escaping the green prison entrepreneurship and the creation of opportunities for sustainable development abstract while entrepreneurial activity has been an important force for social and ecological sustainability its efficacy is dependent upon the nature of market incentives this limitation is sometimes explained by the metaphor of the prisoner s dilemma which we term the green prison in this prison entrepreneurs are compelled to environmentally degrading behavior due to the divergence between individual rewards and collective goals for sustainable development entrepreneurs however can escape from the green prison by altering or creating the institutions norms property rights and legislation that establish the incentives of competitive games we provide a variety of evidence of such entrepreneurial action and discuss its implications for theory and practice

energy transitions in small scale regions what we can learn from a regional innovation systems perspective the prevalent theories in the debate on sustainability transitions have been criticised for not sufficiently addressing energy change processes at the local level this paper aims to enhance our understanding of local energy reorganisation processes drawing on the regional innovation systems ris approach we argue that local development dynamics result from the interaction of various subsystems science politics public administration industry finance intermediaries and civil society the analysis of the involved subsystems and their interaction shows how energy transitions are shaped by different individual and organisational actors as well as institutions on the local level empirical evidence from case studies on the german cities of emden and bottrop illustrates our theoretical conceptualisation of energy transitions we conclude by presenting characteristic interaction patterns for energy transition drawn from the two cases

sustainable consumption within a sustainable economy beyond green growth and green economies abstract in 1992 one unambiguous result of the unced conference was the need for changing consumption and production patterns with affluent countries taking the lead 20 years later at the 2012 uncsd little is left over and instead the green economy has been the theme pursued by the oecd the eu and other countries so the question needs to be answered if this is finally an attempt to put into practice what was promised 20 years ago or another diversion from what needs to be accomplished sustainable development is still a convincing concept if the original definition is taken avoiding the confusion caused by partisan interests reinterpreting the concept focussing on human needs fulfilment and respecting environmental limits it can still guide strong sustainable consumption green economy green growth on the other hand is a new terminology for what is known since 40 years as ecological modernisation it is indeed overdue but with its focus on efficiency and innovation it cannot guarantee to fulfil the brundtland sustainability criteria a factor analysis based on the i p a t formula demonstrates how optimistic the assumptions regarding future technologies must be to support the green growth concept consequently the authors pledge for a pragmatic risk avoiding approach by slimming the physical size of the economy this requires strong sustainable consumption including production as resource consumption which in turn requires a change of the societies institutional settings formal and informal mechanisms and orientations finally some elements of a strategy towards this end are pointed out with special emphasis on the role of non governmental organisations ngos through networking and advocacy they can both stimulate bottom up action and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream strong sustainable consumption

a time varying copula approach to oil and stock market dependence the case of transition economies abstract we employ the time varying copula approach to investigate the conditional dependence between the brent crude oil price and stock markets in the central and eastern european cee transition economies our results show evidence of a positive dependence between the oil and the stock markets of the six cee countries which is indicative of a contagion between those markets regardless of the changes in the oil price or the cee stock index moreover the dependence patterns in both the center and left tails of the return distributions change over time particularly during the heart of the financial crisis and are best described by the survival gumbel copulas the empirical evidence also suggests that the lower tail dependence is much stronger than that of the upper tail highlighting the importance of contagion during severe contractionary business cycles among the sample markets poland is shown to be particularly sensitive in this regard while hungary and slovenia are the least sensitive

toward a theory of sustainable entrepreneurship reducing environmental degradation through entrepreneurial action this article explains how entrepreneurship can help resolve the environmental problems of global socio economic systems environmental economics concludes that environmental degradation results from the failure of markets whereas the entrepreneurship literature argues that opportunities are inherent in market failure a synthesis of these literatures suggests that environmentally relevant market failures represent opportunities for achieving profitability while simultaneously reducing environmentally degrading economic behaviors it also implies conceptualizations of sustainable and environmental entrepreneurship which detail how entrepreneurs seize the opportunities that are inherent in environmentally relevant market failures finally the article examines the ability of the proposed theoretical framework to transcend its environmental context and provide insight into expanding the domain of the study of entrepreneurship

on the frequency of large stock returns putting booms and busts into perspective textabstractnumerous articles have investigated the distribution of share prices and find that the returns are fat tailed nevertheless there is still controversy about the amount of probability mass in the tails and hence about the most appropriate distribution to use in modeling returns this controversy has proven hard to resolve as the alternatives are non nested we employ extreme value theory focusing exclusively on the larger observations in order to assess the tail shape within a unified framework we find that at least the first two moments exist this enables one to generate robust probabilities on large returns which put the recent stock market swings into historical perspective

