unraveling the effects of environmental outcomes and processes on financial performance a non linear approach abstract we examine the roles of the outcome and process dimensions of environmental performance in determining financial performance as measured by tobin s q outcomes refer to the impacts of the firm on the natural environment while processes are the firm s actions to reduce these outcomes we focus on a specific outcome carbon emissions and suggest that it affects tobin s q non linearly we find that firms achieve the highest financial performance when their carbon performance is neither low nor high but intermediate we also find that environmental processes moderate this relationship as they reinforce firms financial performance through improved stakeholder management this mixed picture suggests that firms do not generally internalize the costs of poor carbon performance but those that stand out in both environmental outcomes and processes achieve net financial benefits these findings are based on a sample of carbon intensive firms that disclosed their greenhouse gas ghg emissions through the carbon disclosure project from 2007 through 2013

credit and market risks measurement in carbon financing for chinese banks abstract this paper concerns the risk analysis of six chinese banks which are involved in carbon financing factor copula is introduced to simulate the corresponding carbon finance credit risk and market risk by latent variables in an indirect method in short the four common factors in carbon financing exchange rates interest rates cer price and brent oil prices are analyzed and explored in factor copula approach that incorporates kmv garch models in two steps the kmv and garch models are used to generate data that reflects the overall credit and market risk associated with each bank both normal copula and t copula functions are used to simulate the parameter estimations for comparison in a new way the value at risk for each of the six banks is calculated through a monte carlo simulation and compared additionally we calculate shock estimates for each factor to explore the changes in both credit risk and market risk given economic shocks also make a hypothetical analysis of the impact of the financial crisis on common factors overall our findings reveal that exchange rates and oil prices are the key factors to consider in carbon financing ping an bank is facing the most risk of all the banks in the sample while the industrial and commercial bank of china is carrying the least risk the results of this analysis gave provide some insight into domestic carbon trading and carbon markets connectivity

integration of carbon risks and opportunities in enterprise risk management systems evidence from australian firms this study addresses managerial perceptions of risks and opportunities related to carbon pricing and emission management and the factors that affect the extent to which carbon related risks and opportunities are integrated into the organisation s formal enterprise risk management erm system we assess the role played by internal governance features resource availability managerial perceptions on competitive pressures and industry type on the inclusion of carbon risks within the erm system based on survey responses from 96 senior managers in australian carbon intensive firms i e firms listed in the 2009 publication of data under section 24 of the national greenhouse and energy reporting nger act 2007 we find that the extent of carbon risk integration is positively associated with the existence of a formal carbon strategy senior management involvement internal audit oversight resource personnel and funds availability and energy sector membership the paper also provides several insights into the perceptions of risks and opportunities confronting an organisation as a result of carbon pricing mechanism

carbon emission reduction the impact on the financial and operational performance of international companies abstract over the last few decades companies operate in an environment in which exercising responsibility is a prerequisite for competing owing to the growing social concern for ethical social and environmental issues the question of the impact of emissions trading on firm competitiveness has acquired special relevance in recent years this research analyzes the impact of the variation in carbon dioxide emissions on financial and operational performance by using international data consisting of 89 companies for the period 2006 2009 the findings show a reduction in emissions that generates a positive impact on financial performance in addition certain control variables are considered such as company size sector growth sustainability index and legal system while a panel data methodology is used as the analysis technique overall this research shows that companies promote greater environmental behaviour in order to obtain higher financial performance nonetheless the findings do not show evidence for operational performance this study contributes to the literature on carbon emission reduction and corporate performance moreover it complements previous literature in the sense that results obtained show a reduction in emissions that generates a positive impact on financial performance

circles within a circle the condition for the possibility of ethical business institutions within a market system how can a business institution function as an ethical institution within a wider system if the context of the wider system is inherently unethical if the primary goal of an institution no matter how ethical it sets out to be is to function successfully within a market system how can it reconcile making a profit and keeping its ethical goals intact while it has been argued that some ethical businesses do exist e g johnson and johnson the argument i would like to put forth is that no matter how ethical a business institution is or how ethical its goals are its capacity to act in an ethical manner is restricted by the wider system in which it must operate the market system unless there is a fundamental change in the notion of the market system itself the capacity for individual businesses to act in an ethical manner will always be restricted my argument is divided into two parts the first part is to show the inherent bias towards unethical outcomes that is inherent in the market system the second part is to suggest how to reorient the general economic framework in order to make ethical institutions more possible the question then becomes how to define economic behavior in terms other than competition for profit

evidence on whether banks consider carbon risk in their lending decisions banks face a dilemma in choosing between maximising profits and facilitating the sustainable use of resources within a carbon constrained future this study provides empirical evidence on this dilemma investigating whether a bank loan announcement for a firm with high carbon risk conveys information to investors about the firm s carbon risk exposure collected through a bank s pre loan screening and ongoing monitoring we use a sample of 120 bank loan announcements for asx listed firms over the period 2009 2015 we measure high low carbon risk exposure based on whether firms meet do not meet the reporting threshold of the nger scheme we document positive and significant excess loan announcement returns for loan renewals for high carbon risk firms but not for loan initiations further we document a more significant loan announcement return for renewals with favourable term revisions finally we find no evidence that the market differentiates between domestic and foreign lenders taken together our results suggest that investors perceive that banks incorporate carbon risk considerations into their lending decisions our results highlight the value of banks as financial intermediaries given the information asymmetry surrounding firms carbon risk exposure and more generally the need to extend modern banking theory to consider issues such as the impact of banks csr reputation on lending decisions

the ethical challenges of the un s clean development mechanism this paper examines the ethical implications of the clean development mechanism cdm the united nation s climate change initiative that provides incentives to countries and firms in developed countries to motivate investments in greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries using the tenets of agency theory we present a solid waste management project in el salvador as an illustrative example of how the cdm can produce a disproportionately high social cost for the most marginalized populations in the developing world we suggest that the un needs to reformulate the cdm so that it more effectively aligns the divergent goals of multiple actors and upholds the un s principles for sustainable development including ethical firm level behavior by providing incentives for environmental economic and social value creation the cdm would not only promote ethical norms for profit seeking firms that participate in the program but also reinforce the un s twin pro poor and environmental objectives

