the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

impact of deposit rate ceiling changes on bank stock returns this paper reexamines the impact of four major changes in deposit rate ceilings that occurred during the 1970 80 decade on bank systematic and unsystematic risk the reexamination clarifies why it is dangerous to conduct event studies naively stephen m goldfeld and richard e quandt s switching regressions method is proposed as a procedure that forces the researcher to take a more disciplined approach to determining event dates contrary to previous studies switch dates identified by goldfeld and quandt s switching regressions method cannot be associated with ceiling change announcements because of other information flows so that inferences cannot be drawn about the specific effects of the regulatory adjustments copyright 1989 by ohio state university press

drivers and inhibitors of renewable energy a qualitative and quantitative study of the caribbean abstract we explore the factors that affect the development of renewable energy in the caribbean the caribbean region can serve as a laboratory in studying the institutional issues relating to energy development due to the differences in political jurisdictions over a short distance based on 12 case studies and 75 in depth interviews with a variety of stakeholders we identified five factors that appear to be critical for the development of renewable energy in the caribbean entrepreneurship attitudes the role of local champions the electric utility influence informal institutions and the influence of international agencies we built a multiple regression model to test these relationships through a survey of 34 political jurisdictions in the caribbean the statistical analysis we conducted suggests that informal institutions have a significant impact on the extent of renewable energy development while the incumbent electricity utilities influence may impede the development of renewable energy based on these findings we provide recommendations on how best to make use of these factors identified in order to develop effective energy policies throughout the caribbean

do renewable electricity policies promote renewable electricity generation evidence from panel data using the poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimation technique this paper evaluates the effects of renewable electricity policies on renewable electricity generation using a large panel dataset that covers 122 countries over the period of 1980 2010 the results suggest that renewable electricity policies play a crucial role in promoting renewable electricity generation but their effectiveness is subject to diminishing returns as the number of policies increases there is also evidence that the effects of renewable electricity policies are more pronounced before 1996 as well as in developed and emerging market countries and the negative policy interaction effect fades with the stage of economic development lastly policy effectiveness varies by the type of renewable electricity policy and energy source only investment incentives and feed in tariffs are found to be effective in promoting the development of all types of renewable energy sources for electricity considered in this paper

interactions of factors impacting implementation and sustainability of renewable energy sourced electricity abstract two renewable energy sourced electricity res e technologies are at the forefront of the current energy transition away from fossil fuels wind and solar photovoltaic however res e must overcome implementation and sustainability challenges from factors identified in economic policy societal technological and environmental dimensions res e diffusion is also a complex problem and this critical review suggests that outcomes depend on interdependencies between factors within a single or across multiple dimensions four categories of interactivity have been identified higher capital costs or market inequalities associated with the economic dimension of res e drive supportive policies or incentives in the policy dimension in the policy policy category interactions between res e demand or supply side incentives influence electricity pricing energy market mixes or greenhouse gases emissions the society technology category examines societal technological interactions at both micro and macro scales the environment technology category details interactions between res e and the environment the technology technology category examines synergies between res e when collocated with conventional electricity generation technologies this review identified several knowledge gaps first research on res e implementation lacks system level analyses on the impact of interactions on project outcomes a well developed line of research examines interactions between multiple simultaneous supportive policies on res e implementation in developed nations however a second gap exists on the understanding of these interactions in developing nations a third gap exists on evaluating the impact of technological lock in this includes the impact on res e implementation rates when the complex economic policy governance and societal factors implicated in lock in are removed

performance changes around bank mergers revenue enhancements versus cost reductions this paper examines operating performance around commercial bank mergers we find that industry adjusted operating performance of merged banks increases significantly after the merger large bank mergers produce greater performance gains than small bank mergers activity focusing mergers produce greater performance gains than activity diversifying mergers geographically focusing mergers produce greater performance gains than geographically diversifying mergers and performance gains are larger after the implementation of nationwide banking in 1997 further we find improved performance is the result of both revenue enhancements and cost reduction activities however revenue enhancements are most significant in those mergers that also experience reduced costs

towards a sustainable electrification in ghana a review of renewable energy deployment policies abstract ghana has been facing perennial power rationing over the years due to fuel supply challenges the country s energy system is likely to suffer additional strain from rising energy demand fueled by population growth rapid urbanization and economic development fortunately there are enormous renewable energy resources which can provide sustainable electrification as backbone to socioeconomic development while curbing global warming ghana s energy strategy targets 100 access to electricity and 10 share of sustainable power in national generation mix by 2020 despite the existence of numerous policies and a renewable energy act current contribution of non conventional renewable energy to electricity generation is less than 1 the right mix of policies to address the unique domestic conditions and achieve its specific development goals remains insufficient this study reviews the regulatory framework financing incentives and other provisions of ghana s renewable energy act it critically examines the policy s strengths weaknesses opportunities and treats based on comparative analysis and lessons drawn from failed and successful implementation of similar policies around the world the study also assesses the impact of policy on project development it was found that the performance of ghana s renewable energy policy on grid connected electricity has been poor compared to its target the fundamental reasons for this unsatisfactory performance may be attributed to partial implementation of policies lack of market driven support schemes lack of pricing policy framework weak grid network limited access to funds and inconsistencies in renewable energy development strategies this study proposes the following countermeasures i ghana should comprehensively harmonize renewable energy regulatory and fiscal policies with domestic electricity pricing regime ii market driven support schemes should be prioritized for cost effectiveness and minimum governmental influence these reforms can help eliminate some of the major barriers to sustainable electrification in ghana while the lessons provide a learning curve for other african countries

