US Asset-Backed Securities – Regulatory Reform, Dodd-Frank and Final Rules

This chapter examines the new rules proposed under regulatory reform since the credit crisis of 2008-09, including the major proposals of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 and some of the Final Rules thereto.

D1.4 – First version applied gaming asset methodology

This deliverable (D1.4) is an intermediate document, expressly included to inform the first project review about RAGE’s methodology of software asset creation and management. The final version of the methodology description (D1.1) will be delivered in Month 29. The document explains how the RAGE project defines, develops, distributes and maintains a series of applied gaming software assets that it aims to make available. It describes a high-level methodology and infrastructure that are needed to support the work in the project as well as after the project has ended.

The RAGE Software Asset Model and Metadata Model

Software assets are key output of the RAGE project and they can be used by applied game developers to enhance the pedagogical and educational value of their games. These software assets cover a broad spectrum of functionalities – from player analytics including emotion detection to intelligent adaptation and social gamification. In order to facilitate integration and interoperability, all of these assets adhere to a common model, which describes their properties through a set of metadata. In this paper the RAGE asset model and asset metadata model is presented, capturing the detail of assets and their potential usage within three distinct dimensions – technological, gaming and pedagogical. The paper highlights key issues and challenges in constructing the RAGE asset and asset metadata model and details the process and design of a flexible metadata editor that facilitates both adaptation and improvement of the asset metadata model.

Building public policy on shifting sands: the case of the National Asset Management Agency

Over the last thirty years, there has been an increased demand for better management of public sector organisations (PSOs). This requires that they are answerable for the inputs that they are given but also for what they achieve with these inputs (Hood 1991; Hood 1995). It is suggested that this will improve the management of the organisation through better planning and control, and the achievement of greater accountability (Smith 1995). However, such a rational approach with clear goals and the means to measure achievement can cause difficulties for many PSOs. These difficulties include the distinctive nature of the public sector due to the political environment within which the public sector manager operates (Stewart and Walsh 1992) and the fact that PSOs will have many stakeholders, each of whom will have their own specific objectives based on their own perspective (Boyle 1995). This can
result in goal ambiguity which means that there is leeway in interpreting the results of the PSO. The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) was set up to bring stability to the financial system by buying loans from the banks (which were in most cases, non-performing loans). The intention was to cleanse the banks of these loans so that they could return to their normal business of taking deposits and making loans. However, the legislation, also gave NAMA a wide range of other responsibilities including responsibility for facilitating credit in the economy and protecting the interests of taxpayers. In more recent times, NAMA has been given responsibility for building social housing. This wide-range of activities is a clear example of a PSO being given multiple goals which may conflict and is therefore likely to lead to goal ambiguity. This makes it very difficult to evaluate NAMA’s performance as they are attempting to meet numerous goals at the same time and also highlights the complexity of policy making in the public sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine how NAMA dealt with goal ambiguity. This will be done through a thematic analysis of its annual reports over the last five years. The paper’s will contribute to the ongoing debate about the evaluation of PSOs and the complex environment within which they operate which makes evaluation difficult as they are
answerable to multiple stakeholders who have different objectives and different criteria for measuring success.

Integration between the London and New York Stock Exchanges, 1825-1925

The integration between the London and New York Stock Exchanges is analyzed during the era when they were still developing as asset markets. The domestic securities on both exchanges showed little sustained integration, even when controlling for the different characteristics of stocks, implying that the pricing of securities in the US and UK were still being driven by local factors. However, there was considerable integration between New York and those listings on London which operated internationally. These results place a limit on the view that pre-World War I was the first era of globalization in terms of capital markets, and suggest that the listing of foreign securities may be one of the primary mechanisms driving asset market integration.

Innovations in Hospitality Human Resources: Cases from the U.S. Lodging Industry

[Excerpt] Today’s hospitality and tourism companies face complex, dramatically shifting challenges, most notably the need to compete for increasingly sophisticated customers in a global, fluid marketplace. To attract and retain the loyal cadre of customers that will ensure the organization’s success, service companies such as hospitality organizations must employ technologically advanced, yet margin sensitive, product and pricing strategies and practices that will differentiate themselves to their intended market. Even more importantly, these service organizations need to devise strategies that will capture and retain the most important yet, from a financial perspective, unrecognized asset on the balance sheet: the employees that design and deliver the service to the customer base. Human resource strategists (i.e. Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Cappelli & Crocker-Hefter, 1996; O’Reilly & Pfeffer, 2000; Pfeffer, 1998; Ulrich, 1997), including those who take a hospitality perspective (i.e. Baumann, 2000; Hume, 2000; Worcester, 1999) advocate a renewed attention to the investment in employees or “human capital” as a source of strategic competitive advantage.

