short selling and the price discovery process we show that stock prices are more accurate when short sellers are more active first in a large panel of nyse listed stocks intraday informational efficiency of prices improves with greater shorting flow second at monthly and annual horizons more shorting flow accelerates the incorporation of public information into prices third greater shorting flow reduces post earnings announcement drift for negative earnings surprises fourth short sellers change their trading around extreme return events in a way that aids price discovery and reduces divergence from fundamental values these results are robust to various econometric specifications and their magnitude is economically meaningful the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

techno economic analysis and environmental impact assessment of a 10 mw biomass based power plant in malaysia abstract considering that renewable energy is the primary energy source in the future this study investigates biomass power for sustainable and secure energy supply biomass fuels in malaysia include empty fruit bunch mesocarp fiber palm kernel shell oil palm frond oil palm trunk from palm oil plantation and woody biomass from forests the moisture content and heating value of palm oil based biomass fuels are analyzed relative to their cost savings in a 10 mw biomass power plant the net present value internal rate of return and payback period for various finance options and at various system efficiencies are also presented results indicate that for an empty fruit bunch priced at myr 20 t without loan the net present values are myr 45 31 million myr 54 32 million and myr 57 74 million with 20 30 and 40 system efficiencies respectively the internal rates of returns are 21 88 22 and 21 11 respectively and the payback periods are 4 16 4 20 and 4 22 y respectively the 10 mw plant releases 50 130 t less co 2 750 t less so 2 218 65 t less nox and 22 83 t less co emissions in the environment compared with the existing energy mix

social absorption capability systems of innovation and manufactured export response to preferential trade incentives abstract in many extant analyses of the impact of non reciprocal system of trade preferences it is typical to focus on the details of market access value of tariff concessions as explanation for why export of beneficiaries may or may not respond to incentives very often the role that supply related factors can and do play in the process is relegated to the background this paper argues that the social absorption capability of a beneficiary s economy as expressed in her incumbent systems of innovation is a crucial determinant of export performance response the experience of sub sahara african countries under the us african growth and opportunity act apparel trade incentive is used as a classical illustration of this proposition it is shown that the comparative efficiency of lesotho despite emerging from a relatively weak trade performance potential background in recording the highest level of export success among beneficiaries of the scheme is a function of the relative efficiency of her systems of innovation

a theory of trading volume a theory of trading volume is developed based on assumptions that market agents frequently revise their demand prices and randomly encounter potential trading partners the model describes two distinct ways informational events affect trading volume one is consistent with conjectures made by empirical researchers that investor disagreement leads to increased trading but the observation of abnormal trading volume does not necessarily imply disagreement and volume can increase even if investors interpret the information identically if they also have had divergent prior expectations simulation tests support the model and are used to contrast the random pairing environment with costless market clearing volume is lower in the costly market and volume increases caused by an informational event persist after the event period this is consistent with existing empirical evidence and suggests that markets do not immediately clear all orders or that investors have demands to recontract

security analysis and trading patterns when some investors receive information before others in existing models of information acquisition all informed investors receive their information at the same time this article analyzes trading behavior and equilibrium information acquisition when some investors receive common private information before others the model implies that under some conditions investors will focus only on a subset of securities herding while neglecting other securities with identical exogenous characteristics in addition the model is consistent with empirical correlations that are suggestive of oft cited trading strategies such as profit taking short term position reversal and following the leader mimicking earlier trades in existing models of information acquisition all informed investors receive their information at the same time while these models provide many important insights in reality some investors either fortuitously or owing to superior skill acquire pertinent information before others by being first an investor can exploit this information to great advantage information that is uncovered only slightly later is less valuable even if it has not yet been publicly revealed we show in this article that the sequential nature of information arrival has a significant effect on both the trading decisions and the types of information collected by investors the model we develop describes the investment choices of a set of competitive risk averse investors who investigate the long term prospects of firms lucky or high ability investors uncover the

upgrading primary production a global commodity chain approach abstract global commodity chain gcc analysis has been concerned mainly with examining power relations in global manufacturing industries although it has been preoccupied increasingly by the question of how developing country dc producers can upgrade this paper extends gcc analysis to traditional primary commodities where international traders exercise the driving role and suggests a new agenda for their upgrading in dcs based upon public action

