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The present study primarily examines the impact of financial distress (FD) on the dividend policy of 33 banks working in the Indian economy from 2010 to 2019. In addition, we further explore the association between financial distress and dividend policy under the influence of shareholder activism (SHA). Using the static panel data regression technique, it is revealed that financial distress is non-linearly associated with the dividend policy of banks in an inverted U-shape. In the initial phase of a distressing situation, banks tend to have a liberal dividend policy. However, after reaching the pressure point, the banks start to squeeze dividend distribution to the stakeholders. Furthermore, the significant impact of shareholder activism has been found in the association between financial distress and the dividend payout policy of banks. From the policy perspective, the study will provide the policymakers with a clear all-round perspective of distressing situations, as the current research involves exploring the impact of distress on the dividend policy that will help the experts in basically understanding the adverse effect of financial distress and the repercussions, respectively, on the earning of the shareholders.

Facing the increasingly severe environmental problems, the development of a green and sustainable low-carbon economy has become an international trend. In China, the core issue of low-carbon economic development is effectively resolving the contradiction between the exploitation and utilization of fossil energy and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly carbon emissions). Based on the SAM matrix, we established a static Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate the impact of carbon tax policies on energy consumption, carbon emissions, and macroeconomics variables under 10, 20, and 30% emission reductions. Meanwhile, we analyze the impact of different carbon tax recycling mechanisms under the principle of tax neutrality. We find that the carbon tax effectively reduces carbon emissions, but it will negatively impact economic development and social welfare. A reasonable carbon tax recycling system based on the principle of tax neutrality can reduce the negative impact of carbon tax implementation. Among the four simulated scenarios of carbon tax cycle, the scenario of reducing residents’ personal income tax is most conducive to realizing the “double dividend” of carbon tax.

Economic fallouts from COVID-19 have been unprecedented across all industries, with a handful of exceptions. The present study attempts to capture the impact of dividend distribution tax elimination, introduced through the Indian Finance Act 2020, on corporate dividend behavior in India. It explores the determinants of dividend payouts, changing payout decisions, dividend behavior of regular payers, and the prevalence of factors associated with changing payouts. Out of the top 1000 firms, based on their market capitalization at the Bombay Stock Exchange, 509 non-financial firms pursuing consistent dividend payments from 2015 to 2019 are analyzed. The study also examines the dividend behavior of regular payers exhibiting a stable or step-up payout from 2015 to 2019. COVID’s impact on the firm’s financial performance and sentiments seems to dominate, suppressing investors’ expectations of enhanced payouts associated with dividend distribution tax advantages, with considerable reductions in payouts and omissions shown by regular and irregular payers in 2020 and 2021 vis-à-vis the preceding years. The findings signify that the dividend payouts of sample firms are positively associated with the firms’ size, MBV ratio, and past dividends, and negatively allied with free cash flows and the EBITDA margin. Regular payers are observed to be more sensitive to past dividends. The study lends credence to the conservatism and prevalence of signaling and catering theories in the dividend behavior of Indian corporate firms.

We investigate a dividend maximization problem under stochastic interest rates with Ornstein-Uhlenbeck dynamics. This setup also takes negative rates into account. First a deterministic time is considered, where an explicit separating curve $\alpha(t)$ can be found to determine the optimal strategy at time $t$. In a second setting we introduce a strategy-independent stopping time. The properties and behavior of these optimal control problems in both settings are analyzed in an analytical HJB-driven approach as well as using backward stochastic differential equations., Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures

With the advent of the Energy 4.0 era, the adoption of “Internet + artificial intelligence” systems will enable the transformation and upgrading of the traditional energy industry. This will alleviate the energy and environmental problems that China is currently facing. The integrated development of artificial intelligence and the energy industry has become inevitable in the development of future energy systems. This study applied a comprehensive evaluation index to the energy industry to calculate the comprehensive development index of the energy industry in 30 provinces of China from 2000 to 2017. Then, taking Guangdong and Jiangsu as examples, the synthetic control method was used to explore the direction and intensity of the integrated development of artificial intelligence and the energy industry on the comprehensive development level of the local energy industry. The results showed that when artificial intelligence (AI) and the energy industry achieved a stable coupled development without the need to move to the coordination stage, the coupling effect promoted the development of the regional energy industry, and the annual growth rate of the comprehensive development index was above 20%. This coupling effect passed the placebo test and ranking test and was significant at the 10% level, indicating the robustness and validity of the experimental results, which strongly confirmed the great potential of AI in re-empowering traditional industries from the data perspective. Based on the findings, corresponding policy recommendations were proposed on how to promote the development of inter-regional AI, how the government, enterprises, and universities could cooperate to promote the coordinated development of AI and energy, and how to guide the integration process of regional AI and energy industries according to local conditions, in order to maximize the technological dividend of AI and help the construction of smart energy in China.

