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This article examines how university students assess the coordination of the courses their programmes contain and how course coordination affects how content they are with their studies. The study is based on survey data from more than 5700 students, collected through Lund University's Student Barometer. The survey examines the students' views on course coordination based on content, workload, administrative procedures and whether or not teachers of different courses provide coherent information. The analysis shows that the coordination of courses has a significant impact on how students experience their studies. The better the course coordination, the more satisfaction students will get from their studies; and the correlation remains stable when several other factors of importance for student satisfaction are included in the analysis. The conclusion of the study is thus that course coordination clearly contributes to explaining variations in students' appreciation of their university studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education is often framed as a means to social mobility and increased earnings. However, the value of university education in the United States is coming under scrutiny in regard to its costs. This article examines a university education's return on investment (ROI) from attending different types of universities in the United States. Unlike previous research, this study focuses on the variation of university institutional characteristics and their impact on ROI. This study analysed data from the US Department of Education College Scorecard, focusing on institutional factors, such as public/private, student body characteristics, research intensity, student diversity and selectivity. The results confirm that highly selective universities have a greater ROI, public universities overall have a better ROI, Research 1 universities have the higher ROI and private Research 1 institutions have the highest ROI. Implications for educational administration and university selection criteria are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy technologies play a crucial role in solving global energy and environmental issues, and the pace of the energy transition directly depends on improving their efficiency. Presently, the development and implementation of renewable energy systems are ensured mainly through state funding, the possibilities of which are limited. The potential of attracting private investments depends directly on their impact on companies' profitability indicators, and the uncertainty regarding the return on investments is one of the main barriers affecting investors' decision-making. Based on a vector autoregressive model for analysing the stationary time series, the paper explores the impact of long-term investments and research and development costs in renewable energy technologies on the financial performance of ten of the largest companies operating in this field. The study's results showed that investments and spending on research and development positively affect such companies' profitability indicators as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, earnings before interest and tax, net income, and return on investment. The obtained results can be used to substantiate the economic effectiveness of investments in developing and improving renewable energy technologies when forming the companies' financial policies to support them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of patent eligibility on the development of technological innovations for medical diagnosis in the U.S. Topics mentioned include the role of patents in providing incentives for private companies to invest in technological innovations, an explanation of taxation and appropriation in public investment, and the use of patent system in creating property rights, a market in technology, and a return on investments for inventors.

The federal tax code contains a number of provisions that reduce taxes on personal and business investment income. Many of these provisions fall into two categories: yield exemption provisions, which reduce taxes on investment returns, and tax deferral provisions, which reduce taxes on investment principal. While these two families of tax provisions are sometimes said to be equivalent, there are important differences between them. This Note focuses on one under-appreciated difference between yield exemption and tax deferral: the amount of risk to which the federal government is exposed. Under a tax deferral approach, the federal government's expected revenue is higher but more uncertain, as revenue collections depend on the performance of taxpayers' investments. This Note argues that policies that raise revenue by exposing the federal government to greater risk could be more efficient than other avenues of raising federal revenue. The federal government is able to take on market risk at a relatively low social cost, because of its high liquidity and ability to diversify risk across generations. While there are many possible ways for the government to raise revenue by taking on more risk, this Note argues that the tax code is a promising vehicle for doing so. All in all, this analysis adds a reason why tax deferral provisions are preferable to yield exemption provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst diminishing federal investment in Adult Basic Education (ABE), there is growing interest in return on investment (ROI) as an economic rationale to support ABE funding. Against this backdrop, we provide an overview of the ROI concept and methods and the empirical evidence on ABE program impacts to broaden the discourse among practitioners and advocates. We point out that the most crucial building blocks necessary for ROI estimations are missing in the literature. We contextualize the current status of the literature by discussing challenges in ABE program evaluations and limitations in ROI methods. We then further our discussions by offering a recommendation for ROI estimation and alternative approaches to ROI. We conclude by calling for an expanded public discourse, beyond ROI, on the social benefits of funding ABE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of survey-based measures in volatility forecasting. We argue that an aggregate volatility forecast built up from individual forecasts should be the sum of individual expected volatilities and the dispersion in mean return