When EU Leaders Speak,the Markets Listen

Abstract

We use content analysis software to examine certain characteristics of communications arising from European Council meetings. These characteristics appear to explain a large proportion of variation in stock returns around the meeting dates. More specifically, stock market investors react favourably when the conclusions and declarations issued by heads of states convey a positive sentiment and demonstrate a stance of moral rectitude. On the other hand, the returns tend to be negative when the communications are obfuscated by an excessive use of abstract words and fixated on regional rather than global issues.     

Non-positive upper bounds on expectations of small order statistics from DDA and DFRA populations

Rychlik [Appl Math (Warsaw) 29:15–32, 2002] presented positive sharp upper bounds on the expectations of order statistics with sufficiently large ranks, based on i.i.d. samples from the decreasing density and failure rate populations (DDA and DFRA, for short). They were expressed in terms of the population mean and standard deviation. Here we provide respective non-positive upper tight evaluations for expected small order statistics centered about the population mean, measured in various scale units.     

Risk sensitive asset management with transaction costs

This paper develops a continuous time risk-sensitive portfolio optimization model with a general transaction cost structure and where the individual securities or asset categories are explicitly affected by underlying economic factors. The security prices and factors follow diffusion processes with the drift and diffusion coefficients for the securities being functions of the factor levels. We develop methods of risk sensitive impulsive control theory in order to maximize an infinite horizon objective that is natural and features the long run expected growth rate, the asymptotic variance, and a single risk aversion parameter. The optimal trading strategy has a simple characterization in terms of the security prices and the factor levels. Moreover, it can be computed by solving a {\it risk sensitive quasi-variational inequality}. The Kelly criterion case is also studied, and the various results are related to the recent work by Morton and Pliska. Mansucript received: July 1998; final version received: January 1999     

The Influence of General Strikes against Government on Stock Market Behavior

Using a sample of 76 countries, this paper examines the impact of major strikes against government and its policies on stock market behavior. An occurrence of a general strike is detrimental to the value of equities, as documented by the ceteris paribus 6.11% fall in dollar-denominated stock market indices of the affected countries. This event is also accompanied by a statistically significant increase in risk, as measured by the standard deviation of returns and Value-at-Risk metrics. Taken together, these results imply that general strikes have serious ramifications for stock market investors.     

Women as employees and entrepreneurs in the Polish transformation

The article examines the experience of women compared to men in the new Polish job markets with special emphasis on their participation in the explosion of entrepreneurship that has occurred in the country since 1990. Tightening laws related to gender discrimination would have some limited impact on women's employment opportunities. Promotion of entrepreneurship is proposed as an important solution to joblessness – especially for women with general secondary education living outside major cities     

Institutions and female entrepreneurship

This paper compares the impact of institutions on men and women’s decisions to establish new business start-ups between 2001 and 2006. We use data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey (GEM) which cover at least 2,000 individuals per year in each of up to 55 countries and have merged it with country-level data, from the World Bank, Economist Intelligence Unit, Polity IV and the Heritage Foundation. We find that women are less likely to undertake entrepreneurial activity in countries where the state sector is larger, but the rule of law is not generally found to have gender-specific effects. However, more detailed institutional components of discrimination against women, in particular, restrictions on freedom of movement away from home, make it less likely for women to have high entrepreneurial aspirations in terms of employment growth, even if their entry into entrepreneurial activities, including self-employment, is not affected by this.     

Cost-effectiveness of air pollution abatement in Poland

The aim of the paper is to discuss the concept of cost-effectiveness of national air pollution abatement programmes, analyze it from a region-wide perspective, and outline a framework for integrating international and domestic environmental priorities. The paper refers to air protection policy priorities adopted by the government of Poland in 1990, and reviews policy instruments envisaged for their implementation. Additionally, it discusses international priorities and how the government of Poland attempts to address these in its policy.After defining cost-effectiveness, this paper reviews how the choice of policy instruments influences the costs of pollution control policy. Then, the recent Polish experience with charges, environmental funds, and transferable permits is confronted with the cost-effectiveness principles. The paper concludes that Poland has developed an extensive system of pollution fees which serves a revenue-raising purpose and gives modest incentives to abate, although the cost-effectiveness of this mechanism needs improvement. A potential role for transferable permits is emphasized.     

Institutions and entrepreneurship development in Russia: A comparative perspective

In this paper we use a comparative perspective to explore the ways in which institutions and networks have influenced entrepreneurial development in Russia. We utilize Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data to study the effects of the weak institutional environment in Russia on entrepreneurship, comparing it first with all available GEM country samples and second, in more detail, with Brazil and Poland. Our results suggest that Russia's institutional environment is important in explaining its relatively low levels of entrepreneurship development, where the latter is measured in terms of both number of start-ups and of existing business owners. In addition, Russia's business environment and its consequences for the role of business networks contribute to the relative advantage of entrepreneurial insiders (those already in business) to entrepreneurial outsiders (newcomers) in terms of new business start-ups.     

Corporate governance and MNE strategies in emerging economies

We explore factors of convergence and divergence in corporate governance of emerging and developed market economies, focussing on the role of firm internationalisation. In particular, foreign investments by emerging economy firms led to upgrade of their governance capabilities. These firms also became advocates for home-country policy reforms that mandated the development of similar capabilities for local firms. We present a broad overview of the literature and propose an approach that considers the evolution of corporate governance, both at the national level and the firm level, with MNEs from both emerging market economies and developed economies as active actors in this process.     

Glamour,value and anchoring on the changing P/E

The fact that value shares outperform glamour shares in the long term has been known for over 50 years. Why then do glamour shares remain popular? The price-earnings (P/E) ratio was the first statistic documented to discriminate between the two. Using data for all US stocks since 1983, we find that glamour shares have a much greater tendency to change P/E decile than value shares. We use TreeAge decision tree software, which has not been applied to problems in finance before, to show that glamour investors cannot rationally expect any windfall as their company's P/E decile changes, whatever their horizon. We infer that glamour investors anchor on the initially high P/E value, underestimate the likelihood of change and are continually surprised. We also seek theoretical justification for why value shares tend to outperform glamour shares. No convincing arguments based on the efficient market hypothesis have been put forward to show that the outperformance of value shares might be due to their being fundamentally riskier. Here, we apply equations from option theory to show that value shares can indeed be expected to outperform glamour shares.