FX modelling under collateralization

We present the market practice for interest rate yield curves construction and pricing interest rate derivatives. Then we give a brief description of the Vasicek and the Hull-White models, with an example of calibration to market data. We generalize the classical Black-Scholes-Merton pricing formulas, considering more general cases such as perfect or partial collateral, derivatives on a dividend paying asset subject to repo funding, and multiple currencies. Finally we derive generic pricing formulae for different combinations of cash flow and collateral currencies, and we apply the results to the pricing of FX swaps and CCS, and we discuss curve bootstrapping.

Repositioning a Multifamily Asset

Multifamily investments, particularly value-added strategies, have been of keen interest to real estate investors for years now. Successful execution of a multifamily investment offers excellent risk-adjusted returns when compared to other classes of real estate such as industrial, retail, and office. From a volatility standpoint, multifamily enjoys relatively stable long-term cash flows with less downside risk during periods of recession due to stable tenancy in most major markets. The stability during downturns is also supported by the fact that recessions tend to make renters out of owners, increasing demand for apartments.

Asset Management and Investment Banking

We find evidence that conflicts of interest are pervasive in the asset management business owned by investment banks. Using data from 1990 to 2008, we compare the alphas of mutual funds, hedge funds, and institutional funds operated by investment banks and non-bank conglomerates. We find that, while no difference exists in performance by fund type, being owned by an investment bank reduces alphas by 46 basis points per year in our baseline model. Making lead loans increases alphas, but the dispersion of fees across portfolios decreases alphas. The economic loss is $4.9 billion per year.

Usage-Based versus Measure-Based Unit Pricing: Is There a Better Index of Value?

In many product categories, unit prices facilitate price comparisons across brands and package sizes; this enables consumers to identify those products that provide the greatest value. However in other product categories, unit prices may be confusing. This is because there are two types of unit pricing, measure-based and usage-based. Measure-based unit prices are what the name implies; price is expressed in cents or dollars per unit of measure (e.g. ounce). Usage-based unit prices, on the other hand, are expressed in terms of cents or dollars per use (e.g., wash load or serving). The results of this study show that in two different product categories (i.e., laundry detergent and dry breakfast cereal), measure-based unit prices reduced consumers’ ability to identify higher value products, but when a usage-based unit price was provided, their ability to identify product value was increased. When provided with both a measure-based and a usage-based unit price, respondents did not perform as well as when they were provided only a usage-based unit price, additional evidence that the measure-based unit price hindered consumers’ comparisons. Finally, the presence of two potential moderators, education about the meaning of the two measures and having to rank order the options in the choice set in terms of value before choosing, did not eliminate these effects.

Production planning, pricing and market coordination for news vendor problem with price dependent demand

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Il Pricing come fattore competitivo nel mercato dei beni durevoli

L'elaborato tratta delle dinamiche del pricing, analizzando nello specifico al contrapposizione fra Prezzo e Valore per il Cliente, entrando nello specifico delle metodologie per la determinazione degli stessi per poi introdurre alcune delle più comuni politiche di prezzo attuate dalle aziende. Si descrive dunque il mercato degli elettrodomestici bianchi, evidenziando come il Prezzo sia una variabile determinante in questo mercato ormai in fase di saturazione. Infine si fa un analisi di "The Business Game" analizzando la condotta del team irajoya e come il Prezzo sia stato essenziale per il successo della squadra nel mercato simulato.

Essays in International Finance and Macroeconomics

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Books for asset management in hospitals in Seville.

Hospitals from ancient Seville had an important heritage for survival of the institution and its patients. In order to keep this heritage, the officialdom settled down several control mechanisms that would serve to manage a profitable management of their income and rights. For this purpose, they developed devising instruments able to preserve their possessions and put them into operation. This article attempts to identify the defining elements of these books, called “protocolos de bienes” (protocols goods), indicating their characteristics and evolution from archaic models until the final form. This final form was reached late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, at which time devoted use main codex of hospitality. To do this, we used the documentary collec-tions of Seville, preserved in different archives of the city, from where they have taken several significant examples showing the changes that occurred in both its internal structure and its mate-rials manufacturing, underlining the participation of official, booksellers, illuminators and calligraphers. Similarly, it has high-lighted the multifaceted and multifunctional character of this ins-titutions that became also a corporate identity. The multiplicity of hospitals in Sevilla had different types and features of protocols, which were modificated according to the different needs of each institution.