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222 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Economics, Econometrics and Finance. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Firm-level climate sentiments, climate politics and implied cost of equity capital

Katsiaryna Salavei Bardos, Dev R. Mishra, Hyacinthe Somé · 2025 · Journal of Corporate Finance

In a sample of U.S. firms, we find strong evidence that firms' implied cost of equity is decreasing in a novel proxy of firm-level climate change sentiments of earnings call participants, supporting prior literature that shows investors demand higher returns from their investments in brown firms and lower returns from that in green firms. This effect, however, is particularly pronounced for the firm-years headquartered in the states experiencing higher than median per-capita energy related CO2 emissions, those headquartered in climate related disaster intensive counties and those headquartered

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Threshold Effects on South Africa’s Renewable Energy–Economic Growth–Carbon Dioxide Emissions Nexus: A Nonlinear Analysis Using Threshold-Switching Dynamic Models

Luyanda Majenge, Sakhile Mpungose, Simiso Msomi · 2025 · Energies

The transition of South Africa from coal-dependent energy systems to renewable energy alternatives presents economic and environmental trade-off complexities that require empirical investigation. This study employed threshold-switching dynamic models, NARDL analysis, and threshold Granger causality tests to investigate nonlinear relationships between renewable energy generation, economic growth, and carbon dioxide emissions in South Africa from 1980 to 2023. The threshold-switching dynamic models revealed critical structural breakpoints: a 56.4% renewable energy threshold for carbon dioxide em

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Government effectiveness on environmental degradation in developing countries

Rong Yuan, Tajul Ariffin Masron, Yujie Chen et al. · 2025 · International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology

Abstract The alarming rate of environmental degradation worldwide has prompted a renewed focus on government effectiveness as an essential factor affecting environmental quality. Few studies have demonstrated the role of government effectiveness in environmental degradation under the influence of economic development. Consequently, this study aims to investigate the effect of government effectiveness and how it impacts environmental degradation using panel data from 61 regions from 2007 to 2021 and the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. The results show that improving government ef

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Determinants of Green Energy Penetration in N-11 Countries: A Machine Learning Analysis

Najabat Ali, Md Reza Sultanuzzaman · 2026 · Energies

This study investigates the determinants of green energy penetration in the Next Eleven (N-11) economies over the period 2000–2022, with a particular focus on the roles of foreign direct investment (FDI), green transition, governance quality, industrial growth, and urbanization. The primary objective of the study is to assess how investment flows, structural transformation, and institutional capacity jointly shape the adoption of renewable energy in fast-growing emerging economies. To achieve this goal, the study employs a second-generation panel econometric and machine-learning framework that

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Bridging digital innovation and energy justice: The role of artificial intelligence in advancing energy equity

Oxana Kirichok, Yuliia Orlovska, G.S. Zhanseitova et al. · 2025 · Environmental Economics

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstract Global progress toward universal access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy has stalled, with over two billion people still lacking access to clean cooking, and affordability pressures are rising. AI is emerging as an energy-intensive technology and a potential enabler of more equitable energy systems. This paper assesses whether AI vibrancy contributes to advancing energy equity across countries while accounting for differences in economic capacity. The study employs a balanced panel of 36 countries from 2017 to 2023 (252 observations), draw

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

From Fossil Dependence on Sustainability: The Effects of Energy Transition, Green Growth, and Financial Inclusion on Environmental Degradation in the MENA Region

Sami S. Omar, Wagdi M. S. Khalifa, Tolga Öz · 2025 · Energies

Amid growing environmental concerns and an increasing push for sustainable development, countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have taken proactive steps toward green growth, energy transition, and technological innovation. As a result, this study examines the effects of green growth, energy transition, technological innovation, financial inclusion, and urbanization on environmental sustainability in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Moreover, this study breaks new ground by exposing the hidden environmental costs of financial inclusion, urbanization, and tec

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

FinTech Investment, Geopolitical-Economic Uncertainty, and CO2 Emissions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Evidence from Dynamic Panel Models

Nurcan Kilinc‐Ata, Alia Al-Fori · 2026 · Journal of risk and financial management

The intersection of financial innovation and environmental sustainability offers important opportunities for low- and middle-income (LMI) countries. This study examines the association between FinTech investment, geopolitical-economic uncertainty, urbanization, economic development, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in LMI countries. CO2 emissions per capita are used as an environmental outcome indicator rather than as a direct measure of green finance. Using a panel dataset covering 2010–2021, the study applies fixed-effects panel regressions as the main empirical approach and reports one-st

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Reconciling fiscal decentralization, environmental protection expenditures, and stringent regulations with the ecological priorities of the European Union

