dynamic adverse selection a theory of illiquidity fire sales and flight to quality we develop a dynamic equilibrium model of asset markets with adverse selection there exists a unique equilibrium in which better quality assets trade at higher prices but with a lower price dividend ratio in less liquid markets sellers of high quality assets signal quality by accepting a lower trading probability we show how the distribution of sellers private information affects an asset s price and liquidity how a change in that distribution can cause a re sale and a ight to quality and how asset purchase and subsidy programs may raise prices and liquidity and reverse the ight to quality jel d82 g12 this paper develops a dynamic equilibrium model of asset markets with adverse selection the owners of heterogeneous assets are privately informed about the quality of their assets sellers set prices for their assets recognizing that sales may be rationed at high prices buyers set prices recognizing that the quality of available assets may depend on the price selected in equilibrium sellers of high quality assets are willing to set a high price despite the low sale probability because the continuation value from failing to sell a high quality asset is high conversely sellers of low quality assets opt for a low price buyers are indifferent between paying a low price for a low quality asset and a high price for a high quality asset we prove these results in a deliberately stylized dynamic general equilibrium framework assets are perfectly durable and pay a constant dividend each period some amount of a perfectly perishable consumption good better quality assets pay a higher dividend but only the asset s current owner observes the dividend this is the source of private information and the root of the adverse selection problem as in akerlof 1970 the only permissible trades are between the consumption good and the asset individuals are risk neutral and have a discount factor that changes over time independently across individuals creating gains from trade finally discount factors are observable which ensures that patient individuals never sell assets since there are no gains from trade we believe this framework is useful for capturing

the energy ladder theoretical myth or empirical truth results from a meta analysis abstract modern fuels are an important enabler of social and economic development still over 2 billion people rely on traditional biomass for their daily energy needs to overcome the negative effects of traditional energy on human health and the environment and to enhance the livelihood conditions of the poor a transition towards cleaner and more efficient forms of energy is needed understanding household fuel choice and fuel switching behaviour is of vital importance in search for policies to support such a transition process this paper adds to the existing energy transition literature in two ways first we provide a novel conceptual framework to analyze the decision environment underlying energy and fuel choices second we apply this framework in a meta analysis of existing choice models investigating energy switching and stacking behaviour in urban and rural areas in developing countries the meta analysis shows that socio economic household characteristics appear to receive most attention so far in identifying groups of fuel users while relatively little information is available on the impact of the external decision context on household energy choices

dynamics of energy related co2 emissions in china during 1980 to 2002 the relative importance of energy supply side and demand side effects abstract based on a newly developed model that integrates energy production transformation and consumption processes this paper compares the relative importance of some traditionally recognized factors operating on the energy demand side with a body of newly defined factors on the supply side in terms of their contribution to trends in china s co2 emissions related to the total primary energy supply c tpes before 1996 changes in china s c tpes were mainly driven by changes on the energy demand side factors operating on the energy supply side played trivial roles during the period 1996 2000 however increasing demand side effects declined dramatically and at the same time decreasing effects from supply side expanded significantly such changes resulted directly in a decline in the c tpes the decreasing effects from international trade as well as statistical imbalances between supply and demand reinforced the declining trend the shrinkage of demand side effects mainly arose from the slowdown of economic growth and speed of decrease in energy intensity the expansion of supply side effects was principally attributed to the speed of decrease in gross unit consumption in transformation sectors especially in electricity sector therefore the acceleration of efficiency improvements in end use and transformation sectors accounted for the decline in the c tpes over the period 1996 2000

a liquidity based model of security design we consider the problem of the design and sale of a security backed by specified assets given access to higher return investments the issuer has an incentive to raise capital by securitizing part of these assets at the time the security is issued the issuer s or underwriter s private information regarding the payoff of the security may cause illiquidity in the form of a downward sloping demand curve for the security the severity of this illiquidity depends upon the sensitivity of the value of the issued security to the issuer s private information thus the security design problem involves a tradeoff between the retention cost of holding cash flows not included in the security design and the liquidity cost of including the cash flows and making the security design more sensitive to the issuer s private information we characterize the optimal security design in several cases we also demonstrate circumstances under which standard debt is optimal and show that the riskiness of the debt is increasing in the issuer s retention costs for assets

