This paper analyzes situations in which a project consisting of several activities is not realized according to plan. Ifthe project is expedited, a reward arises. Analogously, a penalty arises if the project is delayed. This paper considersthe case of arbitrary nondecreasing reward and penalty...

The recent and rapidly growing interest in biofuel as a green energy source has raised concerns about its impact on the prices, returns and volatility of related agricultural commodities. Analyzing the spillover effects on agricultural commodities and biofuel helps commodity suppliers hedge...

This paper shows that the presence of conditional staging in R&D (Research & Development) has a critical impact on portfolio risk, and changes diversification arguments when a portfolio is constructed. When R&D projects exhibit option-like characteristics, correlation between projects plays a...

We propose a semiparametric estimator to determine the effects of explanatory variables on the conditional interquantile expectation (IQE) of the random variable of interest, without specifying the conditional distribution of the underlying random variables. IQE is the expected value of the...

Internationally operating firrns naturally face the decision whether or not to hedge the currencyrisk implied by foreign investments. In a recent paper, Bos, Mahieu and van Dijk (2000) evaluatethe returns from optimal and alternative currency hedging strategies, for a series of 7 models,using...

An expected utility based cost-benefit analysis is in general fragile to its distributional assumptions. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions on the utility function of the expected utility model to avoid this. The conditions ensure that expected (marginal) utility remains finite also...

We investigate the effect of estimation error on backtests of (multi-period) expected shortfall (ES) forecasts. These backtests are based on first order conditions of a recently introduced family of jointly consistent loss functions for Value-at-Risk (VaR) and ES. We provide explicit expressions...