Elma Šatrović, Oluwatoyin Abidemi Somoye, Banji Rildwan Olaleye et al. · 2025 · Frontiers in Environmental Science

This study elucidates how fiscal decentralization affects environmental sustainability, moderating the role of environmental policy stringency in the selected European Union (EU) countries between 1995 and 2020. In addition, economic upturn, import diversification, and environmental protection expenditures are utilized as control variables. The empirical findings of the Method of the Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) disclosed that the environmental policy stringency and environmental protection expenditures help the EU achieve ecological priorities. In addition, import diversification also s

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Income Convergence in Europe: The Role of Institutions and Structural Factors

Goran Lalić, Dragana Trifunović · 2026 · Social Sciences

This paper examines income convergence in Europe by jointly analyzing European Union member states and Western Balkan economies over the period 2004–2023. While classical growth theory predicts that poorer economies should grow faster than richer ones, empirical evidence for Europe remains mixed, particularly when institutional and structural heterogeneity is taken into account. Using panel data techniques, the study tests for absolute and conditional β-convergence and complements this analysis with an assessment of σ-convergence. The results provide strong evidence of absolute income converge

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Clinical aspects of reimbursement policies for orphan drugs in Central and Eastern European countries

S Jakubowski, Paweł Kawalec, Przemysław Holko et al. · 2024 · Frontiers in Pharmacology

Objectives: The aim of this study was to characterize the reimbursement policy for orphan drugs (ODs) in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in relation to the availability and impact of clinical evidence, health technology assessment (HTA) procedure, selected economic indicators, and the drug type according to indications. Materials and methods: A list of authorized medicines with orphan designation and information about active substance, Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classification, and therapeutic area was extracted from the web-based register of the European Medicines Agen

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

The Pressure Is on: How Geopolitical Tensions Impact Institutional Fiscal and External Stability Responses

António Afonso, José Alves, João Jalles et al. · 2026 · Scottish Journal of Political Economy

ABSTRACT We examine how geopolitical risks (GPR) affect fiscal (FS) and external sustainability (ES) across 27 European Union economies over 2001Q4–2022Q3. We apply a two‐step strategy: first, estimating time‐varying FS and ES coefficients…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Searching for Smurfs: Testing if Money Launderers Know Alert Thresholds

Rasmus Ingemann Tuffveson Jensen, Joras Ferwerda, Christian Remi Wewer · 2023 · arXiv

Objectives: To combat money laundering, banks raise and review alerts on transactions that exceed confidential thresholds. However, the thresholds may be leaked to criminals, allowing them to break up large transactions into amounts under the thresholds. This paper introduces a data-driven approach to detect the phenomenon, popularly known as smurfing. Methods: Our approach compares an observed transaction distribution to a counterfactual distribution estimated using a high-degree polynomial. We investigate the approach with simulation experiments and real transaction data from a systemically

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Structural Limits of OHLCV-Based Intraday Signals in MNQ Futures: A Systematic Falsification Study

Mathias Mesfin · 2026 · arXiv

This paper tests whether intraday momentum signals derived from open-high-low-close-volume (OHLCV) data produce a statistically significant trading edge in Micro E-mini Nasdaq 100 futures (MNQ) under realistic execution constraints. Using 947 trading days of five-minute data (2021-2025), fourteen signal families are evaluated, including opening range breakouts, gap strategies, volume signals, cross-session momentum, liquidity grabs, volatility-conditioned classifiers, and news-driven strategies. All signals are assessed using strict institutional criteria: out-of-sample walk-forward validation

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Do Whitepaper Claims Predict Market Behavior? Evidence from Cryptocurrency Factor Analysis

Murad Farzulla · 2026 · arXiv

This study investigates whether cryptocurrency whitepaper narratives align with empirically observed market factor structure. We construct a pipeline combining zero-shot NLP classification of 38 whitepapers across 10 semantic categories with CP tensor decomposition of hourly market data (49 assets, 17,543 timestamps). Using Procrustes rotation and Tucker's congruence coefficient (phi), we find weak alignment between claims and market statistics (phi = 0.246, p = 0.339) and between claims and latent factors (phi = 0.058, p = 0.751). A methodological validation comparison (statistics versus fact

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

The Informativeness of Combined Experimental and Observational Data under Dynamic Selection

Yechan Park, Yuya Sasaki · 2024 · arXiv

This paper addresses the challenge of estimating the Average Treatment Effect on the Treated Survivors (ATETS; Vikstrom et al., 2018) in the absence of long-term experimental data, utilizing available long-term observational data instead. We establish two theoretical results. First, it is impossible to obtain informative bounds for the ATETS with no model restriction and no auxiliary data. Second, to overturn this negative result, we explore as a promising avenue the recent econometric developments in combining experimental and observational data (e.g., Athey et al., 2020, 2019); we indeed fin

