Asset pricing with skewed-normal return

Despite the fact that it is easy to see intuitively why skewness and coskewness should matter for asset pricing, it is difficult to build a model that links analytically skewness premia to deep structural parameters governing preferences and the distribution of shocks. This paper takes up the challenge and studies the effect of skewness and coskewness on asset valuation. To reach this important goal, asset returns skewness is modeled with promising Azzalini’s [1985. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 12, 171–178] skew-normal distribution. With this assumption, we are now able to derive explicit expressions of assets skewness premiums and to shed a new light on asset valuation.     

Rational Versus Intuitive Gatekeeping: Escalation of Commitment in the Front End of NPD

The unwillingness of a gatekeeper to let go of a fruitless new product development (NPD) project wastes valuable resources and hampers NPD performance. The onset of such escalation of commitment is likely to occur already in the front end of NPD, where high ambiguity and complexity make it hard to distinguish fruitless from potentially successful projects. This study investigates if a gatekeeper’s thinking style—whether they think rationally or whether they follow their intuition—can prevent escalation of commitment in the front end. Theory on cognition provides arguments for and against either thinking style’s influence on escalation of commitment, but empirical evidence on this matter is lacking. Our study demonstrates that gatekeepers who think rationally are less likely to escalate their commitment than those who follow their intuition. This result holds both in a correlational study of dispositional thinking styles, as well as in an individual‐level randomized experiment in which the thinking style of experienced practitioners before they take gate decisions is induced. Our findings provide ample opportunities for improving existing front end gate review practices, such as allocating candidates for gatekeeper positions based on their thinking style, training gatekeepers to think rationally, and increasing the use of gate‐decision rules and templates.     

Architectural design education: in varietate unitas

A fascinating and rich landscape of personal views and approaches can be seen in architectural design and in architectural design education. This variation may be confusing for students. This paper focuses on the question: is the framework of generic elements that we developed for explicating the design process helpful to compare the differences in architectural design approaches? The results of interviewing a variety of 15 architectural, urban and landscape designers show all kinds of personal approaches that have a set of five underlying generic elements in common. Therefore, the framework may be helpful for teachers and students to describe these personal approaches and may help students in understanding differences and similarities and in finding out what their own personal approach may be.     

Passive Hedge Fund Replication – Beyond the Linear Case

In this paper we extend Hasanhodzic and Lo (2007) by assessing the out‐of‐sample performance of various non‐linear and conditional hedge fund replication models. We find that going beyond the linear case does not necessarily enhance the replication power. On the other hand, we find that selecting factors on the basis on an economic analysis allows for a substantial improvement in out‐of‐sample replication quality, whatever the underlying form of the factor model. Overall, we confirm the findings in Hasanhodzic and Lo (2007) that the performance of the replicating strategies is systematically inferior to that of the actual hedge funds.     

Does the welfare regime impact the telework gender stress gap?

After decades of slow diffusion, the acceptance of telework has dramatically accelerated during the pandemic crisis, becoming a mainstream work practice. However, little is still known on the impact of telework design on employee stress, particularly when stress is high due to a major health crisis, at a time when it is crucial that organizations help buffer it. Using the welfare regime literature, we study the effects of telework demands/resources factors on stress and the moderating effects of gender in more or less egalitarian welfare regimes, during a pandemic crisis. Analyzing data collected from 4602 respondents in France and Quebec, we find that telework demands (family interference with work, organizational isolation, emotional isolation) impact stress positively in both welfare regimes. We also find that the gender stress gap is higher in a more gender-inegalitarian welfare regime than in a more gender-egalitarian welfare regime. Men's and women's stress is not impacted in the same manner in the two contexts studies. Contributions to research and practice are discussed, along with limitations and potential future research avenues.     

Barriers to knowledge spillovers and regional convergence in an evolutionary model

This paper will present a multi-region/multi-country model in which inter-regional knowledge spillovers determine the growth of regions. Key parameters in the model are the learning capability of a region and the rate of knowledge generation (R&D). The intensity of spillovers depends on geographical distance between regions. The model is investigated by means of simulation techniques. What results is a core-periphery situation, the exact form of which depends on the assumed spatial structure. The impact of economic integration is investigated by introducing barriers-to-knowledge-spillovers in the model in the form of borders between countries. Contrary to the popular belief and some economic theories, we find that removing such spillover barriers may result in larger disparity of income levels between regions.     

A Markovian cross-impact model

The author describes a cross-impact method which is based on Markov-chain theory. This allows scenarios to be derived which explicitly include the time dimension. An example of the use of the method is included which deals with the installation of nuclear reactors for energy production.     

Soviet interrepublican capital transfers and the republics' level of development, 1966–1991

Conclusions We suggest the following interpretation of the results obtained. In the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet investment policy, directly countered the tendency towards economic divergence between the republics. Gradually, however, the aim ofoutput maximization gained in importance with respect to that ofequality. In the late 1970s, Soviet planners began to regard their economic growth rates as insufficient. Capital redistribution from rich to poor was done away with so as to improve overall Soviet economic performance, and interrepublican economic inequality began to rise soon after. After 1985, the effort to accelerate Soviet economic growth (output maximization in a dynamic setting) came to be referred to by the termuskoreniye. By increasing interrepublican economic inequality, this policy released latent centrifugal forces. We may cautiously conclude that the dissolution of the Soviet empire should be attributed not only toperestroika, but also touskoreniye. In the near future, capital transfers can be expected to come to a complete halt. As a result, interrepublican inequality will increase further still.