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“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

The depth and breadth of the market for contingent claims, including exotic options, has expanded dramatically. Regulators have expressed concern regarding the risks of exotics to the financial system, due to the difficulty of hedging these instruments. Recent literature focuses on the difficulties in hedging exotic options, e.g., liquidity risk and other violations of the standard Black‐Scholes model. This article provides insight into hedging problems associated with exotic options: 1) hedging in discrete versus continuous time, 2) transaction costs, 3) stochastic volatility, and 4) non‐constant correlation. The author applies simulation analysis of these problems to a variety of exotics, including Asian options, barrier options, look‐back options, and quanto options.

The capital asset pricing model has fundamentally changed the way finance is taught and practiced since its development in 1964. However, one problem with the use of the model is estimating the systematic risk of untraded assets. Academics and practitioners have dealt with the problem by using traded assets as “proxies” for the untraded asset. Some academic research has attempted to measure the validity of this technique using the average difference in the true beta of a traded firm and the “proxy” beta using a sample of similar firms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

However, the use of the average difference across a number of comparisons is not necessarily useful to a practitioner. This paper examines the absolute difference between a firm’s unlevered beta and a proxy beta calculated using the formula given in Hamada, 1972, and the pure play method.

The authors find that the estimates are not reliably close to the true value. Using both deciles of relevant variables and a matching method similar to that used by practitioners, the authors examine a variety of different characteristics to identify similar firms.

However, the authors do not find any matching criteria that improves the absolute error of the estimate to a level, the authors believe would be acceptable to practitioners attempting to measure cost of equity capital for their untraded firm or asset. The authors conclude that managers should use pure play estimates of asset beta with caution. More research should be done in order to identify a better way for managers of untraded firms or assets to proxy their systematic risk.

This paper describes how firm characteristics evolve in different industries. In particular, it reports on relationships between industry performance and competitor diversity in the American economy from 1981 to 1997. Industry performance is measured using a prospective measure of performance (Tobin's q) and a measure of performance that reflects historical competence (accounting profitability). Competitor diversity is characterized by differences in size, operating margin, asset composition, and asset utilization. The results indicate significant diversity among competitors in both high- and low-performance industries. The study suggests that low industry performance may be associated with processes of transition in competitor characteristics.

This chapter uses a college-by-graduate degree fixed effects estimator to evaluate the returns to 19 different graduate degrees for men and women. We find substantial variation across degrees, and evidence that OLS overestimates the returns to degrees with the highest average earnings and underestimates the returns to degrees with the lowest average earnings. Second, we decompose the impacts on earnings into effects on wage rates and effects on hours. For most degrees, the earnings gains come from increased wage rates, though hours play an important role in some degrees, such as medicine, especially for women. Third, we estimate the net present value and internal rate of return for each degree, which account for the time and monetary costs of degrees. Finally, we provide descriptive evidence that satisfaction gains are large for some degrees with smaller economic returns, such as education and humanities degrees, especially for men.

Panel data, where observations of entities are repeated over time, are common in strategic management research. However, explorations of the role of time on predictors of interest are often unexplored. In this chapter, we illustrate how the use of mixed-effect growth models can enhance theory and research in strategic management by exploring changes in outcomes of interest over time. Mixed-effects models allow for testing both within and between effects, while also calculating specific intercepts (firm average values) and slopes (trajectories of specific firms over time) using empirical Bayes estimates. We also illustrate how a discontinuous growth model could be used to assess differences in firm intercepts and slopes surrounding exogenous events (e.g., global pandemics) without requiring a control group.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability have gained prominence in the major capital markets. In Brazil, the São Paulo Stock Exchange (BM&FBovespa) has created the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) and the Carbon Efficient Index (ICO2), responsible for indicating the performance of sustainable companies. Therefore, this study proposes to examine and compare the stock returns of the sustainability index member companies with the returns of companies out of these indexes. In this methodology we selected the two principal negotiability indexes of that market (IBOV and IBrX50), which are indexes that meet the most traded stocks of BM&FBovespa, and calculated the average daily returns of the four indexes in order to make performance comparisons over the period 2005–2014, based on nonparametric statistical tests. Our findings indicate that the average returns of sustainability indexes were higher, but these differences were not statistically significant, confirming previous evidence. Additionally, by means of a cointegration test, we found that the indexes are cointegrated in the long term. These findings are limited to the analyzed emerging market and are also subject to the limitations of the estimated models. Thus, we can infer that presence in the sustainability indexes does not indicate statistically significant higher returns, which means that companies with sustainable practices in Brazil are not only concerned with economic performance, but also with social, cultural, and environmental issues. The main findings are aligned with the concept of triple bottom line, even in the case of an emerging market.

Introduction: This study presents defining and analysis of the results of people infected with COVID-19. The main goal of this chapter is to extract and present an overview of COVID-19 pandemic infection; wherewith extracted dataset, we analyse confirmed, deaths and recovery cases.

Aim: This chapter tries to analyse the differences between Balkan states according to affected cases with COVID-19. To achieve our goal, we used a reported dataset from World Health Organization (WHO). The methodology used in this chapter is quantitative by measuring the data and comparing these data. Results show compared cases between countries in Balkan.

Results: The data are analysed using SPSS software. The analysed data show that there exist very important differences between states regarding all cases that are either positive or deaths of recovered. All the data are collected from WHO databases in the CSV file where the number of cases in our dataset is 2,762 rows which include Balkan countries.

Conclusion: All these cases are taken in the period January–December 2020. These contain a total of 10 cases from Balkan countries. In this way, the number of infected, confirmed and death cases is shown in that region.

Originality/value: This chapter contributes to defining and analysing the epidemiology of all states which are part of Balkan territory. As we know, COVID-19 has its impact in different forms but the greatest consequences in these places are tremendous. According to WHO reports, we see three statements of cases which are cured, died and infected up until now. The most powerful states in the world have passed this period of infection in different forms successfully, but some of them, such as in the Balkan region, have failed by having numerous deaths and this had an impact on the economy, free movement of people and so on.