Determinants of workers’ remittances: An empirical investigation for a panel of eleven developing Asian economies

We explore the key motives of migrant workers’ remittances from abroad for 11 major Asian migrant‐sending countries. Using panel regressions, we find that relative higher growth rate, interest rate and capital market returns of home over the host, investment, financial deepening at home have significant impact on remittance inflows into Asia, along with higher per capita incomes and international crude oil prices. With incorporation of per capita incomes and lagged impact of remittances, we observe an emergence of consumption motives to remit. Therefore, we conclude that both investment and altruistic motives are the driving forces for remittances inflows into the Asian economies.     

Management of petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated sites in Nigeria: Current challenges and future direction

Sites affected by petroleum hydrocarbons from oil exploitation activities have been identified as a major environmental and socio-economic problem in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The current Nigerian regulatory instruments to manage these contaminated sites are fragmented and the roles and responsibilities of government agencies, such as the Department for Petroleum Resources (DPR), and the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), are not well defined. This lack of coordination has led to ineffective land contamination policy and poor enforcement more generally. Appropriate, risk-based policy instruments are needed to improve regulatory capacity, and to enhance the regulator's ability to manage new and existing petroleum hydrocarbons contaminated sites. Lessons can be learned from countries like the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States America (USA) that have experience with the management and clean up of historically contaminated land. In this paper, we review the status of petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated sites management in Nigeria and identify the gaps in existing policy and regulation. We review the contaminated land policies and regulation from the UK and the USA, and identify lessons that could be transferred to the Nigerian system. Finally, we provide a series of recommendations (e.g. source – pathway-receptor approach, soil screening criteria, clean-up funding, liability) that could enhance contaminated land legislation in Nigeria.     

Quantification of the high level of endogeneity and of structural regime shifts in commodity markets

We propose a “reflexivity” index that quantifies the relative importance of short-term endogeneity for several commodity futures markets (corn, oil, soybean, sugar, and wheat) and a benchmark equity futures market (E-mini S&P 500), from mid-2000s to October 2012. Our reflexivity index is defined as the average ratio of the number of price moves that are due to endogenous interactions to the total number of all price changes, which also include exogenous events. It is obtained by calibrating the Hawkes self-excited conditional Poisson model on time series of price changes. The Hawkes model accounts simultaneously for the co-existence and interplay between the exogenous impact of news and the endogenous mechanism by which past price changes may influence future price changes. Our robustness tests show that our index provides a ‘pure’ measure of endogeneity that is independent of the rate of activity, order size, volume or volatility. We find an overall increase of the reflexivity index since the mid-2000s to October 2012, which implies that at least 60–70 percent of commodity price changes are now due to self-generated activities rather than novel information, compared to 20–30 percent earlier. While our reflexivity index is defined on short-time windows (10–30 min) and thus does not capture long-term memory, we discover striking coincidence between its dynamics and that of the price hikes and abrupt falls that developed since 2006 and culminated in early 2009.     

A MILP model for planning the trips of dynamic positioned tankers with variable travel time

The transportation of the crude oil produced in offshore oilfields to onshore terminals is performed by vessels, known as shuttle tankers. Scheduling shuttle-tanker operations entails solving complex problems to ensure a timely offloading of the platforms, taking into account several logistics and inventory constraints. This work proposes a new MILP formulation that advances previous works by considering variable travel time between platforms and terminals. The combination of the MILP formulation with an optimization solver constitutes a decision-support tool to aid engineers reach optimal decisions for a planning horizon. To handle large-scale instances, rolling-horizon and relax-and-fix strategies are proposed.     

Risk averse retail pricing with robust demand forecasting

Good demand estimates are the key to effective pricing decision-making. However, they are subject to a high degree of uncertainty due to various factors that are unpredictable or difficult to model, thus making pricing decisions risky. This research provides a simple proposal for a robust optimization methodology that incorporates both demand uncertainty and the decision maker's degree of risk aversion. Uncertainty is explicitly considered for two coefficients of a linear demand function, price expressions are derived, and a criterion is proposed for defining the degree of risk aversion. The resulting model is also applied to an exponential demand case to better reflect a more realistic retail setting.     

