decoupling china s carbon emissions increase from economic growth an economic analysis and policy implications as the world s second largest carbon emitter china has long been criticized as a free rider benefiting from other countries efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but not taking responsibility for its own emissions china has been singled out as one of the major targets at the subsequent negotiations after the kyoto meeting bq analyzing the historical contributions of interfuel switching energy conservation economic growth and population expansion to china s co2 emissions during 1980 97 this article clearly demonstrates that the above criticism is unjustified moreover given the fact that the role of china is an issue of perennial concern at the international climate change negotiations the article envisions some efforts and commitments that could be expected from china until its per capita income catches lip with the level of middle developed countries by emphasizing the it win win strategies these efforts and commitments are unlikely to jeopardize china s economic development and at the same time would give the country more leverage at the international climate change negotiations subsequent to the buenos sires meeting c 2000 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

stock market development and low carbon economy the role of innovation and renewable energy abstract we examine the effect of stock market development smd on the low carbon economy lce we consider two channels renewable energy and technological innovation by which this affect occurs we use the cross sectional autoregressive distributed lags cs ardl approach to analyse panel time series data over the period 1980 2016 for european union member countries we demonstrate that smd impedes lce in the long run in contrast technological innovation ti is found to be a driving factor in achieving lce in the long run our results also support the argument that renewable energy consumption and production enhance lce stock market development fosters lce through the channels of renewable energy and technological innovation overall results are robust to the conditions of short and long run homogeneity and the cross sectional dependence in the sample our results pose important policy implications

going going gone the apparent demise of the accruals anomaly consistent with public statements made by sophisticated practitioners we document that the hedge returns to sloan s sloan r g 1996 do stock prices fully reflect information in accruals and cash flows about future earnings accounting rev 71 3 289 315 accruals anomaly appear to have decayed in u s stock markets to the point that they are on average no longer reliably positive we explore some potential reasons why this has happened our empirical analyses suggest that the anomaly s demise stems in part from an increase in the amount of capital invested by hedge funds into exploiting it as measured by hedge fund assets under management and trading volume in extreme accrual firms a decline in the size of the accrual mispricing signal as measured by the magnitude of extreme decile accruals and the relative persistence of cash flows and accruals may also play a weaker role this paper was accepted by stefan reichelstein accounting

risk in dynamic arbitrage the price effects of convergence trading i develop an equilibrium model of convergence trading and its impact on asset prices arbitrageurs optimally decide how to allocate their limited capital over time their activity reduces price discrepancies but their activity also generates losses with positive probability even if the trading opportunity is fundamentally riskless moreover prices of identical assets can diverge even if the constraints faced by arbitrageurs are not binding occasionally total losses are large making arbitrageurs returns negatively skewed consistent with the empirical evidence the model also predicts comovement of arbitrageurs expected returns and market liquidity many hedge funds and other financial institutions attempt to exploit the relative mispricing of assets however from time to time the prices of the assets diverge forcing these institutions whom i will refer to as convergence traders or arbitrageurs to unwind some of their positions at spectacular losses the near collapse of the long term capital management ltcm hedge fund in 1998 is frequently cited as an example of this phenomenon 1 to what extent can these losses be attributed to the actions of arbitrageurs as opposed to unforeseen shocks why do other institutions with liquid capital not eliminate the abnormal returns around these events in this paper i develop a theoretical model to address these questions i show that such losses can occur in the absence of any shock i also show that even if the constraints faced by

funding liquidity and equity liquidity in the subprime crisis period evidence from the etf market using index and financial exchange traded funds etfs this study explores the relation between funding liquidity and equity liquidity during the subprime crisis period our empirical results show that a higher degree of funding illiquidity leads to an increase in bid ask spread and a reduction in both market depth and net buying imbalance such findings indicate that an increase in funding liquidity can improve equity liquidity with a stronger effect for the financial etfs than for the index etfs our study provides a better overall understanding of the effect of the liquidity supplier funding constraint during the subprime crisis period

does trade liberalization increase national energy use abstract this paper utilises the theoretical principles of antweiler et al antweiler w b r copeland and m s taylor 2001 is free trade good for the environment american economic review 91 4 pp 877 908 to estimate empirically the linkages between trade liberalization and energy use focusing on scale technique and composition effects results suggest that trade will increase energy use for the mean country in the sample

the changing landscape of accrual accounting a fundamental property of accrual accounting is to smooth temporary timing fluctuations in operating cash flows indicating an inherent negative correlation between accruals and cash flows we show that the overall correlation between accruals and cash flows has dramatically declined in magnitude over the past half century and has largely disappeared in more recent years the adjusted r 2 from regressing changes in accruals on changes in cash flows drops from about 70 90 in the 1960s to near zero under 20 in more recent years in exploring potential reasons for the observed attenuation we find that increases in non timing related accrual recognition as proxied by one time and nonoperating items and the frequency of loss firm years explain the majority of the overall decline on the other hand temporal changes in the matching between revenues and expenses and the growth of intangible intensive industries play only a limited role in explaining the observed attenuation finally the relative decline of the timing role of accruals does not appear to be associated with an increase in the asymmetrically timely loss recognition role

cash flows accruals and future returns this study explored the accrual anomaly the study is unique because it analyzed originally reported unrestated quarterly data for 1991 through the first quarter of 2004 to calculate accruals and used u s sec filing dates to identify the day on which investors first obtained information about accruals the study found that the accrual anomaly exists for quarterly accruals as has been found for annual accruals future quarterly earnings were found to be more highly associated with current net operating cash flows than with accruals because accruals have less persistence than cash flows companies with extremely high low current quarterly accruals have significant and negative positive abnormal returns through the subsequent four quarters

