credit constraints and international financial crises abstract a version of the kiyotaki and moore j political econom 105 1997 211 model of credit cycles is used to examine the extent to which a crisis in a country can spread to another seemingly unrelated country the model features two small open economies that face credit constraints and produce a differentiated commodity which they export to a large country a productivity shock to one of the small open economies triggers an adverse terms of trade shock to the other which is then amplified by credit constraints the paper provides a new perspective on the relationship between terms of trade shocks and the balance of payments that differs from existing models which focus on risk sharing and consumption smoothing in particular it is shown that if financial frictions are present a temporary terms of trade shock can trigger capital outflows and a rapid deterioration in the current account

measuring corporate sustainability management a data envelopment analysis approach despite the increased awareness of the conceptual and practical definition of corporate sustainability questions remain on how to measure performance the objective of this paper is to advance our understanding of the measurement of corporate sustainability management by introducing a data envelopment analysis dea technique and an empirical case of a korean electronics industry in particular we employ cross efficiency in the presence of dual role factors by reflecting some complexity of a real world case donations for tax benefits by employing the combined approach of cross efficiency and dual role factors we offer a new model to measure corporate sustainability management the new model and study findings contribute to the body of knowledge in corporate sustainability management and its performance measurement

globalization and emerging markets with or without crash we analyze the effects of financial and trade globalization on the likelihood of financial crashes in emerging markets while trade globalization always makes crashes less likely financial globalization may make them more likely especially when trade costs are high pessimistic expectations can be self fulfilling and lead to a collapse in demand for goods and assets such a crash comes with a current account reversal and drops in income and investment lower income countries are more prone to such demand based financial crises a quantitative evaluation shows our model is consistent with the main stylized facts of financial crashes in emerging markets

lessons from the debt deflation theory of sudden stops this paper reports results for a class of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with credit constraints that can account for some of the empirical regularities of the sudden stop phenomenon of recent emerging markets crises in these models credit constraints set in motion irving fisher s debt deflation mechanism and they bind as an endogenous equilibrium outcome when agents are highly indebted the quantitative predictions of these models yield three key lessons 1 sudden stops can occur as an endogenous response to typical realizations of adverse shocks to fundamentals in environments in which agents plan their actions taking credit constraints and expectations of sudden stops into account 2 credit constraints cause output declines during sudden stops when collateral constraints limit debt to a fraction of the market value of capital when there are limits on access to working capital or when debt deflation lowers the value of the marginal product of factors of production 3 the debt deflation mechanism has significant quantitative effects in terms of the amplification asymmetry and persistence of the responses of macroeconomic aggregates to standard shocks and in the occurrence of sudden stops as infrequent events nested within regular business cycles precautionary saving rules out the largest sudden stops from the stochastic stationary state but sudden stops remain a positive probability event in the long run this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

ecological modernization in the electrical utility industry an application of a bads goods dea model of ecological and technical efficiency abstract newly developed data envelopment analysis techniques permit simultaneous consideration of good and bad outputs in evaluating efficiency we use these techniques to determine joint ecological and technical efficiencies of the 437 largest fossil fueled electricity generating plants in the united states utilizing the epa s e grid and clean air markets databases and drawing on ecological modernization theory we evaluate whether innovations in organizational practices and technological solutions help achieve joint technical and environmental performance efficiencies