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

A Note on Delta Hedging in Markets with Jumps

Aleksandar Mijatović, Mikhail Urusov · 2011 · arXiv

Modelling stock prices via jump processes is common in financial markets. In practice, to hedge a contingent claim one typically uses the so-called delta-hedging strategy. This strategy stems from the Black--Merton--Scholes model where it perfectly replicates contingent claims. From the theoretical viewpoint, there is no reason for this to hold in models with jumps. However in practice the delta-hedging strategy is widely used and its potential shortcoming in models with jumps is disregarded since such models are typically incomplete and hence most contingent claims are non-attainable. In this

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

The Machiavellian frontier of stable mechanisms

Qiufu Chen, Yuanmei Li, Xiaopeng Yin et al. · 2024 · arXiv

The impossibility theorem in Roth (1982) states that no stable mechanism satisfies strategy-proofness. This paper explores the Machiavellian frontier of stable mechanisms by weakening strategy-proofness. For a fixed mechanism $\varphi$ and a true preference profile $\succ$, a $(\varphi,\succ)$-boost mispresentation of agent i is a preference of i that is obtained by (i) raising the ranking of the truth-telling assignment $\varphi_i(\succ)$, and (ii) keeping rankings unchanged above the new position of this truth-telling assignment. We require a matching mechanism $\varphi$ neither punish nor r

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Obstacles to Redistribution Through Markets and One Solution

Roy Allen, John Rehbeck · 2021 · arXiv

Dworczak et al. (2021) study when certain market structures are optimal in the presence of heterogeneous preferences. A key assumption is that the social planner knows the joint distribution of the value of the good and marginal value of money. This paper studies whether relevant features of this distribution are identified from choice data. We show that the features of the distribution needed to characterize optimal market structure cannot be identified when demand is known for all prices. While this is a negative result, we show that the distribution of good value and marginal utility of mon

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

The Trade-off Between Minimal Instability and Larger Improvements over Deferred Acceptance

Taylor Knipe, Josue Ortega · 2025 · arXiv

The celebrated Efficiency-Adjusted Deferred Acceptance mechanism (EADA) improves the efficiency of the DA algorithm via consented priority violations. Notwithstanding its many merits, we show that EADA can improve only two students when an alternative mechanism that Pareto-dominates DA could benefit all but one student. This shortfall in the number of students improved is not exclusive of EADA but extends to all setwise minimally unstable mechanisms, i.e. those that generate a set of blocking pairs that is never a strict superset of that of another mechanism. The incompatibility between number

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Informer in Algorithmic Investment Strategies on High Frequency Bitcoin Data

Filip Stefaniuk, Robert Ślepaczuk · 2025 · arXiv

The article investigates the usage of Informer architecture for building automated trading strategies for high frequency Bitcoin data. Three strategies using Informer model with different loss functions: Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Generalized Mean Absolute Directional Loss (GMADL) and Quantile loss, are proposed and evaluated against the Buy and Hold benchmark and two benchmark strategies based on technical indicators. The evaluation is conducted using data of various frequencies: 5 minute, 15 minute, and 30 minute intervals, over the 6 different periods. Although the Informer-based model

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Judgment in macroeconomic output growth predictions: Efficiency, accuracy and persistence

Michael Pedersen · 2024 · arXiv

The present study applies observations of individual predictions of the first three releases of the US output growth rate to evaluate how the applied judgment affects prediction efficiency and accuracy as well as if judgment is persistent. While the first two issues have been assessed in other studies, there is little evidence on the formation of judgment in macroeconomic projections. Most of the forecasters produce unbiased predictions, but employing the median Bloomberg projection as baseline, it turns out that judgment generally does not improve accuracy. There seems to be persistence in th

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Take Caution in Using LLMs as Human Surrogates: Scylla Ex Machina

Yuan Gao, Dokyun Lee, Gordon Burtch et al. · 2024 · arXiv

Recent studies suggest large language models (LLMs) can exhibit human-like reasoning, aligning with human behavior in economic experiments, surveys, and political discourse. This has led many to propose that LLMs can be used as surrogates or simulations for humans in social science research. However, LLMs differ fundamentally from humans, relying on probabilistic patterns, absent the embodied experiences or survival objectives that shape human cognition. We assess the reasoning depth of LLMs using the 11-20 money request game. Nearly all advanced approaches fail to replicate human behavior dis

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Testing the simplicity of strategy-proof mechanisms

Alexander L. Brown, Daniel G. Stephenson, Rodrigo A. Velez · 2024 · arXiv

This paper experimentally evaluates four mechanisms intended to achieve the Uniform outcome in rationing problems (Sprumont, 1991). Our benchmark is the dominant-strategy, direct-revelation mechanism of the Uniform rule. A strategically equivalent mechanism that provides non-binding feedback during the reporting period greatly improves performance. A sequential revelation mechanism produces modest improvements despite not possessing dominant strategies. A novel, obviously strategy-proof mechanism, devised by Arribillaga et al. (2023), does not improve performance. We characterize each alternat

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Does Anxiety Improve Economic Decision-Making?

