Saliency of outside options in the lost wallet game

This paper reports an experiment designed to shed light on an empirical puzzle observed by Dufwenberg and Gneezy (Games and Economic Behavior 30:163–182, 2000) that the size of the foregone outside option by the first mover does not affect the behavior of the second mover in a lost wallet game. Our conjecture was that the original protocol may not have made the size of the forgone outside option salient to second movers. Therefore, we change two features of the Dufwenberg and Gneezy protocol: (i) instead of the strategy method we implement a direct response method (sequential play) for the decision of the second mover; and (ii) we use paper money certificates that are passed between the subjects rather than having subjects write down numbers representing their decisions. We observe that our procedure yields qualitatively the same result as the Dufwenberg and Gneezy experiment, i.e., the second movers do not respond to the change in the outside option of the first movers.     

An Option-Based Operational Risk Management Model for Pandemics

Abstract

In this paper we employ the theory of real option pricing to address problems in the area of operational risk management. We develop a two-stage model to help firms determine the optimal suspension-reactivation triggers in the events of pandemics. In the first stage, we propose a regime-dependent epidemic model to simulate the spread of the virus, depending on whether the firm is active or inactive. In the second stage, we view the reactivation decision as a call option and the suspension decision as a put option, and use dynamic programming methods to obtain the optimal switching thresholds. Our method can be regarded as a quantitative implementation of the CDC’s instructions for pandemic preparation. We find that when they take the uncertainty of disease transmission into consideration, firms are more conservative about the decisions of suspension and reactivation. We also find that when firms incur switching costs, the suspension threshold increases with costs, whereas the reactivation threshold decreases with costs. By adopting disease control policies, firms can increase their values in both regimes.     

The key issues and procedures of industrial marketing research

Industrial marketing research has failed to receive its due attention in marketing books and journals, even though the volume of transactions in industrial goods and services is more than twice that of consumer goods and services. This article provides a systematic and wide ranging review of the issues, procedures, and opportunities found in industrial marketing research.     

Revealed Preferences of Business Students at a Major State University

ABSTRACT: Business schools are facing a rapidly changing environment as new technology and alternative delivery systems erode barriers of time and place. The authors analyze the practices for determining curricula and courses offered by a major state university's business school and conclude that the school operates as a command economy. Such a structure produces artificial demand for some courses and obfuscates the measurement of true student preferences. The authors propose that, at least for full-capacity courses, enrollment should be replaced as a demand measure by one based on attempts to enroll. The authors' demand measure provides significantly different results from the traditional enrollment measure. The authors' results also provide insight into the relative preferences of students for different courses at the business school and the factors affecting these preferences, with some positive implications for the risk management and insurance discipline.     

Application of Risk Theory to Interpretation of Stochastic Cash-Flow-Testing Results

Abstract

In this paper we consider the Sparre Andersen insurance risk model. Three cases are discussed: the ordinary renewal risk process, stationary renewal risk process, and s-delayed renewal risk process. In the first part of the paper we study the joint distribution of surplus immediately before and at ruin under the renewal insurance risk model. By constructing an exponential martingale, we obtain Lundberg-type upper bounds for the joint distribution. Consequently we obtain bounds for the distribution of the deficit at ruin and ruin probability. In the second part of the paper, we consider the special case of phase-type claims and rederive the closed-form expression for the distribution of the severity of ruin, obtained by Drekic et al. (2003, 2004). Finally, we present some numerical results to illustrate the tightness of the bounds obtained in this paper.     

Estimation of a US dairy sector model by maximum simulated likelihood

This paper estimates a multivariate Tobit system of monthly wholesale dairy prices where four prices are lower censored by the dairy price support programme. Using Maximum Simulated Likelihood (MSL) the effects of simulation noise are tested/corrected for and the relevance of estimating multivariate versus the single Tobit equations discussed.     

An Empirical Examination of Institutional Investor Preferences for Corporate Social Performance

This study investigates the pattern of institutional shareholding in the U.K. and its relationship with socially responsible behavior by companies within a sample of over 500 UK companies. We estimate a set of ownership models that distinguish between long- and short-term investors and their largest components and which incorporate both aggregated and disaggregated measures of corporate social performance (CSP). The results suggest that long-term institutional investment is positively related to CSP providing further support for earlier studies by Johnson and Greening (1999, Academy of Management Journal 42, 564–576) and Graves and Waddock (1994, Academy of Management Journal 37, 1034–1046). Disaggregation of CSP into its constituent components suggests that the pattern of institutional investment is also related to the form which CSP takes. Investigation of the impact of investment screens on the selection of stocks suggests that long-term institutional investors select primarily through exclusion, rejecting those firms which have the worst CSP.     

Catastrophe Risk Bonds

Abstract

This article examines the pricing of catastrophe risk bonds. Catastrophe risk cannot be hedged by traditional securities. Therefore, the pricing of catastrophe risk bonds requires an incomplete markets setting, and this creates special difficulties in the pricing methodology. The authors briefly discuss the theory of equilibrium pricing and its relationship to the standard arbitrage-free valuation framework. Equilibrium pricing theory is used to develop a pricing method based on a model of the term structure of interest rates and a probability structure for the catastrophe risk. This pricing methodology can be used to assess the default spread on catastrophe risk bonds relative to traditional defaultable securities.     

Why Eradicating Urban Poverty Requires a Long Term Multi-Program 'War': A Review of Anti-Poverty Strategies for the Needs of the Late 70s

Abstract . Identifying who are the urban poor may help determine why poverty exists in our cities; and, of course, knowing why people are poor is a prerequisite for designing effective policies to eradicate the problem. As the statistics presented in this paper demonstrate, poverty has many causes and, therefore, a successful ‘war’ on poverty will necessarily have to be long term and multi-programmed. One essential part of that ‘war,’ of course, will be an attack on racial and sexual discrimination in labor markets; but, as this paper's analysis of the possible underlying causes of such discrimination points out, economic progress alone may be insufficient—racial and sexual prejudice itself will have to be eradicated.