Some Likelihood Based Properties in Large Samples: Utility and Risk Aversion, Second Order Prior Selection and Posterior Density Stability

The likelihood function plays a central role in statistical analysis in relation to information, from both frequentist and Bayesian perspectives. In large samples several new properties of the likelihood in relation to information are developed here. The Arrow-Pratt absolute risk aversion measure is shown to be related to the Cramer-Rao Information bound. The derivative of the log-likelihood function is seen to provide a measure of information related stability for the Bayesian posterior density. As well, information similar prior densities can be defined reflecting the central role of likelihood in the Bayes learning paradigm.

Pricing Decisions in Dual-Channel Closed-Loop Supply Chain Under Retailer’s Risk Aversion and Fairness Concerns

This paper studies the price decisions in a dual-channel closed-loop supply chain with a risk-averse retailer and a risk-neutral manufacturer by modeling and analyzing three cases:(1)the retailer does not have fairness concerns;(2)the retailer has fairness concerns and the manufacturer considers it;and(3)the retailer has fairness concerns and the manufacturer does not consider it.The effects of risk aversion and fairness concerns on the pricing decisions,profits and demand are examined in differing scenarios.

Time-Consistent Portfolio Policy for Asset-Liability Mean-Variance Model with State-Dependent Risk Aversion

In reality,when facing a multi-period asset-liability portfolio selection problem,the risk aversion attitude of a mean-variance investor may depend on the wealth level and liability level.Thus,in this paper,we propose a state-dependent risk aversion model for the investor,in which risk aversion is a linear function of current wealth level and current liability level.Due to the time inconsistency of the resulting multi-period asset-liability mean-variance model,we investigate its time-consistent portfolio policy by solving a nested mean-variance game formulation.We derive the analytical time-consistent portfolio policy,which takes a linear form of current wealth level and current liability level.We also analyze the influence of the risk aversion coefficients on the time-consistent portfolio policy and the investment performance via a numerical example.

Who Wants to Be Informed-Less Risk Aversion or More Risk Aversion?

Information is an important issue in financial markets since information advantage leads to increased profits. This paper investigates whether those with less risk aversion or more risk aversion would like to be informed when there is private information which can be acquired for a certain cost. The CARA utility function and normal return assumptions were used to get the closed form solution of the absolute risk aversion coefficient which is indifferent to whether a person wants to be informed, which shows that the less risk aversion investor would like to be informed. The results further show that in financial markets, those people with lower risk aversion （for instance, institutional investors） are more favorable to information and price discovery of risky assets, which is consistent with intuition as well as empirical studies.

Market misvaluation and corporate innovation:“Catering”or“risk aversion”?——Empirical evidence from China capital market

This paper tests how market misvaluation affects corporate innovation.Unlike the“catering effect”observed in the US,we find that estimated stock overvaluation in China is strongly negatively associated with corporate innovation,conforming to our“risk-aversion”hypothesis.In China,misvaluation affects innovation via finance and management behavior channels.The effect is more significant in non-state-owned corporations than in state-owned corporations.Stock turnover rate and ownership concentration play moderating roles in the effect.The evidence sheds light on the relationship between market risks and corporate innovation in an emerging market.

Uncertainty aversion and farmers' innovative seed adoption:Evidence from a field experiment in rural China

Based on the microdata of 705 wheat farmers in the Loess Plateau, this study empirically analyzes the impact of uncertainty on farmers' adoption of innovative seeds using a field experiment. The results indicate that farmers are generally ambiguity-averse and risk-averse. In addition, farmers with higher ambiguity aversion and risk aversion are less likely to adopt innovative wheat seeds, where their risk aversion plays a dominant role. Enhancing information access will alleviate the negative influence of ambiguity aversion on farmers' adoption of innovative seeds, and interlinked insurance and credit contracts will be beneficial to ease the adverse effect of risk aversion on the adoption of innovative wheat seeds. Meanwhile, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the inhibitory effects of ambiguity aversion and risk aversion on innovative seed adoption are more significant among farmers with lower education and household income.The government can establish both ex-ante and ex-post relevant guarantee mechanisms to help farmers preferably cope with various uncertainties in the production process, remitting farmers' ambiguity aversion and risk aversion to enhance new agricultural technology adoption rates.

