Download or read book Distorted Probabilities and Choice under Risk written by Clemens Puppe and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the development of modern probability theory in the 17th cen tury it was commonly held that the attractiveness of a gamble offering the payoffs :1:17 ••• ,:l: with probabilities Pl, . . . , Pn is given by its expected n value L:~ :l:iPi. Accordingly, the decision problem of choosing among different such gambles - which will be called prospects or lotteries in the sequel-was thought to be solved by maximizing the corresponding expected values. The famous St. Petersburg paradox posed by Nicholas Bernoulli in 1728, however, conclusively demonstrated the fact that individuals l consider more than just the expected value. The resolution of the St. Petersburg paradox was proposed independently by Gabriel Cramer and Nicholas's cousin Daniel Bernoulli [BERNOULLI 1738/1954]. Their argument was that in a gamble with payoffs :l:i the decisive factors are not the payoffs themselves but their subjective values u( :l:i)' According to this argument gambles are evaluated on the basis of the expression L:~ U(Xi)pi. This hypothesis -with a somewhat different interpretation of the function u - has been given a solid axiomatic foundation in 1944 by v. Neumann and Morgenstern and is now known as the expected utility hypothesis. The resulting model has served for a long time as the preeminent theory of choice under risk, especially in its economic applications.

Download or read book Handbook of Portfolio Construction written by John B. Guerard, Jr. and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-12-12 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portfolio construction is fundamental to the investment management process. In the 1950s, Harry Markowitz demonstrated the benefits of efficient diversification by formulating a mathematical program for generating the "efficient frontier" to summarize optimal trade-offs between expected return and risk. The Markowitz framework continues to be used as a basis for both practical portfolio construction and emerging research in financial economics. Such concepts as the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT), for example, provide the foundation for setting benchmarks, for predicting returns and risk, and for performance measurement. This volume showcases original essays by some of today’s most prominent academics and practitioners in the field on the contemporary application of Markowitz techniques. Covering a wide spectrum of topics, including portfolio selection, data mining tests, and multi-factor risk models, the book presents a comprehensive approach to portfolio construction tools, models, frameworks, and analyses, with both practical and theoretical implications.

Download or read book Prospect Theory written by Daniel Kahneman and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Handbook of the Fundamentals of Financial Decision Making written by Leonard C. MacLean and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013 with total page 941 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook in two parts covers key topics of the theory of financial decision making. Some of the papers discuss real applications or case studies as well. There are a number of new papers that have never been published before especially in Part II.Part I is concerned with Decision Making Under Uncertainty. This includes subsections on Arbitrage, Utility Theory, Risk Aversion and Static Portfolio Theory, and Stochastic Dominance. Part II is concerned with Dynamic Modeling that is the transition for static decision making to multiperiod decision making. The analysis starts with Risk Measures and then discusses Dynamic Portfolio Theory, Tactical Asset Allocation and Asset-Liability Management Using Utility and Goal Based Consumption-Investment Decision Models.A comprehensive set of problems both computational and review and mind expanding with many unsolved problems are in an accompanying problems book. The handbook plus the book of problems form a very strong set of materials for PhD and Masters courses both as the main or as supplementary text in finance theory, financial decision making and portfolio theory. For researchers, it is a valuable resource being an up to date treatment of topics in the classic books on these topics by Johnathan Ingersoll in 1988, and William Ziemba and Raymond Vickson in 1975 (updated 2 nd edition published in 2006).

Download or read book Axiomatic Utility Theory under Risk written by Ulrich Schmidt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first attempts to develop a utility theory for choice situations under risk were undertaken by Cramer (1728) and Bernoulli (1738). Considering the famous St. Petersburg Paradox! - a lottery with an infinite expected monetary value -Bernoulli (1738, p. 209) observed that most people would not spend a significant amount of money to engage in that gamble. To account for this observation, Bernoulli (1738, pp. 199-201) proposed that the expected monetary value has to be replaced by the expected utility ("moral expectation") as the relevant criterion for decision making under risk. However, Bernoulli's 2 argument and particularly his choice of a logarithmic utility function seem to be rather arbitrary since they are based entirely on intuitively 3 appealing examples. Not until two centuries later, did von Neumann and Morgenstern (1947) prove that if the preferences of the decision maker satisfy cer tain assumptions they can be represented by the expected value of a real-valued utility function defined on the set of consequences. Despite the identical mathematical form of expected utility, the theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern and Bernoulli's approach have, however, IFor comprehensive discussions of this paradox cf. Menger (1934), Samuelson (1960), (1977), Shapley (1977a), Aumann (1977), Jorland (1987), and Zabell (1987). 2Cramer (1728, p. 212), on the other hand, proposed that the utility of an amount of money is given by the square root of this amount.