special purpose entities and bank loan contracting abstract in this study we show that a firm s use of special purpose entities spes is associated with unfavorable loan contract terms including higher loan rates collateral requirements and restrictive covenants further analyses suggest that the association between the use of spes and unfavorable loan contract terms is primarily due to the increase in the information risk faced by lenders as firm managers can easily use spes to manipulate earnings and hide losses specifically we find that the use of spes has a more pronounced effect on increasing the cost of loans and causing more stringent non price loan terms when managers have a stronger incentive to manipulate earnings and when banks have less knowledge about the spe sponsor firms due to the lack of prior lending relationship in addition we find that the use of spes is associated with a greater likelihood of accounting restatements and greater information asymmetry between inside managers and outside capital suppliers

energy transition poverty and inequality in vietnam this paper investigates energy transition energy poverty and energy inequality in vietnam employing a longitudinal dataset of a nationally representative household survey we use the data on residential energy expenditure of more than 9 000 households over the period 2004 2016 we find a transition from traditional energy to modern energy but this transition varies across regions between ethnic and welfare groups and between rural and urban population the poor and ethnic minority households still rely heavily on traditional energy sources such as coal and biomass to meet their energy demands electricity poverty has decreased but energy cost poverty has increased in addition energy inequality tends to decrease at a more significant rate than income and consumption inequalities we propose a national program for energy poverty alleviation be established to devise policies to lower households energy costs further assistance to the poor and ethnic minority households is also recommended so that they can afford a higher level of electricity consumption

prepayment and the valuation of mortgage backed securities this paper puts forward a valuation framework for mortgage backed securities rather than imposing an optimal value minimizing call condition we assume that at each point in time there exists a probability of prepaying this conditional probability depends upon the prevailing state of the economy to implement our valuation procedure we use maximum likelihood techniques to estimate a prepayment function in light of recent aggregate gnma prepayment experience by integrating this empirical prepayment function into our valuation framework we provide a complete model to value mortgagebacked securities given an optimal value minimizing call policy a mortgage should never be called when its market value is less than its call price similarly a mortgage should be called if it is worth more than its call price however mortgagors often call their loans when the prevailing refinancing rate exceeds the contract rate on the loan dunn and mcconnell 1981 in addition some mortgagors do not call their loans when the loan s contract rate exceeds the prevailing refinancing rate the purpose of this paper is to put forward a valuation framework for mortgagebacked securities consistent with these stylized facts associated with mortgage prepayments the mortgagor s prepayment decision is integral to our valuation framework however we do not impose an optimal value minimizing call condition to price these securities rather we assume that at each point in time there exists a probability of prepaying this conditional probability depending upon the prevailing state of the economy by integrating this prepayment function into our valuation framework we provide a complete model to value mortgage backed securities to implement our valuation procedures we estimate a prepayment function given recent gnma prepayment experience we follow green and shoven 1986 by using a proportional hazards model to estimate the influence of various explanatory variables or covariates on the mortgagor s prepayment decision distinct from green and shoven we explicitly model the effects of seasoning as well as investigating the influence of interest cost savings from refinancing in addition we also consider the effects of lagged refinancing rates heterogeneity

improved stoves in sub saharan africa the case of the sudan the paper estimates charcoal demand and supply elasticities to determine rebound effects from improved stoves in the sudan these are increases in fuel consumption resulting from gains in real income upon the use of more efficient appliances and from downward price adjustments associated with the reduction in fuel requirements the findings are that 1 charcoal markets are characterized by low elasticities and 2 42 of fuel savings are lost mostly as a result of large price adjustments since low elasticities place more of the burden of market adjustment on prices than on quantities nonetheless price related effects may be small because of increases in charcoal prices as a result of accelerated deforestation

from linear fuel switching to multiple cooking strategies a critique and alternative to the energy ladder model abstract promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices the transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the energy ladder model that suggests that with increasing affluence a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels in this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four year 1992 96 case study of a village in mexico and from a large scale survey from four states of mexico we show that an alternate multiple fuel model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households the multiple fuel model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty a economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels b technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices c cultural preferences and d health impacts this model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households

