determinants of electricity consumption function in pakistan old wine in a new bottle abstract the objective of the study is to re investigate the multivariate electricity consumption function for pakistan particularly economic growth foreign direct investment and population growth over a 36 year time period i e between 1975 and 2010 the study employed the bounds testing procedure for cointegration which examines the short run and long run estimates dynamic short run causality test is applied to determine the causality direction between electricity consumption and its determinants by using wald f statistics the results reveal that determinants of electricity consumption function are cointegrated and influx of foreign direct investment income and population growth is positively related to electricity consumption in pakistan however the intensity of these determinants is different on electricity consumption if there is 1 increase in income foreign direct investment and population growth electricity consumption increases by 0 973 0 056 and 1 605 respectively this infers that income foreign direct investment and population growth induce an increase in electricity consumption in pakistan dynamic short run causality test indicates that there has been unidirectional causality which is running from population growth to electricity consumption in pakistan

on the determinants of bank interest margins under credit and interest rate risks abstract this paper explores the determinants of optimal bank interest margins based on a simple firm theoretical model under multiple sources of uncertainty and risk aversion the model demonstrates how cost regulation credit risk and interest rate risk conditions jointly determine the optimal bank interest margin decision we find that the bank interest margin is positively related to the bank s market power to the operating costs to the degree of credit risk and to the degree of interest rate risk an increase in the bank s equity capital has a negative effect on the spread when the bank faces little interest rate risk the effect of rising interbank market rate on the spread is ambiguous and depends on the net position of the bank in the interbank market our findings provide alternative explanations for the empirical evidence concerning bank spread behavior

determinants of energy consumption function in saarc countries balancing the odds abstract the objective of the study is to investigate the multivariate energy consumption function for south asian association for regional cooperation saarc countries namely bangladesh india nepal pakistan and srilanka particularly economic growth gdp relative prices of energy rep foreign direct investment fdi and different financial development indicators i e broad money supply liquid liabilities domestic credit provided by banking sector and domestic credit to private sector over a period of 1975 2011 the results reveal that granger causality running from all other variables to fdi which indicates a strong support for the hypothesis that energy consumption ec gdp rep and fd are important determinants in promoting the fdi both in short and long run in the context of bangladesh the results suggest for india indicate that gdp fdi rep and fd are useful in explaining the movements of ec in the short run similarly the granger causality results indicate that ec gdp rep and fd are the important determinants of fdi in case of nepal rep is the only variable whose movements in the short run determined by movements in the other four variables i e gdp fdi ec and fd however the ec also provide useful information about the variable fd the results of pakistan indicate the causal relationship among fdi and ec which supports the feedback hypothesis in the short and long run similarly both variables i e fdi and gdp supports the feedback hypothesis both in the long run and short run where as fd and ec fd and rep fdi and rep and finally rep and gdp supports the feedback hypothesis in the short run in case of srilanka this study did not find any strong support of the causality among the variables either in the short or long run except unidirectional granger causality running from fd to ec and ec to fdi

electricity consumption and economic growth exploring panel specific differences abstract in this paper we examine the long and short run dynamics between electricity consumption and economic activities using panel data of per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp of 160 countries for the period of 1980 2010 accounting for the degree of electricity dependence and the level of urbanization furthermore in order to capture the differences in this relationship the full sample is divided into various subsamples based on countries income levels regional locations and oecd memberships this framework is argued and found to be appropriate since the causal links and inferences arising therefrom differ considerably among the subsamples which led us to conclude that the electricity growth nexus is highly sensitive to regional differences countries income levels urbanization rates and supply risks

who should buy long term bonds according to conventional wisdom long term bonds are appropriate for conservative long term investors this paper develops a model of optimal consumption and portfolio choice for infinite lived investors with recursive utility who face stochastic interest rates solves the model using an approximate analytical method and evaluates conventional wisdom as risk aversion increases the myopic component of risky asset demand disappears but the intertemporal hedging component does not conservative investors hold assets to hedge the risk that real interest rates will decline long term inflation indexed bonds are most suitable for this purpose but nominal bonds may also be used if inflation risk is low

banking spreads in latin america i introduction financial intermediation in latin america is low by international standards financial systems in latin america are still largely bank based but after a short period of strong credit growth sparked by financial liberalization in the early 1990s bank lending has not yet recovered from the collapse following the banking crises of the mid 1990s as shown by singh et al 2005 as a result from figure 1 it is clear that bank lending as a percentage of gross domestic product gdp is low compared to industrialized countries and other emerging markets this lack of financial intermediation is seen as an important obstacle to growth there is a considerable body of evidence indicating that financial intermediation is not only correlated with growth but also a causal factor in explaining economic performance see e g levine 2004 the low levels of lending in latin america appear related to the prevalence of high intermediation costs in the region intermediation spreads in latin america are high compared to those in other banking markets this is true when measuring spreads as either ex ante bank spreads the difference between weighted averages of lending rates and bank funding costs figure 2 or ex post net interest margins defined as the bank s total interest income minus total interest expense divided by the sum of interest bearing assets figure 3 the high levels of spreads are not a recent phenomenon and unlikely to be a result of the ongoing process of bank consolidation as in other regions in the 1990s latin america saw a trend toward bank consolidation and concentration to a large extent as depicted in inter american development bank 2004 consolidation was driven by financial crises and subsequent regulatory tightening while this resulted in a marked reduction in the number of banks in most countries it does not seem to have yielded a decline in competition intensity partly because it was accompanied by a lowering of barriers of entry to foreign banks which is shown in gelos and roldos 2004 and inter american development bank 2004 in fact banking spreads have fallen somewhat over the past decade although the pace of the reduction has been slow figure 4 1 this paper takes a closer look at the determinants of bank interest margins in latin america using bank and country level data from 85 countries including 14 latin american economies we assess the role of bankand country specific factors in determining banking spreads using microdata from more than 2 200 banks taking an international perspective allows us to delineate the key dimensions in which latin america differs from other regions the paper differs from existing studies in further dimensions apart from the latin american specific focus in a cross country approach among other aspects we make use of new or expanded data sets including comprehensive information on reserve requirements and foreign ownership and investigate the relationship between competition and bank spreads using behavioral measures of bank competition suggested by the new industrial organization literature figure 1 omitted figure 2 omitted the results suggest that latin america has higher interest rate levels less efficient banks and larger reserve requirements than other regions and that these factors have a significant impact on spreads however latin american countries do not differ markedly from their peers in other aspects that are found important in determining the cost of financial intermediation such as inflation bank profit taxation average bank size or average equity as a percentage of total bank assets ii the determinants of spreads literature review the extensive literature on bank behavior suggests that at the country level the following factors are likely to influence the cost of credit creditor rights and the quality of the legal framework higher recovery rates and shorter times to repossess collateral in countries with better legal environments are expected to reduce bank spreads

the numeraire portfolio abstract a portfolio formed from a given list of assets is defined as a numeraire portfolio for the list if a it is self financing b its value is always positive and c zero is always the best conditional forecast of the numeraire dominated rate of return of every asset on the list the numeraire portfolio exists if and only if there are no profit opportunities from trading assets on the list for a sample list of heterogeneous assets nyse size quintile portfolios corporate bonds and short term bills numeraire dominated returns are similar to market model forecast errors and as abnormal return measures clearly dominate market adjusted returns

environmental kuznets curve among brics countries spot lightening finance transport energy and growth factors abstract the environmental sustainability reforms considered the highly successful factor for the countries that devoted for green investment in transportation financial activities energy demand and growth factors this challenging task is monetized by fair environmental policies that integrated with the countries action plans brics countries is no exception that wider accepted this environmental task and provoked the need of healthy investment for sustainable growth this study reviewed finance transport energy and growth factors under environmental kuznets curve ekc framework in a panel of brics countries by utilizing a consistent time series data from 1990 to 2015 the study employed panel fixed effect regression to observe unmodeled heterogeneity among the cross section identifiers that vary over a period of time the results show that transport services and industry value added indvad both escalate fossil fuel ffuel energy consumption while financial factors environmental prices and renewable energy consumption rec decreases fossil energy in a region bank capital broad money supply domestic credit railways goods transported travel services and indvad considerably increases nitrous oxide emissions n 2 o whereas rec significantly decreases n 2 o emissions in a panel of countries greenhouse gas ghg emissions affected by domestic credit railways goods transported travel services and indvad there is a monotonic decreasing relationships between i per capita income and ffuel energy ii railways passenger carried and n 2 o emissions iii rec and ghg emissions and iv income and n 2 o emissions whereas there is an inverted u shaped relationship between broad money supply and n 2 o emissions and u shaped relationships between per capita income and ghg emissions the panel causality tests confirmed the bidirectional relationship between financial indicators and railways transportation while bank capital granger cause ffuel energy per capita income indvad and rec but not other way around in a panel of brics countries the inter temporal relationships show that bank capital indvad and price level will largely affect ffuel energy n 2 o emissions and ghg emissions respectively for the next 10 years period the results of the study emphasized the need of green policy instruments that should be connected with the country s policies and program for sustained growth