corporate governance through the proxy contest evidence and implications the current literature concerning proxy contests provides little evidence that shareholders suffer materially from sub par performance prior to a contest furthermore no study has thoroughly examined the long term performance of targeted firms subsequent to a proxy contest using a sample of ninety seven election contests during the period 1968 87 the authors find negative abnormal returns and deteriorating operating performance prior to the announcement of a contest following the contest negative abnormal returns are observed these negative returns are driven by cases in which dissident shareholders successfully acquire board seats the results for accounting based operating performance measures confirm these findings copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

competitiveness through management of diversity effects on stock price valuation this study s premise is that firms that can lower their costs and enhance their differentiation through the effective management of their human resources have a competitive advantage using data fr

is there a glass ceiling over europe exploring the gender pay gap across the wages distribution using harmonised data from the european union household panel we analyse gender pay gaps by sector across the wages distribution for ten countries we find that the mean gender pay gap in the raw data typically hides large variations in the gap across the wages distribution we use quantile regression qr techniques to control for the effects of individual and job characteristics at different points of the distribution and calculate the part of the gap attributable to differing returns between men and women we find that first gender pay gaps are typically bigger at the top of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with the existence of glass ceilings for some countries gender pay gaps are also bigger at the bottom of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with sticky floors third the gender pay gap is typically higher at the top than the bottom end of the wage distribution suggesting that glass ceilings are more prevalent than sticky floors and that these prevail in the majority of our countries fourth the gender pay gap differs significantly across the public and the private sector wages distribution for each of our eu countries

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

energy security and renewable energy deployment in the eu liaisons dangereuses or virtuous circle abstract a large body of literature estimates the effect of energy security drivers on renewable energy deployment using import dependence as a proxy for energy security which is an approach that ignores the potential effect of other energy security strategies such as the diversification of energy sources using panel data for the energy sector across 21 eu member states we investigate the effect of different energy security concepts on the development of renewable energies we compare the results of applying different energy security indicators including the ones used in eu energy policymaking unlike previous studies this study reports a long term relationship between energy security and renewable deployment our findings suggest that the relationship between energy security policies and renewable energy sources res deployment is far from straightforward and depends on the chosen energy security strategy which is usually linked to different energy security conceptualizations our primary findings confirm i that res deployment is a consequence of a combination of energy security strategies including environmental concerns rather than being solely caused by a shift towards more sustainable energy policies and ii that among the different energy security strategies the diversification of energy sources through renewable energy deployment is a more coherent strategy than using res to reduce dependency

potential gains from international portfolio diversification and inter temporal stability and seasonality in international stock market relationships abstract in this paper we find empirical evidence that diversification across countries results in greater risk reduction than diversification across industries our inter temporal stability tests indicate that the longer the time period considered the better proxies ex post patterns of co movement can be for the ex ante co movements of international stock markets our seasonality tests show that international stock market co movements are stable in the september may period but relatively unstable in the may september period

green electricity market development lessons from europe and the us this study compares the development and implementation of green electricity policies in germany the netherlands sweden and the united states a set of countries applying a range of policy instruments to encourage electricity from renewable energy sources a general tendency is identified that policies shift emphasis from r d stimulation towards dissemination and market application of renewable energy technologies we argue that in light of the long term nature of policy goals on energy security mitigation of climate change and environmental protection the applied range of policy instruments may be lacking in providing incentives for the long term development of new technologies clarifying policy objectives would allow careful selection of policy instruments including support for r d improved capacity building for policy implementation is also important

understanding cross national trends in high tech renewable power equipment exports to the united states we track us imports of advanced technology wind and solar power generation equipment from a panel of countries during 1989 2010 and examine the determining factors including country size sector specific us fdi outflow and domestic wind and solar power generation differentiating between the core high tech and the balance of system equipment we find us imports of both categories have grown at significantly higher rate from the relatively poorer countries and particularly china and india larger countries are found to be exporting significantly more and us fdi is found to play a significant positive role in the exports of high tech equipment for the poor countries for the core wind and solar high tech equipment we find domestic renewable power generation of the exporting countries also played a significant positive role

the perverse effects of partial labour market reform fixed term contracts in france we argue that the effects of a partial reform of employment protection by allowing firms to hire workers on fixed term contracts may be perverse the main effect may be high turnover in entry level jobs leading to higher not lower unemployment even if unemployment falls workers may be worse off going through many spells of unemployment and entry level jobs before obtaining a regular job considering french data for young workers since the early 1980s we conclude that the reforms have substantially increased turnover without a substantial reduction in unemployment duration if anything the effect on their welfare appears to have been negative

proxy contests and the governance of publicly held corporations abstract analysis of 60 proxy contests for seats on the boards of exchange listed firms during 1978 1985 shows that three years after the contest less than one fifth of the sample firms remain independent publicly held corporations run by the same management team proxy contests are typically followed by managerial resignations even when dissidents fail to obtain a majority of board seats and are often followed by sale or liquidation of the firm the average stockholder wealth gains associated with proxy contests are largely attributable to gains by companies in which dissident activity leads to sale or liquidation

