Portfolio Selection with Quadratic Utility Revisited

Considering a simple portfolio selection problem by agents with quadratic utility, an apparently counterintuitive outcome results. When such a choice is over two assets that can be ordered in terms of riskiness, an agent that is more risk averse may optimally invest a larger portion of wealth in the riskier asset. It is shown that such an outcome is not counterintuitive, since for the portfolios from which agents optimally choose, a larger proportion of investment in the riskier asset leads to a less risky portfolio.     

A counterpoint assessment of Vancouver international airport as a gateway to North America

The essential issue here is does the trans-Pacific market need a hub at Vancouver, and if so, can Vancouver position itself to meet that need. Critical to arriving at an appropriate answer will be understanding the changing trans-Pacific market, the applicable regulatory environments, the airlines in the market, and the competing hub airports. Although Vancouver's location and its history place it in a favorable position, success is far from a foregone conclusion. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Integrating innovation skills in an introductory engineering design-build course

Modern engineering curricula have started to emphasize design, mostly in the form of design-build experiences. Apart from instilling important problem-solving skills, such pedagogical frameworks address the critical social skill aspects of engineering education due to their team-based, project-based nature. However, it is required of the twenty-first century engineer to be not only technically competent and socially and culturally aware, but also innovative and entrepreneurial. This paper discusses a reformulated first-year engineering course at the University of Pretoria, which was adopted 6 years ago to better address the required innovation skills of engineering students. This design-build-innovate course employs a unique creative problem-solving strategy in designing and building solutions to set technological problems. The students further investigate the provisional patenting of their design concepts. Mini business plans are developed and the students participate in a university- and in a national innovation competition. This introductory engineering course has been successful as measured by overwhelmingly positive student feedback, several provisional patents, and a number of small start-up companies that emanated from the students’ work.     

From Washington Consensus to BeST Consensus for world development

While the set of liberalising and fiscally conservative development precepts dubbed the 'Washington Consensus' are now discredited as a tool for development, there is as yet no widely adopted or accepted alternative other than references to the 'East Asian model'. In this paper, we distil the essence of the experience of East Asia—of Japan initially, then of Korea and Taiwan, and now of China—in a set of flexible precepts that we suggest underpin the policies and strategies pursued with success by these East Asian economies. In the spirit of proposing an alternative to the Washington Consensus, we suggest that these precepts—pragmatic and known to work—be dubbed the Beijing–Seoul–Tokyo Consensus (or BeST Consensus for development). The essence of this consensus is its focus on capability building, on dynamic transitions from one stage to the next, and on building an institutional platform to capture latecomer effects. We outline what this BeST Consensus might be and discuss why it is that its elements appear to work so well; and whether they can still be applied in the world of 21st-century conditions.     

Quality in religious services

Despite intensive research into service quality, the Church appears to have been overlooked. Using a tailored measurement tool, this paper examines those aspects of the Church that respondents feel are important in their assessments of service quality. Results indicate that the three most important service quality dimensions are responsiveness, credibility and commitment. The more often that consumers visit church, the more demanding they are in terms of their importance ratings overall. Female churchgoers consider most of the service quality dimensions to be more important than do male customers, while other demographic factors have little or no impact on perceived service quality. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications