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Do financial derivatives enhance or impede innovation? We aim to answer this question by examining the relationship between equity options markets and standard measures of firm innovation. Our baseline results show that firms with more options trading activity generate more patents and patent citations per dollar of R&D invested. We then investigate how more active options markets affect firms' innovation strategy. Our results suggest that firms with greater trading activity pursue a more creative, diverse and risky innovation strategy. We discuss potential underlying mechanisms and show that options appear to mitigate managerial career concerns that would induce managers to take actions that boost short-term performance measures. Finally, using several econometric specifications that try to account for the potential endogeneity of options trading, we argue that the positive effect of options trading on firm innovation is causal.
Traditional finance focuses solely on financial return and risk. By contrast, sustainable finance considers financial, social and environmental returns in combination. This essay provides a new framework for sustainable finance highlighting the move from the narrow shareholder model to the broader stakeholder model, aimed at long-term value creation for the wider community. Major obstacles to sustainable finance are short-termism and insufficient private efforts. To overcome these obstacles, this essay develops guidelines for governing sustainable finance. Moving from traditional to sustainable finance means having to counter attitudes that are embedded in the ways our economic systems are organised. Shifting away from them requires both new ways of operating but, importantly, new underlying principles that put sustainability centre stage to guide our thinking. It is important that we put this process in motion, and the earlier the better.
This dissertation is composed of three chapters. All three deal with topics in development economics. The first chapter examines the effects on village institutions of introducing formal financial institution options into the village. The second addresses the effects of government policy on educational investment and crime. The third tests the explanatory power of various explanations of the gender gap in math test scores. The first chapter examines the effects of a transition from a ``traditional'' economy based on an uncertain source of income, with risk fully insured away by one's neighbors in a social network through costly network ties, to a ``modern'' economy in which some agents have access to partial insurance at a lower cost. A theoretical model is used to show that village social networks can break down as some members of the village no longer need the insurance the social network provides, producing a reduction in welfare (if the costs of reducing moral hazard are not too high) for at least some individuals and possibly the village as a whole. This loss of welfare can occur even when networks provide other benefits to those belonging to them and is likely to be heterogeneous, depending on the opportunities and networks available to individuals. This paper tests these predictions using Indonesian data to examine the effect of a change in the banking institutions available to a community on the strength of social networks (measured by community participation) and welfare (measured by household expenditure and by child health). The analysis finds that changing financial institution availability in general does not influence community participation or welfare, but that financial institutions that primarily serve certain groups do relatively reduce the welfare of households not in those groups, which is consistent with the hypotheses generated by the model. Crime is an important feature of economic life in many countries, especially in the developing world. Crime distorts many economic decisions because it acts like an unpredictable tax on earnings. In particular, the threat of crime may influence people's willingness to invest in schooling or physical capital. The second chapter explores the questions "What influence do crime rates and levels of investment have on one another?" and "How do government policies affect the relationship between investment and crime?" by creating a simple structural model of crime and educational investment and attempting to fit this model to Mexican data. A method of simulated moments procedure is used to estimate parameters of the model and the estimated parameters are then used to carry out policy simulations. The simulations show that increasing spending on police or increasing the severity of punishment reduces crime but has little effect on educational investment. Increased educational subsidies increase educational investment but reduce crime only slightly. Thus, one type of policy is insufficient to accomplish the goals of both reducing crime and increasing education. The third chapter is joint work with Prashant Bharadwaj, Giacomo De Giorgi, and Christopher Neilson. Boys tend to have better performances than girls in mathematical testing; in particular, there are significantly more boys than girls among high achievers and the score distribution appears to have a longer right tail for boys. We confirm such results on several low- and middle-income countries. In particular we find that the gender gap is already present by age 10 and substantially increases by age 14 and 15. We propose and try to test a series of explanations for such a gap: (i) parental investment, (ii) ability, (iii) school resources, (iv) individual investment and effort (not tested directly), (v) competitive environment, and (vi) cultural norms. We conclude that none of our proposed explanations can account for a substantial portion of the gap.
