Online research in philosophy

The New Economic Windows Series, derived from Massimo Salzano's ideas and work, incorporates material from textbooks, monographs and conference proceedings that deals with both the theoretical and applied aspects of various sub-disciplines ...

The increased scrutiny of investors regarding the non-financial aspects of corporate performance has placed portfolio managers in the position of having to weigh the benefits of ' holding the market' against the cost of having positions in companies that are subsequently found to have questionable business practices. The availability of stock indexes based on sustainability screening makes increasingly viable for institutional investors the transition to a portfolio based on a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) benchmark at relatively low cost. The increasing (...) share of socially responsible investments may play a role in providing incentives towards a continuous upgrading of sustainability standards to the extent that their performance is not systematically inferior to that of the other funds. This article examines whether these incentives have been so far detectable with particular reference to the Dow Jones Sustainability Stoxx Index (DJSSI) that focuses on the European corporations with the highest CSR scores among those included in the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index. The aim of the article is twofold. First, we analyse the performance of the DJSSI over the period 2001-2006 compared to that of the Surrogate Complementary Index (SCI), a new benchmark that includes only the components of the DJ Stoxx 600 that do not belong to the ethical index to evaluate more correctly the size of possible divergent performances. Second, we perform an event study on the same data set to analyse whether the stock market evaluation reacts to the inclusion (deletion) in the DJSSI. In both cases, the results suggest that the evaluation of the CSR performance of a firm is a significant criterion for asset allocation activities. (shrink)

This paper offers an explanation of the resilience of IS-LM models, which are still alive more than sixty years after the birth of the first prototype despite growing criticism within the profession. To this end two significant episodes of their evolution are examined in some detail: the genesis of the prototype of the ?first generation? of IS-LM models (Hicks 1937), and a recent example of what is here called the ?second generation? of IS-LM models (McCallum and Nelson 1997). The resilience (...) of IS-LM models is mainly related to their adaptability to a changing perception of the economic environment within which they are applied. This depends on the evolution of the relevant stylized facts and of the salient policy problems as well as on the evolution of the prevailing theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches. The stock of cumulated empirical evidence and the flow of new additions to it have both played a role in this process, though they have done so mainly indirectly by affecting the perception of the economic environment. (shrink)