voluntary disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions contrasting the carbon disclosure project and corporate reports as global warming continues to attract growing levels of attention various stakeholders states general public investors and lobbyists have put climate change on corporate agendas and expect firms to disclose relevant greenhouse gas ghg information in this paper we investigate the consistency of the ghg information voluntarily disclosed by french listed firms through two different communication channels corporate reports cr and the carbon disclosure project cdp more precisely we contrast the amounts of ghg emissions reported and the methodological explanations provided named traceability in each channel consistent with a stakeholder theory perspective we find that ghg amounts are significantly lower in the cr than in the cdp we also find that firms increase the cr figures traceability when there is a discrepancy between disclosures in the two channels we suggest that the aim of this greater traceability is to enhance information credibility across the different channels used

determinants of ghg reporting an analysis of global oil and gas companies corporate reporting on climate change is of increasing academic interest but is often considered solely from the firm perspective this article extends current knowledge by considering how institutional pressures influence the greenhouse gas ghg reporting practices of multinational oil and gas companies the results show that regulation under the eu emissions trading scheme and reporting according to the global reporting initiative gri guidelines leads to better quality and more extensive reporting although generally adopting proactive climate change strategies european companies do not have superior ghg reporting practices corporate media visibility does not impact ghg reporting practices which may be a reflection of the obscure portrayal of climate change in the print media or the fact that coverage is generally positive this article adds to the current literature on ghg reporting practices demonstrating that institutional theory along with stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory can give further insights into explaining the ghg reporting practices of multinational companies

analyzing the impact of futures trading on spot price volatility evidence from the spot electricity market in france and germany abstract this paper examines the impact of the introduction of electricity futures on the spot price volatility of the french powernext and german eex electricity markets as well as the degree of their price correlation over the period 2002 2011 our working hypotheses were tested based on a bivariate vecm garch model the results indicate that the introduction of futures contracts in the french electricity market as well as the launch of the joint futures market in these countries in 2009 has decreased spot price volatility however this effect was not as explicit for the german market due to data specificities other interesting results are the german market dominates and leads the long run price relationship the impact of cooling needs on demand is greater than the impact of heating needs there is a substantial systematic pattern of electricity prices and their respective volatilities during weekdays and holidays overall results are supportive of policy making at the european commission regarding electricity market integration

does weather or energy prices affect carbon prices abstract this study investigates the extent that key energy prices coal gas oil and electricity and weather explain carbon prices a key feature of the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets and whether this relationship changed since full auctioning came into effect in 2013 energy prices were found to impact the carbon price in phase iii of the eu ets however modelling based solely on energy prices explained only 12 of carbon price variation weather variables did not affect the carbon price except for unanticipated temperature changes these results indicate that it is not the level of temperature that impacts the carbon price rather it is unanticipated changes in temperature that matter given that climate change is associated with increased variance in temperature this result is consistent with climate change resulting in greater carbon price volatility and higher hedging costs

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

deeds not words a cosmopolitan perspective on the influences of corporate sustainability and ngo engagement on the adoption of sustainable products in china to make a business case for corporate sustainability firms must be able to sell their sustainable products the influence that firm engagement with non governmental organizations ngos may have on consumer adoption of sustainable products has been neglected in previous research we address this by embedding corporate sustainability in a cosmopolitan framework that connects firms consumers and civil society organizations based on the understanding of responsibility for global humanity that underlies both the sustainability and cosmopolitanism concepts we hypothesize that firms sustainability engagement and their ngo engagement influence consumer adoption of sustainable products empirically we investigate the adoption of sustainable eco circle products made from recycled fibers marketed by li ning a china based global sportswear brand we apply a stepwise regression approach to test our hypotheses with paper and pencil survey data from 217 chinese consumers we find adoption to be positively associated with consumers sustainability attitude but not with firms sustainability engagement for firm ngo engagement these relationships are reversed adoption is positively associated with firm ngo engagement but not with consumers related attitude our results present a picture of the chinese context in which there is a business case for corporate sustainability if firms words about sustainable product strategies are supported by signals from civil society about firm deeds the results imply that in a chinese context firms need to be particularly aware of the role of ngos when hoping to be rewarded for sustainability

an optimization model for a monopolistic firm serving an environmentally conscious market use of chemical reaction optimization algorithm this work considers a monopolist firm which faces the following twin challenges of serving an environmentally sensitive market the first challenge is the demand s elasticity to emissions and price to entice its emission conscious customers and generate higher demand the firm incrementally invests in cleaner production technologies it also adopts a voluntary limit on its emissions from transportation however such investments and penalty lead to the second challenge of reduced net profit to address above trade off a non linear programming nlp model with a maximization quadratic profit function has been formulated recently developed chemical reaction optimization algorithm with superior computational performance has been adopted to solve the nlp the output of the model provides near optimal monopolistic price best attainable reduction in manufacturing emissions through proportional investment and makes a choice of suitable mode of transportation for each type of product offered by the firm three types of sensitivity analyses were performed by varying contextual parameters customers emission elasticity penalty charged per unit emission and investment coefficient the results underpin the importance of investments in cleaner technologies and the need of financial aids for profit maximizing firms operating in cleaner markets this work provides a decision making tool to determine the near optimal degree of each of the above dimension in multiple business fronts

exploring the applications of carbon footprinting towards sustainability at a uk university reporting and decision making abstract campus greening is often the first step universities take towards sustainability in order to infer the current level of environmental performance and the progress being made it is imperative that universities measure and report their campus greening efforts this paper shows that sustainability reporting can be a simple task and is of significant value for directing sustainable campus operations to do this environmentally extended input output analysis was used to derive the carbon footprint for the university of leeds being driven by financial data which is readily available to universities the assessment is easy to conduct and maintain through time environmentally extended input output analysis provides complete coverage of the campus system and thus accounts for the majority of emissions sources accordingly it enables comparisons of environmental performance to be made between institutions the reliability of comparisons falters when organisational boundaries vary between carbon footprints and thus in the interest of methodological consistency a framework should be established that defines universal organisational boundaries which universities must adhere to interviews with university procurement staff showed that carbon footprints can provide a screening assessment which identifies emissions hotspots in supply chains such as assessment is currently lacking and provides evidence of win win situations where emissions and costs can be reduced simultaneously although carbon footprinting considers only the environmental dimension of the triple bottom line it is recommended that universities intensify its application for the institutions themselves the results will be of significant practical value for directing initiatives such as sustainable procurement and for enhancing stakeholder engagement with the sustainability agenda whilst an increased application will help build much needed momentum for sustainability reporting overall

blue carbon knowledge gaps critical issues and novel approaches blue carbon the carbon stored and sequestered in mangrove forests seagrass meadows and tidal salt marshes is considered a cost effective means to achieve positive climate change mitigation and adaptation outcomes blue carbon is therefore of considerable interest to the scientific and policy communities and is frequently discussed in relation to carbon markets and climate finance opportunities this paper identifies peer reviewed and gray literature documents that discuss blue carbon in the context of finance and market mechanisms the document set is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively and the principal scientific economic regulatory social and management issues that emerge are discussed the study reveals that 1 the blue carbon literature is dominated by technical and policy commentary with a dearth of research into practical social considerations and a stark absence of private sector perspectives 2 there is confusion over the nature and role of important concepts including private and public sector finance and instruments and 3 understanding of the important issues of investment priorities and risk considerations is also limited this paper therefore identifies gaps in the blue carbon literature clarifies critical concepts and issues and proposes novel pathways for blue carbon research and project development