zombie lending and depressed restructuring in japan this paper explores the role that misdirected bank lending played in prolonging the japanese macroeconomic stagnation that began in the early 1990s the investigation focuses on the wide spread practice of japanese banks of continuing to lend to otherwise insolvent firms we docu ment the prevalence of this forbearance lending and show its distorting effects on healthy firms that were competing with the impaired firms the paper by hoshi 2000 was the first to call attention to this phenomenon and its ramifi

rational prepayment and the valuation of mortgage backed securities this article presents a new model of mortgage prepayments based on rational decisions by mortgage holders these mortgage bolders face beterogeneous transaction costs which are explicitly modeled the model is estimated using a version of hansen s 1982 generalized method of moments and is sbown to capture many of the empirical features of mortgage prepayment estimation results indicate that mortgage holders act as tbougb tbey face transaction costs tbat far exceed tbe explicit costs usually incurred on refinancing they also wait an average of more than a year before refinancing even when it is optimal to do so the model fits observed prepayment behavior as well as thee recent empirical model of schwartz and torous 1989 implications for pricing mortgage backed securities are discussed

optimal security design how should new securities be designed traditional theories have little to say on this the literature on capital structure and general equilibrium theories with incomplete markets take the securities firms issue as exogenous this paper explicitly incorporates the transaction costs of issuing securities and develops a model where the instruments that are traded are chosen optimally and the economy s market structure is endogenous among other things it is shown that the firm s income stream should be split so that in every state all payoffs are allocated to the security held by the group that values them most this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

switch off the light please energy use aging population and consumption habits abstract in parallel with worldwide population growth europe is experiencing a fast demographic shift widely studied but generally undervalued by policymakers population aging may imply smaller household sizes and more home based energy consumption which will change the energy mix consumer preference shifts and different attitudes towards environment among the generations determine additional effects study of the link between an aging population and energy demand is even more important for italy because its energy dependence is almost complete and its population is aging quickly this paper aims to assess the role of changing generational preferences in the energy expenditure trend in italy by distinguishing between a pure age effect and a cohort effect the decomposition shows significant differences in the shape of age and cohort effects thus confirming that beside an aging effect we must consider that recent generations have a higher residential energy expenditure indeed the energy culture of post war italian generations seems more linked to thermal comfort heating and air conditioning than to environmental attitudes

factors underlying rural household energy transition a case study of china abstract this paper identifies factors underlying the energy transition of rural households in china based on province level panel data for years of 1991 2014 it indicates that there exists the energy stacking process of rural household energy transition characterized by the significant consumption inertia effects of traditional biomass energy tbe traditional commercial energy tce and advanced commercial energy ace respectively the insignificant substitution effect of tce and ace for tbe and the significant partial substitution of ace for tce with regard to the factors underlying rural household energy transition 1 per capita disposal income is negatively correlated with tbe tce and ace consumption 2 the number of motorcycles is positively correlated with tce and ace consumption 3 the number of firewood saving stoves and the price for ace are positively correlated with tbe consumption 4 household size and the number of motorcycles and the number of appliances are positively correlated with ace consumption 5 education level is positively correlated with tbe but negatively with tce consumption 6 the number of rural energy management institutions is positively correlated with tbe but negatively correlated ace consumption therefore some policy implications are discussed

cooking fuel choice in rural china results from microdata abstract unclean cooking fuel is widely used in the developing world and it is the main indication of energy poverty in rural china in this paper we investigate the situation transition and determination of fuel choice in china s rural household cooking using the large scale micro survey data of china health and retirement longitudinal study charls we find that there is a big gap in using commercial cooking fuels between rural and urban households 60 of the rural households adopt traditional biomass resource as their main fuel for cooking in 2011 while this figure is less than 5 in the urban we also identify a significant spatial divide in fuel choice in southeastern coastal areas about 40 of the rural households prefer solid fuels while this figure jumps to over 80 in northeastern areas the longitudinal data also reveal a significant transition from traditional to modern fuels from 2008 to 2012 moreover the distance to the most commonly used farmer s market education background coal price and female labor participation are all influential in determining the households choices