modeling the co movements between crude oil and refined petroleum markets abstract in this paper we investigate two types of asymmetries i e the asymmetry in the lower and upper tail dependences and the asymmetry in the propagation of crisis bubble between crude oil market and refined petroleum markets based on copula models thirteen copula models with different types of dependence structures and time varying dependence parameters are considered we find that in general the malm copula fits our sample data best based on aic criterion we find that lower and upper tail dependences are both positive indicating that crude oil and refined product markets tend to move together using the asymmetric copulas we find asymmetry in tail dependence between crude oil and heating oil returns and that between crude oil and jet fuel returns interestingly upper tail dependence is significantly greater than the lower tail dependence for the pre crisis period while the result is reversed for the post crisis period finally although our data prefers the nonexchangeable malm copula the asymmetry in the propagation of crisis bubble between crude oil and refined product returns is very weak

how sustainable entrepreneurs engage in institutional change insights from biomass torrefaction in the netherlands sustainable entrepreneurship often requires a purposeful change to the existing business environment market regulations and societal norms and values institutions to ensure sustainable products and services become legitimate and competitive yet how sustainable entrepreneurs alter or create institutions remains unclear we employ a two year comparative case study with four entrepreneurs commercializing torrefied biomass in the netherlands consistent with insights from institutional entrepreneurship research findings show that sustainable entrepreneurs create new symbols theorize construct new measures build consensus and forge new relations to alter or create new institutions moreover we find that entrepreneurial collaboration in the form of a trade association has three feedback effects it creates accessible modes diversity of scope and an increased scale of institutional change strategies we conclude that future studies should further connect sustainable and institutional entrepreneurship research and take group and individual factors into account when explaining how sustainable entrepreneurs engage in institutional change

is volatility clustering of asset returns asymmetric abstract volatility clustering is a well known stylized feature of financial asset returns this paper investigates asymmetric pattern in volatility clustering by employing a univariate copula approach of chen and fan 2006 using daily realized kernel volatilities constructed from high frequency data from stock and foreign exchange markets we find evidence that volatility clustering is highly nonlinear and strongly asymmetric in that clusters of high volatility occur more often than clusters of low volatility to the best of our knowledge this paper is the first one to address and uncover this phenomenon in particular the asymmetry in volatility clustering is found to be more pronounced in the stock markets than in the foreign exchange markets further the volatility clusters are shown to remain persistent for over a month and asymmetric across different time periods our findings have important implications for risk management a simulation study indicates that models which accommodate asymmetric volatility clustering can significantly improve the out of sample forecasts of value at risk

multi sided pre play communication by burning money we investigate the consequences of allowing some players to send a costly message before a game is played since messages have no literal meaning sending costly messages is also called burning money we consider a setting withnplayers among whichkhave the possibility to burn money we show that strategy profiles in sets that are closed under rational behavior yield all players that have the possibility to burn their preferred outcome moreover in such equilibria no money is actually burnt the possibility alone suffices for the special case with two players all results go through for persistent retracts as well journal of economic literatureclassification number c72

fines leniency and rewards in antitrust this article reports results from an experiment studying how fines leniency and rewards for whistleblowers affect cartel formation and prices antitrust without leniency reduces cartel formation but increases cartel prices subjects use costly fines as punishments leniency improves antitrust by strengthening deterrence but stabilizes surviving cartels subjects appear to anticipate the lower postconviction prices after reports leniency with rewards prices fall at the competitive level overall our results suggest a strong cartel deterrence potential for well run leniency and reward schemes these findings may also be relevant for similar white collar organized crimes such as corruption and fraud

history s role in coordinating decentralized allocation decisions what causes individual suppliers to allocate goods in such a way that the aggregate allocation satisfies the law of one price a satisfactory answer to this question must confront two related problems equal net prices at all allocations provide no information to suppliers about the quantity to deliver to a specific location and strategic uncertainty makes an observed violation of the law of one price an unreliable indicator of a profit opportunity this paper develops a simple analytical framework to formalize these two problems reviews some solutions found in the literature and reports laboratory evidence on how people solve them in addressing these issues we focus on the role historical prices play in coordinating decentralized allocation decisions

the extreme value in crude oil and us dollar markets abstract this study constructs a flexible range based volatility model by considering extreme value information to explore the volatility and dependence structures between the oil price and the us dollar exchange rate an asset allocation strategy is implemented to evaluate the economic value and confirm the efficiency of this model the empirical results indicate that the use of extreme value information can not only enhance the explanatory power of volatility structures but also sort out the asymmetric volatility effect in the oil market besides investors can obtain extra benefits of between 72 and 713 annualized basis points by incorporating extreme value information into their asset allocation strategies less risk averse investors can generate higher benefits the empirical results have potentially important implications for asset allocation and risk management

