Greenfield shopping center development. The integration between environmental features, building design and investment analysis at the decision making stage

The Shopping centre is a long term investment in which Greenfield development decisions are often taken based on risks analysis regarding construction costs, location, competition, market and an expected DCF. Furthermore, integration between the building design, project planning, operational costs and investment analysis is not entirely considered by the investor at the decision making stage. The absence of such information tends to produce certain negative impacts on the future running costs and annual maintenance of the building, especially on energy demand and other occupancy expenses paid by the tenants to the landlord. From the investor´s point of view, this blind spot in strategy development will possibly decrease their profit margin as changes in the occupancy expenses[ ] have a direct outcome on the profit margin. In order to try to reduce some higher operating cost components such as energy use and other utility savings as well as their CO2 emissions, quite a few income properties worldwide have some type of environmental label such as BREEAM and LEED. The drawback identified in this labelling is that usually the investments required to get an ecolabel are high and the investor finds no direct evidence that it increases market value. However there is research on certified commercial properties (especially offices) that shows better performance in terms of occupancy rate and rental cost (Warren-Myers, 2012). Additionally, Sayce (2013) says that the certification only provides a quick reference point i.e. the lack of a certificate does not indicate that a building is not sustainable or efficient. Based on the issues described above, this research compares important components of the development stages such as investments costs, concept/ strategy development as well as the current investor income and property value. The subjects for this analysis are a shopping centre designed with passive cooling/bioclimatic strategies evaluated at the decision making stage, a certified regional shopping centre and a non-certified standard regional shopping centre. Moreover, the proposal intends to provide decision makers with some tools for linking green design features to the investment analysis in order to optimize the decision making process when looking into cost savings and design quality.

BigLaw Identity Capital: Pink and Blue, Black and White

This Article advances a new capital framework for understanding the bargain between large law firms and their lawyers, depicting BigLaw relationships not as basic labor-salary exchanges but rather as complex transactions in which large law firms and their lawyers exchange labor and various forms of capital — social, cultural, and identity. First, it builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu regarding economic, cultural, symbolic, and social capital by examining the concepts of positive and negative capital, exploring the meaning of capital ownership by entities, and developing the notion of identity capital — the value individuals and institutions derive from their identities. Then, the Article advances a capital theory of BigLaw, in which large law firms and their lawyers engage in complex transactions trading labor, social, cultural, and identity capital for economic, social, cultural, and identity capital. Capital analysis sheds new light on the well-documented and troubling underrepresentation of diverse lawyers at BigLaw. It shows that the underrepresentation of women and minority lawyers is not solely the result of exogenous forces outside the control of large law firms such as implicit bias, but rather the outcome of the very exchanges in which BigLaw and its lawyers engage. Specifically, large law firms take into account the capital endowments of their lawyers in making hiring, retention and promotion decisions, and derive value from their lawyers’ capital, for example, by trading on the identity of women and minority lawyers in marketing themselves as being diverse and inclusive to clients and potential recruits. Yet, while BigLaw trades for the identity capital of women and minority lawyers, it fails to offer them opportunities in return to acquire the social and cultural capital necessary for attaining positions of power, resulting in underrepresentation. Moreover, these labor-capital exchanges are often implicit and made by uninformed participants, and therefore unjust. Exactly because the capital framework describes the underrepresentation of diverse lawyers at BigLaw as an endogenous outcome within the control of BigLaw and its lawyers, however, it is a cautiously optimistic model that offers hope for greater representation of diverse lawyers in positions of power and influence. The Article suggests policies and procedures BigLaw can and should adopt to improve the quality of the exchanges it offers to women and minority attorneys and to reduce the underrepresentation of diverse lawyers within its ranks. Employing the concepts of capital transparency, capital boundary, and capital infrastructure, it demonstrates how BigLaw can (1) explicitly recognize the roles social, cultural, and identity capital play in its hiring, retention and promotion apparatuses and (2) revise its policies and procedures to ensure that all of its lawyers have equal opportunities to develop the requisite capital and compete on equal and fair terms for positions of power and influence.

