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Accurate measurement of Company Social Performance is a challenge which calls for attention from many stakeholders. Worldwide, businesses are very economical, powerful entities and have operations in developed and emerging countries, and therefore are requested to behave ethically and in accordance with social concerns. The financial crises of 2008 affected the reputation of many firms and give Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) more importance. In addition to the demands of Sustainable Global Economy, firms are required to disclose activities. Evidence demonstrated that for CSR disclosing initiatives, firms are evaluated and measured. Ethic rating (ER) is one method to measure CRS. This investigation presents a CSR measuring approach based on CSR disclosing/reporting, information in which the ER is based. In my endeavours, more specifically, I try to answer the question how could I measure CSR using ethic rating? This work presents a specific case of study of Colombian quoted enterprises in the Colombian Stock Exchange using ethic rating analysis. For this research, sustainable reports and annual reports are analysed and the ethics rating is based on both qualitative and quantitative assessments. The ethic rating analysis shows that CSR in Colombia is gaining importance each year, and IGBC companies are showing improved performance. Currently, there are no studies conducted to assess ER for Colombian companies.

The innovations in fundamentals coupled with noise traders induce co-movement in diverse markets. This co-movement in equity markets which is evidenced higher during the turmoil period influences economic fundamentals of a country dissimilar in nature. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether economic fundamentals or investors’ behavior attributable to disturbances across the world are the rationale behind the crisis transmission, and thereby distinguish fundamental-based contagion from investor-induced contagion.

Initially, the study investigates the role of macroeconomic fundamentals and stock returns on crisis occurrence using panel probit estimates. Additionally, ordinary least squares estimates controlling the influence of fundamentals on domestic return capture the discrete country effect measuring the influence of domestic as well as foreign economic fundamentals along with foreign returns on the domestic stock index.

The empirical results reveal that foreign country stock index returns are having a significant influence on domestic returns besides a prominent role in crisis occurrence. The binary probit model confirmed the influence of both macroeconomic factors and foreign returns in crisis occurrence. The OLS estimates found evidence for investor-induced contagion in the crisis period where the effects of economic fundamentals are small in comparison to foreign market returns that are mainly dominant in pre- and post-crisis period.

The propagation of crisis from one market to other would enable the policy makers to make clear regulations at right time to control for the crisis in future. The results can help the policy makers as well as investors in reducing the impact of the crisis in future by clearly monitoring the behavior of the factors under study.

The current study addresses the role of macro fundamentals and investors influence in crisis propagation. Adopting subprime crisis of 2008-2009 as a reference point and separating the sample period into pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis period, the study explains how badly the other 30 markets impacted the crisis that emerged in the USA.

The present study examines the short term dynamism and long term equilibrium relationship between the stock markets of South and Central America. It also aims to capture the dynamic conditional correlations between the stock markets using weekly returns of market benchmark indices of the respective countries spanning from 2nd week of 1995 to 4th week of December 2015 are analyzed.

The Johansen and Juselius multivariate cointegration test, Granger causality test based vector error correction model (VECM) approach, and variance decomposition analysis were used to investigate the dynamic linkages between markets. GARCH-DCC is used to investigate the Correlation Dynamics.

This study identifies long run co-movements between the stock markets. Chile, Peru and Venezuela are the most dynamically interlinked. The empirical results VECM reveal that Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela stock market returns are significantly influenced by each other, suggesting a stronger linkages between national stock markets. Cointegration test confirms long-run equilibrium relationship. among the major stock markets of the region. The findings from GARCH-DCC provide evidence consistent with increasing market integration. Stocks exhibit asymmetries in conditional correlations. The results demonstrate that correlations are higher toward the end of the sample period than in the early phase.

On the basis of the results produced by the study, we conclude that there exist opportunities for diversification and investors will benefit from reduction of diversifiable risk among the South and Central American countries in general, but in particular Chile, Peru and Venezuela have not shown the same outcome.

This study has been conducted for a longer period of time and also uses various tools to investigate the dynamic linkages between markets.VAR, VECM, Cointegration and GARCH-DCC altogether in a single study is a rare piece of work.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the pattern of return volatility and information spillover and the extent of conditional correlation among the stock markets of leading South American economies. It also examines the connectedness of market returns within the region.

The time series properties of weekly stock market returns of benchmark indices spanning from the second week of 1995 to the fourth week of December 2015 are analyzed. Using univariate auto-regressive conditional heteroscedastic, generalized auto-regressive conditional heteroscedastic, and dynamic conditional correlation multivariate GARCH model approaches, the study finds evidence of returns and volatility linkages along with the degree of connectedness among the markets.

The findings of this study are consistent with increasing market connectedness among a group of leading South American economies. Stocks exhibit relatively fewer asymmetries in conditional correlations in addition to conditional volatility; yet, the asymmetry is relatively less apparent in integrated markets. The results demonstrate that co-movements are higher toward the end of the sample period than in the early phase. The stock markets of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru are closely and strongly connected within the region followed by Colombia, whereas Venezuela is least connected with the group.

The implication is that foreign investors may benefit from the reduction of the risk by adding the stocks to their investment portfolio.

The unique features of the paper include a large sample of national stock returns with updated time series data set that reveals the time series properties and empirical evidence on volatility testing. Unlike other studies, this paper uncovers the relation between the stock markets within the same region facing the same market condition.

The growth of Indian economy has brought with it significant increase in construction activities. These increased construction activities have further highlighted the problem of waste generation on construction sites. The purpose of this paper is to provide important insights and highlight some issues related to the implementation of effective waste management practices on construction sites in India.

