Current account deficits in Greece,Portugal and Spain — origins and consequences

In light of the shortcomings of the Stability and Growth Pact, there has been a recognition that a surveillance framework is needed which goes beyond fiscal issues to cover wider macroeconomic factors. The question arises whether the surveillance and connected reform criteria should be applied symmetrically, to all members of the eurozone, or whether they should specifically target countries with current account deficits.     

How Media Coverage of Corporate Social Irresponsibility Increases Financial Risk

Research summary: This article explores the relationship between corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and financial risk. We posit that media coverage of CSI generates risk by providing conditions that increase the potential for stakeholder sanctions. Through analyzing an international panel of 539 firms during 2008–2013, we find that firms receiving higher CSI coverage face higher financial risk. We show that the reach of the reporting media outlet is a critical condition for this relationship. Once the outlet has a high reach, the severity of CSI coverage is a boundary condition that further reinforces the effect. Our findings complement existing theory about the risk‐mitigating effect of corporate social responsibility by illuminating the risk‐generating effect of CSI coverage. For executives, these insights suggest complementary strategies for corporate risk management. Managerial summary: This article examines the effect of negative news on financial risk. It shows that negative media articles regarding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues increase a firm's credit risk. It also provides a detailed analysis of the impact of an article's reach and severity, i.e., how many readers are exposed to the article and how harshly it criticizes the firm. The results allow to quantitatively assess the risk that emanates from negative ESG news. For executives, three strategies are derived for limiting a firm's exposure to this risk: balancing corporate social responsibility programs with operational safety programs, reporting suboptimal environmental and social performance transparently and proactively, and avoiding acquisition targets and markets with a legacy of negative news. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social security and saving — A critical note on the feldstein hypothesis

Zusammenfassung In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird versucht, Feldsteins Hypothese, wonach die Sozialversicherung das Sparen dämpft, an Hand internationaler Querschnittdaten zu überprüfen. Ausgehend von einem Ansatz, den Feldstein aufbauend auf das Lebenszyklusmodell in den Jahren 1977 und 1980 entwickelte, wird versucht, die Validität der Ergebnisse in bezug auf Änderungen in den Variablendefinitionen, der Zeitperiode sowie der Sampleauswahl aufzuzeigen. Weiters wird der Einfluß von geringen Modellmodifikationen (Berücksichtigung der Arbeitslosenrate als Unsicherheits-bzw. Stimmungsindikator) sowie Änderungen der Schätzmethode (gewogene oder ungewogene Regression bzw. OLS oder TSLS) auf die Resultate untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daß die Feldstein-Hypothese keineswegs als ein empirisch allgemein gültiges Gesetz angesehen werden kann, sondern eher als zufällig zustandegekommen.     

Corporate Strategies for Managing Climate Risks

This paper focuses on organizations and their management of climate risks. Climate risks stem from continued changes in climate means and the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. We ask whether companies also apply the usual process of corporate risk management to climate risks. In seeking to answer this question, we review several literature streams in order to set out an initial theoretical reflection. Based on this we conducted an exploratory case study with 11 electric utilities. Our results illustrate that these companies perceive climatic changes as a material issue for their business. However, management has restricted knowledge about such climatic changes and thus cannot precisely determine the potential negative impacts on business activities. As a consequence, the companies have implemented a climate risk management that does not differ from the usual process of managing other business risks. Our results further illustrate that there is some variation in how individual firms manage climate risks: While risk identification and risk assessment are equally important for all electric utilities, there are differences in how management determines the direction of the individual response to climate risks. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Ecology-Driven Real Options: An Investment Framework for Incorporating Uncertainties in the Context of the Natural Environment

The role of uncertainty within an organization’s environment features prominently in the business ethics and management literature, but how corporate investment decisions should proceed in the face of uncertainties relating to the natural environment is less discussed. From the perspective of ecological economics, the salience of ecology-induced issues challenges management to address new types of uncertainties. These pertain to constraints within the natural environment as well as to institutional action aimed at conserving the natural environment. We derive six areas of ecology-induced uncertainties and propose ecology-driven real options as a conceptual approach for systematically incorporating these uncertainties into strategic management. We combine our results in an integrative investment framework and illustrate its application with the case of carbon constraints.     