the theory of human capital revisited on the interaction of general and specific investments human capital theory distinguishes between training in general usage and firm specific skills becker 1964 argues that employers will only invest in specific training not general training when labour markets are competitive the article reconsiders becker s theory using essentially his framework we show that there exists an incentive complementarity between employer sponsored general and specific training the possibility to provide specific training leads the employer to invest in general human capital conversely the latter reduces the hold up problem that arises with firm specific training we also consider the desirability of institutionalised training programmes and the virtues of breach penalties and discuss some empirical facts that could be explained by the theory

switching towards coal or renewable energy the effects of financial capital on energy transitions abstract does a country s stock of financial capital affect its ability to achieve energy transitions this paper uses data for up to 137 countries for the period 1998 2013 to investigate the importance of financial capital for changes in the use of each energy type i find that financial capital supports transition to more capital intensive energy types for high income countries financial capital facilitates transitions from fossil fuels to modern renewable energy sources especially wind both private credit from banks and domestic private debt securities support greater shares of wind energy for lower income countries financial capital supports progression from biomass towards fossil fuel energy sources such as coal i also find that countries with larger stocks of financial capital are more likely to move to more capital intensive electricity generation systems

international banking a survey two distinct sets of issues are involved in the analysis of international banking one set the industrial organization issues centers on the patterns of expansion of foreign branches and subsidiaries of banks headquartered in the united states great britain japan and a few other industrial countries and on the nature of the advantage that these branches and subsidiaries have in relation to their host country competitors the second set the international finance issues involves the role of banks in cross border and cross currency financial flows both from their head offices and from their foreign branches and subsidiaries despite the attention to international banking there are few uniquely international institutions rather international banks are a subset of domestic banks with significant numbers of foreign branches and subsidiaries moreover there are few uniquely international banking activities although foreign exchange trading may seem to be one in many countries most or all foreign exchange trading involves domestic banks with few if any foreign branches the growth of foreign branches and subsidiaries of major banks occurred in two waves the first occurred in the decades before world war i when the war started

communication costs information acquisition and voting decisions in proxy contests this article synthesizes some recent progress in the theories of corporate control and political lobbying to model the proxy campaign as a political campaign the model yields a number of testable implications only some of which have been examined in the literature for example if the loss from voting for a bad dissident exceeds the gain from voting for a good dissident the model predicts that as communication costs fall the number of proxy fights increases announcement day returns decrease and the fraction of dissident wins first increases and then decreases article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

the timing of option repricing we investigate whether executive stock option repricings are systematically timed to coincide with favorable movements in the company s stock price for a sample of 236 repricing events we observe sharp increases in stock price in the 20 day period following the repricing date in addition repricing dates tend to either precede the release of good news or follow the release of bad news in the quarterly earnings announcements since information about stock option repricing is not generally released to the public around the repricing date these findings suggest that ceos opportunistically manage the timing of the option repricing date

the renewable portfolio standard design considerations and an implementation survey renewables have social and environmental bene ts compared to conventional electricity sources but are rarely competitive on a strict nancial cost basis this is because conventional sources are sometimes subsidized their full pollution costs are ignored and renewables involve newer higher cost technologies whose relative costs will fall with commercialization governments use several mechanisms to support renewables including direct nancial support grants loans indirect support r d demonstrations reform of nancial costs of conventional sources subsidy removal pollution taxes and the renewable portfolio standard rps the rps requires a minimum share of electricity from renewable energy sources its use is spreading because it maintains an incentive for renewable producers to reduce costs links the regulated market outcome to an environmental target and reduces government involvement although it is too early to evaluate fully its e ectiveness the survey for this study explored implementation issues in three european countries nine us states and australia and found the following the rps target is usually set to have environmental bene ts without causing signi cant price increases cost caps are sometimes used most jurisdictions limit eligibility to gridconnected domestic renewables the rps is usually applied to producers rather than consumers and to energy output not capacity flexibility mechanisms are desired but a challenge to implement administration in the us and australia is by government with delegation to independent utility regulators while in europe it is more the responsibility of government everywhere the rps is applied alongside other mechanisms of renewables support 2001 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

factors affecting the efficiency of wind power in the european union countries abstract the study uses the two stage bias corrected dea approach of simar and wilson 2007 to assess the efficiency of the eu countries in terms of their wind power investment in 2015 the set of input variables includes installed wind power capacity and average wind power density while output variables include wind generated electricity and three additional aspects environmental economic and energy security next the study examines the effect of renewable energy policy regarding wind energy the energy mix and the offshore wind power utilisation on the wind power efficiency of the analysed countries the results obtained reveal that the united kingdom sweden denmark and ireland are the most efficient countries in terms of wind power investment the inclusion of additional aspects demonstrates the greatest improvement of efficiency in belgium cyprus the netherlands estonia and germany the results seem to indicate that economic instruments used within renewable energy policy have a positive effect on wind power efficiency while policy support and regulatory instruments might negatively impact moreover the results show that the energy mix explains the variation of the efficiency of the eu countries when their economic and environmental aspects are considered the analysis of the geographic location indicates that countries with a high share of offshore wind capacity are the most efficient