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

speculative intensity and spot and futures price variability this paper develops a simultaneous stochastic rational expectations model of futures and spot price determination using the model we find that increases in what we term speculative intensity increase spot price variability arising from storage cost shocks but decrease spot price variability arising from demand shocks in contrast increases in speculative intensity unambiguously decrease futures price variability regardless of the underlying source of disturbances we are able to develop these comparative static results because the model has a unique equilibrium

reexamining the expected effect of available resources and firm size on firm environmental orientation an empirical study of uk firms an emergent body of literature examined why some firms apply some environmental initiatives while other firms do not take responsibility for their natural environment thus firm environmental orientation responsiveness and performance are linked in the literature to several variables unfortunately the relationship between firm environmental orientation and either available resources or firm size showed mixed results and inconclusive evidence therefore the aim of this paper is to show empirically how available resources and firm size can explain differences in firm environmental responsiveness and environmental performance econometric results of environmental responsiveness using the logistic regression model demonstrated that firm size does appear to add something unique in explaining differences in environmental responsiveness while available resource can be safely dropped from the model however econometric analysis of environmental performance using the maximum likelihood random effects model showed strong evidence that available resources and firm size are significant predictors of firm environmental performance

reconciling corporate citizenship and competitive strategy insights from economic theory neoclassical and austrian evolutionary economic paradigms have different implications for integrating corporate social responsibility corporate citizenship and competitive strategy porter s five forces model implicitly rests on neoclassical theory of the firm and is not easily reconciled with corporate social responsibility resource based models of competitive strategy do not explicitly embrace a particular economic paradigm but to the extent their conceptualization rests on neoclassical assumptions such as imperfect factor markets and profits as rents these models also imply a trade off between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility differences in austrian evolutionary economic model s assumptions about equilibrium profits and other economic concepts allow this paradigm to embrace alternative views of strategy such as the activities or dynamic capabilities views these alternative views of strategy focus on learning and adaptation they align more easily with corporate social responsibility in practice this alignment comes about because social engagement facilitates the learning and adaptation that are a source of competitive advantage among the many business arguments for csr such as improved employee morale productivity or brand differentiation this view prioritizes innovation

what is the economics of climate change a major review of the economics of climate change under the leadership of professor sir nicholas stern was announced at the end of july 2005 reporting to the united kingdom s chancellor of the exchequer and to the prime minister the stern review on the economics of climate change is due to report in autumn 2006 this article sets out some of the issues the review is considering

corporate reputation and collective crises a theoretical development using the case of rana plaza banking scandals accounting fraud product recalls and environmental disasters their associated reputational effects as well as company response strategies have been well reported in the literature reported crises and scandals typically involve one focal company for example bp and the 2010 deepwater horizon accident as business practices change and company supply chains become more complex and interlinked there is a greater risk of collective crises where multiple companies are associated with the same scandal we argue that companies are likely to behave differently in a group setting compared to when faced with a crisis individually using an inductive approach we examine the case of the rana plaza building collapse we find that organizations with a history of similar crises adopt defensive strategies and communicate much later compared to organizations which adopt accommodative strategies contrary to the individual case in a collective crisis accommodative strategies result in more negative reputational damage and a higher burden of responsibility we propose that the relationship between crisis response strategy and organization reputation is moderated by the crisis setting we extend the logic of crisis management and corporate reputation to incorporate the case of a collective crisis

exploring the determinants and long term performance outcomes of corporate carbon strategies abstract so far research has insufficiently addressed the long term effectiveness of business responses to climate change in delivering actual outcomes the aim of this article is therefore to analyze the determinants of such strategies and their influence on firms financial and carbon performance over time it is argued that corporate carbon strategies have three main objectives carbon governance carbon reduction and carbon competitiveness to assess the complex interactions between these strategic objectives their determinants and outcomes an integrative structural equation model is developed and empirically tested data are sourced from a global sample of 45 leading enterprises from the steel cement and automotive sector including some of the largest ghg emitters in the world in order to account for the long term impacts of strategies the firm level change in financial and carbon performance is calculated by comparing two different points in time namely 2008 and 2013 the results provide empirical evidence for the positive effect of institutional and stakeholder pressure on emission reduction activities proof for a positive impact of carbon pressure on organizational capabilities and corporate competitiveness in the context of climate change cannot be established surprisingly the results also indicate no relationship between carbon reduction activities and long term improvements in carbon performance however such measures are linked to long term financial gains advancements in carbon performance in turn are not found to be associated with economic benefits

the role of the private sector in global climate and energy governance the private sector plays an active role in implementation of mechanisms concerning the mitigation of climate change in spite of that the corporate actors play a limited direct role in international arenas when it comes to negotiating the design of climate and energy regime the climate and energy governance in the united nations system remains mostly state centric but the active participation of corporate actors in negotiation of climate and energy regimes is essential to increase the effectiveness of their governance business is not just a subject of a regulatory climate and energy imposed by the state rather business is an intrinsic part of the fabric of climate and energy governance as rule maker particularly in the many voluntary regimes however the architecture in place should guarantee that the private sector does not highjack the decisions and its positions are balanced by other non governmental actors in the process this article analyzes the role that the private sector can play in the global climate and energy governance the private sector does not only play a rule taker role in the climate change and energy regime indeed they are not passive observers as they influence through indirect means the results suggest that the private sector is able to play a key role in global climate and energy governance based on the principle of multi stakeholder participation in global decision making but the architecture should be able to balance the goods and bads of private direct influence in international regimes