Ian Crawford, Carl-Emil Pless · 2026 · arXiv

We study the associations between everyday economic decision-making quality and people's emotional states. Using high-frequency, highly disaggregated consumer "scanner" data, we show that the cost of poor decision-making is substantial, on average equal to around half of day-to-day consumption budgets. While material circumstances help explain decision-making quality, how people feel about those circumstances is equally important. Contrary to evidence that stress and worry impair performance in settings where distraction is costly, we find these same feelings are associated with improved decis

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Talents from Abroad. Foreign Managers and Productivity in the United Kingdom

Dimitrios Exadaktylos, Massimo Riccaboni, Armando Rungi · 2020 · arXiv

In this paper, we test the contribution of foreign management on firms' competitiveness. We use a novel dataset on the careers of 165,084 managers employed by 13,106 companies in the United Kingdom in the period 2009-2017. We find that domestic manufacturing firms become, on average, between 7% and 12% more productive after hiring the first foreign managers, whereas foreign-owned firms register no significant improvement. In particular, we test that previous industry-specific experience is the primary driver of productivity gains in domestic firms (15.6%), in a way that allows the latter to ca

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Do COVID-19 and crude oil prices drive the US economic policy uncertainty?

Claudiu Albulescu · 2020 · arXiv

This paper investigates the effect of the novel coronavirus and crude oil prices on the United States (US) economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Using daily data for the period January 21-March 13, 2020, our Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model shows that the new infection cases reported at global level, and the death ratio, have no significant effect on the US EPU, whereas the oil price negative dynamics leads to increased uncertainty. However, analyzing the situation outside China, we discover that both new case announcements and the COVID-19 associated death ratio have a positive influe

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

A Study on Impact of Dividend Policy on Initial Public Offering Price Performance

S. Meghna, N. Suresh, J. C. Usha · 2022 · arXiv

This study examines the impact of dividend policy on the performance of initial public offerings in India. The period of study is from the year 2011-2014. Monthly returns of the IPOs issued in the considered period and the Indian Stock Market Index (Nifty 50) were considered for the long-run performance study. The methodological tools used are long-run performance statistics and the GARCH model. The Dummy variable was used to measure the effect of dividends on the IPOs. The study reveals that the dividend policy has no significant effect on the stock prices of IPO.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

A Review of Disease and Development

Ruiwu Liu · 2021 · arXiv

Acemoglu and Johnson (2007) put forward the unprecedented view that health improvement has no significant effect on income growth. To arrive at this conclusion, they constructed predicted mortality as an instrumental variable based on the WHO international disease interventions to analyse this problem. I replicate the process of their research and eliminate some biases in their estimate. In addition, and more importantly, we argue that the construction of their instrumental variable contains a violation of the exclusion restriction of their instrumental variable. This negative correlation betw

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Elementary Bitcoin economics: from production and transaction demand to values

Misha Perepelitsa · 2022 · arXiv

In this paper we give an elementary analysis of economics of Bitcoin that combines the transaction demand by the consumers and the supply of hashrate by miners. We argue that the decreasing block reward will have no significant effect on the exchange rate (price) of Bitcoin and thus the network will be transitioning to a regime where transaction fees will play a bigger part of miners' revenue. We consider a simple model where consumers demand bitcoins for transactions, but not for hoarding bitcoins, and we analyze market equilibrium where the demand is matched with the hashrate supplied by min

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Public Support for Environmental Regulation: When Ideology Trumps Knowledge

Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt, Max R. P. Grossmann · 2025 · arXiv

When environmental regulations are unpopular, policymakers often attribute resistance to information frictions and poor communication. We test this idea in the context of a major climate policy: Germany's Heating Law of 2023, which mandates the phase-out of fossil fuel heating. Through a survey experiment with property owners, we examine whether providing comprehensive information about the regulation's costs, requirements, and timeline affects adoption decisions and policy support. Despite successfully increasing factual knowledge, information provision has no significant effect on intended t

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