securitization and loan performance ex ante and ex post relations in the mortgage market this study examines the relation between securitization and loan performance using a comprehensive dataset from a major national mortgage lender loans remaining on the bank s balance sheet ex post incurred higher delinquency rates than sold loans contrasting the negative relation between screening efforts and ex ante probability of loan sale explored by prior studies moreover the performance gap between sold and retained loans was wider among the subsample of loans that were perceived as easier to resell the investors seeming advantage over the originating bank can mostly be explained by information revealed during the time between loan origination and sale

reassessing the energy ladder household energy use in maun botswana abstract in the context of sub saharan africa s rapid urbanization improved insight into urban energy use is increasingly important based on the predictions of energy transition theory a regional shift from biomass to modern fuels has long been expected to occur in tandem with urban growth however trends observed in the region s towns and cities have often not followed such patterns and fuelwood continues to be important in most areas this paper examines the practical relevance of transition theory using a recent case study conducted by the authors in maun botswana and results previously reported in the literature it finds that despite the long term link between socio economic development and increased modern fuel consumption at the national scale the notion of transition does not accurately reflect ongoing energy use patterns at lower levels of aggregation this is chiefly because its model of household fuel switching largely dismisses the importance of active and strategic decision making by urban consumers and their responsiveness to structural factors such as relative fuel prices as the botswana case illustrates this weakness can significantly distort expectations and policies around urban fuelwood use

making markets for structured mortgage derivatives abstract this paper distinguishes between securitization in which simple pass through instruments are created and structuring in which mortgages derivative claims are created the point is to explain how structuring a transaction brings value to a deal s underwriter briefly an underwriter must defeat arbitrage between pass throughs and derivatives the potential for market segmentation and price discrimination by the underwriter is used to analyze the structuring process in the course of the analysis the legal rules for trusts the algebraic rules for structuring and the limits on permissible price discrimination are discussed results for an actual transaction illustrate the important features of the analysis

investment tobin s q and interest rates the interest rate is a key determinant of rm investment we integrate a widelyused term structure model of interest rates cir cox ingersoll and ross 1985 with the q theory of investment hayashi 1982 and abel and eberly 1994 we show that stochastic interest rates have signicant eects on investment and rm value because capital is medium long lived capital adjustment costs have a rst order eect on investment and rm value we use duration to measure the interest rate sensitivity of rm value decompose a rm into assets in place and growth opportunities and value each component by extending the model to allow for endogenous capital liquidation we nd that the liquidation option provides a valuable protection against the increase of interest rates we further generalize the model to incorporate asymmetric adjustment costs a price wedge between purchasing and selling capital xed investment costs and irreversibility we nd that inaction is often optimal for an empirically relevant range of interest rates for rms facing xed costs or price wedges finally marginal q is equal to average q in our stochastic interest rate settings including one with serially correlated productivity shocks

does energy price regulation benefit china s economy and environment evidence from energy price distortions abstract china s energy prices have long been regulated due to the critical role energy plays in economic growth and social development which leads to energy price distortion to some extent to figure out whether energy price regulations will benefit china s economy measured by gdp growth and environment measured by carbon emissions we conducted an in depth simulation using path analysis where five energy products natural gas gasoline fuel oil steam coal and coking coal are selected and three measurements absolute relative and moving of energy price distortions are calculated the results indicate that with a series of energy pricing policies the price distortion for a single type of energy has gradually transformed while the energy pricing system in china is not fully market oriented yet furthermore china s economy benefits from relative and moving distortions while the absolute distortions of energy prices have negative impacts on economic growth finally with regard to the environment carbon emissions call for fewer distortions