risk pre play communication and equilibrium abstract we report an experiment with a 3 3 game with a unique and efficient equilibrium however each player s equilibrium strategy may result in a very low payoff if the other player does not use her equilibrium strategy players can avoid this possibility by playing an alternative safe strategy when players have no opportunity for pre play communication over 80 of subjects choose the safe strategy however we observe substantial increases in the amount of equilibrium play when i the riskiness of the equilibrium strategy is reduced and ii subjects have opportunities to send non binding costless messages to one another prior to playing the game

sustainable development in practice abstract the semi annual european environment sustainable conference in aalborg denmark brought together from primarily europe but also other parts of the world the conference focused on sustainability but one panel focused on practical applications for public policy and private industry the papers from this panel are presented in this special issue of the journal they cover topics ranging from corporate sustainable programs to government plans including feed in laws some papers are more academic oriented but clearly derived from practical political experiences such as those of the california energy crisis these theories argue the need for agile energy systems whereby regions cities and communities must have combinations of on site or distributed energy generation like combined heat and power cph along with central grid power generation finally there is a clear message in all the papers that market forces alone do not develop monitor or even provide level playing fields for communities in short there needs to be continuous government or public involvement in the sustainable communities

sustainable development in a transition economy business case studies from poland abstract in general examples from developed countries are cited when making reference to good practice in sustainable development while there is limited access to case studies from transition economies our aim is to analyse case studies from poland which has recently undergone the transition to a market based economy in order to identify and critically assess both the drivers of and barriers to sustainable development in polish business by demonstrating that evidence of good practice is available within poland we also aim to motivate key stakeholders to follow these examples in an addition to importing practice from developed countries together the 11 case studies analysed in the article demonstrate that while constraints exist to sustainable development there are nonetheless positive examples of best practice from which to learn this review therefore complements other studies conducted on sustainable development in transition economies by indicating that lessons can be drawn on promoting sustainable development within this context and in other similar states undergoing economic political and social transition

economic crisis and social learning for the provision of public services in two spanish municipalities economic crises pose challenges for the provision of public services but may also open up opportunities for social learning about how to achieve a sustainable society the main research question addressed in this paper is can economic crises catalyse social learning for a sustainable society the hypothesis of the paper is that social learning emerges in association with the reduction of consumption levels that follows degrowth or with the reconfiguration of infrastructure management practices and sustainable innovation that could lead to a transition to sustainability following this we empirically examine whether the crisis has led to social learning about the sustainable provision of public services in two similar municipalities in the north of spain after the economic crisis of 2008 we develop an interpretative analysis of individual experiences of learning from the crisis using a set of qualitative interviews with individuals who were involved in key decisions about public service delivery during or immediately after the crisis the analysis suggests that there has been a broader cultural change which is challenging institutional models of regional development that there has been a drive towards greater resource efficiency and that some opportunities have opened for entrepreneurs to develop sustainable innovations the findings support the view that the crisis may have fostered learning responses that could lead to either degrowth or a sustainable transition

a social and environmental approach to microfinance credit scoring microfinance institutions provide loans to low income individuals their credit scoring systems if they exist are strictly financial although many institutions consider the social and environmental impact of their loans they do not incorporate formal systems to estimate these social and environmental impacts this paper proposes that their creditworthiness evaluations should be coherent with their social mission and accordingly should estimate the social and environmental impact of microcredit thus a decision support system to facilitate microcredit granting is proposed using a multicriteria evaluation the assessment of social impact is performed by calculating the social net present value the system captures credit officers experience and addresses incomplete and intangible information the model has been tested in a microfinance institution the paper shows how a small institution can include social and environmental issues in its decision making systems to evaluate credit applications a gap in the preferences was found between members of the board who are socially driven and managers and credit officers who are financially drifted this mission drift was corrected the approach followed contributed to creating a culture of social and environmental assessment within the institution especially among credit officers thereby translating microfinance institutions social mission into numbers

endogenous communication and tacit coordination in market entry games an explorative experimental study this paper explores experimentally the effects of costly communication possibilities in market entry games it is shown that these effects depend on whether entry costs are symmetric or asymmetric in the former but not the latter case communication possibilities increase coordination success substantially and are likely to generate inferior outcomes for consumers furthermore cost asymmetries provide a tacit coordination cue that is robust to changes in the game and is used by experienced players as a substitute to communication it is also shown that although communication opens up for aggressive market domination strategies such strategies are not used often successful

