What to do in globalised economies if global governance is missing? The vicarious role of competition in social responsibility

In this article, we present a model that seeks to illustrate mechanisms that have fostered the diffusion of socially responsible corporate practices with specific reference to Fair Trade. We do so with a simple standard Hotelling approach of competition on product differentiation between a profit-maximising producer (PMP) and a “socially responsible” not for profit “fair trader” (FT) over prices and (costly) “socially and environmentally responsible” features of their products. We show that, under reasonable conditions concerning consumers’ costs of ethical distance, the fair trader’s entry into the market triggers the partial adoption of socially responsible practices by the profit-maximising competitor. We finally compare the ethical choices of the two players with the optimal ones of a domestic benevolent planner. Our findings show that competition between the fair trader and the PMP leads to a level of transfers to marginalised producers in the South, which is above the optimal level fixed by a planner maximising the welfare of the consumers in the North. This finding shows that the competition in social responsibility triggered by fair traders partially compensates for the lack of global governance and global institutions properly representing marginalised producers.     

Market competition and firms' social performance

This paper investigates whether market competition encourages firms to be more socially responsible. We find that firms in more competitive markets exhibit better overall social performance, as measured by doing well (“strength”) and doing badly (“concern”) in areas such as community, environment, human rights, and treatment of employees. To deal with endogeneity, we instrument market competition on entry barrier and observe that market competition only significantly reduces social concerns but not increases social strengths. Thus, firms are more reactive in reducing social concerns than proactive in augmenting their social strengths. Amongst these concerns, firms appear to be more active in reducing environmental concerns. The paper underscores the limitations in relying on the “invisible hand” of the market to deal with the multi-dimensional challenges of firms’ social performance.     

Optimal tax rules and public sector efficiency with an externality in an overlapping generations model

This paper examines optimal tax rules and public sector efficiency, integrating them in a second-best world with pollution by using an overlapping generations model. The second-best world is characterized by the comparative statics of green preferences. The main results obtained are as follows. First, the marginal cost of public funds may be reduced by the externalities, regardless of the choice of taxes. Second, optimal environmental and non-environmental tax rules are additively and directly affected by the dynamic efficiency of capital accumulation per unit labour (DECAL), and indirectly by it, through the efficiency of the public sector. Environmental taxes going beyond Pigovian ones may be welfare-improving if the DECAL is improved by the environmental tax. Even optimal non-environmental tax rules should additively and directly counter the dynamics of pollution to consider the income effects of the optimal tax system for the future. Third, the “additivity property,” or the “principle of targeting,” does not hold even in the absence of incentive compatibility constraints. The essential reasons for this are clarified as follows: distortions that should be countered by taxes; that is, the income effects of the optimal tax system and the DECAL in this model, break the equality between optimal environmental taxes and the externalities measured by governments. Finally, growing environmental concerns may, in fact, increase pollution. The inverse relationship between environmental and labour income taxes may not hold.     

Changes in Investors' Market Attention and Near-Term Stock Market Returns

We use Google Search volume to track changes investors' positive and negative market attention. Our results support the hypothesis that this information reflects investors' optimistic and pessimistic anticipation and can be used to predict near-term future returns. We find that changes in negative search term volume of “market crash” and “bear market” and changes in positive search term volume “market rally” explain near-term stock returns. Changes in investors' attention are partly related to past stock market returns, implying that investors are prone to pay attention to possible price reversals. These measures of market attention are potential gauges of investor sentiment.     

Dynamic relationships between crude oil prices and socially responsible investing in Brazil: evidence for linear and non-linear causality

Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in socially responsible investing (SRI), reflecting investors’ growing awareness of social, environmental, ethical and corporate governance issues. At the same time, the effect of oil price shocks on stock price returns has become a prominent issue due to surges in energy prices. Using the Brazilian corporate sustainability index (ISE) as a benchmark for socially responsible investments in the Brazilian stock market, the present study extends the understandings on the impact of oil prices on stock price behaviour, focusing on a new class of assets: those from socially responsible firms. To this end, apart from conventional linear causality approaches, we apply a nonparametric test by Diks and Panchenko (DP) on daily data spanning from January 2008 to December 2015 to test for non-linear causality, before and after controlling for conditional heteroscedasticity. Our findings show that, in spite of their efforts to become more socially responsible, firms that have adhered to the ISE in recent years are influenced by crude oil spot prices, especially the WTI crude. In line with previous studies, we also provide consistent evidence that the Brazilian stock market, as a whole, is associated with the international crude oil market.     