This study empirically examines the relationship between corporate sustainable management (CSM) and dividend policy. Among the various motivations related to dividends, this study examines the relationship between CSM and dividend policy based on the agency and signaling theory. After examining the relationship between CSM and dividend policy, we investigate whether belonging to a large business group (chaebol group) has a significant effect on the relationship between CSM and dividend policy. The analysis period is from 2011 to 2018, and the ESG ratings of the Korea Corporate Governance Service are used as proxies for CSM. The empirical results show that CSM and dividends have a significant relationship in the positive direction. This means that firms with excellent CSM activities have higher dividend levels than those that do not. Furthermore, the association between CSM and dividends is more negative for firms belonging to a chaebol group. This indicates that the positive relationship between CSM and dividends in a firm that belongs to a chaebol group is weakened. This means that the relationship between CSM and dividends in the group belonging to the chaebol group is weakened. It belongs to the group of conglomerates, meaning that the relationship between the amount of dividends and CSM weakened. Our study focuses on CSM as a determinant of dividends, and examines the effects of belonging to a chaebol group in the relationship between CSM and dividends. Given that resolving the interest incompatibility between investors and managers is the focus of corporate governance, dividend policies can be used as a method for resolving the interest incompatibility between investors and managers.

We formulate a claim valuation problem where the dynamics of the underlying asset process contain the claim value itself. The problem is motivated here by an equity valuation of a firm, with intermediary dividend payments that depend on both the underlying, that is, the assets of the company, and the equity value itself. Since the assets are reduced by the dividend payments, the entanglement of claim, claim value, and underlying is complete and numerically challenging because it forms a forward–backward stochastic system. We propose a numerical approach based on disentanglement of the forward–backward deterministic system for the intrinsic values, a parametric assumption of the claim value in its intrinsic value, and a simulation of the stochastic elements. We illustrate the method in a numerical example where the equity value is approximated efficiently, at least for the relevant ranges of the asset value.

We investigate a control problem leading to the optimal payment of dividends in a Cramér-Lundberg-type insurance model in which capital injections incur proportional cost, and may be used or not, the latter resulting in bankruptcy. For general claims, we provide verification results, using the absolute continuity of super-solutions of a convenient Hamilton-Jacobi variational inequality. As a by-product, for exponential claims, we prove the optimality of bounded buffer capital injections (−a,0,b) policies. These policies consist in stopping at the first time when the size of the overshoot below 0 exceeds a certain limit a, and only pay dividends when the reserve reaches an upper barrier b. An exhaustive and explicit characterization of optimal couples buffer/barrier is given via comprehensive structure equations. The optimal buffer is shown never to be of de Finetti (a=0) or Shreve-Lehoczy-Gaver (a=∞) type. The study results in a dichotomy between cheap and expensive equity, based on the cost-of-borrowing parameter, thus providing a non-trivial generalization of the Lokka-Zervos phase-transition Løkka - Zervos (2008). In the first case, companies start paying dividends at the barrier b*=0, while in the second they must wait for reserves to build up to some (fully determined) b*&gt, 0 before paying dividends.

Since the “high stock dividend” of A-share companies in China often leads to the short-term stock price increase, this phenomenon’s prediction has been widely concerned by academia and industry. In this study, a new multi-layer stacking ensemble algorithm is proposed. Unlike the classic stacking ensemble algorithm that focused on the differentiation of base models, this paper used the equal weight comprehensive feature evaluation method to select features before predicting the base model and used a genetic algorithm to match the optimal feature subset for each base model. After the base model’s output prediction, the LightGBM (LGB) model was added to the algorithm as a secondary information extraction layer. Finally, the algorithm inputs the extracted information into the Logistic Regression (LR) model to complete the prediction of the “high stock dividend” phenomenon. Using the A-share market data from 2010 to 2019 for simulation and evaluation, the proposed model improves the AUC (Area Under Curve) and F1 score by 0.173 and 0.303, respectively, compared to the baseline model. The prediction results shed light on event-driven investment strategies.