the asian drivers and ssa is there a future for export oriented african industrialisation export oriented industrialisation is the orthodoxy and is widely indicated as a development path for sub saharan africa in recent years there has been a surge of clothing exports from a limited number of ssa economies to the us in 2006 these exports accounted for more than half of ssa s manufactured exports excluding south africa however the ending of quota controls on chinese clothing exports to the us led to a significant fall in these exports is this a harbinger for the future of export oriented industrialisation in ssa in a world of a level trading playing field

journalists and the stock market we use exogenous scheduling of wall street journal columnists to identify a causal relation between financial reporting and stock market performance to measure the media s unconditional effect we add columnist fixed effects to a daily regression of excess dow jones industrial average returns relative to standard control variables these fixed effects increase the r super 2 by about 35 indicating each columnist s average persistent bullishness or bearishness to measure the media s conditional effect we interact columnist fixed effects with lagged returns this increases explanatory power by yet another one third and identifies amplification or attenuation of prevailing sentiment as a tool used by financial journalists the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

the african growth and opportunity act and the global commodity chain for clothing abstract this paper examines responses to the african growth and opportunity act in sub saharan africa s clothing sector the paper reviews statistical evidence on supply response as well as presenting recent fieldwork findings from southern africa using a modified version of global commodity value chain analysis it argues that while there has been a significant level of response this has been largely confined to enterprises of a particular type the latter has evolved globally in relation to the specificities of the us clothing market this has consequences both for chain analysis and for broader debates concerning industrial upgrading and trade vs aid

the changing global geography of low technology labor intensive industry clothing footwear and furniture summary a basic approach to the geographic investigation of low technology labor intensive industries is sketched out by invoking notions of industrial organization locational agglomeration and spatial divisions of labor the distribution of the clothing footwear and furniture industries across the contemporary world is described on the basis of detailed published statistics special emphasis is accorded to similarities and contrasts in the geography of production between more developed and less developed countries i show that no matter what the level of development agglomeration tends to be a pervasive though not universal feature of these three industries global trading patterns in the three industries are subjected to extended investigation i examine international flows of finished products as well as production sharing activities involving various kinds of subcontracting arrangements between high wage and low wage countries i then attempt to demonstrate in theory how spatial agglomeration and international commodity flows function as mutually reinforcing phenomena via the play of increasing returns effects the significance of low wage low technology industries for processes of economic development is also stressed in the conclusion i suggest that the global geography of production is tending more and more to assume the form of a far flung mosaic of competing and collaborating agglomerations at various levels of productive capability and development

trade policy reform and the competitive response in kwazulu natal province south africa like many other formerly protected economies the liberalization of the external trade regime has placed new competitive pressures on south african enterprises detailed research in over 130 enterprises in the kwazulu natal kzn province of south africa shows the extent to which firms have been able to respond to these new competitive pressures and particularly on their ability to hear and to meet more demanding customers requirements inevitably the response has been varied but there are reasons to be concerned that the pace of adjustment has been suboptimal this reflects imperfections in information markets the challenges poses by the need for new social relations in production and the limited implementation of new supply sided policies designed to compensate firms for the reduction in protective barriers

snails southern hake and sustainability neoliberalism and natural resource exports in chile abstract this examination of the recent history of the fishing sector in chile shows that in this sector which has played an important role in chile s export success short term growth was achieved at the cost of long term sustainability with negative implications for those involved in the industry this case raises the more general issue of the importance of regulatory frameworks in the promotion of natural resource exports neoliberal policy frameworks which generally assume that self regulating markets produce better results than explicit efforts to modify market results have been increasingly adopted by developing countries analyses of the implications of these policy frameworks for the long term sustainability of growth based upon natural resource exports have not grown along with the popularity of the policies themselves this article is an effort to redress the imbalance

selling success constructing value in conservation and development summary selling success is crucial in conservation and development solutions ideas projects and people must actively be constructed as valuable to get donors and policy makers to buy into them exactly how success travels and becomes capital however is not often explicated using a southern african conservation and development intervention the paper compares positive translation along the project s accountability chain with the broader circulation of positive references to the project s payments for ecosystem services initiative while both illuminate the construction of value in conservation and development the paper concludes that a neoliberal context increasingly emphasizes the latter tactic of epistemic circulation

