costly arbitrage evidence from closed end funds arbitrage costs lead to large deviations of prices from fundamentals using a sample of closed end funds i find that the market value of a fund is more likely to deviate from the value of its assets 1 for funds with portfolios that are difficult to replicate 2 for funds that pay out smaller dividends 3 for funds with lower market values and 4 when interest rates are high these factors are related to the magnitude of the deviation as opposed to the direction i e whether discount or premium and explain a quarter of cross sectional mispricing variation these findings are consistent with noise trader models of asset pricing

an analysis of policy initiatives to promote strategic research partnerships strategic research partnerships srps have become a salient feature of the us national innovation system we provide an overview of srps and examine the antecedents and consequences of centerpiece legislation designed to stimulate the formation of srps the national cooperative research act ncra of 1984 ncra allows firms to disclose their research joint ventures rjvs to the department of justice which enabled them to significantly reduce their exposure to antitrust litigation we estimate an econometric model of trends in rjv filings and find that as intended by the legislation the propensity of firms to engage in rjvs is sensitive to changes in the global competitiveness of us high technology industries more importantly our results suggest that the establishment of the commerce department s advanced technology program which provides financial support to firms that engage in collaborative research projects induced firms to engage in additional privately financed rjvs this is a spillover mechanism that warrants further attention as national innovation systems evolve

energy security and renewable electricity trade will desertec make europe vulnerable to the energy weapon abstract solar power imports to europe from the deserts of north africa as foreseen in the desertec concept is one possible way to help decarbonising the european power sector by 2050 however this approach raises questions of threats to european energy security in such an import scenario particularly in the light of increasing import dependency and russia s use of the energy weapon in recent years in this paper we investigate the threat of north african countries using the desertec electricity exports as an energy weapon we develop and use a new model to assess the interdependence the bargaining power symmetry operationalised as costs of a disruption in a future renewable electricity trade between north africa and europe if europe maintains current capacity buffers some demand response capability and does not import much more than what is described in the desertec scenario it is susceptible to extortion and political pressure only if all five exporter countries unite in using the energy weapon europe is not vulnerable to extortion by an export cut from only one country as the european capacity buffers are sufficient to restore the power supply no single exporter country would have sustained bargaining power over europe

creative destruction and firm specific performance heterogeneity traditional u s industries with higher firm specific stock return and fundamentals performance heterogeneity use information technology it more intensively and post faster productivity growth in the late 20 th century we argue that this mechanically reflects a wave of schumpeter s 1912 creative destruction disrupting a wide swath of industries with successful it adopters unpredictably undermining established firms this validates endogenous growth theory models of creative destruction e g aghion and howitt 1992 and suggests intensified creative destruction as explaining findings associating greater firm specific performance variation with higher per capita gdps economy growth rates accounting standards financial system development and property right protection

the role of lockups in initial public offerings in a sample of 2 794 initial public offerings ipos we test three potential explanations for the existence of ipo lockups lockups serve as i a signal of firm quality ii a commitment device to alleviate moral hazard problems or iii a mechanism for underwriters to extract additional compensation from the issuing firm our results support the commitment hypothesis insiders of firms that are associated with greater potential for moral hazard lockup their shares for a longer period of time insiders of firms that have experienced larger excess returns are backed by venture capitalists or go public with high quality underwriters are more likely to be released from the lockup restrictions an initial public offering ipo often represents the first opportunity that a firm s founders and initial investors have to begin the process of realizing the value for their ownership stake in the firm 1 we explore one particular aspect that regulates this cashing out by insiders namely the structure of the price reaction to and the compliance with investment banker lockups which restrict the ability of the firm s management and prepublic investors from selling their stock in the aftermarket for a period of time after the ipo our article provides three contributions on going public and financial markets first we explore why prepublic insiders agree to long holding periods after the ipo we test three potential explanations i lockups as a signal of quality ii as a commitment device to alleviate moral hazard problems and iii as a means for investment banks to extract additional compensation from issuing firms our analysis supports the commitment hypothesis specifically investment banks impose longer lockups when the moral hazard in the aftermarket is higher we conduct several tests of the signaling hypothesis and find no support for the idea that insiders signal their quality by locking

examining the patterns of innovation in low carbon energy science and technology publications and patents of asian emerging economies this paper focuses on selected asian emerging economies the study employs publications and patents as proxies for science and technology and its analysis is divided into three main parts production trends catching up trends and patterns of convergence the findings resulted in four salient points to be considered by policy makers 1 asean 4 lagged significantly behind the more advanced economies korea taiwan and china even though their performance was identical in the early 1990s china has forged ahead in terms of scientific publications and patents production but lags behind in patents quality 2 compared to the world average the region as a whole has high potential to forge ahead in low carbon energy scientific production 3 advanced economies in asia kicked off their low carbon energy science and technology development more from technological rather than scientific production with no straightforward co evolution between the two competencies this demonstrates the need for a strong science based technological foundation and a high level of dynamism for low carbon energy technology development and 4 the economies demonstrated contrasting development trends in their focus between the supply and demand sides of energy technology development the performance of the advanced economies is higher in demand side low carbon energy innovations

universities and fundamental research reflections on the growth of university industry partnerships the recent rise in university industry partnerships has stimulated an important public policy debate regarding how these relationships affect fundamental research in this paper we examine the antecedents and consequences of policies to promote university industry alliances although the preliminary evidence appears to suggest that these partnerships have not had a deleterious effect on the quantity and quality of basic research some legitimate concerns have been raised about these activities that require additional analysis we conclude that additional research is needed to provide a more accurate assessment of the optimal level of commercialisation

religious beliefs gambling attitudes and financial market outcomes this study investigates whether geographic variation in religion induced gambling norms affects aggregate market outcomes we conjecture that gambling propensity would be stronger in regions with higher concentrations of catholics relative to protestants consistent with our conjecture we show that in regions with higher catholic protestant ratios investors exhibit a stronger propensity to hold lottery type stocks broad based employee stock option plans are more popular the initial day return following an initial public offering is higher and the magnitude of the negative lottery stock premium is larger collectively these results indicate that religion induced gambling attitudes impact investors portfolio choices corporate decisions and stock returns

