Search-for-yield in Portuguese fixed-income mutual funds and monetary policy

This paper studies the effects of monetary policy on mutual fund risk taking using a sample of Portuguese fixed-income mutual funds in the 2000-2012 period. Firstly I estimate time-varying measures of risk exposure (betas) for the individual funds, for the benchmark portfolio, as well as for a representative equally-weighted portfolio, through 24-month rolling regressions of a two-factor model with two systematic risk factors: interest rate risk (TERM) and default risk (DEF). Next, in the second phase, using the estimated betas, I try to understand what portion of the risk exposure is in excess of the benchmark (active risk) and how it relates to monetary policy proxies (one-month rate, Taylor residual, real rate and first principal component of a cross-section of government yields and rates). Using this methodology, I provide empirical evidence that Portuguese fixed-income mutual funds respond to accommodative monetary policy by significantly increasing exposure, in excess of their benchmarks, to default risk rate and slightly to interest risk rate as well. I also find that the increase in funds’ risk exposure to gain a boost in return (search-for-yield) is more pronounced following the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, indicating that the current historic low interest rates may incentivize excessive risk taking. My results suggest that monetary policy affects the risk appetite of non-bank financial intermediaries.

Managing marginal capital requirements in solvency II: Analysis of a real insurance portfolio

This thesis provides a complete analysis of the Standard Capital Requirements given by Solvency II for a real insurance portfolio. We analyze the investment portfolio of BPI Vida e Pensões, an insurance company affiliated with a Portuguese bank BPI, both at security, sub-portfolio and asset class levels. By using the Standard Formula from EIOPA, Total SCR amounts to 239M€. This value is mostly explained by Market and Default Risk whereas the former is driven by Spread and Concentration Risks. Following the methodology of Leblanc (2011), we examine the Marginal Contribution of an asset to the SCR which allows for the evaluation of the risks of each security given its characteristics and interactions in the portfolio. The top contributors to the SCR are Corporate Bonds and Term Deposits. By exploring further the composition of the portfolio, our results show that slight changes in allocation of Term and Cash Deposits have severe impacts on the total Concentration and Default Risks, respectively. Also, diversification effects are very relevant by representing savings of 122M€. Finally, Solvency II represents an opportunity for the portfolio optimization. By constructing efficient frontiers, we find that as the target expected return increases, a shift from Term Deposits/ Commercial Papers to Eurozone/Peripheral and finally Equities occurs.

What Fidelidade group should do to convey its human centric brand identity values to millennial insurance consumers

Companies are concerned in attracting and retaining Millennial consumers, especially if their relation with this target audience is weak. This happens in the insurance industry in Portugal and in Fidelidade group specifically. The aim of this study is to recommend a strategy for the insurance group to improve its relationship with these consumers, by conveying its human centric values. In order to address this goal, we developed a qualitative research. The main insight is that Millennials may perceive those values in the industry but do not associate them with insurance brands.

Changes in reproductive roles are associated with changes in gene expression in fire ant queens.

Abstract In species with social hierarchies, the death of dominant individuals typically upheaves the social hierarchy and provides an opportunity for subordinate individuals to become reproductives. Such a phenomenon occurs in the monogyne form of the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, where colonies typically contain a single wingless reproductive queen, thousands of workers and hundreds of winged nonreproductive virgin queens. Upon the death of the mother queen, many virgin queens shed their wings and initiate reproductive development instead of departing on a mating flight. Workers progressively execute almost all of them over the following weeks. To identify the molecular changes that occur in virgin queens as they perceive the loss of their mother queen and begin to compete for reproductive dominance, we collected virgin queens before the loss of their mother queen, 6 h after orphaning and 24 h after orphaning. Their RNA was extracted and hybridized against microarrays to examine the expression levels of approximately 10 000 genes. We identified 297 genes that were consistently differentially expressed after orphaning. These include genes that are putatively involved in the signalling and onset of reproductive development, as well as genes underlying major physiological changes in the young queens.

Social chromosome variants differentially affect queen determination and the survival of workers in the fire ant Solenopsis invicta.

Intraspecific variation in social organization is common, yet the underlying causes are rarely known. An exception is the fire ant Solenopsis invicta in which the existence of two distinct forms of social colony organization is under the control of the two variants of a pair of social chromosomes, SB and Sb. Colonies containing exclusively SB/SB workers accept only one single queen and she must be SB/SB. By contrast, when colonies contain more than 10% of SB/Sb workers, they accept several queens but only SB/Sb queens. The variants of the social chromosome are associated with several additional important phenotypic differences, including the size, fecundity and dispersal strategies of queens, aggressiveness of workers, and sperm count in males. However, little is known about whether social chromosome variants affect fitness in other life stages. Here, we perform experiments to determine whether differential selection occurs during development and in adult workers. We find evidence that the Sb variant of the social chromosome increases the likelihood of female brood to develop into queens and that adult SB/Sb workers, the workers that cull SB/SB queens, are overrepresented in comparison to SB/SB workers. This demonstrates that supergenes such as the social chromosome can have complex effects on phenotypes at various stages of development.

