The effects of social heterogeneity on travel patterns: A replication study

This paper examines differences between the U.S. and Australian urban landscape in terms of the relationship between urban structure and the effectiveness of public transportation. A replication study is undertaken that tests the validated hypothesis from a U.S. study that urban travel corridor social heterogeneity reduces patronage of public transportation because of resident concerns with social composition of passengers and effects on the travel privacy dimension. A causal model is identified for the city of Sydney that specifies enogenous and endogenous variables, as per the U.S. study, which affect bus and rail use. Results do not lead to the acceptance of the hypothesized relationship. The presence of social heterogeneity in Sydney travel corridors does not deter residents within the study corridors from using the bus or train for the journey to work, nor do they appear to affect longer term decisions on car ownership. Bus patronage was shown to be dependent on social heterogeneity factors while rail use was associated with car owning households. These results highlight differences in urban spatial structure and travel patterns between Sydney and cities in the U.S. study, and suggest differential effects of changes in urban spatial structure and policy responses.     

Valentin F. Wagner † 17. XII. 1895 bis 8. V. 1959

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Chancen und Risiken in den Finanzmärkten

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

On the Term Structure of Default Premia in the Swap and LIBOR Markets

Existing theories of the term structure of swap rates provide an analysis of the Treasury–swap spread based on either a liquidity convenience yield in the Treasury market, or default risk in the swap market. Although these models do not focus on the relation between corporate yields and swap rates (the LIBOR–swap spread), they imply that the term structure of corporate yields and swap rates should be identical. As documented previously (e.g., in Sun, Sundaresan, and Wang (1993)) this is counterfactual. Here, we propose a model of the default risk imbedded in the swap term structure that is able to explain the LIBOR–swap spread. Whereas corporate bonds carry default risk, we argue that swap contracts are free of default risk. Because swaps are indexed on "refreshed"-credit-quality LIBOR rates, the spread between corporate yields and swap rates should capture the market's expectations of the probability of deterioration in credit quality of a corporate bond issuer. We model this feature and use our model to estimate the likelihood of future deterioration in credit quality from the LIBOR–swap spread. The analysis is important because it shows that the term structure of swap rates does not reflect the borrowing cost of a standard LIBOR credit quality issuer. It also has implications for modeling the dynamics of the swap term structure.     

Currency Hedging and Siegel's Paradox: On Black's Universal Hedging Rule*

In an international multicurrency context, with nonstochastic inflation, equilibrium asset pricing models dictate that all investors should hold a combination of their national risk-free bill and the world market portfolio partly hedged against currency risk. We show that the equilibrium hedge ratios are not universal and depend on investors' preferences and relative wealth. So-called universal hedging rules are devoid of solid theoretical underpinning and practical applicability.     

Developing the marketing concept in public accounting firms

As the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts relaxes its practice development restrictions, CPA firms find themselves with a need to develop more aggressive approaches to the markets they serve. This paper focuses on the development of a marketing strategy for an illustrative market, that of small, rapidly-growing high technology firms. Results from a telephone survey of company executives serve as the basis for strategy development. In addition, the evaluation of a small firm and its accounting needs are provided in a hypothetical example to dramatize the conclusions. The results suggest that the burden may be on CPA firms to anticipate, recognize, and meet the accounting needs of their clientele.     

U-Convolutional model for spatio-temporal wind speed forecasting

The increasing penetration of intermittent renewable energy in power systems brings operational challenges. One way of supporting them is by enhancing the predictability of renewables through accurate forecasting. Convolutional Neural Networks (Convnets) provide a successful technique for processing space-structured multi-dimensional data. In our work, we propose the U-Convolutional model to predict hourly wind speeds for a single location using spatio-temporal data with multiple explanatory variables as an input. The U-Convolutional model is composed of a U-Net part, which synthesizes input information, and a Convnet part, which maps the synthesized data into a single-site wind prediction. We compare our approach with advanced Convnets, a fully connected neural network, and univariate models. We use time series from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis as datasets and select temperature and u- and v-components of wind as explanatory variables. The proposed models are evaluated at multiple locations (totaling 181 target series) and multiple forecasting horizons. The results indicate that our proposal is promising for spatio-temporal wind speed prediction, with results that show competitive performance on both time horizons for all datasets.     

Benchmarking institutional variety in the eurozone: An empirical investigation

The European debt crisis has shown that the future of the European Union (EU) depends on the willingness of each member country to implement responsible policies, avoid moral hazard and uncooperative attitudes, and ensure stability and soundness. However, the European institutional variety means that each member country reacts differently to shocks and policies, follows a different path of recovery, and adapts to common institutions, including the common currency, in different ways. Helping countries to converge toward a situation that guarantees well-being, stability, and development at the national and community level is the goal of the European benchmark. This benchmark is a framework inspired by European treaties that, through the distance-to-frontier score methodology, aims to measure member countries’ performance and identify inefficiencies and negative externalities within the economic, social, and political institutions of each member country. The paper presents an empirical investigation of the European benchmark. Based on the results obtained, all countries can improve their performance, and none of them can be considered a model for the others. However, the Mediterranean and post-communist countries have more challenges to face and therefore need to make greater efforts.     

Morality and Rationality in Environmental Policy

The "Moralist" camp takes environmental morale to be essential in order to save nature. The "Rationalist" camp, mainly represented by economists, takes market-based instruments solely relying on extrinsic motivation to be both necessary and sufficient for a successful environmental policy. Recently, the moralists have learned to appreciate economists' incentive instruments, and rationalists have learned that environmental morale is required to find political support for the introduction of their preferred instruments.Intrinsic motivation in the form of environmental morale is moreover closely connected to the extrinsic motivation via crowding effects. Economic incentives – in particular tradeable emission rights and emission taxes – tend to undermine environmental morale while policy instruments tend to raise it.An environmental policy based on complementarity is able to exploit the advantages, and to weaken the disadvantages, of the policies proposed by the two camps. Market-based instruments should be accompanied by policies informing and inviting the consumers to engage. In addition, possibilities to participate in the decision-making about environmental policy should be offered (preferably via direct democracy), and the policy should be decided and undertaken at the lowest possible level, normally the local community level.