assessing spillovers from universities to firms evidence from french firm level data we assess the importance of information flows from universities to innovative firms and determine the relative contribution of formal collaboration and pure knowledge spillovers in this process we find that spillovers provide the most benefit to firms that imitate existing technologies or those that are involved in incremental innovation on the other hand highly innovative firms appear to derive most benefit from collaborative research with foreign universities indeed highly innovative firms are at the frontier of the academic knowledge in their industry therefore they only marginally benefit from aggregate or industry wide spillovers they require new forms of academic knowledge that they acquire through formal cooperation with foreign universities

evaluating energy security in the asia pacific region a novel methodological approach this paper establishes an energy security assessment instrument based on a new and expanded conceptualisation of energy security the instrument is a systematic interrogative tool for evaluating energy security of individual states or regions it consists of eleven broad energy security dimensions associated with the current global energy system these energy security dimensions take into account numerous quantitative and qualitative attributes of each country s energy security and policy and include both traditional energy security concerns and many new factors such as environmental socio cultural and technological another dimension largely absent from previous analyses is the existence of and the issues addressed in energy security policy in each country this instrument serves as an assessment system with which to evaluate energy security in the asia pacific region the existing studies on energy security in the asia pacific region suffer from serious limitations no study to date examines regional energy security policies by adopting a more comprehensive energy security definition as a starting point most studies also focus on a single country or issue even if they examine energy security in major regional economies they lack critical comparative analysis the instrument is valuable as it may be utilised to draw a comprehensive map of regional energy security situation which can also include comparative analysis of energy security characteristics across the asia pacific region ultimately it may be utilised to set up a framework for improved regional energy cooperation with the aim of providing regional leaders with a blueprint for improving regional energy security and policy

the challenging economics of energy security ensuring energy benefits in support to sustainable development abstract energy is a key resource to economic development and is required to be available continuously and in adequate amounts also it is expected to be affordable and environmentally friendly ensuring this is a challenge yet strategic to maintain economies running under a sustainable pattern energy security is neither a new concept nor a new concern however because of new issues it requires a novel broader approach such an approach should address both demand security of supply and supply security of demand sides as well as take into account energy scarcity situations and surplus opportunities in addition it should allow for both private markets and public policies and regulations initiatives this paper presents a theoretical and practical basis for the economics of energy security energy security is defined in this context as the ability of an economy to provide sufficient affordable and environmentally sustainable energy services so as to maintain a maximum welfare state even when issues would press it otherwise we introduce the notion of energy security gap to represent the economy s failure to show such ability additionally we also propose a framework to support the evaluation planning and implementation of energy security in an economy this framework relies on the concepts of resilience adaptability and transformability walker et al 2004 to prescribe indicators to assess the energy security of an economy furthermore it proposes mechanisms to enhance energy security as well as a continuous process to increasingly achieve this

university industry collaboration and firms r d effort abstract this paper investigates the impact of publicly funded university industry collaboration on uk firms r d effort we test the hypotheses that project participation has a positive effect on firms r d expenditure per employee and on their share of r d employment the paper exploits a novel source of data made up of a set of u i projects funded by the uk engineering and physical sciences research council between 1997 and 2007 and firm level data available through the uk office for national statistics we employ propensity score matching to select an appropriate control group of untreated firms on the basis of the probability that they participate to u i partnerships we then estimate the impact of participation on firms r d effort in two points in time via ordinary least squares regression the results show a positive and significant impact on the share of r d employment two years after the end of projects this is also confirmed by a robustness check a positive effect on r d expenditure per employee is found both at the end of the project and two years later these findings are highly relevant for policy given that u i collaboration is among the most frequent policy instruments put in place by local and national policy makers to foster pre competitive research and firms r d activities

the asset growth effect insights from international equity markets abstract firms with higher asset growth rates subsequently experience lower stock returns in international equity markets consistent with the u s evidence this negative effect of asset growth on returns is stronger in more developed capital markets and markets where stocks are more efficiently priced but is unrelated to country characteristics representing limits to arbitrage investor protection and accounting quality the evidence suggests that the cross sectional relation between asset growth and stock return is more likely due to an optimal investment effect than due to overinvestment market timing or other forms of mispricing

zombie board board tenure and firm performance we show that board tenure exhibits an inverted u shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance the quality of corporate decisions such as m a financial reporting quality and ceo compensation also has a quadratic relation with board tenure our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors on the job learning improves firm value up to a threshold at which point entrenchment dominates and firm performance suffers to address endogeneity concerns we use a sample of firms in which an outside director suffered a sudden death and find that sudden deaths that move board tenure away from toward the empirically observed optimum level in the cross section are associated with negative positive announcement returns the quality of corporate decisions also follows an inverted u shaped pattern in a sample of firms affected by the death of a director

a theoretical analysis of the role of social networks in entrepreneurship entrepreneurship involves innovation and uncertainty we outline a theory of entrepreneurship which highlights the importance of social networks in promoting innovation and reducing uncertainty our findings suggest that this social aspect of entrepreneurship increases the probability of entrepreneurial success the results also lend credence to theories of entrepreneurship that suggest that entrepreneurial opportunities are formed endogenously by the entrepreneurs who create them we also consider the public policy implications of our findings

