Revenue management policies for the truck rental industry

In this paper, we consider the problem of managing a fleet of trucks with different capacity to serve the requests of different customers that arise randomly over time. The problem is formulated via dynamic programming. Linear programming approximations of the problem are presented and their solutions are exploited to develop partitioned booking limits and bid prices policies. The numerical experiments show that the proposed policies can be profitably used in supporting the decision maker.     

SOCIAL INVESTMENT AND YOUTH LABOR MARKET PARTICIPATION

In this paper, we first rely on small area techniques to derive from EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU‐SILC) survey new indicators of compensatory and social‐investment policies at regional level. While compensatory policies have mainly the goal of protecting individuals from “old” risks (e.g., old‐age), investment‐related social policies tend to focus more on “new social risks” (e.g., skill deficits). We rely on these new indicators to perform a data‐driven structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) analysis to investigate the causal relationships between youth labor market outcomes and these two types of spending. Our results support the view that social‐investment policies are effective for tackling new social challenges. (JEL C18, C54, E02)     

The Survival of Family Firms: The Importance of Control and Family Ties

The aim of this article is to analyze the survival patterns of a group of family firms which have already spent at least 25 years in the market. To this end, we use the Kaplan–Meier product limit estimator supplemented with qualitative information gathered by direct observation and discussions with entrepreneurs. The main findings are that small family firms which have reached their 30th year in the market face a very high risk of sudden exit, increasing with firm age. Further control carried out by means of interviews with entrepreneurs identifies problems connected with succession as one of the main causes of the decision to close down.     

Ethical Consumption and New Business Models in the Food Industry. Evidence from the Eataly Case

Individual and collective ethical stances regarding ethical consumption and related outcomes are usually seen as both a form of concern about extant market offerings and as opportunities to develop new offerings. In this sense, demand and supply are traditionally portrayed as interacting dialectically on the basis of extant business models. In general, this perspective implicitly assumes the juxtaposition of demand side ethical stances and supply side corporate initiatives. The Eataly story describes, however, a different approach to market transformation; in this case a company and a social movement (Slow Food) have negotiated and collaborated prior to initiating a new business model. This collaboration process and its outcomes are described, focusing specifically on ordinary Eataly customers’ and Slow Food members’ reactions. Given that Eataly can be regarded as a case of mainstreaming, ordinary customers seem satisfied with the new offering and the Slow Food support for the initiative; the more purist members of the Slow Food movement had critical concerns, however, as happened in similar conditions, according to literature, with regard to Fair Trade. The Slow Food endorsement of the new venture has also been observed from the attitude–behaviour gap perspective, as it contributed to addressing the factors affecting the gap between attitudes and actual behaviours. Extensive qualitative data were collected and analysed over a 3-year period. The main study implications refer to the ways in which companies and social movements could interact to co-design new business models, as well as outlining consumers’ attitudes and behaviours towards such new offerings.     

Shifting martingale measures and the birth of a bubble as a submartingale

In an incomplete financial market model, we study a flow in the space of equivalent martingale measures and the corresponding shifting perception of the fundamental value of a given asset. This allows us to capture the birth of a perceived bubble and to describe it as an initial submartingale which then turns into a supermartingale before it falls back to its initial value zero.     

LOCAL RISK MINIMIZATION FOR DEFAULTABLE MARKETS

We study the local risk minimization approach for defaultable markets in a general setting where the asset price dynamics and the default time may influence each other. We find the Föllmer-Schweizer decomposition in this general setting and compute it explicitly in two particular cases, when default time depends on the risky asset's behavior and when only a dependence of discounted asset price on default time is occurring.     

ON THE TIMING OPTION IN A FUTURES CONTRACT

The timing option embedded in a futures contract allows the short position to decide when to deliver the underlying asset during the last month of the contract period. In this paper we derive, within a very general incomplete market framework, an explicit model independent formula for the futures price process in the presence of a timing option. We also provide a characterization of the optimal delivery strategy, and we analyze some concrete examples.