This article examines the propensity to pay dividends in the U.S banking sector during 1973–2014. Although the propensity to pay dividends has been declining over the 52 years of our sample period, banks are consistently more likely to pay dividends than non-financial firms. Using the coefficients from logit models estimated early in the sample period to forecast the percentage of dividend payers in each subsequent year, we conclude that there has been a decline in the likelihood of paying dividends in the banking sector. However, the decline started from a very high level as compared to that of the non-banking sectors. In addition, the variables taken from the non-financial firm literature do not explain the difference between the actual and expected percentage of dividend payers in the banking sector. We also conduct exploratory analyses with bank-specific variables. Although newly included variables are significantly related to the likelihood of paying dividends, they do not explain the declining propensity to pay dividends in the banking sector.

Legislation imposes insurance companies to project their assets and liabilities in various financial scenarios. Within the setup of with-profit life insurance, we consider retrospective reserves and bonus, and we study projection of balances with and without policyholder behavior. The projection resides in a system of differential equations of the savings account and the surplus, and the policyholder behavior options surrender and conversion to free-policy are included. The inclusion results in a structure where the system of differential equations of the savings account and the surplus is non-trivial. We consider a case where we are able to find accurate differential equations and suggest an approximation method to project the savings account and the surplus, including policyholder behavior, in general. To highlight the practical applications of the results in this paper, we study a numerical example.

[Abstract] Computing implied volatility from observed option prices is a frequent and challenging task in finance, even more in the presence of dividends. In this work, we employ a data-driven machine learning approach to determine the Black–Scholes implied volatility, including European-style and American-style options. The inverse function of the pricing model is approximated by an artificial neural network, which decouples the offline (training) and online (prediction) phases and eliminates the need for an iterative process to solve a minimization problem. Meanwhile, two challenging issues are tackled to improve accuracy and robustness, i.e., steep gradients of the volatility with respect to the option price and irregular early-exercise domains for American options. It is shown that deep neural networks can be used as an efficient numerical technique to compute implied volatility from European/American options. An extended version of this work can be found in .

We examine stock prices and the number of stocks traded around ex-dividend dates of German stocks with tax-free dividend. Tax-free dividends are temporarily tax-exempt, as they reduce the initial purchasing price of a stock. With our analysis of this particular group of German stocks, we can make clear predictions regarding ex-date prices and analyze the number of stocks traded around ex-dates, doing so without the systematic bias of cum-ex trades over time. For XETRA, our empirical results indicate that ex-date prices decline, on average, by the amount of the dividend. We do not find a significant relationship between a stock&rsquo, s price-drop ratio and dividend yield. Further, the empirical analysis suggests that there is no significant correlation between an abnormal number of a stock being traded and its dividend yield. These results are most consistent with tax-motivated reasoning. However, our volume analysis reveals no consistency regarding the abnormal number of stocks traded for multilateral trading facilities.

Our study investigates Chinese manufacturing firms listed on both the Shanghai and the Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. These firms follow the pecking order or trade-off theories in their capital structure choices. Using panel data from the Taiwan Economic Journal and quantile regression, we construct three models to compare the two theories. Our first model tests the impact of profitability, tangible asset, firm size, and investment opportunities on leverage, our second model adds the dividend payout ratio to test the robustness of the first model, and our third model tests how leverage, profitability, firm size, and dividend variables affect a firm&rsquo, s investments. From the results of all the models used in our study, we find a negative relationship between leverage and both profitability and the dividend payout ratio and a positive relationship between leverage and growth in a firm&rsquo, s investments. We also find a negative relationship between dividends, firm size, and growth in a firm&rsquo, s investments and a positive relationship between investment capital and profitability. The overall results indicate that the capital structure decisions of Chinese manufacturing firms are best explained by the pecking order theory.

Despite developments of recent theoretical and numerous empirical studies on the policies effectively adopted by companies, the dividend distribution policy (DDP) remains largely unexplained. In this regard, the main purpose of the current study is to empirically examine the effects of both CEO duality and ownership concentration on DDP during a crisis period. Furthermore, we test, using an interaction variable, the moderating effect of the crisis period on the association between both the degree of CEO duality and the ownership concentration on the DDP by analyzing panel data on selected listed firms in an emerging economy, namely, Tunisia. Based on a sample made up of 576 firm-year observations over the period 1996–2019, the findings of this research indicate that the crisis period plays an important role in mitigating the positive effect of both CEO duality and ownership concentration on DDP. The findings confirm furthermore that the crisis period on the one hand and both CEO duality and ownership concentration on the other represent two competing forces influencing DDP. Our results also support the agency theory on which DDP depends, among other things, family ownership, board and company size, and ROE.