This dissertation is a compilation of three essays I wrote during my investigation of China's foreign exchange markets. I list the abstract of each in the following paragraphs. Essay 1: Anomaly in China's Dollar--RMB Forward Market Newly-established data on onshore deliverable US dollar--RMB forwards and the Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate from October 2006 to April 2009 reveal significant violations of covered interest rate parity. This paper hypothesizes that these violations are caused by an increase in US dollar-to-RMB conversion restrictions. Given that Chinese monetary authorities want to prevent market participants from taking advantage of the predictable appreciation of the RMB, China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange has to tighten up the control on US dollar-to-RMB conversions. Under the tightened conversion restrictions, similar deviations will resurface in the forward market whenever hot money inflow increases. One way to avoid covered interest rate parity violations in the forward market is to decrease hot money inflow into China by maintaining a stable and credible exchange rate policy. Essay 2: Convertibility Restriction in China's Foreign Exchange Market and its Impact on Forward Pricing Different from the well established markets such as the dollar-Euro market, recent CIP deviations observed in the onshore dollar-RMB forward market were primarily caused by conversion restrictions in the spot market rather than changes in credit risk and/or liquidity constraint. This paper proposes a theoretical framework under which the Chinese authorities impose conversion restrictions in the spot market in an attempt to achieve capital flow balance, but face the tradeoff between achieving such balance and disturbing current account transactions. Consequently, the level of conversion restriction should increase with the amount of capital account transactions and decrease with the amount of current account transactions. Such conversion restriction in turn places a binding constraint on forward traders' ability to cover their forward positions, resulting in the observed CIP deviation. More particularly, the model predicts that onshore forward rate is equal to a weighted average of CIP-implied forward rate and the market's expectation of future spot rate, with the weight determined by the level of conversion restriction. As a secondary result, the model also implies that offshore non-deliverable forwards reflect the market's expectation of future spot rate. Empirical results are consistent with these predictions. Essay 3: The Global Credit Crisis and China's Exchange Rate The case for stabilizing China's exchange rate against the dollar is strong. Before 2005 when the yuan/dollar rate was credibly fixed, it helped anchor China's domestic price level. But gradual RMB appreciation from July 2005 to July 2008 created a "one-way-bet" that disordered China's financial markets in two respects: (1) no private capital outflows to finance China's huge trade surplus leading to an undue build up of official exchange reserves and erosion of monetary control, and (2) a breakdown of the forward exchange market in 2007-08 so that exporters could no longer get trade credit—probably worsening the severe slump in Chinese exports. But after July 2008, the credit crunch induced an unexpected unwinding of the dollar carry trade leading to a sharp appreciation in the dollar's effective exchange rate. The People's Bank of China (PBC) then stopped RMB appreciation against the dollar. China's forward exchange market was restored and monetary control regained. Now the PBC can better support the fiscal stimulus by promoting a parallel expansion of bank credit. But, since March 2009, the fall in the dollar (with the RMB tied to it) again threatens to undermine the yuan/dollar rate and China's monetary stability.
This book is unique in that it challenges scholarly views on financial inclusion and poverty reduction while also relating financial inclusion and poverty reduction to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The book deviates from the usual method of analyzing financial inclusion, which relies on bank accounts or microcredit as success criteria, and instead discusses how the Fourth Industrial Revolution is facilitating digital financial inclusion. With a five-fold goal, this book investigates both past and present readings and understandings of poverty and financial inclusion. To begin, it provides a thorough introduction to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and financial inclusion in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Second, the book dives quite extensively into the theories of financial inclusion in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Third, the book reconstructs the theory of financial inclusion, moving from traditional to digital financial inclusion, highlighting the role of digital financial inclusion in the transition from an informal financial money market to a formal financial system. The fourth goal is to evaluate the tools and effects of digital financial inclusion on poverty. Finally, it provides case studies of digital financial inclusion and the future of digital financial inclusion in emerging and developing countries. This book will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners in a range of disciplines, including finance, development economics, and consumer economics.
Coalitions and political accountability -- Divisive politics and accountability -- Minimum taxes and repeated tax competition -- Summary in German.
