Oil price forecasting under asymmetric loss

Based on the approach developed by Elliott et al. (2005), we found that the loss function of a sample of oil price forecasters is asymmetric in the forecast error. Our findings indicate that the loss oil price forecasters incurred when their forecasts exceeded the price of oil tended to be larger than the loss they incurred when their forecast fell short of the price of oil. Accounting for the asymmetry of the loss function does not necessarily make forecasts look rational.     

Households' Preferences and Exchange Rate Overshooting

Abstract

This paper uses a ‘New-Open-Economy Macroeconomic’ model to study the effect of a shock to Households' preferences on exchange rate dynamics. The special features of the model are that Households' preferences exhibit a ‘catching-up with the Joneses’ effect and that international financial markets are imperfectly integrated. Results of numerical simulations of the model demonstrate that these features imply that, in an otherwise standard ‘New-Open-Economy Macroeconomic’ model, a shock to Households' preferences can give rise to an overshooting of the exchange rate.     

The role of venture capitalist to enhance the growth of Spanish and Italian university spin-offs

The establishment of spin-offs to commercialise university knowledge/technology is a potential mechanism to promote economic and innovative development. Nevertheless, University Spin-Offs (USOs) are usually resource-constrained, especially in obtaining funding, limiting their growth. Venture Capital (VC) investors play an important role in the financing and the improvement of their managerial skills, which are critical for firm growth. This paper aims to explore both the effect of VC partners on the USOs’ growth and the cross-national differences in the role played by them. To study both issues, we empirically analysed 516 Spanish and 904 Italian USOs created by 50 Spanish and 57 Italian universities, respectively, and observed them between 2005 and 2013. The results showed different effects in the Spanish and Italian cases. While in Spain the presence of VC partners positively affects the USOs’ growth, in Italy there is not a significant effect. This evidence calls for systematic policies by public administrations and universities to foster USO growth.     

Gambling in contests

This paper presents a strategic model of risk-taking behavior in contests. Formally, we analyze an n-player winner-take-all contest in which each player decides when to stop a privately observed Brownian motion with drift. A player whose process reaches zero has to stop. The player with the highest stopping point wins. Unlike the explicit cost for a higher stopping time in a war of attrition, here, higher stopping times are riskier, because players can go bankrupt. We derive a closed-form solution of a Nash equilibrium outcome. In equilibrium, highest expected losses occur at an intermediate negative value of the drift.     

The framing of product ideas in the making: a case study of the development of an energy saving pump

Research regarding work with ideas in industrial settings has predominantly treated ideas as rather stable ‘black boxes’. This article contributes a new understanding of idea work and seeks to expand our understanding of how a product concept is constituted and synthesised through socio-material interaction of organisational members and engagement in idea work. The article contributes a case study of the development process behind the energy-saving Alpha Pro circulator launched by the Danish pump manufacturer Grundfos. Based on an analysis of how organisational players engage in the controversial and shifting understandings of what seems to constitute a successful product, the article offers a new perspective on navigating the players’ ideas in the political processes of innovation. It suggests that navigation of technological frames can offer a new perspective to make explicit the implicated actors’ world views, including what they perceive as relevant problems and related strategies for solving them.     

Product development as reading and writing doings within sociotechnical practices: the reciprocity between engineers and artefacts

This ethnographic study aims at understanding how product development of wind turbine controls unfolds as ongoing engineer-artefact reciprocity. We adopt a Deweyan constructionist and Science-Technology-Society approach to contribute to product development and sociomaterial studies by emphasising the role of reciprocity between engineers' experience and artefacts through reading and writing doings. Reading doings involve texts such as specifications, minutes, sketches and components. Writing doings create/modify the same type of texts. In one project, convergent reciprocity enabled the development. Another project's development was blocked, restarted and completed internally at the producer. Enablers included repositioning of working practices, application of various artefacts/tools, heterogeneous engineers and creation of common ground. Constraints involved lack of openness, too malleable artefacts, no common ground and radical change of the development trajectory. The engineers' learning depends on these constraints and enablers. Three types of reciprocity occur: convergent, faded away and blocked.     

Keynes and Sraffa's 'Difficulties with J. H. Hollander'

The paper reports on Jacob H. Hollander's cooperation with John Maynard Keynes and Piero Sraffa in the preparation of the latter's edition of The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo. The report is based on archive material from various sources, including the unpublished papers of Edwin Cannan, Piero Sraffa, Jacob H. Hollander, John Maynard Keynes, and Jacob Viner, and the archive of the Royal Economic Society. The archive material consulted by us shows that, put mildly, Jacob H. Hollander did not promote Sraffa's editorial project: he held back material which he had received from Frank Ricardo and did not disclose to Sraffa that he owned several important letters which he had privately purchased. Moreover, Sraffa was refused access to Ricardiana even after he had traced them down in laborious detective work to be in Hollander's possession. Hollander's unwillingness to cooperate with Sraffa considerably delayed the publication of the Ricardo edition.     

The effect of capital requirement regulation on the transmission of monetary policy: evidence from Austria

This paper analyzes the role of banks’ regulatory capitalization in the transmission of monetary policy. We use a confidential dataset for Austrian banks spanning from the first quarter of 1997 to the fourth quarter of 2003. We find evidence that Austrian banks react in an asymmetric way to monetary policy depending on their regulatory excess capitalization, i.e. low capitalized banks react more restrictively to a monetary tightening than their highly capitalized peers.