Three Decades of IPO Markets in Canada: Evolution,Risk and Return

This article explores the extent that the long‐run returns following initial public offerings (IPOs) can explain the asserted decrease in IPOs in Canada. The causes of such a decrease remain controversial, in part because of our limited knowledge of this market. We first describe in detail the evolution of Canadian IPOs on the senior and the venture stock exchanges over three decades (1986–2016). This evolution differs considerably between natural resource and non‐natural resource firms. Second, using other junior markets as a benchmark, we show that the Canadian IPO market is very particular, mainly because it lists very small firms at an early development stage. Third, using 2,145 Canadian IPOs, we provide evidence that these IPOs generate three‐year negative average abnormal returns, and more than 70 percent report negative abnormal returns. Large issuers reporting profits constitute the only subsample that provides fair returns, but they account for less than 5 percent of IPOs. Such a market probably survived for many decades because of investors' preference for skewness and the characteristics of the returns' distribution. We observe a high level of skewness of abnormal returns, consistent with the behavioral finance proposition that investors are often unduly optimistic when valuing lottery stocks.     

Whither IPOs? Toward an Ecosystem Perspective on Corporate Financing: A Commentary

This commentary reviews the Canadian initial public offering (IPO) market and positions it within global capital market trends. Our views and comments reflect discussions with several market participants whom we have met over the years. Essentially, the falling number of IPOs in Canada during the last decade mimics trends in other developed countries such as the United States. In our view, five underlying factors underlie that decline. The picture that emerges is that capital markets are now widely viewed as a global integrated ecosystem where all actors are interconnected and an IPO represents but one way to raise capital.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Eco‐Control Deployment: Evidence from Canadian Manufacturing Firms

Environmental issues have become an important consideration for a growing number of organizations. Eco‐control may represent a valuable tool to help organizations address such issues. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the eco‐control practices adopted by Canadian organizations and to understand the antecedents and consequences of their adoption. More specifically, this study examines (i) the extent to which eco‐control practices are deployed within organizations, (ii) the factors and motivations that lead organizations to implement eco‐control practices, and (iii) the impact of adoption on firms’ managerial and operational environmental actions as well as on environmental and economic performance. Using survey data from a sample of 249 Canadian manufacturing firms, this article shows that environmental missions, environmental policies, environmental strategic planning, environmental budgets and environmental performance indicators are the most frequently adopted eco‐control practices among the investigated firms, while environmental incentives seem to be less frequently adopted. The results of this study also suggest that competitive and ethical motivations as well as size, environmental exposure and stakeholder pressure are all important factors in explaining eco‐control practice adoption by Canadian manufacturing firms. Moreover, the results of this study show that organizations that have undertaken more intensive managerial and operational environmental actions have also adopted more intensive eco‐control practices. Organizations adopting more intensive eco‐control practices perform better both environmentally and economically performance than firms adopting less intensive eco‐control practices.     

Multifrequency jump-diffusions: An equilibrium approach

This paper proposes that equilibrium valuation is a powerful method to generate endogenous jumps in asset prices. We specify an economy with continuous consumption and dividend paths, in which endogenous price jumps originate from the market impact of regime-switches in the drifts and volatilities of fundamentals. We parsimoniously incorporate regimes of heterogeneous durations and verify that the persistence of a shock endogenously increases the magnitude of the induced price jump. As the number of frequencies driving fundamentals goes to infinity, the price process converges to a novel stochastic process, which we call a multifractal jump-diffusion.     

