Permit markets,carbon prices and the creation of innovation clusters

Innovation clusters combining public and private effort to develop breakthrough technologies promise greater technological advances to slow down climate change. We use a multi-country model with an emission trading system to examine whether and how international climate policy can incentivize countries to create such innovation clusters. We find that a minimal carbon price is needed to attract applied research firms, but countries may nevertheless fail to invest in complementary research infrastructure. We construct a mechanism that leads to innovation clusters when emissions targets are set before uncertainty surrounding technological developments is resolved. It is a combination of low permit endowments for the country with the lowest costs to build the needed infrastructure, compensation for this country by profits from permit trade, and maximal possible permit endowments for the remaining countries. We outline how the EU-ETS can be further refined according to this mechanism.     

Motives behind retailers’ post-entry expansion - Evidence from the Chinese luxury fashion market

This study aims to examine the motives behind retailers’ post-entry expansion in foreign markets. Through case studies of eleven participating luxury fashion retailers in China, qualitative data was collected from twenty-two executive interviews. Although their initial market entry was driven by both reactive (push) and proactive (pull) factors, the motives behind their post-entry expansion have become predominantly proactive, especially long-term growth strategies, the ambition to extend their brands and retail formats to more cities, and the experiences gained in entry markets. The desire to optimize the retail store portfolio through multiple channel strategies have slowed down the expansions of physical stores.     

Predicting the equity market with option-implied variables

We comprehensively analyze the predictive power of several option-implied variables for monthly S&P 500 excess returns and realized variance. The correlation risk premium (CRP) and the variance risk premium (VRP) emerge as strong predictors of both excess returns and realized variance. This is true both in- and out-of-sample. Our results also reveal that statistical evidence of predictability does not necessarily lead to economic gains. However, a timing strategy based on the CRP leads to utility gains of more than 5.03% per annum. Forecast combinations provide stable forecasts for both excess returns and realized variance, and add economic value.     

Passive Investment Strategies and Efficient Markets

This paper presents the case for and the evidence in favour of passive investment strategies and examines the major criticisms of the technique. I conclude that the evidence strongly supports passive investment management in all markets—small–capitalisation stocks as well as large–capitalisation equities, US markets as well as international markets, and bonds as well as stocks. Recent attacks on the efficient market hypothesis do not weaken the case for indexing.     

Contrarian Investment in the Dutch Stock Market

The efficient markets hypothesis states that at any times security prices fully reflect all available information. Contrarian investment strategies do not recognize the efficiency of capital markets. They call for buying undervalued stocks, i.e. stocks with a low price relative to their fundamentals. The idea behind such a strategy is to take advantage of the extrapolation behaviour of naive investors. Using a fresh and extensive data set from the Dutch stock market, we found that these strategies yield an outperformance without a higher risk. Our results make it hard to maintain the efficient market hypothesis.     

网络媒体与思想政治工作

网络媒体给思想政治工作带来了方便,也增添了难度,同时对思想政治工作者的素质提出了更 高的要求。在信息网络技术飞速发展的今天,必须重视和发挥网络媒体在思想政治工作中的作用。     

Operations of a Pension Fund after the Asian Crisis: The Thai Experience*

During and after the Asian crisis, institutional investors and pension funds in Asian financial markets have been confronted with a number of difficulties effecting their performance and the way they carry out their role within the national pension system. We analyze these problems by comparing the actual investment policy of an institutional investor with an optimal investment strategy derived from the insights of modern portfolio theory. We also analyze whether the organizational set‐up of a pension fund allows it to adequately perform its role within the pension system. As an example, we examine the operations of the Thai Government Pension Fund (GPF). We find that allowing international investments and reducing restrictions on equity investments while lowering the implicit requirements for investments in government debt would allow the GPF to further diversify its investment risk and to increase its risk‐adjusted return. We also show that some changes in the governance structure of the GPF would lower the occurrence of conflicts of interest for the management and increase the efficiency of the GPF operations.     

The ‘demographic timebomb’ and how some hospitality employers are responding to the challenge

The phrase ‘demographic timebomb’ has taken on the aura of a shibbholeth and that everyone knows they ought to be fearful about. But is it really understood and what needs to be done? This article seeks to answer these questions and to shed some light on the employment strategies being developed by some British hospitality employers to counteract the demographic changes of the 1990s. As a result, some of the myth that the hospitality industry is lagging behind other industries can be dispelled but other findings support popular testimony that the industry faces special problems.     

Glamour and Value Strategies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

This paper evaluates the performance of glamour and value strategies and tests the extrapolation model for the Japanese equity market. In general, value stocks outperform glamour stocks by between 6 and 12 percent per annum for the five years after portfolio formation. Evidence from past, future and expected growth provides strong support for the story developed in Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (1994). It is difficult to attribute the value premia to the difference, if any, in risk factors. In addition, the book-to-market premium is much closer to an arbitrage opportunity than the size premium.