The Global Determinants of Direct Office Real Estate Returns

We investigate the determinants of direct office real estate returns by analyzing rents, capital appraisals, and total returns. A recently compiled global database of major cities in Asia, Europe, and the United States provides a unique opportunity to give a macro-view on the effects of economic growth and supply and demand factors on nominal real estate returns. The global database provides quarterly observations from 1986 to 1999. To address the smoothness problem of appraisal-based price data and regulated rents, we employ the Generalized Method of Moments to estimate a dynamic panel-data model. The model allows us to combine the cross-sectional and time-series dimension in our quarterly data. We find that gross domestic product, inflation, unemployment, vacancy rate, and the available stock all have an effect on real estate returns.     

Development and efficiency of the banking sector in a transitional economy: Hungarian experience

The paper analyzes the experiences and developments of Hungarian banking sector during the transitional process from a centralized economy to a market-oriented system. The paper identifies that early reorganization initiatives, flexible approaches to privatization, and liberal policies towards foreign banks’ involvement with the domestic institutions helped to build a relatively stable and increasingly efficient banking system. Foreign banks and banks with higher foreign bank ownership involvement were associated with lower inefficiency.     

国内金融市场完全开放对国有商业银行的影响

按照入世协定书中的开放时间表,我国在入世5年后也即2006年底将实行金融业的全面开放。本文认为,我国金融市场完全开放将对国内商业银行带来深远影响:一是在政策层面,经济政策、金融政策、配套政策的进一步开放将使金融业的进入门槛降低,从而带来竞争主体的多元和竞争的更加市场化;二是在市场层面,客户的金融知识的普及和客户的议价能力的提高造成客户对银行需求也在不断提高;三是在竞争层面上,竞争主体、竞争模式和竞争手段的改变将使银行业面临更为复杂的竞争局面。为应对上述影响,国有商业银行应根据自身优势,扬长避短,根据不同情况,综合运用不同战略,以期达到持续发展的目标。     

国内金融市场完全开放对国有商业银行的影响

按照入世协定书中的开放时问表，我国在入世5年后也即2006年底将实行金融业的全面开放。本文认为，我国金融市场完全开放将对国内商业银行带来深远影响：一是在政策层面，经济政策、金融政策、配套政策的进一步开放将使金融业的进入门槛降低，从而带来竞争主体的多元和竞争的更加市场化；二是在市场层面，客户的金融知识的普及和客户的议价能力的提高造成客户对银行需求也在不断提高；三是在竞争层面上，竞争主体、竞争模式和竞争手段的改变将使银行业面临更为复杂的竞争局面。为应对上述影响，国有商业银行应根据自身优势，扬长避短，根据不同情况，综合运用不同战略，以期达到持续发展的目标。     

中国电力行业融资问题研究

电力行业的融资方式与过程是与其在国民经济中的地位、作用以及自身的经济技术特征密切联系的,作为资金密集型行业,电力行业的发展,主要靠扩大投入来实现。我国目前电力融资仍然没有脱离计划经济的融资特征,还存在一系列阻碍电力产业资金融通的问题,这在很大程度上影响了整个行业特别是电网经营企业的发展。因此,必须积极寻求符合电力行业发展客观要求的融资方式。     

发展中国家的电力市场化改革综述——市场模式、约束条件及路径选择

发展中国家由于社会和经济发展水平低,在电力市场化改革中遇到了很多教训。电力市场的目标模式是零售竞争型、但发展中国家受制度、资本市场、人力资源、技术的约束,难以直接实现目标模式。渐进式改革路径更适用于发展中国家的电力市场化改革。     

The potential of integrated reporting to enhance sustainability reporting in the public sector

This paper examines the influence of integrated reporting (IR) on the sustainability reporting practices of a state-owned enterprise through a content analysis of their reports and interviews with report preparers. The findings show a steady increase in the quantity and quality of sustainability disclosures. In 2012, the organization chose to adopt the IR framework in order to enhance sustainability reporting for all stakeholders. The IR process resulted in a more balanced disclosure of material aspects of sustainability. However, while IR has the potential to enhance public sector sustainability reporting, inter-generational equity issues were ignored.     

New development: Private finance over public good? Questioning the value of impact bonds

This article contrasts the proposed benefits of social impact bonds (SIBs) with the more mixed performance of initial projects, and reviews the early literature, revealing a similar divide between initial optimism and subsequent critique. Despite this, SIBs continue to receive high-level support, while expanding their reach through controversial new ‘development’ and ‘environmental’ impact bonds. This situation deserves more scrutiny in the accounting literature.     

Barriers to the investment in the Concentrated Solar Power sector in Morocco: A foresight approach using the Cross Impact Analysis for a large number of events

The Scenario Analysis methods have often been used by policy makers as an instrument to manage uncertainty and to support the shaping of long-term economy policies. In this research, we apply Scenario Analysis in order to identify the barriers affecting the decision to invest in the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) sector in Morocco. Our results aim at facilitating the process of defining different paths in strategic political and policy actions. Using data from a survey on a panel of experts, the Cross Impact Analysis (CIA) and the Cross Impact Matrix System (SMIC) techniques are applied. The advantage of these techniques is that they allow including in the analysis the interlinkages between the events that will define the future scenarios. However, their limitation is that the number of events analyzed cannot be too high since the information collected from the experts increases exponentially according to the number of events introduced. We thus expand our analysis with a new methodological approach, combining the use of prospective and statistics techniques. This approach allows addressing the mentioned limitation and applying these techniques, initially restricted to 6 events in its common application, to a large number of events. The results show that uncertainty and informality would be key factors in promoting the arrival of companies in this sector. Additionally, regarding companies that already have a presence in Morocco’s renewable energy sector, an increase in activity would be achieved through improvements in the easing of financial and legal barriers.     

Spillovers among CDS indexes in the US financial sector

By employing the robust cross-correlation function approach proposed by Hong (2001), and conducting pre-tests for structural breaks in the variances as well as removing the causality-in-mean effects in the causality-in-variance tests, we investigate volatility and mean transmissions between the credit default swaps (CDS) indexes of three US financial sectors. We use daily series on five-year banking, insurance, and financial services sector CDS indexes at the sector level from January 2004 to December 2011. We find evidence of significant causality-in-mean effects running from the banking sector to the insurance and financial services sector CDS indexes and from the financial services to the insurance sector CDS indexes, suggesting the leading role of the banking and financial services sectors in terms of price discovery. Moreover, we find significant causality-in-variance effects from the financial services sector CDS index to that of the banking sector, implying the existence of information transmission and contagion from the former, the least regulated of the three. The implications of these findings on traders and policymakers are also provided.