This paper presents two cases and results from semi‐structured interviews which shed light on some of the major issues, challenges and drivers associated with the implementation of waste management in construction in India.

One of the key findings was that client preference and enforcement of existing laws could actually facilitate the implementation of waste minimisation effectively. Some of the practices being followed, and which are gaining more popularity, are waste quantification, waste segregation, and the implementation of 3Rs (reduce, recycle, and reuse). Congested construction sites, sites in heavily built‐up areas with no ability to have an alternate storage or staging location for materials, lack of ownership of waste due to the presence of multiple contractors on the construction site and lack of awareness and education among the construction workforce were regarded as major challenges associated with the implementation of waste minimisation practices in India.

The cases and the interviewees chosen were through the authors' links with the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC). The cases were LEED registered projects therefore issues dealing with green construction had been taken into account. These cases might not be representative of the entire country, as there are significantly high proportions of construction projects that are not as green, especially in smaller cities in India. However, the two cases do provide important insights and highlight some issues related to the implementation of effective waste management practices on construction sites in India. The individuals interviewed also had link with IGBC. They had been involved with the green building movement in India for a significant length of time. But the length and breadth of their experience gave them the ability to comment on state of the construction sector and its green as well as non‐green practices associated with waste management.

This paper presents an exploratory study which assesses the implementation of waste management practices in the Indian construction industry. It also highlights activities within different stages of a construction project that can lead to more effective waste management in the construction sector.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an estimate of the demand and supply in the housing market in Colombia in a period of high real estate valuation (2005-2016). On the demand side, it evaluates the impact of new housing prices, unemployment, stock market returns, real wages in the retail sector, remittances and mortgage rates. On the supply side, it estimates the influence of the price of new housing, construction costs, time deposit (TD) and mortgage rates. Real estate valuation was analyzed considering foreigners migration and land prices evolution.

Ordinary least squares (OLS) was used to estimate housing area with the semilog regression model and also to construct price models. OLS was also used in price models. Since quantities depend on prices and vice versa, a two-stage least squares (2SLS) was implemented.

Rising prices in new homes have an “elastic” effect on both demand and even higher effect on supply. Likewise, the real wage index for the retail sector has an elastic effect. On the other hand, the response to interest rates is negative, but statistically significant only on the supply side. Furthermore, the inflow of remittances is “inelastic” and statistically insignificant.

Housing can sometimes be a Giffen good, this result challenges the traditional neoclassical model, but it can be explained by investment reasons and “bubble” behavior in the housing market. One last influence is the difference between “temporary” and “permanent” migrations. The latter has a statistically significant and perfectly inelastic effect on the price of new homes.

This chapter examines herd behavior across national borders. A dynamic latent factor model with Gibbs sampling is used to decompose the national herd behavior into the world, regional, and country-specific components. Testing the daily data from 2000 through 2014 for 47 countries, we find that the impact of world factor on national herd behavior is short-lived. This study indicates that world and regional factors play a significant role in explaining the variations of national herd behavior, constituting 33% of the herding variability. The significance of world and regional components is likely to produce a biased herding estimator.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of the cross‐market transmission mechanism for terrorist shocks, focusing on two major terrorist events and 68 national stock markets.

The paper generates daily abnormal returns from a three‐factor world asset‐pricing model. Abnormal returns are then regressed on proxies of three transmission mechanisms; a world integration channel, a bilateral integration channel, and a liquidity channel.

The findings indicate that terrorism shocks are diffused cross‐nationally in a non‐uniform manner. This paper finds empirical support for all three channels when considered separately. The bilateral integration channel contains the highest explanatory power since it is found that a third country's trade linkages with the “ground‐zero” country explain about 24 percent of the stock market reaction. A country's share in the world trade, a proxy for the world integration channel, is able to explain about 12 percent of abnormal‐return variation, while the liquidity channel exhibits the lowest predictive power, with the value of stock trading explaining about 6 percent. A hybrid model, where proxies for all channels are included, shows that only the bilateral trade linkages with the “ground‐zero” country are significant determinants of the stock market reaction.

Provides evidence useful for portfolio management and authorities' assessment of terrorist shocks' impact on capital markets.

It is the first study that investigates the determinants of cross‐market transmission of terrorist shocks.

Construction industry is one of the leading causes of pollution generation in today's context. But the fact that the development of construction industry leads to the country's economic and social development cannot be unobserved. Hence, there is a need to develop a sustainable construction methodology, and while doing so, measures must be considered so as to not disturb the natural habitats. With the greater prominence shown toward the concept of green and sustainable construction developments, various tools have been developed in recent years in order to measure the performance of such sustainable and green buildings. In the Indian context, the assessment tools developed to measure the performance of the green building are found to be scanty in addressing various economic and social impacts.

This study aims at developing a building performance score (BPS) model concerning the sustainability model built on the triple bottom priorities considering all the three vital components, viz. environmental, economic and social factors. In this study, the different phases involved in the complete life cycle of the project are recognized and then all the phases are assessed considering all the three major components mentioned in the BPS model.

The outcome of this study specifies that various indicators, such as the topographical and climate change, health and safety of the construction workers, project management consultancy, risk management, security measures and solid waste management, form a chief source of a sustainable building, and these indicators are not being assessed in the existing assessment tools. Also, consideration of environmental, economic and social factors is also equally important in construction industry. Moreover, these indicators are also required to be assessed and included in the evaluation process while assessing the performance of the building.

The BPS model developed in the study will assist to improve in assessing the building performance with respect to all indicators in the complete life cycle of the project.