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

feed in tariffs combined with capital subsidies for promoting the adoption of residential photovoltaic systems abstract both feed in tariffs fits and capital subsidies have been widely employed to promote the adoption of renewable energy technologies this study sheds light on the combined use of fits and capital subsidies the purpose of the study is to clarify their optimal combinations in order to encourage households to adopt photovoltaic pv systems the study develops a microeconomic model embodying the idea of two part tariffs the most important findings concern the combination that maximizes social welfare if fits are applied to the total pv electricity generated they should be set at the avoided cost per unit of pv electricity and capital subsidies should be used to control the number of adopters whereas if fits are applied to only surplus pv electricity the previous principle is distorted however a numerical example suggests that the distortion has little effect on the maximized social welfare and thus it makes little difference whether fits are applied to all pv electricity or just the surplus pv electricity the findings may also be applied to the adoption of wind power generation systems and to adoption by businesses

changes in organizational structure and shareholder wealth the case of limited partnerships this paper analyzes the consequence for shareholders of a change in organizational form the conversion of a corporation or the spin off of a unit into a limited partnership theory suggests that prior to the tax reform act of 1986 the tax benefits of conversion to a limited partnership and the creation of a new entity separate from the parent corporation should have a positive effect on shareholder wealth on the other hand the increase in agency costs of such an organizational change should decrease the wealth of shareholders empirical results lend support to hypotheses that predict an increase in stock price at the announcement of the conversion but cannot identify the source of the gain

evolution in dynamic linkages across daily national stock indexes abstract this article investigates how dynamic linkages among the daily rates of return of eight national stock indexes have evolved since 1972 a dynamic simultaneous equations model is estimated to describe the contemporaneous and lead lag relationships across national equity markets over three different years 1972 1980 and 1987 results reveal growing market interdependence within the same geographical region over time while there are many significant intermarket relationships within the same 24 hour period there are few significant lagged responses across markets beyond 24 hours this suggests a high degree of international market efficiency furthermore japan s market influence has been growing to rival that of the usa

equity joint ventures and theory of the multinational enterprise this paper extends the internalization approach to the theory of the multinational enterprise mne to include an expanded role for equity joint ventures using the transaction cost paradigm of williamson this paper explains why joint ventures may sometimes be preferred over wholly owned subsidiaries also presented is empirical work on joint venture performance in developing countries which demonstrates that under certain conditions joint ventures can be the optimal mode of foreign direct investment 1987 jibs journal of international business studies 1987 18 1 16

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

the social construction of market value institutionalization and learning perspectives on stock market reactions this study advances a social constructionist view of financial market behavior the paper suggests that the market s reaction to particular corporate practices such as stock repurchase plans are not as financial economists contend simply a function of the inherent efficiency of such practices rather stock market reactions are also influenced by the prevailing institutional logic and the degree of institutionalization of the practice the theory first predicts that the emergence of the agency perspective on corporate governance in the mid 1980s represented a powerful new institutional logic that would lead the market to reverse its prior aggregate reaction to stock repurchase plans in the united states the paper then considers the potential for institutional decoupling of repurchase plans and develops competing hypotheses about how the market value of these policies might have changed as more firms formally adopted but did not implement the plans over time in contrast to a financial economic pers

equity joint ventures and the theory of the multinational enterprise this paper extends the internalization approach to the theory of the multinational enterprise mne to include an expanded role for equity joint ventures using the transaction cost paradigm of williamson this paper explains why joint ventures may sometimes be preferred over wholly owned subsidiaries also presented is empirical work on joint venture performance in developing countries which demonstrates that under certain conditions joint ventures can be the optimal mode of foreign direct investment

the outsourcing of r d through acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry abstract we examine the performance of 160 pharmaceutical acquisitions from 1994 to 2001 and find evidence that on average acquirers realize significant positive returns these returns are positively correlated with prior acquirer access to information about the research and development activities at target firms and a superior negotiating position a unique desperation index is employed to determine the current status of a firm s internal productivity we find that firms experiencing declines in internal productivity or which are more desperate are more likely to engage in an outsourcing type acquisition in an effort to replenish their research pipelines

renewable generation across italian regions spillover effects and effectiveness of european regional fund abstract this paper investigates on the determinant factors that drive the italian regions toward a sustainable development path and evaluates the effectiveness of european regional development incentives in promoting investments in renewable energy sources res starting from the consideration that there are spillover effects between similar regions first we identify the factors that capture these similarities then we use them to evaluate their relevance in determining the success of the investments in res an econometric analysis based on the use of spatial panel specification model is implemented to support the hypotheses two important results emerge from the study the first is the identification of regional determinants of res production that are driven by the similarities between regions and that can be interpreted as guidelines in the policy choices in support of investments the second is the lack of effectiveness of the incentives in support of res results indicate that the capacity of some regional governments to direct the funds allocated by the central government or european commission towards efficient production of renewable energy is likely limited and these incentives have been undone

modelling the treatment effect of renewable energy policies on economic growth evaluation from mena countries abstract this paper investigates the effects of renewable energy re policies on economic growth in mena countries using the propensity score matching methodology our empirical analysis conducted on a sample of 24 economies 17 re and 7 non re countries from 1980 to 2012 shows that the treatment effect of re policies has a significant and positive impact on stimulating and promoting economic growth in mena economies that have implemented these energy policies re policies alone however are not sufficient this change requires the collective long term commitment of all stakeholders including governments citizens financiers private companies and international agencies this would help impede policy overlaps and incoherence as well as consequently improve the overall policy effectiveness

