Tracing Return and Volatility Spillover Effect between Exchange Rate and Pakistan Stock Exchange Index

The volatility spillover is broadly measured as the transmission of variability from one financial market to other markets. This study explores the spillover effect between the newly emerged index of the Pakistan stock exchange (PSX) and exchange rate by using the newly proposed alternative methodology by Ghouse et al. (2019) and GARCH model. Furthermore, the index under study is more concise in its composition than other readily used indices. The study finds shreds of evidence for the bidirectional spillover effect between PSX and exchange rate, which will be helpful for central policy makers and markets players in designing effective policy frameworks. Keywords: ARDL; GARCH; spillover effec

Market-based Approaches to Environmental Management: A Review of Lessons from Payment for Environmental Services in Asia

Market-based approaches to environmental management, such as payment for environmental services (PES), have attracted unprecedented attention during the past decade. PES policies, in particular, have emerged to realign private and social benefits such as internalizing ecological externalities and diversifying sources of conservation funding as well as making conservation an attractive land-use paradigm. In this paper, we review several case studies from Asia on payment for environmental services to understand how landowners decide to participate in PES schemes. The analysis demonstrates the significance of four major elements facilitating the adoption and implementation of PES schemes: property rights and tenure security, transaction costs, household and community characteristics, communications, and the availability of PES-related information. PES schemes should target win-win options through intervention in these areas, aimed at maintaining the provision of ecological services and improving the conditions for local inhabitants

How Markets Work: The Lawyer’s Version

In this article, we combine two sources of data to shed light on the nature of transactional legal work. The first consists of stories about contracts that circulate widely among elite transactional lawyers. Surprisingly, the stories portray lawyers as ineffective market actors who are uninterested in designing superior contracts, who follow rather than lead industry standards, and who depend on governments and other outside actors to spur innovation and correct mistakes. We juxtapose these stories against a dataset of sovereign bond contracts produced by these same lawyers. While the stories suggest that lawyers do not compete or design innovative contracts, their contracts suggest the contrary. The contracts, in fact, are entirely consistent with a market narrative in which lawyers engage in substantial innovation despite constraints inherent in sovereign debt legal work. This raises a puzzle: Why would lawyers favor stories that paint them in a negative light and deny them a potent role as market actors? We conclude with some conjectures as to why this might be so. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference on Socializing Economic Relationships: New Perspectives and Methods for Transnational Risk Regulation, at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford, April 2010

Bundling and stacking in bio-sequestration schemes: Opportunities and risks identified by Australian stakeholders

The stacking and bundling of ecosystem services credits has emerged as mechanisms to promote the conservation of biodiversity in carbon sequestration schemes. Globally, apart from a few certification standards in the voluntary market, little genuine action has eventuated, but actors in these markets are continuing to examine the idea of combining carbon and biodiversity credits. This paper provides the first empirical analysis of the opportunities and barriers of bundling and stacking carbon and biodiversity credits as articulated by policymakers and academics, in Australia. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) acts as a driving force for business interest in the co-benefits of carbon plantings; however, uncertainty in the market and policy settings act as barriers for both buyers and sellers. Interviewees highlighted substantial benefits of both bundling and stacking, including easing transaction costs for landholders, reduced monitoring costs for regulators. Nevertheless, there is a risk that stacking can affect the perceived additionality of carbon plantings, which has the potential to erode the integrity of carbon markets. Obstacles to the establishment of stacked/bundled markets include the lack of standards to show that co-benefits are real, dealing with the additionality rule, and designing scenarios to achieve genuine outcomes for both biodiversity conservation and carbon abatement

Western Aid Conditionality and the Post-Communist Transition

The political and economic collapse of communism in the Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has created enormous challenge for Western democracies. The challenge has been not that of providing financial developmental aid although it is very important for countries facing the double challenge of transition and development. Its most important dimension has been to provide active policy support to implement reforms dismantling central planning. This in turn includes designing and providing a stimulus to implement a viable transition strategies and establishing market friendly institutions. Thus, the question is the extent to which Western assistance has made a difference in the course of transition from economic systems based on central planning to those based on competitive markets. This paper examines links between the economic transition in the former Soviet bloc countries (including states that emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union) and Western assistance. Its main focus is on addressing two specific questions: (i) have the Western governments and international institutions supported the most effective strategy of transition in Eastern Europe and FSU?; and (ii) what kind of aid policy can give the best results in terms of recipient countries commitment to effective transition strategy?Post-Communism, transition, Western aid

Design Thinking

{Excerpt} In a world of continuous flux, where markets mature faster and everyone is affected by information overload, organizations regard innovation, including management innovation, as the prime driver of sustainable competitive advantage. To unlock opportunities, some of them use mindsets and protocols from the field of design to make out unarticulated wants and deliberately imagine, envision, and spawn futures. Design is more important when function is taken for granted and no longer helps stakeholders differentiate. In the last five years, design thinking has emerged as the quickest organizational path to innovation and high-performance, changing the way creativity and commerce interact. In the past, design was a downstream step in the product development process, aiming to enhance the appeal of an existing product. Today, however, organizations ask designers to imagine solutions that meet explicit or latent needs and to build upstream entire systems that optimize customer experience and satisfaction. Therefore, although the term design is commonly understood to describe an object (or end result), it is in its latest and most effective form a process, an action, and a verb, not a noun: essentially, it is a protocol to see, shape, and build. Lately, design approaches are also being applied to infuse insight into the heart of campaigns and address social and other concerns

Vertical Integration and Dis-integration of Computer Firms: A History Friendly Model of the Co-evolution of the Computer and Semiconductor Industries

In this paper we present a history-friendly model of the changing vertical scope of computer firms during the evolution of the computer and semiconductor industries. The model is "history friendly", in that it attempts at replicating some basic, stylized qualitative features of the evolution of vertical integration on the basis of the causal mechanisms and processes which we believe can explain the history. The specific question addressed in the model is set in the context of dynamic and uncertain technological and market environments, characterized by periods of technological revolutions punctuating periods of relative technological stability and smooth technical progress. The model illustrates how the patterns of vertical integration and specialization in the computer industry change as a function of the evolving levels and distribution of firms' capabilities over time and how they depend on the co-evolution of the upstream and downstream sectors. Specific conditions in each of these markets - the size of the external market, the magnitude of the technological discontinuities, the lock-in effects in demand - exert critical effects and feedbacks on market structure and on the vertical scope of firms as time goes by