rural residential energy transition and energy consumption intensity in china abstract this paper examines the impact of residential energy transition on residential energy consumption per capita recpc and identifies the underlying drivers in rural china based on province level panel data for years 1991 2014 in rural china it is shown that energy transition from traditional biomass energy tbe to traditional commercial energy tce significantly decreases recpc while energy transition from tbe or tce to advanced commercial energy ace significantly increases recpc as is revealed by the energy stacking model per capita income has a significantly negative impact on recpc and the impact of lagged recpc is opposite due to the regulation of energy price there exists price distortion in china s rural energy market and the price mechanism functions poorly besides factors including juvenile dependency ratio and education level significantly reduce recpc therefore it is vital to integrate rural energy into national energy strategic system facilitate energy transition process and introduce the market system reform of rural energy and continue to improve the education level of rural residents in rural china

total factor productivity growth in local enterprise partnership regions in britain 1997 2008 harris r and moffat j total factor productivity growth in local enterprise partnership regions in britain 1997 2008 regional studies this paper decomposes aggregate total factor productivity tfp growth in britain for 1997 2008 to show the contribution of different local enterprise partnerships leps as well as manufacturing and services and uk and foreign owned plants within leps these contributions are further decomposed to show the role of productivity growth in continuing plants vis a vis reallocations in output shares the results show that the largest leps in population terms with higher levels of job density a greater reliance on manufacturing more skilled and better qualified workers and a lower turnover of businesses achieved the highest tfp growth this is mostly the result of reallocations of output shares towards high productivity plants

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

the determinants of household energy demand in rural beijing can environmentally friendly technologies be effective with the recent rapid economic growth total energy demand in rural china has increased dramatically and the energy structure is in the transition from non commercial to commercial sources simultaneously it is expected that households in rural areas will face energy shortages and additional environmental problems unless they have more access to renewable energy technologies however little is known about i the transition of energy use patterns and ii whether introduced technologies have been effective to analyze these issues we estimated the energy demands of rural households by using survey data taken from beijing s ten suburban districts the data contain information on both non commercial and commercial energy use key characteristics of the households and several renewable energy technologies our empirical analysis yielded three main results first the per capita income is a key factor in the per capita energy consumption more specifically the marginal increase or marginal change in per capita coal consumption strongly diminishes or declines as per capita income increases second coal and liquefied petroleum gas lpg prices do not exhibit substitution effects but an increase in these prices has strong negative effects on the use of these energy resources third renewable energy technologies are identified to reduce coal consumption and to improve energy efficiency overall these findings suggest a positive perspective if the chinese government were to design appropriate policies associated with renewable energy technologies and related energy prices then coal consumption can be reduced in the near future and the substitution to cleaner energy use will accelerate therefore a smooth energy transition in rural china could be made in a more environmentally sustainable manner

plant closure in britain since the great recession one of the suggested explanations for the uk productivity puzzle is that since the onset of the great recession low productivity plants that would normally have closed have continued operating this paper therefore investigates whether there has been a change in the relationship between productivity and closure since the recession we find that for a number of sectors the negative association between tfp and closure that existed prior to the recession has been offset or even reversed since the recession

issuer credit quality and the price of asset backed securities following the financial market crisis of the past few years critics and scholars have identified numerous problems related to all parties associated with securitization including investors rating agencies issuers underwriters and borrowers some of this research focuses on the rating process itself adam ashcraft paul goldsmith pinkham and james vickery 2009 show that observable credit fundamentals deteriorated relative to ratings between 2005 and 2007 efraim benmelech and jennifer dlugosz 2009 find that collateralized debt obligations cdos rated by only one rating agency are more likely both to be downgraded and to suffer more severe downgrades than cdos rated by more than one agency joshua coval jakub jurek and erik stafford 2009a point out that ratings of cdos were highly unreliable due to models that were highly sensitive to even small errors in economic projections or losses and that underestimated the correlation of risks across various debt securities other research focuses on the conflicts of interest between parties who participate in the underlying processes of originating and bundling loans and collecting payments from delinquent borrowers chris downing dwight jaffee and nancy wallace 2009 find that some residential mortgage backed securities trade in a market for lemons where originators can use private information to determine which mortgage issuer credit quality and the price of asset backed securities