determinants of renewable energy development in the eu countries a 20 year perspective abstract the objective of the paper is to identify factors which determine energy policy in the eu countries in the middle of 1990s this objective is achieved in three stages first the changes in the distribution of res in 26 eu countries in the period between 1995 and 2014 are investigated the analysis demonstrates that over the last 20 years the eu countries diversify the res they use which results in substantial changes in their distribution second the distribution of energy sources in 1995 is described as it is assumed that the distribution might be a crucial factor influencing energy policy in each country third several other factors related to energy security environmental concerns economy and politics are considered as potential determinants of renewable energy development two statistical methods of variable selection namely the best subset regression and the lars method reveal that the present in 2014 share of res in the energy mix significantly depends on the condition of the eu countries in the middle of 1990s the distribution of energy sources in 1995 is the crucial determinant of renewable energy development countries without their own fossil fuel sources are the ones which develop renewable energy to the greatest extent other important factors boosting re development include gdp per capita concentration of energy supply swi and the costs of consumption of energy obtained from fossil fuels in relation to gdp

temporary jobs institutions and wage inequality within education groups in central eastern europe summary in this paper we investigate the drivers of wage inequality within education groups in central eastern european countries by employing eu silc microdata before 2007 and after 2012 the crisis our main focus is on the variability of temporary permanent workers wage gap and on the role of institutions labor market deregulation union density and wage coordination in shaping the gap across education groups and along the wage distribution results obtained by means of ols and quantile regression methods confirm that holding a temporary position corresponds to a statistically significant negative wage gap with respect to permanent jobs especially for low paid jobs and tertiary educated workers the impact of institutional settings on the wage gap varies remarkably across education groups and wage levels and strongly depends on the macroeconomic conditions labor market deregulation and weaker minimum wage provisions reduce the wage gap this could be related to the fact the these institutional features reduce the duality on the labor market triggering a downward convergence of permanent wages toward the lowest level of the temporary employed especially in the context of labor reallocation and declining wages typical of recession stronger wage setting institutions on the contrary seem to reinforce duality in the labor market although to different extents depending on the group of workers and on the part of the wage distribution concerned

feed in tariff vs renewable portfolio standard an empirical test of their relative effectiveness in promoting wind capacity development abstract this paper examines the relative effectiveness of feed in tariff fit and renewable portfolio standard rps in promoting wind capacity development using panel data conservative estimates suggest that on average across countries fit increases total wind capacity more than rps by a magnitude of about 1800 mw when using time variant policy indicators the difference between the two policies increases to nearly 2000 mw roughly 8 of 2009 cumulative capacity in germany as for annual wind capacity since 2005 this paper has found no significant difference between fit and rps it is also found that wind energy development responds to high electricity demand and high oil dependence

the effect of private antitrust litigation on the stock market valuation of the firm the authors study the implications for shareholder wealth of interfirm antitrust litigation and how the costs of the dispute affect the propensity to settle upon filing defendants experience significant wealth losses that are ten million dollars larger than the wealth gains of plaintiffs financial distress behavioral constraints and follow on suits are sources of wealth leakage and influence settlement behavior since the threat of a monetary transfer has little power to explain either wealth effects or the likelihood of settlement the central concern of defendants may be the potential prohibition of profitable business practices copyright 1995 by american economic association

recent trends in international banking abstract the paper defines international banking more as a geographical expression than as a particular type of activity and points out that the internationalization of the world s major banking systems was in many cases an evolutionary phenomenon governed by market or institutional developments it analyses both the development of international banking structures stressing the process that brought banks to prefer international retail activity rather than wholesale and the relationship between domestic and international banking finally the paper deals with the not easy to resolve problem of the establishment of lender of last resort facilities in international banking

are multinational corporations superior investment vehicles for achieving international diversification international portfolio diversification is advantageous to the investor from a risk reduction viewpoint investing in mncs and direct investing in foreign firms are 2 methods of diversifying internationally two issues are examined in this paper are there barriers to direct international diversification by investors do mncs enjoy certain unique economic and financial advantages positive responses to both of these questions indicate that mncs are in fact superior investment vehicles for achieving international diversification

policy interactions risk and price formation in carbon markets carbon pricing is an important mechanism for providing companies with incentives to invest in carbon abatement price formation in carbon markets involves a complex interplay between policy targets dynamic technology costs and market rules carbon pricing may under deliver investment due to r d externalities requiring additional policies which themselves affect market prices also abatement costs depend on the extent of technology deployment due to learning by doing this paper introduces an analytical framework based on marginal abatement cost mac curves with the aim of providing an intuitive understanding of the key dynamics and risk factors in carbon markets the framework extends the usual static mac representation of the market to incorporate policy interactions and some technology cost dynamics the analysis indicates that supporting large scale deployment of mature abatement technologies suppresses the marginal cost of abatement sometimes to zero whilst increasing total abatement costs however support for early stage r d may reduce both total abatement cost and carbon price risk an important aspect of the analysis is in elevating risk management considerations into energy policy formation as the results of the stochastic modelling indicate wide distributions for the emergence of carbon prices and public costs around the policy expectations