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

liquidity risk and exchange traded fund returns variances and tracking errors abstract we investigate the effect of exchange traded fund etf liquidity on etf tracking errors returns and volatility in the us we find that illiquid etfs have large tracking errors the effect is more pronounced when underlying assets are less liquid returns and liquidity of illiquid etfs are more sensitive to underlying index returns or etf market liquidity or both thus a positive liquidity premium exists in us etf markets the etf variance could be larger than its net asst value variance owing to infrequent trading in summary illiquid etfs are more likely to deviate from their underlying indexes and could be riskier than underlying portfolios

exploring public perceptions of energy security risks in the uk along with climate change and affordability concerns about energy security are key drivers behind proposals for major energy system change in the uk and numerous other countries unlike climate change we know very little about how the public thinks and feels about this aspect of sustainability and energy policy beyond engaging critically with conceptual and theoretical discussions empirical data from two surveys cardiff postal survey n 520 online uk survey n 499 using a ten item energy security scale are presented and discussed here we show that aspects of energy security are certainly of concern to the uk public with particularly high concern around dependence on fossil fuels imports and relatively lower expressed concern for actual disruption of energy supply however public concerns around energy security are only emerging and likely to change depending on the context in which it is discussed e g in comparison to climate change in addition findings from public interviews are used to further contextualise the survey findings showing unfamiliarity among the uk public with regards to the term energy security we discuss implications and further work that would be useful for understanding public perceptions in more depth

the impact of r d investment on productivity new evidence using linked r d lrd data the impact of r d investment on productivity new evidence using linked r d lrd data this paper uses confidential census longitudinal microdata to examine the association between r d and productivity for the period 1972 1985 these data allow for significant improvements in measurement and model specification yielding more precise estimates of the returns to r d our results confirm the findings of existing studies 1 positive returns to r d investment 2 higher returns to company financed research 3 a productivity premium on basic research these results are robust to adjustments for influential outliers also our evidence suggests that the return to company financed r d is an increasing function of firm size i introduction robert solow s studies in the late 1950s dramatically changed perceptions of the sources of economic growth until this time the commonly held view was that improvements in economic welfare were achieved primarily through the use of more inputs in particular capital input however solow 1957 reported that only 10 percent of the twofold rise in u s per capita output during the years 1909 1949 was due to growth in the capital labor ratio the remainder was attributed to more efficient use of inputs or technological change solow also established a framework for estimating technological change a productivity residual or a measure of changes in output that could not be explained by changes in input use the solow residual in modified form has become virtually synonymous with the measurement of total factor productivity tfp growth jorgenson and griliches 1967 demonstrated that under the assumptions of constant returns to scale and competitive factor pricing changes in total factor productivity measure shifts in a production function rather than treat technological change as exogenous or manna from heaven many economists have explored its determinants r d investment is generally regarded as having a strong impact on productivity growth empirical analysis of the r d productivity connection has often been based on estimation of reduced form equations derived from the r d capital stock model griliches 1979 which extends the solow model to include the stock of technical knowledge or knowledge capital as a factor of production in addition to the standard factors of production physical capital labor intermediate materials and energy if the rate of depreciation of knowledge capital is assumed to be negligible tfp growth dtfp is a function of the intensity of r d investment rdint which is usually measured as the ratio of r d expenditure to sales 1 dtf p sub t alpha beta rdin t sub t u sub t where u sub t is a classical disturbance term the coefficient on r d intensity beta is interpreted as both the marginal product of knowledge capital and the rate of return to r d investment 1 estimates of beta at the company or line of business level are interpreted as measures of the private rate of return to r d or those that accrue to the firm or its investors due to incomplete appropriability or other factors this return may not equal the social return to this activity most empirical studies especially those based on aggregate and sectoral data have found evidence of a strong positive correlation between tfp growth and r d investment however results using firm level data have been mixed the finding that these two variables are uncorrelated is cause for concern because it implies that firms may not be able to earn significant returns on their investment in r d making them less likely to undertake this investment in the future even if it is socially desirable for them to do so we believe that it is important to reestimate this relationship because it is highly likely that existing firm level studies have been based on measures of tfp that are crude imprecise and unrepresentative

nuclear power climate change and energy security exploring british public attitudes public attitudes towards nuclear power in the uk have historically been deeply divided but as concern about climate change and energy security has exerted an increasing influence on british energy policy nuclear power has been reframed as a low carbon technology previous research has suggested that a significant proportion of people may reluctantly accept nuclear power as a means of addressing the greater threat of climate change drawing on the results of a national british survey n 1822 the current study found that attitudes towards nuclear remain divided with only a minority expressing unconditional acceptance in general people who expressed greater concern about climate change and energy security and possessed higher environmental values were less likely to favour nuclear power however when nuclear power was given an explicit reluctant acceptance framing allowing people to express their dislike for nuclear power alongside their conditional support concerns about climate change and energy security became positive predictors of support for nuclear power these findings suggest that concern about climate change and energy security will only increase acceptance of nuclear power under limited circumstances specifically once other preferred options have been exhausted

energy security and sustainability in northeast asia abstract energy security has typically to those involved in making energy policy meant mostly securing access to oil and other fossil fuels with increasingly global diverse energy markets however and increasingly transnational problems resulting from energy transformation and use old energy security rationales are less salient and other issues including climate change and other environmental economic and international considerations are becoming increasingly important as a consequence a more comprehensive operating definition of energy security is needed along with a workable framework for analysis of which future energy paths or scenarios are likely to yield greater energy security in a broader more comprehensive sense work done as a part of the nautilus institute s pacific asia regional energy security pares project developed a broader definition of energy security and described an analytical framework designed to help to compare the energy security characteristics both positive and negative of different quantitative energy paths as developed using software tools such as the leap long range energy alternatives planning system

a framework to evaluate security of supply in the electricity sector security of electricity supply soes has become a major concern for regulators and policymakers over the last decade however most work focusses either more generally on energy security or on a single fuel we develop a comprehensive but flexible framework to assess the soes for a single jurisdiction taking into the account the specificities of electricity this framework has two aims i provide a snapshot of the situation to understand current weaknesses and determine what actions are required ii capture the evolution over time to evaluate progress and identify potential problems before they materialise the framework based on an extensive literature review consists of twelve dimensions that are critical for soes we develop metrics that capture the state and evolution of each dimension this framework is intended to be a management information tool for all stakeholders aimed at organising data and structuring its analysis to enable monitoring the evolution of the soes while also functioning as an early warning system by flagging potential future problems

