Start-ups are a dominant factor for the economic development of a country. However, the foundation of a company is a complex procedure and many start-ups fail. External support is available from many sources as e.g. business angels, tax advisors, chambers of industry and commerce, banks and...

This paper analyzes the career backgrounds of local government officials in provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs) in China and explains appointment processes of Chinese EPB bureaucrats. Using biographical information of provincial EPB heads and drawing on extensive fieldwork...

Financial services are characterised by the integration of customers while the service is being delivered. This integration leads to interruptions and thus delays in the processing of a customer order until for example the customer provides the missing input. Because customer behaviour can only...

The credit business is an essential part of each banks' activities. With regard to the increasing regulatory obligations, the risk management and the associated minimum capital requirements gain in importance. Banks have got the possibility to determine their credit risk by an internal rating...

In Zeiten stark schwankender Finanzmarkte liegt der Fokus von Investoren insbesondere auf dem mit einer Anlage verbundenen Risiko. Gerade in diesen Marktphasen suchen Investoren nach Moglichkeiten, ihr bestehendes Portfolio weiter zu diversifizieren. Volatilitätsinvestments bieten durch ihre...

The often reported empirical success of trend-following technical timing strategies remains to be puzzling. In previous academic research, many authors admit some prediction power but struggle to substantiate their findings by referring vaguely to insufficient market effciency or unknown hidden...

The application of a technical trading rule, which just provides long and short signals, requires the investor to decide upon the exposure to stake in each trade. Although this position sizing (or money management) crucially affects the risk and return characteristics, recent academic literature...

The vanna-volga method, also called the traders rule of thumb is an empirical procedure that can be used to infer an implied-volatility smile from three available quotes for a given maturity. It is based on the construction of locally replicating portfolios whose associated hedging costs are...

This paper compares the performance of three methods for pricing vanilla options in models with known characteristic function: (1) Direct integration, (2) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), (3) Fractional FFT. The most important application of this comparison is the choice of the fastest method for...