Model for evaluating the environmental sustainability of energy projects

This article focuses on the problem of assessing the environmental sustainability of energy projects. For this purpose an original model, which is based on various indicators that measure the environmental sustainability of energy projects, has been developed. This model, so called index of environmental sustainability of energy projects (IESEP), can be used in scenario comparison, while measuring the effectiveness of the proposed alternatives. Finally, an example of how to use this model is provided by analyzing alternatives to ameliorate the environmental sustainability of a hydroelectric project. In doing so, it is possible to show the usefulness of this model when used as a decision making tool for energy planners.     

Technology,property rights and organizational diversity in the software industry

Why do open- and closed-source productions co-exist? To address this question, the paper studies the viability of distinct systems for software development. The model shows that: (a) for low design costs of modularity, both open- and closed-source productions are viable systems; (b) closed-source production is more likely to be adopted the greater the expected rents on software; and (c) production efficiency is not a necessary condition for the stochastic stability of a system to obtain. These three results can shed light on the emergence of organizational diversity in the software industry. The paper adds to the literature in three ways: first, it considers property rights and technology as endogenous variables in the process of system design; second it argues that in producing software multiple equilibrium designs may exist; and third, it shows that, in because of high rents and low design costs of modularity, production inefficiency can be persistent.     

Warning labels on junk food: experimental evidence

Unhealthy food choice is one of the main causes of being overweight. Nutritionists blame a particular category of food: junk food. Several authors have proposed a fat tax for reducing the junk food demand, but others have demonstrated that these taxes must be very high in order to be effective. Therefore, a warning label about calorie content may be an alternative way to reduce the consumption of junk food. In this exploratory study, using students as respondents, a high‐calorie warning label is explored with an incentive compatible valuation method. The results indicate that a high‐calorie warning label has little effect on respondents’ choices, even when they have no prior familiarity with the food.     

Free‐riding in multi‐party alliances: The role of perceived alliance effectiveness and peers' collaboration in a research consortium

Research summary : Multi‐party alliances rely on partners' willingness to commit and pool their efforts in joint endeavors. However, partners face the dilemma of how much to commit to the alliance. We shed light on this issue by analyzing the relationship between partners' free‐riding—defined as their effort‐withholding—and their perceptions of alliance effectiveness and peers' collaboration. Specifically, we posit a U‐shaped relationship between partners' subjective evaluations of alliance effectiveness and their free‐riding. We also hypothesize a negative relation between partners' perceptions of the collaboration of peer organizations and their free‐riding. Results from a mixed‐method study—combining regression analysis of primary data on a major inter‐organizational research consortium and evidence from two experimental designs—support our hypotheses, bearing implications for the multi‐party alliances literature. Managerial summary : Free‐riding is a major concern in multi‐party alliances such as large research consortia, since the performance of these governance forms hinges on the joint contribution of multiple partners that often operate according to different logics (e.g., universities, firms, and government agencies). We show that, in such alliances, partners' perceptions have relevant implications for their willingness to contribute to the consortium's shared goals. Specifically, we find that partners free‐ride more—that is, contribute less—when they perceive the effectiveness of the overall alliance to be either very low or very high. Partners also gauge their commitment to the alliance on the perception of the effort of their peers—that is, other organizations similar to them. These findings provide managers of multi‐party alliances with additional levers to motivate partners to contribute fairly to such joint endeavor. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of technology shocks on hours and output: a robustness analysis

We analyze the effects of neutral and investment‐specific technology shocks on hours and output. Long cycles in hours are removed in a variety of ways. Hours robustly fall in response to neutral shocks and robustly increase in response to investment‐specific shocks. The percentage of the variance of hours (output) explained by neutral shocks is small (large); the opposite is true for investment‐specific shocks. ‘News shocks’ are uncorrelated with the estimated technology shocks. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why Do Companies Go Public? An Empirical Analysis

Using a large database of private firms in Italy, we analyze the determinants of initial public offerings (IPOs) by comparing the ex ante and ex post characteristics of IPOs with those of private firms. The likelihood of an IPO is increasing in the company's size and the industry's market-to-book ratio. Companies appear to go public not to finance future investments and growth, but to rebalance their accounts after high investment and growth. IPOs are also followed by lower cost of credit and increased turnover in control.     

Debt Maturity: Is Long‐Term Debt Optimal?

We model and calibrate the arguments in favor and against short-term and long-term debt. These arguments broadly include: maturity premium , sustainability, and service smoothing. We use a dynamic-equilibrium model with tax distortions and government outlays uncertainty, and model maturity as the fraction of debt that needs to be rolled over every period. In the model, the benefits of defaulting are tempered by higher future interest rates. We then calibrate our artificial economy and solve for the optimal debt maturity for Brazil as an example of a developing country and the US as an example of a mature economy. We obtain that the calibrated costs from defaulting on long-term debt more than offset costs associated with short-term debt. Therefore, short-term debt implies higher welfare levels.     

When and how politicians take ‘scandalous’ decisions?

We study the decisions of a politician who maximizes his probability of being re-elected, which depends on the enactment of legislative instruments defined ‘scandalous’ because of their highly redistributive content. The agents are a politician and the voters; the legislative instruments available to the legislator are ordinary and executive laws, which differ according to their visibility. The theoretical model predicts that ‘scandalous’ legislation tends to be passed at the beginning of the legislature, while ‘non scandalous’, broader legislation, is approved mostly at the end of the legislation. Scandalous decisions, moreover, tend to be implemented by means of less visible executive legislation, while ordinary acts are mainly used to implement non scandalous decisions. This explanation of the genesis of legislation cycles is consistent with the findings of the empirical literature.     

Pricing options under stochastic volatility: a power series approach

In this paper we present a new approach for solving the pricing equations (PDEs) of European call options for very general stochastic volatility models, including the Stein and Stein, the Hull and White, and the Heston models as particular cases. The main idea is to express the price in terms of a power series of the correlation parameter between the processes driving the dynamics of the price and of the volatility. The expansion is done around correlation zero and each term is identified via a probabilistic expression. It is shown that the power series converges with positive radius under some regularity conditions. Besides, we propose (as in Alós in Finance Stoch. 10:353–365, 2006) a further approximation to make the terms of the series easily computable and we estimate the error we commit. Finally we apply our methodology to some well-known financial models.      

The Heisenberg picture in the analysis of stock markets and in other sociological contexts

We review some recent results concerning some toy models of stock markets. Our models are suggested by the discrete nature of the number of shares and of the cash which are exchanged in a real market, and by the existence of conserved quantities, like the total number of shares or some linear combination of the cash and the shares. This suggests to use the same tools used in quantum mechanics and, in particular, the Heisenberg picture to describe the time behavior of the portfolio of each trader. We finally propose the use of this same framework in other sociological contexts.