Awards for Excellence

Citation

(2006), "Awards for Excellence", Review of Accounting and Finance, Vol. 5 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/raf.2006.28505caa.001

Awards for Excellence

Outstanding paper

Richard F. Kosobud & Houston H. StokesUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA

Carol D. TallaricoDominican University, Illinois, USA, and

Brian ScottUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham, Alabama, USA

are the recipients of the journal's Outstanding Paper Award for Excellence for their paper

“Valuing tradable private rights to pollute the public's air”

which appeared in Review of Accounting and Finance, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2005, pp. 50-72

Abstract

Purpose - This study develops the economic rationale for the inclusion of new environmental financial assets, tradable pollution rights, in a well-diversified portfolio. These new assets are generated and their valuation determined in the market-incentive environmental regulatory approach called emissions trading, especially the capand-trade variant. This approach has been gaining wide acceptance and approval.Design/methodology/approach - A leading example is the sulfur dioxide market where tradable allowances are assets that may be held by private investors. Transactions in this market have reached volumes indicative of a high degree of liquidity. Comparable tradable rights in other pollutants are under active development.Findings - We explain the design and workings of these markets and demonstrate empirically, on the basis of time series data, that sulfur dioxide allowances have rates of return and yield distributions that make them candidates for inclusion in asset portfolios. We conjecture that other tradable pollution rights will exhibit similar properties when sufficient data are available.Practical implications - Financial analysts and accountants are likely to play an increasing role in advising investors about the role of these assets in a well-diversified portfolio.Originality/value - This is an original research paper.

Keywords: Environmental health and safety, Pollution, Emission, Assets, Rate of return, Diversification

Highly commended

Abdel-Aziz M. Mohamed, Mahmood A. Qureshi and Ali R. Behnezhad, “Reliability, evaluation and design of AICS: a review of models and experiments”, Vol. 4 No. 2, 2005.

Ehsan H. Feroz, Sungsoo Kim and Ray Raab, “Performance measurement in corporate governance: do mergers improve managerial performance in the post-merger period”, Vol. 4 No. 3, 2005.

Marc J. LeClere, “Time-dependent and time-invariant covariates within a proportional hazards model: a financial distress application”, Vol. 4 No. 4, 2005.