Gains from configuration: The transboundary protected area as a conservation tool

Nearly two hundred transboundary protected areas comprise a portion of the global conservation landscape the size of India, with further expansion anticipated. Proponents claim that transboundary protected areas outperform isolated protected areas in achieving conservation objectives, while regional case studies have led critics to challenge this claim. Empirical investigation into the relative performance of transboundary protected areas is fundamentally limited since these areas cannot be directly compared to the isolated protected areas that might otherwise have emerged in the same location. This paper develops a game theory model of park formation to compare counterfactual transboundary and isolated protected areas. The model suggests that under certain conditions, transboundary protected areas can achieve greater conservation and production objectives, even in the absence of international cooperative park management. The paper establishes five sufficient conditions for transboundary protected areas to provide greater national welfare, domestic conservation value, or global conservation value than counterfactual isolated protected areas. These conditions are tested for three common conservation objectives. The results suggest that when the objective of conservation is species persistence or interior habitat, conservation groups should encourage transboundary protected areas. However, when the objective of conservation is to extend reserve coverage to the maximum number of species, conservation groups should encourage protected areas where species richness is greatest, whether or not these areas span international borders.     

Estimating emissions based on the integration of microscopic traffic simulation and vehicle dynamics model

This study proposes an integrated simulation approach, which consists of a microscopic traffic simulation model, a vehicle dynamics model, and an emission estimation model, in order to estimate emissions based on more reliable vehicle performance measures. The vehicle performance measures such as engine power and engine speed significantly relate to the amount of emissions, and road curvatures and inclinations are the core inputs affecting these vehicle performance measures. Therefore, providing reliable vehicle performance measures reflecting the road geometric attributes is critical for a reliable emission estimation. This study proposes to use the microscopic traffic simulation model for generating vehicle trajectories, which is advantageous in modeling various traffic situations, and the vehicle dynamics model for producing the vehicle performance measures based on the vehicle trajectories. Finally, the outputs from the vehicle dynamics model are fed into the emission estimation model to compute emission measures. This study conducted a case-study using two road sections, one is a hypothesized road section, including various curvatures and inclinations with regular variations, and the other is a Kesselberg road section, which is an actual geometry in Bayern, Germany. The emission measures are estimated in these case-study road sections using both an existing simulation approach and the proposed integrated simulation approach. The difference between these two emission estimation approaches is discussed in terms of the emission measures, including fuel consumption, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matters.     

Forestry,Forest Fires,and Climate Change in Indonesia

In recent months, strong global growth, rebounding commodity prices, and relatively accommodative financial conditions have benefited the Indonesian economy. The first quarter of 2017 in Indonesia saw resilient GDP growth, moderate inflation, stable exchange rates, an increase in the growth of non-oil exports, and an investment upgrade from ratings agency Standard & Poor's. Investment growth, however, did not pick up enough to drive overall growth to a higher rate. The poor quality of banking-sector assets and the gaps in tax revenue—despite the fulfilment of the government's tax-amnesty program—are two of the most immediate economic concerns. President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), who is well into the second half of his term, is under pressure to deliver on his development platform, which includes making progress in sustainable development and climate change mitigation. The effective management of forests is key to this platform. There has been longstanding tension over Indonesia's forests between the protection of environmental values, including carbon storage, and the production of valuable commodities, including timber, palm oil, and pulpwood, which generate revenue and employment. We survey recent developments in four storylines related to forestry and climate change: first, Indonesia's commitment to reducing emissions to 29%–41% below projected business-as-usual levels by 2030, as well as the international climate agreements and finance that can help achieve this commitment; second, land-use rights and regulations, including a moratorium on clearing, draining, or setting fires on peatland; third, measures to prevent catastrophic forest fires like those during the 2015 El Niño, including the establishment of the Peatland Restoration Agency; and, fourth, the actions of non-state actors, especially large agribusinesses, in managing forests and peatland. We conclude by discussing differences in the approaches of Jokowi's administration and those of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration and by questioning whether Indonesia's budgeted resources, actions, and results to date are commensurate with its climate commitments.     

Negotiation games with unobservable mixed disagreement actions

A negotiation model combines an alternating offers bargaining game with a normal form stage game that determines players’ (interim) disagreement payoffs. Busch and Wen [Econometrica 63 (1995) 545] investigated this negotiation model under the assumption that players’ past mixed disagreement actions are observable. The question arises if this assumption is a substantial restriction. In this paper, we adopt the more plausible assumption that only the realizations of past mixed actions are observable, and find that the set of equilibrium payoffs shrinks, compared to that when mixed disagreement actions are observable. We precisely identify the effects of the unobservability and characterize the limiting set of equilibrium payoffs as the two players become sufficiently patient.