in house versus external basic research and first to market innovations this paper explores to what extent conducting internal basic research as opposed to external basic research i e outsourcing and collaboration with universities encourages firms to bring new products into the market ahead of competitors and contributes to innovation performance the analysis is based on a sample of spanish manufacturing firms over the period 2006 2012 our findings suggest that conducting in house basic research affects firm s propensity to introduce product novelties furthermore performing this activity continuously affects the probability of being product pioneer in low and medium low tech sectors collaboration with universities also helps in introducing new products ahead of competitors but contracting scientific research from universities does not lead to a pioneer strategy results also reveal the absence of complementarities

energy security and improvements in the function of diversity indices taiwan energy supply structure case study abstract facing the risk and uncertainty inherent in social and economic development many countries have adopted an energy supply diversification strategy in their energy security policy to control the energy import risk and cost to ensure that sufficient energy can be obtained at an affordable price level diversification helps the energy system respond to external changes and shocks diversification can also lessen the vulnerability of a single energy source to supply shocks and the market power of various energy supply sources this study develops the diversity reliability index and co vary diversity reliability index based on the hirschman herfindahl and shannon wiener indices investigates the contribution of different energy sources to the energy system and analyzes the covariance between various energies and their impacts on energy security to determine the impact of energy diversity in reducing the risk of energy supply shortages and cost fluctuations

transforming the energy system why municipalities strive for energy self sufficiency abstract despite evidence that a rising number of municipalities in germany are striving for energy self sufficiency there is little understanding of the driving factors behind this development we investigate economic ecological social and energy system related factors that drive municipalities to strive for energy self sufficiency with a focus on electricity supply the empirical data for this study is based on insights generated through expert interviews n 19 with mayors energy experts and scientists as well as a quantitative study among mayors and energy officers n 109 of german municipalities results show that environmental awareness tax revenues and greater independence from private utilities are positively related to the mayors attitude towards the realization of energy self sufficiency furthermore citizens the political environment the mayor s political power and his her financial resources are relevant factors for a municipality striving for energy self sufficiency policymakers need to decide whether or not to support mayors in this development for suitable policy interventions the results suggest the importance of an integrated approach that considers a combination of identified factors finally we propose a morphological box to structure different aspects of energy self sufficiency and categorize the present study

dividend distributions and closed end fund discounts abstract empirical support for the hypothesis that closed end fund discounts are related to overhanging tax liabilities has been mixed we introduce a new approach to testing this hypothesis by examining changes in discount levels following distributions of dividends and capital gains since distributions reduce future shareholder tax liabilities the tax liability hypothesis implies that closed end fund discounts should decline following distributions focusing on changes in discounts isolates this tax effect by eliminating the impact of other fund specific factors on discount levels our results support the tax liability hypothesis showing that short run fluctuations in discounts are directly affected by taxable distributions

energy security in china a quantitative analysis and policy implications abstract this study aims to examine how china s energy security has changed over 30 years of reform and the opening period it constructs a 4 as quantitative evaluation framework the availability of energy resources the applicability of technology the acceptability by society and the affordability of energy resources the quantitative results show that china s energy security was at its best during the sixth fyp period 1981 1985 but then deteriorated until it hit higher levels between 1995 and 2005 however it was still lower than the level reached during the sixth fyp period during the eleventh fyp period 2006 2010 the energy security situation deteriorated again differences in policy priority over the study period appear to affect the country s energy security status this study suggests that china needs to develop renewable energy resources on a large scale and pay more attention to emissions control to reverse the downward trend in energy security

opaque financial reports r2 and crash risk abstract we investigate the relation between the transparency of financial statements and the distribution of stock returns using earnings management as a measure of opacity we find that opacity is associated with higher r2s indicating less revelation of firm specific information moreover opaque firms are more prone to stock price crashes consistent with the prediction of the jin and myers 2006 r2 around the world new theory and new tests journal of financial economics 79 257 292 model however these relations seem to have dissipated since the passage of the sarbanes oxley act suggesting that earnings management has decreased or that firms can hide less information in the new regulatory environment

zero r 2hedge funds and market neutrality factor models yield an r 2 insignificantly different from 0 for one third of hedge funds in a broad sample these funds illustrate the concept of market neutrality and feature lower volatilities higher sharpe ratios and higher alphas than other funds indicating that they provide a successful alternative investment however large portfolios of zero r 2 funds contain fully half the volatility of portfolios of other funds suggesting that they feature substantial systematic risk furthermore these funds display an increased probability of failure even after controlling for idiosyncratic volatility these results indicate the presence of an omitted factor that exposes investors to significant downside risk

differences in trading and pricing between stock and index options we find that the demand for stock options that increases exposure to the underlying is positively related to the individual investor sentiments and past market returns whereas the demand for index options is invariant to these factors these differences in trading patterns are also reflected in the differences in the composition of traders with different types of options options on stocks are actively traded by individual investors whereas trades in index options are more often motivated by the hedging demand of sophisticated investors consistent with a demand based view of option pricing the individual investor sentiments and past market returns are related to time series variations in the slope of the implied volatility smile of stock options but they have little impact on the prices of index options the pricing impact is more pronounced in options with a higher concentration of unsophisticated investors and those with higher delta hedging costs our results provide evidence that factors not related to fundamentals also impact security prices this paper was accepted by brad barber finance

what drives the formation of valuable university industry linkages insights from the wine industry abstract most of the literature on university industry u i linkages assumes that these linkages are beneficial per se we question this assumption suggesting that not all such linkages are equally helpful in this paper we explore the factors driving the formation of valuable u i linkages conceived as those linkages between universities and firms that have a higher potential to diffuse knowledge to other firms in their regional economy our empirical strategy combines case study methodology with econometric techniques using data from two wine clusters in chile and in italy the firm s knowledge base is found to be a key driver of valuable u i linkages we conclude that selectivity should be encouraged among policy makers endeavouring to promote u i linkages

