Voluntary development of environmental management systems: motivations and regulatory implications

Encouraging firms to develop voluntarily more comprehensive environmental management systems (EMSs) is touted as a policy tool to augment mandatory environmental regulations. Using a unique dataset of environmental management practices of Japanese manufacturers and controlling for self-selection bias in survey responses, we find that proxies for regulatory pressures and consumer pressures are the most important factors that motivate firms toward more comprehensive EMSs. Despite the oft-claimed “voluntary” nature of EMS development, our results show that the government may have a role to play in both directly and indirectly affecting EMS development by firms.      

Earnings management of initial public offering firms: evidence from regulation changes in China

Discretionary current accruals of Chinese initial public offering (IPO) firms decreased after the abolition of fixed‐price offering systems that directly linked offering price to reported earnings. Results suggest IPO firms that decrease managerial ownership manage earnings upward during the fixed‐price offering period, but this relationship disappeared after the introduction of a book‐building system. We also find that bank debt is negatively related to discretionary current accruals during the fixed‐price offering period, but no relation exists for the book‐building period. Leverage has a significant positive relationship with earnings management. However, this finding is potentially attributable to nonoffering price objectives or endogeneity biases.     

Productivity growth in east Asia: a reappraisal

In recent years there has been considerable disagreement over the extent to which productivity growth has accounted for the success of the east Asian economies. Empirical evidence, based on forms of growth accounting or direct estimation of a production function, is inconclusive so that the debate appears to be at a stalemate. This article applies an alternative approach, using the Malmquist productivity indices, to investigate the contribution of productivity to the longer term growth. The results support the view that over the longer term, the east Asian economies were input driven but interesting differences arise between countries when shorter periods are analysed.     

Innovation and Market Structure in the Manufacturing Sector: An Application of Linear Feedback Models*

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the relationship between market structure and innovation activities at an industry level. The paper examines the relationship between these for the manufacturing sector in a sample of 33 countries. It applies a recently developed method, based on linear feedback models, and uses cross‐country time‐series data. Despite the relatively small number of observations, the results indicate that domestic competition, external market share, and research and development have a positive effect on innovation activities. The results also suggest that the introduction of the foreign competition may have an initial positive effect on innovation activities, but over time this becomes dissipated.     

Do Japanese consumers care about sustainable fisheries? Evidence from an auction of ecolabelled seafood

This paper investigates Japanese consumers' willingness to pay for Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) ecolabelled seafood using a sealed bid, second price auction. Participants in an experiment in Tokyo were provided varying degrees of information about the status of world and Japanese fisheries and the MSC program in sequential rounds of bidding on ecolabelled and nonlabelled salmon products. A random‐effects tobit regression shows that there is a statistically significant premium of about 20 per cent for MSC‐ecolabelled salmon over nonlabelled salmon when consumers are provided information on both the status of global fish stocks and the purpose of the MSC program. This premium arises from a combination of an increased willingness to pay for labelled products and a decreased willingness to pay for unlabelled products. However, in the absence of experimenter‐provided information, or when provided information about the purpose of the MSC program alone without concurrent information about the need for the MSC program, there is no statistically significant premium.     

The Regime Switching Portfolios

In this paper we develop a portfolio selection theory under regime switching means and volatilities. We use log mean-variance as the portfolio selection criteria and, as a result, the theory is made substantially easier to implement than other existing theories. Moreover, the estimated regimes are easy to interpret as one of the regimes corresponds to the business cycle turning points. Finally, we conduct an asset allocation simulation and obtain reasonable results by introducing an idea of switching volatility targets.     

Hybrid estimators for small diffusion processes based on reduced data

We deal with the Bayes type estimators and the maximum likelihood type estimators of both drift and volatility parameters for small diffusion processes defined by stochastic differential equations with small perturbations from high frequency data. From the viewpoint of numerical analysis, initial Bayes type estimators for both drift and volatility parameters based on reduced data are required, and adaptive maximum likelihood type estimators with the initial Bayes type estimators, which are called hybrid estimators, are proposed. The asymptotic properties of the initial Bayes type estimators based on reduced data are derived and it is shown that the hybrid estimators have asymptotic normality and convergence of moments. Furthermore, a concrete example and simulation results are given.     

Other financial institutions' portfolio behaviour and policy implications: A study of India

Abstract

Applied literature has largely neglected the asset decision of other financial institutions (OFIs), though it may possess important policy implications. In this paper, portfolio behaviour of OFIs in India is modelled by using the annual flow of funds data for 1951/52 to 1993/94. The long-run model of the Almost Ideal Demand System and the allied concepts of cointegration generated economically and statistically plausible results. We find a strong influence of interest rates on portfolio behavior, thereby the role of interest rates on resource allocation. The paper concludes that the macroeconomic management through monetary policy actions may not be unnecessarily limited through the channel of OFIs in the post-financial reform regime in India.     

Monetary Policy Rules for Transition Economies: An Empirical Analysis

In this paper, we investigate the monetary policy reaction functions for the new European Union member states. We find interesting differences when looking at both interest rates (the Taylor rule) and monetary base (the McCallum rule) as monetary policy rules. Monetary aggregate is more likely to react to the deviation of inflation from its target, while short‐term interest rates are highly sensitive to the deviation of exchange rates in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. For Hungary and Romania, both interest rates and money are responsive to inflation. In empirical literature, much attention is paid to the use of the Taylor‐type rule for developed economies. However, our empirical results raise questions on the reliance of this rule for these transition economies.