forecasts. We use data coming from a repeated survey to capture volatility expectations and mean returns of investors, and to produce aggregate volatility forecasts. Our survey-based volatility forecasts are consistent and quantitatively similar with forecasts based on GARCH and implied volatility models. This result is robust to both in-sample and out-of-sample comparisons and in response to news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enormous progress has been made in the field of rheumatology in the past several decades, historically led by publicly funded academic innovators but in more recent times with much greater involvement of the pharmaceutical industry. This shift in resources has created a complex new model for reinvestment in the medical community in which the vast majority of private funds are redirected towards influencing the prescription behaviour of practitioners through 'key opinion leaders', with the main purpose of enhancing and perpetuating profit rather than innovation and critical thinking, and often at the expense of partnerships with scientists (that is, basic and translational researchers) and academic collaborations. This new episteme brings multiple opportunities to rethink approaches to sustaining long-term critical research in the field, ultimately maximizing the return on investment: scientific knowledge for the benefit of patients and society. Central to such strategies should be the rebalancing of academia-industry partnerships towards academic research and the involvement of 'innovation and knowledge leaders', rather than mostly key opinion leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, Jiang et al. (Statist. Probab. Lett. 101, 83–91) obtained the asymptotic formulas for the large deviations for the stochastic present value of aggregate claims in the renewal risk model with Pareto-type claims and stochastic return on investments, where the price process of the investment portfolio is described as a geometric Lévy process. In the paper, we extend the above results to a nonstandard compound renewal risk model with widely upper orthant dependent and dominatedly-varying-tailed claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural development projects have a poor track record of success mainly due to risks and uncertainty involved in implementation. Cost-benefit analysis can help allocate resources more effectively, but scarcity of data and high uncertainty makes it difficult to use standard approaches. Bayesian Networks (BN) offer a suitable modelling technology for this domain as they can combine expert knowledge and data. This paper proposes a systematic methodology for creating a general BN model for evaluating agricultural development projects. Our approach adapts the BN model to specific projects by using systematic review of published evidence and relevant data repositories under the guidance of domain experts. We evaluate a large-scale agricultural investment in Africa to provide a proof of concept for this approach. The BN model provides decision support for project evaluation by predicting the value—measured as net present value and return on investment—of the project under different risk scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the interplay of transmission and storage investments in a multistage game that we translate into a bilevel market model. In particular, on the first level we assume that a transmission system operator chooses optimal line investments and a corresponding optimal network fee. On the second level we model competitive firms that trade energy on a zonal market with limited transmission capacities and decide on their optimal storage facility investments. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to analyze interdependent transmission and storage facility investments in a zonal market environment that accounts for the described hierarchical decision structure. As a first best benchmark, we also present an integrated, single-level problem that may be interpreted as a long-run nodal pricing model. Our numerical results show that adequate storage facility investments of firms may in general have the potential to reduce the amount of line investments of the transmission system operator. However, our bilevel zonal pricing model may yield inefficient investments in storages, which may be accompanied by suboptimal network facility extensions as compared to the nodal pricing benchmark. In this context, the chosen zonal configuration of the network will highly influence the equilibrium investment outcomes including the size and location of the newly invested facilities. As zonal pricing is used for instance in Australia or Europe, our models may be seen as valuable tools for evaluating different regulatory policy options in the context of long-run investments in storage and network facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the ruin problem with investment in a general framework where the business part X is a Lévy process and the return on investment R is a semimartingale. Under some conditions, we obtain upper and lower bounds on the finite and infinite time ruin probabilities as well as the logarithmic asymptotic for them. When R is a Lévy process, we retrieve some well-known results. Finally, we obtain conditions on the exponential functionals of R for ruin with probability 1, and we express these conditions using the semimartingale characteristics of R in the case of Lévy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To determine the convenience of investing in more years of education after graduating from high school, the aim is to analyze a scenario under uncertainty as well as the household valuation of risk given the US subprime bubble. By using real option value and expected utility the main results are: 1) The optimal choice is to invest in more years of education immediately after graduating from high school; 2) The expected utility of investing is higher for risk-averse households and 3) No important differences were found in the observed periods, except with the reduction in wages between 2009 and 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the influence of financial asset historical price path characteristics on investors' risk perception, return beliefs and investment propensity. To that end, we run a series of survey experiments in which we present various price patterns to individuals with vested interest in financial matters. Our findings reveal that price paths with