energy savings in nigeria is there a way of escape from energy inefficiency abstract this study estimates the transition probabilities for different energy use states in nigeria using the markov switching regression technique according to the results both energy efficient and energy inefficient states are less persistent but comparatively the energy inefficient state is more persistent thus in nigeria it is much difficult to escape from the energy inefficient state than the energy efficient state several reasons may explain this phenomenon and they include inefficient regulatory system poor institutional structure high corruption proliferation of second hand goods undeveloped markets high incidence of poverty and inefficient pricing in the energy sector pricing policies should be combined with institutional improvement and infrastructural development if nigeria wants to achieve a sustainable energy efficient state in the long term

industrial structure energy saving regulations and energy intensity evidence from chinese cities abstract exploring the drivers of declining energy intensity is necessary in order to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy in china to date studies have typically adopted case analysis to link enterprise features and energy saving performance the impact of internal industrial configuration in terms of size and ownership structure on aggregate energy intensity remains to be examined to fill this research gap this paper tests the impact of the internal structure of industries on city level energy intensity by employing a unique panel dataset of 283 cities for the period 2005 to 2010 the driscoll kraay method and instrumental variable are used to treat residual cross sectional dependence and endogeneity respectively results suggest that small scale enterprises exerts a negative effect on energy intensity a 1 increase in the output value proportion of small sized firms will lead to a decrease in total energy intensity of 0 067 in contrast the same change by medium enterprises will raise energy intensity by 0 031 a negative and or non significant coefficient suggests that for most energy intensive large and state owned enterprises china s 2006 top down energy saving regulation has been quite effective in targeting key energy intensive enterprises in china the findings reveal that state owned enterprises soes can act as promoters of rather than barriers to low carbon policy implementation in china given that the effectiveness of energy saving regulation will be undermined as a result of diluted regulatory strength in each enterprise market oriented energy price reform is proposed as a fundamental driver for guaranteeing a continual decline in energy intensity

the abatement of carbon dioxide intensity in china factors decomposition and policy implications to deal with the challenges brought about by climate changes china decided to reduce the carbon dioxide co2 intensity by 40 45 per cent from 2005 to 2020 using the decomposition technique this study finds that energy intensity is the most important force to drive the decline of co2 intensity between 1980 and 2008 followed by structural factors such as the adjustment of energy and industrial structure therefore any environmental policy to promote energy efficiency will play the biggest role in achieving the target of abating co2 intensity in 2020

the risk in hedge fund strategies theory and evidence from trend followers hedge fund strategies typically generate option like returns linear factor models using benchmark asset indices have difficulty explaining them following the suggestions in glosten and jagannathan 1994 this article shows how to model hedge fund returns by focusing on the popular trend following strategy we use lookback straddles to model trend following strategies and show that they can explain trend following funds returns better than standard asset indices though standard straddles lead to similar empirical results lookback straddles are theoretically closer to the concept of trend following our model should be useful in the design of performance benchmarks for trend following funds

does short selling amplify price declines or align stocks with their fundamental values critics of short selling argue that short sellers amplify price declines by targeting firms with falling prices in an unwarranted manner contrary to this viewpoint we find that increases in short interest for firms following a price decline are associated with measures of overpricing based on financial statement analysis our results extend to short selling activity following marketwide declines we also find evidence consistent with the profitability of short selling following price declines being driven by valuation based positions overall our findings suggest short sellers primarily undertake valuation based strategies following price declines and have implications for regulators limiting short selling following price declines is likely to impede efficient price discovery this paper was accepted by mary barth accounting

the paradox of financial fire sales the role of arbitrage capital in determining liquidity how can fire sales for financial assets happen when the economy contains well capitalized but non specialist investors our explanation combines rational expectations equilibrium and lemons models when specialist informed market participants are liquidity constrained prices become less informative this creates an adverse selection problem decreasing the supply of high quality assets and lowering valuations by non specialist uninformed investors who become unwilling to supply capital to support the price in normal times arbitrage capital can multiply itself by making uninformed capital function as informed capital but in a crisis this stabilizing mechanism fails

structural innovation and efficiency effects of environmental regulation evidence from china s carbon emissions trading pilot conventional wisdom argues that environmental regulation can trigger both structural adjustments and enhanced innovation we test this conjecture by using a difference in differences approach to analyze the impacts of china s carbon emission trading cet pilot policy on energy consumption we find that compliance with the cet regulation has triggered statistically significant adjustments in energy structure industrial structure and technological innovation adjustments in industrial structure also contribute to enhanced total factor energy efficiency whereas increased technological innovation has mixed effects on energy efficiency we show that in the short run government led innovation does not immediately contribute to improvement in energy efficiency whereas enterprise led innovation has a negative impact it indicates that cet regulation can affect energy efficiency through industrial structure and technological innovation overall our results provide new evidence for the strong version of the porter hypothesis our results also provide strong scientific support for china s recent transition towards market based carbon mitigation strategies

foreign investment and technology transfer a simple model abstract this paper develops a model in which international technology transfer through foreign direct investment emerges as an endogenized equilibrium phenomenon resulting from the strategic interaction between subsidiaries of multinational corporations and host country firms the model explicitly recognizes two types of costs the costs to the multinational of transferring technology to its subsidiaries and the learning costs of domestic firms the analysis points to the importance of the learning efforts of host country firms in increasing the rate at which mncs transfer technology the paper also explores some of the reasons why learning investment in host country firms may be suboptimal

