Optimal adaptation strategies to face shocks on groundwater resources

We consider an exogenous and reversible shock to a groundwater resource, namely a decrease in the recharge rate of the aquifer. We compare optimal extraction paths and the social costs of optimal adaptation in two cases: under certainty, i.e. when the date of occurrence of the shock is known, and under uncertainty, when the date of occurrence of the shock is a random variable. We show that an increase in uncertainty leads to a decrease in precautionary behavior in the short run and to an increase in precautionary behavior in the long run. We apply our model to the particular case of the Western la Mancha aquifer in Spain. We show that, in this context, it is advantageous for the water agency to acquire information on the date of the shock, especially for high-intensity and intermediate-risk events.     

Impact of macroeconomic policy uncertainty on opportunistic insider trading

The macroeconomic policy environment affects the internal governance of microenterprises, which may provide opportunities for management to benefit from stock sales while decreasing its motivation to manipulate stock transactions. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2018, we study the impact of macroeconomic policy uncertainty on opportunistic insider trading. The results show that macroeconomic policy uncertainty helps restrain the opportunistic trading of shares held by management. When macroeconomic policies are uncertain, enterprises improve their internal governance. Furthermore, strengthening equity governance helps reduce management’s opportunistic use of the uncertainty of the policy environment, highlighting the advantageous effect of macroeconomic policy uncertainty and helping regulators standardize managerial behavior and promote the governance effect of macroeconomic policy.     

Gold price dynamics and the role of uncertainty

This study focuses on the dynamics of the gold price against bonds, stocks and exchange rates based on a disaggregation of the underlying relationships across different frequencies applying a wavelet decomposition. To analyze joint extreme movements (i.e. tail dependence), we adopt a copula approach, which helps us to assess the dependence between the returns of gold and other assets in calm and turmoil market times and therefore the hedge and safe haven functions of gold. We also examine whether gold prices are directly affected by changes in macroeconomic uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty and/or CPI forecasters disagreement. Analyzing data for nine economies for a sample period starting in 1985, we find that the role of gold changes significantly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Gold is unable to serve as a hedge or safe haven in the classical sense while the findings for the period prior to 2008 mostly suggest that gold is able to shield investors. Uncertainty measures display a surprising and time-varying relationship with the path of the gold price. While economic policy uncertainty is positively correlated with gold price changes, macroeconomic uncertainty and inflation uncertainty among forecasters are both negatively related to gold price changes.     

Emptying the future: On the environmental politics of anticipation

Anticipation may be seen as structured by images and representations, an approach that has informed recent work in science and technology studies on the sociology of expectations. But anticipation, as a capacity or characteristic, is not solely manifested in the form of representations, even where such representations of the ‘not yet’ are performative in nature. It also comprises material capacities, technological, biophysical and affective in nature. The politics of anticipation is shaped by how these symbolic and material capacities, and the forms of agency they make possible, are distributed. As anticipation is an environmentally distributed capacity, it is suggested that the politics of anticipation is also an environmental politics. A conceptual framework for analysing anticipation as comprised of environmental capabilities is introduced, and fleshed out using a case study of energy infrastructure planning from the UK. Key elements of this framework include the concepts of anticipatory assemblages and future horizons or ‘styles’ of anticipation. Working through the case study as an empirical example of a conflict concerning the politics of anticipation and of ‘environments’, it is demonstrated how the relationships between styles of anticipation are materially constitutive of such conflicts.     

The implications,challenges and benefits of a complexity-orientated Futures Studies

Complexity science is increasingly cited as an essential component of a Futures Studies (FS) capable of assisting with the wide-ranging and complex societal problems of the 21st century. Yet, the exact implications of complexity science for FS remain somewhat opaque. This paper explicitly sets out the challenges for FS that arise from six complexity science concepts: (1) irreversibility of time (2) path dependence 3) sensitivity to initial conditions (4) emergence and systemness (5) attractor states (6) complex causation. The discussion highlights the implications of these challenges for FS tools such as horizon scanning and weak signals, and sets out the benefits of overcoming the challenges to create an explicitly complexity-orientated FS. The discussion concludes with a set of questions summarising the challenge for FS from complexity science with the aim of stimulating a discussion as to how they can be met. The concluding remarks make some initial suggestions in this regard.     

Measuring the unmeasurable: an application of uncertainty quantification to Treasury bond portfolios

We extract from the yield curve a new measure of fundamental economic uncertainty, based on McDiarmid’s diameter and related methods for optimal uncertainty quantification (OUQ). OUQ seeks analytical bounds on a system’s behaviour, even where aspects of the underlying data-generating process and system response function are not completely known. We use OUQ to stress test a simple fixed-income portfolio, certifying its safety—i.e. that potential losses will be ‘small’ in an appropriate sense. The results give explicit tradeoffs between: scenario count, maximum loss, test horizon, and confidence level. Unfortunately, uncertainty peaks in late 2008, weakening certification assurances just when they are needed most.     

Entrepreneurial risk,investment, and innovation

I estimate the effect of uncertainty on risky innovation using a panel of 11,417 manufacturing firms. I find that an increase in uncertainty has a large negative effect on the risky innovation of entrepreneurial firms, while it does not have any significant impact on other firms. This negative effect is stronger for the less diversified entrepreneurial firms in the sample. The estimation results are consistent with the innovation dynamics generated in a model in which entrepreneurs are risk averse and cannot diversify the risk of their business.     

Stock market reactions to monetary policy surprises under uncertainty

This article investigates how uncertainty impacts the effect of monetary policy surprises on stock returns. Using high-frequency US data, we demonstrate that stock markets respond more aggressively to monetary policy surprises during periods of high uncertainty. We also show that uncertainty asymmetrically influences the transmission of positive and negative monetary policy surprises to stock market prices. The amplifying effect of uncertainty is found to be stronger for expansionary shocks than for contractionary shocks. Our robustness analysis confirms that financial uncertainty has a significant role in shaping the influence of monetary policy on the stock market.     

Duration analysis of venture capital staging: A real options perspective

This study takes a real options perspective towards venture capital staging and views the staging decision as a choice between holding the current option to invest and investing now to obtain the option to invest subsequently. It proposes that this staging decision depends on the factors that influence the value of these two options, such as competition and various sources of uncertainty. The empirical results suggest that market uncertainty encourages venture capital firms to delay investing at each round of financing, whereas competition, project-specific uncertainty and agency concerns prompt venture capital firms to invest sooner. This study has useful implications for theory and practice.     

Impact of uncertainty and exchange rate shocks: Theory and global empirics

This paper offers two points on the impact of uncertainty and exchange rate shocks. (1) A conceptual model where behavioural frictions – rational inattentiveness and bounded expectations – interact with uncertainty, generating aggregate fluctuations. Central banks can target these behavioural frictions to stabilise output and prices. (2) Empirical findings from a panel of advanced and emerging economies. Output and inflation slow in response to uncertainty shocks. Government bond yields moderate and exchange rates depreciate, suggesting within-country and between-country flight-to-safety respectively. Exchange rate appreciation shocks generate similar responses. The Malaysia-specific analysis finds divergent responses in employment and output, likely reflecting compositional effects in more productive tradable and less productive non-tradable sectors.