This survey compares different portfolio selection frameworks, namely the common mean-variance analysis versus different mean-downside risk analysis, to determine which of these frameworks leads to the most efficient portfolio selection.

In this paper, it is examined whether the structure of constrained submarkets constructed according to three a priori classifications (property type, house value and geographical areas) differs from that of unconstrained submarkets constructed by means of principal component analysis and cluster...

This paper studies the links existing between the Swiss stock market and the five largest stock markets in the world (USA, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany and France) in terms of return and volatility. We find that conditional heteroskedasticity is present in every market and also that...

The paper is a simplified exposition of an early combined phase I-phase II method for linear programming. The method works from an infeasible start. Besides, there is no need for regularity conditions if the method is applied to a primal-dual formulation.

Swiss intitutional investors hold approximately 19% of their wealth in property, and the bulk of the allocation to property is housing. The financial reasons which are often given to motivate this investment strategy are twofold. Firstly, property returns are hypothesised to be lowly correlated...

We propose an alternative apporach to stochastic programming based on Monte-Carlo sampling and stochastic gradient optimization. The procedure is by essence probabilistic and the computed solution is a random variable. The associated objectiev value is doubly random, since it depends two...

Earnings management can be defined as a purposeful intervention by executives into a firm's financial reporting process in order to secure some gains for themselves, for some firm stakeholders (e.g. investors), or from other firm stakeholders (e.g. debtholders). In this context, a firm's...

The preemptive role of the mean of payment in a takeover contest is analysed following the bidder's point of view.

This paper proposes and tests an approximation of the solution of a class of piecewise deterministic control problems, typically used in the modeling of manufacturing flow processes. This approximation uses a stochastic programming approach on a suitably discretized and sampled system. The...

The seminal study by Fama and MacBeth (1973) initiated a stream of papers testing for the cross-sectional relation between return and risk. The debate wether beta is a valid measure of risk has been renimated by Fama and French (1992) and subsequent studies. Rather than focusing on exogenous...