The first five years of the EU Impact Assessment system: a risk economics perspective on gaps between rationale and practice

In 2003, the European Commission (EC) started using Impact Assessment (IA) as the main empirical basis for its major policy proposals. The aim was to systematically assess ex ante the economic, social and environmental impacts of European Union (EU) policy proposals. In parallel, research proliferated in search for theoretical grounds for IAs and in an attempt to evaluate empirically the performance of the first sets of IAs produced by the EC. This paper combines conceptual and evaluative studies carried out in the first five years of EU IAs. It concludes that the great discrepancy between rationale and practice calls for a different theoretical focus and a higher emphasis on evaluating empirically crucial risk economics aspects of IAs, such as the value of statistical life, price of carbon, the integration of macroeconomic modelling and scenario analysis.     

Evaluating capital mobility in the EU: a new approach using swaps data

The level of capital mobility prevailing within a group of core European Union (EU) countries is evaluated by means of cointegration-based tests of the covered interest parity (CIP). Unlike previous studies, this one concentrates on long maturities, investigating three to ten-year assets, and employing swap rates as a means of covering foreign exchange risk. Although CIP has not been previously assessed for EU long-term interest rates, such evaluation has practical interest. In fact, given EU member states' scarcity of mechanisms to react to asymmetric shocks, financial markets may become one major source of adjustment and stabilization. To this end, it is the mobility of long-term capital that is of critical importance. The analysis in this paper suggests that long-term financial flows appear to be completely unrestrained only between domestic Dutch and German markets.     

Financial data science: the birth of a new financial research paradigm complementing econometrics?

Financial data science and econometrics are highly complementary. They share an equivalent research process with the former’s intellectual point of departure being statistical inference and the latter’s being the data sets themselves. Two challenges arise, however, from digitalisation. First, the ever-increasing computational power allows researchers to experiment with an extremely large number of generated test subjects (i.e. p-hacking). We argue that p-hacking can be mitigated through adjustments for multiple hypothesis testing where appropriate. However, it can only truly be addressed via a strong focus on integrity (e.g. pre-registration, actual out-of-sample periods). Second, the extremely large number of observations available in big data set provides magnitudes of statistical power at which common statistical significance levels are barely relevant. This challenge can be addressed twofold. First, researchers can use more stringent statistical significance levels such as 0.1% and 0.5% instead of 1% and 5%, respectively. Second, and more importantly, researchers can use criteria such as economic significance, economic relevance and statistical relevance to assess the robustness of statistically significant coefficients. Especially statistical relevance seems crucial, as it appears far from impossible for an individual coefficient to be considered statistically significant when its actual statistical relevance (i.e. incremental explanatory power) is extremely small.     

The UK's Exit Charge from the EU: Insights from Modes of Accounting

Whatever the final charge on the UK for leaving the EU, the money itself is relatively marginal to the former's public finances. However, this charge is politically sensitive and financially aggravating during one of the longest periods of fiscal austerity in the UK's history. The ways in which leaving is conceptualized have implications for any continuing financial obligations that must be managed within the context of fiscal austerity and political uncertainty. Yet, leaving the EU is a unique transaction: it is not analogous, for example, to a divorce settlement, the leaving of a club, the termination of a commercial contract, the leaving of a treaty-based international organization, or secession from a state. Analyzing the formulation of the charge in terms of the four modes of government accounting—financial reporting, statistical accounting, budgeting, and fiscal sustainability projections—enhances its fiscal transparency. It evidences not only the weakness and inconsistency of the UK's negotiating position but also the dominance in EU thinking of the short-term budgetary calculations of the 2014–20 Multiannual Financial Framework over its long-term sustainability without a large net contributor. The final amount paid by the UK will depend on the resolution of competing perspectives as well as on liabilities and contingent liabilities associated with the increasingly complex EU financial architecture.     

The effects of environmental regulation on the stock market: the French experience

The impact of environmental regulation on the French stock market is investigated by using event study methodology and asset pricing models. The impact of environmental regulation on the stock prices of environmentally friendly businesses and polluters is assessed. Additionally, we estimate the change in systematic risk following the introduction of new regulations. According to the results, the French stock market is particularly sensitive to the environmental regulation embodied in the European Union Emissions Trading System and less so to the regulation on water, soil and air. The chemicals, oil and gas industries exhibit negative reactions, whereas other polluters (such as construction and materials, and industrial transportation) produce positive abnormal returns.     

The role of the national institutional environment in IFRS convergence: a new approach

This study uses an ideal setting to capture the influence of the national institutional environment on outcomes (i.e., earnings quality) of IFRS convergence using a within-country approach. We show that earnings quality in terms of discretionary accruals and persistence has increased, while conservatism has decreased after IFRS convergence. The results are more pronounced in companies with a strong institutional environment. Our results are robust after considering incentives and other confounding factors. Our findings show differences in earnings quality in firms within a country adopting the same standards, let alone in firms worldwide. This indicates the context embeddedness of accounting standards.     

The effect of CBOE option listing on the volatility of NYSE traded stocks: a time-varying variance approach

This paper employs the standard General Auto-regressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH(1,1)) process to examine the impact of option listing on volatility the underlying stocks. It takes into consideration the time variation in the individual stock's variance and explicitly tests whether option listing causes any permanent volatility change. It also investigates the impact of option listing on the speed at which information is incorporated into the stock price. The study uses clean samples to avoid sample selection biases and control samples to account for the change in the volatility and/or information flows that may be caused by factors other than option listing.     

An agency perspective on the accounting costs used in various roles in the regulation of a state-owned natural monopoly: The British Gas Corporation 1972-86

This study describes and analyses the accounting costs reported in the financial statements of the British Gas Corporation (BGC) during its fourteen years (1972-86) as a state-owned natural monopoly. Evidence is provided of the various roles in which these accounting costs were used in the regulation of the corporation. The agency perspective developed by Whittington (1985) is used to provide an analytical framework for discussion of the effects of BGC's accounting costs on the allocation of burdens and rewards between gas consumers and taxpayers through being used in these various roles. Further analytical insights are drawn from developments subsequent to privatisation in 1986.     

The new political importance of the old hurricane risk: a contextual approach to understanding contemporary struggles with hurricane risk and insurance

In the United States, policy-makers struggle to resolve conflict between public demands for affordable insurance costs covering hurricanes and market demands for risk-based insurance pricing. Given the socially constructed nature of risk, a risk-based pricing approach prioritizes insurer values and business practices over all societal value goals expressly limiting democratic inclusion in decision-making about risk. As a step towards the more democratically inclusive approach of risk governance, this article uses the state of Florida as a case study to provide a narrative of the social and political context for the evolution of the idea of U.S. hurricane risk. I argue that today’s hurricane risk is a product of long-standing shared efforts to build prosperity. However, it is no longer a simple risk for society to overcome on its way to economic well-being. Contemporary hurricane risk is systemic and serves as a nexus for political battles over American values.