We develop a general equilibrium model of a production economy which has a risky production technology as well as a growth option to expand the scale of the productive sector of the economy. We show that when confronted with growth options, the representative consumer may sharply alter consumption rates to improve the likelihood of investment. This reduction in consumption is accompanied by an ...

An efficient Bayesian estimation using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method is proposed in the case of a multivariate stochastic volatility model as a natural extension of the univariate stochastic volatility model with leverage and heavy-tailed errors. Note that we further incorporate cross-leverage effects among stock returns. Our method is based on a multi-move sampler that samples a block of l...

As environmental issues have become increasingly important in economic research and policy for sustainable development, firms in the private sector have introduced environmental and social issues in conducting their business activities. Such behaviour is tracked by the Dow Jones Sustainable Indexes (DJSI) through financial market indexes that are derived from the Dow Jones Global Indexes. The s...

The impact of information technology on productivity has been debated for two decades. While some studies in the1980s found no contribution of IT to output, more recent studies have found a positive return to IT investment in several industries. However, we have a limited understanding of industry differences in these returns, in particular as to why productivity enhancements in the trade and s...

Oil price fluctuations affect equity values in North American, European, and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock markets, as evidenced by prior studies. However, they only focus on market-wide level analysis. This study, through both market level and sector level analyses, examines the sensitivity of Malaysian stock returns to oil price fluctuations over the period from January 2000 to March 2...

Educational Upgrading and Returns to Skills in Latin America: Evidence from a Supply-Demand Framework, 1990-2010 It has been argued that a factor behind the decline in income inequality in Latin America in the 2000s was the educational upgrading of its labor force. Between 1990 and 2010, the proportion of the labor force in the region with at least secondary education increased from 40 to 60 pe...

China’s current saving and investment levels are extraordinary— both in terms of its own history, but also by comparison with the current and historical experience of high-saving countries like Japan. The International Monetary Fund’s 2005 World Economic Outlook places China’s gross saving at 50 percent of GDP with gross capital formation, not far behind, at 45 percent of GDP (IMF 2005: 96–97)....

This paper deals with private sponsorship as a tool for the redevelopment of Italy’s vast wealth of historical-architectural public heritage sites. Italian law provides for the stipulation of sponsorship agreements by and between public sector agencies or entities (which need financial resources to restore or re-qualify property) and private sector investors (which guarantee the capital sought ...

In credit risk modelling, the correlation of unobservable asset returns is a crucial component for the measurement of portfolio risk. In this paper, we estimate asset correlations from monthly time series of Moody’s KMV asset values for around 2,000 European firms from 1996 to 2004. We compare correlation and value-atrisk (VaR) estimates in a one–factor or market model and a multi-factor or sec...