University of British Columbia

About: University of British Columbia is a education organization based out in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 89939 authors who have published 209679 publications receiving 9226862 citations. The organization is also known as: UBC & The University of British Columbia.

An Integrated Risk Function for Estimating the Global Burden of Disease Attributable to Ambient Fine Particulate Matter Exposure

Abstract: Background: Estimating the burden of disease attributable to long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in ambient air requires knowledge of both the shape and magnitude of the relative ...

Economic Reasons for Conserving Wild Nature

Abstract: On the eve of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, it is timely to assess progress over the 10 years since its predecessor in Rio de Janeiro. Loss and degradation of remaining natural habitats has continued largely unabated. However, evidence has been accumulating that such systems generate marked economic benefits, which the available data suggest exceed those obtained from continued habitat conversion. We estimate that the overall benefit:cost ratio of an effective global program for the conservation of remaining wild nature is at least 100:1.

North-South Trade and the Environment

Abstract: A simple static model of North-South trade is developed to examine linkages between national income, pollution, and international trade. Two countries produce a continuum of goods, each differing in pollution intensity. We show that the higher income country chooses stronger environmental protection, and specializes in relatively clean goods. By isolating the scale, composition, and technique effects of international trade on pollution, we show that free trade increases world pollution; an increase in the rich North's production possibilities increases pollution, while similar growth in the poor South lowers pollution; and unilateral transfers from North to South reduce worldwide pollution.

Is All That Talk Just Noise? The Information Content of Internet Stock Message Boards

Abstract: Financial press reports claim that Internet stock message boards can move markets We study the effect of more than 15 million messages posted on Yahoo! Finance and Raging Bull about the 45 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Dow Jones Internet Index Bullishness is measured using computational linguistics methods Wall Street Journal news stories are used as controls We find that stock messages help predict market volatility Their effect on stock returns is statistically significant but economically small Consistent with Harris and Raviv (1993), disagreement among the posted messages is associated with increased trading volume MANY PEOPLE ARE DEVOTING a considerable amount of time and effort creating and reading the messages posted on Internet stock message boards News stories report that the message boards are having a significant impact on financial markets The Securities and Exchange Commission has prosecuted people for Internet messages All this attention to Internet stock messages caused us to wonder whether these messages actually contain financially relevant information 1 We consider three specific issues Does the number of messages posted or the bullishness of these messages help to predict returns? Is disagreement among the messages associated with more trades? Does the level of message posting or the bullishness of the messages help to predict volatility? The first issue is, does the level of message activity or the bullishness of the messages successfully predict subsequent stock returns? This is the natural starting place because a very high proportion of the messages contain explicit assertions that the particular stock is either a good buy or a bad buy Of course, there are a great many previous empirical studies showing how hard it is to predict stock returns by enough to cover transactions costs We find that there is evidence of a small degree of negative predictability even after controlling for bid‐ask bounce When many messages are posted on a given day, there ∗ Both authors are at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia We would