innovation process of new ventures driven by sustainability abstract since the brundtland report appeared in 1987 various approaches to realising sustainable consumption and production have come into practice while more traditional approaches like ecodesign and design for sustainability often emphasize optimizing existing products processes and businesses more radical approaches like product service systems and system innovation for sustainability emphasize developing new innovative products and services with higher environmental gains although these studies increased our understanding of sustainability in relation to product design they are criticized for failing to draw on existing theoretical frameworks in the organizational innovation literature berchicci 2005 this paper seeks to explore the innovation process within new ventures driven by sustainability since 1 conventional wisdom suggests that young and new firms have advantages in innovation acs and audretsch 1990 and as such they are the potential candidates of offering radical solutions to the challenges of sustainability and 2 there are few studies that address exploiting sustainable product ideas through new organizations the paper reports on the results of an explorative study involving the use of generative techniques during 19 individual semi structured interviews with eight entrepreneurs and seven innovation support organizations the results suggest that the relative impact of internal and external factors on the innovation process change over time as the new organization forms in addition creating new businesses from sustainability ideals is influenced by the firms ability in understanding and managing the differences between intended and created value and in finding an overlap between customer benefits and clearly defined prioritized sustainability goals

the time variation of risk and return in the foreign exchange and stock markets this paper attempts to determine whether the fluctuations of conditional first and second moments which are observed for many assets are consistent with the sharpelintner mossin capital asset pricing model we test the mean variance model under several different assumptions about the time variation of conditional second moments of returns using weekly data from july 1974 to december 1986 that include returns on a portfolio composed of dollar deutsche mark sterling and swiss franc assets together with the u s stock market the results indicate that estimated conditional variances cannot explain the observed time variation of risk premia rates of return on international financial assets are characterized by statistical properties that are quite common to all financial markets they are highly volatile and largely unpredictable these properties make it very difficult to extract statistically reliable estimates of systematic exchange rate and assetprice movements and are at the root of the generally poor empirical performance of international asset pricing models nevertheless two important results have been uncovered by empirical researchers and can be considered a fair characterization of the data a expected returns on foreign assets vary over time cumby and obstfeld 1981 and the numerous articles that followed recently surveyed by frankel and meese 1987 b the volatility of returns of foreign assets also changes over time cumby and obstfeld 1984 hodrick and srivastava 1984 and hsieh 1988 among others as giovannini and jorion 1987 suggest the

simultaneous entry and welfare abstract i examine the welfare properties of free entry under conditions of simultaneous entry specifically i consider the second best problem of influencing the number of entrants while taking as given firm behavior upon entry i consider two alternative models of simultaneous entry grab the dollar entry and war of attrition entry i show that if entry costs are low then the results from previous models of sequential entry are fairly robust to the possibility of simultaneous entry if however entry costs are high then the welfare effects of free entry depend delicately on the nature of the entry game being played

dependence and extreme dependence of crude oil and natural gas prices with applications to risk management abstract in this article we show how the copula garch approach can be appropriately used to investigate the conditional dependence structure between the crude oil and natural gas markets as well as to derive implications for portfolio risk management in extreme economic conditions using daily price data from january 1997 to october 2011 our in sample results show evidence of asymmetric dependence between the two markets the crude oil and gas markets tend to comove closely together during bullish periods but not at all during bearish periods moreover taking the extreme comovement into account leads to an improvement in the accuracy of the out of sample value at risk forecasts

institutional entrepreneurship in sustainable urban development dutch successes as inspiration for transformation sustainable urban development is a wicked problem on the basis of three case studies we conclude that institutional entrepreneurs play an important role in sustainable urban development the question we address is how institutional entrepreneurs do this we theorize and find six tactics that entrepreneurs employ to influence both formal and informal institutions to create a favourable institutional context for sustainable development we do so by combining insights from both institutional theory and institutional economics through framing and theorizing institutional entrepreneurs create new visions on sustainable urban developments whereas collaboration and lobbying are important for the realization of the projects the study adds new insights into how negotiation private governance contracts property rights and standardization certification standards form a key to altering incentive schemes and to create a competitive advantage through the joint changes in both informal institutions and the formal institutions the entrepreneurs are able to change the institutional context in which projects are embedded thereby increasing the feasibility of their projects 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