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

speculative commodity holdings abstract adopting a mean variance approach we characterize the optimal commodity holdings for a risk averse speculator within a discrete time framework a new factor namely covariance risk effect arises which essentially represents the difference between the optimal stock of a risk averse speculator and that of a risk neutral one

ecology driven real options an investment framework for incorporating uncertainties in the context of the natural environment the role of uncertainty within an organization s environment features prominently in the business ethics and management literature but how corporate investment decisions should proceed in the face of uncertainties relating to the natural environment is less discussed from the perspective of ecological economics the salience of ecology induced issues challenges management to address new types of uncertainties these pertain to constraints within the natural environment as well as to institutional action aimed at conserving the natural environment we derive six areas of ecology induced uncertainties and propose ecology driven real options as a conceptual approach for systematically incorporating these uncertainties into strategic management we combine our results in an integrative investment framework and illustrate its application with the case of carbon constraints

it pays to be green a premature conclusion it has been claimed that good environmental performance can improve firms economic performance however because of e g data limitations the methods applied in most previous quantitative empirical studies on effects of environmental performance on economic performance of firms suffer from several shortcomings we discuss these shortcomings and conclude that previously applied methods are unsatisfactory as support for a conclusion that it pays for firms to be green then we illustrate the consequences of these shortcomings by performing several regression analyses of the effect of environmental performance on economic performance using a panel data set of norwegian plants a pooled regression where observable firm characteristics like e g size or industry are controlled for confirms a positive effect of environmental performance on economic performance however the estimated positive effect could be due to omitted unobserved variables like management or technology when the regression model controls for unobserved plant heterogeneity the effect is generally no longer statistically significant hence although greener plants tend to perform economically better the analysis provides little support for the claim that it is because they are greener these empirical findings further indicate that a conclusion that it pays to be green is premature

trends and determinants of corporate non financial disclosure in greece an increasing number of business organizations around the world engage in the accounting for and reporting on non financial aspects of performance mainly within the domains of social and environmental responsibility using a composite disclosure index this study investigates the status of the non financial disclosure practices of the top 100 companies operating in greece a number of determinants which potentially drive greek firms to publicly disclose such information are examined an investigation of the reporting practices of a subgroup of firms which is on the spotlight regarding their environmental performance is performed while overlapping perspectives for the greek case are outlined the analysis suggests that only a small group of leading greek firms appears to endorse a meaningful business and society dialogue as an instrument for stakeholder communication and the discharging of organizational accountability most other corporations still tend to treat such practices superficially and in an imprecise manner

multinational oil companies and the adoption of sustainable development a resource based and institutional theory interpretation of adoption heterogeneity sustainable development is often framed as a social issue to which corporations should pay attention because it offers both opportunities and challenges through the use of institutional theory and the resource based view of the firm we shed some light on why more than 20 years after sustainable development was first introduced we see neither the adoption of this business model as dominant nor its converse that is the total abandonment of the model as unworkable and unprofitable we focus on multinational corporations mncs because they were among the organizations first called to take action in order to illustrate the institutional pressures mncs face and their strategic response to these pressures we analysed four major oil and gas multinationals subject to similar sustainable development pressures climate change biodiversity renewable energy development and social investment we argue that normative and coercive isomorphism does not occur at the global level because sustainable development is largely a stakeholder driven rather than a broad social pressure that is host country interpretation of sustainable development pressures varies across an mnc s subsidiary network based on the analysis of the four major mncs annual reports from 2000 to 2005 we argue that mimetic isomorphism may occur but since it implies the use of complex and intangible resources mimetic processes are slow rare and discretionary

the mineral economy how prices and costs can falsely signal decreasing scarcity abstract natural resource prices and costs of extraction have declined simultaneously with increasing quantities of extraction for a long time in a hotelling sense this indicates decreasing scarcity since low cost resources normally would be used first and quantities of extraction normally would decrease over time the main reason for the trend being opposite to hotelling characteristics is usually thought to be due to technological innovation however an alternative reason for decreasing costs and prices and increasing quantities of extraction may be due to georgescu roegen s georgescu roegen nicholas 1972 energy and economic myth in georgescu roegen nicholas ed energy and economic myths institutional and analytical economic essays published 1976 pergamon press new york pp 3 36 concept of bonanza where there is only the appearance of decreasing scarcity norgaard s norgaard r b 1990 economic indicators of resource scarcity a critical essay j environ econ manage 19 1 19 25 mayflower problem can be used to model an alternative neo classical approach to resource extraction and scarcity in this paper a model of resource exploration is developed where the explorer does not know total reserves of the resource base as he searches for and extracts the natural resource the explorer never entirely knows how big the resource base is but does gain information about the potential location of new reserves as discovery proceeds that reduces exploration costs the lower exploration costs can cause the price to fall over time until eventually scarcity of the resource causes the price to rise the true scarcity is only revealed towards the end of exhaustion the model shows that it is possible to have several years of increasing production simultaneous with lower prices and costs until a sudden intense price rise occurs with a huge cut in production when technology is able to cut costs and increase the reserve base the decline in prices and costs and the increase in production can last longer however even with better technology it is still possible for a sharp increase in price as long as demand is growing faster than technological innovation the problem is that the true size of the resource base is never known society does not know if technology is actually overcoming scarcity or not until demand for a resource outstrips supplies it is even possible for a price shock of incredible magnitude to surprise an economy within one or two years after a hundred years of declining prices and increasing production

the heterogeneity of socially responsible investment many writers have commented on the heterogeneity of the socially responsible investment sri movement however few have actually tried to understand and explain it and even fewer have discussed whether the opposite standardisation is possible and desirable in this article we take a broader perspective on the issue of the heterogeneity of sri we distinguish between four levels on which heterogeneity can be found the terminological definitional strategic and practical whilst there is much talk about the definitional ambiguities of sri we suggest that there is actually some agreement on the definitional level there are at least three explanations which we suggest can account for the heterogeneity on the other levels cultural and ideological differences between different regions differences in values norms and ideology between various sri stakeholders and the market setting of sri discussing the implications of the three explanations for the sri market we suggest that there is reason to be sceptical about the possibilities of standardisation if not standardisation is imposed top down whether this kind of standardisation is desirable or not we argue depends on what the motives for it would be to the extent that standardisation may facilitate the mainstreaming of sri it could be a good thing but we entertain doubts about whether mainstreaming really requires standardisation

derivative securities and cash market stability this study investigates the effect of introducing interest rate futures and options on the price variances in related financial cash markets standard research approaches to this issue relate cash price stability before the introduction of futures and options trading to cash price stability after trading in the derivative security begins however controlling for the additional factors that may also effect cash markets is difficult the approach employed here to deal with this obstacle is motivated by recent theoretical research relating cash and futures markets but hitherto not operationalized to empirically test for a relationship between the markets varying parameter models of 1 the demand for short term treasury securities 2 the demand for large time deposits and 3 the supply of large time deposits are specified such that changes in the parameters imply changes in the volatility of the cash price these parameters are modelled as functions of the trading volume of interest rate futures and o

