Bank-Specific Daily Interest Rate Adjustment in the Dutch Mortgage Market

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the interest rate setting behavior of the four largest banks in the Dutch mortgage market, using advertised interest rates at a daily frequency. The evidence for the long run pricing behaviour suggests that the banks operate in a competitive environment as they base their interest rates on funding cost. However, two banks appear to be less cost sensitive than the others. In the short run, most of the banks adjust their rates less strongly to funding cost increases than to decreases, which suggests competitive pressures. For one bank significant evidence is found for a quicker response to negative than to positive deviations of actual from desired interest rates.     

Wendell Bell and his contribution to the field of futures

In training to be a pilot one of the earliest lessons taught and repeated is that no matter what happens, the pilot must first and foremost fly the airplane. It can be bouncing in turbulence, slammed up or down in a thunderstorm, caught up in the vortex of a jumbo jet that has just taken off, radios gone, night dark and foreboding, but fly the airplane first, then solve the problem. This may be a metaphor that Wendell uses when he looks at life span and the prospects of death. He says (emphasis his) the first task of life is to live.     

Barriers to technological adoption in Spain and Portugal

Since 1945, both Spain and Portugal have experienced significant market transformations. These countries were both led by dictators for many years until the mid 1970s when each moved toward more democratic governments and more open markets. As a result, each experienced significant changes in output with Spain’s becoming a model for proper market based transformations. Although Portugal’s transformation has been less impressive it experienced improvements too. This paper uses a Parente and Prescott (J Polit Econ 102(2), 298–321, 1994; 2000) type model to investigate the recent transformations in each of these countries and quantify the extent to which barriers to technological adoption may have played for these two development experiences. Our results indicate that from 1945 to 2003 these barriers have fallen considerably but remain high, and are somewhat higher in Portugal than in Spain.     

Green tax reforms and habits

Using a dynamic general equilibrium model, we explore the role of habit formation when analyzing green tax reforms under the double dividend hypothesis. We assume increases in energy taxes and adjust capital taxation in a revenue-neutral framework to evaluate the effects on welfare. Since the existence of an environmental dividend is uncontroversial, we mainly focus on the efficiency dividend. Our findings show that, when taxes on household energy consumption increase, habits and transitional dynamics alter household decisions, and change the efficiency dividend. However, when the tax increase is on energy used as an input, reform always induces a welfare cost in terms of efficiency. In this case, habits play a less important role.     

Adversarial and Amiable Inference in Medical Diagnosis,Reliability and Survival Analysis

In this paper, we develop a family of bivariate beta distributions that encapsulate both positive and negative correlations, and which can be of general interest for Bayesian inference. We then invoke a use of these bivariate distributions in two contexts. The first is diagnostic testing in medicine, threat detection and signal processing. The second is system survivability assessment, relevant to engineering reliability and to survival analysis in biomedicine. In diagnostic testing, one encounters two parameters that characterize the efficacy of the testing mechanism: test sensitivity and test specificity. These tend to be adversarial when their values are interpreted as utilities. In system survivability, the parameters of interest are the component reliabilities, whose values when interpreted as utilities tend to exhibit co‐operative (amiable) behavior. Besides probability modeling and Bayesian inference, this paper has a foundational import. Specifically, it advocates a conceptual change in how one may think about reliability and survival analysis. The philosophical writings of de Finetti, Kolmogorov, Popper and Savage, when brought to bear on these topics constitute the essence of this change. Its consequence is that we have at hand a defensible framework for invoking Bayesian inferential methods in diagnostics, reliability and survival analysis. Another consequence is a deeper appreciation of the judgment of independent lifetimes. Specifically, we make the important point that independent lifetimes entail at a minimum, a two‐stage hierarchical construction.     

Personal values associated with political consumption: an exploratory study with university students in Brazil

Emerging countries have witnessed an incredible change in their societal structure in the last few years. In Brazil, the economical rise of the middle class brought more that 100 million people to the marketplace. This stimulus to consumerism (i.e. the social and economic order that encourages the purchase of goods and services in ever‐greater amounts) is accompanied by a notable growth in social movements and mobilization of citizen‐consumers, which indicates changes in the values of individuals and concerns with the direction the society is taking. Conscious and political consumption consequently arises as an alternative way. Especially among young consumers such issues are interesting to address from a theoretical and social point of view, as this new generation will shape the future of the nation. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to analyse socially conscious and political consumption in terms of consumers’ civic engagement as political citizens. We argue that the young political consumer is value‐oriented. The study relied on quantitative research, conducted through an internet‐based survey where 458 valid questionnaires were obtained. Schwartz's Portrait Values Questionnaire was used to measure personal values of the interviewees. Conscious and political consumption were measured through eight questions addressing alter‐ and anti‐consumption actions. The results indicated significant differences among the personal values of the university students that were classified as political consumers. Universalism and benevolence stood out among the core values of this group, with prominence of self‐transcendence, appreciation for equality and concerns for the well‐being of others. However, a gap was observed between the discourse and action of interviewees, once only one‐third of the sample undertook some form of political consumption. The conclusion was that most of the university students interviewed show the will to change society with individual actions, but demonstrate very little political commitment, and currently do not act politically in their purchases.     

Where firms choose to disclose voluntary environmental information

Corporate environmental performance is of increasing importance to investors, public policy makers and the general public. Firms disclose environmental information (mostly) voluntarily in their annual reports and on their websites. These disclosures are important, because they provide environmental performance information and influence capital markets. We compare environmental disclosure in annual reports and on websites with a long-term (bad) and a short-term (crisis) environmental performance measure. We find evidence to support our hypotheses that different levels of environmental disclosure are made in annual reports and on websites under different conditions. More specifically, firms disclose more environmental information on their websites when faced with an environmental crisis and more in their annual reports when they have a bad environmental reputation.