Molecular variation at a candidate gene implicated in the regulation of fire ant social behavior

The fire ant Solenopsis invicta and its close relatives display an important social polymorphism involving differences in colony queen number. Colonies are headed by either a single reproductive queen (monogyne form) or multiple queens (polygyne form). This variation in social organization is associated with variation at the gene Gp-9, with monogyne colonies harboring only B-like allelic variants and polygyne colonies always containing b-like variants as well. We describe naturally occurring variation at Gp-9 in fire ants based on 185 full-length sequences, 136 of which were obtained from S. invicta collected over much of its native range. While there is little overall differentiation between most of the numerous alleles observed, a surprising amount is found in the coding regions of the gene, with such substitutions usually causing amino acid replacements. This elevated coding-region variation may result from a lack of negative selection acting to constrain amino acid replacements over much of the protein, different mutation rates or biases in coding and non-coding sequences, negative selection acting with greater strength on non-coding than coding regions, and/or positive selection acting on the protein. Formal selection analyses provide evidence that the latter force played an important role in the basal b-like lineages coincident with the emergence of polygyny. While our data set reveals considerable paraphyly and polyphyly of S. invicta sequences with respect to those of other fire ant species, the b-like alleles of the socially polymorphic species are monophyletic. An expanded analysis of colonies containing alleles of this clade confirmed the invariant link between their presence and expression of polygyny. Finally, our discovery of several unique alleles bearing various combinations of b-like and B-like codons allows us to conclude that no single b-like residue is completely predictive of polygyne behavior and, thus, potentially causally involved in its expression. Rather, all three typical b-like residues appear to be necessary.

"Public on the outside, private on the inside": the organizational hybridization, sense of belonging and identity strategies of the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland

A number of studies show that New Public Management reforms have altered the current identity benchmarks of public officials, particularly by hybridizing values or management practices. However, existing studies have largely glossed over the sense of belonging of officials when their organization straddles the concerns of public service and private enterprise, so that the boundary between public and private sector is blurred. The purpose of this article is precisely to explore this sense of belonging in the context of organizational hybridization. It does so by drawing on the results of research conducted among the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland. On the one hand, the analysis shows how much their markers of belonging are hybrid, multiple and constructed in negative terms (with regard to the State), while indicating that the working practices of the employees point to an identity that is nevertheless closely bound with the public sector. On the other hand, the analysis shows that the organization plays strategically with its State status, by exploiting either its private or public identity in line with the needs related to its external image. The article concludes with a discussion of the results highlighting the strategic functionality of the hybrid identity of the actors.

Les viveurs de Paris : drame en cinq actes et huit tableaux. [Suivi de] La Médée de Nanterre : tragédie fantaisiste en trois parties et en vers de Bohême : traduction en gaulois de la traduction en italien de la tragédie française de Médée. Livr. 304 / par M. Xavier de Montépin... ; par Th. Cogniard, É. Grange et Bourdois...

Collection : Théâtre contemporain illustré ; 303e et 304e livraisons

Les viveurs de Paris : drame en cinq actes et huit tableaux. [Suivi de] La Médée de Nanterre : tragédie fantaisiste en trois parties et en vers de Bohême : traduction en gaulois de la traduction en italien de la tragédie française de Médée. Livr. 303 / par M. Xavier de Montépin... ; par Th. Cogniard, É. Grange et Bourdois...

Collection : Théâtre contemporain illustré ; 303e et 304e livraisons

Mémoires authentiques de Jacques-Nompar de Caumont, duc de La Force,... et de ses deux fils, les marquis de Montpouillan et de Castelnaut, suivis de documents curieux et de correspondances inédites de Jeanne d'Albret, Henri III, Henri IV, Catherine de Bourbon,... et autres personnages marquants, depuis la Saint-Barthélemy jusqu'à la Fronde, pour faire suite à toutes les collections de mémoires sur l'histoire de France / recueillis, mis en ordre et précédés d'une introduction, par le Mis de La Grange,...

Comprend : [Correspondance inédite] ; Lettres ; Correspondances inédites...

Mémoires authentiques de Jacques-Nompar de Caumont, duc de La Force,... et de ses deux fils, les marquis de Montpouillan et de Castelnaut, suivis de documents curieux et de correspondances inédites de Jeanne d'Albret, Henri III, Henri IV, Catherine de Bourbon,... et autres personnages marquants, depuis la Saint-Barthélemy jusqu'à la Fronde, pour faire suite à toutes les collections de mémoires sur l'histoire de France / recueillis, mis en ordre et précédés d'une introduction, par le Mis de La Grange,...

Comprend : [Correspondance inédite] ; Lettres ; Correspondances inédites...

Mémoires authentiques de Jacques-Nompar de Caumont, duc de La Force,... et de ses deux fils, les marquis de Montpouillan et de Castelnaut, suivis de documents curieux et de correspondances inédites de Jeanne d'Albret, Henri III, Henri IV, Catherine de Bourbon,... et autres personnages marquants, depuis la Saint-Barthélemy jusqu'à la Fronde, pour faire suite à toutes les collections de mémoires sur l'histoire de France / recueillis, mis en ordre et précédés d'une introduction, par le Mis de La Grange,...

Comprend : [Correspondance inédite] ; Lettres ; Correspondances inédites...

Mémoires authentiques de Jacques-Nompar de Caumont, duc de La Force,... et de ses deux fils, les marquis de Montpouillan et de Castelnaut, suivis de documents curieux et de correspondances inédites de Jeanne d'Albret, Henri III, Henri IV, Catherine de Bourbon,... et autres personnages marquants, depuis la Saint-Barthélemy jusqu'à la Fronde, pour faire suite à toutes les collections de mémoires sur l'histoire de France / recueillis, mis en ordre et précédés d'une introduction, par le Mis de La Grange,...

Comprend : [Correspondance inédite] ; Lettres ; Correspondances inédites...