Unintended trajectories: liberalization and the geographies of private business flight

The global commercial aviation industry has undergone significant regulatory reform during the last 30 years. This paper explores something of the relationship between air transport liberalization and the growth of private business aviation and suggests that the sector’s development is largely an unintended consequence of the increasingly deregulated operating environment in that it has developed to overcome some of liberalization’s negative impacts, including delays, congestion, and perceptions of poor customer service. We argue that liberalization has created innovative market opportunities for private business aviation and illustrate how the sector’s operating models are facilitating new, as yet largely undocumented, forms of aerial mobility. The paper examines: the advantages of private business aviation over scheduled services; business strategies in the sector, especially the idea of fractional jets; the impact of new technologies, particularly the Very Light Jet (VLJ); and, finally, employs Europe as an example of the spatialities of private business aviation.     

Herding among Investment Newsletters: Theory and Evidence

A model is developed which implies that if an analyst has high reputation or low ability, or if there is strong public information that is inconsistent with the analyst's private information, she is likely to herd. Herding is also common when informative private signals are positively correlated across analysts. The model is tested using data from analysts who publish investment newsletters. Consistent with the model's implications, the empirical results indicate that a newsletter analyst is likely to herd on Value Line's recommendation if her reputation is high, if her ability is low, or if signal correlation is high.     

A scenario-based integrated approach for modeling carbon price risk

Carbon prices are highly dependent on government emission policies and local industrial compositions. When historical data does not exist or limited price data can only be sourced from another country, scenario analysis becomes the only tool for the modelling of future carbon prices. However, various plausible but equally possible scenarios can produce large variations in forecast carbon prices. In a traditional approach of scenario analysis, investment decisions or risk management strategies are proposed and analysed for each given scenario, optimal solutions are determined. However, when the number of scenarios becomes large, it often becomes too complex and intractable to have a clear view on the selection of investment decisions or risk-management strategies because these decisions and strategies are closely linked with each of the many scenarios. In this paper, it is proposed to use a stochastic mean-reversion model to represent future carbon price movements, but this model is calibrated to the forecast carbon prices of all the scenarios. In this approach, a single model is used to capture the underlying uncertainty and expectation of the stochastic carbon prices as projected by all the scenarios, carbon price risk can thus be modeled and analysed without the need for direct references to any specific scenarios. The modelling and management of long-term carbon-price risk are therefore purely dependent on future carbon price levels and volatilities of these scenarios, instead of on the scenarios themselves. Through such an approach, the optimization of investment decisions and risk management solutions can be much simpler because the forecasted carbon prices are the only input data.      

Developing country finances,present and future

Existing ways for developing countries to obtain finance are explained-IMF credits, compensatory finance, private loans, etc. Reforms to these arrangements are discussed; for instance, the IMF could ease the conditions it imposes for loans, compensatory finance could react to rising import bills as well as to falling export revenues, and Special Drawing Rights could be better linked to aid schemes. Given inertia in existing facilities, a new World Development Fund may be needed to complement existing institutions.     

The incidental parameter problem in a non-differentiable panel data model

We consider a panel quantile model with fixed effects. It is shown that the maximum likelihood estimator is numerically equivalent to the least absolute deviations estimator of the differenced model, and as a consequence, there is no incidental parameter problem.     

The effects of remittances,foreign direct investment,and foreign aid on economic growth: An empirical analysis

The Sustainable Development Goals have refocused attention on ways of providing external finance to support development. Because they have different motivations and work through different modalities, remittances, foreign direct investment (FDI), and official development assistance may be expected to have different consequences for economic growth. Existing empirical evidence suggests that both positive and negative effects are associated with each source of finance. We use both a dynamic panel model and a fixed effects model to calculate the overall effects of each source of finance in isolation and taken together over the period 1976–2015. We include a range of control variables to allow for other potential influences on economic growth. We disaggregate the effects across geographical regions and income levels to test for heterogeneity. We also undertake a series of robustness checks. Our results suggest that FDI has a significant positive effect on economic growth, whereas remittances have a significant and negative effect. The effect of foreign aid is more ambiguous but is usually insignificant. The article offers an interpretation of the results drawing on ideas from the relevant theory.     

An empirical examination of the pricing of exchange‐traded barrier options

Actively traded barrier options were introduced on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1998. This market provides a unique laboratory in which to empirically examine their pricing. This is particularly so given that, for a number of these options, otherwise identical standard European options were simultaneously traded. As a result, the pricing of barrier options may be compared both with their theoretical valuations and with the pricing of otherwise identical European options. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:1049–1064, 2004