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

inter linking issues and dimensions in sustainability reporting during the last decade sustainability reporting sr has been increasingly adopted by corporations worldwide this is evidenced by the adoption of several guidelines such as the iso 14000 series the social accountability 8000 standard and the gri sustainability guidelines sr shows promise to help corporate leaders and their employees to contribute towards achieving sustainable societies however most of the guidelines and standards address sustainability issues through comparmentalisation thereby leading to the separation of the economic environmental and social dimensions due to these divisive approaches holistic assessments of the effects of their efforts are seldom properly integrated into coporate decisions and procedures to make improvements for example through cleaner production worker health and safety consumer safety and reductions in the negative short and long term social and environmental impacts this paper analyses sr reports from three companies with the help of grounded theory s constant comparative analysis this analytical framework helped the authors to systematically assess the degree to which the companies addressed economic ecological and social issues separately or in an integrated and inter linked manner from the inter linkages found a new category is proposed to be added to future sr this new category can help corporate sr planners and researchers on sustainability reports to better understand how the company leaders understand their responsibilities with regard to sd these inter connectednesses are highly relevant in many short and long term dimensions of supply chain management global warming ecological disruption and societal equity issues especially with regard to the local national and global energy issues of fuels and oils the central themes of the conference at which this paper was originally presented it also plays a key role in real long term changes towards sustainability where the time dimension plays a key role in human survival on planet earth

turkey s energy efficiency assessment white certificates systems and their applicability in turkey abstract the last decade has seen an increase in the importance of energy efficiency and the sustainable use of energy resources due to their significant benefits for reducing a country s dependence on foreign energy resources and increasing awareness on environmental problems turkey aims to reduce its energy intensity by 20 up to 2023 and in order to accomplish this target the country plans to use energy more effectively in various industries and develop financial mechanisms for energy efficiency although much effort has been made to improve energy efficiency additional policies such as marked based incentives are still necessary this article deals with one of the many market based energy efficiency policies called tradable white certificates whc or energy efficiency obligations the current situation of the energy field in turkey and energy consumption by industries is presented first in this paper followed by potentials for energy efficiency in each industry and energy efficiency policies furthermore the theory and applicability of a whc system is introduced and discussed in terms of market conditions choice of obligated participants and market mechanisms and barriers for the turkish electricity and natural gas market to benefit from the residential and industrial energy savings potential

dea environmental assessment on u s industrial sectors investment for improvement in operational and environmental performance to attain corporate sustainability abstract environmental assessment has recently become an important business concern because consumers are interested in environmental protection they try to avoid purchasing products from dirt imaged companies which do not pay attention to environmental protection even if their prices are much less than the ones produced by green imaged companies thus a green image is very important for corporate survivability in a global market this study considers corporate sustainability indicating that companies need to consider both economic prosperity and pollution prevention in their operations to discuss the issue from corporate strategy for modern business this study discusses a use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment by focusing upon research and development r d strategy as well as technology innovation and selection for reduction of undesirable outputs e g co 2 emission this type of research has never been explored in previous studies it is easily envisioned that the proposed dea environmental assessment will guide corporate leaders in identifying how to invest for technology innovation to reduce an amount of undesirable outputs to discuss the practicality this study applies the proposed approach to 153 observations on s p 500 corporations in 2012 and 2013 the empirical investigation confirms that investors pay more serious attention to company s green image and the reality for a long run sustainability than profitability in a short run concern furthermore the energy sector is the best investment target among seven industrial sectors examined in this study the measurement of corporate sustainability can serve as an empirical basis in selecting what type of technology is fitted for a specific industry

sustainability assessment of electricity generation technologies using weighted multi criteria decision analysis abstract solving the issue of environmental degradation due to the expansion of the world s energy demand requires a balanced approach the aim of this paper is to comprehensively rank a large number of electricity generation technologies based on their compatibility with the sustainable development of the industry the study is based on a set of 10 sustainability indicators which provide a life cycle analysis of the plants the technologies are ranked using a weighted sum multi attribute utility method the indicator weights were established through a survey of 62 academics from the fields of energy and environmental science our results show that large hydroelectric projects are the most sustainable technology type followed by small hydro onshore wind and solar photovoltaic we argue that political leaders should have a more structured and strategic approach in implementing sustainable energy policies and this type of research can provide arguments to support such decisions

measuring the immeasurable a survey of sustainability indices sustainability indices for countries provide a one dimensional metric to valuate country specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development economic environmental and social conditions at the policy level they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country s development can be measured and even a cross country comparison can be performed this paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice we show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice

quantitative implications of a debt deflation theory of sudden stops and asset prices abstract this paper shows that the quantitative predictions of an equilibrium asset pricing model with financial frictions are consistent with key features of the sudden stop phenomenon foreign traders incur costs in trading assets with domestic agents and a collateral constraint limits external debt to a fraction of the market value of domestic equity holdings when this constraint does not bind standard productivity shocks cause typical real business cycle effects when it binds the same shocks cause strikingly different effects depending on the leverage ratio and asset market liquidity with high leverage and a liquid market the shocks force fire sales of assets and fisher s debt deflation mechanism amplifies the responses of asset prices consumption and the current account precautionary saving makes these sudden stops infrequent in the long run

strategies to promote renewable energy in brazil the present study is the result of recent research that has been developed in brazil in cooperation with international research centers the aim is to analyze the best strategies for maintaining the high share of renewable sources in brazil s electric power generation system the results show that for the time horizon considered the country still has plentiful energy resources available notably its hydroelectric potential and that the introduction of mitigation measures in the electricity sector has only a small impact on the price of electricity the study also shows that the country has made a significant contribution to the struggle against global warming

are asset price guarantees useful for preventing sudden stops a quantitative investigation of the globalization hazard moral hazard tradeoff abstract an implication of the globalization hazard hypothesis is that sudden stops caused by global financial frictions could be prevented by offering foreign investors price guarantees on emerging markets assets these guarantees create a tradeoff however because they weaken globalization hazard while creating international moral hazard we study this tradeoff using a quantitative equilibrium asset pricing model without guarantees margin calls and trading costs cause sudden stops driven by a fisherian deflation price guarantees prevent this deflation by propping up foreign demand for assets the effectiveness of price guarantees their distortions on asset markets and their welfare implications depend critically on whether the guarantees are contingent on debt levels and on the price elasticity of foreign demand for domestic assets

analysis of the energy intensity evolution in the brazilian industrial sector 1995 to 2005 this study developed a method to evaluate the evolution of energy intensity in the brazilian industrial sector from 1995 to 2004 in order to do so it was necessary to obtain six different measures indicators of the sector energy intensity considering the concept of energy intensity as the ratio between energy consumption and the level of economic activity two measures were used for the energy consumption a thermal physical and an economic one for the level of economic activity three measures were used value of production value of delivered goods and added value in the brazilian industrial sector most of these indicators have behaved in a similar way in a disaggregated way energy intensity indicators show a unified direction of its evolution however a more elaborate study on the consumption profile of the brazilian industrial sector and its economical activities indicates the presence of important deviations concerning the annual rate of change in energy intensity besides there is no evident relation between these deviations and the composition of the different indicators of energy intensity

financial markets views about the euro swiss franc floor exchange rates and option prices incorporate market participants views about the credibility and the effects of exchange rate targets i present a model to determine exchange rates under policy targets that can be used to price options the model is estimated with euro swiss franc exchange rate and options price data in the first few months of the minimum exchange rate policy the implied survival probability of the policy for a 3 month horizon was typically less than 75 over time the credibility increased and this probability reached 95 in august 2014

environmental assessment by dea radial measurement u s coal fired power plants in iso independent system operator and rto regional transmission organization abstract the economic concept of weak and strong disposability on undesirable outputs dominated the previous discussions on dea data envelopment analysis radial measurement for environmental assessment this study reexamines the economic concept from the perspective of corporate strategies on how to adapt a regulation change on undesirable outputs the economic concept of disposability conventionally accepted by production economists is replaced by natural and managerial disposability in this study the natural disposability implies an environmental strategy that a firm attempts to decrease an input vector to reduce a vector of undesirable outputs given the decreased input vector the firm attempts to increase a vector of desirable outputs as much as possible this type of strategy indicates negative adaptation meanwhile the managerial disposability indicates an opposite strategy by increasing the input vector this disposability expresses an environmental strategy by which a firm considers a regulation change on undesirable outputs as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified operational and environmental performance by utilizing new technology and or new management the strategy indicates positive adaptation considering the two types of disposability this study discusses how to measure unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability by dea radial models to document the practicality of the proposed dea environmental assessment this study applies it to compare the performance of u s coal fired power plants under isos rtos independent system operators regional transmission organizations with that of the other power plants not belonging to any organization this study identifies two empirical findings one of the two findings is that the latter coal fired power plants outperform the former power plants belonging to isos rtos in terms of three efficiency measures this result indicates that isos and rtos do not provide an effective coordination for coal fired power plants at the level that can be found in the other power plants the other finding is that there is technological improvement in the operation of coal fired power plants