why regulate insider trading evidence from the first great merger wave 1897 1903 we use event time methodology to study legal insider trading associated with mergers circa 1900 for mergers with prospective disclosures similar to today s we find substantial value gains at announcement implying participation by outside shareholders despite the absence of insider constraints furthermore preannouncement stock price runups relative to total value gain are no more than those observed for modern mergers insider regulation apparently has produced little benefit for outsiders with the inside information pricing function and related gains shifting to external information specialists other results suggest market penalties for nondisclosure i e insider trading is less successful in a restricted information environment

investment in developed and less developed countries a number of studies have compared the investment risk of various industries and of various individual corporations in developed countries dcs the purpose of this paper is to compare investment risk in dcs with less developed countries ldcs the variance of returns to investment in common stocks provides a natural measure of investment risk and will be used in this study studies in ldcs include work of levy and sarnat 12 13 errunza 3 4 and lessard 11 levy and sarnat and errunza found low economy wide investment risk on an average for ldcs relative to dcs with stock indices being used as surrogates for economy wide risk these results are not unambiguous however because there are probable difficulties due to infrequent trading and averaging in the broad market indices used in the above studies hence we use a sample of the largest corporations that suffer little if at all from thin trading and or averaging

is flexible labour good for innovation evidence from firm level data whether the use of flexible workers is damaging to innovation or not depends on the dominant innovation regime in a sector in sectors with a routinised innovation regime high shares of low paid temporary workers have a negative impact on the probability that firms invest in r d in sectors that tend towards a garage business regime however flexibility has no impact the two innovation regimes differ in the nature of their knowledge base reliance on generally available knowledge or dependence on a firm s historically accumulated knowledge base innovation in the latter regime benefits from longer job durations our results are consistent with findings in macro level studies that coordinated market economies with rigid labour markets have higher labour productivity gains than liberalised market economies

empirical evidence on on vertical foreclosure i introduction prior to the 1980s the united states department of justice and the federal trade commission actively challenged vertical mergers on the theory that such mergers foreclosed unintegrated rivals in the downstream market from access to inputs supplied by the merged firm this policy changed when critics of the foreclosure theory claimed that vertically integrated firms have no incentive to transfer products between the upstream and downstream markets at a price other than the market price and therefore vertical mergers have no effect on the price charged to consumers 1 the arguments against attacking vertical mergers were also supported by research that demonstrated that vertical integration can enhance efficiency 2 as a result vertical mergers currently receive very little if any attention from the enforcement agencies recent contributions by ordover saloner and salop 1990 krattenmaker and salop 1986 and salinger 1988 1989 have reopened the debate about the competitive effects of vertical mergers they each use theoretical models to show that vertical foreclosures can raise costs to unintegrated rivals and lead to higher prices for consumers although these models demonstrate that foreclosure can be a profitable strategy that injures competition to date these theories have not been tested empirically if vertical foreclosure rarely occurs or if it occurs only in a narrow set of circumstances changes in current policy on vertical mergers may not be justified a necessary but not sufficient condition for anticompetitive foreclosure is that the vertical merger cause the unintegrated rivals to be less profitable this result from previous theoretical work is tested here on a sample selected from all vertical merger cases challenged by the justice department and the federal trade commission during the period 1963 to 1982 we find no evidence of anticompetitive market foreclosure for the sample of cases challenged by the antitrust agencies one possible explanation for our results is that the tests over the entire sample are significantly affected by a few weak cases brought by the government during a period of aggressive antitrust enforcement we test this by examining variables that have been identified by krattenmaker and salop 1986 and the department of justice merger guidelines as being conducive to foreclosure such as barriers to entry and industry concentration even the cases with high industry concentration and barriers to entry which potentially should exhibit substantial market power provide no evidence of foreclosure while this does not preclude anticompetitive foreclosure as a possibility it does call into question the cases brought by the antitrust agencies during the 1960s and the 1970s until the proponents of the more rigorous economic version of the foreclosure theory provide clearer guidelines about the conditions under which vertical mergers are likely to injure competition continuation of the current policy of not contesting these mergers seems justified ii theory of anticompetitive foreclosure the foreclosure arguments used to challenge vertical mergers during the 1950s and 1960s were easily discredited because no formal theory was used to support them more recent attempts to reconstruct the foreclosure theory have used economic models to demonstrate that vertical foreclosure can reduce competition the key to each of these models is that foreclosure raises the costs to the unintegrated rivals of the merged firm and this under certain conditions raises the price of the final product to the consumer the legal definition of foreclosure focuses on the ability of unintegrated firms to buy from or sell to integrated rivals while the economic definition of anticompetitive foreclosure focuses on whether prices to consumers increase salinger 1988 has provided a model that demonstrates the conditions under which anticompetitive foreclosure will occur

an application of the theory of foreign direct investment to multinational banking in ldcs for assessing the determinants of mnbs expansion into ldcs a model that incorporates both supply and demand factors is constructed a reduced form of the model is tested by using pooled data over the period 1975 1982 for a sample of twenty three ldcs the results of the study indicate that market size the presence of multinational corporations from the home country the extent of economic development and the balance of payments are all significant determinants of the growth of mnbs in ldcs