diversity and security in uk electricity generation the influence of low carbon objectives abstract we explore the relationship between low carbon objectives and the strategic security of electricity in the context of the uk electricity system we consider diversity of fuel source mix to represent one dimension of security robustness against interruptions of any one source and apply two different diversity indices to the range of electricity system scenarios produced by the uk government and independent researchers our results show that low carbon objectives are uniformly associated with greater long term diversity in uk electricity generation with reference to data on wind generation we also consider the impact of source variability on a second dimension of security the reliability of generation availability we conclude that this does not undermine our fundamental conclusion that low carbon scenarios are associated with greater strategic security of supply in uk electricity we discuss reasons for this result explore sensitivities and briefly discuss possible policy instruments associated with diversity and their limitations

governance of global value chains in response to food safety and certification standards the case of shrimp from vietnam summary we use global value chain gvc theory to understand governance of vietnam s shrimp farming industry we describe this gvc as buyer driven with important food safety standards imposed by governments of importing countries and new certification systems promoted by nongovernmental organizations ngos governance relations are clear between governments in importing countries and vietnam and between importers and ngos governance relations become more fragmented further down the chain where large numbers of small scale producers and traders operate this fragmentation may adversely affect access to the most lucrative markets and have the unanticipated effect of marginalizing small scale farmers and traders

ena based evaluation of energy supply security comparison between the chinese crude oil and natural gas supply systems abstract energy has become a scarce global strategic resource and energy supply security is receiving increasing attention a common evaluation platform is necessary to systematically understand the supply security levels of different energy sources and help make the national energy strategy ecological network analysis ena is thus regarded as a useful common tool to systematically simulate evaluate and compare the supply security for different energy sources when considering the fact that modern energy systems have formed a complex global energy network through extensive energy trading based on the established ena platform we evaluated and compared china s crude oil and natural gas supply security from 2000 to 2012 to this end we assessed the overall security level investigated the relationship among different compartments within the network system determined the system s structure and analyzed the system s properties it was found that the chinese crude oil supply security level was higher than that of the natural gas supply and that the crude oil supply system was more mature in terms of multiple properties suggestions are proposed to improve the chinese energy supply security based on further scenario analysis including increasing domestic energy production controlling energy consumption diversifying foreign supply sources and strengthening the strategic reserve the ena based common platform can be used for the systematic evaluation and improvement of energy supply security and further support national energy policymaking for both developed and developing countries both energy importers and exporters

power sector reform in developing countries mismatched agendas power sector reform is rapidly spreading across all corners of the developing world at an alarmingly rapid pace while the rationales for reform seem to have gained acceptance among the stakeholders the reform model and process are contested this paper examines the impacts of reform using the promised outcomes as a basis for analysis the ability of reform to meet the developmental challenges facing the reformers is explored it concludes that reform has had some achievements if conventional performance indicators are used but also questions the validity of some of these indicators reform has however not fulfilled many of its goals and the prevailing recipes are likely to leave developing countries socially and economically worse off than in the pre reform period progressive government intervention is needed to shift reform process towards a more responsible development path

diversity and ignorance in electricity supply investment addressing the solution rather than the problem the need for diversity has been cited as a rationale for important recent investment decisions in the uk electricity supply sector it is invoked as the principal argument for continuing major government intervention yet there exists no formal analytical basis for the concept why is diversity good what is meant by diversification what is it that must be diversified what trade off should be struck between diversity and other measures of performance the resulting ambiguity causes confusion and is vulnerable to special pleading despite this this paper argues that diversification offers a superior alternative to probabilistic approaches towards uncertainty and ignorance in electricity supply investments and proposes a formal analytical approach a quantitative index of diversity is borrowed from information theory and used to derive a value for the government s implicit willingness to pay for diversity in the uk electricity supply mix this is then applied in a pilot exercise to the problem of optimizing the diversity and financial performance of the supply portfolio although provisional the results are relevant to the government s forthcoming nuclear review particularly in assessing the relative levels of support for nuclear power and renewable energy

efficiency and the bear short sales and markets around the world we analyze cross sectional and time series information from 46 equity markets around the world to consider whether short sales restrictions affect the efficiency of the market and the distributional characteristics of returns to individual stocks and market indices we find some evidence that prices incorporate negative information faster in countries where short sales are allowed and practiced a common conjecture by regulators is that short sales restrictions can reduce the relative severity of a market panic we find strong evidence that in markets where short selling is either prohibited or not practiced market returns display significantly less negative skewness

