New evidence on the green building rent and price premium

This paper investigates the effect of voluntary eco-certification on the rental and sale prices of US commercial office properties. Hedonic and logistic regressions are used to test whether there are rental and sale price premiums for LEED and Energy Star certified buildings. The results of the hedonic analysis suggest that there is a rental premium of approximately 6% for LEED and Energy Star certification. A sale price premium of approximately 35% was found for 127 price observations involving LEED rated buildings and 31% for 662 buildings involving Energy Star rated buildings. When compared to samples of similar buildings identified by a binomial logistic regression for LEED-certified buildings, the existence of a rent and sales price premium is confirmed albeit with differences regarding the magnitude of the premium. Overall, the results of this study confirm that LEED and Energy Star buildings exhibit higher rental rates and sales prices per square foot controlling for a large number of location- and property-specific factors

Wafering economies for industrialization from a wafer manufacturer's viewpoint

The key technical limitations which inhibit the lowering of value-added costs for state-of-the-art wafering techniques are assessed. From the best experimental results to date, a projection was made to identify those parts of each system which need to be developed in order to meet or improve upon the value-added cost reduction necessary for $0.70/Wp photovoltaics modules

Flight to quality? An investigation of the attributes of sold properties in hot and cold markets

This paper uses sales transaction data in order to examine whether flight from risk phenomena took place in the US office property investment market during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. The effect of the crisis on the pricing of property quality attributes, mainly summarized by the class category of each building, is investigated. In addition, the paper examines how turnover levels were affected by the market downturn and whether there were significant variations between different real estate quality types. The results of the hedonic regression models suggest that the price spread between Class, A, B and C grew significantly during the downturn. We also find that property attributes such as size, height and age are priced significantly different in ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ markets

University Student Understanding of Evolutionary Biology's Place in the Creation/Evolution Theory

Author Institution: Department of Genetics, The Ohio State UniversityA questionnaire was used to survey 2,387 students in 10 different science courses at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Students were questioned about their views on the creation/evolution controversy, especially their acceptance of the concept of Darwinian evolution and on the concept of equal time for creation science. Biology students in Ohio showed a surprisingly low level of acceptance for the theory of evolution, and by an 80%-to-20% rate favored the concept of equal time for competing theories of origins. Students with increased education in biology were significantly less likely to accept co-instruction of alternative theories of origins in high school. Only eight percent of students could correctly identify the concept of differential reproduction as being most consistent with Darwinian evolution, among a set of five choices. Twentyfive percent believe that scientists doubt the validity of evolution as a science, while 22% feel that teaching naturalistic theories of science may lead to a decay in American society. Age and college rank had no effect on students' answers when the amount of science education in biology was taken into account. Students who had been exposed to evolution during high school biology courses were more likely to accept the concept of Darwinian evolution. Those students who have experienced more education in biology tend to answer questions in a manner which is more favorable to evolutionary biology and less favorable to creationist ideas. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that current mass biological education is not very successful in conveying the scientific basis of evolutionary biology

Stock prices and output growth: an examination of the credit channel

When stock market values fall, we know that investors expect lower economic growth in the future. But can stock market declines actually affect future growth? There is some evidence that they can-through the credit channel.Stock - Prices

Flight to quality? An investigation of changing price spreads in commercial real estate markets

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the crisis on the pricing of asset quality attributes. This paper uses sales transaction data to examine whether flight from risk phenomena took place in the US office market during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Design/methodology/approach – Hedonic regression procedures are used to test the hypothesis that the spread between the pricing of low-quality and high-quality characteristics increased during the crisis period compared to the pre-crisis period. Findings – The results of the hedonic regression models suggest that the price spread between Class A and other properties grew significantly during the downturn. Research limitations/implications – Our results are consistent with the hypothesis of an increased price spread following a market downturn between Class A and non-Class A offices. The evidence suggests that the relationships between the returns on Class A and non-Class A assets changed during the period of market stress or crisis. Practical implications – These findings have implications for real estate portfolio construction. If regime switches can be predicted and/or responded to rapidly, portfolios may be rebalanced. In crisis periods, portfolios might be reweighted towards Class A properties and in positive market periods, the reweighting would be towards non-Class A assets. Social implications – The global financial crisis has demonstrated that real estate markets play a crucial role in modern economies and that negative developments in these markets have the potential to spillover and create contagion for the larger economy, thereby affecting jobs, incomes and ultimately people’s livelihoods. Originality/value – This is one of the first studies that address the flight to quality phenomenon in commercial real estate markets during periods of financial crisis and market turmoil. The authors wish to thank the CoStar Group for providing a large database of property transactions to enable this research. Franz Fuerst also wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Cambridge University Land Society (CULS).This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Emerald at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/SEF-10-2013-0155

Probing large-scale wind structures in Vela X-1 using off-states with INTEGRAL

Vela X-1 is the prototype of the class of wind-fed accreting pulsars in high mass X-ray binaries hosting a supergiant donor. We have analyzed in a systematic way ten years of INTEGRAL data of Vela X-1 (22-50 keV) and we found that when outside the X-ray eclipse, the source undergoes several luminosity drops where the hard X-rays luminosity goes below 3x10^35 erg/s, becoming undetected by INTEGRAL. These drops in the X-ray flux are usually referred to as "off-states" in the literature. We have investigated the distribution of these off-states along the Vela X-1 ~8.9 d orbit, finding that their orbital occurrence displays an asymmetric distribution, with a higher probability to observe an off-state near the pre-eclipse than during the post-eclipse. This asymmetry can be explained by scattering of hard X-rays in a region of ionized wind, able to reduce the source hard X-ray brightness preferentially near eclipse ingress. We associate this ionized large-scale wind structure with the photoionization wake produced by the interaction of the supergiant wind with the X-ray emission from the neutron star. We emphasize that this observational result could be obtained thanks to the accumulation of a decade of INTEGRAL data, with observations covering the whole orbit several times, allowing us to detect an asymmetric pattern in the orbital distribution of off-states in Vela X-1.Comment: Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (5 pages, 3 figures). A few typos fixed to match the published versio

Does energy efficiency matter to home-buyers? An investigation of EPC ratings and transaction prices in England

This paper investigates whether energy performance ratings, as measured by mandatory Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), are reflected in the sale prices of residential properties. This is the first large-scale empirical study of this topic in England involving 333,095 dwellings sold at least twice in the period from 1995 to 2012. Applying hedonic regression and an augmented repeat sales regression, we find a positive relationship between the energy efficiency rating of a dwelling and the transaction price per square metre. The price effects of superior energy performance tend to be higher for terraced dwellings and flats compared to detached and semi-detached dwellings. The evidence is less clear-cut for rates of house price growth but remains supportive of a positive association. Overall, the results of this study suggest that energy efficiency labels have a measurable and significant impact on house prices in England.The authors wish to thank the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (TRN 297/11/2011) for financial support. Helpful comments on earlier drafts were received from Chris Nicholls, Jeremy Moody and two anonymous referees of this Journal. Franz Fuerst also wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Cambridge University Land Society (CULS) in enabling his research.This is the accepted manuscript of a paper published in Energy Economics Volume 48, March 2015, Pages 145–156, doi:10.1016/j.eneco.2014.12.012