An important challenge of portfolio allocation arises when the (true) characteristics of returns distribution are replaced by some estimates. This introduces estimation risk, which is crucial for portfolio management just like traditional financial risk. This paper contrasts with existing literature by focusing on a different measure of performance. We borrow from practitioners and evaluate dif...

Regulators, investors, consumers, and insurance brokers use insurer financial strength ratings to evaluate the insolvency risk of insurers. This article investigates the factors influencing the decision to obtain a rating or multiple ratings, the determinants of ratings for the three major insurer rating agencies, and reasons for differences in ratings across agencies. This study indicates that...

We analyze selection of an auction format by an informed seller. We model a game with two stages: first, an informed seller announces a good for sale and chooses an auction format from a set of standard auctions; second, privately informed bidders compete for the object. The game has an important signaling element as the auction choice may signal the seller’s type. We study both private and com...

Recall that: L(w) = 1 n E‖Xw − Y ‖ = 1 n E‖Xw − E[Y ]‖ + σ Define our “empirical loss” as: L̂(w) = 1 n ‖Xw − Y ‖ which has no expectation over Y . Note that for a fixed w E[L̂(w)] = L(w) e.g. the empirical loss is an unbiased estimate of the true loss. Suppose we knew the support size q. One algorithm is to simply find the estimator which minimizes the empirical loss and has support only on q coo...

How do lawyers decide which cases to accept? Previous studies suggest that they use a simple risk/return formula to make such decisions. I argue, however, that legal environments also shape lawyers’ decisions. Analyses of in-depth interviews with lawyers across four states demonstrate that lawyers make different decisions about cases in different legal environments. Lawyers in states without to...

This paper discusses the uncertain portfolio selection problem when security returns cannot be well reflected by historical data. It is proposed that uncertain variable should be used to reflect the experts’ subjective estimation of security returns. Regarding the security returns as uncertain variables, the paper introduces a risk curve and develops a mean-risk model. In addition, the crisp fo...

breeding based on selection indices is an effective method for improving complex traits such as yield. to assess the efficiency of different selection methods, 50 genotypes of tall fescue (festuca arundinace) were evaluated under two moisture conditions including full irrigation (normal environment) and deficit irrigation (stress environment). the experiment was conducted according to a randomi...