The following dissertation is a collection of four stand-alone research papers. The focus of my research is on the interplay of immigration, native human-capital investment and the resulting consequences for the labour market outcome of natives and necessary implications for the immigration...

The purpose of this thesis is to argue that the core of a monetary economy is a network of triangular contracts between banks, firms, workers and capital goods suppliers. Not only does this network give rise to the creation and valuation of money but it is the organising feature of modern...

At its core, this dissertation examines the role of information, particularly as it relates to proxies for quality, and how it affects both donor and organization decision processes in the humanitarian space. In Chapter 2 I consider the context of competition within the sub-sector of...

By using a broker, the owner of a house can speed up his search for buyers but must pay a percentage of the sale price as a commission. Nonstationarities inherent in the housing market may make it optimal to market a house “by-owner” at the outset and to retain a broker only if the house...

Portfolio selection has a long tradition in financial economics and plays an integral role in investment management. Portfolio selection provides the framework to determine optimal portfolio choice from a universe of available investments. However, the asset weightings from portfolio selection...

This paper investigates the farm level impacts of multiple peril yield and revenue insurance in an expected value-variance framework. The analysis is conducted using stochastic simulation jointly with numerical optimisation. Simulation is used to compute the means and variances of revenues as...

The objective of this paper was to compare and to analyze three portfolio selection models: Mean-Variance, Minimax and Minimax Weighted. These models were evaluated using historical data (September 1999 to August 2000, January 2001 to December 2001 and February 2002 to January 2003) obtained...

This dissertation consists of four stand-alone research papers which investigate various aspects of hedge fund performance and optimal portfolio choice. The first chapter of this thesis deals with the problem of unobserved hedge fund returns after delisting. It is a joint work with Prof. Jens...

Die Dissertation wendet die fallgestützte Entscheidungstheorie (Case-Based Decision Theory) vorgeschlagen von Gilboa and Schmeidler (1995) auf Entscheidungen in Finanzmärkten an. Betrachtet werden sowohl das individuelle Portfoliowahlproblem eines Investors, wie auch Märkte, in denen...

In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden Modelle für die Portfolio-Optimierung analysiert und implementieren. Dabei stehen quantitative Methoden der Fuzzy-Logik im Vordergrund. Zunächst wird das klassische Portfolio-Modell nach Markowitz dargestellt und dessen Resultate für einen Vergleich mit einem...