a perspective on multinational enterprises and climate change learning from an inconvenient truth this paper explores whether and how an important environmental issue such as climate change can not only give multinational enterprises the opportunity to develop green firm specific advantages fsas but also help reconfigure key fsas that are viewed as the main sources of firms profitability growth and survival we examine the nature and geography of such fsa development and develop two organizing frameworks which are subsequently applied to climate change using information from global 500 firms implications and future directions for international business research are indicated

futures market efficiency in the soybean complex 13 1 rev division of agricultural sciences university of ifornla working paper no 139 r i j futures market efficiency in the soybean complex gordon c rausser and colin carter giannini foundation of agricultural economics l ibraili v im california agric u l tural elqieriment station giannini foundation of agricultural economics march 1982

estimating oil price value at risk using the historical simulation approach abstract in this paper we propose using value at risk var for oil price risk quantification var provides an estimation for the maximum oil price change associated with a likelihood level and can be used for designing risk management strategies we analyse three var calculation methods the historical simulation standard approach the historical simulation with arma forecasts hsaf approach developed in this paper and the variance covariance method based on autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models forecasts the results obtained indicate that hsaf methodology provides a flexible var quantification which fits the continuous oil price movements well and provides an efficient risk quantification

the impacts of liquidity dynamics on emissions allowances price different evidence from china s emissions trading pilots abstract the liquidities of china s emissions trading markets have significant impacts on emissions allowances price movement and pricing efficiency liquidity measures on illiquidity ratio and trade values indicate hubei emissions allowances hbea product has the highest liquidity shenzhen allowances sza and guangdong emissions allowances gdea products have the higher liquidity than beijing emissions allowances bea and shanghai emissions allowances shea products while tianjin emissions allowances tjea product has the lowest market liquidity in considered china s emissions trading pilots the dynamics of the illiquidity ratios for all selected emissions allowances products are negatively related with emissions allowances returns and trade volumes for bea tjea sza and hbea products are also negatively related with emissions allowances returns the dynamics of daily illiquidity ratios and trade based liquidity in beijing tianjin guangdong shenzhen hubei emissions pilots have significant volatility clustering impacts on the variances of regional emissions allowances returns previous market shocks of overnight and intraday price variations have the more persistent influences on the gdea returns than hbea returns reflecting greater inter day price ranges clustering effect

emerging carbon constraints for corporate risk management abstract while discussions about global sustainability challenges abound the financial risks that they incur albeit important have received less attention we suggest that corporate risk assessments should include sustainability related aspects especially with relation to the natural environment and encompass the flux of critical materials within a company s value chain such a comprehensive risk assessment takes into account input as well as output related factors with this paper we focus on the flux of carbon and define carbon constraints that emerge due to the disposition of fossil fuels in the input dimension and due to direct and indirect climate change effects in the output dimension we review the literature regarding the financial consequences of carbon constraints on the macroeconomic sector and company level we conclude that a financial consequences seem to be asymmetrically distributed between and within sectors b the individual risk exposure of companies depends on the intensity of and dependency on carbon based materials and energy and c financial markets have only started to incorporate these aspects in their valuations this paper ends with recommendations on how to incorporate our results in an integrated carbon risk management framework

sustainable energy systems and company performance does the implementation of sustainable energy systems improve companies financial performance abstract the main aim of this paper is to analyse whether the adoption of sustainable energy systems improves corporate financial performance to this end we obtained data from a sample of 574 multinational companies from 36 countries in the 2008 2013 period on this data we implement a dynamic system panel data method our findings show that the adoption of sustainable energy systems allows firms to improve their short term corporate financial performance while not leading them to reduce their corporate financial performance in the long term specifically our results indicate that an increase in energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources do not significantly affect corporate financial performance neither does the integration of energy efficiency systems and renewable energy sources have any significant influence on corporate financial performance while the level of implementation of sustainable energy management systems has a significant effect on short term but not long term corporate financial performance furthermore other control variables such as research and development expenditure and year are also relevant in explaining firms financial performance the adoption of sustainable energy systems helps to improve corporate financial performance in the short term but has no affect in the long term this might be because the monitoring of energy efficiency using key performance indicators allows firms to detect and correct failures in the production process and hence improve short term financial performance however this measure does not generate competitive advantages for firms and therefore has no effect on long term corporate financial performance from a scientific perspective of energy this paper contributes to the literature by providing a detailed explanation of how the adoption of sustainable energy systems proposed by peura 2013 influences corporate financial performance on the basis of new empirical evidence these explanations provide a strong rationale for improving the efficient use of energy and harvesting low hanging fruits in the short term from a managerial perspective policymakers should encourage firms to align sustainable energy systems with their core business strategy by developing green technologies that allow them to acquire rare and valuable capabilities and abilities which generate competitive advantage and therefore allow firms to increase their long term corporate financial performance

global environmental risks the need to manage climate risks is not a new it has shaped social institutions for many centuries in medieval england a peasant farmer s land was broken into many widely dispersed parcels economic historians interpret this as a way of hedging climate risk see references in bromley 9 land in different locations would be affected differently by droughts floods and frosts by spreading land holdings over different locations as well as by organizing agricultural cooperatives and buying insurance farmers have managed climate risk for many centuries

responsible innovation and the innovation of responsibility governing sustainable development in a globalized world earth s life support system is facing megaproblems of sustainability one important way of how these problems can be addressed is through innovation this paper argues that responsible innovation that contributes to sustainable development sd consists of three dimensions 1 innovations avoid harming people and the planet 2 innovations do good by offering new products services or technologies that foster sd and 3 global governance schemes are in place that facilitate innovations that avoid harm and do good the paper discusses global governance schemes based on deliberation as a means to foster such responsible innovation these schemes can provide voluntary soft law regulations that complement and extend national and international hard law regulations and facilitate collective innovation that contributes to sd goals the article addresses the facilitative role of governments and international organizations in overcoming problems of deliberation and offers illustrative examples of such governance schemes

evolutionary framework design in formulation of decision support models for production emissions and net profit of firm implications on environmental concerns of supply chains abstract there have been increased investments in cleaner technologies and adoption of a voluntarily limit on transportation emissions by the global firms to handle the environmental concerns of supply chains and to increase demand for finished goods consequences are the reduction in net profit for the firm to address this trade off between the net profit and environmental concerns the formulation and optimization of a compact model are needed development of these models requires a thorough understanding of the nature of the impact of three inputs investment coefficient penalty per unit emission and customer s emission elasticity on production emissions and net profit past studies revealed that a compact model comprising the interactive effect of these inputs on the production emissions and net profit is not yet formulated therefore this study illustrates the development of an evolutionary framework of an advanced multi gene genetic programming in the formulation of functional expressions for the net profit and production emissions based on the three inputs investment coefficient penalty per unit emission and customer s emission elasticity of the monopolist firm the sensitivity and parametric based 2 d analysis determine the relationships and found that the penalty per unit emission is dominant input for reducing emissions and maintaining net profit simultaneously the contribution of this work lies in designing of an evolutionary framework in the development of empirical explicit expressions which can easily be optimized analytically to keep production emissions and net profit balanced

cooperation and competition in the context of organic and mechanic worldviews a theoretical and case based discussion in this study we argue that there is an interconnection between the mechanistic worldview and competition and the organic worldview and cooperation to illustrate our main thesis we introduce two cases first max havelaar a paradigmatic case of how business might function in an economy based upon solidarity and sustainability second tine a norwegian grocery corporation engaged in collusion in order to force a small competitor out of the market on the one hand in order to encourage market behaviour that integrates economic societal and environmental values we find that transparent cooperation within a context of an organic worldview takes care of important intrinsic as well as instrumental values on the other hand we find evidence for asserting that cooperation based upon a mechanistic worldview typically leads to group egotistical consequences undermining the long term common good

the disclosure of industrial greenhouse gas emissions a critical assessment of corporate sustainability reports abstract the european body of research on corporate environmental performance has not yet reached maturity that is mainly due to the limited access researchers have to raw environmental performance data in conjunction with an often sterile approach to developing proxies and indicators for this type of corporate performance moreover annual sustainability reports are often neglected in spite of their capacity to produce a compelling longitudinal research perspective the present article offers a critical reading of the last decade s sustainability reports from the top five largest european oil and gas companies on account of their significant contribution to global warming the sample companies i e bp total shell bg group and eni have been scrutinized for their ability to provide high quality environmental disclosures at group level given the sophistication of emissions data collection and estimation tools such as the greenhouse gas ghg protocol it comes as a surprise that these five industry leaders have issued reports containing unexplained figures and methodological inconsistencies finally the reader is persuaded that empirical research in the field of corporate environmental performance should mostly be about creating a context for discussing a firm s commitment to sustainability rather than modelling irrelevant cross sectional data to find similarities between incomparable cases

does energy efficiency affect financial performance evidence from chinese energy intensive firms energy intensive firms are confronted with increasing pressure to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption this paper explores the relationship between the energy efficiency and financial performance of a sample of firms in china based on a panel dataset for the period 2010 2014 six financial indicators representing the benefits of different stakeholders are used in the analysis our empirical results show that energy efficiency is positively related to return on equity return on assets return on investment return on invested capital and return on sales but has no significant relationship with tobin s q in addition we examine the interaction effect between energy intensity and firm growth and find that firm growth helps to enhance the positive relationship between energy intensity and financial performance our findings provide incentive for firms to be proactive in their efforts towards energy conservation and emissions reduction

a theory of environmental risk disclosure abstract the regulation of environmental risks increasingly emphasizes the awareness and empowerment of stakeholders the success of this approach however seems to depend crucially on the quality of environmental disclosures in this paper we investigate the amount and quality of the information that would be voluntarily delivered to some stakeholder by a potential polluter we find that information may be hazier when the stakeholder is confident or naive a priori the cost of analyzing the received reports increases little with their complexity or a polluter s net expected payoff from undertaking an industrial activity that would turn out to be unsafe is small a worried stakeholder and a low cost of producing more accurate figures on the other hand favor disclosure of high quality information by delivering information of very good quality safe firms can set themselves apart more easily from dangerous ones the higher the relative ex post payoff from their current industrial activity implications of this framework for the scope and design of public programs of environmental disclosure are briefly examined

a quest for the economics of sustainability and the sustainability of economics abstract this paper briefly reviews key insights from natural resource and environmental economics ecological economics and industrial ecology in an effort to identify the major contributions of these fields to the understanding and promotion of sustainable development each is based on overlapping worldviews methods and tools their synthesis and extension subsumed under the rubric of natural economics is suggested as a new thrust in environmental research offering valuable guides to policy making an early illustration of the application of natural economics in new zealand is presented

economics of technological change and the natural environment how effective are innovations as a remedy for resource scarcity abstract the paper aims to substantiate the importance of endogenous innovations when evaluating the compatibility of natural resource use and economic development it explains that technological change has the potential to compensate for natural resource scarcity diminishing returns to capital poor input substitution and material balance restrictions but is limited by various restrictions like fading returns to innovative investments and rising research costs it also shows how innovative activities are fostered by accurate price signals and research favouring sectoral change the simultaneous effects of increasing technical knowledge decreasing resource inputs and increasing world population largely determine the chances of long run sustainable development consequently future research has to be directed at a more thorough understanding of the mechanisms driving innovations in the presence of natural resource scarcity

eu emission allowances and the stock market evidence from the electricity industry this paper constitutes to our best knowledge the first econometric analysis on stock market effects of the eu emission trading scheme eu ets our results suggest that eu emission allowance eua price developments matter to the stock performance of electricity firms eua price changes and stock returns of the most important european electricity corporations are shown to be positively related this effect does not work asymmetrically so that stock markets do not seem to react differently to eua appreciations in comparison to depreciations the carbon market effect is shown to be both time and country specific it is particularly strong for the period of eua market shock in early 2006 and differs with respect to the countries where the electricity corporations analysed are headquartered stock market reactions to eua volatility could not be shown

carbon risk carbon risk awareness and the cost of debt financing we seek insights into potential benefits for firms adopting strategies to improve business sustainability in a carbon constrained future we investigate whether lenders incorporate a firm s exposure to carbon related risk into lending decisions through the cost of financing and if so importantly whether firms can mitigate the penalty by demonstrating an awareness of their carbon risks we use a sample of 255 firm year observations from eight industries over the period 2009 2013 we measure carbon related risk exposure as the firm s historical carbon emissions and our primary measure of carbon risk awareness is based on the firm s willingness to respond to the carbon disclosure project cdp survey we document a positive association between cost of debt and carbon risk for firms failing to respond to the cdp further this association is economically meaningful with a one standard deviation increase in carbon risk mapping into between a 38 and 62 basis point increase in the cost of debt equally we find that this penalty is effectively negated for firms exhibiting carbon risk awareness our results are robust when we consider alternate measures of carbon awareness disclosure through alternative medium to the cdp and firms annual cash investment in new capital assets using cleaner technology our results highlight not only the importance of carbon awareness as a business strategy for polluting firms but also its importance to lenders exposed to their clients default and reputational risk the debt market appears to incorporate historical carbon emissions and forward looking indicators of carbon performance