electricity consumption and economic growth a time series experience for 17 african countries abstract while the availability of electricity by itself is not a panacea for the economic and social problems facing africa the supply of electricity is nevertheless believed to be a necessary requirement for africa s economic and social development this paper tests the long run and causal relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 17 african countries for the period 1971 2001 using a newly developed cointegration test proposed by pesaran et al 2001 and using a modified version of the granger causality test due to toda and yamamoto 1995 the advantage of using these two approaches is that they both avoid the pre testing bias associated with conventional unit root and cointegration tests the empirical evidence shows that there was a long run relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gdp per capita for only 9 countries and granger causality for only 12 countries for 6 countries there was a positive uni directional causality running from real gdp per capita to electricity consumption per capita an opposite causality for 3 countries and bi directional causality for the remaining 3 countries the result should however be interpreted with care as electricity consumption accounts for less than 4 of total energy consumption in africa and only grid supplied electricity is taken into account

dynamic hedging and extreme asset co movements the paper investigates the portfolio allocation effects of increased asset co movements during market downturns we develop a model for the stock price process that allows for increased and asymmetric dependence between extreme return realizations we isolate the portfolio hedging demands that arise due to extreme co movements and find a substantial shift of the portfolio holdings toward the risk free asset we demonstrate that accounting for dependence between extreme events in portfolio decisions leads to significant economic gains that stem primarily from intertemporal hedging motives these findings are robust along alternative modeling assumptions of extreme co movements and conditional correlation

energy crisis greenhouse gas emissions and sectoral growth reforms repairing the fabricated mosaic abstract the study examined energy crisis and sought solutions for reforms in the largest regions of the world i e east asia pacific europe and central asia latin america the caribbean south asia and sub saharan africa the study used number of growth related factors over the period of 1975 2012 the results indicate significant relationship between electric power shortage and growth related specific factors however the intensity for each factor varies from region to region the results of granger causality verify multiple cause effect channels in the different regions i e feedback hypothesis economic factors driven electric shortage electric shortage driven economic factors and no causal relationship between the variables the results of variance decomposition analysis indicate that greenhouse gas emissions exhibit the largest contribution due to shortages in the electric power transmission the study opens the debate for environmentalists government and non government officials to formulate the sustainable policies related to energy reforms

energy security under de carbonization scenarios an assessment framework and evaluation under different technology and policy choices abstract how would a low carbon energy transformation affect energy security this paper proposes a framework to evaluate energy security under long term energy scenarios generated by integrated assessment models energy security is defined as low vulnerability of vital energy systems delineated along geographic and sectoral boundaries the proposed framework considers vulnerability as a combination of risks associated with inter regional energy trade and resilience reflected in energy intensity and diversity of energy sources and technologies we apply this framework to 43 scenarios generated by the message model as part of the global energy assessment including one baseline scenario and 42 low carbon scenarios where the global mean temperature increase is limited to 2 c over the pre industrial level by and large low carbon scenarios are associated with lower energy trade and higher diversity of energy options especially in the transport sector a few risks do emerge under low carbon scenarios in the latter half of the century they include potentially high trade in natural gas and hydrogen and low diversity of electricity sources trade is typically lower in scenarios which emphasize demand side policies as well as non tradable energy sources nuclear and renewables while diversity is higher in scenarios which limit the penetration of intermittent renewables

the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in the asean countries abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth among the association of south east asian nations asean 4 members namely indonesia malaysia singapore and thailand using modern time series techniques for the period 1971 2002 the results indicate that there is a bi directional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in malaysia and singapore this means that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic growth and that economic growth also stimulates further electricity consumption in the two countries however uni directional causality runs from economic growth to electricity consumption in indonesia and thailand without any feedback effect thus electricity conservation policies can be initiated without deteriorating economic side effects in the two countries

an asset allocation puzzle this paper examines popular advice on portfolio allocation among cash bonds and stocks it documents that this advice is inconsistent with the mutual fund separation theorem which states that all investors should hold the same composition of risky assets in contrast to the theorem popular advisors recommend that aggressive investors hold a lower ratio of bonds to stocks than conservative investors the paper explores various possible explanations of this puzzle and finds them unsatisfactory copyright 1997 by american economic association

electricity consumption and economic growth in transition countries a revisit using bootstrap panel granger causality analysis abstract the purpose of this paper is to revisit the granger causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth for 15 transition economies for the period 1975 2010 using a bootstrap panel causality approach that allows for both cross sectional dependency and for heterogeneity across countries applying this approach we found a unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth only in belarus and bulgaria from economic growth to electricity consumption in the czech republic latvia lithuania and the russian federation bidirectional causality only in ukraine while no granger causality in any direction in albania macedonia moldova poland romania serbia slovak republic and slovenia these results show that there is a limited support for the electricity led growth hypothesis nevertheless these different findings provide important implications for energy strategies and policies for transition countries

the relationship between agricultural technology and energy demand in pakistan abstract the purpose of this study was two fold i to investigate the casual relationship between energy consumption and agricultural technology factors and ii electricity consumption and technological factors in the agricultural sector of pakistan the study further evaluates four alternative but equally plausible hypotheses each with different policy implications these are i agricultural technology factors cause energy demand the conventional view ii energy demand causes technological factors iii there is a bi directional causality between the two variables and iv both variables are causality independent by applying techniques of cointegration and granger causality tests on energy demand i e total primary energy consumption and electricity consumption and agricultural technology factors such as tractors fertilizers cereals production agriculture irrigated land high technology exports livestock agriculture value added industry value added and subsides over a period of 1975 2010 the results infer that tractor and energy demand has bi directional relationship while irrigated agricultural land share of agriculture and industry value added and subsides have supported the conventional view i e agricultural technology cause energy consumption in pakistan on the other hand neither fertilizer consumption and high technology exports nor energy demand affect each others government should form a policy of incentive based supports which might be a good policy for increasing the use of energy level in agriculture

dynamic asset allocation portfolio decomposition formula and applications a new decomposition of the optimal portfolio in dynamic models with von neumann morgenstern preferences and ito prices is established the formula rests on a change of numeraire that uses pure discount bonds as units of account the dynamic hedging demand has two components the first hedge insures against fluctuations in an optimally designed bond with a maturity date matching the investor s horizon the second hedge immunizes against fluctuations in the market price of risk in the bond numeraire various applications are examined new results concerning the behavior of extremely risk averse individuals the demand for bonds and its long horizon limit and the optimal portfolio in incomplete markets are derived the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please email journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

consumption and portfolio choice under internal multiplicative habit formation this paper explores the optimal consumption and investment behavior of an individual who derives utility from the ratio between his consumption and an endogenous habit we obtain closed form policies under general utility functionals and stochastic investment opportunities by developing a nontrivial linearization to the budget constraint this enables us to explicitly characterize how habit formation affects the marginal propensity to consume and optimal stock bond investments we also show that in a setting that combines habit formation with epstein zin utility consumption no longer grows at unrealistically high rates at high ages and investments in risky assets decrease

optimal hedging in a dynamic futures market with a nonnegativity constraint on wealth abstract this paper examines the issue of optimal hedging demands for futures contracts from an investor who cannot freely trade his portfolio of primitive assets in the context of lognormal rather than normal returns and of a constant absolute risk aversion utility function in this context the nonnegativity constraint on wealth is binding and the optimal hedging demands are not identical with those encountered in the bulk of the literature which has largely overlooked this problem negative results concerning the derivation of equilibrium in the futures markets and the computation of the open interests then follow

