Identifying social determinants of urban low carbon transitions: the case of energy transition in Bilbao, Basque Country

33 p.

Does rating shopping exist in spanish securitization issues?

[EN] Debt issue credit ratings can lead to conflicts of interest as the issuer itself is entrusted with contracting and compensating the rating agency. Into the bargain, the credit rating agency may be involved in designing the issues that the same agency subsequently rates. Credit rating agencies thus could have incentives to rate issues advantageously. Given the economic importance of this issue, in this paper we have proposed to analyze this phenomenon, known as rating shopping in academic literature, for Spanish market securitization issues for the period of time comprehensive from January 1993 to December 2011. In sum 3,665 published ratings are been analysed, for an issued nominal amount of 791,090 million Euros. The results show an association between the credit rating agency contracted and the mean rating awarded. Significant differences are observed in the ratings associated to the contracting manager (or special purpose vehicle SPV- manager firm), to the number of ratings or to the type of collateral. Furthermore, a pattern compatible with rating shopping was observed for some types of collateral: abnormally high market shares associated with certain agencies awarding unusually generous ratings. However, this phenomenon is not seen to be widespread on the rating market associated to Spanish securitization issues.

Efectos macroeconómicos de la progresividad en los sistemas de seguridad social: una aplicación al caso de los Estados Unidos

[ES] Este trabajo estudia los potenciales efectos macroeconómicos de una reforma que aumente la progresividad del sistema de Seguridad Social de los Estados Unidos de América. Condicionados por los supuestos del modelo, los resultados abogan por un aumento en el bienestar social con un determinado aumento de la progresividad. Esto es debido a que la redistribución total de la renta de los más pudientes a los que cuentan con menos recursos origina un contexto de menor bienestar social. Además, los resultados respaldan la validez del tipo de cotización como herramienta para ajustar el nivel de progresividad del sistema y rechazan la tasa de reemplazo de la pensión como mecanismo para conseguir dicho fin.

The Environmental, Social, Governance, and Financial Performance Effects on Companies that Adopt the United Nations Global Compact

This paper aims to investigate companies' environmental, social, governance (ESG), and financial implications of their commitment to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). The focus is placed on companies operating in the three countries with the highest number of UNGC participants: Spain, France, and Japan. The results clearly reveal that adoption of the UNGC often requires an organizational change that fosters stakeholder engagement, ultimately resulting in improvements in companies' ESG performance. Additionally, the results reveal that ESG performance has a significant impact on financial performance for companies that adopted the principles of the UNGC. These findings provide both non-financial and financial incentives to companies to commit to this voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, which will have important implications on companies' strategic management policies that aim to foster sustainable businesses and community development. Finally, the linkages between the UNGC-committed companies' ESG and financial performance may be influenced by geographical spread, mainly due to the appearance of differences in the institutional, societal, and cultural settings.