Incorporating sustainability criteria into credit risk management

Does a commercial debtor's economic, environmental and social performance in terms of sustainability affect its credit risk rating? Does adding criteria aimed at assessing a lender's environmental, social or sustainability practices provide added value to traditional financial rating criteria? Many analyses have reported that a correlation exists between companies' environmental and their financial performance. We checked out the assertion that it ‘pays to be sustainable’ by analyzing the role that criteria pertaining to sustainability and environmental orientation play in the commercial credit risk management process. Our results show that sustainability criteria can be used to predict the financial performance of a debtor and improve the predictive validity of the credit rating process. We conclude that the sustainability a firm demonstrates influences its creditworthiness as part of its financial performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Imaginable surprise in global change science

Decisionmakers at all scales (individuals, firms, and local, national, and international governmental organizations) are concerned about reducing their vulnerability to (or the likelihood of) unexpected events, 'surprises.' After briefly and selectively reviewing the literature on uncertainty and surprise, we adopt a definition of 'surprise' that does not include the strict requirement that it apply to a wholly unexpected outcome, but rather recognizes that many events are often anticipated by some, even if not most observers. Thus, we define 'imaginable surprise' as events or processes that depart from the expectations of some definable community. Therefore, what gets labelled as 'surprise' depends on the extent to which what happens departs from community expectations and on the salience of the problem. We offer a typology of surprise that distinguishes imaginable surprises from risk and uncertainty, and develops several kinds of impediments to overcoming ignorances. These range from the need for more 'normal science' to phenomenological impediments (e.g., inherentunpredictability in some chaotic systems) to epistemological ignorance (e.g., ideological blocks to reducing ignorance). Based on the input of some two dozen scholars at an Aspen Global Change Institute Summer Workshop in 1994 *, we construct two tables in which participants offer many possible 'imaginable surprises' in the global change context, as well as their potential salience for creating unexpectedly high or low carbon dioxide emissions. Improving the anticipation of surprises is an interdisciplinary enterprise that should offer a sceptical welcoming of outlier ideas and methods.     

Context sensitive multimodal road planning: a case study in Cape Town, South Africa

Road planning practice relies almost exclusively on parameters related to traffic factors, such as private vehicle speeds and volumes. In many developing countries the requirements for public transport and non-motorised transport are not explicitly integrated into the planning process, despite the fact that these form the primary mode of transport for the majority of the population. This affects the mobility opportunities for these sectors of the population and contributes to poor road safety, especially with regards to pedestrians. The research outlined in the paper posits that, in order to assess the usage and needs of the road holistically, other factors related to the adjacent land uses, socio-economic characteristics of the population the road serves, and the environmental context within which the road is located, factors heavily in how the road is used and should, therefore, be considered within the planning process. The paper describes a methodology to include these factors in the planning of roads. The method attempts to prioritise amongst the five primary road based modes (public transport, car, freight, walking and cycling) based upon a combination of traffic and non-traffic factors. The method employed uses a geographic information system (GIS) based spatial multiple criteria evaluation (SMCE) model with inputs from widely available data sources such as census, household travel surveys, land use and environmental data to arrive at solutions for modal priorities. A case study is conducted along an arterial route in Cape Town, South Africa, providing infrastructure planning recommendations and audit possibilities for the future. Since weighting is an important driver in the SMCE process, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the effect of alternative weighting schemes on the outputs from the method.     

OTC MARKET SWITCHING AND STOCK RETURNS: SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

In this study the effect on the common stock returns of 278 firms that switched OTC market segments from 1982 to 1987 is examined. It is hypothesized that abnormally positive returns are associated with news of the move from the NASDAQ to the NASDAQ National Market System (NMS) and that the market responds more favorably during pre-NMS inclusion for stocks with low versus high liquidity before switching. Using event study methodology, results support these hypotheses. Unlike post-listing studies, the evidence reveals no anomalous return behavior during the post-NMS inclusion period studied.