A framework model for assessing sustainability impacts of urban development

Urban man-made assets have impacts not just on those who develop, build and operate them, but on people who may be quite remote from them. For example, the impact of a building on greenhouse gas emissions arising from fossil fuel use, pollution caused by travel to work patterns and employment opportunities provided by urban developments may be far removed from their immediate locality. There is a growing recognition of the need to internalize these external costs and benefits in accountancy frameworks, drawing on experiences in accounting for sustainable development. This desire, however, presents major challenges in identifying, evaluating and allocating the external environmental, social and economic costs and benefits of an urban environment. This paper reports on the development of an Urban Development Sustainability Assessment Model (UD-SAM) which allows decision makers to identify sustainability indicators (economic, environmental and social) and which may lead to more holistic evaluation of the sustainability impact of elements of the urban environment. The UD-SAM builds on a sustainability assessment model (SAM) developed originally in the oil industry. This paper describes how SAM has been tailored for the construction industry and urban sustainability assessment, and how a set of generic sustainable development indicators have been identified and validated by stakeholders.     

Risk taking under heterogenous revenue sharing

We examine the impact of informal risk sharing on risk taking incentives when transfers are organized through a social network. A bilateral partial sharing rule satisfies that neighbors share equally a part of their revenue. In such a society, correlated technologies generate interdependent risk levels. We obtain three findings. First, there is a unique and interior Nash-equilibrium risk profile, and it is in general differentiated and related to the Bonacich measure of the risk sharing network. Second, more revenue sharing enhances risk taking on average, although some agents may lower their risk level. Last, we find that under investment might often be observed.     

Temporal changes in income distribution among the states of America during the 1980s

Abstract: The purpose of this paper was to examine the effect of variations in selected factors on the change in interstate distribution of household income during the 1980s. The results indicate that the percentage change in the female labour force's participation as well as the state unemployment rate had statistically significant effects on the percentage increase change in the Gini measure of income inequality.     

On the strong uniform consistency of the mode estimator for censored time series

Let (T _n ) _n≥1 be a sequence random variables (rv) of interest distributed as T. In censorship models the rv T is subject to random censoring by another rv C. Let θ be the mode of T. In this paper we define a new smooth kernel estimator [^(q)]_n{\hat{\theta}_n} of θ and establish its almost sure convergence under an α-mixing condition.     

Long memory and structural breaks in modeling the return and volatility dynamics of precious metals

We investigate the potential of structural changes and long memory (LM) properties in returns and volatility of the four major precious metal commodities traded on the COMEX markets (gold, silver, platinum and palladium). Broadly speaking, a random variable is said to exhibit long memory behavior if its autocorrelation function is not integrable, while structural changes can induce sudden and significant shifts in the time-series behavior of that variable. The results from implementing several parametric and semiparametric methods indicate strong evidence of long range dependence in the daily conditional return and volatility processes for the precious metals. Moreover, for most of the precious metals considered, this dual long memory is found to be adequately captured by an ARFIMA–FIGARCH model, which also provides better out-of-sample forecast accuracy than several popular volatility models. Finally, evidence shows that conditional volatility of precious metals is better explained by long memory than by structural breaks.     

Part-time work in the public health service of Denmark,France and the UK

The aim of this paper is to consider the extent to which and the ways in which part-time work is used in the health services of Denmark, France and the UK. The reasons for and the implications of introducing part-time work in the three EU countries are also analysed and compared. Data were collected using questionnaires and interviews from hospitals in Denmark, France and the UK. Questionnaires were completed by heads of department and by part-time employees. Interviews (for the UK sample only) were held with the managers responsible for the introduction of flexible working practices. The findings show that part-time employment is the most common flexible working practice in the health services of all three countries but that the purpose of its introduction differs from one country to another. Part-time work seemed to have satisfied the desire of those who run the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK for cost reduction and for flexibility of working practices. In the French health service it was aimed at creating jobs, whereas in Denmark it was a response to increasing employee demand for flexible working. It was also found that, contrary to the Danish case with its established tradition of flexible working and equality in employment, the full-time working traditions and the male-dominated cultures of the health services in France and in the UK have often undermined the importance and benefits of part-time employment.     

A comparative study of the effects of ‘best practice’ HRM on worker outcomes in Malaysia and England local government

This paper presents the findings of a cross-cultural comparison of the effects of ‘best practice’ HRM using employees from a matched sample of local government service departments in England and Malaysia (England n = 569, Malaysian n = 453). The paper tests the universal ‘best practice’ thesis, and also assesses the perceived level of up-take of HR practices in the two samples. The research also considers the effects of the psychological climate and employees' perceptions of trust on five work-related outcomes, namely job satisfaction, motivation, organizational citizenship behaviour, stress and quit intentions. The findings reveal that the Malaysian workers perceived the up-take of HR practices to be higher in comparison to their counterparts in England. A less consistent pattern emerged with regards to perceptions of climate. OLS regression revealed that consistent with the universal thesis, a bundle of HR practices significantly predicted employee outcomes in the hypothesized directions in both samples. Therefore, these findings provide strong support for the universal thesis.     

A model of optimal portfolio selection under liquidity risk and price impact

We study a financial model with one risk-free and one risky asset subject to liquidity risk and price impact. In this market, an investor may transfer funds between the two assets at any discrete time. Each purchase or sale policy decision affects the rice of the risky asset and incurs some fixed transaction cost. The objective is to maximize the expected utility from terminal liquidation value over a finite horizon and subject to a solvency constraint. This is formulated as an impulse control problem under state constraints and we characterize the value function as the unique constrained viscosity solution to the associated quasi-variational Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman inequality. We would like to thank Mihail Zervos for useful discussions.