international diversification an extreme value approach abstract international diversification has costs and benefits depending on the degree of asset dependence we study international diversification with two dependence measures correlations and extreme dependence we discover that dependence has typically increased over time and document mixed evidence on heavy tails in individual countries moreover we uncover three additional findings related to dependence first the timing of downside risk differs depending on the region surprisingly recent latin american returns exhibit little downside risk second latin america exhibits a great deal of correlation complexity third according to the empirical results correlation does not vary with returns but extreme dependence does vary monotonically with regional returns our results are consistent with a tradeoff between international diversification and systemic risk they also suggest international limits to diversification and that international investors demand some compensation for joint downside risk during extreme events

sustainability driven entrepreneurship principles of organization design abstract concern about whether the social ecological processes that provide for human wellbeing can be sustained has given rise to sustainable development as a broad social goal as a dynamic force for change entrepreneurship is increasingly expected to contribute to this goal this article reports on the results of an intensive empirical study investigating the organization design expertise necessary for sustainability driven entrepreneurs to succeed in a competitive market context results reveal five principles of organization design that diverge in important ways from the conventional principles of entrepreneurship suggesting the expertise required for venture success differs depending on entrepreneurial values and motives

do antitrust laws facilitate collusion experimental evidence on costly communication in duopolies bertrand supergames with non binding communication are used to study price formation and stability of collusive agreements on experimental duopoly markets the experimental design consists of three treatments with different costs of communication zero cost low cost and high cost prices are found to be significantly higher when communication is costly moreover costly communication decreases the number of messages but more importantly it enhances the stability of collusive agreements mccutcheon 1997 presents an interesting application to antitrust policy by letting the cost of communication symbolize the presence of an antitrust law that prohibits firms from discussing prices although our experimental results do not support the mechanism of mccutcheon s 1997 argument the findings point in the direction of her prediction that antitrust laws might work in the interest of firms

do food and oil prices co move abstract this paper studies co movements between world oil prices and global prices for corn soybean and wheat using copulas several copula models with different conditional dependence structures and time varying dependence parameters were considered empirical results for weekly data from january 1998 to april 2011 showed weak oil food dependence and no extreme market dependence between oil and food prices these results support the neutrality of agricultural commodity markets to the effects of changes in oil prices and non contagion between the crude oil and agricultural markets however dependence increased significantly in the last three years of the sampling period even though upper tail dependence remained insignificant indicating that food price spikes are not caused by positive extreme oil price changes these results have implications for policy design risk management and hedging strategies

dependence structure between the equity market and the foreign exchange market a copula approach abstract this paper investigates the dependence structure between the equity market and the foreign exchange market by using copulas in particular several copulas with different dependence structure are compared and used to directly model the underlying dependence structure we find that there exists significant symmetric upper and lower tail dependence between the two financial markets and the dependence remains significant but weaker after the launch of the euro our findings have important implications for both global investment risk management and international asset pricing by taking into account joint tail risk

market imperfections opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship this research develops the argument that four types of market imperfections i e inefficient firms externalities flawed pricing mechanisms and information asymmetries at once contribute to environmental degradation and that they also provide significant opportunities for the creation of radical technologies and innovative business models we show that these opportunities establish the foundations for an emerging model of sustainable entrepreneurship one which enables founders to obtain entrepreneurial rents while simultaneously improving local and global social and environmental conditions to advance this new field we offer suggestions for a research agenda focusing on two areas the relationship between market imperfections and entrepreneurial opportunities and the emerging field of sustainable entrepreneurship

introduction to the special issue urban energy governance local actions capacities and politics introduction to a special issue showing how there is much to be gained for deeper understandings of energy policy from a specifically urban analysis of rationales forms and repercussions of energy systems in transition the special issue offers an in depth examination of the variety of urban responses to quite distinctive and sometimes competing energy related challenges

commodity and equity markets some stylized facts from a copula approach abstract in this paper we propose to identify the dependence structure that exists between returns on equity and commodity futures and its development over the past 20 years the key point is that we do not impose any dependence structure but let the data select it to do so we model the dependence between commodity metal agriculture and energy and stock markets using a flexible approach that allows us to investigate whether the co movement is i symmetrical and frequent ii a symmetrical and mostly present during extreme events and iii asymmetrical and mostly present during extreme events we also allow for this dependence to be time varying from january 1990 to february 2012 our analysis uncovers three major stylised facts first we find that the dependence between commodity and stock markets is time varying symmetrical and occurs most of the time as opposed to mostly during extreme events second not allowing for time varying parameters in the dependence distribution generates a bias towards an evidence of tail dependence similarly considering only tail dependence may lead to false evidence of asymmetry third a growing co movement between industrial metals and equity markets is identified as early as 2003 this co movement spreads to all commodity classes and becomes unambiguously stronger with the global financial crisis after fall 2008