rational contagion and the globalization of securities markets this paper argues that globalization may promote contagion by weakening incentives for gathering costly information and by strengthening incentives for imitating arbitrary market portfolios in the presence of short selling constraints the gain of gathering information at a fixed cost may diminish as markets grow moreover if a portfolio manager s marginal cost for yielding below market returns exceeds the marginal gain for above market returns there is a range of optimal portfolios in which all investors imitate arbitrary market portfolios and this range widens as the market grows numerical simulations suggest that these frictions can have significant implications for capital flows in emerging markets

firm size and productivity evidence from the electricity distribution industry in brazil in this paper we apply stochastic frontier analysis through a distance function to investigate the impact of firm size on productivity development in electricity distribution we use a sample of seventeen brazilian firms from 1998 to 2005 and decompose productivity into technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical change moreover a further step is to decompose the technical change measurement into several components the results indicate that firm size is important for industry s productivity and therefore a key aspect to consider when making decisions that affect the market structure in the electricity distribution industry

risk sharing within the extended family evidence from the indonesia family life survey abstractin recent years there has been an increase in the availability of longitudinal household surveys in developing countries that allow the researchers to construct linkages between households with familial ties this type of data allows researchers to look at whether some household outcomes are influenced by decisions made at the extended family level this article utilizes data from two waves of the indonesia family life survey 1997 and 2000 to construct a panel of extended families in order to focus on one particular example of such outcome whether consumption risk sharing occurs among households within the extended family the findings show that after controlling for the extended family fixed effects changes in the household s own income still matter for changes in its consumption rejecting full consumption risk insurance however the coefficients on household own income are small indicating significant degrees of risk sharing results from a set of reduced form estimations suggest that ho

international and domestic collateral constraints in a model of emerging market crises abstract we build a model of emerging markets crises which features two types of collateral constraints firms in a domestic economy have limited borrowing capacity from international investors they also have limited borrowing capacity with respect to each other we study how the presence and changes in these collateral constraints affect financial and real variables a binding international constraint in the aggregate leads to a sharp rise in interest rates and fire sales of domestic assets while limited domestic collateral can lead to wasted international collateral these two collateral constraints can interact in important ways the first is disintermediation a fire sale of domestic assets causes banks to fail in their function of reallocating resources across the economy leading to wasted international collateral the second is a dynamic effect we show that firms in an economy with limited domestic collateral and a binding international collateral constraint will not adequately precaution against adverse shocks increasing the severity of these shocks

sustainability performance for brazilian electricity power industry an assessment integrating social economic and environmental issues the increased pressure on companies to address sustainability issues has resulted in the development of several voluntary corporate sustainability integration approaches the array of existing approaches is large and overwhelming resulting in companies not understanding what corporate sustainability really means for their businesses considering environmental economic and social issues this paper aims at assessing the performance of the brazilian electricity power industry in terms of its sustainability performance an analysis of global reporting initiative gri indicators for the energy sector lead to an assessment of its sustainability performance by applying data envelopment analysis dea specified with a directional distance function ddf five scenarios were created i flexible weights ii triple bottom line iii social issues iv economic issues and v environmental issues with considering i flexibility weights almost all companies are efficient we also found a significant difference when we compared i with the other four scenarios ii iii iv and v taking into account the triple bottom line scenario ii the results indicate that companies were less efficient when compared with the flexible weights scenario i taking into account the last three scenarios iii iv and v only four companies were considered as providing top benchmarks in sustainability performance