UTILITY BASIS OF CONSUMPTION AND INVESTMENT DECISIONS IN A RISK ENVIRONMENT

Using expectations regarding utilities to make decisions in a risk environment hides a paradox,which is called the expected utility enigma.Moreover,the mystery has not been solved yet;an imagined utility function on the risk-return plane has been applied to establish the mean-variance model,but this hypothetical utility function not only lacks foundation,it also holds an internal contradiction.This paper studies these basic problems.Through risk preference VNM condition is proposed to solve the expected utility enigma.How can a utility function satisfy the VNM condition?This is a basic problem that is hard to deal with.Fortunately,it is found in this paper that the VNM utility function can have some concrete forms when individuals have constant relative risk aversion.Furthermore,in order to explore the basis of mean-variance utility,an MV function is founded that is based on the VNM utility function and rooted in underlying investment activities.It is shown that the MV function is just the investor's utility function on the risk-return plane and that it has normal properties.Finally,the MV function is used to analyze the laws of investment activities in a systematic risk environment.In doing so,a tool,TRR,is used to measure risk aversion tendencies and to weigh risk and return.

Financial Innovation Way of Avoiding Risk of Climate Disasters in Food Production:Weather Index Insurance

Climate change will lead to a variety of climate disasters, and climate disasters have a greater impact on China＇s food production. Weather index insurance is a new financial way to avoid risk of climate disasters effectively in China＇s food production. Firstly, the relationship between weather index insurance and food production in China was elaborated, and then the development status, advantages and disadvantages of weather index insurance in China at present were analyzed. Finally, some countermeasures against the problems of weather index insurance in China were put forward.

Optimal Portfolio Selection of Wind Power Plants Using a Stochastic Risk-Averse Optimization Model, Considering the Wind Complementarity of the Sites and a Budget Constraint

This work focuses on the best financial resources allocation to define a wind power plant portfolio, considering a set of feasible sites. To accomplish the problem formulation and solution, the first step was to establish a long-term wind series reconstruction methodology for generating scenarios of wind energy, applying it to study five different locations of the Brazilian territory. Secondly, a risk-averse stochastic optimization model was implemented and used to define the optimal wind power plant selection that maximizes the portfolio financial results, considering an investment budget constraint. In a sequence, a case study was developed to illustrate a practical situation of applying the methodology to the portfolio selection problem, considering five wind power plants options. The case study was supported by the proposed optimization model, using the scenarios of generation created by the reconstruction methodology. The obtained results show the model performance in terms of defining the best financial resources allocation considering the effect of the complementarity between sites, making it feasible to select the optimal set of wind power plants, characterizing a wind plant optimal portfolio that takes into account the budget constraint. The adopted methodology makes it possible to realize that the diversification of the portfolio depends on the investor risk aversion. Although applied to the Brazilian case, this model can be customized to solve a similar problem worldwide.

Risk Seeking Behavior in Anticipation to Volatility Mean Reversal:A Case Study Using Bitcoin and SKEW

The traditional finance approach to decision analysis,based on neo-classical economics,assumes self-interested,utility maximizing approach,and risk aversion.This essay points to a situation that investment in a risky asset(Bitcoin)is directly related to an increase in market risk,measured by SKEW index.This contradicts the traditional approach and aligns to several findings of behavioral finance.More specifically,it shows that investors may be risk seeking actors in anticipation to a belief that volatility will return to normal levels.

Analysis of Conditional Value-at-Risk for Newsvendor with Holding and Backorder Cost under Market Search

We consider a distribution system with one supplier and two retailers. For the two retailers, they face different demand and are both risk averse. We study a single period model which the supplier has ample goods and the retailers order goods separately. Market search is measured as the fraction of customers who unsatisfied with their ＂local＂ retailer due to stock-out, and search for the goods at the other retailer before leaving the system. We investigate how the retailers game for order quantity in a Conditional Value-at-Risk framework and study how risk averse degree, market search level, holding cost and backorder cost influence the optimal order strategies. Furthermore, we use uniform distribution to illustrate these results and obtain Nash equilibrium of order strategies.