The present study empirically investigates the effect of corporate governance on the value of cash holding, usage of excess cash, and firm performance in concentrated and competitive industries in the context of less developed countries. The empirical analysis was conducted in the panel data setting using Pakistan as a case study. Our findings suggest a strong relationship between the value of cash holding and corporate governance, and the complementary effect of product market competition for corporate governance. This suggests that the external market discipline is also needed, in addition to good governance, to resolve agency problems in less developed countries. This is because less developed countries are usually characterized by lower competition, poor mechanisms for shareholder protection, and weak legal systems. Consequently, agency problems are greater in less developed countries compared to developed countries. Our findings also indicate that firms with good governance dissipate less excess cash on internal investment, dividends and diversification in competitive industries. Moreover, the significant positive relationship between the lagged excess cash and corporate governance dummy interaction with the dividend supports the dividend outcome model, particularly in the concentrated industries. Finally, our results suggest that the efficient utilization of excess cash, induced by good governance, leads to better corporate performance in less developed countries.

Because both pollution emissions and production policies often are international in scope, it is necessary to find optimal coordination strategies for international production planning and pollution abating. Differential game models are developed for multiple neighboring countries to reach optimal decisions on their production planning and pollution abating under cap-and-trade regulations. Non-cooperative and cooperative differential games are presented to depict the optimal tradeoffs between production planning and pollution abating. Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations are then employed to analyze the asymmetric and symmetric feedback solutions. Numerical simulations are used to illustrate the results. Five different dividends are also discussed. With the proposed strategies, more improvement will be directed toward production supplies and environmental issues than ever before.

I document a sizeable bias that might arise when valuing out of the money American options via the Least Square Method proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (2001). The key point of this algorithm is the regression-based estimate of the continuation value of an American option. If this regression is ill-posed, the procedure might deliver biased results. The price of the American option might even fall below the price of its European counterpart. For call options, this is likely to occur when the dividend yield of the underlying is high. This distortion is documented within the standard Black&ndash, Scholes&ndash, Merton model as well as within its most common extensions (the jump-diffusion, the stochastic volatility and the stochastic interest rates models). Finally, I propose two easy and effective workarounds that fix this distortion.

This study examines the link between foreign ownership and firm value in the context of dividend payouts and long-term firm growth. Consistent with prior studies, we find that foreign ownership is positively related to firm value. Next, we find that changes in foreign ownership are negatively related to changes in agency costs, which is linked to the improvement of future firm profitability. We also find a positive relationship between foreign ownership and dividend payouts. We further find that dividend payouts are negatively related to 3-year-ahead and 5-year-ahead sales (or earnings) growth as a proxy for long-term firm growth. However, for firms with high foreign ownership, we find a positive relationship between dividend payouts and long-term firm growth. These findings indicate that foreign ownership has a moderating effect on dividend payouts and long-term firm growth. Overall, our results suggest that foreign investors are expected to provide managers with an incentive to pursue long-term value for the sake of shareholders by monitoring and disciplining managers. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the value-increasing effects of foreign ownership on firm value by demonstrating that the reduction in agency costs due to the foreign ownership effect is associated with higher growth rates and thus higher firm value. Our study also contributes to the literature on the foreign ownership&ndash, firm value nexus by showing that foreign investors play a crucial role in ensuring sustainable firm growth.

We investigate the effects of monetary policy shocks, including unconventional policy measures, on the bubbles of the energy sector, for the case of the United States. We estimate a time-varying Bayesian VAR model that allows for quantifying the impact of monetary policy shocks on asset prices and bubbles. The energy sector is measured through the S&amp, P Energy Index, while bubbles are measured through the difference between asset prices and the corresponding dividends for the energy sector. We find significant differences in the impact of monetary policy shocks for the aggregate economy and for the energy sector. The findings seem sensitive to the interest rate use, i.e., whether one uses the shadow interest rate or the long-term interest rate.

We present closed-form solutions to the perpetual American dividend-paying put and call option pricing problems in two extensions of the Black&ndash, Merton&ndash, Scholes model with random dividends under full and partial information. We assume that the dividend rate of the underlying asset price changes its value at a certain random time which has an exponential distribution and is independent of the standard Brownian motion driving the price of the underlying risky asset. In the full information version of the model, it is assumed that this time is observable to the option holder, while in the partial information version of the model, it is assumed that this time is unobservable to the option holder. The optimal exercise times are shown to be the first times at which the underlying risky asset price process hits certain constant levels. The proof is based on the solutions of the associated free-boundary problems and the applications of the change-of-variable formula.