In the winter of 1933, the American financial and economic system collapsed. Since then economists, policy makers and financial analysts throughout the world have been haunted by the question of whether "It" can happen again. In 2008 "It" very nearly happened again as banks and mortgage lenders in the USA and beyond collapsed. The disaster sent economists, bankers and policy makers back to the ideas of Hyman Minsky – whose celebrated 'Financial Instability Hypothesis' is widely regarded as predicting the crash of 2008 – and led Wall Street and beyond as to dub it as the 'Minsky Moment'. In this book Minsky presents some of his most important economic theories. He defines "It", determines whether or not "It" can happen again, and attempts to understand why, at the time of writing in the early 1980s, "It" had not happened again. He deals with microeconomic theory, the evolution of monetary institutions, and Federal Reserve policy. Minsky argues that any economic theory which separates what economists call the 'real' economy from the financial system is bound to fail. Whilst the processes that cause financial instability are an inescapable part of the capitalist economy, Minsky also argues that financial instability need not lead to a great depression. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Jan Toporowski.
This clear-thinking collection brings together 25 of Daly s essays, speeches, reviews and testimonials from the past decade. . . as a whole they provide a useful masterclass on the principles of ecological economics. Daly s vision, as well as his frustration with mainstream economists refusal to engage with his arguments, comes through loud and clear. New Scientist It s hard to imagine ecological economics without the numerous and profound contributions of Herman Daly. These papers reveal the consistency of his analysis and clarity of exposition that have made him one of the most influential economists of his generation. Because of Herman Daly we have a much better understanding of how economies relate to the environment, why so much is wrong with this relationship and what must be done to fix it. Peter Victor, York University, Canada This thrilling compilation outlines the origins of the young discipline of ecological economics by the intellectual leader of the movement, Herman Daly. He recounts how, as a member of the recently demoted environment department at the World Bank, he integrated ecology with economics during his six years in the bowels of the beast. Herman lucidly and compellingly combines common sense with profound understanding of both economics and ecology to arrive at sustainable solutions to the global problematique. Herman s rigorous yet compassionate solutions to climate change, peak oil, globalization vs. internationalization, poverty reduction, and the unsung concept of scale leading to uneconomic growth, are precisely what we need to prevent the current liquidation of our beautiful world. This book will galvanize you into the action we need so much. Robert Goodland, Environmental adviser, World Bank Group, 1978 2001 In this book, written in crystal clear style, Herman Daly reiterates the main points of his analysis and vision, he praises some teachers (John Ruskin, Frederick Soddy, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Kenneth Boulding), he fearlessly attacks some adversaries in the World Bank and MIT, and he offers some advice to the government of his own country, to the Russian Duma, and especially to OPEC that, if followed, would change the world very much for the better. Finally, on a different line of thought, he interrogates conservation biologists on their reasons for wanting to keep biodiversity since, as biologists, they claim that evolution has no particular purpose. Why not let the Sixth Great Extinction run its course? In other words, science cannot provide an ethics of conservation, which Herman Daly finds in religion more than in democratization deliberations. Joan Martinez-Alier, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona, Spain Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development comprises a carefully chosen selection of some 25 articles, speeches, congressional testimonies, reviews, and critiques from the last ten years of Herman Daly s ever-illuminating work. This book seeks to identify the blind spots and errors in standard growth economics, alongside the corrections that ecological economics offers to better guide us toward a sustainable economy one with deeper biophysical and ethical roots. Under the general heading of sustainability and ecological economics, many specific topics are here brought into relation with each other. These include: limits to growth; full-world versus empty-world economics; uneconomic growth; definitions of sustainability; peak oil; steady-state economics; allocation versus distribution versus scale issues; non-enclosure of rival goods and enclosure of non-rival goods; production functions and the laws of thermodynamics; OPEC and Kyoto; involuntary resettlement and development; resource versus value-added taxation; globalization versus internationalization; immigration; climate change; and the philosophical presuppositions of policy, including the policies suggested in connection with the topics above. This fascinating work will appeal to scholars and academics of ecol