Financial literacy,behavioral traits,and ePayment adoption and usage in Japan

This study investigates how financial literacy and behavioral traits affect the adoption of electronic payment(ePayment)services in Japan.We construct a financial literacy index using a representative sample of 25,000 individuals from the Bank of Japan’s 2019 Financial Literacy Survey.We then analyze the relationship between this index and the extensive and intensive usage of two types of payment services:electronic money(e-money)and mobile payment apps.Using an instrumental variable approach,we find that higher financial literacy is positively associated with a higher likelihood of adopting ePayment services.The empirical results suggest that individuals with higher financial literacy use payment services more frequently.We also find that risk-averse people are less likely to adopt and use ePayment services,whereas people with herd behavior tend to adopt and use ePayment services more.Our empirical results also suggest that the effects of financial literacy on the adoption and use of ePayment differ among people with different behavioral traits.

Economic appraisal of shale gas resources, an example from the Horn River shale gas play, Canada

Development of unconventional shale gas resources involves intensive capital investment accompa- nying large commercial production uncertainties. Eco- nomic appraisal, bringing together multidisciplinary project data and information and providing likely economic outcomes for various development scenarios, forms the core of business decision-making. This paper uses a dis- counted cash flow （DCF） model to evaluate the economic outcome of shale gas development in the Horn River Basin, northeastern British Columbia, Canada. Through numerical examples, this study demonstrates that the use of a single average decline curve for the whole shale gas play is the equivalent of the results from a random drilling process. Business decision based on a DCF model using a single decline curve could be vulnerable to drastic changes of shale gas productivity across the play region. A random drilling model takes those drastic changes in well estimated ultimate recovery （EUR） and decline rates into account in the economic appraisal, providing more information useful for business decisions. Assuming a natural gas well-head price of S4/MCF and using a 10 % discount rate, the results from this study suggest that a random drilling strategy （e.g., one that does not regard well EURs）, could lead to a negative net present value （NPV）; whereas a drilling sequence that gives priority to developing those wells with larger EURs earlier in the drilling history could result in a positive NPV with various payback time and internal rate of return （IRR）. Under a random drilling assumption, the breakeven price is S4.2/MCF with more than 10 years of payout time. In contrast, if the drilling order is strictly proportional to well EURs, the result is a much better economic outcome with a breakeven price below the assumed well-head price accompanied by a higher IRR.

Impact of the COVID‑19 outbreak on the US equity sectors:Evidence from quantile return spillovers

The aim of this study is to examine the extreme return spillovers among the US stock market sectors in the light of the COVID-19 outbreak.To this end,we extend the now-traditional Diebold-Yilmaz spillover index to the quantiles domain by building networks of generalized forecast error variance decomposition of a quantile vector autoregressive model specifically for extreme returns.Notably,we control for common movements by using the overall stock market index as a common factor for all sectors and uncover the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on the dynamics of the network.The results show that the network structure and spillovers differ considerably with respect to the market state.During stable times,the network shows a nice sectoral clustering structure which,however,changes dramatically for both adverse and beneficial market conditions constituting a highly connected network structure.The pandemic period itself shows an interesting restructuring of the network as the dominant clusters become more tightly connected while the rest of the network remains well separated.The sectoral topology thus has not collapsed into a unified market during the pandemic.

Optimal investment and consumption with forward preferences and uncertain parameters

We introduce and analyze a class of forward performance criteria in incomplete markets in the presence of model ambiguity.Incompleteness stems from general investment constraints,while model uncertainty is represented by a convex and compact set of plausible model parameter processes.Following the max-min criteria in traditional(backward)robust control,we formulate similar criteria for the robust forward performance processes and focus on the rich class of time-monotone processes.We provide a novel PDE characterization and a semi-explicit saddle-point construction of the robust forward performance criteria and their optimal policies.Furthermore,we present additional results within the class of homothetic constant relative risk aversion(CRRA)processes.Within this class,we investigate the relationship between forward performance processes on wealth and those on consumption,establishing an interesting dominance through time.