adoption of solar and wind energy the roles of carbon pricing and aggregate policy support abstract this paper analyzes the roles of policies and preferences in national adoption of solar and wind energy technologies we use cross sectional and panel regressions for both the european union and a broader international sample we find that countries that price carbon emissions have gone on to adopt more solar and wind energy the aggregate level of policy support measured in euros per megawatt hour appears to have been important for solar energy adoption we also find that solar energy adoption has been larger in countries with higher proportions of people concerned about climate change in addition we assess the effects of other key explanators including financial system size and income levels

welfare improving employment protection this paper derives new results on the welfare effects of employment protection using data from 17 oecd countries we show that there exists an inverse u shape relationship between employment protection and economic growth using a simple theoretical model with non contractible specific investments we show that over some range increasing employment protection does indeed raise welfare we also show that the optimal level of employment protection depends on other labour market features such as the bargaining power of workers and the existence of wage rigidities like the minimum wage

the effect of pre emptive right amendments on shareholder wealth abstract pre emptive rights allow existing shareholders to purchase a new offering of shares before the general public this paper investigates the effect on shareholder wealth of removing pre emptive rights from corporate charters two hypotheses are constrasted 1 shareholder wealth maximization suggests that management uses this extra degree of freedom to pick the least cost method for raising new equity hence the amendment increases shareholder wealth 2 management welfare maximization holds that management will use the passage of the amendment to maximize their own welfare sometimes to the detriment of shareholders hence the amendment decreases shareholder wealth the evidence indicates that the amendment decreases shareholder wealth

wealth effects of foreign expansion by u s banks abstract the effects of foreign expansion on the market values of u s banks usbs are examined in this study the results show that shareholders of usbs experience significant abnormal returns of 0 17 percent when banks announce foreign expansions abnormal returns are insignificant when the announced mode of expansion is through a representative office are significantly positive for announcements related to branches and are significantly negative when the announced mode of expansion is through formation of a joint venture or a subsidiary or through an acquisition abnormal returns are significantly negative when banks announce expansion into developed countries and are significantly positive when announcements relate to risky developing countries post announcement changes in the total variance of returns and in the unsystematic risk of usbs are inversely related with abnormal returns higher wealth effects are associated with higher levels of prior overseas experience

multinational enterprise internal governance and industrial organization abstractthe following sections are included monopoly vs efficiency interpretations of the multinational enterprisehost country controlsdynamic considerationsconclusionreferences this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

costs and benefits of renewables portfolio standards in the united states lbnl xxxx costs and benefits of renewables portfolio standards in the united states by galen barbose 1 jenny heeter 2 lori bird 2 samantha weaver 1 francisco flores espino 2 and ryan wiser 1 lawrence berkeley national laboratory national renewable energy laboratory corresponding author galen barbose research scientist electricity markets and policy group environmental energy technologies division lawrence berkeley national laboratory 1 cyclotron road ms 90r4000 berkeley ca 94720 phone 510 984 3453 email glbarbose lbl gov abstract as state level renewable portfolio standards rps have driven large increases in u s renewable generation capacity states have sought to quantify the costs and benefits of these policies this paper examines recent costs and benefits of rps implementation focusing on the net or incremental cost to utilities of renewables used for compliance with rps targets during the years 2010 2012 incremental rps cost estimates are developed using a wide variety of methods and assumptions which makes comparisons among states imperfect for states with restructured electricity markets we use a standardized method to calculate incremental costs based on renewable energy certificate prices alternative compliance payment levels and compliance obligations for states with traditionally regulated electricity markets we rely on estimates produced by utilities and regulators whose methods and underlying assumptions vary widely we find that recent estimated incremental rps costs were equivalent to less than 2 of retail rates in 17 states and about 2 4 in eight states or 4 mwh to 48 mwh of renewable energy required across all states for the most recent year available in each state estimated rps costs in most states were well below the respective cost caps although a few states are currently operating at or near their cap 1 introduction twenty nine states washington dc and puerto rico have adopted renewables portfolio standards rps helping drive a roughly eight fold increase in u s renewable generation capacity over the past decade concern over the impact of these policies on electricity prices and economic growth however has spurred recent legislation in at least a dozen states to repeal reduce or freeze existing rps requirements at the same time other recent legislative proposals have sought to expand state rps policies understanding the actual historical costs and benefits of rps policies is critical to informing these legislative debates but the subject is inadequately understood this paper examines historical costs of rps implementation drawing on a recent joint report by lawrence berkeley national laboratory and the national renewable energy laboratory estimating the costs and benefits of complying with renewable portfolio standards reviewing experience to date heeter et al 2014 1 we summarize the methods state agencies and utilities have used to assess rps costs compare incremental rps compliance costs to date and evaluate the potential for increases in rps compliance costs as legislative targets rise and cost caps in some states potentially become binding the aforementioned report also synthesizes recent estimates of broader societal benefits from formal state agency evaluations including estimates of health and emission reduction benefits economic development benefits and wholesale electricity market price reductions though those findings are not included in the present paper compared to the summary of estimated rps costs the summary of rps benefits is more limited as relatively few states have undertaken detailed benefits estimates and then only for a few types of potential policy impacts in some cases the same impacts may be captured in the assessment of costs for these reasons and because methodologies and level of rigor vary widely direct comparisons between the estimates of benefits and costs are challenging 2 methods and data sources for estimating incremental rps compliance costs rps compliance costs may be defined as either gross costs or incremental costs gross costs consist of the total cost of procuring renewables to meet the rps while incremental costs also referred to as net or above market costs represent this report is publically available at http emp lbl gov publications participation by lawrence berkeley national laboratory was supported by the office of energy efficiency and renewable energy solar technologies office of the u s department of energy under lawrence berkeley national laboratory contract no de ac02 05ch1131