a network model of financial system resilience abstract we examine the role of macroeconomic fluctuations asset market liquidity and network structure in determining contagion and aggregate losses in a stylized financial system systemic instability is explored in a financial network comprising three distinct but interconnected sets of agents domestic banks overseas banks and firms calibrating the model to advanced country banking sector data this preliminarily model generates broadly sensible aggregate loss distributions which are bimodal in nature we demonstrate how systemic crises may occur and analyse how our results are influenced by firesale externalities and the feedback effects from curtailed lending in the macroeconomy we also illustrate the resilience of our model financial system to stress scenarios with sharply rising corporate default rates and falling asset prices

china s changing energy intensity trend a decomposition analysis china experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000 but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003 most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change but disagreed on the role of structural change to the best of our knowledge no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000 in this paper we use logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980 2003 we find that 1 technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity 2 structural change at the industry and sector sub industry level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980 2003 although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period 3 structural change involving shifts of production between sub sectors however decreased overall energy intensity 4 the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress 5 inter fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity

slow moving capital we study three cases in which specialized arbitrageurs lost significant amounts of capital and as a result became liquidity demanders rather than providers the effects on security markets were large and persistent prices dropped relative to fundamentals and the rebound took months while multi strategy hedge funds who were not capital constrained increased their positions a large fraction of these funds actually acted as net sellers consistent with the view that information barriers within a firm not just relative to outside investors can lead to capital constraints for trading desks with mark to market losses our findings suggest that real world frictions impede arbitrage capital this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

national research funding and energy efficiency evidence from the national science foundation of china abstract the enhancement of energy efficiency is crucial to saving energy and reducing pollution emissions increasing investment in basic research may promote innovative energy technologies that improve energy efficiency in this paper the authors employ a stochastic frontier analysis to evaluate the impact of government funded research programs on improving national energy efficiency using estimates of energy efficiency based on the shepherd energy distance function the analysis used panel data from 30 provinces in china over the 2006 2015 period using the number of research programs funded by the national natural science foundation of china nsfc as a proxy the results show that research funding has a significantly negative effect on energy inefficiency the average energy efficiency continually increased from 2006 to 2015 in china while the energy efficiency in the eastern region was higher than that in the central and western regions in most years moreover a robustness test further validates and supports these findings some policy implications are proposed based on the empirical results

the real consequences of market segmentation we study the real effects of market segmentation due to credit ratings using a matched sample of firms just above and just below the investment grade cutoff these firms have similar observables including average investment rates however flows into high yield mutual funds have an economically significant effect on the issuance and investment of the speculative grade firms relative to their matches especially for firms likely to be financially constrained the effect is associated with the discrete change

sustainable total factor productivity growth the case of china abstract a scientific and rational evaluation of the sustainable development process is of vital and practical significance for not only china but also the entire world this study incorporates the ecological footprint index and the human development index into the translog production function to define and construct a sustainable total factor productivity growth index the sustainable total factor productivity growth of 30 provinces in china from 2006 to 2016 was calculated by employing the stochastic frontier analysis method based on the translog production function the results are as follows firstly from 2006 to 2016 the overall sustainable total factor productivity growth of china was slow indicating sluggish sustainable development secondly factors such as labor productivity and environmental regulations were found to improve sustainable technological efficiency positively while capital deepening economic openness and industrial structure played a negative role in promoting sustainable technological efficiency thirdly sustainable total factor productivity growth for china s regions presented different upward trends in the order of the western central and eastern regions from high to low four the divergence of sustainable total factor productivity growth among the provinces revealed a high incidence of economic imbalance accompanied by the matthew effect thus revealing the problems of unresolved imbalances in china s sustainable development progress hence to improve china s sustainable total factor productivity growth it is imperative to focus on measures such as ensuring environmental governance upgrading the industrial structure and narrowing the gap in regional development

how does foreign direct investment influence energy intensity convergence in china evidence from prefecture level data abstract the huge energy intensity gaps among chinese prefectures make the overall reduction of energy intensity extremely difficult energy intensity convergence eic i e catching up of the high energy intensity prefectures with the low ones is imperative for narrowing these gaps as one of the most important channels for international technology diffusion foreign direct investment fdi has great impact on energy intensity and may be beneficial for the convergence based on pollution haven hypothesis however fdi may result in energy intensity divergence to provide an in depth understanding of the mechanisms of fdi induced convergence divergence this paper employs markov chain approach to examine the impact of fdi on eic for 256 chinese prefectures in the period from 2005 to 2014 moreover we particularly emphasis on the influences of local specific characteristics such as human capital resource endowment and environmental regulation on fdi induced convergence divergence our study on 256 chinese prefectures finds that fdi helps prefectures with higher energy intensity to catch up with lower ones which strengthens eic the impact of fdi on eic varies depending on different local characteristics among all characteristics mentioned above human capital and environmental regulation benefit the convergence driving effect of fdi while this effect is hindered by resource endowment more comprehensive and detailed policies are recommended to address energy intensity gaps in china

can foreign direct investment harness energy consumption in china a time series investigation abstract this study assesses the long run relationship and short run dynamics between foreign direct investment fdi and energy consumption in china applying the bounds testing approach to annual data from 1982 to 2012 we find that a stable fdi energy nexus exists in the long run and a 1 increase in fdi reduces energy consumption by 0 21 however this study shows a positive association between fdi and energy consumption in the short run attributing to the dominance of the scale effect our results remain robust to different measurements and estimators it is suggested that the chinese government shall support the inward fdi in the tertiary and energy sectors and strengthen local absorptive capacities to fully internalize fdi related knowledge spillovers in energy conservation