Estimation and tests for power-transformed and threshold GARCH models

Consider a class of power-transformed and threshold GARCH(p,q)$(p,q)$ (PTTGRACH(p,q)$(p,q)$) model, which is a natural generalization of power-transformed and threshold GARCH(1,1) model in Hwang and Basawa [2004. Stationarity and moment structure for Box–Cox transformed threshold GARCH(1,1) processes. Statistics & Probability Letters 68, 209–220.] and includes the standard GARCH model and many other models as special cases. We first establish the asymptotic normality for quasi-maximum likelihood estimators (QMLE) of the parameters under the condition that the error distribution has finite fourth moment. For the case of heavy-tailed errors, we propose a least absolute deviations estimation (LADE) for PTTGARCH(p,q)$(p,q)$ model, and prove that the LADE is asymptotically normally distributed under very weak moment conditions. This paves the way for a statistical inference based on asymptotic normality for heavy-tailed PTTGARCH(p,q)$(p,q)$ models. As a consequence, we can construct the Wald test for GARCH structure and discuss the order selection problem in heavy-tailed cases. Numerical results show that LADE is more accurate than QMLE for heavy-tailed errors. Furthermore, the theory is applied to the daily returns of the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index, which suggests that asymmetry and nonlinearity could be present in the financial time series and the PTTGARCH model is capable of capturing these characteristics. As for the probabilistic structure of PTTGARCH(p,q)$(p,q)$ model, we give in the appendix a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a strictly stationary solution of the model, the existence of the moments and the tail behavior of the strictly stationary solution.     

A core-theoretic solution for the design of cooperative agreements on transfrontier pollution

For a simple economic model of transfrontier pollution, widely used in theoretical studies of international treaties bearing on joint abatement, we offer in this paper a scheme for sharing national abatement costs through international financial transfers that is inspired by a classical solution concept from the theory of cooperative games—namely, the core of a game. The scheme has the following properties: total damage and abatement costs in all countries are minimized (optimality property), and no coalition or subset of countries can achieve lower total costs for its members by taking another course of action in terms of emissions or transfers, under some reasonable assumption about the reactions of those not in the coalition (core property). In the concluding section economic interpretations of the scheme are proposed, including its connection with the free-riding problem.     

Psychological Bias as a Driver of Financial Regulation

I propose here the psychological attraction theory of financial regulation – that regulation is the result of psychological biases on the part of political participants – voters, politicians, bureaucrats, and media commentators; and of regulatory ideologies that exploit these biases. Some key elements of the psychological attraction approach are: salience and vividness, omission bias, scapegoating and xenophobia, fairness and reciprocity norms, overconfidence, and mood effects. This approach further emphasises emergent effects that arise from the interactions of individuals with psychological biases. For example, availability cascades and ideological replicators have powerful effects on regulatory outcomes.     

河北省地质科技人才供需形势分析

地质行业是国家的基础产业,肩负着国家经济社会发展的矿产资源供给的重任,地质行业科技人才培养是关系到地质行业能否实现持续快速发展的关键。在全面分析河北省地质行业科技人才队伍现状和存在的问题的基础上,对河北省地质行业未来科技人才需求和供给开展了具体的预测,并就未来地质科技人才供需缺口状况进行了分析和判断,为地质行业实施科技人才培养规划提供了现实的参考。     

服务型社会的服务外包合作实证研究

通过12个服务外包示范城市面板数据GC检验和虚拟变量半对数面板数据模型,从供给角度研究中间需求与技术进步对服务外包合作的影响.研究结果证明：在服务型社会中,价值链整合能力与服务外包合作之间相互影响;一国政策制度开放程度高会直接对服务外包合作产生正面影响;一国信息技术发展水平高、基础设施完善直接对服务外包合作产生推动作用;一国区域资源禀赋越丰富,进行服务外包合作的可能性越强.     

Modeling complex systems

Empirical observations suggest that linear dynamics are not an adequate representation of ecological systems and that a realistic representation would require adoption of complex nonlinear dynamical systems with characteristics encountered in complex adaptive systems (CAS). Adequate modeling should include and combine elements, such as strategic interactions among economic agents, nonconvexities induced by nonlinear feedbacks, separate spatial and temporal scales and modeling of spatiotemporal dynamics, and allowance of alternative time scales. Ignoring these characteristics might obscure very important features that we observe in reality, such as bifurcations and irreversibilities or hysteresis. As a consequence, the design of policies that do not take CAS characteristics into account might lead to erroneous results and undesirable states of managed economic–ecological systems.