does environmental performance affect financial performance a meta analysis abstract what do we know about the impact of environmental regulations performance on firm performance after more than three decades of theoretical as well as empirical research the results seem to remain inconclusive some papers suggest that regulations harm firms while others claim that regulations may contribute positively and give an impetus to innovations therefore i examine the heterogeneity in financial environmental performance nexus empirically carrying out a meta regression analysis of 64 outcomes from 37 empirical studies to uncover the underlying factors which can influence the observed variation in the empirical results the results suggest both that the empirical method used matters for the nexus and that the likelihood of finding a negative link between environmental and financial performance significantly increases when using simple correlation coefficients instead of more advanced econometric analysis the results also indicate that the portfolio studies tend to report a negative link between environmental and financial performance this likely reflects the omitted factors in portfolio studies the positive link is found more frequently in common law countries than in civil law countries the results also point to the importance of appropriate time coverage to establish a positive link between environmental and financial performance

does voluntary carbon reporting meet investors needs abstract through initiatives such as the carbon disclosure project investors have encouraged companies to report on their climate change related risks and opportunities their greenhouse gas emissions and their climate change management systems and processes despite the large number of companies that now report climate change related information investors have consistently criticised companies for not providing information that can be readily used in investment decision making companies in turn have criticised investors for not utilising the information that they provide this article taking the case of the uk retail sector analyses the reasons for this debate between companies and their investors it concludes that there are two factors at play the first is that while investors have encouraged companies to report they have at least to date paid much less attention to the quality of the reported information the second is that company reporting on climate change falls far short of the quality required for investors to make meaningful comparisons between companies this in turn has limited investor interest in these data the article considers the potential for mandatory reporting to address these problems and concludes that mandatory reporting is at best a partial solution and that it is a combination of voluntary and mandatory reporting underpinned by active investor interest in the data being reported that offers the greatest potential for progress

can environmental sustainability be used to manage energy price risk energy security issues and climate change are two of the most pressing problems facing society and both of these problems are likely to increase energy price variability in the coming years this paper develops and estimates a model of a company s energy price exposure and presents evidence showing that increases in a company s environmental sustainability lowers its energy price exposure this result is robust across two different measures of energy prices these results should be useful to companies seeking new ways of addressing energy price risk as well as governments concerned about the impact that energy price risk can have on economic growth and prosperity

climate change and insurance a critical appraisal several issues relating to insurance and the damage costs of climate change are discussed it is argued that the option of insuring climate change is severely limited because the associated damages are hardly quantifiable and little diversifiable in addition binding contracts are a problem on long time scales and in an international context hedging consumption smoothing over time precautionary investments and liability are not to be presented under the heading of insurance not only because this unnecessarily and confusingly expands the traditional definition of insurance but also because this could create a false sense of security the impact of climate change on the profitability of the commercial insurance sector is not likely to be severe as the insurance companies are capable of shifting changed risks to the insured provided that they are properly and timely informed on the consequences of climate change

to what extent is business responding to climate change evidence from a global wine producer most studies on climate change response have examined reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions yet these studies do not take into account ecosystem services constraints and biophysical disruptions wrought by climate change that may require broader types of response by studying a firm in the wine industry and using a research approach not constrained by structured methodologies or biased toward ghg emissions the findings suggest that both inside out and outside in actions are taken in response to climate change while attempts are made by the firm to curtail and reverse climate change through management of carbon emissions evidence suggests a clear pattern of actions designed to adjust to the adverse consequences of climate change as well the results both confirm and extend previous findings and suggest that the level and breadth of response to climate change is shaped by situated attention structural controls and industry type

business responses to climate change regulation in canada and germany lessons for mncs from emerging economies this article proposes a novel mapping of the complex relationship between business ethics and regulation by suggesting five distinct ways in which business ethics and regulation may intersect the framework is applied to a comparative case study of business responses to climate change regulation in canada and germany both signatories to the kyoto protocol both countries represent distinctly different approaches which yield significant lessons for emerging economies we also analyze the specific role of large multinational corporations in this process

ten years of corporate action on climate change what do we have to show for it abstract a significant proportion of the world s greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed directly or indirectly to corporate activities an increasing number of companies have set targets and have adopted initiatives to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions raising the question of what sorts of outcomes can realistically be expected from corporate action on climate change this paper aims to shed some light on this issue through an analysis of the climate change performance of the uk supermarket sector this sector is directly responsible for around 1 of uk greenhouse gas emissions but it has been estimated that indirectly it may be responsible for up to 10 of emissions in the period between 2000 and 2010 the major uk supermarkets transformed their approach to climate change this paper examines the outcomes that resulted from these actions it finds that there have been significant and steady improvements in energy efficiency but that these efficiency gains are often outstripped by the impacts of business growth for most companies short of a radical redesign of their business activities or an expansion of the scope of their energy management initiatives to include their indirect emissions total greenhouse gas emissions will tend to increase over time

speculative storage futures markets and the stability of commodity prices a theoretical dynamic model is developed that integrates the micro behavior of commodity and futures speculators into the simultaneous determination of cash and futures prices in a storable commodity market the model is used to demonstrate the way in which the introduction of a futures market by affecting the decisions of speculative inventory holders alters the distribution of spot prices and to elucidate the conditions that render futures trading stabilizing for cash prices

what global emission regulations should corporations support in their role as political actors and lobbyists corporations have responsibilities to help determine the existence and content of global regulations of pollutants the ethical nature of those responsibilities is highly sensitive to the assumed normative framework this paper compares several frameworks by modeling them as differently weighted versions of utilitarianism under a strict neoclassical approach corporations have a narrow obligation to maximize profits which generally entails opposing emission regulations in contrast a stakeholder approach as well as marxian and common ethics approaches suggest that firms have an obligation to actively support sustainable emission regulations with the following properties major restrictions would be global rather than local global restrictions would apply in all cases of persistent emissions global restrictions would apply to non persistent emissions as well unless they have been affirmatively shown to be safe using reasonably persuasive scientific evidence safety thresholds would be set fairly restrictively based on administrative models and rules of thumb in light of existing scientific knowledge but without requiring full scientific justification long run goals would include zero emission of persistent unsafe substances