an econometric model of serial correlation and illiquidity in hedge fund returns the returns to hedge funds and other alternative investments are often highly serially correlated in sharp contrast to the returns of more traditional investment vehicles such as long only equity portfolios and mutual funds in this paper we explore several sources of such serial correlation and show that the most likely explanation is illiquidity exposure i e investments in securities that are not actively traded and for which market prices are not always readily available for portfolios of illiquid securities reported returns will tend to be smoother than true economic returns which will understate volatility and increase risk adjusted performance measures such as the sharpe ratio we propose an econometric model of illiquidity exposure and develop estimators for the smoothing prole as well as a smoothing adjusted sharpe ratio for a sample of 908 hedge funds drawn from the tass database we show that our estimated smoothing coecien ts vary considerably across hedge fund style categories and may be a useful proxy for quantifying illiquidity exposure

the tips treasury bond puzzle we show that the price of a treasury bond and an inflation swapped treasury inflation protected securities tips issue exactly replicating the cash flows of the treasury bond can differ by more than 20 per 100 notional treasury bonds are almost always overvalued relative to tips total tips treasury mispricing has exceeded 56 billion representing nearly 8 of the total amount of tips outstanding we find direct evidence that the mispricing narrows as additional capital flows into the markets this provides strong support for the slow moving capital explanation of arbitrage persistence

the impact of mfa phasing out on world clothing and textile markets simulations using a world clothing and textile trade model and a new set of estimates of tariff equivalents suggest that the global welfare cost of the multifibre arrangement mfa amounted to us 7 3 billion a year in the mid 1980s most of this cost seems to have been inflicted on the established developing country exporters and on major industrial mfa markets emerging developing country exporters have also suffered considerably from the mfa but unlike the established exporters their losses may have largely occurred in the non mfa restricted markets where export prices have been depressed thus it is in the interest of both industrial and developing countries to eliminate the mfa the proposed phasing out of the mfa should go ahead as quickly as possible

hedge fund benchmarks information content and biases we discuss the information content and potential measurement biases in hedge fund benchmarks hedge fund indexes built from databases of individual hedge funds inherit the measurement biases in the databases in addition broad based indexes mask the diversity of individual hedge fund return characteristics consequently these indexes provide incomplete information to investors seeking diversification from traditional asset classes through the use of hedge funds the approach to constructing hedge fund benchmarks we propose is based on the simple idea that the most direct way to measure hedge fund performance is to observe the investment experience of hedge fund investors themselves the funds of hedge funds fofs in terms of measurement biases returns of fofs can deliver a cleaner estimate of the investment experience of hedge fund investors than the traditional approach in terms of risk characteristics indexes of fofs are more indicative of the demand side dynamics driven by hedge fund investors p

limited investment capital and credit spreads using proprietary credit default swap cds data i investigate how capital shocks at protection sellers impact pricing in the cds market seller capital shocks measured as cds portfolio margin payments account for 12 of the time series variation in weekly spread changes a significant amount given that standard credit factors account for 18 during my sample in addition seller shocks possess information for spreads that is independent of institution wide measures of constraints these findings imply a high degree of market segmentation and suggest that frictions within specialized financial institutions prevent capital from flowing into the market at shorter horizons

asset based style factors for hedge funds asset based style factors link returns of hedge fund strategies to observed market prices they provide explicit and unambiguous descriptions of hedge fund strategies that reveal the nature and quantity of risk asset based style factors are key inputs for portfolio construction and for benchmarking hedge fund performance on a risk adjusted basis we used previously developed models to construct asset based style factors and demonstrate that one model correctly predicted the return behavior of trend following strategies during out of sample periods in particular during stressful market conditions like those of september 2001

limits to arbitrage and the term structure of bond illiquidity premiums abstract theoretical models suggest that the relation of speculators capital and market liquidity is highly nonlinear changes in capital only marginally affect liquidity when capital is available abundantly but have a large effect when capital is scarce in this paper we confirm this relation within a regime switching model using three broad measures of german bond market liquidity we then analyze how the term structure of illiquidity premiums of german agency bonds is related to intermediaries capital and foreign flows illiquidity premiums are related to both variables only in the stress regime the effect of intermediaries capital is most strongly pronounced at the short end of the term structure in contrast flows into and out of the illiquid bond market segment constitute a level effect as they are related to illiquidity premiums of all maturities

quarterly accruals or cash flows in portfolio construction using quarterly and rolling four quarter data this study explores the incremental roles of accruals and net operating cash flows in generating abnormal returns for the full population of u s listed companies and specific industries quarterly net operating cash flow ocf is a stronger signal of the next quarter s returns than are accruals when rolling four quarter ocf and accruals were used to construct portfolios held for a whole year however ocf dominated accruals only in the first three fiscal quarters the industry specific results are consistent with the results for the full population for most industries investment managers and financial analysts should focus on ocf more than on accruals

multi period performance persistence analysis of hedge funds since hedge funds specify significant lock up periods we investigate persistence in the performance of hedge funds using a multi period framework in which the likelihood of observing persistence by chance is lower than in the traditional two period framework under the null hypothesis of no manager skill no persistence the theoretical distribution of observing wins or losses follows a binormial distribution we test this hypothesis using the traditional two period framework and compare the findings with the results obtained using our multi period framework we examine whether persistence is sensitive to the length of return measurement intervals by using quarterly half yearly and yearly returns we find maximum persistence at the quarterly horizon indicating that presistence among hedge fund managers is short term in nature

