Accounting for decarbonisation and reducing capital at risk in the S&P500

This article accounts for carbon emissions in the S&P 500 and explores the extent to which capital is at risk from decarbonising value chains. At a global level it is proving difficult to decouple carbon emissions from GDP growth. Top-down legal and regulatory arrangements envisaged by the Kyoto Protocol are practically redundant given inconsistent political commitment to mitigating global climate change and promoting sustainability. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and European Commission (EC) are promoting the role of financial markets and financial institutions as drivers of behavioural change mobilising capital allocations to decarbonise corporate activity.     

金融投机、实需与国际大宗商品价格——信息摩擦视角下的大宗商品价格影响机制研究

本文实证考察了2005-2015年金融投机和实需对国际大宗商品现货价格的影响及其作用机理。首先对具有信息噪音属性的金融投机进行了明确识别。其次,从多个维度出发区分市场信息摩擦状态,定量分析不同信息摩擦环境中金融投机和实需的影响差异。研究发现:大宗商品价格在长期中由实需因素主导,短期中由金融投机主导;短期中,相对于低信息摩擦环境,在市场波动性较高、金融压力上升以及投资者情绪高涨的高信息摩擦环境中,以金融投机为主的信息噪音对大宗商品价格的影响更强。进一步分析证实,相比于低信息摩擦环境,高信息摩擦环境中金融交易者的市场份额反而降低。据此,本文提出稳定大宗商品市场的关键在于提高市场透明度,减少信息摩擦,从市场质量出发降低信息噪音的影响。     

中国居民资产配置效率的门限效应研究:金融约束视角

本文基于金融约束视角,结合微观调查数据,并运用门限回归法和两阶段最小二乘法,对我国居民资产配置效率的门限效应问题进行研究。结果表明,从流动性约束、房产持有及商业资产持有三个角度分析居民面临的金融约束,居民资产配置效率的非对称门限效应在不同样本中都显著存在。居民持有资产的风险水平越高,带来的投资收益增量部分越低。同时,持有房产在缓解居民金融约束的同时,资产风险增加对于居民资产配置收益的促进作用仍然下降,受流动性约束影响低的居民以及持有商业资产的居民均能够获得更高的资产配置收益。在不改变金融约束的框架下,以商业性资产替代房产作为主要资产种类能够从微观层面增强经济稳定性,降低系统性金融风险,优化收入结构,提升资产配置效率。     

Pricing mortgage insurance contracts under housing price cycles with jump risk: evidence from the U.K. housing market

Previous studies have investigated the determinants of housing price cycles in the housing market; however, we observed the phenomenon of housing price jumps in the 2007 subprime crisis. This paper presents a discussion on the housing price cycle and abnormal price jumps to describe the behavior of housing prices in the United Kingdom. The empirical results show that the impact factors of housing cycles are market risk and the switching factor. Furthermore, the impact factors of jump risks include the bursting of the housing bubble and financial crises. Therefore, in this paper, we employ the Markov switching model with jump risks to value the MI contracts and analyze the influences of housing price cycles, jump risks, risks of market interest rate, and the prepayment risks on MI premiums. The results of sensitivity analysis show that more volatile housing price index returns, as well as longer periods of higher volatility in housing prices, raise MI premiums. Moreover, the MI premium is positively related to the absolute value of the average jump amplitude and the shock frequency of abnormal events. There is the tradeoff between the market interest rate and the prepayment risk. The influences of market interest rate are different on MI premium with/without prepayment risks.     

The politics of urban climate risks: theoretical and empirical lessons from Ulrich Beck’s methodological cosmopolitanism

Abstract

In the face of global climate risks, world cities increasingly figure in academic and policy discourse as strategic spaces for harnessing the expertise and governance capacity needed to steer societies toward more sustainable and low-carbon futures. This article reviews existing approaches to the study of urban climate politics, by way of asking what contribution Ulrich Beck’s theory of world risk society – and principles of methodological cosmopolitanism – make to such epochal conversations? Three main analytical frameworks stand out: low-carbon transition literature highlight generic processes of socio-technical ‘greening’ of urban infrastructures; urban policy mobility work documents growing intercity networks around climate and sustainability; and actor–network theory-informed takes on urban controversies engage the localized politics of specific city-based ‘riskscapes’. While each framework makes valuable contributions, this article suggests that all of them remain under-theorized from the point of view of the specific dynamics of local–global interdependencies in urban climate risk politics. In response, the article draws on Beck in outlining the contours of new urban–cosmopolitan risk communities. To this effect, empirical studies into large-scale East Asian and European port cities is used to illustrate how a shared transnational risk imaginary (e.g. of future sea-level rises) may help spur collective action and new forms of trans-boundary solidarity. Reflecting on such research practices, the article ends by pointing to the need for reworking methods of (multi-sited) ethnography and comparison as central parts of realizing Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology in the domain of urban climate risks.     

Value relevance of proportionate consolidation versus the equity method: Evidence from Hong Kong

Whether proportionate consolidation (PC) or the equity method (EM) provides more informative financial statements is a controversial issue. This study uses data from listed companies in Hong Kong to investigate the value relevance of the EM compared with PC during 2005–2008 when the local word-for-word equivalent HKAS 31 offered the same options. The results of this study provide evidence that PC does not offer higher value relevance than the EM. PC’s horizontal aggregation of a portion of the operations, assets and liabilities of the jointly controlled entities with those of the venturer is less informative to investors than the EM’s vertical aggregation.     

金融体系杠杆形成机制和管控建议

2008年国际金融危机的一个深刻教训是金融杠杆的过犹不及。本文在金融杠杆概 念及相关文献综述的基础上,对我国金融部门杠杆率进行了多角度的测算,并分析金融过度杠 杆化的形成机制,梳理当前已采取的金融去杠杆措施,总结值得关注的问题,为下一步管控金 融杠杆、稳住宏观杠杆提供参考。     

金融行业对实体行业的尾部风险传导研究——基于实体企业金融化视角

本文基于我国金融资本超额回报率的事实,在市场套利分析框架下实证检验了实 体企业金融化是抑制还是加剧了尾部金融风险溢出。数值模拟结果表明：从杠杆率来看,实体 企业金融化对杠杆率具有“双刃剑”效应,然而,实证结果发现,从长期经济后果来看,实体 企业金融化却显著提高了杠杆率,基于Altman-Z值的风险分析进一步发现企业破产风险显著 上升,从而加剧了尾部金融风险溢出。文章的研究结论有利于全面观察实体企业金融化带来的 的实际效果,也揭示了金融行业对实体行业的风险传导过程中的一个风险源,对于实体经济和 金融领域关于企业金融化效应的研究具有参考价值。     

Systemic event prediction by an aggregate early warning system: An application to the Czech Republic

This work develops an early warning framework for assessing systemic risks and predicting systemic events over a short horizon of six quarters and a long horizon of 12 quarters on a panel of 14 countries, both advanced and developing. First, we build a financial stress index to identify the starting dates of systemic financial crises for each country in the panel. Second, early warning indicators for the assessment and prediction of systemic risk are selected in a two-step approach; we find relevant prediction horizons for each indicator by a univariate logit model followed by the application of Bayesian model averaging to identify the most useful indicators. Finally, we observe the performance of the constructed EWS over both horizons on the Czech data and find that the model over the long horizon outperforms the EWS over the short horizon. For both horizons, out-of-sample probability estimates do not deviate substantially from their in-sample estimates, indicating a good out-of-sample performance for the Czech Republic.