News Media as a Channel of Environmental Information Disclosure: Evidence from an EGARCH Approach

This paper incorporates EGARCH modeling in a financial event study relating firm value to negative environmental news. News media provide informal information channels unlike formal government disclosure programs. This paper improves on previous studies by using a larger sample than most studies, treating heteroskedasticity in the disturbance term with a hybrid method that allows EGARCH, and comparing stock market reactions across industries and event types. Both standard and hybrid methods reveal reductions in firms’ stock market valuations by on average 1.2% in response to negative environmental events. Significant negative market reactions to environmental news arise for all industry groups and event types analyzed. Accidents and complaints yield 2.0% mean reductions in stock market value, versus later lawsuits and court decisions with 1.5% and 0.8% reductions respectively. Firms in traditional polluting industries are most affected. These stock market impacts suggest that informal environmental information channels may financially incentivize firms’ self-regulation.

Comment on "Wandering minds: The default network and stimulus-independent thought"

Mason et al. (Reports, 19 January 2007, p. 393) attributed activity in certain regions of the "resting" brain to the occurrence of mind-wandering. However, previous research has demonstrated the difficulty of distinguishing this type of stimulus-independent thought from stimulus-oriented thought (e.g., watchfulness). Consideration of both possibilities is required to resolve this ambiguity

Sensor data to measure Hawthorne effects in cookstove evaluation.

This data in brief article includes estimated time cooking based on temperature sensor data taken every 30 min from three stone fires and introduced fuel-efficient Envirofit stoves in approximately 168 households in rural Uganda. These households were part of an impact evaluation study spanning about six months to understand the effects of fuel-efficient cookstoves on fuel use and pollution. Daily particulate matter (pollution) and fuelwood use data are also included. This data in brief file only includes the weeks prior to, during, and after an in-person measurement team visited each home. The data is used to analyze whether households change cooking patterns when in-person measurement teams are present versus when only the temperature sensor is in the home

Regionalvermarktung und Bio-Produkte: Spannungsverhältnis oder sinnvolle Ergänzung?

Several studies on organic and region-of-origin labelled products assume that combining both characteristics enhances the success of the products on food markets. This paper presents results of two surveys which together give an insight into the compatibility of advertising the characteristics “organic” and “produced in the region of consumption” (regional products) for the case of Germany. Based on indepth interviews, the surveys reveal that the combination of both characteristics can complement each other but can also lead to unfavourable effects for both, organic and regional products. Hence, if market segments for organic and regional products are too small to serve them separately, the contrariness of the characteristics should be taken into account for developing adequate communication strategies

Coplanar waveguide discontinuities for P-I-N diode switches and filter applications

A full wave space domain integral equation (SDIE) analysis of coplanar waveguide (CPW) two port discontinuities is presented. An experimental setup to measure the S-parameters of such discontinuities is described. Experimental and theoretical results for CPW realizations of pass-band and stop-band filters are presented. The S-parameters of such structures are plotted in the frequency range 5 to 25 GHz

Cloud Service Brokerage 2013 - Methods and Mechanisms

In the future, the Cloud will evolve into a rich ecosystem of service providers and consumers, each building upon the offerings of others. Cloud service brokers will play an important role, mediating between providers and consumers. As well as providing vertical integration and value-added aggregation of services, brokers will play an increased role in continuous quality assurance and optimization. This may range from setting common standards for service specification, providing mechanisms for lifecycle governance and service certification, to automatic arbitrage respecting consumer preferences, continuous optimization of service delivery, failure prevention and recovery at runtime. This workshop introduces some of these anticipated methods and investigates some of the mechanisms envisaged in future Cloud service brokerage

On the ground electronic states of copper silicide and its ions

The low-lying electronic states of SiCu, SiCu^+, and SiCu^− have been studied using a variety of high-level ab initio techniques. As expected on the basis of simple orbital occupancy and bond forming for Si(s^2p^2)+Cu(s^1) species, ^2Π_r, ^1Σ^+, and ^3Σ^− states were found to be the ground electronic states for SiCu, SiCu^+, and SiCu^−, respectively; the ^2Π_r state is not that suggested in most recent experimental studies. All of these molecules were found to be quite strongly bound although the bond lengths, bond energies, and harmonic frequencies vary slightly among them, as a result of the nonbonding character of the 2π-MO (molecular orbital) [composed almost entirely of the Si 3p-AO (atomic orbital)], the occupation of which varies from 0 to 2 within the ^1Σ^+, ^2Π_r, and ^3Σ^− series. The neutral SiCu is found to have bound excited electronic states of ^4Σ^−, ^2Δ, ^2Σ^+, and ^2Π_i symmetry lying 0.5, 1.2, 1.8, and 3.2 eV above the ^2Π_r ground state. It is possible but not yet certain that the ^2Π_i state is, in fact, the “B state” observed in the recent experimental studies by Scherer, Paul, Collier, and Saykally