sell side debt analysts and debt market efficiency we explore sell side debt analysts contributions to the efficiency of securities markets we document that debt returns lag equity returns less when debt research coverage exists which is consistent with debt analysts facilitating the process by which available information is impounded in debt prices the effect of debt research on the debt market s lag is incremental to but comparable in magnitude to hedge fund ownership s effect no such effect exists for credit rating agencies we also find that the dissemination of debt reports has an immediate effect on return volatility in both markets which is consistent with debt analysts providing new information to securities markets increased return covariation suggests that this information impacts the pricing of debt and equity in the same direction a large percentage of debt reports do not induce any immediate debt market return reaction but do induce an equity return reaction which is consistent with new information being provided despite the absence of a debt market reaction finally there is a systematic variation in the debt market s trading and return reactions to debt research timely reports and those by high reputation brokers induce a quicker trading response thus enhancing liquidity whereas only timely reports induce a greater return response this study illuminates the institutional underpinnings of debt market efficiency and it has important implications for information content tests in the debt market where trading is limited

do weather induced moods affect the processing of earnings news we investigate whether unpleasant environmental conditions affect stock market participants responses to information events we draw from psychology research to develop a new prediction that weather induced negative moods reduce market participants activity levels exploiting geographic variation in equity analysts locations we find compelling evidence that analysts experiencing unpleasant weather are slower or less likely to respond to an earnings announcement relative to analysts responding to the same announcement but experiencing pleasant weather price association tests find evidence consistent with reduced activity due to weather induced moods delaying equilibrium price adjustments following earnings announcements we also use our analyst based research design to re examine an existing prediction that unpleasant weather induces investor pessimism and find evidence of both analyst pessimism and reduced activity in the presence of unpleasant weather together our study provides new evidence that both extends and reaffirms findings of a relation between unpleasant weather and market activities and contributes to the broader psychology and economics literature on the impact of weather induced mood on labor productivity this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

long term price effect of s p 500 addition and earnings quality when a company is added to the s p 500 index it receives a positive price response several explanations for this effect have been suggested but empirical findings do not provide a conclusive cause the inclusion of a company in the index may strengthen managerial incentives to provide high quality disclosures of financial data this study is an examination of the earnings quality of s p 500 companies before and after their addition to the index it finds that discretionary accruals significantly decrease after companies are added to the index which greatly improves earnings quality this change in earnings quality provides a possible explanation for the price response to the s p 500 addition

dynamic misspecification in the environmental kuznets curve evidence from co2 and so2 emissions in the united kingdom this study looks at the behaviour of emissions when in disequilibrium with respect to the environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship we use the non linear threshold cointegration and error correction methodology and a long dataset beginning in 1830 in an application to the united kingdom there is significant evidence that not only does the inverse u shape hold between per capita co 2 and so 2 emissions and gdp per capita but we also find that temporary disequilibrium from the long run ekc is corrected in an asymmetric fashion this may be due to the historical pressure of environmental regulation in the uk to reduce emissions that are higher than permitted however further analysis suggests that technological change can partially account for the asymmetric adjustment

a model of capital and crises we develop a model in which the capital of the intermediary sector plays a critical role in determining asset prices the model is cast within a dynamic general equilibrium economy and the role for intermediation is derived endogenously based on optimal contracting considerations low intermediary capital reduces the risk bearing capacity of the marginal investor we show how this force helps to explain patterns during financial crises the model replicates the observed rise during crises in sharpe ratios conditional volatility correlation in price movements of assets held by the intermediary sector and fall in riskless interest rates

short selling and price discovery in corporate bonds we show short selling in corporate bonds forecasts future bond returns short selling predicts bond returns where private information is more likely in high yield bonds particularly after lehman brothers collapse of 2008 short selling predicts returns following both high and low past bond returns this together with short selling increasing following past buying order imbalances suggests short sellers trade against price pressures as well as trade on information short selling predicts bond returns both in the individual bonds that are shorted and in other bonds by the same issuer past stock returns and short selling in stocks predict bond returns but do not eliminate bond short selling predicting bond returns bond short selling does not predict the issuer s stock returns these results show bond short sellers contribute to efficient bond prices and that short sellers information flows from stocks to bonds but not from bonds to stocks

energy intensity and foreign direct investment a chinese city level study article i nfo in this paper we investigate the relationship between the energy intensity of chinese cities and the location of foreign firms employing a unique dataset of 206 of the largest prefecture level cities between 2005 and 2008 our results reveal a non linearinverted u shaped relationship between energy intensity and city level per capita income with the majority of cities on the downward slope of the curve we also find evidence of a significant and negative relationship between the foreign direct investment fdi flows into a city and energy intensity however this effect varies by geographic location reflecting differences in the ability of regions to absorb and benefit from environmental spillovers the relatively small economic effect of fdi can in part explained by the propensity for foreign firms to invest in energy intensive sectors coupled with the trend for china to invest heavily in capital intensive industries

in search of environmental spillovers there is an extensive literature that examines the relationship between foreign direct investment fdi and the productivity and competitiveness of domestic firms using estimation techniques from the productivity spillover literature this paper tests for the presence of environmental spillovers from foreign firms on the basis that foreign owned firms may encourage firms in their extended supply chain to improve their environment related management practices evidence for the existence of environmental spillovers should be easier to find than productivity spillovers where firms naturally attempt to minimise intra industry knowledge leakage in this paper we show that first foreign owned firms are more likely to implement environmental management systems ems and second that the presence of foreign owned firms in those sectors that a firm supplies can encourage good environmental practice this is especially true if a firm is foreign has high absorptive capacity and operates in the presence of formal and informal networks