optimal contracts in a continuous time delegated portfolio management problem this article studies the contracting problem between an individual investor and a professional portfolio manager in a continuous time principal agent framework optimal contracts are obtained in closed form these contracts are of a symmetric form and suggest that a portfolio manager should receive a fixed fee a fraction of the total assets under management plus a bonus or a penalty depending upon the portfolio s excess return relative to a benchmark portfolio the appropriate benchmark portfolio is an active index that contains risky assets where the number of shares invested in each asset can vary over time rather than a passive index in which the number of shares invested in each asset remains constant over time fund managers compensation schemes in a delegated portfolio management setting have been of special interest to both academics and practitioners academic interest stems in part from the rapid growth of managed funds over the last two decades gompers and metrick 1998 report that by december 1996 mutual funds pension funds and other financial intermediaries held discretional control over more than half of the u s equity market it is thus of importance to study the impact of institutional trading on asset prices and to integrate into one model both asset pricing and delegated portfolio management compensation as advocated by brennan 1993 allen and santomero 1997 and allen 2001 it is also important to understand the relationship between a manager s trading strategies and his implicit incentives or career concerns see e g brown harlow and starks 1996 brown goetzmann and park 1997 chevalier and ellison 1999 and chen and pennacchi 2000 these concerns include internal promotion from a small to a large fund higher outside offers and the flow of money through the fund under management 1 the importance of fund manager compensation is also underscored by congressional passage in 1970 of the amendment to

a general equilibrium model of international portfolio choice we investigate in a two country general equilibrium model whether a bias in consumption towards domestic goods will necessarily lead to a preference for domestic securities we develop a model where investors are constrained to consume only from their domestic capital stock and where it is costly to transfer capital across countries in this model investors less risk averse than an investor with log utility bias their portfolios towards domestic assets investors more risk averse than log however prefer foreign assets thus this model suggests that it is unlikely that the portfolios observed empirically can be explained by the high proportion of domestic goods in total consumption we investigate in a two country general equilbrium model whether a bias in consumption toward domestic goods will necessarily lead to a preference for domestic assets in an investor s optimal portfolio we constrain investors to consume only from their domestic capital stock and introduce a proportional cost for transferring goods from one country this cost gives rise to endogenous deviations from the law of one price lop thus the home and foreign investors do not hold identical portfolios we show that an investor s optimal portfolio is biased towards domestic equity only if she is less risk averse than an investor with log utility investors with relative risk aversion greater than one exhibit a preference for the foreign asset this is because the exchange rate derived endogenously is negatively correlated with the return on the foreign asset and therefore the translated return on the foreign stock is less risky than that on the domestic stock thus the results of this model suggest that it is unlikely that the preference for domestic assets that is observed empirically can be explained by the high proportion of domestic goods in total consumption there exists a considerable body of literature documenting the gains from international diversification grubel 1968 was the first to propose that international diversification allows investors to attain lower return variances than those achievable by diversifying domestically this proposition relies on the correlation between stock indices across countries being significantly less

regional differences in the dynamic linkage between co2 emissions sectoral output and economic growth environmental degradation measured by co2 emissions is a significant challenge to sustainable economic development owing to significant differences in the empirical relationship between the economic growth and co2 emissions and policies adopted by different countries to overcome the challenge are not decisive this study aims to generalize our knowledge about the relationship between co2 emissions per capita and economic growth across the world for 1980 2009 periods besides it explores whether the transformation of different economies e g agrarian to industrial and industrial to sophisticated service economy over the past few decades yielded any significant positive impact towards sustainable economic development by reducing the level of co2 emission empirical results suggest that i except for high income countries environmental kuznets curve ekc is a general phenomenon across the world and ii the transformation of different economies towards a service economy has produced more pollution in high income countries and less pollution in low and middle income countries

market timing with option implied distributions a forward looking approach we address the empirical implementation of the static asset allocation problem by developing a forward looking approach that uses information from market option prices to this end we extract constant maturity s p 500 implied distributions and transform them to the corresponding risk adjusted ones then we form optimal portfolios consisting of a risky and a risk free asset and evaluate their out of sample performance we find that the use of risk adjusted implied distributions times the market and makes the investor better off than if she uses historical returns distributions to calculate her optimal strategy the results hold under a number of evaluation metrics and utility functions and carry through even when transaction costs are taken into account not surprisingly the reported market timing ability deteriorated during the recent subprime crisis an extension of the approach to a dynamic asset allocation setting is also presented this paper was accepted by wei xiong finance

causal relationship between trade openness economic growth and energy consumption a panel data analysis of asian countries abstract this paper explores the causal relationship between economic growth trade openness and energy consumption using data of 15 asian countries the study covers the period of 1980 2011 we have applied panel cointegration and causality approaches to examine the long run and causal relationship between variables empirical results confirm the presence of cointegration between variables the impact of economic growth and trade openness on energy consumption is found to be positive the panel granger causality analysis reveals the bidirectional causality between economic growth and energy consumption trade openness and energy consumption

a note on merton s optimum consumption and portfolio rules in a continuous time model in the paper optimum consumption and portfolio rules in a continuous time model by r c merton j econ theory 3 1971 373 413 solutions obtained in cases when marginal utility at zero consumption is finite are not feasible while they do satisfy the hamilton jacobi bellman equations they do not represent appropriate value functions because the boundary behavior near zero wealth is not satisfactorily dealt with in this note we specify the boundary behavior and characterize optimal solutions journal of economic literature classification numbers 022 213

risk aversion in a dynamic asset allocation experiment we conduct a controlled laboratory experiment in the spirit of merton 1971 in which subjects dynamically choose their portfolio allocation between a risk free and risky asset using the optimal allocation of an investor with hyperbolic absolute risk aversion hara utility we fit the experimental choices to characterize the risk profile of our participants despite substantial heterogeneity decreasing absolute risk aversion and increasing relative risk aversion are the predominant types we also find some evidence of increased risk taking after a gain finally the session level risk attitudes show a different profile than the individual descriptions of risk attitudes

optimal portfolio management with american capital guarantee abstract the aim of the paper is to investigate finite horizon portfolio strategies which maximize a utility criterion when a constraint is imposed on a terminal date european guarantee or on every intermediate date american guarantee we prove the optimality of the option based portfolio insurance method for both european and american cases when an expected crra utility function is maximized the american obpi is fully described in a black scholes environment as well as in the more general case of complete markets using the gittins index techniques developed by el karoui and karatzas 1995 optimality results are extended to general utility functions

multivariate granger causality between electricity consumption exports and gdp evidence from a panel of middle eastern countries this paper examines the causal relationship between electricity consumption exports and gross domestic product gdp for a panel of middle eastern countries we find that for the panel as a whole there are statistically significant feedback effects between these variables a 1 per cent increase in electricity consumption increases gdp by 0 04 per cent a 1 per cent increase in exports increases gdp by 0 17 per cent and a 1 per cent increase in gdp generates a 0 95 per cent increase in electricity consumption the policy implications are that for the panel as a whole these countries should invest in electricity infrastructure and step up electricity conservation policies to avoid a reduction in electricity consumption adversely affecting economic growth further policy implications are that for the panel as a whole promoting exports particularly non oil exports is a means to promote economic growth and that expansion of exports can be realized without having adverse effects on energy conservation policies

electricity consumption and economic growth in china abstract this paper applies the error correction model to examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and real gdp for china during 1971 2000 our estimation results indicate that real gdp and electricity consumption for china are cointegrated and there is unidirectional granger causality running from electricity consumption to real gdp but not vice versa in order to overcome the constraints on electricity consumption the chinese government has to speed up the nation wide interconnection of power networks to upgrade urban and rural distribution grids and to accelerate rural electrification

a monte carlo method for optimal portfolios this paper proposes a new simulation based approach for optimal portfolio allocation in realistic environments with complex dynamics for the state variables and large numbers of factors and assets a first illustration involves a choice between equity and cash with nonlinear interest rate and market price of risk dynamics intertemporal hedging demands significantly increase the demand for stocks and exhibit low volatility we then analyze settings where stock returns are also predicted by dividend yields and where investors have wealth dependent relative risk aversion large scale problems with many assets including the nasdaq sp500 bonds and cash are also examined the question of optimal portfolio allocation has been of long standing interest for academics and practitioners in finance while the mean variance analysis of markowitz 1952 is still commonly used among portfolio managers it has been well understood since merton 1971 that long term investors would prefer portfolios that include hedging components to protect against fluctuations in their investment opportunities prompted by the seminal papers of merton 1969 1971 and samuelson 1969 studies have explored various aspects of the dynamic portfolio problem when asset prices follow diffusion processes e g richard 1975 this literature has relied for the most part on a dynamic programming approach to the problem more recent contributions by pliska 1986 karatzas lehoczky and shreve 1987 and cox and huang 1989 have proposed an alternative resolution method based on martingale techniques in the context of this approach an optimal portfolio formula was derived by ocone and karatzas 1991 this expression involves expectations of random variables depending on j6erme b detemple is at boston university school of management and cirano rene