This study analyzes the relationship between information asymmetry and dividend policy in an emerging market, Korea. We adopt several proxies for information asymmetry, such as the Glosten–Harris and Hasbrouk–Foster–Viswanathan models, drawn from market microstructure literature. This study finds a negative relationship between information asymmetry and dividend yields, which appears to be particularly strong when firms have difficulty raising external capital because they have high systematic risk, financial constraints, or low stock liquidity. This result, based on an analysis using market microstructure variables that provide direct measures of information asymmetry, suggests that the pecking order theory holds for the Korean stock market and that information asymmetry is a strong determinant of dividend policy decisions in an emerging market.

Most previous articles estimate the effects of information communication technologies (ICTs) on economic growth average using national data without consideration of heterogeneity of ICT effects on cities across multiple economic development. The heterogeneity of ICT effects is confirmed to promote both the sustainability and equitableness of the whole cities. In order to investigate the heterogeneous effects of ICT between developed and less developed cities, a quantile spatial autoregressive (QSAR) model is applied to estimate coefficients at different quantiles while accounting for the spatial dependence of urban economy. We find significantly positive effects of ICT in local and neighboring cities after controlling the spatial dependence of urban economy. We have further found larger coefficients of ICT-related variables in cities with lower gross domestic product (GDP) per capital suggesting that digital dividend from ICT prefer the less developed cities over developed cities. Our conclusions indicate there would be &ldquo, double dividend&rdquo, from ICT, namely an improvement of both overall economic growth and balanced economic development among cities.

In the compound Poisson insurance risk model under a dividend barrier strategy, this paper aims to analyze jointly the aggregate discounted claim amounts until ruin and the total discounted dividends until ruin, which represent the insurer's payments to its policyholders and shareholders, respectively. To this end, we introduce a Gerber-Shiu-type function, which further incorporates the higher moments of these two quantities. This not only unifies the individual study of various ruin-related quantities, but also allows for new measures concerning covariances to be calculated. The integro-differential equation satisfied by the generalized Gerber-Shiu function and the boundary condition are derived. In particular, when the claim severity is distributed as a combination of exponentials, explicit expressions for this Gerber-Shiu function in some special cases are given. Numerical examples involving the covariances between any two of (i) the aggregate discounted claims until ruin, (ii) the discounted dividend payments until ruin and (iii) the time of ruin are presented along with some interpretations.

In eras of intense debates on the appointment of women on corporate boards, this research sheds light on the structure of board in Asian emerging economies by examining how women on board of family businesses separately and collectively affect the dividend announcement of business organizations. On the basis of the panel data of four Asian emerging economies&mdash, China, Malaysia, Pakistan, and India&mdash, for the period 2010&ndash, 2018, the results from our Tobit regression showed the adverse (negative) and significant impact of women on boards and in family businesses upon dividend announcement. It is important that policymakers should not view firms with one eye. There should be a spillover on board gender diversity from international to domestic levels, and international firms should be set as an example for domestic firms for the inclusion of women on boards. It might be the best time for Asian emerging economies to take productive action for balancing the gender in boardroom settings, and to set a minimum mass of women on boards for better and more effective decision making.

This paper investigates the relationship between dividend payout and institutional ownership for all Australian listed firms in the period between 2001 and 2015. In our univariate tests, we find that institutional investors, in general, prefer dividend-paying firms more than non-paying firms, and for the dividend-paying firms in our sample, institutional investors hold more shares in the firms who pay higher dividends. We further explore the causality between dividend payout and institutional ownership in our multivariate tests with our panel data. The results show an insignificant effect of institutional ownership (dividend payout) on the future dividend payout (institutional ownership) while controlling for firms&rsquo, fundamentals, that a higher dividend yield does not attract more institutional investors and that there is no catering to Australian institutional investors.

The absolute ruin insurance risk model is modified by including some valuable market economic information factors, such as credit interest, debit interest and dividend payments. Such information is especially important for insurance companies to control risks. We further assume that the insurance company is able to finance and continue to operate when its reserve is negative. We investigate the integro-differential equations for some interest actuarial diagnostics. We also provide numerical examples to explain the effects of relevant parameters on actuarial diagnostics.