the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle time trend or speculative episodes campbell lettau malkiel and xu 2001 document a positive trend in idiosyncratic volatility during the 1962 1997 period we show that by 2003 volatility falls back to pre 1990s levels furthermore we show that the increase and subsequent reversal is concentrated among firms with low stock prices and high retail ownership this evidence suggests that the increase in idiosyncratic volatility through the 1990s was not a time trend but rather an episodic phenomenon at least partially associated with retail investors results from cross sectional regressions conditional trend estimation stock split events and attention grabbing events are consistent with a retail trading effect the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please email journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

sustainable energy development in austria until 2020 insights from applying the integrated model e3 at this paper reports on the austrian research project renewable energy in austria modeling possible development trends until 2020 the project investigated possible economic and ecological effects of a substantially increased use of renewable energy sources in austria together with stakeholders and experts three different scenarios were defined specifying possible development trends for renewable energy in austria the scenarios were simulated for the period 2006 2020 using the integrated environment energy economy model e3 at the modeling results indicate that increasing the share of renewable energy sources in total energy use is an important but insufficient step towards achieving a sustainable energy system in austria a substantial increase in energy efficiency and a reduction of residential energy consumption also form important cornerstones of a sustainable energy policy

the methodological challenges of creating a comprehensive energy security index this short article defends the methods utilized in creating an energy security index it explains why an energy security index is needed and then justifies research interviews as a data collection tool next it responds to the three strands of professor cherp s critique before offering a few general conclusions for readers concerned about energy security

a framework for reviewing the trade offs between renewable energy food feed and wood production at a local level high fuel prices and concerns about energy security and anthropogenic climate change are encouraging a transition towards a low carbon economy although energy policy is typically set at a national level tools are needed for people to engage with energy policy at regional and local levels and to guide decisions regarding land use distributed generation and energy supply and demand the aim of this paper is to develop a per capita approach to renewable energy demand and supply within a landscape and to illustrate the key trade offs between renewable energy food animal feed and wood production the chosen case study area 16 000 ha of marston vale england is anticipated to have a population density midway between that for england and the uk the daily per capita demand for energy for heat 31 kwh transport 34 kwh and electricity 15 kwh when combined 80 kwh was seven fold higher than the combined demand for food 2 kwh animal feed 6 kwh and wood 4 kwh using described algorithms the combined potential energy supply from domestic wind and photovoltaic panels solar heating ground source heat and municipal waste was limited 10 kwh p 1 d 1 additional electricity could be generated from landfill gas and commercial wind turbines but these have temporal implications using a geographical information system and the yield safe tree and crop yield model the capacity to supply bioethanol biodiesel and biomass food feed and wood was calculated and illustrated for three land use scenarios these scenarios highlight the limits on meeting energy demands for transport 33 and heat 53 even if all of the arable and grassland area was planted to a high yielding crop like wheat the described framework therefore highlights the major constraints faced in meeting current uk energy demands from land based renewable energy and the stark choices faced by decision makers

idiosyncratic return volatility cash flows and product market competition over the past 40 years the volatility of the average stock return has drastically outpaced total market volatility thus idiosyncratic return volatility has dramatically increased we estimate this increase to be 6 per year consistent with an efficient market this result is mirrored by an increase in the idiosyncratic volatility of fundamental cash flows we argue that these findings are attributable to the more intense economy wide competition various cross sectional and time series tests support this idea economic competitiveness facilitates reinterpretation of the results from the cross country r2 literature as well as the us idiosyncratic risk literature jel g12 g14

mid range universities linkages with industry knowledge types and the role of intermediaries we analyze how mid range universities can contribute to industrial change through the transfer of tacit and codified knowledge in the areas of spin offs licensing and patents contract research consultancy and reach out and graduate and researcher mobility we use archival survey and interview data relating to mid range universities in mid range environments in the uk belgium germany and sweden our findings suggest that mid range universities primarily need to focus on generating world class research and critical mass in areas of expertise as well as developing different types of intermediaries mid range universities may need to develop a portfolio of university industry linkages in terms of the scope of activities and the types of firms with which they interact we also show that different intermediaries have important roles to play in developing university industry linkages for mid range universities

evaluating energy security of resource poor economies a modified principle component analysis approach abstract this study proposes to aggregately measure energy security performance with the principal component analysis in its application of the methodology to four resource poor yet economically advanced island economies in east asia singapore south korea japan and taiwan this study establishes a novel framework to conceptualize energy security the framework incorporates three dimensions vulnerability efficiency and sustainability three indicators being allocated to each dimension the study finds that all the three dimensions are critical for the resource poor economies but have different weights in each of them an urgent task for these four economies is to implement energy efficiency and conservation measures liberalization of electricity sector can be a helpful tool to reduce energy consumption and increase efficiency all of them have been committed to promoting renewable energy development which shall be further expanded in these economies

market madness the case of mad money we use the popular television show mad money hosted by jim cramer to test theories of attention and limits to arbitrage stock recommendations on mad money constitute attention shocks to a large audience of individual traders we find that stock recommendations lead to large overnight returns that subsequently reverse over the next few months the spike reversal pattern is strongest among small illiquid stocks that are hard to arbitrage using daily nielsen ratings as a direct measure of attention we find that the overnight return is strongest when high income viewership is high we also find weak price effects among sell recommendations taken together the evidence supports the retail attention hypothesis of barber and odean barber b t odean 2008 all that glitters the effect of attention and news on the buying behavior of individual and institutional investors rev financial stud 21 2 785 818 and illustrates the potential role of media in generating mispricing this paper was accepted by brad barber teck ho and terrance odean special issue editors