free competition without sustainable development tanzanian cotton sector liberalisation 1994 95 to 1997 98 this article summarises the results of fieldwork carried out in 1997 8 season on post liberalisation changes in the tanzanian cotton sector developments in primary marketing ginning and the export trade are reviewed on the basis of survey material market entry by private companies has been high leading to considerable competition and slight increases in producers share of the world price but real producer price and cultivation increases have not been sustained following changes in the input supply system insecticide use has fallen sharply along with the quality and underlying international price of the cotton crop tanzania s place in the world market has been re defined as a producer for a specific time based market window this places a question mark over the sustainability of the sector s future and by inference over policy reforms whose main emphasis is to increase competition

news droughts news floods and u s disaster relief this paper studies the influence of mass media on u s government response to approximately 5 000 natural disasters occurring between 1968 and 2002 these disasters took nearly 63 000 lives and affected 125 million people per year we show that u s relief depends on whether the disaster occurs at the same time as other newsworthy events such as the olympic games which are obviously unrelated to need we argue that the only plausible explanation of this is that relief decisions are driven by news coverage of disasters and that the other newsworthy material crowds out this news coverage

stealth trading which traders trades move stock prices usingaudit trail data for a sample of nyse firms we show that medium size trades are associated with a disproportionately large cumulative stock price change relative to their proportion of all trades and volume this result is consistent with the predictions of barclay and warner s 1993 stealth tradinghypothesis we find that the source of this disproportionately large cumulative price impact of medium size trades is trades initiated by institutions this result is robust to various sensitivity checks our findings appear to confirm street lore that institutions are informed traders 2001 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

export processing zones in madagascar a success story under threat summary the success of export processing zones or the zone franche in madagascar since 1990 is with the exception of mauritius an isolated and unknown case in africa this paper based on first hand data explains that the zone franche has had a highly significant macroeconomic impact in terms of exports and jobs we show that average wages in the zone franche are equivalent to the other formal activity sectors other things being equal and that labor standards there are higher than average the zone franche quickly recovered from the 2002 crisis and has benefited a great deal from agoa the final phase out of the multi fibre arrangement in 2005 is expected to have a negative impact on the zone franche

assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies the non combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature the indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology availability of renewable sources efficiency of energy conversion land requirements water consumption and social impacts the cost of electricity greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source the social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development it was found that wind power is the most sustainable followed by hydropower photovoltaic and then geothermal wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs

high gas dependence for power generation in thailand the vulnerability analysis abstract thailand uses 74 of its natural gas supply for power generation and 70 of its power comes from gas based technology high dependence on natural gas in power generation raises concerns about security of electricity supply that could affect competitiveness of thai manufacturing and other industries at the global level the effect of fuel dependence on security of electricity supply has received less emphasis in the literature given this gap this research examines the economic impact of high dependence on natural gas for power generation in thailand by analyzing the effect of changes in fuel prices including fuel oil and natural gas on electricity tariff in thailand at the same time the research quantifies the vulnerability of the thai economy due to high gas dependence in power generation our research shows that for every 10 change in natural gas price electricity tariff in thailand would change by 3 5 in addition we found that the gas bill for power generation consumed between 1 94 and 3 05 of gross domestic product gdp between 2000 and 2004 and in terms of gdp share per unit of energy gas dependence in power generation is almost similar to that of crude oil import dependence we also found that the basic metal industry being an electricity intensive industry is the most affected industry additionally we find that volatility of gas price is the main factor behind the vulnerability concern the research accordingly simulates two mitigation options of the problem namely reducing gas dependence and increasing efficiency of gas fired power plants where the results show that these methods can reduce the vulnerability of the country from high gas dependence in power generation

local means in value chain ends dynamics of product and social upgrading in apparel manufacturing in guatemala and colombia summary this paper contributes to existing discussions of global value chains gvc and industrial upgrading by examining observations from eight months of field research in guatemala and colombia where upgrading firms have their own nationally distinct form of labor relations despite producing the same products for the same overseas buyers analysis of these observations leads to the conclusion that labor relations show significant leeway in relation to upgrading outcomes and that local history merits more attention as a driver of management strategy the paper concludes with a discussion of relevant theory and implications for future research