保险资金持股与股价崩盘风险——市场“稳定器”还是崩盘“加速器”?

现阶段,有关保险资金持股与资本市场稳定相互关系的讨论多止于推测,少有学者以大样本数据进行实证考察。在理论上,保险资金持股上市公司,一方面可以抑制经理人负面信息隐藏,作为市场“稳定器”降低股价暴跌风险;另一方面,也能引发投资者跟风炒作,导致市场情绪高涨和股价高估,成为股价崩盘风险的“加速器”。本文基于2007—2016年中国沪深两市A股上市公司的数据,实证分析保险资金持股上市公司是否加剧市场暴跌及其作用机制。结果显示:保险资金持股加剧了股价崩盘风险,是公司股价崩盘的“加速器”。这一结论在经过DID模型、工具变量回归、PSM+OLS等内生性分析,以及稳健性检验之后依然成立。进一步研究表明,相比于民营、小型和财产保险公司,在股市投资规模更大的国有、大型和人寿保险公司更能引发市场跟风炒作,加剧股价崩盘风险;不过,当保险资金作为前十大股东参与公司治理时则能够降低股价崩盘风险。本文不仅为保险资金持股与资本市场稳定相互关系的讨论提供了经验证据,也为规范保险资金股权投资,维护资本市场稳定提供有益借鉴。     

资本市场开放与企业创新——基于沪深港通交易制度的准自然实验

资本市场改革能否有效促进实体经济发展是当前中国经济发展面临的重大挑战。基于企业创新研究视角，以沪深港通交易制度作为外生事件，采用多时点双重差分模型(DID)系统考察了我国资本市场开放对公司创新的影响及内在作用机理。研究发现，沪深港通交易制度实施显著提升了标的公司创新绩效，表现为专利产出增加，且该现象在管理层持股比例高、融资约束强的样本中较为显著，表明沪深港通制度通过提升管理层创新意愿与提高企业创新能力两大途径提升创新绩效。进一步分析发现，资本市场开放对企业创新的正向影响在信息透明度低、沪深港通交易活跃股以及法制环境不完善样本中更显著。上述结论不仅拓展了企业创新影响因素研究，也为实施沪深港通交易制度带来的经济影响提供了来自微观公司层面的经验证据，亦为后续完善该项制度提供了参考与借鉴。     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY WITH OVERLAPPING GENERATIONS

A two‐sector overlapping generations model illuminates the intergenerational effects of a tax that protects an environmental stock. A traded asset capitalizes the economic returns to future tax‐induced environmental improvements, benefiting the current asset owners, the old generation. Absent a transfer, the tax harms the young generation by decreasing their real wage. Future generations benefit from the tax‐induced improvement in environmental stock. The principal intergenerational conflict arising from the tax is between generations alive at the time society imposes the policy, not between generations alive at different times. A Pareto‐improving tax can be implemented under various political economy settings.     

Relative consumption and renewable resource extraction under alternative property-rights regimes

This paper presents a simple model of resource extraction where preferences are defined over the individual’s consumption level, her effort and the comparison of her consumption with that of other members of the community. Our specification captures the intuition that lies behind the growing body of empirical evidence that places interpersonal comparisons as a key determinant of well-being. We consider the effect of consumption externalities under two alternative property-rights regimes: perfect property rights and open access. We identify two dimensions along which consumption externalities distort the efficient exploitation of resources, or, in the case of open access, aggravate the over-exploitation of resources: (i) the static trade-off between consumption and leisure, and (ii) the dynamic trade-off between current and future consumption. In general, envious agents over-exploit the natural resource stock, resulting in a steady-state stock lower than the efficient level chosen by a central planner. We propose a tax mechanism to induce the first-best outcome.     