bioenergy expansion in the eu cost effective climate change mitigation employment creation and reduced dependency on imported fuels presently the european union eu is promoting bioenergy the aim of this paper is to study the prospects for using domestic biomass resources in europe and specifically to investigate whether different policy objectives underlying the promotion of bioenergy cost effective climate change mitigation employment creation and reduced dependency on imported fuels agree on which bioenergy options that should be used we model bioenergy use from a cost effectiveness perspective with a linear regionalized energy and transport system model and perform supplementary analysis it is found that the different policy objectives do not agree on the order of priority among bioenergy options maximizing climate benefits cost effectively is in conflict with maximizing employment creation the former perspective proposes the use of lignocellulosic biomass in the stationary sector while the latter requires biofuels for transport based on traditional agricultural crops further from a security of supply perspective the appeal of a given bioenergy option depends on how oil and gas import dependencies are weighed relative to each other consequently there are tradeoffs that need to be addressed by policymakers promoting the use of bioenergy also the importance of bioenergy in relation to employment creation and fuel import dependency reduction needs to be further addressed

carbon emission energy consumption and intermediate goods trade a regional study of east asia abstract using country level panel data from east asia over the period 1998 2011 this paper examines the implications of international production fragmentation induced intermediate goods trade on the link between energy consumption and carbon pollution the paper focuses on the interaction effect between energy consumption and trade in intermediate goods on carbon emission the empirical results presented suggest that international trade in intermediate goods decreases the positive impact on carbon emission of energy consumption when compared with the trade in final goods intermediate goods trade contributes to a greater decrease in carbon pollution resulting from energy consumption these results confirm that the link between energy consumption and carbon pollution in east asia is significantly affected by international production fragmentation induced trade in intermediate goods the results presented in this paper have some important policy implications

arbitrage risk and post earnings announcement drift this study examines whether the magnitude of post earnings announcement drift is related to the risk faced by arbitrageurs who may view the anomaly as a trading opportunity consistent with this hypothesis the magnitude of the drift is strongly related to the arbitrage risk measure developed by wurgler and zhuravskaya 2002 the effect of arbitrage risk is statistically and economically significant in a range of specifications the results support the view of post earnings announcement drift as an underreaction to earnings information

university patenting and its effects on academic research the emerging european evidence this paper surveys the existing fragmentary data on the growth of university owned patents and university invented patents in europe we find evidence that university patenting is growing but this phenomenon remains heterogeneous across countries and disciplines we found some evidence that university licensing is not profitable for most universities although some do succeed in attracting substantial additional revenues this might be due to the fact that patents and publications tend to go hand in hand in a dynamic setting however we fear that the increase in university patenting exacerbates differences across universities in terms of financial resources and research outcome

potential pilot problems treatment spillovers in financial regulatory experiments abstract the total effects of a regulatory change consist of direct effects and indirect effects spillovers but the standard difference in difference approach mostly ignores potential indirect effects during the 2007 full repeal of the uptick rule short sellers become much more aggressive across the board even in control stocks where the uptick rule is already suspended this finding is consistent with positive and significant indirect effects on control stocks likely driven by aggressive broad list based shorting in contract the indirect effect coefficients on shorting aggressiveness are negative for the 2005 partial uptick repeal possibly due to substitutions between control and treatment stocks

financial asset demand is elastic evidence from new issues of federal home loan bank debt abstract we estimate the slope of the demand curve for newly auctioned fhlb discount notes and investigate the impacts of arbitrage risk and heterogeneity of investor beliefs on demand elasticity our unique dataset of roughly 2900 observations of two price quantity pairs the first from a pre auction dealer survey the second from actual auction results provides the quantity shift necessary to identify demand in contrast to previous findings of downward sloping demand curves for equities we show that demand for newly issued fhlb notes is nearly perfectly elastic during normal market conditions we find however that frictions like arbitrage risk and to a lesser extent heterogeneity of investor beliefs negatively affect elasticity and explain the nearly 50 drop in elasticity observed during the recent financial crisis

regional energy autarky potentials costs and consequences for an austrian region local actors at community level often thrive for energy autarky to decrease the dependence on imported energy resources we assess the potentials and trade offs between benefits and costs of increasing levels of energy autarky for a small rural region of around 21 000 inhabitants in austria we use a novel modeling approach which couples a regional energy system model with a regional land use optimization model we have collected and processed data on the spatial distribution of energy demand and potentials of biomass photovoltaics and solar thermal resources the impacts of increasing biomass production on the agricultural sector are assessed with a land use optimization model that allows deriving regional biomass supply curves an energy system model is subsequently applied to find the least cost solution for supplying the region with energy resources model results indicate that fossil fuel use for heating can be replaced at low costs by increasing forestry and agricultural biomass production however autarky in the electricity and the heating sector would significantly increase biomass production and require a full use of the potentials of photovoltaics on roof tops attaining energy autarky implies high costs to consumers and a decline in the local production of food and feed

a transaction level analysis of spatial arbitrage the role of habit attention and electronic trading despite the central role of arbitrage in finance and economic theory there is limited evidence of the factors that create and eliminate arbitrage opportunities how often arbitrage occurs and how profitable it is we address these gaps via a transaction level analysis of spatial arbitrage in the wholesale automotive market we investigate why arbitrage opportunities are created by analyzing how sellers choose where to sell vehicles we find that the attention sellers pay to the distribution of a vehicle is negatively related to the probability that it is arbitraged arbitrage occurs in approximately 1 of transactions although electronic trading is making arbitrage less prevalent by improving buyer seller matching across locations arbitrage yields a 5 6 return on average although arbitrageurs take a loss 14 of the time our results contribute to the literature on arbitrage the effect of attention allocation on market outcomes and the effect of information technology on market efficiency this paper was accepted by brad barber teck ho and terrance odean special issue editors

