The versatile role of sustainable market entrepreneurs in market transformation: An intervention framework for institutional change

This article investigates in which way sustainable entrepreneurship can generate institutional change that transforms markets towards sustainability. A transformation of models of economic organization and market structures through sustainable entrepreneurship fosters the path towards sustainability. Institutional change involves sustainable market entrepreneurs as institutional entrepreneurs that operate in an effectual manner in different market transformation phases. Sustainable market entrepreneurs while seeking entrepreneurial opportunities simultaneously shape existing market structures and market conditions in different sustainable market transformation phases thereby creating new opportunities. Accordingly, a framework that explains institutional change prompted by sustainable market entrepreneurs in market transformation phases is developed. In this framework, various interventions which encourage sustainable market entrepreneurs to co-create with the stakeholders of their choice are strategized. The provided framework enhances the understanding of the versatile role of sustainable market entrepreneurs and potentially the leverage of their actions towards institutional impact over time.     

Algorithmic market making for options

In this article, we tackle the problem of a market maker in charge of a book of options on a single liquid underlying asset. By using an approximation of the portfolio in terms of its vega, we show that the seemingly high-dimensional stochastic optimal control problem of an option market maker is in fact tractable. More precisely, when volatility is modeled using a classical stochastic volatility model—e.g. the Heston model—the problem faced by an option market maker is characterized by a low-dimensional functional equation that can be solved numerically using a Euler scheme along with interpolation techniques, even for large portfolios. In order to illustrate our findings, numerical examples are provided.     

The US financial crisis,market volatility,credit risk and stock returns in the Americas

We employ the multivariate DCC-GARCH model to identify contagion from the USA to the largest developed and emerging markets in the Americas during the US financial crisis. We analyze the dynamic conditional correlations between stock market returns, changes in the general economy’s credit risk represented by the TED spread, and changes in the US market volatility represented by the CBOE Volatility Index^® (VIX). Our sample includes daily closing prices from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2015, for the USA and stock markets in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. We first identify that increases in VIX have a negative intertemporal and contemporaneous relationship with most of the stock returns, and these relationships increase significantly during the US financial crisis. We then find evidence of significant increases in contemporaneous conditional correlations between changes in the TED spread and stock returns. Increases in conditional correlations during the financial crisis are associated with financial contagion from the USA to the Americas. Our findings have policy implications and are of interest to practitioners since they illustrate that during periods of financial distress, US stock volatility and weakening credit market conditions could promote financial contagion to the Americas.

     

Impact investing and sustainable market transformations: The role of venture capital funds

Impact investors often know their financial return on investments, but are less certain about their impact. This article frames impact as their contribution to sustainable market transformation. A sustainable market transformation consists of inception, first movers, critical mass, and institutionalization phases. Given the nature of such transformations, the impact is effectuated at different moments and toward various market actors. Based on an exploratory research design with semi-structured expert interviews, this article aims to create an overview of the roles of impact venture capital funds in sustainable market transformations. The results suggest that the view that the capitalization of start-ups is the only impact of impact investors is a misconception. The needs of companies with sustainability value propositions change over time and consequently impact investors perform various roles. For example, exiting an investment while upholding social and environmental objectives communicates to mainstream business that the start-up is ready to create a greater impact. Further, impact investors fulfill external roles that change the perspectives of institutional actors toward sustainable investments. Based on an overview of the different roles that impact investors fill, this article proposes a future research agenda to strengthen our knowledge about the impact return of investments.     

Disaggregating input–output tables in time: the temporal input–output framework

The input–output framework has evolved dramatically since its initial formulation. New analytical techniques and extensions have allowed a more comprehensive assessment of the economy and expanded its applicability. Nonetheless, the core of the framework has remained unchanged: an annually compiled input–output table, which conveys monetary flows between sectors in a region in a particular year. Hence, the technical coefficients derived from it are ‘average’ input compositions, neglecting fluctuations in production capacity, seasonality and temporal shocks within that period. This paper develops a consistent methodology to disaggregate the annual input–output table in its time dimension in order to estimate intra-year input–output matrices with distinct technical structures for a particular year. The main advantages in relation to the annual model are to allow seasonal effects to be studied within the input–output framework, to better understand the process of coefficient change and to offer a more comprehensive dynamic view of production.     

Overt searchers' responses to advertising

The purpose of this study was to compare two groups of prospective buyers of an industrial product on awareness and recall of a particular advertising campaign. The two groups were: (a) overt searchers - operationally defined as those who had made inquiries about the product, and (b) random prospects - randomly selected from local industrial directories. According to the Howard and Sheth model, it is expected that overt searchers would exhibit greater awareness and knowledge of the advertising campaign than would the random prospects. The results indicated, however, that overt searchers scored higher than random prospects only on awareness. Indeed, they seemed to have poorer recall of the content of the advertisements. The authors provide an explanation for this unexpected result.     

Land relations under unbearable stress: Rwanda caught in the Malthusian trap

This paper describes how the distribution of land access rights and the prevailing social fabric have evolved in a Rwandan village in the face of extreme land pressure. The study was conducted to gain a better understanding of the equity impact of land tenure individualization and the rising incidence of market transactions in such a context. The densely populated area studied during 1988-93 was in northwest Rwanda and belongs to the commune of Kanama in Gisenyi prefecture. Acute competition for land in a context characterized by too slow expansion of non-agricultural income opportunities has led to increasingly unequal land distribution and rapid processes of land dispossession through the functioning of the illegal land market and evolution of indigenous tenure arrangements. Also, the many land disputes and the threat of landlessness have led to rising tensions in social relations and even within the core of family life, paving the way for more overt expressions of discontentment and violence. A connection between those conditions and the civil war which erupted in 1994 is established.     

Hybrid Choice Models: Progress and Challenges

We discuss the development of predictive choice models that go beyond the random utility model in its narrowest formulation. Such approaches incorporate several elements of cognitive process that have been identified as important to the choice process, including strong dependence on history and context, perception formation, and latent constraints. A flexible and practical hybrid choice model is presented that integrates many types of discrete choice modeling methods, draws on different types of data, and allows for flexible disturbances and explicit modeling of latent psychological explanatory variables, heterogeneity, and latent segmentation. Both progress and challenges related to the development of the hybrid choice model are presented.     

On Consumer Credit Outcomes in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region

The ease in mobility of people across the U.S.-Mexico border region provides a natural setting for analyzing the role of economic interdependency on consumer credit outcomes. Since the U.S. and Mexican economies are not entirely synchronized and have different growth rates, the growing Mexican border economy is likely to increase the consumption of U.S. goods and services in the region, and provide additional job opportunities to the U.S. border residents. Thus, the effect of being located at the border (‘border effect’) might reduce default and bankruptcy in the U.S. However, if both economies are nearly perfectly correlated, then the ‘border effect’ is likely to be insignificant. Our results are consistent with the border effect lowering the rate of bankruptcies and mortgage defaults in the U.S. counties that share a border with Mexico. An increase in the level of economic interdependency, as measured by the differential economic growth between Mexican municipalities and their sister U.S. county, decreases the bankruptcy rates in the U.S. border region. Overall, this research helps understand credit risk issues in the U.S.-Mexico border region.