Contributions in Merlin

Diese Arbeit prüft die Anwendung des modifizierten Dividendenwachstumsmodells nach Balschun und Schindler (2015) zur Portfoliokonstruktion innerhalb nordischer Aktienmärkte. Dabei werden die Portfolios auf risikobereinigte Überschussrenditen untersucht, um den Nutzen des neuartigen Modells für das Portfoliomanagement zu analysieren. Das Modell unterscheidet sich durch die zugrundeliegende lineare Wachstumsannahme von dem traditionellen Dividendenwachstumsmodell (Gordon Growth Model). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Portfolios des modifizierten Dividendenwachstumsmodells, nach Abzug berechneter Transaktionskosten, über 14% annualisierte Alphas erzielen können. Auch bei einem Anstieg der Transaktionskosten oder der Portfoliogrösse bleiben die beobachteten Ergebnisse robust, jedoch zeigen sich signifikante Veränderungen bei einem abweichendem Stichprobenzeitraum oder einer Anpassung von Variablenmassen.

The literature on knowledge spillovers provides evidence that higher education institutions (HEIs) positively affect regional firm location (i.e., start-ups or firms located in a region). However, less is known about how HEIs in different fields of study impact regional firm location in different industries. To investigate this question, we exploit the establishment of universities of applied sciences (UASs)—bachelor’s degree-granting three-year HEIs in Switzerland. We find that the effects of UASs are heterogeneous across fields of study and industries. UASs specializing in “chemistry and the life sciences” and “business, management, and services” are the only UASs that positively affect regional firm location across several industries. Positive effects emerge in service industries characterized by radical service, incremental product, or process innovations. Thus, UASs are not a one-size-fits-all solution for increasing regional firm location. Instead, only UASs specializing in particular fields of study positively influence firm location in certain industries.

null

We suggest a novel choice of non-separable basis functions for an approximate linear programming approach to the well-known network revenue management problem. Considering non-separability is particularly important when interdependencies between resources are large. Such a situation can be illustrated for example by a bus line, where different origin-destination pairs have many overlapping segments. Traditional separable approximation approaches tend to ignore the resulting interactions. We suggest to group resources into non-separable subnetworks. For each chosen subnetwork, basis functions either span the whole function space or consist of linear functions. Given this more general choice of basis functions, we extend existing reductions of approximate linear programs. If there is only one subnetwork, for which the basis functions span the whole function space, we prove the equivalence to a compact linear program of polynomial size. For the general case, we suggest an approximate reduction. Numerical examples illustrate our novel upper bounds for the maximum expected revenue and the corresponding competitive policies. In particular, we find that the added benefit of non-separability heavily depends on the network structure and the capacity. Our work helps to better understand the impact of assuming separability in network revenue management. The polynomial sized reductions make it possible to estimate the added average revenue resulting from incorporating interactions between resources. The theory we develop demonstrates how the interpretation of dual variables as state-action probabilities can be applied to reduce exponentially large approximate linear programs via variable aggregation.

This article presents new estimates of wages for Normandy between 1600 and 1850. We use a vast array of primary and secondary sources to assemble two new databases on wages and commodity prices to establish a new regional consumer price index (CPI) and twelve regional wage series. We find that unskilled labourers earned similar wages across the agricultural, maritime, and textile sectors. Historical evidence suggests that Norman employers grappled with a tight labour market, which placed more pressure on wage increases. We posit that this situation is best explained by the combination of the early fertility transition, resulting in slow demographic growth and the rapid development of the textile industry accelerated by the arrival of cotton. Finally, we also provide tentative evidence suggesting that labourers with stable employment could have earned a little less than their English counterparts during this period.

Welzel et al. (2021) claim that non-invariance of instruments is inconclusive and inconsequential in the field for cross-cultural value measurement. In this response, we contend that several key arguments on which Welzel et al. (2021) base their critique of invariance testing are conceptually and statistically incorrect. First, Welzel et al. (2021) claim that value measurement follows a formative rather than reflective logic. Yet they do not provide sufficient theoretical arguments for this conceptualization, nor do they discuss the disadvantages of this approach for validation of instruments. Second, their claim that strong inter-item correlations cannot be retrieved when means are close to the endpoint of scales ignores the existence of factor-analytic approaches for ordered-categorical indicators. Third, Welzel et al. (2021) propose that rather than of relying on invariance tests, comparability can be assessed by studying the connection with theoretically related constructs. However, their proposal ignores that external validation through nomological linkages hinges on the assumption of comparability. By means of two examples, we illustrate that violating the assumptions of measurement invariance can distort conclusions substantially. Following the advice of Welzel et al. (2021) implies discarding a tool that has proven to be very useful for comparativists.

We examine international regulatory agreements that are negotiated under lobbying pressures from producer groups. The way in which lobbying influences the cooperative setting of regulatory policies, as well as the welfare impacts of international agreements, depend crucially on whether the interests of producers in different countries are aligned or in conflict. The former situation tends to occur for product standards, while the latter tends to occur for process standards. We find that, if producer lobbies are strong enough, agreements on product standards lead to excessive deregulation and decrease welfare, while agreements on process standards tighten regulations and enhance welfare.

Comprehending communication is dependent on analyzing the different modalities of conversation, including audio, visual, and others. This is a natural process for humans, but in digital libraries, where preservation and dissemination of digital information are crucial, it is a complex task. A rich conversational model, encompassing all modalities and their co-occurrences, is required to effectively analyze and interact with digital information. Currently, the analysis of co-speech gestures in videos is done through manual annotation by linguistic experts based on textual searches. However, this approach is limited and does not fully utilize the visual modality of gestures. This paper proposes a visual gesture retrieval method using a deep learning architecture to extend current research in this area. The method is based on body keypoints and uses an attention mechanism to focus on specific groups. Experiments were conducted on a subset of the NewsScape dataset, which presents challenges such as multiple people, camera perspective changes, and occlusions. A user study was conducted to assess the usability of the results, establishing a baseline for future gesture retrieval methods in real-world video collections. The results of the experiment demonstrate the high potential of the proposed method in multimodal communication research and highlight the significance of visual gesture retrieval in enhancing interaction with video content. The integration of visual similarity search for gestures in the open-source multimedia retrieval stack, vitrivr, can greatly contribute to the field of computational linguistics. This research advances the understanding of the role of the visual modality in co-speech gestures and highlights the need for further development in this area.

null

null