identical daily and monthly returns (and consequently identical return standard deviation) can lead to substantially different risk perception by investors, indicating that historical volatility is insufficient to explain risk perception. Salient features such as highs, lows and crashes are the most influential drivers of perceived risk in price paths. Return forecasts are primarily driven by past overall returns and the most recent price developments. Perceived risk and return beliefs strongly predict investment propensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any business entity is based on labour, nature, capital and entrepreneurial ability in order to achieve the proposed objectives. The vast majority of the company assets are usually consumed over a longer or shorter period of time, passing on their value to manufactured/traded goods, services provided or works performed. The dynamic environment in which companies carry out their activity and the continuous desire to develop/expand with the purpose of increasing their economic performance/minimize risks, determine them to identify and select new investment opportunities. The article focuses on emphasizing the role and use of the accounting information in substantiating direct investment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to optimize the investment portfolio of the international financial market, this paper selects the important stock index of the seven major stock markets in the world. First, we use the more flexible APARCH model to describe the "stylized facts" of the stock index return sequence. In the portfolio optimization model, the R-vine Copula, which is selected by the maximum spanning tree (MST) algorithm is used to describe the interdependent structure of the seven stock markets, and then measure portfolio risk under R-vine Copula dependent structure CVaR. Finally, the Mean-CVaR portfolio model was established under the R-vine Copula dependent structure condition. And compare Mean-VaR, Mean-CVaR and Mean-CVaR model based on R-vine Copula dependency structure. The empirical results shows that the interdependence between assets can be used to optimize the portfolio effect, reducing the risk of portfolio risk while increasing the rate of return. The Mean-CVaR model based on the R-vine Copula dependent structure is better than the Mean-CVaR model, while the Mean-VaR model has a relatively poor performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the risk-return of financing and find the optimum financing instruments portfolio of Islamic microfinance institutions (IMFI).The optimum portfolio financing is determined by the minimum coefficients of variation of financing instruments portfolio, namely Murabahah, Mudharabah-Musyarakah, and Ijarah. The methodology of this study is quantitative, which is using risk and return theory to compute risk, return, variance, and coefficient of variation of financing instruments portfolio. The solver program of Microsoft Excel is used to find the optimum combination and composition of financing portfolio. This research found that ijarah financing has the highest return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are a broad challenge for decision-makers. NCDs account for seven out of every 10 deaths globally, with 42 percent occurring prematurely in individuals under age 70. Despite their heavy toll, NCDs are underfunded, with only around two percent of global funding dedicated to the disease set. Country governments are responsible for funding targeted actions to reduce the NCD burden, but among other priorities, many have yet to invest in the health-system interventions and policy measures that can reduce the burden. This article examines “investment cases” as a potential mechanism for catalyzing attention to—and funding for—NCDs. In Jamaica, using the UN inter-agency OneHealth Tool, we conducted an economic analysis to estimate the return-on-investment from scaling up strategic clinical interventions, and from implementing or intensifying policy measures that target NCD risk factors. In addition, we conducted an institutional and context (ICA) analysis, interviewing stakeholders across sectors to take stock of promising policy pathways (e.g., areas of general consensus, political appetite and opportunity) as well as challenges to implementation. The economic analysis found that scaling up clinical interventions that target CVD, diabetes, and mental health disorders, and policy measures that target tobacco and alcohol use, would save over 6,600 lives between 2017–2032, and avert JMD 81.3 billion (USD 640 million) in direct and indirect economic costs that result from mortality and morbidity linked to NCDs. The ICA uncovered government economic growth targets and social priorities that would be aided by increased attention to NCDs, and it linked these targets and priorities to the economic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Franklin Templeton Investments is a worldwide asset management company that provides services to clients in more than 170 countries. Unlike investment funds, mutual funds do not have legal personality, therefore they are merely baskets that associate assets. High past equity returns are not a guarantee of future earnings. Individual funds are often praised for the positive results they have achieved in the past, but even experienced portfolio managers cannot guarantee future returns despite their past successes in the market. The main purpose of this paper is to compare the competitiveness of Franklin Templeton fund managers. Among the time-tested indicators and suitable markers for our research on the validation of an active mutual fund with its benchmark index, the information ratio and sharp ratio have been included in the present study. Recent studies suggest that fund managers cannot achieve better results than those set in their benchmark. Managers do not utilize a simple set-up with a given portfolio, and thus their competitiveness would seem to compare unfavorably to results achieved by so-called passive investment. It can be noted that over the course of 15 years, the longest single time period that was analyzed, out of 22 equity funds, only four sets of results exceeded the benchmark. However, if regular fees are also taken into consideration to reflect more pragmatically the benefits for the investor, none of the funds analyzed in the present study failed to overcome the set benchmark during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, we