voluntary global business initiatives and the international climate negotiations a case study of the greenhouse gas protocol abstract the past few years have witnessed the emergence of a plethora of transnational climate governance experiments they have been developed by a broad range of actors such as cities non profit organizations and private corporations several scholars have lately devoted particular attention to voluntary global business initiatives in the policy domain of climate change their studies have provided considerable insights into the role and function of such new modes of climate governance however the precise nature of the relationship between the various climate governance experiments and the international climate negotiations has not been analyzed in enough detail against this backdrop the present article explores the interplay of a business sector climate governance experiment i e the greenhouse gas protocol ghg protocol with the international climate regime on the one hand the article underscores that the ghg protocol has filled a regulatory gap in global climate policy making by providing the means for the corporate sector to comprehensively account and report their ghgs on the other hand it reveals that the application of the ghg protocol guidelines depends to a large extent on the existence of an overarching policy framework set up by nation states at the intergovernmental level only if private companies receive a clear political signal that stringent mandatory ghg emission controls and a global market based instrument are at least likely to be adopted will they put substantial efforts into the accurate measurement and management of their ghgs thus this article points to the limits of climate governance experimentation and suggests that business sector climate governance experiments need to be embedded in a coherent international regulatory setting which generates a clear stimulus for corporate action

the dynamic volatility spillover between european carbon trading market and fossil energy market abstract with the rapid spread of carbon trading in the world the interaction of carbon prices and fossil energy prices has raised growing attention but little research has discussed their time varying correlation and dynamic volatility spillover this paper employs the threshold dynamic conditional correlation dcc generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity garch model and the full baba engle kraft and kroner bekk garch model to explore these issues for the daily data of european carbon futures prices and the three fossil energy prices coal natural gas and brent oil from january 2 2008 to september 30 2014 the results indicate that first there is significant unidirectional volatility spillover from coal market to carbon market and from carbon market to natural gas market whereas there exists no significant volatility spillover between carbon market and brent oil market second carbon market and fossil energy markets have significantly positive correlation across time specifically among the three fossil fuels coal market has the highest correlation with carbon market followed by natural gas and brent oil markets finally as for the three fossil fuels their price decrease may have stronger impact on carbon price volatility than their price increase with the same degree while there is asymmetric impact of carbon price increase and decrease only on brent oil price volatility these results may help investors to well configure their portfolios and manage their investment risks and help emission trading installations to join in carbon market in a cost effective way

regulatory taxation of fossil fuels theory and policy abstract research on energy taxation is often based on purely theoretical deductions this paper stays closer to the real world using empirical data and interpreting results in a political economic setting of risk and uncertainty economic growth in developing countries will boost energy demand increasing the risk of shortages of oil and natural gas half way through the next century and of coal towards the year 2100 furthermore there is mounting evidence that emissions of co 2 trigger harmful climate changes a timely introduction of regulatory taxes will reduce demand for fossil fuels and accelerate the introduction of sustainable technology the empirical results presented show moreover that such taxes may claim a substantial part of the rent on energy extraction for the energy importing countries it is argued that optimal control and the avoidance of displacement effects require a tax affecting marginal use with exceptions to safeguard competitive positions exceptions may be scaled down as the jurisdiction is enlarged

knowledge and the climate change issue an exploratory study of cluster and extra cluster effects climate change while potentially impacting many industries appears to have considerable significance to the wine industry yet little is known about how firms acquire knowledge and gain an understanding of climate change and its impacts this study exploratory in nature and studying firms from the wine producing region of tasmania is one of the first in the management literature to use cluster theory to examine the climate change issue firms are predicted to exchange knowledge about climate change more readily with other firms internal to the sub cluster than with those external to the sub cluster the hypothesis does not find support the study also proposes that the different characteristics of knowledge can either increase or decrease their flows in and around clusters specifically public knowledge about climate change is predicted to flow more freely than private knowledge about climate change the hypothesis does not find support finally firms are expected to acquire knowledge about climate change from sources other than cluster entrenched firms and in particular peak national industry bodies the hypothesis finds partial support a discussion of the findings is presented along with future research directions

impacts of market based climate change policies on the us pulp and paper industry abstract much of the policy debates on climate issues have centered on the optimal level and timing of policy interventions that cost effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions we briefly review the range of policy issues in our paper and assess the impact that climate change policies may have on energy use and carbon emissions in the us pulp and paper industry we then present results from time series based analyses of changes in technologies and fuel mix and compare the results with engineering based technology analyses of us pulp and paper production for a copy of the model and software send e mail to mruth bu edu projections based on information for eight paper and paperboard categories are presented for the years 1995 2020 the findings indicate that under a wide range of specifications and policy assumptions carbon emissions from fossil fuel use per ton of product are likely to decline when combined with investment incentives an additional cost effective reduction in carbon emissions per ton of product will be realized however expected increases in output from the industry are likely to be higher than the reductions in energy and carbon intensities the policy implications of these findings are discussed

asymmetric relationship between carbon emission trading market and stock market evidences from china abstract this paper has investigated the asymmetric relationship between carbon emission trading market and stock market in china by using the nonlinear auto regressive distributed lag nardl model based on our investigation on both of the overall and sector level of stock market we have obtained interesting and convincing empirical results that show there are significantly negative long run and short run asymmetric relationships between carbon emission trading market and overall stock market in china specifically we have noticed that while passing the effects from the former to the later the increasing of carbon emission trading price would make greater effects on the stock price than its decreasing also on the sector level carbon emission trading price is significantly related to some energy intense sectors and financial sector stock market furthermore we have surprisingly found out that there are no significant effects passing from stock index to carbon emission trading price in china neither on the overall level nor on the sector level of stock market

carbon taxes a drop in the ocean or a drop that erodes the stone the effect of carbon taxes on technological change abstract we develop an economic partial equilibrium model for energy supply and demand with capital and labor as production factors and endogenous technological change through learning by research and learning by doing our model can reproduce the learning curve typical for bottom up energy system models the model also produces an endogenous s curved transition from fossil fuel energy sources to carbon free energy sources over the coming two centuries we use the model to study carbon taxes effects on fossil fuel and carbon free energy use and carbon dioxide emissions it is shown that without induced technological change carbon taxes have a modest effect on emissions while with induced technological change they accelerate the substitution of carbon free energy for fossil fuels substantially