“牛市”和“熊市”对信息的不平衡性反应研究

“利好”和“利空”信息对股票市场具有不平衡性的影响 ,研究这一现象对资产定价、投资组合构造及风险头寸确定都有重要作用。而新信息的出现对股票市场的影响应该区分股市所处的位置 ,这一点正是已有的波动性研究所忽视的。中国股票市场总体上不平衡性信息表现与国外不同 ,本文将股票市场波动划分为“牛市”和“熊市”两个阶段 ,采用EGARCH模型实证研究我国股票市场在牛市和熊市阶段对“利好”与“利空”的不平衡性反应特征。然后从投资者预期、结构、心理和交易机制等方面解释产生“强市恒强、弱市恒弱”现象的原因 ,指出进一步研究的方向 ,以期为投资者选择投资策略和政府制订政策提供参考     

Pollution Control in Open Economies: Implications of Within-period Interactions for Dynamic Game Equilibrium

This paper examines a two-country, dynamic game model of pollution control in the presence of economic interactions between countries within a period, as well as the environmental interaction between periods (i.e., a change in the stock of global pollution). These economic interactions emerge because of changes in the terms of trade of polluting goods or the market share of domestic polluting industries. It is shown that if within-period externalities exist, a noncooperative equilibrium may result in a smaller stock of global pollution in the steady state than does international cooperation. Moreover, the properties of equilibrium paths depend on the direction and size of such externalities. In addition, trigger strategy equilibria that achieve the outcome of the collusive solution are examined.     

A Comparison of Emission Taxes and Permit Markets for Controlling Correlated Externalities

This paper provides an answer to the question: Are emission taxes an efficient and self-enforcing mechanism to control correlated externality problems? By “correlated externalities” we mean multiple pollutants that are jointly produced by a single source but cause differentiated regional and global externalities. By “self-enforcing” we mean a mechanism that accounts for the endogeneity that exists between competing jurisdictions in the setting of environmental policy within a federation of regions. This mechanism incorporates sequential decision making among the jurisdictions and therefore determines an equilibrium based on the concept of subgame perfection. We find that, unlike joint domestic and international tradable permit markets, joint emission taxes and a hybrid scheme of permits and taxes are neither efficient nor self-enforcing.     

Optimal location in two-sided markets

As the network externality in an industrial organization has been widely discussed in recent years, many researchers in the field have noted a particular type of market, the so-called two-sided market. In a two-sided market, two or more groups of agents such as buyers and sellers interact while exerting cross-group externalities upon each other. They interact with each other via some sort of medium, called the “platform” of interaction. This paper integrates the concept of two-sided markets into the optimal location problem for two platform providers. We show that when the two groups of customers' cross-side network externalities are equal, the duopoly platforms will agglomerate at the market center with no undercutting. However, disparate conditions exist under which the duopoly platforms will stay apart at the market endpoints, or agglomerate at either endpoint, with no undercutting.     

Efficient political contributions with conditional Coasian contracts

The externalities associated with political contributions imply agents choose a socially inefficient level. A typical market solution to these externalities would involve Coase bargaining where agents form contracts with payments conditional on the actions of others. These contracts, however, are hard to enforce because political contributions can be unobservable or unmeasurable. In this study, we modify these Coasian contracts, making the payments conditional on the outcome of the political election. We show the agents that form these contracts contribute the socially efficient amount.     

Altruism,fertility, and the value of children: Health policy evaluation and intergenerational welfare

This paper accounts for the value of children and future generations in the evaluation of health policies. This is achieved through the incorporation of altruism and fertility in a “value of life” type of framework. We are able to express adults' willingness to pay for changes in child mortality and also to incorporate the welfare of future generations in the evaluation of current policies. Our model clarifies a series of puzzles from the literature on the “value of life” and on intergenerational welfare comparisons. We show that, by incorporating altruism and fertility into the analysis of the recent U.S. experience, the estimated welfare gain of a young adult from reductions in mortality easily doubles.     