can invest in projects that are distributed around the world through online investment platforms. Will the spatial distance between these projects and ourselves affect our investment preferences? The present research aims to experimentally examine the impact of spatial distance on intertemporal preferences for investment returns and to explore the underlying mediating effect of the sense of control. Three studies were devised to address this topic. Studies 1 and 2 used two methods to manipulate the spatial distance between the location of investment projects and the location of investors. Participants were more impatient with investment returns when the investment project was located farther away. In other words, they preferred lower but earlier returns in intertemporal choice. Moreover, participants' sense of control over the investment project mediated the relationship between spatial distance and intertemporal preferences. Using a priming method, Study 3 showed that participants' impatience for investment returns in investments with different spatial distances could be remedied by giving them generalized control. Theoretical implications for studies regarding psychological distance and intertemporal decision making and practical implications for investments are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investors' perception of past portfolio returns predicts their investment behavior, but does this relationship mediate by overconfidence? Taking into account different aspects of overconfidence, this paper examines whether overconfidence manifested as illusion of control, miscalibration and better-than-average mediates the association between perception of past portfolio returns and investment behavior. In a survey study with individual and institutional investors from Malaysia, the results indicate that perception of higher past portfolio returns increases investors' trading, percentage of risky share investment and the number of financial asset holding, through the mediating channel of better-than-average effect. While individual investors are influenced by this overconfidence mechanism, institutional investors are not sensitive. This finding has theoretical implication for overconfidence model, house money effect and naïve reinforcement learning. Practically, the results imply that individual investors should be careful about underlying overconfidence biases as it can lead to inefficient decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The aim of this study is to analyze whether managers, practitioners and individual investors could obtain higher risk-adjusted returns by allocating their investments to funds that integrate specific levels of socially responsible (SR) criteria in their portfolios. This is achieved by comparing the performance of mutual funds according to their SR characteristics: environmental, governance, social, and sustainability attributes. For a large sample of 3920 equity SR mutual funds around the world, performance is measured using a multifactor model that incorporates relevant benchmarks according to the fund investment objectives, and using Carhart's (1997) methodology to measure mutual fund performance persistence. In general, fund performance is not significant, the average being negative and close to zero. Funds achieving relatively high levels of SR attributes in their portfolios seem to experience overall worse performances. This evidence is, however, mainly driven by the behavior of worst-performing funds. Moreover, investing in the previous best SR funds could lead investors to greater overall returns in most areas and levels of SR attributes considered. This evidence highlights the role of managers in enhancing the returns of a portfolio with a well-defined SR investment policy. Therefore, there is no incompatibility between pursuing higher ethical (and sustainable) values as well as greater financial performances from investments—provided managers have the skills necessary to choose the right SR funds. Highlights • We compare the performance of socially responsible (SR) funds. • Funds with high SR attributes experience overall worse performances. • Investing in the previous best SR funds leads to greater overall returns. • The evidence highlights managers' role for designing SR investment policies. • Ethical and sustainable values are compatible with greater performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to mitigate the reliance on fossil fuels as main power sources for expressway service areas in South Korea, a ground sourced heat pump (GSHP) is explored as an alternative power source, especially for high-oil-consuming service areas, and its economic feasibility is evaluated using three investment financing metrics: Payback Period, Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). Fuel consumption and energy load data collected from 174 (out of 197) expressway service areas are analyzed to characterize their energy profile, and along with the energy per unit price, 20 simulation targets (service areas) with high oil consumption are selected to maximize the potential benefits of the GSHP system. Rather than a conventional peak load design concept, a base load (an energy load corresponding to 65% of total annual energy) is introduced for an optimal system design and operation. A pilot test building is constructed to verify the coefficient of performance (COP) of a GSHP system applicable to the target service areas. The results show that the payback period of GSHP systems is less than three years, regardless of energy loads and deployment options (new and retrofit). In addition, positive net present values and higher internal return rates suggest the proposed GSHP systems should be a viable option to save operation costs while maintaining higher energy efficiency. Finally, the potential greenhouse gas reductions of GSHP systems relative to oil furnace/air conditioning systems are calculated over the selected service areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any research on strategies for reaching business excellence aims at revealing the appropriate course of actions any executive should consider. Thus, discussions take place on how effective a performance measurement system can be estimated, or/and validated. Relevant questions can be raised, like: can one find an adequate measure (i) on the performance result due to whatever level of investment, and (ii) on the timing of such investments? We argue that