Search results for " return"
showing 10 items of 166 documents
The effects of recent Spanish pension reforms on sustainability and pension adequacy
2017
ABSTRACTThe Spanish pension system has been recently reformed as a response to the demographic challenge and with the objective of ensuring the sustainability of the pension system in the long-term. The overall reforms include changes in the majority of the system parameters, a new indexation rule and a sustainability factor that links life expectancy and the first pension amount. The aim of this work is to analyse how these reforms affect two important features of a pension system: fiscal sustainability and adequacy. For this purpose, the real internal rate of return (IRR) of the lifetime contributions and benefits and the prospective gross theoretical replacement rate (TRR), both before a…
More skilled, better paid : labour-market returns to postsecondary vocational education
2017
Outside the USA, relatively little is known about the labour-market returns to postsecondary vocational (or polytechnic) education. Yet, polytechnics in Europe are distinct from US community colleges. This paper focuses on the labour-market returns to polytechnic attendance in Finland, where polytechnics are representative of many European countries. Using matching methods and longitudinal administrative data, we find that, compared to individuals with no postsecondary education, students who attend polytechnics have higher annual earnings of €3,300 to €3,700 and employment gains of 2.5 to 6.6 percentage points 10 years after the entry decision. However, the returns vary by personal charact…
Nonlinear dynamics of interest rate and inflation
2004
According to several empirical studies, US inflation and nominal interest rates, as well as the real interest rate, can be described as unit root processes. These results imply that nominal interest rates and expected inflation do not move one-for-one in the long run, which is not consistent with the theoretical models. In this paper we introduce a nonlinear bivariate mixture autoregressive model that seems to fit quarterly US data (1952 Q1 – 2000 Q2) reasonably well. It is found that the three-month treasury bill rate and inflation share a common nonlinear component that explains a large part of their persistence. The real interest rate is devoid of this component, indicating one-for-one m…
Stock Returns and Exchange Rate Volatility Spillovers in the MENA Region
2010
In this article, we examine the presence of volatility spillovers between nominal exchange rates and stock returns in three MENA countries: Egypt, Morocco and Turkey. The multivariate GARCH model we use does not produce evidence of cross-market effects for the general stock indices returns. Nevertheless, bidirectional shock and volatility spillovers between exchange rates and stock returns exist at the industry sector level. These findings are more pronounced in Egypt and Turkey. The different results are due to the different exchange rate regimes/policies adopted by the three countries. While exchange rates in Egypt and Turkey were allowed to float, Morocco followed a more tightly managed…
Multicriteria evaluation of sustainable energy solutions for Colosseum
2017
Abstract Colosseum is a large office building in the capital region of Finland. The building owner operates on the highly competitive office rental market. With increasing emphasis on environmental responsibility, energy efficiency and sustainable energy solutions can provide competitive edge on the rental market. This study evaluates in terms of multiple criteria different alternatives to enhance the energy solutions of the building. The alternatives included different configurations of solar power, ground source heat, and roof constructions, along with district heating. Decision criteria included internal rate of return, energy efficiency, CO2 emissions, and attractiveness. Attractiveness…
Battery storage systems for peak load shaving applications: Part 2: Economic feasibility and sensitivity analysis
2016
This paper is the second of a two-part series, aiming to evaluate the economic feasibility of electrochemical storage systems in peak load shaving applications. The battery energy storage system (BESS) is considered to be added to a private facility, with the aim of reducing the customer electricity bill. The BESS is charged during the night, when the electricity prices are the lowest and discharged during the daily hours, when the prices are the highest, contemporary achieving a leveling of the daily usage pattern. The economical evaluations are carried out considering four different electrochemical technologies: lithium-ion (li-ion), advanced lead-acid, sodium-sulphur (NaS) and flow batte…
Post Feed-in Scheme Photovoltaic System Feasibility Evaluation in Italy: Sicilian Case Studies
2014
: Thanks to national energy policies, over recent years the Italian photovoltaic (PV) sector has undergone an extraordinary growth, also affecting the primary sector. In this context, Mediterranean greenhouses are well-adapted to photovoltaic systems because they represent one of the most energy-intensive sectors in agriculture. The Italian feed-in scheme ended at the beginning of 2013, making it necessary to investigate the feasibility of photovoltaic systems devoid of any electricity production-related incentives. In this paper, production cost and profitability analyses of photovoltaic electricity have been conducted, considering Mediterranean solar greenhouses in which, thanks to net me…
Soil biogeochemistry and microbial community dynamics in Pinus pinaster Ait. forests subjected to increased fire frequency.
2022
Fire frequency might increase in many fire-dominated ecosystems of the world due to the combined effects of global warming, land-use change and increased human pressures. Understanding how changes in fire frequency can affect the main soil biogeochemical dynamics, as well as the microbial community, in the long term is utmost important. Here we determined the effect of changes in fire frequency and other fire history characteristics on soil C and N dynamics and the main microbial groups (using soil fatty acid profiles), in Pinus pinaster forests from central Spain. Stands were chosen to differ in the number of fires (1 to 3) occurred between 1976 and 2018, in the time elapsed since the last…
Trading with Asymmetric Volatility Spillovers
2007
: We study the profitability of trading strategies based on volatility spillovers between large and small firms. By using the Volatility Impulse-Response Function of Lin (1997) and its extensions, we detect that any volatility shock coming from small companies is important to large companies, but the reverse is only true for negative shocks coming from large firms. To exploit these asymmetric patterns in volatility, different trading rules are designed based on the inverse relationship existing between expected return and volatility. We find that most strategies generate excess after-transaction cost profits, especially after very bad news and very good news coming from large or small firm…
On the Number of Closed Factors in a Word
2015
A closed word (a.k.a. periodic-like word or complete first return) is a word whose longest border does not have internal occurrences, or, equivalently, whose longest repeated prefix is not right special. We investigate the structure of closed factors of words. We show that a word of length $n$ contains at least $n+1$ distinct closed factors, and characterize those words having exactly $n+1$ closed factors. Furthermore, we show that a word of length $n$ can contain $\Theta(n^{2})$ many distinct closed factors.