Business Commons^™

Investing In Hedge Funds: Risks, Returns And Performance Measurement, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, David K. C. Lee, Kok Fai Phoon

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hedge funds are collective investment vehicles that are often established with a special legal status that allows their investment managers a free hand to use derivatives, short sell, and exploit leverage to raise returns and cushion risk. We review various issues relating to the investment in hedge funds, which have become popular with high net-worth individuals and institutional investors, as well as discuss their empirical risk and return profiles. The concerns regarding the empirical measurements are highlighted, and meaningful analytical methods are proposed to provide greater risk transparency in performance reporting. We also discuss the development of the hedge fund …

Crop Updates 2004 - Cereals, Wal Anderson, Vivian Vanstone, Robert Loughman, Vanessa Stewart, Darshan Sharma, Christine Zaicou-Kunesch, Brenda Shackley, Mohammad Amjad, Steve Penny Jr, Glen Riethmuller, Jeromy Lemon, Mario D'Antuono, Veronika Reck, Ben Curtis, Judith Devenish, Melaine Kupsch, Anne Smith, Blakely Paynter, Roslyn Jetter, Leanne Schulz, Jocelyn Ball, Tom Sweeny, Stephen Loss, Ashleigh Brooks, Justin Fuery, Geoff Anderson, Zed Rengel, Paul Damon, Eddy Pol, Narelle Hill, Ray Tugwell, Ron Mctaggart, Nathan Moyes, John Majewski, Manisha Shanker, James Piotrowski, Ciara Beard, Kithsiri Jayasena, Kazue Tanaka, Grey Poulish, Debbie Thackray, Rohan Prince, Roger Jones, Peter Nelson, Nigel Metz, Leisa Armstrong, Yee Leong (Alex) Yung, Moin Salam, David Tennant

Crop Updates

This session covers twenty eight papers from different authors:

PLENARY

1. Declining profitability in continuous cropping systems. Is more wheat the answer on Duplex soil? Dr Wal Anderson, Department of Agriculture

2. Disease implications of extending the wheat phase in low-medium rainfall areas, Dr Vivian Vanstone and Dr Robert Loughman, Department of Agriculture

3. Prolonged wheat phase on duplex soils – where do weeds set the boundary? Vanessa Stewart, Department of Agriculture

WHEAT AGRONOMY

4. Management of small grain screenings in wheat, Dr Wal Anderson and Dr Darshan Sharma, Department of Agriculture

5. Agronomic responses of new wheat varieties, Christine …

Rapid Calculation Of The Price Of Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefit Ratchet Options Embedded In Annuities, Eric R. Ulm

Journal of Actuarial Practice (1993-2006)

This paper presents a new method of obtaining quick and accurate values and deltas for discrete look back options using Taylor series expansions. This method is applied to the case of ratchet guaranteed minimum death benefits attached to annuity contracts, and the method is extended to include annuities where a fixed fund is attached to the variable account. Finally, both the speed and the accuracy of the method are compared to Monte Carlo simulation and the exact analytic solution. The Taylor expansion method is shown to be faster and, in most cases, more accurate than the alternative methods.

The Virtues Of Uncertainty In Law: An Experimental Approach, Tom Baker, Alon Harel, Tamar Kugler

All Faculty Scholarship

Predictability in civil and criminal sanctions is generally understood as desirable. Conversely, unpredictability is condemned as a violation of the rule of law. This paper explores predictability in sanctioning from the point of view of efficiency. It is argued that, given a constant expected sanction, deterrence is increased when either the size of the sanction or the probability that it will be imposed is uncertain. This conclusion follows from earlier findings in behavioral decision research and the results of an experiment conducted specifically to examine this hypothesis. The findings suggest that, within an efficiency framework, there are virtues to uncertainty …