information and bank credit allocation abstract private information obtained by lenders leads to borrower capture to the extent that such information cannot be communicated credibly to outsiders we analyze how this capture affects the loan portfolio allocation of informed lenders first we show that banks charge higher interest rates and finance relatively less creditworthy borrowers in market segments with greater information asymmetries second when faced with greater competition from outside lenders banks reallocate credit toward more captured borrowers flight to captivity third if borrower quality and captivity are sufficiently correlated an increase in the competitiveness of uninformed lenders can worsen the informed lender s overall loan portfolio the model explains observed consequences of financial liberalizations

optimal investment and consumption when allowing terminal debt we analyze a dynamic optimization problem which involves the consumption and investment of an investor with constant relative risk aversion for consumption but with a risk aversion for final wealth which does not necessarily imply that terminal wealth must always be positive we require risk aversion for terminal wealth to be positive but not monotone there is a point of maximal risk aversion at zero wealth and the investor may continue to consume when wealth is negative using dual optimization methods we can derive explicit solutions and we find that the optimal solution differs in a fundamental way from the case where risk aversion is monotone it turns out that the optimal consumption function is convex and concave at different wealth levels and that the optimal investment strategy may no longer be monotone as a function of the remaining time to invest and consume

valuation optimal asset allocation and retirement incentives of pension plans we provide a framework in which we link the valuation and asset allocation policies of defined benefits plans with the lifetime marginal productivity schedule of the worker and the pension plan formula in turn we examine the retirement policies that are implied by the primitives of the model and the value of pension obligations our model provides an explicit valuation formula for a stylized defined benefits plan the optimal asset allocation policies consist of the replicating portfolio of the pension liabilities and the growth optimum portfolio independent of the pension liabilities we show that the worker will retire when the ratio of pension benefits to current wages reaches a critical value which depends on the parameters of the pension plan and the discount rate using numerical techniques we analyze the feedback effect of retirement policies on the valuation of plans and on the asset allocation decisions article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

optimal risk sharing with effort and project choice we consider first best risk sharing problems in which the agent can control both the drift effort choice and the volatility of the underlying process project selection in a model of delegated portfolio management it is optimal to compensate the manager with an option type payoff where the functional form of the option is obtained as a solution to an ordinary differential equation in the general case the optimal contract is a fixed point of a functional that connects the agent s and the principal s maximization problems we apply martingale duality methods familiar from optimal consumption investment problems

dynamic asset allocation with mean variance preferences and a solvency constraint abstract the aim of this article is to analyze the portfolio strategies that are mean variance efficient when continuous rebalancing is allowed and a solvency constraint wealth positiveness is imposed at each point in time under very general assumptions ito processes for the security price dynamics those efficient strategies are identified as synthetic put options on the particular inefficient portfolio yielding the return with minimal second moment this general characterization allows us to derive a closed form formula for the optimal portfolio weights when the investment opportunity set is constant the optimal weights are explicit functions of the current market index the formula is then used to simulate dynamically efficient strategies for different horizons and targets and to describe the time pattern of the allocation to stocks versus bonds

interest margins and bank regulation in central america and the caribbean abstract this paper examines empirically the determinants of bank interest margins in central america and the caribbean over the period 1998 2014 a particular focus is set on the impact of differences in the regulatory environment and market structure across countries in explaining the interest margins of individual banks our results suggest that bank market power operating costs credit risk and liquid asset holdings increase the margin between loan and deposit rates while increased income diversification and gdp growth are associated with lower loan deposit spreads when considering information on banking regulation we find strong evidence to support our main hypothesis that improvements in market quality and liberalization have a significant effect on interest margins more specifically reductions in entry requirements to banking higher involvement of foreign banks and increased financial statement transparency are associated with significant reductions in interest margins

dynamic asset allocation in a mean variance framework the aim of this article is to analyze the portfolio strategies that are mean variance efficient when continuous rebalancing is allowed between the current date 0 and the horizon t under very general assumptions when a zero coupon bond of maturity t exists the dynamic efficient frontier is a straight line the slope of which is explicitly characterized every dynamic mean variance efficient strategy can be viewed as buy and hold combinations of two funds the zero coupon bond of maturity t and a continuously rebalanced portfolio an appropriate dynamic strategy defining the latter is explicitly derived for two particular price processes and comparisons of the efficient frontiers static versus dynamic are provided in these cases

an intertemporal general equilibrium asset pricing model the case of diffusion information this paper provides sufficient conditions for the equilibrium price system and a vector of exogenously specified state variable processes to form a diffusion process in a pure exchange economy the conditions involve smoothness of agents utility functions and certain nice properties of the aggregate endowment process and the dividend processes of traded assets in place of the dynamic programming a martingale representation technique is utilized to characterize equilibrium portfolio policies this technique is useful even when there does not exist a finite dimensional markov structure in the economy and thus the markovian stochastic dynamic programming is not applicable a gents are shown to hold certain hedging mutual funds and the riskless asset in contrast to earlier results the market portfolio does not have a special role in hedging since the markets are dynamically complete when there exists a finite dimensional markov system in the economy the dimension of the hedging demand identified through the markovian dynamic programming may be much larger than that identified by the martingale method copyright 1987 by the econometric society

reason for reserve reserve requirements and credit this paper considers the impact of a regulatory policy action on bank credit and traces its incidence across banks i make use of a reserve requirement increase in lebanon that was considerably greater on foreign currency deposits than on domestic currency deposits all banks cut lending as they scrambled to adjust portfolios but the policy shock disproportionately affected banks with a greater reliance on dollar funding and with low buffers of dollar liquid assets exposed domestic owned banks also adjusted more slowly than similar foreign owned banks that obtained outside funding descriptive firm bank matching evidence reveals a disproportionate impact on small firms

does option compensation increase managerial risk appetite this paper solves the dynamic investment problem of a risk averse manager compensated with a call option on the assets he controls under the manager s optimal policy the option ends up either deep in or deep out of the money as the asset value goes to zero volatility goes to infinity however the option compensation does not strictly lead to greater risk seeking sometimes the manager s optimal volatility is less with the option than it would be if he were trading his own account furthermore giving the manager more options causes him to reduce volatility managers with convex compensation schemes play an important role in financial markets this paper solves for the optimal dynamic investment policy for a risk averse manager paid with a call option on the assets he controls the paper focuses on how the option compensation impacts the manager s appetite for risk when he cannot hedge the option position on one hand the convexity of the option makes the manager shun payoffs that are likely to be near the money under the optimal policy the manager either significantly outperforms his benchmark or else incurs severe losses furthermore in examples of optimal trading strategies asset volatility goes to infinity as asset value goes to zero yet option compensation does not strictly lead to greater risk seeking as asset value grows large or if the evaluation date is far away the manager moderates asset risk for example if the manager has constant relative risk aversion crra asset volatility converges to the merton constant as asset value goes to infinity in some situations the manager actually chooses a lower asset volatility than he would if he were investing on his own because the leverage inherent in his option magnifies his exposure to the asset volatility in addition with all constant or decreasing absolute risk averse utility functions from the hyperbolic absolute risk averse hara class giving the manager more options causes him to reduce asset volatility in the crra case for example the manager targets a fixed volatility for his personal

the determinants of bank interest rate margins an international study abstract this paper studies the determinants of bank net interest margins nims in six selected european countries and the us during the period 1988 1995 for a sample of 614 banks we apply the ho and saunders model ho t saunders a 1981 the determinants of bank interest margins theory and empirical evidence journal of financial and quantitative analyses 16 581 600 to a multicountry setting and decompose bank margins into a regulatory component a market structure component and a risk premium component the regulatory components in the form of interest rate restrictions on deposits reserve requirements and capital to asset ratios have a significant impact on banks nims the empirical results suggest an important policy trade off between assuring bank solvency high capital to asset ratios and lowering the cost of financial services to consumers low nims the more segmented or restricted the banking system both geographically and by activity the larger appears to be the monopoly power of existing banks and the higher their spreads macro interest rate volatility was found to have a significant impact on bank nims this suggests that macro policies consistent with reduced interest rate volatility could have a positive effect in reducing bank margins