extreme value statistics provide the answer. We demonstrate that the level and timing of investments allow to be forecasting small and medium size enterprises (SME) performance, — at financial crisis times. The ”investment level” is taken as the yearly total tangible asset (TTA). The financial/economic performance indicators defining ”growth” are the sales or total assets variations; ”profitability” is defined from returns on investments or returns on sales. Companies on the Italian Stock Exchange STAR Market serve as example. It is found from the distributions extreme values that outlier companies (with positive performance) are those with the lowest but growing TTA. In contrast, the SME with low TTA, but which did not increase its TTA, before the crisis, became a ”negative outlier”. The outcome of these statistical findings should suggest strategies to SME board members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Los mileniales alcanzaron la mayoría de edad en medio de una gran incertidumbre económica y mercados financieros volátiles. Enfrentan un conflicto entre el bajo riesgo que están dispuestos a asumir por sus inversiones y la necesidad de obtener alto retorno para financiar su jubilación. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective -- Previous research by this author has stated that the market overreaction phenomenon occurs in the Indonesian capital market and the CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) is able to explain portfolio returns. However, CAPM is still debated along with the emergence of the other asset pricing models, such as the multifactor model proposed by Fama and French. The aim of this research is to test the ability of that model to explain the returns of portfolios formed under market overreaction conditions. Methodology/Technique -- The data used in this study is the same as that of the previous research, which includes winner and loser portfolio data formed in market overreaction conditions, particularly on the Indonesian Stock Exchange, between July 2005 and December 2015. The multifactor models used include a three-factor model consisting of the factors of market, firm size, firm value, and a five-factor model with the added factors of profitability and investment. To obtain more accurate results, GARCH econometric models were also used in addition to standard test models for obtaining unbiased results. Findings -- This research concludes that market factors (Rm-Rf), firm size (SMB), and firm value (HML), are able to explain the winner and loser portfolio returns well. However, when the factors of profitability (RMW) and investment (CMA) are added into the three-factor model, the RMW and CMA explained the returns negatively and inconsistently when the GARCH model is implemented. Novelty -- These results imply that the three-factor model is more accurate than the five-factor model, contrary to the previous findings of Fama and French. Type of Paper: Empirical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the oil project optimal portfolio selection under uncertain environment where cash flows of the projects are mostly determined by experts’ estimations due to the lack of historical investment data. The oil project investment is usually distinguished by its high input, high risk and highly fluctuating ROI sensitive to the economic, political and technology uncertainties. Besides, in most of the cases, it is quite difficult to find reliable referential historical data for a specific project. All these peculiarities make actual oil project investment decision under high uncertainties. In this paper, we use normal uncertain variables to describe the cash flows and estimate the uncertainty distribution of the cash flows by experts’ experimental data. Then, under the constraint of controlling for bankruptcy, we give uncertain programming models to construct portfolios that maximize the expected returns and minimize the sine cross-entropy of the actual return from a prior return. Finally, we provide some numerical examples that fit different risk preference assumptions to further illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Return on investment from animal research in Australia is about half that from investment in crop research. Return on investment in animal research and its application could be enhanced by improving (1) selection of areas for research, (2) application of existing knowledge and (3) adherence to the scientific method. (1) The flat response curve in outputs to changing inputs around the optimum for most agricultural systems means that research investments must be directed towards new technologies rather than refining existing technologies. New technologies have been responsible for advances in all human endeavours. Many new technologies are derived from curiosity research, but processes can also be adopted to identify specific industry-related research priorities. These processes include statistical analysis of historical data, critical evaluation of factors limiting enterprise productivity and profitability, and application of simulation models. These methods can identify changes in industry practice that would have marked effects on productivity. Athorough review of the literature is needed to determine whether the change could be achieved through adoption of existing knowledge or whether new research is required. (2) Adoption of existing knowledge is frequently poor because of the way it is presented to enterprise managers and the perceived risks from changing practices. A method is described to improve adoption, while controlling the risks associated with higher productivity. The method targets the correct and consistent application of a small number of farm practices, which, if not undertaken precisely, would have a major impact on productivity or sustainability. Application of the method has been highly successful in improving enterprise productivity and profitability. However, these improvements tend to wane over time because of the rigour involved and monotony associated with repeated actions. Sustained improvements in productivity should come in the future as more electronic-based technologies are employed to take essential measurements, interpret the information collected and automatically control systems through real-time processing. (3) Other contributors to a poor return on research investment are lack of strict adherence to the scientific method, inadequate experimental design and insufficient application of statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extreme interconnectedness of energy and economic systems will tend to confound any attempt to estimate the energy return on investment at anything other than the global scale. Here, I apply a very simple model of global energy use to specify the dynamic characteristics of global-scale Energy Returns On Investment (EROI G ). This suggests that the observed long-run relative growth rate of ~ 2.5% yr − 1 in global primary energy use is associated with an equilibrium return from infrastructure investments of 2:1, with returns accruing with a time constant of 40 years. The analysis also attempts to show how growth leads to reductions in the supply efficiency of energy, and how this decline is offset by increases in the efficiency with which industrial society can extract useful work from primary energy flows. This observed preservation of the overall energy efficiency of the global energy system implicates variations in the decay/decommissioning rate of infrastructure in observed ‘long-wave’ like variations in the relative growth rate of global primary energy use, and hence EROI G . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimal investment ratios for a set of stocks and other financial products can be obtained by the conventional portfolio theory based on quantitative data such as returns and risks. However, quantitative data are sometimes unavailable, thus qualitative information provided by experts or decision makers should be used. Based on the foregoing, we propose new portfolio selection approaches based on such qualitative information which is represented herein as hesitant fuzzy elements. For general investors and risk investors, we develop two qualitative portfolio models based on the max-score rule and the score-deviation trade-off rule, respectively. Furthermore, the deviation and score trisection approaches are developed to distinguish the three types of risk investors, which also help to construct the corresponding qualitative portfolio models. In addition, we investigate the investment opportunities and efficient frontiers of these proposed qualitative portfolio models. Also, the specific portfolio selection processes are provided. Finally, an example of selecting the optimal portfolio of risk investment is provided. On the basis of the above study and example, we can conclude that the proposed qualitative portfolio models used for the three types of risk investors are effective. The given portfolio selection processes can be reasonably used in practical qualitative risk investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Building on an approach applied to cardiovascular and cancer research, we estimated the economic returns from United Kingdom public- and charitable-funded musculoskeletal disease (MSD) research that arise from the net value of the improved health outcomes in the United Kingdom.Methods: To calculate the economic returns from MSD-related research in the United Kingdom, we estimated (1) the public and charitable expenditure on MSD-related research in the United Kingdom between 1970 and 2013; (2) the net monetary benefit (NMB), derived from the health benefit in quality adjusted life years (QALYs) valued in monetary terms (using a base-case value of a QALY of £25,000) minus the cost of delivering that benefit, for a prioritised list of interventions from 1994 to 2013; (3) the proportion of NMB attributable to United Kingdom research; and (4) the elapsed time between research funding and health gain. The data collected from these four key elements were used to estimate the internal rate of return (IRR) from MSD-related research investments on health benefits. We analysed the uncertainties in the IRR estimate using a one-way sensitivity analysis.Results: Expressed in 2013 prices, total expenditure on MSD-related research from 1970 to 2013 was £3.5 billion, and for the period used to estimate the rate of return, 1978-1997, was £1.4 billion. Over the period 1994-2013 the key interventions analysed produced 871,000 QALYs with a NMB of £16 billion, allowing for the net NHS costs resulting from them and valuing a QALY at £25,000. The proportion of benefit attributable to United Kingdom research was 30% and the elapsed time between funding and impact of MSD treatments was 16 years. Our best estimate of the IRR from MSD-related research was 7%, which is similar to the 9% for CVD and 10% for cancer research.Conclusions: Our estimate of the IRR from the net health gain to public and charitable funding of MSD-related research in the United Kingdom is substantial, and justifies the research investments made between 1978 and 1997. We also demonstrated the applicability of the approach previously used in assessing the returns from cardiovascular and cancer research. Inevitably, with a study of this kind, there are a number of important assumptions and caveats that we highlight, and these can inform future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the adoption of technological changes in library services. It discusses the complex calculation of return on investment for academic libraries since library services are intangible. It provides an assessment on whether the projects to digitize the books from library holding through library cataloging provides absolute value. In the concept of social return on investment, the value of a catalog includes the value of knowledge contained in a library, the availability of materials, accuracy and updated files. It states that with the vast digital resources that are made available to users, there is no question that libraries are worth every penny of its investment in technology.

