Holocaust concentration camp memorial sites: an exploratory study into expected emotional response

This study explored Dutch people's expected intensity of emotional responses of a potential visit to a concentration camp memorial site in the Netherlands. A total of 1050 online panel members participated in a questionnaire that contained a 33-item emotion scale. Results reveal that individuals with a closeness to the Holocaust expect to feel most emotions more intensely, specifically emotions that are traditionally considered ‘positive’, such as pride, love, joy, inspiration, excitement and affection. Overall, respondents expect to feel disgust, shock, compassion and sadness the strongest. Those who look from the viewpoint of the offenders mainly expect to feel emotions that are traditionally considered ‘negative’, whereas those who took the point of view of the victims also expect a more ‘positive’ emotional reaction to the visit. Managerial implications address aspects of education, storytelling and authenticity.     

Socially Responsible Fixed-Income Funds

Abstract:  The growing importance of SRI in the investment arena has resulted in considerable academic interest in the performance of socially responsible equity mutual funds. Remarkably, no attempts have been made to evaluate the performance of mutual funds that invest in socially responsible fixed-income securities. This study fills that gap by measuring the performance of socially responsible bond and balanced funds relative to matched samples of conventional funds, over the period 1987–2003. Using multi-index performance evaluation models, we show that the average SRI bond fund performed similar to conventional funds, while the average SRI balanced fund outperformed its conventional peers by more than 1.3% per year. The expenses charged by SRI funds, match those charged by conventional funds and, evidently, do not cause SRI funds to underperform.     

Model risk and capital reserves

We propose a procedure to take model risk into account in the computation of capital reserves. This addresses the need to make the allocation of capital reserves to positions in given markets dependent on the extent to which reliable models are available. The proposed procedure can be used in combination with any of the standard risk measures, such as Value-at-Risk and expected shortfall.     

Implementing on‐the‐job training: critical success factors

Post Offices Inc. in The Netherlands has developed and implemented a new instruction model for the training of desk employees. The quality of the new instruction model was assessed by means of the evaluation model of Jacobs and Jones for on‐the‐job training. It is concluded that the implementation of the training model has not been completely successful. Critical success factors, such as the performance of the mentors as well as the quality of the self‐study material, have to be improved. Mentors are expected to serve as a behavioural model, to provide feedback, arrange an adequate environment for self‐study, motivate trainees for self‐study and evaluate trainees’ progress on a regular basis. This study shows that mentors must be fully convinced of the benefit of a new instructional model, if not, the implementation will not be successful. Besides, the study shows that the quality of the self‐study material depends very much on the similarity between the knowledge needed in work and the knowledge presented in the self‐study material.     

EXPERIMENTAL AND SELF‐REPORTED MEASURES OF RISK TAKING AND DIGIT RATIO (2D:4D): EVIDENCE FROM A LARGE,SYSTEMATIC STUDY

We systematically investigate the links between the digit ratio (2D:4D)—a biomarker for prenatal testosterone exposure—and two measures of individual risk taking: (i) risk preferences (RP) over lotteries with real monetary incentives and (ii) self‐reported risk attitude (RA). We find that both the right‐hand and the left‐hand digit ratio are significantly associated with RP: Subjects with lower digit ratios tend to choose riskier lotteries. Neither digit ratio, however, is associated with self‐reported RA.     

Market novelty, competence-seeking and innovation networking

Studies of innovation networking have frequently been concerned with the occurrence of dyadic relationships and with their apparent impact on simple measures of firm-level innovation outputs. This paper takes a more detailed look by analyzing the connection between different types of innovation and forms of networking. Based on the market novelty of innovation outcomes and the extent to which innovation activities require new competences, four types of innovation are identified. It is proposed that these types correlate with various innovation network dimensions, including the volume of networks, the strength and content of ties, and the specificity of ties. Drawing on survey data of 594 innovations realized by Dutch small firms, it is observed that the requirement to access new competences for innovation correlates positively with the number of network partners involved. We also note more subtle connections between types of innovation and networking, including that novel innovation outputs correlate with using network partners as a source of inspiration, whilst new competences associate with networking for knowledge capital. In the latter case, these activities also draw on new and intended ties relatively often, i.e. network partners which are actively sought out for the specific contributions they may make to the innovation process. Finally, innovation which is simultaneously new-to-the market and requires new competences uses strong ties relatively often. Implications for innovation policy and practice are discussed.     

Innovation performance across Europe

The innovation performance of firms is primarily determined by their own innovative activities and the interaction with their innovation-related environment. This environment typically differs among countries. We assess empirically these differences on firms' innovation performance. To that end we first estimate the relationship between an aggregate innovation input measure and an aggregate innovation output measure, thereby explicitly controlling for structural differences between countries. We then consider the extent to which firms located in a particular country perform better or worse than this estimated benchmark performance. The analysis is based on a panel dataset that we have constructed from Eurostat's first and second Community Innovation Survey. In order to control for possible data contamination we employ an outlier-robust estimator. It appears that among the fourteen countries considered Italy, Germany and Ireland offer an environment that facilitates most the transformation of innovation-related inputs into commercial outputs while the environment in Denmark is the least facilitating.     

Evaluating portfolio Value-at-Risk using semi-parametric GARCH models

In this paper we examine the usefulness of multivariate semi-parametric GARCH models for evaluating the Value-at-Risk (VaR) of a portfolio with arbitrary weights. We specify and estimate several alternative multivariate GARCH models for daily returns on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes. Examining the within-sample VaRs of a set of given portfolios shows that the semi-parametric model performs uniformly well, while parametric models in several cases have unacceptable failure rates. Interestingly, distributional assumptions appear to have a much larger impact on the performance of the VaR estimates than the particular parametric specification chosen for the GARCH equations.