Developmental Activities That Lead to Dropout and Investment in Sport

Background: Studies suggest that expert performance in sport is the result of long-term engagement in a highly specialized form of training termed deliberate practice. The relationship between accumulated deliberate practice and performance predicts that those who begin deliberate practice at a young age accumulate more practice hours over time and would, therefore, have a significant performance advantage. However, qualitative studies have shown that a large amount of sport-specific practice at a young age may lead to negative consequences, such as dropout, and is not necessarily the only path to expert performance in sport. Studies have yet to investigate the activity context, such as the amount of early sport participation, deliberate play and deliberate practice within which dropout occurs. Purpose: To determine whether the nature and amount of childhood-organized sport, deliberate play and deliberate practice participation influence athletes' subsequent decisions to drop out or invest in organized sport. It was hypothesized that young athletes who drop out will have sampled fewer sports, spent less time in deliberate play activities and spent more time in deliberate practice activities during childhood sport involvement. Participants: The parents of eight current, high-level, male, minor ice hockey players formed an active group. The parents of four high-level, male, minor ice hockey players who had recently withdrawn from competitive hockey formed a dropout group. Data collection: Parents completed a structured retrospective survey designed to assess their sons' involvement in organized sport, deliberate play and deliberate practice activities from ages 6 to 13. Data analysis: A complete data-set was available for ages 6 through 13, resulting in a longitudinal data-set spanning eight years. This eight-year range was divided into three levels of development corresponding to the players' progress through the youth ice hockey system. Level one encompassed ages 6–9, level two included ages 10–11 and level three covered ages 12–13. Descriptive statistics were used to report the ages at which the active and dropout players first engaged in select hockey activities. ANOVA with repeated measures across the three levels of development was used to compare the number of sports the active and dropout players were involved in outside of hockey, the number of hours spent in these sports, and involvement in various hockey-related activities. Findings: Results indicated that both the active and dropout players enjoyed a diverse and playful introduction to sport. Furthermore, the active and dropout players invested similar amounts of time in organized hockey games, organized hockey practices, specialized hockey training activities (e.g. hockey camps) and hockey play. However, analysis revealed that the dropout players began off-ice training at a younger age and invested significantly more hours/year in off-ice training at ages 12–13, indicating that engaging in off-ice training activities at a younger age may have negative implications for long-term ice hockey participation. Conclusion: These results are consistent with previous research that has found that early diversification does not hinder sport-specific skill development and it may, in fact, be preferable to early specialization. The active and dropout players differed in one important aspect of deliberate practice: off-ice training activities. The dropout players began off-ice training at a younger age, and participated in more off-ice training at ages 12 and 13 than their active counterparts. This indicates a form of early specialization and supports the postulate that early involvement in practice activities that are not enjoyable may ultimately undermine the intrinsic motivation to continue in sport. Youth sport programs should not focus on developing athletic fitness through intense and routine training, but rather on sport-specific practice, games and play activities that foster fun and enjoyment.

International Capital Flows and Monetary Policy Spillovers

This dissertation examines the drivers and implications of international capital flows. The overarching motivation is the observation that countries not at the centre of global financial markets are subject to considerable spillovers from centre countries, notably from their monetary policy. I present new empirical evidence on the determinants of the observed patterns of international capital flows and monetary policy spillovers, and study their effect on both financial markets and the real economy. In Chapter 2 I provide evidence on the determinants of a puzzling negative correlation observed between productivity growth and net capital inflows to developing and emerging market economies (EMEs) since 1980. By disaggregating net capital inflows into their gross components, I show that this negative correlation is explained by capital outflows related to purchases of very liquid assets from the fastest growing countries. My results suggest a desire for international portfolio diversification in liquid assets by fast growing countries is driving much of the original puzzle. In the reminder of my dissertation I pivot to study the foreign characteristics that drive international capital flows and monetary policy spillovers, with a particular focus on the role of unconventional monetary policy in the United States (U.S.). In Chapter 3 I show that a significant portion of the heterogeneity in EMEs' asset price adjustment following the quantitative easing operations by the Federal Reserve (the Fed) during 2008-2014 can be explained by the degree of bilateral capital market frictions between these countries and the U.S. This is true even after accounting for capital controls, exchange rate regimes, and domestic monetary policies. Chapter 4, co-authored with Michal Ksawery Popiel, studies unconventional monetary policy in a small open economy, looking specifically at the case of Canada since the global financial crisis. We quantify the effect Canadian unconventional monetary policy shocks had on the real economy, while carefully controlling for and quantifying spillovers from U.S. unconventional monetary policy. Our results indicate that the Bank of Canada's unconventional monetary policy increased Canadian output significantly from 2009-2010, but that spillovers from the Fed's policy were even more important for increasing Canadian output after 2008.