This paper aims to investigate rare natural disasters and studies adaptation decisions in a dynamic stochastic economy. We examine the optimal balance between investment in productive capital and adaptive capital stock, which is inherently non-productive but alleviates the damage caused by a...

This paper investigates the uncertainty about the trading costs associated with a given portfolio strategy. I derive accurate approximations of the ex ante probability distributions of proportional trading costs and portfolio turnover under the conventional assumption of normal asset returns....

Increasing concerns about energy security and climate change mitigation have led to significant policy support for biofuels, particularly for cellulosic biofuels. This paper examines the short- and long-run effects of Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) on the mix of agricultural and forest biomass,...

In this paper, we use an integrated assessment model to examine the implications of not recognizing, and partially recognizing forest carbon in climate policy. Specifically, we investigate the impact of an asymmetric carbon policy that recognizes emissions from fossil fuels while ignoring...

We focus on the issue of currency management in the context of offshore investing with an emphasis on the selection of an appropriate currency hedge. It is shown that when seeking to minimize the risk associated with the Rand value of a foreign asset, the optimal currency hedge is strongly...

This paper investigates tactical investment strategies for investors to survive financial crises. Compared with the buy-and-hold strategy, the buy-and-sell strategy is much more effective in mitigating downside risk before, during, and after a crisis by restricting the left-tail volatility of...

In March 2017, the IMF published an upgrade of its Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) dataset. This paper documents the new methodology that has been developed to estimate missing observations of bilateral trade statistics on a monthly basis. The new estimation procedure is founded on a...

It is well known that shadow economy has many impacts on the economy and distorts competition. It is also known that shadow economy is hard to restrict without some repercussions regarding unemployment creation, investment distortions, economic growth, income distribution worsening, stock prices...

This study builds a simultaneous equation model that establishes inter-connections among the measures of globalization, measures of democracy, human development, corruption perception index and per capita income, which in turn jointly influence social progress. The model has eleven equations in...

In this study we build a simultaneous equation model in which the measures of different aspects of globalization (attributable to KOF) and different aspects of democracy (attributable to EIU) are related in seven structural equations. A bi-directional relationship between democracy and...