Farmers' Risk Preferences and Agricultural Weather Index Insurance Uptake in Rural China

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of farmers' risk preferences on their decisions to purchase the agricultural weather index insurance based on the evidence from a household survey and field experiments conducted in Yongqiao District,Suzhou City of Anhui Province in China.Our empirical results show that farmers' risk aversion significantly increases the probability of their decision to buy weather index-based crop insurance.Other factors that significantly influence weather index insurance participation decisions include farmers' subjective beliefs on the probability of crop losses,farming experience,education level,farm size,and their household income.The empirical results of this study can provide helpful insights for policymakers and local insurers to further improve farmers' participation in weather indexbased crop insurance.

Comparative Analysis of Optimal Strategies with Two Purchase Modes under Different Risk-Averse Criterions

Consider a risk-averse newsvendor who has an option to purchase the units that are short at an emergency purchase price after demand is realized. We use the conditional value-at-risk （CVaR） as the risk measure. The aim of the study is to investigate the optimal ordering decision in such a setting under CVaR only and mean-CVaR criterions. For each case, we derive the closed-form optimal solution and perform comparative statics to show the monotonicity properties and other characteristics of the optimal decisions. We also compare our results with those of risk-neutral newsvendor.

Risk Averse,Broadly Speaking

Investors greet China's first QDII products with caution Ms. Wang, a financial planner at one of China's largest state-owned banks, takes five phone inquiries a day from clients I about its new QDII products, with most clients saying they will consider it. "I have an enquiry about your bank's QDII products. What are the returns?

Fractional-Degree Expectation Dependence

We develop a fractional-degree expectation dependence which is the generalization of the first-degree and second-degree expectation dependence.The motivation for introducing such a dependence notion is to conform with the preferences of decision makers who are mostly risk averse but would be risk seeking at some wealth levels.We investigate some tractable equivalent properties for this new dependence notion,and explore its properties,including the invariance under increasing and concave transformations,and the invariance under convolution.We also extend our results to a combined fractional-degree expectation dependence notion includingε-almost firstdegree expectation dependence.Two applications on portfolio diversification problem and optimal investment in the presence of a background risk illustrate the usefulness of the approaches proposed in the present paper.

A PRICE-SETTING NEWSVENDOR MODEL UNDER CVAR DECISION CRITERION WITH EMERGENCY PROCUREMENT

In this paper, we consider a newsvendor model in which a risk-averse manager faces a stochastic price-dependent demand in either an additive or a multiplicative form. An emergency purchase option is allowed after the realization of demand to satisfy the units that are short. By adopting Conditional value-at-risk （CVaR） as the decision criterion, we aim to investigate the optimal pricing and ordering decisions, and the effects of parameter changes in such a setting. We provide sufficient conditions for the uniqueness of the optimal policy for both demand models. We perforl~, comparative statics analysis to show how the optimal pricing and ordering decision behaves when changing parameters. We also compare our results with those of the newsvendor with a general utility function and with CVaR criterion under lost sales assumption. Our key results include： （i） For both demand models, the optimal selling price is decreasing in risk aversion. Hence, the optimal price of a risk-averse newsvendor is not greater than the optimal price of a risk-neutral newsvendor. （it） In contrary to the lost sales case, for the multiplicative demand model, the optimal order quantity may not be monotonic in risk aversion. Consequently, the optimal risk-averse order quantity may be lower or higher than the optimal risk- neutral counterpart. （iii） For the additive model, the optimal order quantity is strictly increasing in the emergency purchase price, while for the multiplicative model the optimal order quantity has no such a monotonic property. Some numerical examples are conducted to verify our claims and gain more insights about the risk-averse decision-making behaviors.