state renewable energy electricity policies an empirical evaluation of effectiveness over the past decade state governments have emerged as us energy policy leaders across the country states are adopting policy instruments aimed at carbon mitigation and renewable energy deployment one of the most prevalent and innovative policy instruments is a renewable portfolio standard rps which seeks to increase the share of renewable energy electrification in the electricity market this analysis evaluates the effectiveness of state energy programs with an empirical investigation of the linkage between state rps policy implementation and the percentage of renewable energy electricity generation across states we use a variant of a standard fixed effects model referred to as a fixed effects vector decomposition with state level data from 1998 to 2006 results indicate that rps implementation is not a significant predictor of the percentage of renewable energy generation out of the total generation mix yet for each additional year that a state has an rps policy they are found to increase the total amount of renewable energy generation these findings reveal a potentially significant shortcoming of rps policies political institutions natural resource endowments deregulation gross state product per capita electricity use per person electricity price and the presence of regional rps policies are also found to be significantly related to renewable energy deployment

renewable energy costs potentials barriers conceptual issues renewable energy can become the major energy supply option in low carbon energy economies disruptive transformations in all energy systems are necessary for tapping widely available renewable energy resources organizing the energy transition from non sustainable to renewable energy is often described as the major challenge of the first half of the 21st century technological innovation the economy costs and prices and policies have to be aligned to achieve full renewable energy potentials and barriers impeding that growth need to be removed these issues are also covered by ipcc s special report on renewable energy and climate change to be completed in 2010 this article focuses on the interrelations among the drivers it clarifies definitions of costs and prices and of barriers after reviewing how the third and fourth assessment reports of ipcc cover mitigation potentials and commenting on definitions of renewable energy potentials in the literature we propose a consistent set of potentials of renewable energy supplies

labour market institutions and the personal distribution of income in the oecd we examine what determines differences across countries and over time in the distribution of personal incomes in the oecd we first model the wage determination process and show that unemployment the labour share and the wage differential are all functions of labour market institutions next we show that in a model economy with only four types of agents capitalists skilled and unskilled workers and unemployed the gini coefficient of personal incomes can be expressed as a function of the above three variables labour market institutions hence affect income inequality though the sign of their impact is ambiguous stronger unions and or a more generous unemployment benefit tend to reduce inequality through reduced wage differentials a higher labour share and also higher unemployment we then use a panel of oecd countries for the period 1970 96 to examine these effects we find first that the labour share remains an important aspect of overall inequality patterns and second that stronger unions and a more generous unemployment benefit tend to reduce income inequality high capital labour ratios also emerge as a strong equalising factor which has in part offset the impact of increasing wage inequality on the us distribution of personal incomes

austerity and gender inequalities in europe in times of crisis the post 2008 recession and the countercyclical responses by european governments that followed triggered an extensive wave of fiscal adjustments although underpinned by widespread consensus the implementation of such measures has also been severely criticised while their effect on output and employment has been extensively investigated their impact on wage inequality has received less attention in this paper we focus on the consequences of fiscal consolidation measures for gender inequality after describing the literature based conceptual framework of our analysis we provide empirical evidence of the effect of fiscal consolidation on i the adjusted gender wage gap and ii the patterns of gender horizontal segregation the analysis covers eu 28 countries in the years 2010 13 results show that austerity measures both tax based and expenditure based impacted significantly on various aspects of gender wage inequality putting at risk the relatively little progress achieved in europe so far

a reexamination of the conglomerate merger wave in the 1960s an internal capital markets view one possible explanation for bidding firms earning positive abnormal returns in diversifying acquisitions in the 1960s is that internal capital markets were expected to overcome the information deficiencies of the less developed capital markets examining 392 bidder firms during the 1960s we find the highest bidder returns when financially unconstrained buyers acquire constrained targets this result holds while controlling for merger terms and for different proxies used to classify firms facing costly external financing we also find that bidders generally retain target management suggesting that management may have provided companyspecific operational information while the bidder provided capital budgeting expertise

time series properties of the renewable energy diffusion process implications for energy policy design and assessment confronted by increasingly tight budgets and a broad range of alternative options policy makers need empirical methods to evaluate the effectiveness of policies aimed at supporting the diffusion of renewable energy sources res rigorous empirical studies of renewable energy policy effectiveness have typically relied on panel data models to identify the most effective mechanisms a common characteristic of some of these studies which has important econometric implications is that they assume that the contribution of res to total electricity generation will be stationary around a mean this paper reviews such assumptions and rigorously tests the time series properties of the contribution of res in the energy mix for the presence of a unit root to that end we use both individual and panel unit root tests to determine whether the series exhibit non stationary behavior at the country level as well as for the panel as a whole the analysis applied to a panel of 19 oecd countries over the period 1990 2012 provides strong evidence that the time series of the renewable share of electricity output are not stationary in 17 of the 19 countries examined this finding has important implications for energy policy assessment and energy policy making which are discussed in the paper