Noisy chaotic dynamics in commodity markets

The nonlinear testing and modeling of economic and financial time series has increased substantially in recent years, enabling us to better understand market and price behavior, risk and the formation of expectations. Such tests have also been applied to commodity market behavior, providing evidence of heteroskedasticity, chaos, long memory, cyclicity, etc. The present evaluation of futures price behavior confirms that the resulting price movements can be random, suggesting noisy chaotic behavior. Prices could thus follow a mean process that is dynamic chaotic, coupled with a variance that follows a GARCH process. Our conclusion is that models of this type could be constructed to assist in forecasting prices in the short run but not over long run time periods.First version received: June 2001/Final version received: March 2003     

Liability for Past Environmental Contamination and Privatization

This paper examines the role ofliability for past environmental contaminationin the privatization processes of Central andEastern Europe. In particular, it establishes alink between a risk-averse investor's amount ofinformation regarding the extent of pastenvironmental contamination (and its cleanupcosts) and the investor's willingness to payfor a particular enterprise, i.e., bid. As theinvestor obtains a more precise estimate of theuncertain cleanup costs, the investor facesless risk; therefore, the investor's riskpremium falls and the investor's bid rises.This link generates four hypotheses regarding aprivatization agency's responses to theinvestor's knowledge of clean-up costs.     

Utility Regulation and Risk Allocation: The Roles of Marginal Cost Pricing and Futures Markets

The effects on consumer welfare of requiring a utility facing cost or demand risk to use either a fixed retail price or marginal cost pricing are assessed. With marginal cost pricing and cost volatility an efficient futures market allows consumer welfare to be at least as high in every state as with the fixed price. With demand risk marginal cost pricing can benefit the consumer in every state without harming the firm if the profit difference is transferred to the consumer. A futures market can act as a partial replacement for the transfer.     

农业高新技术投资项目风险评价

The agricultural high-teeh investment project （AHIP） is eharaeterized by technology-intensive, high risk and great profit. This article analyzes essential factors of the risks of the agricultural high-tech investment projects and the traditional risk evaluation method of agrtcultral projects. We think that the applications of the sensitivity, analysis and probability ore defer. Therefore; this article introduces a structural model to evaluate the risks of the agricultural high-tech investment projects and the system of the concrete evaluation indexes.     

巨灾风险证券化及在中国保险市场的应用

在分析了巨灾风险的损失频率与损失幅度的特点、传统保险与再保险对抗巨灾风险的局限性等方面的基础上，重点介绍了巨灾风险证券的几种产品类型，分析了各种风险转移方式的优缺点。最后，根据中国保险市场的特点，从应用环境和应用条件两个方面提出了开展巨灾风险证券化应用的若干设想。     

Estimating Willingness to Pay for Improved Drinking Water Quality Using Averting Behavior Method with Perception Measure

This paper suggests an application of an averting behaviormethod to reconcile inconsistent public activity with objectiveenvironmental risk. In Korea, an historically polluted watersupply has created citizen resistance to using tap water. Koreansperceive low quality levels for tap water, although objectivelymeasured data show that the pollution levels are lower than theacceptable risk. We hypothesized that the irrational aversion tousing tap water is a consequence of inconsistencies between theobjectively measured and perceived pollution levels. We introducethe perception averting behavior method, in which we add aperception measure unit to the conventional averting behaviormethod. We found that the perception measure provided a validexplanation for citizens' aversion to using tap water in Korea.     

Incentive Contract and Weather Risk

We study contracts designed to remunerate a farmer for the production of an ecosystem service with the payment dependent on the results of the farmer’s actions and on weather conditions. Two contracts are proposed: the first takes into account both the results of the farmer’s actions and a weather variable that reflects the actual atmospheric conditions during the life of the contract; the second bases the payment on the results alone incorporating only the average effect of weather. Social welfare is optimal when both the results and the specific atmospheric conditions are taken into account; however, this type of contract may be less acceptable to the farmer due to his perception of the level of risk involved.We thank two referees for valuable comments.     

振兴东北老工业基地资本运营效益研究

现阶段,东北老工业基地存在着高消耗、低性能、低附加值、产品生产能力过剩等问题,因而,在市场经济的大潮中,造成了竞争力减弱、经济效益下滑的局面.发达国家的实践告诉我们,传统产业高科技化能改变这种局面,但高科技需要大量投入资本,故而需要研究传统产业高科技化资本运营的模式,从而降低高风险,实现高效益.     

信用的生态学诠释与信用生态链的构建

生态学有逐渐与经济学相渗透、相融合的趋势，从而扩展了经济学的研究边界。本文从生态学的视角对信用加以研究，首先介绍了信用生态的理论内涵，其次研究了良好的社会信用生态环境的评价标准，最后对构建和谐的社会信用生态链提出了具体的对策措施。     

Can the Risks of the Kyoto Mechanisms be Reduced Through Portfolio Diversification? Evidence from the Swedish AIJ Program

Through Joint Implementationand the Clean Development Mechanism, reductionsof greenhouse gas emissions achieved abroad canbe credited to domestic firms. However, thetechnical, economic and political risksinvolved may prevent the private sector frominvesting in such projects. This paperdescribes three types of risks which emissionreduction projects are exposed to. Eleven pilotprojects carried out under the ActivitiesImplemented Jointly (AIJ) program and financedby Sweden are evaluated. Actual project costsare found to exceed projected costs in allcases. Annual emission reductions also deviatefrom their expected values and vary stronglyover time, supporting the hypothesis that suchprojects are risky business. The riskmanagement tool portfolio diversification isapplied to a sample of Swedish AIJ projects.The results indicate that diversification canreduce the risks of greenhouse gas mitigationprojects significantly. Thus, carbon funds area promising way of lowering the risks of theKyoto Mechanisms for private sector investors.