The devil in high heels : drugs, symbolism and Kate Moss

This paper contributes to critical voices on the issue of organisational responses to drugs and employee drug use. It does so by exploring some of the symbolism residing at the heart of organisations’ relations with drugs and drug taking. Our focus is recent media coverage of, and organisational responses to, the UK tabloid media’s exposé of fashion supermodel Kate Moss’s cocaine use. We use this case to explore symbolic relationships between drugs, sex and femininity, and organisation. Through highlighting these symbolic connections we question further the rationality of organisational responses to the ‘spectre’ of drugs and the issue of employee drug use. We conclude by suggesting that workforce drug testing regimes might be fruitfully seen as mechanisms for scapegoating and sacrifice in order to protect the organizational moral order.

A heuristic approach to Asian hedge fund allocation

The article offers information about hedge funds, which refers to pooled investments that are privately organized and professionally managed by investment managers. It examines the statistical properties of the 70 Asian hedge funds and shows the inappropriateness of the traditional mean-variance optimizer to form optimal hedge fund portfolios. The article also introduces a practical heuristic approach using the senti-variance as a measure for downside risk, and describes the risk measures and the methodology to generate optimal hedge fund portfolio.

Book review : The dark pocket of time: war, medicine and the Australian State, 1914-1935 by Kate Blackmore, 2008

Book review of The Dark Pocket of Time: War, Medicine and the Australian State, 1914-1935. By Kate Blackmore. Adelaide: Lythrum Press, 2008

Jo Langdon reviews Ephemeral Waters by Kate Middleton

Review of Kate Middleton's book-length poem, Ephemeral Waters, Giramondo, 2013.

Using fund transfer pricing for comparing financial performance among business units

This study aims to demonstrate by a simplified analysis how fund transfer pricing can be used to measure financial performance taking into account the flow of resources in a bank with only two branches. The present study was developed in three sections. The first section provides information regarding fund transfer pricing and its characteristics. This is followed by a section with an analysis demonstrating how fund transfer pricing can assist top management to evaluate financial performance in a financial institutions with only two business units. Finally, the third section has the concluding remarks about the benefits and limitations of the use of fund transfer pricing. This study uses a simple version of fund transfer pricing system to address a further complex problem which is the exchange of services among business units in a decentralized organization. The analysis has shown how fund transfer pricing can be used to manage a bank, directing the efforts of branch managers.

Because it takes a village to fund the answers: Crowdfunding University Research

Whichever way you look at it, online crowdfunding is ramifying. From its foundations supporting creative industry initiatives, crowdfunding has branched into almost every aspect of public and private enterprise. Niche crowdfunding platforms and models are burgeoning across the globe faster than you can trill “kerching”. Early adopters have been quick to discover that in addition to money, they also get free market information and an opportunity to develop a relationship with their market base. Despite these evident benefits, universities have been cautious entrants in the crowdfunding space and more generally in the emerging ‘collaborative economy’ (Owyang, 2013). There are many cultural and institutional legacies that might explain this reluctance. For example, to date universities have achieved social (and economic) distinction through refining a set of exclusionary practices including, but not limited to, versions of gatekeeping, ranking and credentialing. These practices are reproduced in the expected behaviors of individual academics who garner social currency and status as experts, legislators and interpreters (Osborne, 20014: 435). Digitalization and the emergent knowledge and collaboration economies, have the potential to disrupt the academy’s traditional appeals to distinction and to re-engage universities and academics with their public stakeholders. This chapter will examine some of the challenges and benefits arising from public micro-funding of university-based research initiatives during a period of industrial transition in the university sector.Broadly then this chapter asks; what does scholarship mean in a digital ecosystem where sociality (rather than traditional systems for assessing academic merit) affords research opportunity and success? How might university research be rethought in a networked world where personal and professional identities are blurred? What happens when scholars adopt the same pathways as non-scholars for knowledge discovery, development and dissemination through use of emerging practices such as crowdfunding. These issues will be discussed through detailed exploration of a successful pilot project to crowdfund university research; Research My World. This project, a collaboration between Deakin University and the crowdfunding platform pozible.com, set out to secure new sources of funding for the ‘long-tail’ of academic research. More generally, it aimed to improve the digital capacity of the participating researchers and create new opportunities for public engagement for the researchers themselves as well as the university. We will examine how crowdfunding and social media platforms alter academic effort (the dis-intermediation or re-intermediation of research funding, reduction of the compliance burden, opportunities for market validation and so on), as well as the particular workflows of scholarly researchers themselves (improvements in “digital presence-building”, provision of cheap alternative funding, opportunities to crowdsource non-academic knowledge). In addressing these questions, this chapter will explore the influence that crowdfunding campaigns have for transforming contemporary academic practices across a range of disciplinary instances, providing the basis for a new form of engagement-led research. To support our analysis we will provide an overview of the initiative through quantitative analysis of a dataset generated by the first iteration of Research My World projects.

Another explanation of the mutual fund fee puzzle

This paper demonstrates that investor sentiment explains the recent puzzle of the negative relation between fees and before-fee performance of equity mutual funds. Using a composite proxy for investor sentiment, the puzzle can be explained stronger by investor sentiment, compared to the strategic fee-setting explanation discussed in the literature. More-sentiment driven investors would like to select more skilled fund managers, leading to a better future performance in short run. Additionally, when sentiment is high (low), it results in lower (higher) fees. Our results highlight the use of investor sentiment approach in determining mutual fund fees and performance.

Improving mutual fund market timing measures: a markov switching approach

Market timing performance of mutual funds is usually evaluated with linear models with dummy variables which allow for the beta coefficient of CAPM to vary across two regimes: bullish and bearish market excess returns. Managers, however, use their predictions of the state of nature to deÞne whether to carry low or high beta portfolios instead of the observed ones. Our approach here is to take this into account and model market timing as a switching regime in a way similar to Hamilton s Markov-switching GNP model. We then build a measure of market timing success and apply it to simulated and real world data.

A indústria de Hedge Fund no Brasil: uma avaliação preliminar

O objetivo deste trabalho será o de analisar o desempenho dos Hedge Funds brasileiros, mais conhecidos no mercado nacional como Fundos Multimercados com Renda Variável e com Alavancagem, comparando seus riscos e retornos ao de alguns outros índices financeiros do mercado, principalmente aqueles ligados ao mercado acionário.

The effect of guia exame's ratings on the brazilian fund industry: an analysis of net-worth flows

This paper infers the impact the publication Guia Exame (the guide) has on the Brazilian fund industry, more specifically on the ability the concerned funds develop on attracting new investment. The impact is measured using the event-study analysis based on the variation of net worth subsequently to the event of being rated, according to the methodology applied by the guide to rank the funds. We used five years of fund ratings according to Guia Exame (2000-2004) and analyzed the changes of these funds net worth. We also compared the event amongst different categories of funds. The results found confirm the expected effects according to star rankings and asset manager size in all years.

Estimation of random coefficients logit demand models: an application to the Brazilian fixed income fund market

Estimation of demand and supply in differentiated products markets is a central issue in Empirical Industrial Organization and has been used to study the effects of taxes, merges, introduction of new goods, market power, among others. Logit and Random Coefficients Logit are examples of demand models used to study these effects. For the supply side it is generally supposed a Nash equilibrium in prices. This work presents a detailed discussion of these models of demand and supply as well as the procedure for estimation. Lastly, is made an application to the Brazilian fixed income fund market.