An application of the option-pricing model to the valuation of football player in the ‘Serie A League’

Football is perhaps the most popular sport in the world. The market of football players is one of the most popular factors of the sport that makes the fans dream of each team which increases the interest around the sport. In 2013 the player Gareth Bale was sold from Tottenham to Real Madrid for 100 million Euros. Someone argues that the market for football players is inherently irrational precisely because of the sale price of certain players. This paper is based on Tunaru et al. model that is real option based model. The aim of the paper is the financial valuation of a goalkeeper of Serie A League club. The model depends on relationship of player’s and team’s performance and the club’s turnover

Gender diversity on corporate boards: an empirical investigation of Italian listed companies

In recent years, there has been a growing consensus that gender diversity could improve the economic and social performance of companies—although progress has been painfully slow. In Italy, Law n. 120/2011 has required that since 2012 the composition of corporate boards must comprise at least 1/5 women and, from 2015, 1/3 women. Here, our primary aim was to study the proportion and the progression of female directors on the boards of Italian companies over the period between 2009–2014, among a sample of 60 companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange. We additionally studied the characteristics of the women on the companies’ boards, in order to assemble a typical profile. To do this, we verified the boards’ compositions, the number of female directors, women’s power on the boards and their levels of education. Our results confirm that Italian law has produced significant effects on the composition of corporate boards. Moreover, we found that female directors are generally of Italian ethnic origin and have high levels of education, with a master’s, and sometimes, post-master’s degree. Furthermore, female directors are more likely to be professional figures with experience—the percentages of female directors with professional qualifications as well as the percentage of female directors on boards of other companies have consistently increased during the period mentioned. Our findings provide a descriptive analysis of female directors during the period between 2009–2014, thereby presenting a picture of gender equality in the Italian context. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has focused on examining gender equality among Italian-listed companies over such a long period. Future development of this research could examine in more depth the differences between male and female presence, behaviour and characteristics on boards, as well as how these issues affect the performance of firms. This article is published as part of a collection on the role of women in management and the workplace

Different methods to estimating the cost of equity. An analysis on a sample of too big to fail banks

In this study, a comparison was made between the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), the most widely used methodology, and an actuarial method with the use of credit default swaps (CDSs) and the method based on the inverse of the multiple P/E. These three models are used to estimate the cost of equity. The comparison was made on a sample of 24 banks selected among the largest for assets in the world (too big to fail banks) belonging to 11 different countries. The results show that the CAPM estimates a premium for the higher risk than the one obtained with the actuarial method and the method based on the inverse of the P/E (except for 2013)

Does Intellectual Capital Affect the Volatility of Returns? An Empirical Investigation on Italian Listed Companies

In modern information economies, economic success increasingly depends on the ability to apply knowledge and to transform it into firm value. While intellectual capital plays a critical role in firm success, it is an intangible asset that is difficult to measure and that is unrecorded by the firm. Difficulties in measuring intellectual capital, as well as the dynamic nature of the firms that rely on it, may lead to greater stock market volatility/risk. Consistent with this expectation, in statistical tests we find that intellectual capital, measured by VAIC, positively relates to the volatility of stock returns section among Italian listed companies. We find this positive relation for two components of a firm’s risk: systematic risk and specific risk. The finding is relevant to both investors concerned with understanding the risk/reward balance of particular investments and regulators concerned with market stability

House price cycles in Europe

This paper examines the house price dynamics for thirteen European countries. A Markov-switching error correction model is estimated on house price returns at the country level, with deviations between house prices and fundamentals feeding into the short-run dynamics. The system is assumed to be in either a stable regime, in which deviations from the long-run equilibrium tend to vanish over time, or in an unstable regime, in which no such correction takes place. The analysis yields three sets of results. First, house price returns in Europe are generally characterized by three (high, medium and low) phases; growth rates within regimes differ largely across countries. Second, for some European countries the observed high growth phases are associated with a stable regime. Third, European housing markets have been more in sync with each other since 2000 following a growing trend in the time-span 2002-2006 and a dramatic downturn after the Lehman collapse in 2008 and during the Euro area sovereign debt crisis

Possible Relationships between Seep Carbonates and Gas Hydrates in the Miocene of the Northern Apennines

In the Miocene of the northern Apennines, a widespread carbonate precipitation was induced by the expulsion of methane-rich fluids. Numerous outcrops of carbonate masses share sedimentological, textural and geochemical features with present-day gas hydrate-associated carbonates. We hypothesize the contribution of paleo-gas hydrate destabilization on the base of the heavy oxygen isotope signature, the presence of distinctive sedimentary features (breccias, pervasive nonsystematic fractures, and soft sediment deformation), the close association between seep carbonates and sedimentary instability, and the huge dimensions of seep carbonates bearing brecciated structures