In this paper, we study a stochastic control problem faced by an insurance company allowed to pay out dividends and make capital injections. As in (L&oslash, kka and Zervos (2008), Lindensj&ouml, and Lindskog (2019)), for a Brownian motion risk process, and in Zhu and Yang (2016), for diffusion processes, we will show that the so-called L&oslash, kka&ndash, Zervos alternative also holds true in the case of a Cram&eacute, r&ndash, Lundberg risk process with exponential claims. More specifically, we show that: if the cost of capital injections is low, then according to a double-barrier strategy, it is optimal to pay dividends and inject capital, meaning ruin never occurs, and if the cost of capital injections is high, then according to a single-barrier strategy, it is optimal to pay dividends and never inject capital, meaning ruin occurs at the first passage below zero.

Based on a panel ARDL (AutoRegressive Distributed Lag) model, this paper investigates the environmental and economic consequences of energy tax levied in the four Nordic countries and the G7 countries from 1994 to 2016. Based on the double dividend theory of environmental tax, this paper investigates five variables: energy tax, energy consumption per unit of GDP, income tax, profit tax and capital gains tax, carbon dioxide intensity and fossil fuel burning ratio. A panel ARDL model is established to empirically test the relationship between energy tax and other variables. Experiments show that both the four Nordic countries and the G7 countries have found the existence of green dividends in the long run: the green dividends of the four Nordic countries are reflected in the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, while those of the G7 countries are reflected in the reduction of fossil fuel use. In terms of blue dividends, the implementation of energy tax in the four Nordic countries can not only reduce distorted taxes in the short term, but also promote economic growth and adjust tax structure in the long term. For the G7 countries, blue dividends are not reflected in the long term. The model used in this paper is a panel ARDL model, which is more suitable for the study of multiple countries, multiple variables and long-term cycles. This model has been seldomly used in previous studies. The application of the panel ARDL model in this paper is not only more scientific and applicable, but also more innovative, which makes up for the shortcomings of previous studies. The research object of this paper selects the energy tax, which is an important part of the environmental tax system, and strives to provide a reference for the implementation of environmental taxation priorities and effects through empirical research. This paper may also serve as a reference for other countries to establish and improve environmental tax. As the first environmental tax law in China, the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China was formally implemented on 1 January 2018. This paper chooses G7 countries and Nordic countries as the research objects. As these are important economies in the world, their environmental tax implementation is more perfected and has strong representativeness. This study can provide some experience for the continuous improvement of China’s environmental tax law.

Given a spectrally-negative Lévy process and independent Poisson observation times, we consider a periodic barrier strategy that pushes the process down to a certain level whenever the observed value is above it. We also consider the versions with additional classical reflection above and/or below. Using scale functions and excursion theory, various fluctuation identities are computed in terms of the scale functions. Applications in de Finetti’s dividend problems are also discussed.

We develop a new asset price model where the dynamic structure of the asset price, after the fundamental value is removed, is subject to two different regimes. One regime reflects the normal period where the asset price divided by the dividend is assumed to follow a mean-reverting process around a stochastic long run mean. This latter is allowed to account for possible smooth structural change. The second regime reflects the bubble period with explosive behavior. Stochastic switches between two regimes and non-constant probabilities of exit from the bubble regime are both allowed. A Bayesian learning approach is employed to jointly estimate the latent states and the model parameters in real time. An important feature of our Bayesian method is that we are able to deal with parameter uncertainty, and at the same time, to learn about the states and the parameters sequentially, allowing for real time model analysis. This feature is particularly useful for market surveillance. Analysis using simulated data reveals that our method has better power for detecting bubbles compared to existing alternative procedures. Empirical analysis using price/dividend ratios of S&P500 highlights the advantages of our method.

We compare two types of reinsurance: excess of loss (EOL) and largest claim reinsurance (LCR), each of which transfers the payment of part, or all, of one or more large claims from the primary insurance company (the cedant) to a reinsurer. The primary insurer’s point of view is documented in terms of assessment of risk and payment of reinsurance premium. A utility indifference rationale based on the expected future dividend stream is used to value the company with and without reinsurance. Assuming the classical compound Poisson risk model with choices of claim size distributions (classified as heavy, medium and light-tailed cases), simulations are used to illustrate the impact of the EOL and LCR treaties on the company’s ruin probability, ruin time and value as determined by the dividend discounting model. We find that LCR is at least as effective as EOL in averting ruin in comparable finite time horizon settings. In instances where the ruin probability for LCR is smaller than for EOL, the dividend discount model shows that the cedant is able to pay a larger portion of the dividend for LCR reinsurance than for EOL while still maintaining company value. Both methods reduce risk considerably as compared with no reinsurance, in a variety of situations, as measured by the standard deviation of the company value. A further interesting finding is that heaviness of tails alone is not necessarily the decisive factor in the possible ruin of a company; small and moderate sized claims can also play a significant role in this.