Download or read book On Overlapping Generations Models with Productive Capital written by Günther Lang and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was born out of a five-years research at Sonderforschungsbe reich 303 by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitiit Bonn and was approved as my doctoral thesis by the Rechts-und Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultiit in December 1994. It was my former colleague Wolfgang Peters who had drawn my atten tion to overlapping-generations models and to problems of intergenerational efficiency and distribution. The subtle connection between the latter two has been fascinating me from the very beginning: redistribution of the results of free trade can become necessary from the point of view of efficiency, although no externalities hamper the development of an economy. In spite of being a matured part of economics, neoclassical growth theory had left many questions unsolved, some of them even unrecognized by a large part of our profession. I took up the challenge to contribute to the investigation of some of these thorny problems. One of these issues is the often quoted idea of the inter generational con tract. Although intergenerational transfers can improve intertemporal effi ciency, the design of pension schemes to achieve an improvement of well-being of some generations without hurting that of any other, is not an easy task in an economy with flexible prices. Quite frequently, only interest rate and growth rate are taken into account when deciding on whether a generation wins or looses.

Download or read book Theories of Imperfectly Competitive Markets written by Luis Corchon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most fascinating debates of our times is the discussion over the merits and capabilities of market economies. Very often, one sees strong endorsements to the idea that markets provide an efficient way of allocating resources. Some years ago, opposite views on this issue used to be very popular (at least in Europe) and were held by similarly qualified people. In my opinion, the contribution of economics to this question can not be dismissed on the grounds that economics still in its infancy and that this question is a "practical" one (whatever this means). Economics started with similar naive ideas, two hundred years ago. In particular it has taken a long time to realize that competition does not work in such a smooth way as many classical writers thought it did, and that many facts can not be explained by the theory of perfectly competitive markets. This issue is explored at depth in the Introduction to this Lectures. In this sense the contribution of the Theory of industrial Organization has been to make a convincing case for the view that monopoly and oligopoly can persist in the long run in a world populated by rational agents. Despite of the fact that we are far from having a satisfactory theory of how markets work, progress has been immense, and we certainly understand why current theories are still not completely satisfactory.

Download or read book Adaptive Learning by Genetic Algorithms written by Herbert Dawid and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the learning behavior of genetic algorithms in economic systems with mutual interaction, such as markets. These systems are characterized by a state-dependent fitness function and - for the first time - mathematical results characterizing the long-term outcome of genetic learning in such systems are provided. The usefulness of such results is illustrated by many simulations in evolutionary games and economic models.

Download or read book General Equilibrium with Increasing Returns written by Antonio Villar and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book on general equilibrium in which firms are allowed to exhibit increasing returns to scale (more precisely, in which the convexity of production sets is not assumed). As such, it provides a full fledged general equilibrium model and analyzes the chief questions concerning existence and optimality. Increasing returns is a topic which many economists find it to be simultaneously very imponant, very difficult and very discouraging. It is very important because it refers to a well established technological phenomenon which is essentially incompatible with the functioning of competitive markets. It is very difficult because the standard concepts and tools for the analysis fail (in particular, the supply mappings are not well defined). It is very discouraging because the available models do not seem to solve the basic questions: Normative models where nonconvex firms follow marginal pricing do not achieve efficient outcomes, and positive models cannot incorporate monopolistic competition as a way of defming the behavior of those firms with increasing returns to scale. I would like to think that this monograph will contribute to show that "the increasing returns question" is neither too difficult nor too discouraging. Concerning the difficulty, it will be shown that the analysis can be carried out with essentially the same tools as those applicable to the standard competitive model. As for the relevance of the results available, let me point out the following.

Download or read book Batching and Scheduling written by Carsten Jordan and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In some manufacturing systems significant setups are required to change production from one type of products to another. The setups render the manufacturing system inflexible as for reacting to changes in demand patterns, hence inventories must be maintained to guarantee an acceptable customer service. In this environment, production scheduling faces a number of problems, and this work deals with mathematical models to support the scheduling decisions. Some more background and motivation is given in the following sections, as well as in a case description in Section 1. 3. The synopsis in Section 1. 4 outlines the topics of the work. 1. 1 Motivation of the Planning Problem Consider the production of metal sheets in a rolling mill. If the width of the next type of sheets is greater than the width of the preceding type, then the roll needs a setup: during the rolling process the edges of a sheet cause grooves on the rolls' surface, thus, the surface must be polished if a greater width is run next. Sheets with a smaller width can be run directly, without a setup. Another example in which setups are sequence dependent is a line where cars are sprayed: if the color of the paint changes, the cleaning of the tools requires a setup depending on the sequence of the colors. Only a small setup may be needed for changing from a light to a dark color, but a thorough cleaning of the tools is 2 CHAPTER 1.

Download or read book Network Optimization written by Panos M. Pardalos and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Network optimization is important in the modeling of problems and processes from such fields as engineering, computer science, operations research, transportation, telecommunication, decision support systems, manufacturing, and airline scheduling. Recent advances in data structures, computer technology, and algorithm development have made it possible to solve classes of network optimization problems that until recently were intractable. The refereed papers in this volume reflect the interdisciplinary efforts of a large group of scientists from academia and industry to model and solve complicated large-scale network optimization problems.