Measuring the Redshift Evolution of Clustering: the Hubble Deep Field South

We present an analysis of the evolution of galaxy clustering in the redshift interval 0<z<4.5 in the HDF-S. The HST optical data are combined with infrared ISAAC/VLT observations, and photometric redshifts are used for all the galaxies brighter than I_AB<27.5. The clustering signal is obtained in different redshift bins using two different approaches: a standard one, which uses the best redshift estimate of each object, and a second one, which takes into account the redshift probability function of each object. This second method makes it possible to improve the information in the redshift intervals where contamination from objects with insecure redshifts is important. With both methods, we find that the clustering strength up to z~3.5 in the HDF-S is consistent with the previous results in the HDF-N. While at redshift lower than z~1 the HDF galaxy population is un/anti-biased (b<1) with respect to the underlying dark matter, at high redshift the bias increases up to b~2-3, depending on the cosmological model. These results support previous claims that, at high redshift, galaxies are preferentially located in massive haloes, as predicted by the biased galaxy formation scenario. The impact of cosmic errors on our analyses has been quantified, showing that errors in the clustering measurements in the HDF surveys are indeed dominated by shot-noise in most regimes. Future observations with instruments like the ACS on HST will improve the S/N by at least a factor of two and more detailed analyses of the errors will be required. In fact, pure shot-noise will give a smaller contribution with respect to other sources of errors, such as finite volume effects or non-Poissonian discreteness effects.Comment: 17 pages Latex, with 12 PostScript figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA

Caratteristiche sedimentologiche dei depositi di ventaglio di rotta prodotti dal Fiume Secchia durante l’alluvione del 19 gennaio 2014

Lo studio sedimentologico dei depositi di ventaglio di rotta dell’alluvione del 19 gennaio 2014 presso San Matteo (Modena) ha permesso di ottenere informazioni sull’evoluzione nel tempo e nello spazio del sedimento fuoriuscito dall’alveo del Fiume Secchia in soli tre giorni. L’onda di piena ha allagato la pianura verso nord-est creando un breve solco di erosione e un ventaglio di sabbie dallo spessore massimo di circa 1 m. Il corpo sabbioso si è sviluppato fino ad una distanza dalla breccia di circa 600 m verso nord-est e 1,1 km verso est, dove la velocità della corrente si è mantenuta superiore a 0,75 m/s. Nelle zone distali sono stati deposti limi argillosi (16-44% di argilla) fino a 5,4 km di distanza presso Bastiglia, corrispondenti a velocità della corrente comprese tra 0,75 e 0,25 m/s. Le sezioni stratigrafiche del corpo sabbioso presentano tre unità principali discontinue, dal basso verso l’alto: 1) sabbia limosa poggiante direttamente sul terreno agricolo, fuoriuscita nella fase iniziale dell’alluvione; 2) sabbie medie in discordanza erosiva contenenti abbondanti clasti di fango (16%) costituiti da frammenti del terreno agricolo e dell’argine stesso prodotti dal progressivo allargamento della breccia nell’argine; 3) sabbia media con una minore quantità di clasti fangosi (8%) deposta all’inizio dei lavori di riparazione dell’argine. Abstract Sedimentological characteristics of the crevasse-splay deposits of the River Secchia flood of 19th January 2014. The study of the R. Secchia flood of 19th January 2014 at San Matteo (Modena, Italy) allows the evolution in time and space of the crevasse-splay deposits, which formed in just three days, to be reconstructed. The flood propagated toward the north-east forming a small erosion surface immediately downstream of the collapsed embankment and an irregular sand wedge with a maximum thickness of about 1 m. The sand body covered an area of about 600 m toward the north-east and 1.1 km to the east, where the speed of the current was higher than 0.75 m/s. Laterally, a thin clayey silt (16 to 44% of clay) layer was deposited up to 5.4 km away, in the area where the current speed ranged between 0.75 and 0.25 m/s. The stratigraphic sections of the sand body show three main units, from the bottom to the top: 1) a layer of silty sand resting directly above the soil, deposited during the initial phase of the flood; 2) a medium sand layer containing abundant mud clasts (16%) which are eroded fragments from the soil and the embankment produced by the progressive enlargement of the breach; 3) a top sand layer with less abundant mud clasts (8%) deposited at the beginning of the embankment repair works

Introducing stateful conditional branching in Ciaramella

Conditional branching in Synchronous Data Flow (SDF) networks is a long-standing issue as it clashes with the underlying synchronicity model. For this reason, conditional update of state variables is rarely implemented in data flow programming environments, unlike simpler selection operators that do not execute code conditionally. We propose an extension to SDF theory to represent stateful conditional branching. We prove the effectiveness of such approach by adding conditional constructs to the Ciaramella programming language without compromising its modular declarative paradigm and maintaining domain-specific optimizations intact. This addition enables easy implementation of common DSP algorithms and helps in writing efficient complex programs