what goes up recent trends in china s energy consumption since 1996 china s energy output has dropped by 17 while primary energy use has fallen by 4 driven almost entirely by shrinking output from coal mines and declining direct use since china is the world s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases it is important to understand the sources of this apparent transformation and whether it portends a permanent change in patterns of energy use this remarkable reversal of the long term expansion of energy use has occurred even as the economy has continued to grow albeit more slowly than in the early 1990s generation of electric power has risen implying a steep fall in end uses particularly in industry available information points to a variety of forces contributing to this phenomenon including rapid improvements in coal quality structural changes in industry shutdowns of factories in both the state owned and non state segments of the economy improvements in end use efficiency and greater use of gas and electricity in households a combination of slowing economic growth industrial restructuring broader economic system reforms and environmental and energy efficiency policies has apparently led to at least a temporary decline in and perhaps a long term reduction in the growth of energy use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions

rural household energy consumption the effects of access to electricity evidence from south africa this paper examines household energy consumption patterns in rural areas in the light of energy transition theories in particular the study aims to identify the effects of access to electricity on fuel choice the analysis uses data from an extensive household survey conducted in south africa and examines the prevalence of different fuels energy expenditure the end uses of fuels and multiple fuel use patterns it is concluded that evidence exists for the presence of an energy transition in rural households largely driven by income access to electricity affects the nature of this transition and there is weak evidence to suggest that it accelerates the process

the valuation of complex derivatives by major investment firms empirical evidence this article examines the auction of a portfolio of collateralized mortgage obligations cmos to major broker dealers and institutional investors the unique data set allows us to analyze a number of important empirical questions related to the valuation of cmos by the bidders and the elasticity of demand for the securities the results reveal that the valuations differ substantially implying a significant elasticity of demand this article is designed to shed light on two related questions first it extends the work of bagwell 1991 1992 brown and ryngaert 1990 and bradley desai and kim 1988 among others on shareholder heterogeneity and the elasticity of the demand for financial assets to date the empirical research on investor heterogeneity has focused on common stock this article supplements previous work by examining an auction of another class of securities complex collateralized mortgage obligations cmos to major securities dealers and institutional investors second it provides perspective on fixed income valuation models in the spirit of cox ingersoll and ross 1985 and black derman and toy 1990 virtually all of these models even those that specify relatively complex interest rate processes assume homogeneous beliefs this implies that within the constraints imposed by estimation error sophisticated investors should place equal values on fixed income securities bagwell observes that investors can be heterogeneous along several dimensions first heterogeneity can be induced by tax rules to the extent that different investors are taxed in different ways their demand for securities will be affected second transaction costs can cause heterogeneity by driving a wedge between buyers sellers and owners of a security third investors can differ in their assessments of the value of a security either because they possess different information or because they analyze that information in different ways fourth investors can face different nontradeable risks and thus can have different assessments of the value of a security depending on how it interacts with these risks finally it has been suggested by lee shleifer and thaler 1991 among others that investors may differ for idio

is the market for mortgage backed securities a market for lemons this paper models and provides empirical evidence for the quality of assets that are securitized through bankruptcy remote special purpose vehicles spvs the model predicts that assets sold to spvs will be of lower quality lemons compared to assets that are not sold to spvs we find strong empirical support for this prediction using a comprehensive data set of sales of mortgage backed securities freddie mac participation certificates or pcs to spvs over the period 1991 through 2002 valuation estimates based on a structural two factor model indicate that pcs sold to spvs are on average valued 0 39 lower per 100 of face value relative to pcs not so sold for the four largest coupon groups in our full sample of freddie mac pcs we find a lemons spread of 4 6 basis points in terms of yield to maturity and this spread accounts for 13 45 of the overall prepayment spread of these securities jel d82 g13 g14 g21

energy consumption in rural china a household model for three villages in jiangxi province abstract in china fuelwood and coal are the most important energy sources for rural households in poor areas along with population and economic growth excessive fuelwood collection is a major cause of deforestation burning coal contributes to environmental problems such as air pollution acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions the purpose of this article is to analyze factors determining choice of energy source and labor input into fuelwood collection in poor forest rich regions and to provide policy recommendations on ways to affect these choices to this end a nonseparable household model reflecting choices in labor allocation and energy demand of rural households is estimated from available data for three villages in a poor forest rich region in jiangxi province southeast china innovative aspects of this article are the analyses of factors driving household substitution between forest and non forest fuels and of dissimilarities in household responses under different market access conditions

