Global public policy is an unexplored, but very promising area for the application of real options. Global public policy interventions could be valued through the use of real options, like an investment. This assessment could be deployed strategically such as in case of making interventions more attractive for the potential participants or to pre-assess the effectiveness of different policy measures. These possibilities have been already recognized and accepted in the literature of public policy, but not very well-known to the field of global public policy. In this paper it is demonstrated why real options is very suitable for global public policy and this is demonstrated on the basis of three specific domains: global warming, migration and privacy.

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The purpose of this research is to examine how awards and indexes related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) affect the corporate values of Kao, which is one of the biggest chemical manufacturer in Japan. We conduct event study to validate that an abnormal return occurs on the day Kao wins awards or Kao's stock is designated as investment indexes. We extract all information related to CSR awards and indexes as much as we could search on Kao's web site. In case that Kao won awards and designations in a row, we conduct a retrospective review of the award history. We conduct comprehensively event study on 38 items including domestic and foreign investment indexes, commendation by Japanese and international organizations, and internal evaluation such as Kao's CSR reports. As a result, out of 105 of the event study, we find two statistically significant abnormal returns. One is positive in FTSE4Good 2011, and one is negative in Kao's CSR report 2018. It is more natural to think that the two significant abnormal results are observed coincidentally as we set the significance level as 5%. Two events out of 105 events could show the statistically significant result at 5% coincidentally. We could not conclude that CSR activities positively affect the corporate values of Kao. In the future, it is also necessary to verify CSR activities from the reduction of risk and the improvement of brand values through the increase in reputation.

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It is universally accepted that Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) have a significant contribution in supporting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and buttressing the economy of developing countries. This study attempts to identify the problems that small businesses in Eritrea face while also measuring their awareness and attitudes towards microfinance. We collected data through questionnaires from 145 small business owners, classified into beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of MFI loans. We find that there is considerable lack of awareness about and positive attitude from the beneficiaries towards MFI. The biggest challenge facing SMEs is financial constraints. We find that MFI is helpful in addressing the financial limitations faced by the beneficiaries. These findings underline the need to ramp up sensitization efforts and to increase access to loans for SMEs by privatizing and proliferating MFIs in Eritrea.

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There are plethora of papers analyzing the correlation between CSR / SDGs / ESG and corporate values / stock prices / stock returns, however, a few of them focus on how CSR / SDGs / ESG factors improve or destroy the corporate value and only a very limited number of papers analyze the market risk premium as factor of corporate value. This paper focuses on how the macro level SDG indices are associated with market risk premiums and the corporate value. We show that contributions to SDGs related activities pursuing to improve the overall SDG Index Score as well as SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and 13 (Climate Action) scores could increase the corporate value via the reduction of the market risk premium. On the other hand, SDG 15 (Life on Land) and 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) scores are not correlated with market risk premiums, while an SDG 9 (Industry Innovation and Infrastructure) score is positively correlated with market risk premiums. We need further analysis to conclude the relationship between market risk premiums and SDG 1,2, 4-8, 10-12, 14, and 17.

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