hedge fund seeding via fees for seed swaps under idiosyncratic risk we develop a dynamic valuation model of the hedge fund seeding business by solving the consumption and portfolio choice problem for a risk averse manager who launches a hedge fund through a seeding vehicle this vehicle i e fees for seed swap specifies that a strategic partner seeder provides a critical amount of capital in exchange for participation in the funds revenue our results indicate that the new swap not only solves the serious problem of widespread financing constraints for new and early stage funds esfs managers but can be highly beneficial to both the manager and the seeder if structured properly

short horizon regulation for long term investors we study the effects of imposing repeated short horizon regulatory constraints on long term investors we show that value at risk and expected shortfall constraints when imposed dynamically lead to similar optimal portfolios and wealth distributions we also show that in utility terms the costs of imposing these constraints can be sizeable for a 96 funded pension plan both an annual value at risk constraint and an annual expected shortfall constraint can lead to an economic cost of about 2 5 3 8 of initial wealth over a 15 year horizon

the determinants of bank interest margins theory and empirical evidence this paper has developed a model of bank margins or spreads in which the bank is viewed as a risk averse dealer it was demonstrated that an interest spread or margin would always exist and that this was the result of transactions uncertainty faced by the bank moreover it was shown that this pure spread depended on four factors the degree of managerial risk aversion the size of transactions undertaken by the bank bank market structure and the variance of interest rates the model implied that liability and asset structures had to be analyzed together since they were directly interrelated through transactions uncertainty it was shown that because of this transactions uncertainty hedging behavior was perfectly rational within an expected utility maximizing framework extending the model from a structure with one kind of loan and deposit to loans and deposits with many maturities should lead to further interesting insights into margin determination especially as portfolio effects may become apparent

dynamic portfolio choice with parameter uncertainty and the economic value of analysts recommendations we derive a closed form solution for the optimal portfolio of a non myopic utility maximizer who has incomplete information about the alphas or abnormal returns of risky securities we show that the hedging component induced by learning about the expected return can be a substantial part of the demand using our methodology we perform an ex ante empirical exercise which shows that the utility gains resulting from optimal allocation are substantial in general especially for long horizons and an ex post empirical exercise which shows that analysts recommendations are not very useful

the rationality of asset allocation recommendations the popular finance literature describes the asset allocation decision as one of the most important factors in determining investment performance this article reviews the implications of modern portfolio theory for the asset allocation decision and then examinesthe recommendations of some leading financial experts to see if they are consistent with theory

overuse of wood based bioenergy in selected sub saharan africa countries review of unconstructive challenges and suggestions excessive wood consumption for energy and over dependence on fossil fuel based energy are fundamental issues of importance regarding the destruction of environmental sanity in this respect international communities are seeking to explore opportunities on how to encourage aggressive deployment of technologies for clean and sustainable development and possibly renewable the kyoto protocol on climate change meeting in 1997 with about 160 countries in attendance has been used as one of the platform of discourse on carbon emissions reduction strategies advocated strategies agreed include increase in renewable energy consumption via modern techniques massive deployment of renewable energy systems on a global scale will ensure a reasonable displacement of oil based energy production which is the main source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in sub saharan africa limited access to modern energy in the region has stepped up reliance on bioenergy consumption in form of wood fuel and charcoal resulting to attendant effects on human health environment and the biodiversity in general in view of the foregoing this study presents a review on the current situations of unconstructive effects in the overuse of fuel wood and its charcoal derivative for energy consumption in three selected sub saharan african countries nigeria ghana and uganda in conclusion suggestions on how to confront the challenges associated with the over exploitation conditions of fuel wood in the region are put forward the suggestions could be part of the pursuit to increase electricity availability reliability and security with lower level of emissions in the region

identifying the bank lending channel in brazil through data frequency we study how monetary policy affects bank lending behavior with an unique database and an event study approach using the daily frequencies of interest rates and new loans in our data as a source of identification we estimate banks reactions to monetary policy committee copom decisions and to announcements of reserve requirement changes we argue that these estimated reduced form coefficients can be interpreted as supply shifts the behavior of the estimates corroborates the claim that we capture supply movements since new loans depends negatively on unexpected basic interest rate and reserve requirements changes and the opposite is true for the lending interest rate evidence suggests that banking lending channel is unimportant results are robust to using different bank characteristics to define financial constraint to the monetary policy instrument basic interest rates or reserve requirement and to the measure of monetary policy stance

the asset allocation puzzle is still a puzzle abstract intertemporal hedging activity has been advocated as being the solution to the asset allocation puzzle a standing assumption made in the dynamic asset allocation literature is that one or several bonds can perfectly hedge the interest rate risk and related market price of risk in the economy in a multi asset world ceteris paribus such an assumption biases the portfolio allocation of a non myopic investor towards bonds we extend the literature to allow for an incomplete bond market when solving for the optimal portfolio choice of a rational investor it is shown that investors with a high level of risk aversion could invest more in stocks than in bonds

drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in the baltic states a structural decomposition analysis since the mid 1990s three baltic states have significantly increased their per capita gross domestic product gdp and at the same time have managed to keep the co2 equivalent co2e emissions low we used structural decomposition analysis to identify the drivers of change for co2e emissions in these countries between 1995 and 2009 a period that includes the collapse of the soviet union restructuring and economic growth and the great recession the results show that final demand has been the main driving force for increasing emissions in the baltic states and would have caused an 80 64 and 143 emission increase in estonia latvia and lithuania respectively all other factors kept constant this increase has been partly offset by a declining emission intensity of the economy especially in latvia and lithuania whereas in estonia which has one of the highest emission intensities in europe a shift in consumption patterns towards low carbon consumption items and a decarbonizing economic structure were the main balancing factors it is likely that the baltic states will experience a continuation of economic growth given their relatively low per capita gdp which is less than half of the european union average thus adequate carbon policies are paramount

risk sensitive asset allocation abstract this paper develops a continuous time modeling approach for making optimal asset allocation decisions macroeconomic and financial factors are explicitly modeled as gaussian stochastic processes which directly affect the mean returns of the assets we employ methods of risk sensitive control theory thereby using an infinite horizon objective that is natural and features the long run expected growth rate and the asymptotic variance as two measures of performance analogous to the mean return and variance respectively in the single period markowitz model the optimal strategy is a simple function of the factor levels and even with constraints on the portfolio proportions it can be computed by solving a quadratic program explicit formulas can be obtained as is illustrated by an example where the only factor is a vasicek type interest rate and where there are two assets cash and a stock index the methods are further illustrated by studies of two data sets u s data with two assets and up to three factors and australian data with three assets and three factors

renewable energy policy and electricity market reforms in china the article examines the potential effectiveness of the renewable energy policy in china and its regulatory law framework it frames the option of renewable energy technology within the background of the long lasting electricity problems that china has faced including serious supply shortages reliance on coal and severe environmental contamination its dual administrative and ownership system based on state and privately owned industry is discussed together with the market reform measures adopted in the sector current renewable energy policy is analysed and the scope of the 2005 renewable energy promotion law is investigated this is conducted within the context of the electricity sector reform that china adopted and its effects upon the prospects of encouraging as well as expanding the development of renewable energy this study draws upon primary information collected from interviews with stakeholders on the policy adequacy and identifies three main types of shortcomings that have interfered with a more successful expansion of renewable energy in china

equilibrium prices in the presence of delegated portfolio management abstract this paper analyzes the asset pricing implications of commonly used portfolio management contracts linking the compensation of fund managers to the excess return of the managed portfolio over a benchmark portfolio the contract parameters the extent of delegation and equilibrium prices are all determined endogenously within the model we consider symmetric fulcrum performance fees distort the allocation of managed portfolios in a way that induces a significant and unambiguous positive effect on the prices of the assets included in the benchmark and a negative effect on the sharpe ratios asymmetric performance fees have more complex effects on equilibrium prices and sharpe ratios with the signs of these effects fluctuating stochastically over time in response to variations in the funds excess performance

