The non‐normality of financial asset returns has important implications for hedging. In particular, in contrast with the unambiguous effect that minimum‐variance hedging has on the standard deviation, it can actually increase the negative skewness and kurtosis of hedge portfolio returns....

The Ni layers with good soft magnetic properties have been successfully electroless deposited on PZT layers. To study the thermodynamics and kinetics of electroless Ni-deposition, the effect of bath parameters such as pH and temperature has been discussed. The structural, magnetic and...

Advances in permanent magnets, electronics and design techniques over the past thirty years have led to the development of a new generation of electric machines. Sintered rare-earth neodymium–iron–boron magnets have a magnetic energy product up to an order of magnitude larger than those of...

Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs), used in gas turbine blades, are exposed to oxidation and thermal fatigue conditions. The characterization of TBCs was often performed in laboratory experiments, therefore, its detail failure mechanism is not quite obvious. For better understanding of the...

This paper uses semiparametric time-series methods to model the effects of weather variations on the output growth rate of the construction sector. The paper also employs structural time-series methods to model the cyclical paths of weather variables and uses this information to evaluate the...

This paper uses semiparametric time-series methods to model the non-linear effects of weather variations on the output growth rate of the construction sector. The study is undertaken at both the annual and quarterly frequencies; the results show that weather shocks have significant effects on...

This paper compares the effects of weather shocks on agricultural production in Britain, France and Germany during the late nineteenth century. Using semi- parametric models to estimate the non-linear agro-weather relationship, we find that weather shocks explain between one and two-thirds of...

In this paper, we re-examine the profitability of technical analysis using the Reality Check of White (2000, Econometrica) that corrects the data snooping bias. Comparing to previous studies, we study a more complete “universe” of trading techniques, including not only simple trading rules...