This paper addresses a compensation scheme for self-employed bus service requisition of rural passenger transport, and provides a theoretical basis and policy recommendations for the smooth implementation of self-employed bus service requisition process and the integration of urban&ndash, rural passenger transport resources. Using Chinese urban&ndash, rural passenger transport systems in ten cities or counties (including Shenyang, Liaoyang, Wuxi, Suzhou, Laiwu, Zouping, Wuhu, Guangde, Shuangliu, and Fuyang) as research objects, the compensation scheme for self-employed bus service requisition is explored from three aspects: the construction of compensation model, the estimation of compensation amount, and the determination of compensation mode. The conclusions drawn from this study are summarized as follows: (1) The compensation amount consists of the bus service residual value, the compensation for expected profit in the residual operation period, and the awarded amount for signing compensation agreements. (2) Whether or not bus owners accept the compensation amount is closely related to their psychological expectation threshold. Changes in the average profit of the bus service, the driver&rsquo, s average wage, and the ticket-seller&rsquo, s wage, have the greatest impact, the second greatest impact, and the smallest impact on their psychological expectation threshold, respectively. (3) Younger and more highly educated owners tend to accept &ldquo, monetary compensation and reemployment placement&rdquo, while older and low educated owners prefer &ldquo, monetary compensation and social security&rdquo, (4) High compensation fees, providing reemployment placement for drivers and ticket-sellers, and implementing monetary compensation in the form of an &ldquo, expected income dividend installment&rdquo, can enhance willingness to sign compensation agreements for self-employed bus service.

OECD countries are the largest energy consuming economies in the world, improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution emissions is one of the important goals of the environmental tax policies of OECD countries. Based on the total factor energy efficiency index, this paper establishes an epsilon based measure-data envelopment analysis (EBM-DEA) model to measure the energy efficiency levels of 32 OECD countries during 1995–2016 when undesired outputs are included and not included. The effect of environmental factors on energy efficiency evaluation is compared by efficiency analysis and projection value analysis. On this basis, a Panel Logit model was established to empirically examine the impact of energy taxes on energy efficiency in 32 OECD countries. This paper finds that undesired output has a large impact on the energy efficiency level of OECD countries. Measuring energy efficiency levels without considering undesired outputs tends to lead to overestimation of the energy efficiency level of environmentally friendly countries and underestimate the energy efficiency level of countries that value environmental protection. The collection of energy tax has an important impact on energy consumption efficiency. Without considering the unexpected output, the energy tax has a significant impact on improving the efficiency of coal energy consumption. When considering the unexpected output, the energy tax has a significant impact on improving the efficiency of oil energy consumption. Regardless of the expected output or not, the energy tax has a positive effect on improving the efficiency of natural gas energy consumption. The experimental results also show that the energy structure and energy price have a negative impact on energy efficiency, while the progress of environmental protection technology and industrial structure have a positive impact on energy efficiency. Energy taxes have a “double dividend”. This paper argues that when evaluating a country’s energy efficiency, it should consider the undesired output factors of environmental constraints; governments should pay attention to the role of energy taxes in improving energy efficiency, improve the energy tax system, optimize industrial structure upgrades, stabilize energy prices and support the development of environmental technologies and improve energy efficiency.

This study aims to determine whether a firm&rsquo, s dividends are influenced by the sector to which it belongs. This paper also examines the explanatory factors for dividends across individual sectors in India. This longitudinal study uses balanced data consisting of companies listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India for 12 years&mdash, from 2006 to 2017. Pooled ordinary least squares (POLSs) and fixed effects panel models are used in our estimation. We find that size, profitability, and interest coverage ratios have a significant positive relation to dividend policy. Furthermore, business risk and debt reveal a significantly negative relation with dividends. The findings on profitability support the free cash flow hypothesis for India. However, we also found that Indian companies prefer to follow a stable dividend policy. As a result of this, even firms with higher growth opportunities and lower cash flows continue to pay dividends. We also find evidence that dividend policies vary significantly across industrial sectors in India. The results of this study can be used by financial managers and policymakers in order to make appropriate dividend decisions. They can also help investors make portfolio selection decisions based on sectoral dividend paying behavior.