subsidies in carbon finance for promoting renewable energy development abstract faced with decreasing exhaustible nonrenewable resources and climate change resulting from the use of fossil energy it is urgent to accelerate the development of renewable energy but the development of renewable energy requires abundant financial support both from banks and governments this article considers bank loans to develop renewable energy and highlights the effects of government subsidies by using a microeconomic model and taking all stakeholders including the government banks and shareholders of the firm into consideration this study finds that government subsidies raise outputs and debt levels of renewable energy firms and improve shareholder value as well more importantly financial debts stimulate firms outputs but decrease the net profit per unit of debt due to the limited liability effects finally subsidy policy plays a critical role in renewable energy development because environmental efficiencies of subsidies decrease with the subsidy degree other valuable conclusions would be achieved if principal agent problem and other corporate governance factors are employed

exogenous shocks social skill and power urban energy transitions as social fields abstract the constantly growing scholarship on urban energy transitions needs a framework to analyze these transitions this article proposes the field perspective fp as an approach for the study of urban energy transitions fp analyses how the interplay of actors who are dedicated to a similar purpose and the structures guiding this interplay co evolve by applying fp to the energy transition in the german city emden the article shows how the transition evolves through a alterations in the exogenous context of the city e g national feed in tariffs for renewables b the social skill and changing interplay of local actors engaged in the transition and c the emergence of power constellations and rules

a currency preferential approach to international equity investment we propose a timex strategy for reducing the foreign exchange risk associated with international equity investment pertaining to countries with currencies correctly or undervalued by the standard of ppp the performance of timex is examined from the perspectives of eight developed nations with long histories of free floating currencies based on the data from 1986 q1 to 2014 q4 we find unambiguous evidence for the superior performance of timex in the foreign exchange market compared with the passive diversification strategy and the morgan stanley capital international msci world index timex offers higher total returns and risk adjusted total returns when rebalanced every 6 or 12 months for investors based in all eight countries under study when rebalanced at a 3 year interval timex outperforms the passive diversification and the msci world index for five and all eight countries respectively

when does the stock market listen to economic news new evidence from copulas and news wires we study association between macroeconomic news and stock market returns using the statistical theory of copulas and a new comprehensive measure of news based on textual review and classification of news wires we find the impact of economic news on equity returns to be nonlinear and asymmetric in particular controlling for economic conditions and surprises associated with releases of economic data we find that the market reacts strongly and negatively to the most unfavourable macroeconomic news but appears to largely discount the good news further the most unfavorable news creates price drift and we document that selling stocks short in the wake of unusually bad news yields annual abnormal gross returns greater than four percent

uncertainty and crude oil returns we use a copula approach to investigate the effect of uncertainty on crude oil returns using copulas to construct multivariate distributions of time series data permit the calculation of the dependence structure between the series independently of the marginal distributions further we implement the copula estimation using a rolling window method to allow for a time varying effect of equity and economic policy uncertainty on oil returns the results show that higher uncertainty as measured by equity and economic policy uncertainty indices significantly increase crude oil returns only during certain periods of time that is we find a positive dependence prior to the financial crisis and great recession interestingly estimation of the copula over the entire sample period leads to a negative dependence between the equity and economic policy indices and the crude oil return

a review of governmental support instruments channeling pv market growth in the flanders region of belgium 2006 2013 abstract how did a country in the middle of western europe starting almost from scratch reach the european top 3 in terms of solar pv capacity in five years and what were the costs we provide a systematic chronological review of the different governmental support instruments that drove the exponential growth of the solar energy market in the flanders region of belgium and calculate their relative contributions the results of the economic calculations show that green electricity certificates had by far the greatest effect on both the rise and stagnation of the market costing about 1 5 billion euro only for 2006 2013 the long term societal costs of such growth proved to be even higher 6 7 billion for 2014 2031 and unevenly distributed with residents paying the highest price via their energy bills companies continuously adapted their organizations to enact the available support instruments counter intuitively the substantial support shifted the attention of companies to the larger systems even though the incentive for investment in pv was lower than for the smaller systems

co dependence of extreme events in high frequency fx returns in this paper we investigate extreme events in high frequency multivariate fx returns within a purposely built framework we generalize univariate tests and concepts to multidimensional settings and employ these novel techniques for parametric and nonparametric analysis in particular we investigate and quantify the co dependence of cross sectional and intertemporal extreme events we find evidence of the cubic law of extreme returns their increasing and asymmetric dependence and of the scaling property of extreme risk in joint symmetric tails