Download or read book Rings in Auctions written by Angelo Artale and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In auctions, bidders compete with one another in their attempt to 1 purchase the goods that are up for sale • But buyer competition may be reduced or disappear when a ring of colluding bidders is present. The purpose of the participants to a ring is to eliminate buyer competition and to realize a gain over vendors. When all participants are members of the ring, this is done by purchasing the item at the reserve price and splitting the spoils (the difference between the item market value and the reserve price) among the participants. "The term ring apparently derives from the fact that in a settlement sale following the auction, members of the collusive arrangement form a circle or ring to facilitate observation of their trading behavior by the ring leader" (Cassady jr. (1967)). If the coalition members knew other players' values, the problem faced by the ring might be easily solved: the player with the highest value should submit a serious bid and the other members, on the contrary, only phony bids. However, ring participants do not usually know the values of other members. Therefore, ring members have to find out some mechanism which selects the player who has to bid seriously and, eventually, esta blish side payments paid to each of the losers2.

Download or read book Learning to Become Rational written by Markus Zenner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-09 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1. 1 Rational Expectations and Learning to Become Rational A characteristic feature of dynamic economic models is that, if future states of the economy are uncertain, the expectations of agents mat ter. Producers have to decide today which amount of a good they will produce not knowing what demand will be tomorrow. Consumers have to decide what they spend for consumption today not knowing what prices will prevail tomorrow. Adopting the neo-classical point of view that economic agents are 'rational' in the sense that they behave in their own best interest given their expectations about future states of the ecomomy it is usually assumed that agents are Bayesian deci sion makers. But, as LUCAS points out, there remains an element of indeterminacy: Unfortunately, the general hypothesis that economic agents are Bayesian decision makers has, in many applications, lit tle empirical content: without some way of infering what an agent's subjective view of the future is, this hypothesis is of no help in understanding his behavior. Even psychotic behavior can be (and today, is) understood as "rational", given a sufficiently abnormal view of relevant probabili ties. To practice economics, we need some way (short of psychoanalysis, one hopes) of understanding which decision problem agents are solving. (LucAs (1977, p. 15)) 2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1. 1.

Download or read book Bargaining in Economic and Ethical Environments written by Marlies Klemisch-Ahlert and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two features are combined in this book: the analysis of bargaining experiments and the development of axiomatic bargaining theories. Further, a new type of the latter is derived from observations in the former. The author describes bargaining experiments with different economic and ethical frames as well as developing axiomatic approaches to characterize the corresponding bargaining solutions.

Download or read book Nonlinear Labor Market Dynamics written by Michael Neugart and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nonlinear Labor Market Dynamics discusses adjustment processes in labor markets. Contrary to linear-stochastic approaches this book is based on a non-linear deterministic framework. It is shown that even textbook-like-models of the labor market can generate long lasting adjustment processes, local instabilities, and chaotic movements, once nonlinear relationships and widely accepted adjustment rules are introduced. Thus, labor market dynamics may have an endogenous component that is governed by a nonlinear deterministic core. Of course, all results are tied to the particular models discussed in this book. Nevertheless, these models imply that by incorporating nonlinear relationships, one may arrive at an explanation of labor market behavior where linear stochastic approaches fell. Time series studies for German labor market data support this point of view.

Download or read book Transitional Dynamics and Economic Growth in Developing Countries written by Thomas Steger and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four stylised facts of aggregate economic growth are set up initially. The growth process is interpreted to represent transitional dynamics rather than balanced-growth equilibria. Against this background, the fundamental importance of subsistence consumption is comprehensively analysed. Subsequently, the meaning of the productive-consumption hypothesis for the intertemporal consumption trade-off and the growth process is investigated. Finally, the process of growth is analysed empirically by means of cross-sectional conditional convergence regressions with endogenous control variables.

Download or read book Search Games and Other Applications of Game Theory written by Andrey Garnaev and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is on applications of game theory. The title of this book is not "Game Theory and its Applications" because it does not construct a general theory for considered games. The book contains a lot of examples of applica tion of game theory together with the background of those games considered and a list of unsolved problems. Also we consider only the game where the optimal strategies of the players are found in closed form. This book is an attempt to carryon the approach developed in nice books "Search Games" by Gal and "Geometric Games and their Applications" by Ruckle. The first chapter of this book supplies the required definitions and theorems from game theory. The second chapter deals with discrete search games where both players act simultaneously: the games of protection of a channel from infiltration of a submarine, the submarine versus helicopter game, the matrix search games and others. The third chapter considers the game where the players allocate their contin uous efforts. In these games players face up an alternative either not to come into contest if the cost of efforts seems too high, or come into it. In the last case the player have to decide how much resources they can afford to spend. The allocation models of search, antiballistic protection and marketing are investigated.