capital mobility and asset pricing we present a model for the equilibrium movement of capital between asset markets that are distinguished only by the levels of capital invested in each investment in that market with the greatest amount of capital earns the lowest risk premium intermediaries optimally trade off the costs of intermediation against fees that depend on the gain they can offer to investors for moving their capital to the market with the higher mean return the bargaining power of an investor depends on potential access to alternative intermediaries in equilibrium the speeds of adjustment of mean returns and of capital between the two markets are increasing in the degree to which capital is imbalanced between the two markets and can be reduced by competition among intermediaries

energy productivity and chinese local officials promotions evidence from provincial governors abstract improving energy productivity is one of the most cost effective ways to achieve a sustainable development target the existing literature has shown some factors that have driven the improvement in china s energy productivity however these studies do little to tackle the role of chinese local officials political promotions can be seen as the most important career incentive for chinese local officials hence we intend to study whether energy productivity affects chinese local officials promotions in this paper the data of position changes for the 31 provincial governors during 1978 2012 are utilized we adopted probit models to empirically examine the correlation between provincial governors political promotions and energy productivity the empirical results demonstrate that 1 energy productivity has a significantly positive impact on provincial governors political promotions in china meaning that the provincial governors have the momentum to improve energy productivity and 2 the effect of energy productivity on provincial governors political promotions has evolved dynamically changing along with the transformation of the economic growth mode and the adjustment of the local officials promotion mechanism the results are helpful in understanding the drivers of the improvement in china s energy productivity and provide insightful implications for conducting energy policy in china

portfolio choice and pricing in illiquid markets abstract this paper studies portfolio choice and pricing in markets in which immediate trading may be impossible it departs from the literature by removing restrictions on asset holdings and finds that optimal positions depend significantly and naturally on liquidity when expected future liquidity is high agents take more extreme positions given that they do not have to hold those positions for long when they become undesirable consequently larger trades should be observed in markets with more frequent trading liquidity need not affect the price significantly however because liquidity has offsetting impacts on different agents demands this result highlights the importance of unrestricted portfolio choice the paper draws parallels with the transaction cost literature and clarifies the relationship between the price level and the realized trading frequency in this literature

intermediary asset pricing abstract we model the dynamics of risk premia during crises in asset markets where the marginal investor is a financial intermediary intermediaries face an equity capital constraint risk premia r

do professional currency managers beat the benchmark investigation of an index of returns on professionally managed currency funds and a subset of returns from 34 individual currency fund managers finds that over the 1990 2006 period currency fund m

prices technology development and the rebound effect abstract energy efficiency is the critical parameter for policies that aim at reducing energy consumption while maintaining or even boosting economic growth the two main options to influence energy efficiency are changes in relative prices i e raising the price of energy through economic instruments or to introduce new technologies which increase the productivity of each unit of energy this paper is based on the notion that in an equilibrium economy the marginal economic productivity is identical for all factors i e energy labour knowledge and capital from this premise two main conclusions can be drawn first any change in price or technology will have an impact on the whole economy by creating feedbacks through the substitution of factors of production and goods as well as increased wealth second the two policy approaches changing relative prices and technology development are not opposite to each other they are the two faces of the same reality and should be developed and promoted simultaneously and consistently

performance characteristics of hedge funds and commodity funds natural vs spurious biases it is well known that the pro forma performance of a sample of investment funds contains biases these biases are documented in brown goetzmann ibbotson and ross 1992 using mutual funds as subjects the organization structure of hedge funds as private and often offshore vehicles makes data collection a much more onerous task amplifying the impact of performance measurement biases theis paper reviews these biases in hedge funds we also propose using funds of hedge funds to measure aggregate hedge fund performance based on the idea that the investment experience of hedge fund investors can be used to estimate the performance of hedge funds

global effects of developed country trade restrictions on textiles and apparel this paper uses an applied general equilibrium model to analyze the impacts of quota and tariff restrictions used by developed countries against textile and clothing imports from developing countries in the model countries are represented by their actual size in terms of gdp weakening rent transfer effects compared to partial equilibrium analysis results based on 1986 data suggest annual global gains from elimination of quotas and tariffs of around 23 billion in aggregate developing countries gain around 8 billion suggesting that gains to developing countries from improved access more than offset losses from foregone rent transfers as quotas and tariffs are abolished copyright 1990 by royal economic society

is energy consumption sensitive to foreign capital inflows and currency devaluation in pakistan this study investigates the relationship between foreign capital inflows and energy consumption by incorporating economic growth exports and currency devaluation in energy demand function for the

the effect of foreign direct investment and stock market growth on clean energy use across a panel of emerging market economies this study investigates the impact of both fdi inflows and stock market developments on clean energy use across 20 emerging market economies spanning the period 1991 2012 it accounts for cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity in the analysis and employs robust panel econometric techniques the empirical results on long run elasticities display that economic output fdi inflows and stock market developments have all a significant positive impact on clean energy consumption finally the results on heterogeneous panel non causality tests indicate the presence of unidirectional causality running from fdi to clean energy consumption in the short run for robustness purposes the paper also estimates long run elasticities for individual countries with the findings documenting that both fdi inflows and stock market developments have a considerable positive impact on clean energy uses the findings urge that both policy makers and governments in these emerging market economies should initiate effective public private partnership investments in clean energy projects by providing lucrative incentives which in turn will encourage both domestic and foreign investors to invest more in clean energy projects and eventually moving these economies towards sustainable economic growth