商业银行发行理财产品与股价崩盘风险

商业银行在我国金融体系中的地位举足轻重,是金融系统性风险的重要来源。近年来,理财业务的高速成长为商业银行累积了大量的风险,但无论是监管层、业界还是学界,对银行理财产品的关注主要集中在理财产品驱动因素以及其对商业银行业绩的影响上,忽略了商业银行发行理财产品所引发的风险累积及其对资本市场稳定的潜在影响。因此,本文利用2006-2016年中国境内上市银行理财产品的发行数据,从股价崩盘的角度研究其对银行自身股价产生的影响。本文研究表明:银行理财产品的发行会带来自身股价崩盘风险,理财产品发行数量越大,其股价崩盘风险越大;监管压力和理财产品刚性会加剧股价崩盘风险的发生。基于此,本文建议:相关监管机构重点关注监管考核压力较大的商业银行,商业银行要做好投资者的教育工作,淡化预期收益概念,并落实理财产品信息披露制度,更多地发行“开放式净值型”理财产品。     

Assessing downside and upside risk spillovers across conventional and socially responsible stock markets

Since the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis, socially responsible (SR) investments have become an alternative form of conventional finance, giving rise to further systemic risk between conventional and SR stock markets. In this paper, we assess this risk transmission using Value at Risk (VaR) modeling for the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, over the period covering January 2004–December 2016. We find that socially responsible stock markets exhibit less risk than do conventional markets in terms of the risk hedging properties induced by the SR screening. Second, contributions to systemic risk vary across market phases and return distribution levels, with a larger contribution and spillover effect during the recent global financial crisis. For example, at the downside of the distribution (CoVaR at 5%), the conventional European index shows the highest contribution to the world market’s systemic risk, while the US stock market shows the highest contribution at the upside of the distribution (CoVaR at 95%). This finding is justified by the difference in the risk aversion of investors that varies with the market state as well as the disparities in the development of SR markets.     

Investment banks' stock ratings,call warrant issuance,and responses from heterogeneous investors: Evidence from Taiwan

We investigate the responses of the different types of investors on stock rating change announcements made by investment banks around call warrant issuances in Taiwan. The unique characteristics of the Taiwan warrants market allow investment banks to make stock rating change announcements around call warrant issuances for the same stocks they rate. In Taiwan, investment banks are also dealers of call warrants, and thus, the profit and loss results from their warrant business are potentially in conflict-of-interest for their stock ratings. Another feature of the Taiwan stock market allows us to disentangle the types of investors initiating the stock trades. We identify three types of investors: institutional investors, experienced retail investors, and ordinary retail investors. Our findings suggest that institutional investors are able to “see-through” the conflict-of-interest in investment banks; experienced investors are able to partially “see-through” the conflict-of-interest, and ordinary retail investors are unable to “see-through” the conflict-of-interest of investment banks.     

Gender Bias in Education: the Role of Inter-household Externality, Dowry and other Social Institutions

We analyze gender bias in school enrollment by developing a two‐period model where women become part of extended families of their in‐laws. Each family decides how many sons and daughters are sent to school and thus become skilled. Gender bias occurs due to failure of the families to internalize inter‐household externalities. “Groom‐specific” dowry worsens the situation. Under “bride‐specific” dowry, bias exists if and only if the skill premium in the labor market is bigger than that in the marriage market. A specific discriminatory “food‐for‐education” policy is shown to reduce bias, but increase total enrollment.     

Financial Analysts,Firm Quality,and Social Responsibility

We suggest that financial analysts have an incentive to follow the stocks of socially responsible companies, because such stocks meet the growing demands and psychology of the investment community, who want to combine the usual investment goals with social responsibility. Socially responsible investors prefer to hold stocks of companies they perceive as socially responsible or of high quality. Financial analysts then help brokers' marketing efforts by supplying investors with more analysis for stocks of socially responsible or high-quality companies. Using scores from Fortune surveys on perceptions of community and environmental responsibility as a measure of social responsibility and Fortune survey measures of quality as a measure of company quality, we find evidence that stocks of socially responsible and high-quality companies are indeed followed by more financial analysts. The positive relationship among social responsibility, company quality, and analyst following remains significant even after controlling for the effects on analyst following of firm size, share price, the volatility of stock returns, and market-to-book value of equity.