household energy preferences for cooking in urban ouagadougou burkina faso abstract an extensive survey on household expenditures in ouagadougou the capital of burkina faso was used to analyze the factors determining urban household energy choices using a multinomial logit model wood energy remains the preferred fuel of most urban households in the country though rational the choice is not sustainable as it portends a threat to the savanna woodlands and the economy many important policies have been adopted by public authorities to minimize household wood energy consumption and to substitute it by alternative fuel despite the magnitude of all these policies the depletion rate of the forest resource is increasing a kind of inertia is thus observed for household preferences for cooking fuel this model analyzes the sociological and economic variables of household energy preferences for cooking in ouagadougou the analyses show that the inertia of household cooking energy preferences are due to poverty factors such as low income poor household access to electricity for primary and secondary energy low house standard household size high frequency of cooking certain meals using woodfuel as cooking energy the descriptive analyses show that the domestic demand for wood energy is strongly related to household income the firewood utilization rate decreases with increasing household income in other words this fuel appears as a transition good for these households which aim for other sources of energy for cooking that are more adapted for urban consumption this implies that a price subsidy policy for liquid petroleum gas lpg and its cook stoves could significantly decrease the utilization rate of wood energy

optimal incentives and securitization of defaultable assets abstract we study optimal securitization in the presence of an initial moral hazard a financial intermediary creates and then sells to outside investors defaultable assets whose default risk is determined by the unobservable costly effort exerted by the intermediary we calculate the optimal contract for any given effort level and show the natural emergence of extreme punishment for defaults under which investors stop paying the intermediary after the first default with securitization contracts optimally designed we find securitization improves the intermediary s screening incentives furthermore the equilibrium effort level and the surplus converge to their first best levels with sufficiently many assets

liquidity constraints and imperfect information in subprime lending ditions for precisely the population that is most likely to have a difficult time obtaining credit those with low incomes and poor credit histories these consumers who typically cannot qualify for regular bank loans comprise the so called subprime market because the company we study originates subprime loans its loan applications and transaction records provide an unusual win dow into the consumption and borrowing behavior of households that are rationed in primary credit markets moreover we track loan repayments allowing us to analyze the difficulties in lending to the subprime population we begin by documenting the importance of short term liquidity constraints for individuals in our sample we present two pieces of evidence both are based on purchasing behavior and indicate a high sensitivity to cash on hand first we document a dramatic degree of demand seasonality associated with tax rebates overall demand is almost 50 percent higher during tax rebate season than during other parts of the year this seasonal effect varies with household

what can wages and employment tell us about the uk s productivity puzzle as in many european countries labour productivity in the uk has been stagnant since the start of the great recession this article uses individual data on employment and wages to try to understand whether real wage flexibility can help shed light on the uk s productivity puzzle it finds perhaps unsurprisingly that workforce composition cannot explain the reduction in wages and hence productivity that we observe even compared to previous recessions instead real wages have fallen significantly within jobs this time round why one possibility we investigate is that the labour supply in the uk is higher compared to previous recessions

urban fuelwood challenges and dilemmas abstract this paper explores the use of fuelwood in third world cities the importance of fuelwood and the factors which condition its use in cities are set out and three fuelwood problems are identified the cost to urban consumers fuel supply security and the impact of urban fuelwood markets on rural areas urban fuelwood interventions are evaluated with four categories identified interventions in marketing conservation increased wood production and fuel switching of these fuel switching by improved supply systems and increased production from smallholders and better management of natural woodlands appear to have the greatest potential the need for flexibility community participation in planning is stressed

woodfuels livelihoods and policy interventions changing perspectives in the 1970s it appeared that fuelwood use was growing rapidly and this could have major adverse impacts on the resource and poor users by the mid 1980s revised assessments indicated that there was less of a problem than had been foreseen and much less of a need for forestry interventions to maintain supplies as a result many of the latter were sharply scaled back additional information and analysis that has become available since the 1980s support the view that there is no need for large scale interventions devoted just to provision of fuelwood however declining access to supplies or markets can raise significant problems in some areas and for particular categories of user growing urban demand for charcoal can also cause local problems in particular in africa the potentials for appropriate forms of intervention are discussed

