The market value of decomposed carbon emissions

We introduce the decomposition of carbon emissions into an expected and an unexpected component and analyze the association between these components and firm value. The expected component captures a firm's average carbon emissions inherent to its business model and operating environment. The unexpected component, meaning the firm-specific deviation from expected carbon emissions, reflects the management's effort and ability to implement carbon management and actively influence carbon emissions. For a sample of US firms operating in carbon-intensive industries, we estimate the expected component using a regression of carbon emissions on firm characteristics and industry. The residual of this regression represents the unexpected component. The results reveal that, on average, investors attach value to both components. While investors consider the expected component to be relevant regardless of assurance, they consider the unexpected component to be more relevant in the presence of assurance. The assurance alleviates credibility concerns about the information content of the unexpected component. Additionally, we confirm the nomological validity of our measure of the unexpected component, as it is negatively related to indicators of better carbon management systems.     

Effect of Korean trade union on wage discrimination between regular and irregular workers

Whether the dual labor market structure implied by employment type and unionization causes wage discrimination is an intriguing and relevant policy question in the context of South Korea. This study examines the effect of trade unions on wage discrimination against irregular workers by extracting and comparing the ratios of the discriminatory wage gap by employment type between unionized and non-unionized workplaces. As per the analysis, all generalized decomposition frameworks show that the presence of trade unions expands discrimination regardless of the employment type. In addition, the effects of unionization on the degree of discrimination differ by factors characterized by the dual labor market. The effects are statistically significantly greater for women, youth, service industries, and white-collar jobs.     

Neural basis expansion analysis with exogenous variables: Forecasting electricity prices with NBEATSx

We extend neural basis expansion analysis (NBEATS) to incorporate exogenous factors. The resulting method, called NBEATSx, improves on a well-performing deep learning model, extending its capabilities by including exogenous variables and allowing it to integrate multiple sources of useful information. To showcase the utility of the NBEATSx model, we conduct a comprehensive study of its application to electricity price forecasting tasks across a broad range of years and markets. We observe state-of-the-art performance, significantly improving the forecast accuracy by nearly 20% over the original NBEATS model, and by up to 5% over other well-established statistical and machine learning methods specialized for these tasks. Additionally, the proposed neural network has an interpretable configuration that can structurally decompose time series, visualizing the relative impact of trend and seasonal components and revealing the modeled processes’ interactions with exogenous factors. To assist related work, we made the code available in a dedicated repository.     

Value premium and macroeconomic variables

This paper investigates the effect of macroeconomic expectations on the value premium. We introduce a two-pass estimation procedure to extrapolate the impact of investors' macroexpectations on the firm fundamental value of Rhodes-Kropf, Robinson, and Viswanathan. We find that the level and slope of the term structure affect valuation, revealing a heavily industry-dependent effect. The portfolios sorted on metrics orthogonal to macroeconomic variables show a clear association between the misvaluation component of value premium and size risk. By removing the influence of the macroeconomic conditions and size, we separate the portion of the value premium that rewards macroeconomic expectations.     

The motifs of risk transmission in multivariate time series: Application to commodity prices

In this article we propose to exploit topological information embedded in forecast error variance decomposition derived from large Bayesian vector autoregressive models (VAR) to study network connectedness and risk transmission of multivariate time series observations. Firstly, we design a robust link classification procedure based on shortest paths, so to identify salient directional spillovers in a high-dimensional framework. Secondly, we study recurrent and statistically significant sub-graphs, i.e. network motifs, on the induced network backbone by means of null models which account for local node heterogeneity. The methodology is applied to analyze spillover networks of a set of global commodity prices. We demonstrate that spillovers become key drivers of the system variance during commodity price bubbles and bursts, giving raise to complex triadic structures which do not manifest during normal business periods. By accounting for local node connectivity, we observe a departure from the null models due to the high participation of Crude Oil, Food and Beverages and Raw Materials in complex recurrent sub-graphs.     

菱铁矿在CO2气氛下热分解反应动力学研究

利用热重分析仪(TGA)研究了菱铁矿在CO₂气氛下热分解反应特性及动力学特性。结果表明:在CO₂气氛下,菱铁矿开始热分解温度为419℃,完全热分解的温度为590℃,且在512℃左右热分解速率最大。CO₂抑制了菱铁矿热分解反应过程,相对于在N2气氛下,菱铁矿完全分解所需要的时间及达到最大反应速率所需要的时间明显滞后。通过模型拟合法得到,菱铁矿在CO₂气氛热分解反应的平均表观活化能为399.9 kJ/mol,指前因子lg A为30.70,遵循的机理模型为随机成核与随后生长模型G(x)=-ln(1-x)。     

Good students,avid readers: The cost of academic success

The effects of reading habits on academic performances have been carefully investigated, but little is known about the effects of academic achievements on students’ leisure reading. This paper investigates this issue by estimating the effects of academic achievements, proxied by the number of exams passed, on leisure reading, measured by the number of leisure books read in a year. Using an online survey submitted to the students at the University of Bologna, Italy, we adopt a two-step control-function technique to control for endogeneity. The empirical evidence suggests the existence of a negative relationship between students’ academic achievements and the time devoted to leisure reading. This result holds for students of different fields of study and is stronger for male students. The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition supports the existence of a gender-specific idiosyncratic effect.     

Ordinal Variables and the Measurement of Upward and Downward Intergenerational Educational Mobility in European Countries

This article proposes a new approach to the measurement of intergenerational mobility in education. Borrowing the concept of inequality-sensitive and additive achievement measure axiomatically developed by Apouey et al., we derive new indices of upward, downward, and total mobility, using a “movement approach.” It turns out that the Prais-Bibby and Bartholomew mobility indices are particular cases of the mobility indices we introduce. We then present an empirical illustration based on the 2016 European Social Survey. Particular attention is given to within country differences between fathers to children and mothers to children educational mobility. When comparing two countries, we also make a distinction between gross and net mobility, the latter referring to the case where country differences in the educational structure of parents and children are neutralized.     

Cross-category spillover effects of economic policy uncertainty between China and the US: Time and frequency evidence

This study investigates the connectedness among three types of economic policy uncertainties, namely monetary, fiscal, and trade uncertainties, between China and the US. We used the spillover index measurement and the frequency-domain decomposition approach to detect the spillover effects of these categorical uncertainties from both the time- and frequency-domain perspectives. The results suggest that the spillover effects have time-varying characteristics, and some major events could sharply increase the spillover indices. More spillovers are mainly observed in the short-term, whereas the impacts of the medium- and long-term are limited. Furthermore, the leader of the spillover is monetary policy in China, but fiscal policy in the US, the spillovers of all uncertainties mainly exist domestically, apart from the US trade policy uncertainty. These results provide crucial implications for policymakers and investors, who should pay more attention to short-term spillovers and monetary policy uncertainty, which can mitigate their vulnerability to policy uncertainty shocks.     

Disparity in high school enrollment between native and immigrant children in Japan

Using nonlinear decomposition, this study examines the gap in high school enrollment between native and immigrant children based on data from the 2010 Population Census. The school attendance probability of immigrant children is significantly lower than that of native children. Factors contributing to the gap are the length of stay in Japan, parental employment status, and home ownership. The total explained part of all observable factors is approximately 30% in the comparison between native and immigrant children whose parents are both foreigners. Furthermore, immigrant children who do not attend high school are more likely to be unemployed.