cheap talk coordination and entry we show how costless nonbinding nonverifiable communication cheap talk can achieve partial coordination among potential entrants into a natural monopoly industry where the payoffs are qualitatively like the battle of the sexes the analysis would apply equally in other economic situations with such payoffs for example bargaining under complete information or choosing compatibility standards while cheap talk helps achieve asymmetric coordination in a symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium it cannot achieve complete coordination if the game involves even a small amount of conflict

multiple market entry cost signalling and entry deterrence a low cost incumbent may limit price to informatively signal her cost to an uncertain potential entrant and therefore deter entry we enrich this model by investigating the strategic pricing behavior of the incumbent when she operates in multiple markets we demonstrate that the low cost incumbent s ability to separate from a ghost high cost type is enhanced when she combines her signalling effort across markets instead of independent signalling in each market we show that in the combined least cost signalling the low cost incumbent limit prices in each market in an attempt to minimize dissipative but informative signalling costs the low cost incumbent may enter unprofitable markets but exit after credible separation

overconfidence and excess entry an experimental approach psychological studies show that most people are overconfident about their own relative abilities and unreasonably optimistic about their futures e g shelly e taylor and j d brown 1988 neil d weinstein 1980 when assessing their position in a distribution of peers on almost any positive trait like driving ability ola svenson 1981 income prospects or longevity a vast majority of people say they are above the average although of course only half can be if the trait is symmetrically distributed this paper explores whether optimistic biases could plausibly and predictably influence economic behavior in one particular setting entry into competitive games or markets many empirical studies show that most new businesses fail within a few years for example using plant level data from the u s census of manufacturers spanning 1963 1982 timothy dunne et al 1988 estimated that 61 5 percent of all entrants exited within five years and 79 6 percent exited within 10 years most of these exits are failures see also dunne et al 1989a 1989b d shapiro and r s khemani 1987

risk spillover between energy and agricultural commodity markets a dependence switching covar copula model abstract unlike previous studies we employ a relatively newer modelling technique a time varying copula with a switching dependence to characterise the conditional dependence between energy and agricultural commodity markets in a more realistic way because the dependence may switch between positive and negative correlation regimes over time a dependence switching copula more appropriately and realistically captures a dependence structure than a single copula regime our findings indicate that the lower tail dependence is much stronger in a bearish regime than in a bullish regime highlighting the importance of systematic risk spillovers during extreme downward movements furthermore the significant risk spillovers from energy to agricultural commodities are verified by measuring the conditional value at risk covar and delta covar finally some useful implications are summarized for investors portfolios and risk avoidance

international diversification a copula approach abstract the viability of international diversification involves balancing benefits and costs this balance hinges on the degree of asset dependence in light of theoretical research linking diversification and dependence we examine international diversification using two measures of dependence correlations and copulas we document several findings first dependence has increased over time second we find evidence of asymmetric dependence or downside risk in latin america but less in the g5 the results indicate very little downside risk in east asia third east asian and latin american returns exhibit some correlation complexity interestingly the regions with maximal dependence or worst diversification do not command large returns our results suggest international limits to diversification they are also consistent with a possible tradeoff between international diversification and systemic risk

downside and upside risk spillovers between exchange rates and stock prices abstract we examined downside and upside risk spillovers from exchange rates to stock prices and vice versa for a set of emerging economies we characterized the dependence structure between currency and stock returns using copulas and computed downside and upside value at risk and conditional value at risk we documented a positive relationship between stock prices and currency values in emerging economies with respect to the us dollar and the euro with downside and upside spillover risk effects transmitted both ways finally we also documented asymmetries in upside and downside risk spillovers and asymmetric differences in the size of risk spillovers when the domestic currency values against the us dollar and the euro our results consistent with flight to quality phenomena have implications for downside and upside risk management of international investor portfolios in emerging markets

start up sustainability an insurmountable cost or a life giving investment abstract an outstanding question in the entrepreneurship literature reigns given recent emphases on sustainable business practices and corporate social responsibility if small start ups are generally stretched for time and resources does it enhance their chances for survival and success to be sustainable and socially responsible new firms can aid in rectifying pressing environmental and social issues by being more sustainable while many entrepreneurs like a sustainable business model and or mission investment may not follow so willingly this paper examines a sample of 300 start ups across thirty cities around the world to consider whether sustainability is rewarded by investors investors signal confidence in start ups when they infuse life extending investments into them this analysis also considers whether a more sustainable national context affects investor confidence and whether a sustainable firm within a sustainable national context gains more investor attention and investment results show that investors avoid sustainable firms particularly those that are environmentally sustainable moreover investors enjoy national contexts that are socially responsible but pay no attention to those that are environmentally conscious in addition firms that are sustainable in a sustainable national context are not better off for attracting investment insights for policy are that mainstream investors are attracted by national social policies but these investors are unlikely to be the main force behind sustainable venture growth under today s conditions