sustainability performance disclosures the case of independent power producers abstract independent power producers ipps investing across borders represent a crucial sector that produces an adverse impact on greenhouse gas emissions ghg the main purpose of this study is to articulate issues pertinent to sustainability performance among contemporary ipps which seek funding from the capital markets a framework employing a sustainability performance scorecard is developed based on an interdisciplinary literature review that spans the fields of corporate finance financial reporting and sustainability by examining the sustainability performance as disclosed by three cross border ipps from the u s europe and the emerging economy of asia this comparative case study unveils the current weaknesses in comparability relevance and usefulness in disclosures among the ipps it points out potential information asymmetry to decision making of the primary stakeholders who seek to invest in renewable and sustainable energy while countering short termism over financial returns a concerted policy effort on disclosures about sustainability performance would be crucial to channeling effective private investments into the development of renewable and sustainable energy

blueprint for an international lender of last resort abstract this paper proposes a low cost alternative to the large bailout packages that the international monetary fund imf has organized to address financial crises the imf would act as a lender of last resort faced with an unsustainable debt burden a government would declare default it would announce negotiations to restructure its debt at a sustainable level and a minimum restructured value of the debt during the restructuring period the imf would provide a cash support bid at a discount to the government s minimum offer the imf floor would guarantee liquidity and create a functioning market in the defaulted debt the proposal would remedy market failure preclude panic and contagion and facilitate an orderly debt restructuring this would be achieved without substantial official funds lenders would be forced to bear the risks they undertake thereby reducing moral hazard and future instability

sustainability performance for china s transportation industry under the environmental regulation abstract traffic and transportation industry is a carbon intensive industry in china the implementation of environmental regulation is of important practical significance nowadays literatures lack of quantitative analysis on transport industry s sustainability performance under the environmental regulation by using a directional distance function this paper aims to investigate the effect of environmental regulation on this industry furthermore this paper measures its green total factor productivity under the general intensity of regulation and strict regulation from 2000 to 2010 results show that the economic growth mode in transportation industry is still the extensive mode while there is great potential for the improvement of energy saving and production

the evolution and main determinants of productivity in brazilian electricity distribution 1998 2005 an empirical analysis abstract this paper estimates changes in the productivity of the brazilian electricity distribution sector using data envelopment analysis dea on a panel of 18 firms from 1998 to 2005 the study decomposes the productivity change of these distribution firms in terms of technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical progress this exercise aims to help the understanding of the main determinants of the evolution of productivity focusing its relationship with the restructuring process implemented in the 1990s tfp index records a yearly positive growth rate of 1 3 in the whole period under analysis for all firms technical change was the main component behind this evolution with an average growth of 2 1 per year while technical efficiency presented a yearly negative performance of 0 8 the results prove that in general terms the incentives generated in the reform process do not seem to have led the firms to behave in a more efficient manner

corporate sustainability ratings an investigation into how corporations use the dow jones sustainability index abstract the purpose of this paper is to explore the use of the dow jones sustainability index djsi with an emphasis on canadian corporations the paper provides insight into the use of the djsi in several areas including the use of its logo the steps taken by corporations to achieve initial acceptance to the index and the steps corporations take to maintain their inclusion in the djsi a content analysis of publicly available information from 24 canadian corporations listed in the djsi north america djsina showed that less than half of those sampled used the djsi logo in their sustainability reports or on their websites the majority of the published references to the djsi were in highlighting corporate achievements or in providing background information on the index a survey of 10 experts from the canadian corporations listed in the djsina revealed a wide range of strategies for gaining and maintaining inclusion in the index particularly involving a large number of internal stakeholders in responding to data requests and working with third parties several suggestions for improving the djsi were also provided including streamlining the questionnaire improving coordination among sustainability ratings agencies and enhancing transparency