nuclear energy consumption commercial energy consumption and economic growth in south asia bootstrap panel causality test abstract the objective of the study is to investigate the causal relationship among nuclear energy consumption commercial energy consumption i e oil consumption gas consumption electricity consumption and coal consumption and economic growth in south asian countries namely afghanistan bangladesh bhutan india maldives nepal pakistan and sri lanka over the period of 1975 to 2010 data is analyzed by bootstrap panel granger causality method the results reveal that nuclear energy consumption granger causes economic growth in nepal and pakistan while commercial energy consumption i e oil consumption granger causes economic growth in bangladesh bhutan maldives nepal and srilanka gas consumption granger causes economic growth in bangladesh bhutan india and maldives electricity consumption granger causes economic growth in india and srilanka finally coal consumption granger causes economic growth in bangladesh bhutan nepal and srilanka on the other side economic growth granger causes nuclear energy consumption in pakistan economic growth granger causes oil consumption in bhutan maldives and srilanka economic growth granger causes gas consumption in nepal srilanka and pakistan finally economic growth granger causes electricity consumption economic growth granger causes coal consumption in all south asian countries the findings show that the nature of causality between nuclear energy consumption economic growth and commercial energy consumption economic growth is in favor of the neutrality hypothesis in most of the countries

dynamic asset allocation for stocks bonds and cash closed form solutions for hara optimal portfolios are obtained in a dynamic portfolio optimization model in three assets stocks bonds and cash in a vasicek type model of stochastic interest rates with correlated stock prices the hara is a buy and hold combination of a zero coupon bond with maturity matching the investor s horizon and a crra mutual fund this simple characterization facilitates insights about investor behavior over time and provides explanations on the rational use of convex versus concave investment strategies the model illuminates clearly the role of the different market parameters and relative risk aversion in portfolio strategies

labor supply flexibility and portfolio choice in a life cycle model abstract this paper examines the effect of the labor leisure choice on portfolio and consumption decisions over an individual s life cycle the model incorporates the fact that individuals may have considerable flexibility in varying their work effort including their choice of when to retire given this flexibility the individual simultaneously determines optimal levels of current consumption labor effort and an optimal financial investment strategy at each point in his life cycle we show that labor and investment choices are intimately related the ability to vary labor supply ex post induces the individual to assume greater risks in his investment portfolio ex ante

on the optimality of path dependent structured funds the cost of standardization abstract this paper examines the suitability of an important class of standard financial structured products namely those whose performances are based on smoothing the return of a given risky underlying asset while providing a guarantee at maturity using various assumptions about the customers attitudes towards risk we show that such standardized products are not optimal even if the financial market volatility is constant as a by product we provide in particular the optimal portfolio value in the regret rejoice framework to go further with the notion of aversion of getting a return smaller than the risk free one using the notion of compensating variation we determine for the first time the monetary losses of providing these standardized products instead of the optimal ones to the customers we show that these monetary losses can be very significant when the volatility of the risky asset is stochastic from the operational point of view such results highly suggest to trade on the volatility index vix and or to introduce derivatives written on it when selling standardized funds in order to better meet investors needs and preferences

regulations market structure institutions and the cost of financial intermediation this paper examines the impact of bank regulations market structure and national institutions on bank net interest margins and overhead costs using data on over 1400 banks across 72 countries while controlling for bankspecific characteristics the data indicate that tighter regulations on bank entry and bank activities boost the cost of financial intermediation inflation also exerts a robust positive impact on bank margins and overhead costs while concentration is positively associated with net interest margins this relationship breaksdownwhencontrolling for regulatory impediments to competition and inflation furthermore bank regulations become insignificant when controlling for national indicators of economic freedom or property rights protection while these institutional indicators robustly explain cross bank net interest margins and overhead expenditures thus bank regulations cannot be viewed in isolation they reflect broad national approaches to private property and competition

renewable energy policies and contradictions in causality a case of next 11 countries abstract numerous studies on the causal relationship between economic growth energy consumption and carbon dioxide co2 emissions have shown divergence in policy recommendations which arises mainly due to the choice of methodology and the period of study this inconclusiveness in policy prescriptions might turn out to be critical when the renewable energy policies of the developing nations are considered our study analyses the causal relationship between economic growth carbon emissions fossil fuel and renewable energy consumption in next 11 countries during the period of 1990 2016 along with conducting parametric and non parametric causality tests together introducing the geweke 1982 causality test in the literature of energy economics we attempt to establish a wholesome aspect of policy design by comparing and complementing results of different causality analysis and how the causality directions should comply with the context setting our empirical evidence confirms that robust renewable energy policy can be designed by complementing the various causality test results rather than focusing on one particular causality test

global estimates of energy growth nexus application of seemingly unrelated regressions as the world struggles to emerge from a global recession and financial crisis countries are looking for solutions to improve domestic economic performance and put people back to work global energy demand and prices have been resilient during the recession leading policy makers in countries with the potential to produce energy to look to that sector as a potential engine for economic growth the objective of this study is to undertake an empirical study on linkages among energy consumption economic growth fdi relative price and financial development i e broad money supply m2 in low income middle income high income non oecd high income oecd south africa middle east and north africa mena and the aggregate data of the world over a period of 1975 2011 data is analyzed by the im pesaran shin ips test of unit root to find out the order of integration the long run relationship is investigated through the pedroni 37 test of panel cointegration at last the seemingly unrelated regression sur method is used for estimation of the impact of growth factors on energy consumption in these regions the results reveal that each variable seem to have a unit root at level so we could investigate cointegration of the series at level on the basis of pedroni test we can bring to a close that series are cointegrated the results of seemingly unrelated regression sur suggests that gdp per capita has a positive impact on energy consumption in low income middle income south africa mena and aggregate data of the world however in high income oecd and non oecd regions there is no significant relationship been found in both regions fdi plays a pivotal role in increasing energy demand in middle income high income oecd and non oecd region which implies that whatever other benefits may accrue from fdi it should not be expected to generate sufficient energy in south africa mena and the world directly fdi enhancement policies should be supplemented to stimulate growth in those regions broad money supply exerts positive impact on energy demand in low income middle income high income non oecd and mena regions finally relative prices has either a positive impact i e middle income region and or a negative impact on energy consumption i e low income high income oecd and mena region the results conclude that lower energy prices reduce input costs for nearly all goods and services in the regions thus making them more affordable

an asset allocation puzzle comment should the proportion of risky assets in the risky part of an investor s portfolio depend on the investor s risk aversion according to basic financial theory in particular the mutual fund separation theorem with a riskless asset the answer is no the theorem states that rational investors should divide their assets between a riskless asset and a risky mutual fund the composition of which is the same for all investors risk aversion affects only the allocation between the riskless asset and the fund however niko canner et al 1997 cmw hereafter observed that popular investment advice does not conform to this theory they reported the stocks bonds and cash allocations recommended by four advisors for conservative moderate and aggressive investors as shown in table 1 which is reproduced from cmw the advisors recommend a bond stock ratio that varies directly with risk aversion for example fidelity recommends a bond stock ratio of 1 50 for a conservative more riskaverse investor a ratio of 1 00 for a moderate less risk averse investor and a ratio of 0 46 for an aggressive still less risk averse investor the inconsistency between such advice and the separation theorem is called an asset allocation puzzle by cmw they attempted to solve the puzzle by relaxing key assumptions in the theory but finally reached a negative conclusion although we cannot rule out the possibility that popular advice is consistent with some model of rational behavior we have so far been unable to find such a model p 181 however they suggested that consideration of intertemporal trading might help resolve the puzzle in the present paper we provide theoretical support for the popular advice the two key insights are that the investor s horizon may exceed the maturity of the cash asset and that the investor rebalances the portfolio as time passes if the investor s horizon exceeds the maturity of cash which might be a money market security with maturity of one to six months then cash is not the riskless asset as is commonly assumed in the basic theory in a theory allowing portfolio rebalancing as opposed to a buy and hold framework it is not unreasonable to assume that the investor can synthesize a riskless asset a zero coupon bond maturing at the horizon using a bond fund and cash then bonds will be both in the synthetic riskless asset and in the risky mutual fund and we show that in this case the theoretical bond stock ratio varies directly with risk aversion for any hyperbolic absolute risk aversion hara investor as an example of the type of results that a specific model can produce we provide a continuous time model with closed form solutions which produces theoretical bond stock ratios similar to the popular advice the present paper is organized as follows in the next section we analyze the popular advice in terms of the theory of mutual fund separation of david cass and joseph e stiglitz 1970 we show that this theory is relevant both in static and dynamic frameworks and use it to analyze the popular advice in complete and incomplete markets in section ii we analyze the popular advice in the context of robert c merton s 1971 continuous time statement of mutualfund separation and present an illustrative model in which a crra investor makes continuous time portfolio decisions under interest rate and stock price uncertainty in section iii numerical results are compared with the popular advice section iv is a conclusion bajeux besnainou department of finance school of business and public management george washington university 2023 g street nw washington dc 20052 jordan national economic research associates 1255 23rd street nw washington dc 20037 portait cnam and essec finance chair cnam 2 rue conte paris france this research was supported by a grant from the institute for quantitative investment research we thank two anonymous referees for their comments 1 hara functions include quadratic utility which is one way of justifying mean variance preferences and constant relative risk aversion crra utility both quadratic and crra utility were considered in the cmw analysis

