Adaptive Bet-Hedging Revisited: Considerations of Risk and Time Horizon

Commodity Futures Hedging, Risk Aversion and the Hedging Horizon

This paper examines the impact of management preferences on optimal futures hedging strategy and associated performance. Applying an expected utility hedging objective, the optimal futures hedge ratio is determined for a range of preferences on risk aversion, hedging horizon and expected returns. Empirical results reveal substantial hedge ratio variation across distinct management preferences a...

Time-dependent fitness effects can drive bet-hedging populations extinct

4 To survive unpredictable environmental change, many organisms adopt bet-hedging 5 strategies that trade short-term population growth for long-term fitness benefits. Be6 cause the benefits of bet-hedging may manifest over long time intervals, bet-hedging 7 strategies may be out-competed by strategies maximizing short-term fitness. Here, we 8 investigate the interplay between two drivers of sel...

What is bet-hedging, really?

Bet Hedging against Demographic Fluctuations.

Biological organisms have to cope with stochastic variations in both the external environment and the internal population dynamics. Theoretical studies and laboratory experiments suggest that population diversification could be an effective bet-hedging strategy for adaptation to varying environments. Here we show that bet hedging can also be effective against demographic fluctuations that pose ...

Life-history evolution in uncertain environments: bet hedging in time.

Many vertebrates, forest herbs, and trees exhibit both variable age at maturity and iteroparity as adaptations to uncertain environments. We analyze a stochastic model that combines these two life-history adaptations with density-dependent fertility. Results for a model with only iteroparity are consistent with previous work; environmental uncertainty favors adult survival over juvenile surviva...