signaling future actions and the potential for sacrifice we consider extensions of games where some players have the option of signaling future actions by incurring costs the main result is that in a class of games if one player can incur costs then forwards induction selects her most preferred outcome surprisingly the player does not have to incur any costs to achieve this the option alone suffices however when all players can incur costs one player s attempt to signal a future action is vulnerable to a counter signal by the opponent this vulnerability to counter signaling distinguishes signaling future actions from signaling types

how do crude oil prices co move a copula approach abstract this paper examines the dependence structure between crude oil benchmark prices using copulas by considering several copula models with different conditional dependence structures and time varying dependence parameters we find evidence of significant symmetric upper and lower tail dependence between crude oil prices these findings suggest that crude oil prices are linked with the same intensity during bull and bear markets thus supporting the hypothesis that the oil market is one great pool in contrast with the hypothesis that states that the oil market is regionalized our findings on crude oil price co movements also have implications for risk management hedging strategies and asset pricing

a revisit to the dependence structure between the stock and foreign exchange markets a dependence switching copula approach abstract this paper develops a dependence switching copula model to examine dependence and tail dependence for four different market statuses namely rising stocks appreciating currency falling stocks depreciating currency rising stocks depreciating currency and falling stocks appreciating currency the model is then applied to daily stock returns and exchange rate changes for six major industrial countries over the 1990 2010 period the dependence and tail dependence among the above four market statuses are asymmetric for most countries in the negative correlation regime but symmetric in the positive correlation regime these results enrich the findings in the existing literature and suggest that analyzing cross market linkages within a time invariant copula framework may not be appropriate

sustainable development and entrepreneurship past contributions and future directions this article discusses the emerging research concerned with sustainable development and entrepreneurship which is the focus of this special issue of the journal of business venturing entrepreneurship has been recognized as a major conduit for sustainable products and processes and new ventures are being held up as a panacea for many social and environmental concerns however there remains considerable uncertainty regarding the nature of entrepreneurship s role and how it may unfold we begin with an overview of sustainable development and the role of entrepreneurship and outline recent contributions exploring this role we then summarize the papers presented in this special issue and conclude with suggestions for further research

why do markets move together an investigation of u s japan stock return comovements this article explores the fundamental factors that affect cross country stock return correlations using transactions data from 1988 to 1992 we construct overnight and intraday returns for a portfolio of japanese stocks using their nyse traded american depository receipts adrs and a matched sample portfolio of u s stocks we find that u s macroeconomic announcements shocks to the yen dollar foreign exchange rate and treasury bill returns and industry effects have no measurable influence on u s and japanese return correlations however large shocks to broadbased market indices nikkei stock average and standard and poor s 500 stock index positively impact both the magnitude and persistence of the return correlations stock return cross country covariances play a key role in international finance changes in these covariances affect the volatility of portfolios and asset prices as these covariances increase one expects that a fewer domestic risks are internationally diversifiable so portfolio volatility increases b the risk premium on the world market portfolio increases 1 c the cost of capital increases for individual firms and d the domestic version of the capm becomes increasingly inadequate 2 despite the important economic consequences of changes in cross country covariances the determinants of the levels and dynamics of these covariances have been little studied from an academic

green entrepreneurship in transition economies a case study of bosnia and herzegovina abstract the countries with transition economies are under pressure to increase entrepreneurial activities that will enable fast growth with minimum impact on natural resources despite specific challenges the economies in transition face development of sustainable entrepreneurship has not been in focus of the academic research this leaves some open questions such as those concerning the role and mode of operation of public policies level of risk and its influence on entrepreneurship creativity role of knowledge in diffusing entrepreneurial values and fostering aspirations externalities created for the society and the connection between sustainability and entrepreneurship this paper aims to introduce a discussion on sustainable entrepreneurship in countries with economies in transition the research carried out included i review of literature and statistical data on entrepreneurial environment ii structured interviews with representatives of government civil society business sector and academia to understand the society s perception of green entrepreneurship and iii analysis of case studies on green entrepreneurs it can be concluded that entrepreneurs in economies in transition do not seem to be ready to respond to the challenges or to take any risks by investing in green business but also that the government and educational institutions do not recognize their own role and fail to support the development of green entrepreneurship for those green oriented businesses the key sociological constructs are personal motivation and mission locality and a forward thinking orientation in terms of sustainability all businesses managed to achieve the economic environmental and social value creation without any support from the government