The Era of finance: Proposals for the future

Finance, the economic activity intermediating between savings and investments, is probably the first to reach the stage of globalization; as a consequence, the financial sector is taking a leading position in modern economic systems. While the world expects from financial efficiency an increasingly positive contribution to welfare, it appears that recent developments of financial leadership in an increasingly deregulated world system, are also acting negatively on world welfare. In many aspects, it can be established that finance is crisis prone, induces deflationary biases and stimulates speculative behaviour: crisis, deflation and speculation are often harmful to the real economy. A set of proposals are made in order to improve world financial stabilization, promote growth and encourage the spirit of enterprise, as a way of enhancing the future contribution of financial activities to world welfare.     

Carry Trade Returns with Support Vector Machines

This paper proposes a novel approach to directional forecasts for carry trade strategies based on support vector machines (SVMs), a learning algorithm that delivers extremely promising results. Building on recent findings in the literature on carry trade, we condition the SVM on indicators of uncertainty and risk. We show that this provides a dramatic performance improvement in strategy, particularly during periods of financial distress such as the recent financial crises. Disentangling the measures of risk, we show that conditioning the SVM on measures of liquidity risk rather than on market volatility yields the best performance.     

Futures-Style Options on Euro-deposit Futures: Nihil sub Sole Novi?

Euro-deposit futures play a relevant role among the derivative products traded in official markets. As opposed to most futures contracts, the underlying instrument is not represented by a traded asset but by a linear transformation of an interest rate, the Libor. The options written on Euro-deposit futures that are traded at the London International Financial Futures & Options Exchange (LIFFE) are subject to daily marking to market, as the underlying futures; thus, they are called futures-style options or pure futures options. These options are often priced with the Black (1976) formula, whose use entails several shortcomings. A more realistic alternative is represented by the univariate Cox, Ingersoll and Ross (1985) model. The closed-form solutions for the prices of Euro-deposit futures and futures-style options on Euro-deposit futures obtained in the CIR model are two major original contributions presented in this paper. Other original contributions involve the determination of the relation between futures rates and forward rates and the derivation of the equivalent portfolio for the hedging of futures-style options on Euro-deposit futures.     

The styles of management inventory: A methodological analysis of a training and research instrument

In recent years several theoretical ideas have been advanced in the area of problem-solving and decision-making in administration, with a focus on “leadership” styles. Instruments have been designed to operationalize the theory and for purposes of training and research. However, there has been little systematic testing of such instruments. This study examines the theoretical underpinning of one particular instrument, the Styles of Management Inventory. Then, it proceeds to test it for internal consistency by using multidimensional scaling. The data for this study were obtained from 288 probation administrators in the United States. Since this instrument is currently used by trainers and researchers, it is felt that this methodological study has important implications for both the management training and research fields.     

Sustainability dimensions related to agricultural-based development: the experience of 50 years of intensive farming in Almería (Spain)

In the context of the current agri-food market, several factors have made it increasingly difficult to balance the components of sustainability in agricultural-based development. These factors include increasing internationalization, tighter control of distribution and frequent changes in agricultural policies. Indeed, in the framework of European rural policy there has been considerable debate in recent years concerning the role of the agricultural sector and how it should face the following challenges: productivity-competitiveness, environmental protection and socio-economic development. There is, therefore, a growing need for practical analyses that adopt a holistic approach. This paper analyses how this sector in the province of Almería (Spain), based on horticultural family farms, has risen to the above issues over recent decades. This case study provides some insights into the different trade-offs and synergies between sustainability dimensions. In particular, the integration of ecological, social and economic components may prove useful in helping other regions to adapt their agricultural systems, especially where these are characterized by small-scale farming.     

Portfolio choices and VaR constraint with a defaultable asset

We consider a Constant Elasticity of Variance (CEV) model for the asset price of a defaultable asset showing the so-called leverage effect (high volatility when the asset price is low). We show that a VaR constraint re-evaluated over time induces an agent more risk averse than a logarithmic utility to take more risk than in the unconstrained setting.     

Economic feasibility analysis for electrical generation from biogas in waste disposal sites in Mexico City

This article highlights the main aspects related to energy generation from biogas in a controlled landfill of Mexico City in order to determine profits and environmental benefits. The designed structures and public policies to provide waste management services in Mexico City have been exceeded. A significant increase in demand has led the government of Mexico City to base public services on rudimentary techniques using obsolete equipment. The modernization of waste disposal facilities and the diversification of services linked to waste treatment can offer several business opportunities to optimize energy generation from solid wastes. The use of landfills to dispose large amounts of waste enables the energy generation from biogas. The energy generated can diversify the electricity market and provide economic benefits to landfills managers to cover operational costs.     

The value of an educated population for an individual's entrepreneurship success

Human capital obtained through education has been shown to be one of the strongest drivers of entrepreneurship performance. The entrepreneur's human capital, though, is only one of the input factors into the production process of her venture. In this paper we will analyze to what extent the education levels of other (potential) stakeholders affect the entrepreneur's performance. The education level of consumers may shape the demand function for an entrepreneur's output, whereas the education level of employees may affect the entrepreneur's productivity and thereby shape her supply function. Based on this, we hypothesize that the performance of an entrepreneur is not only affected positively by her own education level but also by the education level of the population. We find empirical support for this hypothesis using an eight year (1994–2001) panel of labor market participants in the EU-15 countries. An implication of our finding is that entrepreneurship and higher education policies should be considered in tandem with each other.     

Construction of voting situations concordant with ranking patterns

Decisions in Economics and Finance - Referring to a standard context of voting theory, and to the classic notion of voting situation, here we show that it is possible to observe any arbitrary set...