Tokens, the digital form of assets, are an innovation that has the potential to disrupt how to transfer and own financial instruments. We hand-collected data on 173 real estate tokens in the USA ...between 2019 and 2021 and trace back 238,433 blockchain transactions. We find that tokens provide broad real estate ownership to many small investors through digital fractional ownership and low entry barriers, while investors do not yet hold well-diversified real estate token portfolios. We analyze the determinants of the success of security token offerings (STOs), secondary market trading, and daily aggregated capital flows. In addition to some property-specific determinants, we find that crypto-market-specific determinants, such as transaction costs and the related sentiment, are relevant both to the STO and capital flows.
The translocation of non-indigenous fishes into lowland rives can result in invasive populations establishing and dispersing. Because non-indigenous fishes can cause ecological harm, it is important ...to understand their trophic relationships and the effects they may have on native fishes. We assessed the trophic ecology of a translocated chub
Squalius cephalus
population in the River Frome, a lowland chalk stream in Southern England, using bulk stable isotope (δ
13
C, δ
15
N) metrics, and compared the results with those derived from indigenous chub populations. The isotopic niche sizes of all fishes in the River Frome were substantially larger in the tidal versus non-tidal site, with the δ
13
C values suggesting some fish were foraging further downstream of their sampling point in areas that had greater tidal and salinity influences. Inter-specific comparisons of isotopic niches revealed a consistent pattern of similar niche size and overlap between chub and the trophically analogous dace
Leuciscus leuciscus
. These isotopic relationships between chub and dace were then also apparent in the indigenous populations of these fishes. These results suggest that the colonisation of this lowland river by translocated chub is being facilitated by their isotopic relationships with other fishes that are similar to those observed in their native range.
We analyze whether lower rents for energy-inefficient apartments reflect tenants’ willingness to pay due to a higher green awareness, purchasing power, or energy consumption costs. Based on a German ...rental apartment dataset from Q1 2007 to Q1 2019, we use interaction terms for socioeconomic characteristics in a hedonic regression model. We find that rents are lower for apartments with higher energy consumption, even in neighborhoods with lower levels of green awareness. This relationship is stronger in neighborhoods with higher purchasing power, such that communities with low levels of green awareness and high purchasing power show the steepest negative slope for increasing energy consumption (−8.6% from the highest to lowest rating). Thus, the rent-decreasing effect of purchasing power is higher than that of green awareness. Splitting the entire period into smaller windows, we find that the interaction effect of green awareness has emerged in the most recent years (2017–2019). This may be driven by changes in regulation, which have made it easier for tenants to assess the energy consumption before they rent, or by a general increase in green awareness over this period.
Excessive government discretion, bribery and abuse of power for private benefit are widespread phenomena in developing countries. This corruption results in hundreds and thousands of citizens going ...without the critical public services they are entitled to or rely on. Corruption occurs at all levels of society, from local and national governments, civil society, judiciary functions and small and large businesses alike, leaving little room for a countrys development and economic growth.To combat corruption in developing countries, policy makers must understand the problem and devise a meaningful strategy that attacks its underlying causes and not just deals with its symptoms. Detecting Corruption merges scholarship on corruption assessments with practical techniques on ways practitioners and policy makers can implement anticorruption assistance. Spector argue that assessments need to adopt a comprehensive whole of government approach that examines all key sectors where there are corruption vulnerabilities. Strong accountability/control measures need to be designed and implemented across all sectors into a multidimensional strategy/program. Detailed case studies from the author's work in Ukraine, Honduras, Senegal and Timor Leste show the effectiveness of the comprehensive approach to corruption.
Using an event-study framework, we examine the stock market reaction to the announcement of firm withdrawal from countries designated as "State Sponsors of Terrorism" by the U.S. Department of State. ...We find that such announcements are, on average, linked to a statistically significant increase in firm value—an effect which already kicks in a few days before the announcement date. The observed abnormal returns are positively associated with the U.S. domicile, the intensity of a firm's hitherto existing engagement in a designated country, the number of countries that it withdraws from, as well as with a withdrawal from Iran compared to a withdrawal from other countries. Evidence suggests an increase in demand for stocks of withdrawing firms as a plausible cause of the positive stock price reaction. Pension and endowment funds are significantly less likely to own strategic stakes in firms with intensive involvements in countries designated as "State Sponsors of Terrorism." We find some statistical evidence that firms remaining active in such countries have abnormally positive returns in the long run.
Much can change over 25 years. When International Negotiation was established in 1996, it was just a few years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, and the ...founding of the European Union. Within a few years after publication began, international terrorist incidents grew rapidly, populist citizen-led protests resulted in the downfall of many governments, the use of information technology and social media mushroomed yielding countless new channels to communicate and organize, many new multinational regimes were formulated, and the rise of the Global South resulted in an upsurge of cooperation among developing countries, to name a few momentous events and trends. Many more critical changes in the global arena can be listed, all having important impacts on the processes and outcomes of international negotiation and mediation.
PurposeWe investigate causes for the cost overrun and delay of the railway project Stuttgart 21. Besides, we try to forecast the actual costs and completion date at an early ...stage.Design/methodology/approachThe results of exploratory research show the causes for the cost overrun and delay of Stuttgart 21; we compare our findings with other railway projects. To estimate the costs at an early stage, the reference class forecasting (RCF) model is applied; to estimate the time, we apply an OLS regression.FindingsWe find that the following causes are relevant for the cost overrun and delay of Stuttgart 21: scope changes, geological conditions, high risk-taking propensity, extended implementation, price overshoot, conflict of interests and lack of citizens' participation. The current estimated costs are within our 95% confidence interval based on RCF; our time forecast underestimates or substantially overestimates the duration actually required.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation of our approach is the low number of comparable projects which are available.Practical implicationsThe use of hyperbolic function or stepwise exponential discount function can help to give a clearer picture of the costs and benefits. The straightforward use of the RFC for costs and OLS for time should motivate more decision-makers to estimate the actual costs and time which are necessary in the light of the rising demand for democratic participation amongst citizens.Social implicationsMore realistic estimates can help to reduce the significant distortion at the beginning of infrastructure projects.Originality/valueWe are among the first who use the RCF to estimate the costs in Germany. Furthermore, the hyperbolic discounting function is added as a further theoretical explanation for cost underestimation.
Different industries exhibit significantly different leverage; companies in the real estate investment trust (REIT) and technology/hardware sectors are extreme examples. In the United States, the ...leverage ratio is twice as high for REITs (50%) as compared to non‐real‐estate firms (around 25%), and the technology/hardware sector has the lowest ratio (around 17%). We theoretically and empirically analyze their differences. By decomposing the difference into three channels, we find that the industry‐specific channel explains around 67% for REITs and 68% for technology/hardware firms; the value‐based channel is mostly responsible for the remaining portion. Taking the nonlinear influences of extreme values into account, the relevance of the industry‐specific channel is considerably reduced.
For varying borrowing and lending amounts, the corresponding subjective discount rates will also vary. A situation where high amounts correspond to lower discount rates is called a conventional ...magnitude effect, while the opposite is called a reverse magnitude effect. We present an overview of the theoretical arguments for both kinds of magnitude effects. Against this background, we then offer the first comprehensive empirical analysis of this issue based on real-life transaction data. To do so, we rely on more than 9,000 credit applications from the formerly largest German peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform, Smava, between February 2007 and April 2013. We confirm that there is a conventional magnitude effect for lending money to others but a reverse magnitude effect for borrowing decisions. We suggest, as an explanation for our findings, the prevalence of cost-based determinants of magnitude effects in this special setting.
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