turn on the lights macroeconomic factors affecting renewable energy in pakistan the objective of the study is to examine the relationship between macroeconomic factors i e population growth urbanization industrialization exchange rate price level food production index and live stock production index and renewable energy in pakistan over a period of 1975 2012 in addition this study uses oil rent as an intervening variable to overcome the biasness of the single equation model the results indicate that macroeconomic factors positively contributed to renewable energy consumption in pakistan the causality test indicate that there is a unidirectional causality running towards macroeconomic factors to renewable energy in pakistan however renewable energy granger cause oil rent but not via other route in addition there is bidirectional causality between exchange rate and live stock production in pakistan variance decomposition analysis shows that economic growth has a major contribution to increase renewable energy in pakistan

understanding the behavior of bank spreads in latin america abstract over the last decade many countries in latin america have eliminated interest rate ceilings reduced reserve requirements and stopped direct credit controls these market oriented reforms have encouraged financial deepening thereby producing considerable economic benefits to the countries nevertheless the persistence of high interest rate spreads has been a disquieting outcome of the reforms this paper explores the determinants of bank spreads in a systematic way for argentina bolivia chile colombia mexico peru and uruguay during the mid 1990s the analysis shows that high operating costs raise spreads as do high levels of non performing loans although the size of these effects differs across the countries in addition reserve requirements in a number of countries still act as a tax on banks that gets translated into a higher spread beyond bank specific variables uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment facing banks appears to increase interest spreads the combination of these microeconomic and macroeconomic factors is a cause for concern in latin america as spreads widen the cost of using the financial system becomes prohibitive to some potential borrowers in addition the results suggest that bank capital requirements may not prevent excessive risk taking by banks when bank spreads are high

an isomorphism between asset pricing models with and without linear habit formation we show an isomorphism between optimal portfolio selection or competitive equilibrium models with utilities incorporating linear habit formation and corresponding models without habit formation the isomorphism can be used to mechanically transform known solutions not involving habit formation to corresponding solutions with habit formation for example the constantinides 1990 and ingersoll 1992 solutions are mechanically obtained from the familiar merton solutions for the additive utility case without recourse to a bellman equation or first order conditions more generally recent solutions to portfolio selection problems with recursive utility and a stochastic investment opportunity set are readily transformed to novel solutions of corresponding problems with utility that combines recursivity with habit formation the methodology also applies in the context of hindy huang kreps 1992 preferences where our isomorphism shows that the solution obtained by hindy and huang 1993 can be mechanically transformed to dybvig s 1995 solution to the optimal consumption investment problem with consumption ratcheting this article presents a general method for solving asset pricing or portfolio selection models involving linear habit formation of the type studied by sundaresan 1989 constantinides 1990 detemple and zapatero 1991 ingersoll 1992 chapman 1998 and others the basic idea we pursue is that linear habit formation can be thought of as a redefinition of what constitutes consumption to include not only the current consumption rate but also a fictitious possibly negative consumption rate derived from past actual consumption by pricing out this fictitious consumption rate correctly the economy with linear habit formation can be mechanically transformed to an equivalent economy without habit formation this analysis simplifies and unifies existing results but also generates novel solutions for example together with the results of schroder and skiadas 1997 1999 our method produces optimal lifetime consumption and portfolio policies with preferences that combine recursive utility with habit formation under a stochastic

continuous time methods in finance a review and an assessment i survey and assess the development of continuous time methods in finance during the last 30 years the subperiod 1969 to 1980 saw a dizzying pace of development with seminal ideas in derivatives securities pricing term structure theory asset pricing and optimal consumption and portfolio choices during the period 1981 to 1999 the theory has been extended and modified to better explain empirical regularities in various subfields of finance this latter subperiod has seen significant progress in econometric theory computational and estimation methods to test and implement continuous time models capital market frictions and bargaining issues are being increasingly incorporated in continuous time theory the roots of modern continuous time methods in finance can be traced back to the seminal contributions of merton 1969 1971 1973b in the late 1960s and early 1970s merton 1969 pioneered the use of continuous time modeling in financial economics by formulating the intertemporal consumption and portfolio choice problem of an investor in a stochastic dynamic programming setting merton 1973b also showed how such a framework can be used to develop equilibrium asset pricing implications thereby significantly extending the asset pricing theory to richer dynamic settings and expanding the scope of applications of continuous time methods to study problems in financial economics 1 within a span of about 30 years from the publication of merton s inf luential papers continuous time methods have become an integral part of financial economics indeed in certain core areas in finance such as e g asset pricing derivatives valuation term structure theory and portfolio selection continuoustime methods have proved to be the most attractive way to conduct research and gain economic intuition the continuous time approach in these areas has produced models with a rich variety of testable implications the econometric theory for testing continuous time models has made rapid strides in the last decade and has thus kept pace with the impressive progress on the theoretical front one hopes that the actual empirical investigations and estimation using the new procedures will follow suit soon

nontraded asset valuation with portfolio constraints a binomial approach we provide a simple binomial framework to value american style derivatives subject to trading restrictions the optimal investment of liquid wealth is solved simultaneously with the early exercise decision of the nontraded derivative noshort sales constraints on the underlying asset manifest themselves in the form of an implicit dividend yield in the risk neutralized process for the underlying asset one consequence is that american call options may be optimally exercised prior to maturity even when the underlying asset pays no dividends applications to executive stock options eso are presented it is shown that the value of an eso could be substantially lower than that computed using the black scholes model we also analyze nontraded payoffs based on a price that is imperfectly correlated with the price of a traded asset the economics of asset pricing when one or more of the assets in the opportunity set are either subject to trading restrictions or entirely nontraded is a matter of great interest viewed from a practical perspective we have several important examples of such assets that are subject to trading restrictions pensions which represent perhaps the most significant of assets held by individual households are subject to trading restrictions it is typically the case that assets in pensions are not available for immediate consumption borrowing against pension assets is subject to significant direct and indirect costs by way of taxes and early withdrawal penalties human capital is another example housing investment is also illiquid and subject to significant transaction costs together pensions human capital and housing constitute a substantial part of a typical household s assets the significance of such nontraded assets for risk premia has already been noted by bewley 1982 there are other circumstances where lack of unrestricted trading plays an important role executive compensation plans usually take the this article was presented at boston university we would like to thank the editor bernard dumas and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments we also thank nalin kulatilaka and seminar participants for useful suggestions ganlin chang fei guan and carlton osakwe provided valuable research assistance j detemple acknowledges support from the social sciences and humanities research

how foreign participation and market concentration impact bank spreads evidence from latin america increasing foreign participation and high concentration levels characterize the recent evolution of banking sectors market structures in developing countries the authors analyze the impact of these factors on latin american bank spreads during the late 1990s their results suggest that foreign banks were able to charge lower spreads relative to domestic banks this was more so for de novo foreign banks than for those that entered through acquisitions the overall level of foreign bank participation seemed to influence spreads indirectly primarily through its effect on administrative costs bank concentration was positively and directly related to both higher spreads and costs