Charitable Donations: Evidence of Demand for Environmental Protection?

Using data from the 2001 Giving and Volunteering in the United States survey, I examine household charitable donations to environmental organizations. Household income has a positive impact on environmental giving. While the tax price affects overall charitable contributions, it does not affect environmental giving. More education, being female, homeownership, and voting are also associated with a greater likelihood of contributing to the environment. African-Americans and Latinos are less likely to contribute to the environment, although conditional on giving, Latinos give more. Retired persons and households with children are less likely to contribute to the environment. Larger households give less to the environment. Households from the Northeast are the most likely to make environmental contributions while households from the South are the least likely.

对外开放条件下的金融安全问题

我国近几年外贸顺差的连创新高,并且进、出口增长的走势与世界经济的联动性日益明显,我国的实体经济已经越来越融入全球经济的大环境当中。同时,我们外贸结构的升级也正在以更快的步伐前进,我国双边贸易的高速增长仍将维持一段时间。中国股市在经历了“2.27”暴跌之后,全球各主要股市随后也遭到重挫。笔者并不认为目前中国的股市对于全球市场有如此巨大的影响,但是全球石油美元的流动以及日元利差交易的变化情况已经逐渐受到国内投资者的重视,中国资本市场已经成为了全球市场的重要一环。在国内实体经济、虚拟经济与世界联动性不断增强的背景下,我们应该更加关注外部因素对于国内经济稳定性的影响,同时也要从其他国家的历史发展经验当中吸取金融安全监管方面的教训。     

国际油气勘探开发项目风险研究——基于变权理论

国际油气勘探开发项目从资源丰度到技术难度、从政治形势到经济效益,都蕴含了诸多的风险,但已有的研究中通常使用常权评价模型,从而降低了项目的总体风险,隐没了突出问题的严重性,从而失去了评价的公正性和有效性。本文结合变权理论,构建了多层次、多目标的变权综合评价模型,计算项目风险的变权综合评价值。其中,通过对评价值上限和下限的引用,对关键风险指标设置了＂门槛＂条件,凸显了关键风险因素对决策的决定意义;而α取值的确定,也反映了决策者的目标取向。最后,本文通过项目案例验证了变权综合评价方法在国际油气合作项目风险评价中应用的有效性。     

国际原油价格波动对中国宏观经济影响的重新考察

本文对国际原油价格波动对中国宏观经济的影响进行了重新考察。研究发现:国际原油价格通过影响采购经理人指数进而影响中国主要宏观经济变量,采购经理人指数的引入,完善了国际原油价格波动对中国宏观经济影响的时序传导机制,从而提高了实证结果的显著性。实证结果显示:国际原油价格上涨对中国消费者价格指数有正向影响,但这一结果并不显著;同时国际原油价格上涨并未改变中国经济增长的总体态势。VEC实证模型的估计结果表明:国际原油价格与中国宏观经济变量之间存在显著的协整关系,而且国际原油价格波动对中国宏观经济的影响存在滞后效应。     

Inflation persistence and exchange rate regime: Implications for dynamic adjustment to shocks in a small open economy

The paper examines implications of inflation persistence for business cycle dynamics following terms of trade shock in a small oil producing economy, under inflation targeting and exchange rate targeting regimes. It is shown that due to the ‘Walters critique’ effect, the country’s adjustment paths are slow and cyclical if there is a significant backward-looking element in the inflation dynamics and the exchange rate is fixed. It is also shown that such cyclical adjustment paths are moderated if there is a high proportion of forward-looking price setters in the economy, so that when the Phillips curve becomes completely forward-looking cyclicality in adjustment paths disappears and the response of the real exchange rate becomes hump-shaped. In contrast, with an independent monetary policy, irrespective of the degree of inflation persistence, flexible exchange rate allows to escape severe cycles, which results in a smooth response of the real exchange rate.