impact of off farm income on household energy expenditures in china implications for rural energy transition abstract this study examines the impact of off farm income on rural household energy expenditures paying special attention to clean energies such as electricity and gas and non clean energy such as coal we use instrumental variable approaches to address the endogeneity issues of off farm income and analyze household survey data collected from rural gansu henan and shandong provinces of china econometric results show that off farm income promotes rural energy transition in particular off farm income significantly increases both electricity and gas expenditures but decreases coal expenditure of rural households further analyses reveal that the energy transition effects generated by off farm income are more pronounced for households in shandong where the economy is relatively better developed relative to henan and gansu our findings highlight the importance of income diversification through off farm activities by farm households to enhance clean energy accessibility and boost sustainable rural economic development

bank funding modes securitization versus deposits abstract we examine a bank s choice of whether to fund the loans it originates by emitting deposits or to sell the loans to investors with common knowledge of loan quality and laissez faire banking we find that the choice is irrelevant with asymmetric information but without government intervention we find that better quality assets will be sold securitized and poorer quality assets will be funded with deposits public regulation can influence the bank s choice subsidies can cause a bank to favor deposit funding but mutual funds and third party insurers may mitigate the effects of governmental subsidies

short term safety or long term failure empirical evidence of the impact of securitization on bank risk based on a sample of u s commercial banks from 2002 to 2012 this paper shows that bank loan securitization has a significant and positive impact on both z scores and the likelihood of bank failure indicating a short term risk reduction and a long term risk increase effect we also find disparate impacts between mortgage and non mortgage securitization loan sale activities are found to have a similar impact to securitization

subprime mortgage default abstract this paper constructs a reduced form credit risk model of mortgage default the data used is of privately securitized subprime arms adjustable rate mortgages originated between 1997 and 2008 and observed between 2000 and 2009 the period studied thus encompasses the beginning of the subprime crisis given the estimated model contractual properties of the loans are then used to infer the market price of default risk for the various quarters of origination it is empirically determined that a change in the inherent nature of borrowers led to a deterioration in their default performance a change which can be first detected in late 2004 on the other hand the evidence also indicates that the secondary mortgage market became aware of this change at about this same time the large rise in defaults in 2007 cannot therefore be attributed to any surprise other than the unexpectedly large fall in housing prices

adverse selection and liquidity distortion this article develops a tractable model with two dimensional asymmetric information in asset markets sellers are privately informed about their asset quality and distress positions illiquidity arises endogenously and manifests itself through two distinct market outcomes the first outcome features limited market participation resulting in a dry up in trading volume the second outcome involves a large volume at a depressed price only in the latter outcome do distressed sellers engage in fire sales quickly unwinding their positions at a steep price discount the article further establishes that this equilibrium can arise only when buyers expect that sellers with a higher need for immediacy will on average have higher quality assets hence both the information structure and the distribution of sellers distress are crucial for the existence of fire sales

rural household energy use and its determinants in china how important are influences of payment for ecosystem services vs other factors abstract fuelwood is an essential environmental good for livelihood in rural china heavy reliance on fuelwood is associated with numerous negative externalities due to decades of rapid economic growth in china we hypothesize that the increase in rural household income would reduce reliance on fuelwood using data from a survey of 481 households conducted in 2014 we examined the effects of two payments for ecosystem services programs the conversion of cropland to forest program ccfp and the ecological welfare forest program ewfp on energy use along with other factors we found that the ccfp did not significantly affect fuel choice nor the quantity of fuelwood used but households with more forestland in ewfp were less likely to adopt modern fuels and likely to use more fuelwood household per capita annual income was the main factor promoting adoption of modern fuels while household size was the most important factor determining the quantity of fuelwood used per capita overall the gradually increasing adoption of modern fuels has thus far not resulted in any significant abandonment of fuelwood fuelwood remains the dominant fuel across all income groups suggesting that households in the study area are in the early stages of the energy transition