This paper analyzes whether the Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations set by Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) have influenced the auditing fees charged to football clubs. In addition, it explores the determinants of audit fees. We used a two-sample t-test with equal variances to determine whether differences are present. After this, we carried out a panel data regression with the clubs fix effect to estimate the determinants of audit fees in football clubs. Our findings revealed an increase of audit fees after the implementation of FFP regulations. On top of that, audit fees were explained by the presence of foreign investors if the audit firm was one of the Big 4 and if the auditor was a woman. The regulation change has had an impact on the audit fees charged by auditors for their services. However, this increase may be compensated over future years given the improving financial situation of clubs, therefore, the auditors&rsquo, risk diminishes and subsequent audit fees may be reduced. UEFA should monitor audit fees as well as the quality of the audit reports, which have become crucial to obtaining the license to participate in UEFA competitions.

This paper examines the link between the green economy and multifunctional agriculture. In particular, the paper uses the case of the Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) initiative, an agro-based enterprise promoting a multifunctional agriculture model in Eastern Zambia, to examine how the potential of smallholder farmers can be harnessed to support a transition towards the green economy. The empirical data on which the paper is based were collected through questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews conducted with farmers and other actors in the agricultural sector. The results of the study show that a number of elements underpinning the COMACO model including sustainable land management practices, conservation outreach, community markets, value addition, and conservation dividends have great potential to deliver benefits related to the green economy. However, to truly foster a transition towards a green economy, a number of constraints need to be overcome. These include lack of a supportive policy and institutional framework, technological backwardness, and lack of consumer awareness of environmental information instruments such as eco-labelling.

States are increasingly turning to environmental taxes as a means of raising revenue. These taxes are often thought to generate a double dividend: an environmental dividend stemming from the environmental improvement, and an economic dividend resulting from use of the revenue from environmental taxes to reduce other distortionary taxes (e.g., income or sales taxes). We review the economic literature on the double-dividend hypothesis, and show explicitly that the conditions under which the second dividend exists are less likely to hold when the amount of revenue that would be raised by an optimal environmental tax is small relative to the tax revenue from other taxes. We then present estimates of the potential revenue that could be raised from two environmental taxes in Connecticut. The results suggest that, because of their small tax base, environmental taxes are likely to have limited potential to raise revenue to finance state government budget deficits and/or reduce other distortionary taxes. Overall, environmental taxes could still generate significant gains for society if they lead to significant improvements in environmental quality. However, without more evidence of the existence of a double dividend, states should not try to justify these taxes on the basis of raising revenue more efficiently.

This paper considers the optimal dividend and capital injection problem for an insurance company, which controls the risk exposure by both the excess-of-loss reinsurance and capital injection based on the symmetry of risk information. Besides the proportional transaction cost, we also incorporate the fixed transaction cost incurred by capital injection and the salvage value of a company at the ruin time in order to make the surplus process more realistic. The main goal is to maximize the expected sum of the discounted salvage value and the discounted cumulative dividends except for the discounted cost of capital injection until the ruin time. By considering whether there is capital injection in the surplus process, we construct two instances of suboptimal models and then solve for the corresponding solution in each model. Lastly, we consider the optimal control strategy for the general model without any restriction on the capital injection or the surplus process.

Because of the profitable nature of risk businesses in the long term, de Finetti suggested that surplus models should allow for cash leakages, as otherwise the surplus would unrealistically grow (on average) to infinity. These leakages were interpreted as 'dividends'. Subsequent literature on actuarial surplus models with dividend distribution has mainly focussed on dividend strategies that either maximise the expected present value of dividends until ruin or lead to a probability of ruin that is less than one (see Albrecher and Thonhauser, Avanzi for reviews). An increasing number of papers are directly interested in modelling dividend policies that are consistent with actual practice in financial markets. In this short note, we review the corporate finance literature with the specific aim of fleshing out properties that dividend strategies should ideally satisfy, if one wants to model behaviour that is consistent with practice.

We consider a discrete-time dependent Sparre Andersen risk model which incorporates multiple threshold levels characterizing an insurer’s minimal capital requirement, dividend paying situations, and external financial activities. We focus on the development of a recursive computational procedure to calculate the finite-time ruin probabilities and expected total discounted dividends paid prior to ruin associated with this model. We investigate several numerical examples and make some observations concerning the impact our threshold levels have on the finite-time ruin probabilities and expected total discounted dividends paid prior to ruin.