The high-tech industry has the characteristics of long term, high investment, high risk and high yield. Therefore, countries have increased the construction and improvement of investment and financing of high-tech industry. Although China has gradually constructed the high-tech industry investment and financing system supported by the government and the market after reform and opening. In general, it is a far cry from the developed countries in the west, and the strategy of "The Belt and Road" brings new opportunities and challenges to the development of hightech enterprises. In view of this, based on the brief introduction of relevant basic concepts and the analysis of the present situation of the investment and financing of high and new enterprises in China and the analysis of the system, this paper puts forward some concrete strategies for constructing the investment and financing system of hightech industries taking the investment and financing system of high-tech industries as the starting point. It is hoped that the discussion in this paper will be of reference value for the theoretical research and practical exploration of the investment and financing of high-tech enterprise in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - People often face constraints such as a lack of time or information in taking decisions, which leads them to use heuristics. In these situations, fast and frugal rules may be useful for making adaptive decisions with fewer resources, even if it leads to suboptimal choices. When applied to financial markets, the recognition heuristic predicts that investors acquire the stocks that they are aware of, thereby inflating the price of the most recognized stocks. This paper aims to study the profitability against the market of the most recognized stocks in Europe. Design/methodology/approach - In this paper, the authors perform a survey and use Google Trends to study the profitability against the market of the most recognized stocks in Europe. Findings - The authors conclude that a recognition heuristic portfolio yields poorer returns than a market portfolio. In contrast, from the data collected on Google Trends, weak evidence was found that strong increases in companies monthly search volumes may lead to abnormal returns in the followingmonth. Research limitations/implications - The applied investment strategy does not account for transaction costs, which may jeopardize its profitability given the fact that it is necessary to revise the portfolio on a monthly basis. Despite the results obtained, they are useful to understanding the performance of recognition heuristic strategies over a comprehensive time horizon and it would be interesting to depict its viability during different market conditions. This analysis could provide additional information about a preferable scenario for employing our strategies and ultimately, enhance the profitability of recognition heuristic strategies. Practical implications - Through the exhaustive analysis performed here on the recognition heuristic in the European stock market, it is possible to conclude that no evidence was found for the viability of exploring this type of strategy. In fact, the investors would always gain better returns when adopting a passive investment strategy. Therefore, it would be wise to assume that the European market presents at least a degree of efficiency where no investment would yield abnormal returns following the recognition heuristic. Originality/value - The main objective of this paper is to study the performance of the recognition heuristic in the financial markets and to contribute to the knowledge in this field. Although many authors have already studied this heuristic when applied to financial markets, there is a lack of consensus in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the social impact investment behavior of private investors in a nonprofit setting. In particular, the influences of three effects-financial return, social impact, and age-on social impact investment behavior are tested in an online survey experiment. The study sample includes bank clients ( N = 145) from Germany's first and largest bank exclusively focused on social and ecological investments. The results with regard to the financial return effects are in line with for-profit research that social impact investors are willing to accept 1% lower financial returns. In addition, younger philanthropists are more likely to contribute part of their money to social impact investments. Further findings reveal that the perceived innovativeness of the project has a consistently positive effect on social impact investment behavior. People with certain profile characteristics (e.g., entrepreneurial spirits) also are more likely to participate in social impact investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is aimed at study of the influence of industrial structure of regional economy on its tax system risk level. The tax systems risk level of Russian regions in 2006 - 2014 was assessed applying the H. Markowitz portfolio approach under the assumption that regional "portfolio" consists of main economic activities. It allowed us to evaluate contribution of various economic activities to total tax system risk, to decompose it into internal and external by origin and to identify the critical zones of instability in Russian regions. The coefficients of variation of tax yield rate revealed different relative impact of the economic activities on instability of regional tax systems. Besides, we found mainly positive albeit changing in strength correlation between internal and total tax system risk level and tax yield rate in economic activities. The diversification level of regional economies was evaluated by means of standard deviation of regional industrial structure from country structure considered as a benchmark. Inclusion of this level along with the tax yield rate and a set of control variables into two developed regressions estimated with GRP-weighted least-square method allowed us to confirm positive influence of diversification on the tax systems stability. Our results may be applicable to management of tax system risks at the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investment in the capabilities of the world's 1·2 billion adolescents is vital to the UN's Sustainable Development Agenda. We examined investments in countries of low income, lower-middle income, and upper-middle income covering the majority of these adolescents globally to derive estimates of investment returns given existing knowledge. The costs and effects of the interventions were estimated by adapting existing models and by extending methods to create new modelling tools. Benefits were valued in terms of increased gross domestic product and averted social costs. The initial analysis showed high returns for the modelled interventions, with substantial variation between countries and with returns generally higher in low-income countries than in countries of lower-middle and upper-middle income. For interventions targeting physical, mental, and sexual health (including a human papilloma virus programme), an investment of US$4·6 per capita each year from 2015 to 2030 had an unweighted mean benefit to cost ratio (BCR) of more than 10·0, whereas, for