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

asset markets with heterogeneous information this paper studies competitive equilibria of economies where assets are heterogeneous and traders have heterogeneous information about them markets are defined by a price and a procedure for clearing trades and any asset can in principle be traded in any market buyers can use their information to impose acceptance rules which specify which assets they are willing to trade in each market the set of markets where trade takes place is derived endogenously the model can be applied to find conditions under which these economies feature fire sales contagion and flights to quality

changes in carbon intensity in china empirical findings from 1980 2003 china experienced sustainable rapid economic growth over the period 1980 2003 but at the same time energy related carbon intensity showed a downward trend it begs the question therefore what factors were driving this decline in carbon intensity and will this decline be maintained in future moreover what measures can be adopted to ensure a continual decline in carbon intensity these questions led to increased research in the factors governing co2 emission in china this paper quantifies the driving force behind china s primary energy related carbon intensity and measures the material production sectors final energy related carbon intensity our results show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline of energy related carbon intensity was the reduction in real energy intensity however policies that focus only on the decline in energy intensity are insufficient to further decrease carbon intensity the change of primary energy mix can improve the decline of carbon intensity this should focus on the material production sectors development strategies and final energy use greater emphasis should be given to secondary industry which needs national and regional governments policy support

margin based asset pricing and deviations from the law of one price in a model with heterogeneous risk aversion agents facing margin constraints we show how securities required returns increase in both their betas and their margin requirements negative shocks to fundamentals make margin constraints bind lowering risk free rates and raising sharpe ratios of risky securities especially for high margin securities such a funding liquidity crisis gives rise to bases that is price gaps between securities with identical cash flows but different margins in the time series bases depend on the shadow cost of capital which can be captured through the interest rate spread between collateralized and uncollateralized loans and in the cross section they depend on relative margins we test the model empirically using the credit default swap bond bases and other deviations from the law of one price and use it to evaluate central banks lending facilities jel g01 g12 g13 e44 e50 the paramount role of funding constraints becomes particularly salient during liquidity crises with the one that started in 2007 being an excellent case in point banks unable to fund their operations closed down and the funding problems spread to other investors such as hedge funds that relied on bank funding therefore traditional liquidity providers became forced sellers interest rate spreads increased dramatically treasury rates dropped sharply and central banks stretched their balance sheets to facilitate funding these funding problems had significant asset pricing effects the most extreme example being the failure of the law of one price loop securities with nearly

economic structure development policy and environmental quality an empirical analysis of environmental kuznets curves with chinese municipal data in many cases the relationship between environmental pollution and economic development can be generally depicted by an inverted u shaped curve or an environmental kuznets curve where pollution increases with income at the beginning and decreases after a certain level of income however what determine the shape of an enviornmental kuznets curve such as the height and the turning point of the curve have not been thoroughly studied a good understanding of the determinants is vitally important to the development community especially for the developing world where income growth is a high priority and yet environmental pollution also needs to be carefully controlled this study analyzes the impacts of economic structure development strategy and environmental regulation on the shape of the environmental kuznets curve with a city level panel dataset obtained from china the results show that economic structure development strategy and environmental regulation can all have important implications on the relationship between environmental environmental quality and economic development but the impacts can be different at different development stages

anticipated and repeated shocks in liquid markets we show that treasury security prices in the secondary market decrease significantly before subsequent auctions and recover shortly after this price pattern implies a large issuance cost for the treasury department which is estimated to be between 9 and 18 basis points of the auction size for example this cost amounts to over half a billion dollars for issuing treasury notes alone in 2007 our results appear to be consistent with the hypothesis of primary dealers limited risk bearing capacity and the imperfect capital mobility of end investors in the treasury market e g federal agencies sovereign wealth funds pension funds and etc highlighting the important role of capital mobility even in the most liquid financial markets

the relationship amongst energy consumption foreign direct investment and output in developed and developing countries abstract the current study inspects the nexus amongst energy consumption fdi inflows and output in 75 countries meantime the period 1990 2010 we further examine this relationship with regard to developed as well as developing countries assembled from diverse geographic regions from the world the present results display that there is proof of bidirectional linkage concerning fdi and output per capita concerning renewable energy consumption and gross domestic product per capita and concerning non renewable energy and gross domestic product per capita in the three groups of countries developed all and developing in addition the judgments detect a bidirectional linkage concerning renewable energy consumption and fdi in developed countries an increase of 1 rate in renewable energy participates to improving fdi by 0 185 and at the same time an increase of fdi contributes to enhancing renewable energy by 0 292 nevertheless in the case of all and developing countries the results discover unidirectional link moving from foreign inflows to both sorts of energy in conclusion the policy recommendations of our empirical results are taken into consideration

convertible bond arbitrage liquidity externalities and stock prices abstract in the context of convertible bond issuance we examine the impact of arbitrage activity on underlying equity markets in particular we use changes in equity short interest following convertible bond issuance to identify convertible bond arbitrage activity and analyze its impact on stock market liquidity and prices for the period 1993 to 2006 there is considerable evidence of arbitrage induced short selling resulting from issuance moreover we find strong evidence that this activity is systematically related to liquidity improvements in the stock these results are robust to controlling for the potential endogeneity of arbitrage activity

dealing with dealers sovereign cds comovements abstract we show that sovereign cds that have common dealers tend to be more correlated especially when the dealers display similar quoting activity in those contracts over time this commonality in dealers activity is a powerful driver of cds return comovements over and above fundamental similarities between countries including default liquidity and macro factors we posit that the mechanism causing the excess correlation is the buying pressure faced by cds dealers for credit enhancements and regulatory capital reliefs an instrumental variable analysis helps alleviate the endogeneity concerns in our analysis