retracted factors affecting commercial energy consumption in pakistan progress in energy the purpose of this study is to identify major macroeconomic factors that enhance energy consumption for pakistan through the cointegration error correction model and granger causality tests over a 32 year time period i e between 1980 and 2011 the study employed the bivariate cointegration technique to estimate the long run relationship between the variables an error correction model was used to determine the short run dynamics of the system while granger causality test was used to find the directions between these variables the study investigates the relation between four energy consumption variables i e oil petroleum consumption gas consumption electricity consumption and coal consumption and four macroeconomic factors which have further sub classifications i e balance of payment bop factors i e exports imports trade deficit worker s remittances and current account balance fuel factors i e carbon dioxide emissions natural resource depletion and net forest depletion agricultural crops yield per hectare i e wheat rice sugarcane maize and cotton and industrial production items i e beverages cigarettes motor tyres motor tubes cycle tyres and cycle tubes in order to manage robust data analysis the result confirms the long run relationship between total commercial energy consumption and macroeconomic factors in pakistan as oil petroleum consumption increases exports fuel factors agricultural crops yield per hectare and industrial items however the intensity of these factors are different in nature carbon dioxide emissions net forest depletion beverages motor tyres and motor tubes are more elastic with oil petroleum consumption however oil petroleum consumption decreases trade deficit and workers remittances in pakistan gas electricity and coal consumption increases agricultural crops yield per hectare and industrial production which shows that as agriculture and industry modernizes energy demand increases energizing the food production chain is an essential feature of agricultural development which is a prime factor in helping to achieve food security in pakistan the empirical results only moderately support the conventional view that energy consumption has significant long run casual effect on macroeconomic variables in pakistan the present study finds evident of unidirectional causality between the commercial energy consumption factors and macroeconomic factors in pakistan however there is some bidirectional causality exist which is running between electricity consumption ec and exports ec to imports ec to carbon emissions ec to natural resource depletion nrd and ec to wheat the results conclude that macroeconomic variables tend to positively respond to total primary energy consumption this indicates that increasing total commercial energy consumption may cause growth variables which show that pakistan is an input driven economy

optimal consumption and portfolio policies when asset prices follow a diffusion process abstract we consider a consumption portfolio problem in continuous time under uncertainty a martingale technique is employed to characterize optimal consumption portfolio policies when there exist nonnegativity constraints on consumption and on final wealth we also provide a way to compute and verify optimal policies our verification theorem for optimal policies involves a linear partial differential equation unlike the nonlinear partial differential equation of dynamic programming the relationship between our approach and dynamic programming is discussed we demonstrate our technique by explicitly computing optimal policies in a series of examples in particular we solve the optimal consumption portfolio problem for hyperbolic absolute risk aversion utility functions when the asset prices follow a geometric brownian motion the optimal policies in this case are no longer linear when nonnegativity constraints on consumption and on final wealth are included by these examples one can see that our approach is much easier than the dynamic programming approach

the equilibrium allocation of diffusive and jump risks with heterogeneous agents abstract we study a two agent pure exchange equilibrium subject to both nondiversifiable diffusive and jump risks agents can trade in a financial market consisting of a stock market a money market and an insurance market for jump risk heterogeneity is introduced through different levels of relative risk aversion in the framework of standard expected utility we find the surprising result that the less risk averse agent purchases insurance contracts against jump risk from the more risk averse agent this equilibrium allocation is linked to the non linear wealth sharing rule in such an economy and preserves the wealth effects studied by dumas rev financ stud 2 1989 157 in the case of pure diffusive risk since the benchmark economy with homogeneous agents generates no excess uncertainty in the stock market we study the effect on excess volatility and excess jump size solely due to different levels of relative risk aversion we observe 3 excess uncertainty in jump sizes for a reasonable specification of economic fundamentals

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

on equilibrium asset price processes in this article we derive necessary and sufficient conditions that must be satisfied by equilibrium asset price processes in apure exchange economy we examine a world in which asset prices follow a diffusion process asset markets are dynamically complete all investors maximize their state independent expected utility of consumption at some future date and investors have nonrandom exogenous income we show that it is necessary and suffcient that the coefficients of an equilibrium diffusion price process satisfy a partial differential equation and a boundary condition we also examine how the dynamics of asset prices are related to the shape of the representative investor s utility function through the boundary condition for example in a constant volatility economy the expected instantaneous return of the market portfolio is mean reverting if and only if the relative risk aversion of the representative investor is decreasing in terminal wealth

precautionary savings and the permanent income hypothesis this paper derives the explicit solution of a dynamic stochastic optimal consumption problem for infinitely lived agents whose preferences exhibit in the presence of non diversifiable labour income uncertainty a constant elasticity of intertemporal substitution and constant absolute risk aversion the constancy of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution which implies that marginal utility at zero consumption is infinite guarantees that the non negativity constraint on consumption is never binding along the optimal path the assumption of constant absolute risk aversion allows an explicit computation of human wealth and provides a simple representation of the precautionary savings motive

two trees with heterogeneous beliefs spillover effect of disagreement in a model where investors disagree about the fundamentals of two stocks the state price density depends on investor disagreements for both stocks especially the larger stock this implies that disagreement among investors in a large firm has a spillover effect on the pricing of other stocks owned by these investors the pricing effects of investor disagreements crucially depend on the average belief biases empirical findings support the novel model prediction of a disagreement spillover effect and help reconcile some mixed evidence in the literature

optimal consumption wealth relationships derived by consumer intertemporal profit maximisation abstract this paper proposes an artificial intertemporal consumer profit maximisation problem that is simple to solve the optimal consumption function which is consistent with intertemporal utility maximisation is then generated directly from a specification of the consumer s instantaneous profit function

the relationship between energy resource depletion climate change health resources and the environmental kuznets curve evidence from the panel of selected developed countries abstract the objective of the study is to examine the relationship between energy resource depletion climate change health resources and the environmental kuznets curve ekc under the financial constraint environment in the panel of selected developed countries over the period of 2000 2013 the study employed panel generalized method of moments gmm estimate for robust inferences the results confirmed the existence of ekc hypothesis in the energy resource depletion model i e inverted u shaped relationship between energy resource depletion and gdp per capita in the selected developed countries the results of climate change model confirmed the u shaped relationship of perfluorocarbons pfc gas emission and particulate matter 2 5 micrometers pm 2 5 emissions with the per capita income the health resource model confirmed the existence of inverted u shaped relationship of infant deaths and health expenditures per capita with the per capita income while there is a u shaped relationship between incidence of tuberculosis tb and gdp per capita the other results indicate that carbon dioxide co 2 emissions increase sulfur hexafluoride sf 6 emissions and health expenditures fossil fuel energy consumption increases pfc gas emissions and pm 2 5 emissions energy demand increases pm 2 5 emissions and health expenditures and financial dummy d 2008 affected energy resource depletion pm 2 5 emissions greenhouse gas ghg emissions index infant deaths and health expenditures per capita

structural breaks energy consumption and economic growth revisited evidence from taiwan abstract this paper studies the stability between energy consumption and gdp for taiwan during 1954 2003 we use aggregate as well as various disaggregate data of energy consumption including coal oil gas and electricity to employ the unit root tests and the cointegration tests allowing for structural breaks our main findings are first though gas consumption seems to have structural breaks in the 1960s after considering the structural breaks the series is a stationary variable when taiwan adopted its expansionary export trade policy second we find that different directions of causality exist between gdp and various kinds of energy consumption the empirical result shows unanimously in the long run that energy acts as an engine of economic growth and that energy conservation may harm economic growth third the cointegration between energy consumption and gdp is unstable and some economic events may affect the stability overall we do find the structural breakpoints and they look to match clearly with the corresponding critical economic incidents

optimal investment with minimum performance constraints abstract we consider the portfolio problem of an investor whose wealth is constrained to be at least as large as that generated by investment in a stochastic benchmark portfolio using standard option pricing results the optimal portfolio policy of a hara utility investor is derived explicitly this policy is shown to be equivalent at any point in time to the investor s optimal unconstrained policy when he has contracted to paying out a proportion of the value of the benchmark portfolio at the terminal date this proportion which lies between zero and one is smaller the more likely it is that the investor will strictly outperform the benchmark over the investment horizon

non addictive habits optimal consumption portfolio policies abstract we formulate a model of preferences with non addictive habits where consumption is required to be non negative at all times but can fall below a standard of living index that aggregates past consumption we study the consumption portfolio problem taking account of the non negativity constraint on consumption and provide a constructive proof for the existence of an optimal policy on a finite time horizon 0 t we show that the consumption constraint binds up to an endogenous stopping time 0 t after which it remains slack until t a decomposition of constrained consumption involving an asian average strike capped call option is demonstrated