ecosystem services and economic development in austrian agricultural landscapes the impact of policy and climate change scenarios on trade offs and synergies we have developed an integrated modeling framework imf to quantify indicators for ecosystem services es and economic development ed in agricultural landscapes austria serves as a case study in which impacts trade offs and synergies of es and ed are assessed for different agricultural policy pathways and regional climate change scenarios agricultural intensification and incentivized use of provisioning es e g biomass production lead to higher macro economic output e g gdp but usually reduce es related to regulation and maintenance e g ecological integrity climate regulation as well as cultural services landscape diversity we revealed both synergies for certain es e g biomass production and soil organic carbon stocks as well as large spatial deviations from the national mean across the heterogeneous agricultural landscapes in austria climate change scenarios i lead to substantial variation in es and ed indicators and ii usually amplify trade offs by stimulating land use intensification our findings depict the complex relationship between different es and ed indicators as well as the importance of considering spatial heterogeneity and regional climate change this assessment can help to improve targeting of agri environmental schemes in order to provide a more balanced and efficient supply of es and to foster rural development

liberalisation and the security of gas supply in the uk abstract this paper contests the view held by the current uk government and its industry regulator ofgem that liberalisation is good for security of supply focusing on the downstream aspects of the security of uk gas supply on system security it considers the impact of the different aspects of liberalisation of legal governance supply competition de integration market simulation regulation and the interaction of liberalised gas and electricity markets categorising these impacts in terms of security threats and threats to security response it finds that individually and as a complex collectivity they have increased the risks of supply failure either potential or already realised in a variety of ways from creating increased uncertainty and failing to signal adequate or appropriate investment to legal ambiguity which divorces responsibility from liability and renders legal liability indeterminate ex ante moreover one of the uk government s responses to these increased dangers which it does appear to perceive is revealed as itself paralysed by the liberalisation paradigm the government can only intervene pre emptively with information in attempt to persuade the market to behave as it thinks it should meanwhile however the government has also had to recognise its default responsibility for security of supply and make preparations to intervene in an emergency situation liberalisation can only be challenged when it is already too late

the divergence of liquidity commonality in the cross section of stocks abstract this paper demonstrates that the cross sectional variation of liquidity commonality has increased over the period 1963 2005 the divergence of systematic liquidity can be explained by patterns in institutional ownership over the sample period we document that our findings are associated with similar patterns in systematic risk our analysis also indicates that the ability to diversify systematic risk and aggregate liquidity shocks by holding large cap stocks has declined the evidence suggests that the fragility of the us equity market to unanticipated events has increased over the past few decades

an international assessment of energy security performance energy security has in recent years grown as a salient policy and political issue to better understand energy security and sustainability concerns this study s main objective is to present an energy security index which measures national performance on energy security over time based on three years of research involving interviews surveys and an international workshop this study conceptualizes energy security as consisting of the interconnected factors of availability affordability efficiency sustainability and governance it then matches these factors with 20 metrics comprising an energy security index measuring international performance across 18 countries from 1990 to 2010 it offers three case studies of japan top performer laos middle performer and myanmar w orst performer to provide context to the index s results it then presents four conclusions first a majority of countries analyzed have regressed in terms of their energy security second despite the near total deterioration of energy security a great disparity exists between countries with some clear leaders such as japan third tradeoffs exist within different components of energy security fourth creating energy security is as much a matter of domestic policy from within as it is from foreign policy without

tax loss selling and the january effect evidence from municipal bond closed end funds this paper provides direct evidence supporting the tax loss selling hypothesis as an explanation of the january effect examining turn of the year return and volume patterns for municipal bond closed end funds which are held mostly by tax sensitive individual investors we document a january effect for these funds but not for their underlying assets we provide evidence that this effect can be largely explained by tax loss selling activities at the previous year end moreover we find that funds associated with brokerage firms display more tax loss selling behavior suggesting that tax counseling plays a role among the numerous stock return anomalies probably none has generated more interest than that of the turn of the year or january effect the phenomenon in which small capitalization stocks realize unusually high returns in early january 1 the literature offers a number of hypotheses to explain this phenomenon including the tax loss selling hypothesis the window dressing hypothesis the insider trading information release hypothesis and the seasonality of the risk return relation hypothesis given existing evidence in some support for the first two hypotheses the debate continues with respect to which of these the tax loss selling of individual investors or the window dressing of

do etfs increase volatility due to their low trading costs exchange traded funds etfs are a potential catalyst for short horizon liquidity traders the liquidity shocks can propagate to the underlying securities through the arbitrage channel and etfs may increase the nonfundamental volatility of the securities in their baskets we exploit exogenous changes in index membership and find that stocks with higher etf ownership display significantly higher volatility etf ownership increases the negative autocorrelation in stock prices the increase in volatility appears to introduce undiversifiable risk in prices because stocks with high etf ownership earn a significant risk premium of up to 56 basis points monthly

cost effective policy instruments for greenhouse gas emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution through bioenergy production in austria abstract climate change mitigation and security of energy supply are important targets of austrian energy policy bioenergy production based on resources from agriculture and forestry is an important option for attaining these targets to increase the share of bioenergy in the energy supply supporting policy instruments are necessary the cost effectiveness of these instruments in attaining policy targets depends on the availability of bioenergy technologies advanced technologies such as second generation biofuels biomass gasification for power production and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage beccs will likely change the performance of policy instruments this article assesses the cost effectiveness of energy policy instruments considering new bioenergy technologies for the year 2030 with respect to greenhouse gas emission ghg reduction and fossil fuel substitution instruments that directly subsidize bioenergy are compared with instruments that aim at reducing ghg emissions a spatially explicit modeling approach is used to account for biomass supply and energy distribution costs in austria results indicate that a carbon tax performs cost effectively with respect to both policy targets if beccs is not available however the availability of beccs creates a trade off between ghg emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution biofuel blending obligations are costly in terms of attaining the policy targets

conceptualizing energy security abstract energy security 1 is one of the main targets of energy policy however the term has not been clearly defined which makes it hard to measure and difficult to balance against other policy objectives we review the multitude of definitions of energy security they can be characterized according to the sources of risk the scope of the impacts and the severity filters in the form of the speed size sustention spread singularity and sureness of impacts using a stylized case study for three european countries we illustrate how the selection of conceptual boundaries along these dimensions determines the outcome this can be avoided by more clearly separating between security of supply and other policy objectives this leads us to the definition of energy security as the continuity of energy supplies relative to demand