on the persistence and pricing of industry wide and firm specific earnings cash flows and accruals economic theory suggests that the industry wide component of firm performance is more persistent than the firm specific component this paper tests whether investors fail to fully appreciate the relatively higher lower persistence of industry wide firm specific earnings consistent with predictions we find that the industry wide component of earnings is a significant predictor of future stock returns we show that this form of mispricing is distinct from the accrual anomaly sloan 1996 a hedge portfolio trading strategy that exploits signals from both industry fundamentals and accounting accruals generates abnormal returns in excess of either strategy alone additional evidence suggests that the market underreacts overreacts to industry wide cash flows firm specific accruals but correctly prices both industry wide accruals and firm specific cash flows

presidential address asset price dynamics with slow moving capital i describe asset price dynamics caused by the slow movement of investment capital to trading opportunities the pattern of price responses to supply or demand shocks typically involves a sharp reaction to the shock and a subsequent and more extended reversal the amplitude of the immediate price impact and the pattern of the subsequent recovery can reflect institutional impediments to immediate trade such as search costs for trading counterparties or time to raise capital by intermediaries i discuss special impediments to capital formation during the recent financial crisis that caused asset price distortions which subsided afterward after presenting examples of price reactions to supply shocks in normal market settings i offer a simple illustrative model of price dynamics associated with slow moving capital due to the presence of inattentive investors i address the implications for asset price dynamics of the apparent slow movement of investment capital to trading opportunities the arrival of new capital to an investment opportunity can be delayed by fractions of a second in some markets for example an electronic limit order book market for equities or by months in other markets such as that for catastrophe risk insurance accordingly prices respond to supply or demand shocks with a sharp reaction because of the relatively small subset of capital and thus risk bearing capacity that is immediately available to absorb a shock on short notice such a price impact is substantially reversed over time as additional capital becomes available the amplitude of the immediate price impact and the pattern of the subsequent recovery can reflect many sorts of attention costs to trade as well as institutional impediments to capital movement such as search costs for trading

capital immobility and the reach for yield abstract i build a model in which financial intermediation slows down capital flows investors optimally learn from intermediary performance to allocate capital toward profitable intermediaries intermediaries reach for yield i e they invest in high tail risk assets in an attempt to drive flows and reduce liquidation risk intermediaries with strong opportunities face a trade off between choosing a portfolio that maximizes profitability and choosing one that maximizes the speed at which capital flows in equilibrium reaching for yield is stronger among intermediaries with weak opportunities resulting in a reduction in the informativeness of performance investors thus take longer to learn and capital flows become less responsive to performance capital becomes slow moving because the reach for yield dampens learning the model predicts capital immobility to be stronger when tail risk is high when tail risk is under priced and in asset classes with large cross sectional variation in tail risk exposures

overcoming limits of arbitrage theory and evidence abstract limits to arbitrage arise because financial intermediaries may face funding constraints when mispricing worsens using a model with limits to arbitrage where we allow arbitrageurs to secure capital even in case of underperformance we show that arbitrageurs that are more protected from withdrawals have more mean reverting and volatile returns using data on hedge fund performance we find robust support for these hypotheses funds with contractual impediments to withdrawals and funds with performance insensitive outflows recover more quickly after a bad year and have more volatile returns our evidence is consistent with the idea that some hedge funds overcome the limits to arbitrage

early option exercise never say never abstract a classic result by merton 1973 is that except just before expiration or dividend payments one should never exercise a call option and never convert a convertible bond we show theoretically that this result is overturned when investors face frictions early option exercise can be optimal when it reduces short sale costs transaction costs or funding costs we provide consistent empirical evidence documenting billions of dollars of early exercise for options and convertible bonds using unique data on actual exercise decisions and frictions our model can explain as much as 98 of early exercises by market makers and 67 by customers

marginal abatement cost air pollution and economic growth evidence from chinese cities abstract the directional distance function ddf with multiple bad outputs allows estimation of conditional marginal abatement cost mac that would be more informative than the unconditional mac estimated with a single pollutant applying a multi pollutant parametric output ddf approach we estimate the macs of co2 so2 and nox emissions for 105 chinese cities in 2006 2014 it is found that the period medians of the macs for the three emissions all increase over time while the medians of the macs for different cities tend to vary significantly a goodness of fit criterion is developed and used to evaluate the fit of alternative models which demonstrates the superiority of the multi pollutant model we have also shown that there exists a positive relationship between mac and economic growth finally several policy implications are suggested for reducing the overall emission abatement costs of china

what drives the energy saving role of fdi and industrialization in east africa abstract analysis of the unconditional impacts of foreign direct inflows fdis and industrialization on energy intensity does not show the hidden roles of some economic conditions such as income and trade openness in this study we focused on the conditional impacts of fdis and industrialization on energy productivity using a panel data consisting of thirteen 13 east african countries covering 1980 2011 the baseline result shows that higher income and a well integrated economy are pro energy productive but fdis and intense industrialization are anti energy productive in the sub region this result remains robust even when we exclude the high income group and control for income group effects income significantly promotes energy productivity more in low income group than middle income group intense industrialization and fdis significantly decreases energy productivity only in low income countries trade openness significantly promotes energy productivity only in middle income group we have shown that fdis and income intense industrialization and fdis and intense industrialization and globalization are complementary forces that promote energy productivity in east africa but this is more evident for the middle income group than the low income group in the sub region based on the result we recommend a quadruplet programme called the growth industrial foreign investment and trade programme giftp last our result suggests that unconditional analysis of energy productivity should not be seen as an end in itself but a basis for further analysis