This study back-tests a marginal cost of production model proposed to value\nthe digital currency bitcoin. Results from both conventional regression and\nvector autoregression (VAR) models show that the marginal cost of production\nplays an important role in explaining bitcoin prices, challenging recent\nallegations that bitcoins are essentially worthless. Even with markets pricing\nbitcoin in the thousands of dollars each, the valuation model seems robust. The\ndata show that a price bubble that began in the Fall of 2017 resolved itself in\nearly 2018, converging with the marginal cost model. This suggests that while\nbubbles may appear in the bitcoin market, prices will tend to this bound and\nnot collapse to zero.\n
We examine the impact of positive versus negative macroeconomic news surprises, originating from large developed economies, on the returns and volatility of gold and Bitcoin prices over the period July 19, 2010 – February 7, 2017. We find an asymmetric impact and evidence that gold is different from Bitcoin. Specifically, gold returns and volatility systematically react to macroeconomic news surprises in a manner consistent with its traditional role as a safe-haven, whereas Bitcoin prices and volatility do not mostly react in a similar manner. Our results are useful for investment decision-making.
This paper aims to elucidate the connectedness between major forex currencies and cryptocurrencies using the quantile cross-spectral approach recently proposed by Baruník and Kley (2015). The sample covers six forex currencies and six cryptocurrencies over the period of 1 September 2015 to 29 December 2017. Compared with the results obtained from standard correlations and detrended moving-average cross-correlation analysis (DMCA), the quantile cross-spectral approach provides richer information on the dependence structure across different quantiles and frequencies. The most interesting result is that the intra-group dependencies are positive in the lower extreme quantiles, while inter-group dependencies are negative. This result holds in both the short- and long-term perspectives. Thus, it is worth diversifying between these two currency groups.
Bitcoin, the most innovate digital currency as of now, created since 2008, even through experienced its ups and downs, still keeps drawing attentions to all parts of society. It relies on peer-to-peer network, achieved decentralization, anonymous and transparent. As the most representative digital currency, people curious to study how Bitcoin’ price changes in the past. In this paper, we use monthly data from 2011 to 2016 to build a VEC model to exam how economic factors such as Custom price index, US dollar index, Dow jones industry average, Federal Funds Rate and gold price influence Bitcoin price. From empirical analysis we find that all these variables do have a long-term influence. US dollar index is the biggest influence on Bitcoin price while gold price influence the least. From our result, we conclude that for now Bitcoin can be treated as a speculative asset, however, it is far from being a proper credit currency.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/rdc.2015.16954 Trabalho enviado em 27 de junho de 2015. Aceito em 29 de junho de 2015. Resumo O Brasil está organizado como uma federação trina desde que, em 1988, os municípios tornaram-se entes federativos. O fortalecimento institucional do Município incluiu a responsabilidade pela execução das políticas sociais, que eles são obrigados a co-financiar. Ao longo do tempo, a maior gama de responsabilidades administrativas e financeiras tem indicado os limites da descentralização das políticas públicas já que a maior parte dos municípios não tem condições de atender às expectativas criadas com o seu papel na estrutura federativa. Trata-se de um problema derivado do federalismo simétrico no Brasil, que trata igualmente todos os municípios, sem distingui-los por porte demográfico ou função na rede urbana. Esse é o contexto em que se estabelece a disputa federativa pela crescente receita que as empresas pagam ao poder público pela extração de petróleo. Tal receita deixa de ser percebida como compensação pelos impactos ambientais e sociais causados pela atividade extrativa e torna-se mais uma transferência intergovernamental aos entes federativos. Tal situação tende a torna-los todos mais dependentes desta fonte de receita e, assim, mais sensíveis aos interesses da economia do petróleo, o que diminui o ímpeto governamental na defesa da política de substituição de energia fóssil por renováveis. Palavras chave: petróleo, energias renováveis, disputa, federação. Abstract Brazil is organized as a federation in three levels including the federal union, states and municipalities since 1988 when municipalities have become federal entities. The institutional strengthening of the municipality included the responsibility for the implementation of social policies which they are required to co-finance. Over time, the larger range of administrative and financial responsibilities has indicated the limits of decentralization of public policies since most municipalities cannot afford to meet the expectations created by its role in the federal structure. It is a problem of the symmetric federalism in Brazil, which treats all municipalities without distinguishing them by population size or function in the urban network. This is the context of the dispute by the increasing federal revenues that companies pay to the government from oil. This income is no longer seen as a compensation for environmental and social impacts caused by extractive activity and becomes an intergovernmental transfer to states and municipalities. This situation tends to make them all more dependent on this source of revenue and thus more vulnerable to the interests of the oil economy, which reduces the government interests to defend the replacement policy of fossil energy by renewable. Keywords: oil, renewable energy, dispute federation
Solid waste, being a basic urban service, is invariably related to urbanization and economic development. In this article, we make an attempt to understand what explains solid waste management (SWM) coverage, a local public service problem, using cross-national data. Using regressions, we find that higher levels of income bring along with them the public awareness, institutional structure, and fiscal capacity to deliver better levels of public services not only in the city but also in the informal settlements. Hence, the objective should be to build awareness of the environmental and health consequences of poor SWM. Furthermore, we find that large cities and decentralized countries are in a better position to deliver SWM in the informal settlements because of the local nature of the service. We find that a major challenge foreseen in meeting the public service demands over the next decade, as it relates to SWM, is financing.
With a complete information dynamic game model and from the perspective of Chinese – style decentralization,this paper analyzes the pollution effects of land finance and effects of environment regulation. An empirical study is conducted with the inter-province panel data in China from 2000 to 2011 by means of a dynamic panel econometric model and the systematic GMM method. The result shows that the expansion of land finance directly intensifies pollution; loose environment regulation stimulates the scale of land fiance,which creates a negative effect on environment. Economic growth,urbanization,energy efficiency and economic openness could also be pollution factors.
Johanna Etner, Meglena Jeleva, Pierre‐André Jouvet
This article study the impact of risk perception on environmental policy. The environmental quality is uncertain and can be improved by voluntary contributions. We introduce then an heterogeneity in individuals' risk perceptions. In this context, the social optimum can be decentralized by tax financed government subsidies to private provision. We distinguish the case of a government who represents perfectly agents' preferences from the case of a government with its own risk preferences. In the two cases, we show that neutrality still holds