the means of the actual cost shares are likely to follow either the normal or ratio of normals distribution function examination of three published empirical studies demonstrates that inferences regarding the values of elasticities cannot be made from point estimates alone and suggests a trade off between the level of aggregation and the width of confidence intervals for the elasticit y estimators copyright 1986 by mit press

valuing climate protection by offsetting carbon emissions rethinking environmental governance abstract this study aimed to investigate households willingness to pay wtp for a carbon reduction programme the demographic and socioeconomic factors that influence households wtp the contingent valuation method cvm was employed as a mechanism to decide a monetary valuation of public preferences for offsetting carbon emissions by ascertaining the value attached to climate protection in kuala lumpur malaysia the valuation of public preference was measured by the households wtp for a specific amount of climate protection this study found that approximately 71 of households were wtp towards the protection of the climate better environment the findings validated that socioeconomic variables such as education income acquired awareness and knowledge of climate change issues have significant impacts on wtp and the mean wtp is myr15 38 us 1 myr3 25 monthly however wtp varied considerably with household perception of the value of climate protection this study would be useful in designing an appropriate policy framework fostering new policy oriented sustainability and further carbon footprint research