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

why do short sellers like qualitative news short sellers trade more on days with qualitative news that is news containing fewer numbers we show that this behavior is not informationally motivated but can be explained by short sellers exploiting higher liquidity on such days we document that liquidity and noise trading increase in the presence of qualitative news enabling short sellers to better disguise their informed trades natural experiments support our findings qualitative news has a bigger effect on short sellers trading after a decrease in liquidity following the stock s deletion from the standard poor s 500 index and a smaller effect when investor attention is distracted by the olympic games

can africa industrialize by processing primary commodities the case of mozambican cashew nuts abstract industrialization strategies based on vertical diversification into processing of primary commodities have long been appealing to low income countries the performance of such strategies is mixed an aggregate level literature is divided on the advisability of low income countries processing commodities for export especially for countries relatively poor in human capital while this general literature usefully illuminates the policy debate over processing cashew nuts in mozambique commodity and country specific factors reveal the weaknesses of conducting debate at too aggregated a level it may be that the most significant constraints on processing industrialization are political rather than purely technical or economic

energy sustainability from analysis of sustainable development indicators a case study in taiwan abstract as taiwan has a dense population and only limited natural resources the government began actively establishing a taiwan s sustainable development indicators tsdi system in 2003 which was developed with reference to the pressure state response psr framework to evaluate the progress towards sustainability energy is a very important factor in leading to sustainable development at the national level however there are only two indicators concerning the energy sustainability in the tsdi system this paper summarizes the current status of energy supply energy consumption carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and renewable energy production since the year 2000 the updated information on the tsdi was also addressed and analyzed to imply the progress towards energy sustainability during 2000 2008 finally the weighted sum method was proposed to make an analysis of energy sustainability from taiwan s renewable energy production showing that this country has experienced a significant progress toward energy sustainability in recent years

industrialization trajectories in madagascar s export apparel industry ownership embeddedness markets and upgrading summary the paper shows the importance of ownership as a conceptual category within global value chain gvc analysis through analyzing firm types based on their gvc linkage market access and ownership profile in madagascar s apparel export industry the central argument is that ownership leading to variances in embeddedness matters ownership characteristics of supplier firms shape the ability to shift between different end markets respond to lead firm requirements and pursue upgrading with madagascar s exclusion from agoa benefits this has enabled locally embedded european french diaspora owned firms and regionally embedded mauritian owned firms to shift market channels and upgrade while asian owned firms largely exited the industry

market power in a securities market with endogenous information a rational expectations model of a securities market is developed in which one agent the monopolist behaves like a stackelberg leader and other agents behave competitively two information structures one in which each agent has identical information and the other in which each agent has independent information are examined equilibrium is shown to exist and is characterized in both cases but monopoly has a significant effect on the equilibrium only in the latter the optimal strategy of the stackelberg leader is also studied and it is shown that he will not randomize his strategy by adding white noise to his demand function even though this obfuscates the information content of the market price

trading volume and serial correlation in stock returns this paper investigates the relationship between aggregate stock market trading volume and the serial correlation of daily stock returns for both stock indexes and individual large stocks the first order daily return autocorrelation tends to decline with volume the paper explains this phenomenon using a model in which risk averse market makers accommodate buying or selling pressure from liquidity or noninformational traders changing expected stock returns reward market makers for playing this role the model implies that a stock price decline on a high volume day is more likely than a stock price decline on a low volume day to be associated with an increase in the expected stock return

assessing the sustainability challenges for electricity industries in asean newly industrialising countries abstract rapid social and economic progress in fast developing countries such that among the countries in the association of southeast asian nations asean have driven substantial growth in electricity consumption in this region whilst this represents significant societal and economic development it has potentially growing adverse environmental impacts this raises a concern on sustainable development in the electricity sector in this region this study evaluates key sustainability challenges in the electricity industries in the five largest energy consumers in asean indonesia thailand malaysia the philippines and vietnam the 3a s energy sustainability objectives accessibility availability and acceptability are used as the sustainability analytical framework this study also draws together a set of associated indicators and criteria within the analytical framework to analyse the status of the electricity industries in these countries the analysis shows that key sustainability challenges in the asean 5 are attributable to satisfying rapid demand growth enhancing security of electricity supply and mitigating the increase in co2 emissions from electricity generation given the promising resource and technical potential in this region renewable energy emerges as a favourable option to address these challenges however increasing the share of renewable energy in electricity generation requires considerable policy support this study suggests that there is an opportunity for the asean countries to strengthen regional collaborations through experience and resource sharing to enhance sustainability in the electricity industries this study also highlights some of the key issues facing the electricity industry and the need for new generation investment decision support tools which can address these issues