the changing composition of innovative activity in the us a portrait based on patent analysis abstract in this paper patent bibliometrics are used to investigate shifts underway in the american innovation system patent indicators point to extraordinarily dynamic innovation in information and health technologies accompanied by a shift in the center of us innovation from the east to the west coast innovating companies are adapting to the demise of large corporate basic research laboratories by using their own research instead growth in university patenting is also striking and universities have become dominant patentees in a few large economically vibrant cities the importance of universities to local innovation has also been revealed by the growth in referencing from patents to papers which allows us to see that companies preferentially reference papers from in state public sector institutions

the precarious consensus on the importance of energy security contrasting views between swiss energy users and experts abstract consented visions of a secure energy system are a driving force for energy policies and projects but while there used to exist a fairly uniform understanding of energy security in recent years competing visions have emerged examples include autarchic regional energy systems and highly integrated international ones each of these follows its own energy security logic this paper explores linkages between individuals understanding of energy security and their preferences for different energy visions comparing energy users and experts it draws from two consecutive studies in switzerland the first is a series of 12 qualitative interviews among energy system experts who reveal a strong preference for an integrated energy system that is based on high quality infrastructure this stands in contrast to the countries predominant paradigm of independence which is not only present in the public discourse but also in national energy policies the second study is an online survey that finds differences between energy users n 194 and experts n 98 understanding of energy security experts tend to see energy security primarily as the absence of supply disruptions whereas energy users tend to take a long term perspective and to include additional aspects in their considerations such as environmental concerns thus the societal consensus on the importance of energy security is a precarious one conflicts about the meaning of energy security can strip the concept of its power to be a building block of societal energy visions decision makers in policy and the energy sector therefore need to be aware that a shared understanding of energy security cannot be taken for granted they should also recognize energy security as a strong argument for promoting renewables however it will not suffice to refer to a specific renewable project as beneficial for energy security conveying its benefits from an energy security perspective requires knowledge of key actors understandings of this complex concept

energy security measurement a sustainable approach abstract the main objective of this paper is to define new energy security indicator with the long term sustainability and to test it in a sample of 28 european union countries for the period 1990 2012 as well as to determine the level of impact of six different indicators on energy security the previous methodologies for measuring of energy security have been mainly focused on security of supply while not taking into account environmental indicators and the social component the newly proposed indicator energy security index differs from the existing measuring methods precisely in a way that it includes environmental and social aspects energy security index recorded a decline in values in most countries in the period 1990 2000 in the period 2000 2008 the values became positive and after 2008 some countries reported again gradual deterioration the index value varies by year and the biggest positive changes were recorded in the case of the netherlands slovenia and spain the four economically strongest eu countries the united kingdom france germany and italy recorded significantly less fluctuations in energy security over 23 years compared to other countries the data for france and denmark show that an increased share of energy from nuclear and renewable sources can compensate even increased energy import dependence the assessment of impact of individual indicators on energy security index was conducted by using principal component analysis and showed that energy intensity gdp per capita and carbon intensity have the greatest impact the countries of the former eastern bloc are facing particular challenges of energy security which is primarily related to the rapid economic growth and at the same time a high degree of dependence on import of energy generating products in terms of energy security the most stable transition was reported in hungary and poland

the shrinking merger arbitrage spread reasons and implications the merger arbitrage spread has declined by more than 400 bps since 2002 this decline which is both economically and statistically significant corresponds to the decline in aggregate returns of merger arbitrage hedge funds as well as increased inflows into merger arbitrage hedge funds part of the decline in the arbitrage spread may be explained by increased trading in the targets stocks following the merger announcement reduced transaction costs and changes in risk related to merger arbitrage these findings suggest that some of the decline is likely to be permanent therefore investors seeking to invest in merger arbitrage hedge funds should focus on returns since 2002

large market shocks and abnormal closed end fund price behaviour abstract this paper investigates the short term price behaviour of closed end funds following eight large market wide shocks the findings from a sample of 63 funds continuously traded on the london stock exchange indicate that prices overreact relative to equilibrium given by net asset values the speed of reversion in discounts following market wide shocks is slower than that following fund specific shocks of a similar magnitude the post shock persistence in discounts is related more to the ease of arbitrage rather than to liquidity as proxied by fund size or to the speed of recovery in the broader market the discount decays more slowly for those funds that are difficult to arbitrage

self selection and the forecasting abilities of female equity analysts this paper investigates whether there are systematic differences between the forecasting style and abilities of female and male analysts and whether market participants recognize these differences my key conjecture is that only female analysts with superior forecasting abilities enter the profession due to a perception of discrimination in the analyst labor market consistent with this conjecture i find that female analysts issue bolder and more accurate forecasts and their accuracy is higher in market segments in which their concentration is lower further the stock market participants are aware of the male female skill

security independence and sustainability imprecise language and the manipulation of energy policy in the united states abstract this article examines the impact of imprecise terminology on the energy policymaking process in us focusing on the manipulation of discourse by different political economic interests seeking to sway popular opinion using the 2012 us presidential elections as a backdrop the analysis highlights the cooption of the concepts security independence and sustainability in energy debates by different and often opposing interest groups the article s first section traces the malleability of energy terminology to the vagueness of the term energy itself and notes how qualifying words like security independence and sustainability have been selectively exploited to introduce further ambiguity to an already fungible concept the second section notes that while energy is a critical and complex factor of macroeconomic production its main public visibility comes via a few partially representative numbers like gasoline prices this mismatch of broad social importance and piecemeal public understanding enables organized interests to leverage vague terminology in support of particular policy ideas the third section examines three policymaking tools 1 taxation 2 regulation and 3 technology promotion and compares these administrative instruments ultimately the article concludes that loosely defined terminology inhibits energy policy discussion and stifles meaningful public debate over and action on energy issues