infonet-economy

There is an increasing convergence between postal products and telecom applications which suggests the need for a co-evolution of regulation. But there is hardly any discussion in academia or in practice about the consequences for regulation. Relevant questions are: Which parts of current regulation will become redundant? Is there additional regulation needed due to new bottlenecks...

We investigate the impact of wage comparisons for worker productivity. We present three studies which all use three-person gift-exchange experiments. Consistent with Akerlof and Yellen's (1990) fair wage-effort hypothesis we find that disadvantageous wage discrimination leads to lower efforts while advantageous wage discrimination does not increase efforts on average. Two...

As of April 2010, several Swiss motor insurers offer mobile apps that enable customers to submit a loss report. This article discusses the emergence of mobile apps in the insurance industry and the impact of mobile technology on claims management in motor insurance. We also present a demonstrator that goes beyond existing solutions by integrating a mobile app with a commercial claims...

In this paper, we investigate the performance persistence of hedge funds over time horizons between 6 and 36 months based on a merged sample from the Lipper/TASS and CISDM databases for the time period from 1994 to 2008. Unlike previous literature, we use a panel probit regression approach to identify fund characteristics that are significantly related to performance persistence. We...

This paper examines the performance of US mutual funds investing primarily in convertible bonds. Although convertible-bond funds are popular investment vehicles, their return process is not well understood. We contribute an analysis of the complete universe of US convertible-bond funds proposing a set of multi-factor models for the return generating process. In spite of the well-...

Main academic criticism on the Sharpe ratio concerns its lack in incorporating skewness in performance evaluation. In this note we rewrite the classical Sharpe ratio for skew normal distributions. This new skew-normal Shape ratio consistently moves with skewness and no distorted information on performance is provided. An empirical investigation illustrates skew-normality of mutual...

Purpose
- The purpose of this paper is to introduce and conceptualize the topic of Model?based management (MBM) in organizations.

Design/methodology/approach
- The relevance of different types of models for management is elaborated, and a research agenda for this new topic is proposed.

Findings
- An analysis of the concept, role and function of models...

This study examines the innovation management practices of small firms in Australia, France and Switzerland. The focus was on how firm size, age and growth influence the commercialisation process. A sample of 143 firms was surveyed across the three countries. Findings from the study suggest that the size of the firm, its age and pace of growth are important determinants in...