interventions targeting road traffic injuries, a BCR of 5·9 (95% CI 5·8-6·0) was achieved on investment of $0·6 per capita each year. Interventions to reduce child marriage ($3·8 per capita each year) had a mean BCR of 5·7 (95% CI 5·3-6·1), with the effect high in low-income countries. Investment to increase the extent and quality of secondary schooling is vital but will be more expensive than other interventions-investment of $22·6 per capita each year from 2015 to 2030 generated a mean BCR of 11·8 (95% CI 11·6-12·0). Investments in health and education will not only transform the lives of adolescents in resource-poor settings, but will also generate high economic and social returns. These returns were robust to substantial variation in assumptions. Although the knowledge base on the impacts of interventions is limited in many areas, and a major research effort is needed to build a more complete investment framework, these analyses suggest that comprehensive investments in adolescent health and wellbeing should be given high priority in national and international policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project has been conducted at the Dairy Products Company of Ciego de Avila, with the purpose of estimating the investment necessary for a new line for the production of yogurt, based on an alternative that contributes to reduce heat losses, energy consumption and risks to the safety and health of the job. The new technological flow proposed, based on a new microlocalization, is viable and projects favorable criteria of effectiveness, economic efficiency of the investment and distribution in plant. The new distribution of the production line implies a technological investment that amounts to 118 349.5 pesos. The economic indicators of the inversion's efficiency, estimated for a 10-year scenario and less favorable prices of products, are competitive, reporting a net present value of $ 36 019.05, a positive amount, and an internal rate of return of 10.09%, higher than the interest rate of the National Bank of Cuba. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a unified approach to creating investment strategies with various desirable properties for investors. Particularly, we provide a new interpretation and the resulting formulations for state space models to attain our investment objectives, which are possibly specified as generating additional returns over benchmark stock indexes or achieving target risk-adjusted returns. Our state space models with particle filtering algorithm are employed to develop expert systems for investment strategies in highly complex financial markets. More concretely, in our state space framework, we apply a system model to representing portfolio weight processes with various constraints, as well as the standard underlying state variables such as volatility processes. Further, we formulate an observation model to stand for target value processes with non-linear functions of observed and latent variables. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodology through creating excess returns over S&P 500 and generating investment portfolios with fine risk-return profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study proposes to include the financial analysis (FA) in optimal portfolio selection. The role of FA in investment decisions is well recognized. While comparing two stocks on FA of their companies it is important to have both drawn from the same sector of economy. This reason motivated us to propose a sectoral portfolio optimization (SPO) which, instead of looking to optimize among all stocks together, focuses on optimizing stocks within each sector on the basis of FA. These stocks are then pooled together and an optimal portfolio is formed from them with their FA weights and mean returns. In context of FA, the four financial ratios included in present study are return on asset (profitable ratio), debt-assets ratio (solvency ratio), current ratio (liquidity ratio), and price-to-earning ratio (valuation ratio). The risk in a portfolio is quantified using the second order stochastic dominance and to this effect constraints are added in the selection process to generate optimal portfolios for rational risk averse investors. The performance of the optimal portfolios from the proposed model is tested against the portfolios from the traditional second order stochastic dominance model [named (SSDP) in this work], the benchmark index and four 5-star rated mutual funds of India from diversified equity. The out-of-sample analysis is carried on mean returns, Sharpe ratio, Sortino ratio, and also their ability to dominate the benchmark index in almost second order stochastic dominance sense over the tolerable violation regions. The stock price data for the period April 2004 to November 2014 of S&P BSE 500 index is used for testing the models. The optimal portfolios generated from the SPO perform better than the portfolios generated from the (SSDP), the benchmark index and the MFs, indicating effectiveness of FA in SPO framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether investors herd in their decision to order or scrap vessels in the drybulk market. We decompose herding into unintentional and intentional, and test for herd behavior under asymmetric effects with respect to freight market states, cycle phases, risk-return and valuation profiles, and ownership of the vessel. We detect unintentional herd behavior during down freight markets and contractions. Furthermore, we find evidence of spill-over unintentional herding effects from the newbuilding to the scrap market. Finally, asymmetric herd effects are evident between traditional and liberal philosophy towards the ownership of the vessel, and during extreme risk-return and valuation periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the average rate of return on investments financed by aid and by domestic resource mobilisation, using aggregate data. Both returns are expected to vary across countries and time. Consequently we develop a correlated random coefficients model to estimate the average returns. Across different estimators and two different data sources for GDP and investment our findings are remarkably robust; the average gross return on ‘aid investments’ is about 20 per cent. This is in accord with micro estimates of the economic rate of return on aid projects and with aggregate estimates of the rate of return on public capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]