1,721 research outputs found
Can Individual Investors Beat the Market?
We document strong persistence in the performance of trades of individual investors. Investors classified in the top 10 percent place other trades that on average earn excess returns of 15 basis points per day. A rolling-forward strategy of going long firms purchased by previously successful investors and shorting firms purchased by previously unsuccessful investors results in excess returns of 5 basis points per day. These returns are not confined to small stocks nor to stocks in which the investors are likely to have inside information. Our results suggest that skillful individual investors exploit market inefficiencies to earn abnormal profits, above and beyond any profits available from well-known strategies based upon size, value, or momentum.Individual Investors, Market Efficiency, Performance Persistence
Biexciton recombination rates in self-assembled quantum dots
The radiative recombination rates of interacting electron-hole pairs in a
quantum dot are strongly affected by quantum correlations among electrons and
holes in the dot. Recent measurements of the biexciton recombination rate in
single self-assembled quantum dots have found values spanning from two times
the single exciton recombination rate to values well below the exciton decay
rate. In this paper, a Feynman path-integral formulation is developed to
calculate recombination rates including thermal and many-body effects. Using
real-space Monte Carlo integration, the path-integral expressions for realistic
three-dimensional models of InGaAs/GaAs, CdSe/ZnSe, and InP/InGaP dots are
evaluated, including anisotropic effective masses. Depending on size, radiative
rates of typical dots lie in the regime between strong and intermediate
confinement. The results compare favorably to recent experiments and
calculations on related dot systems. Configuration interaction calculations
using uncorrelated basis sets are found to be severely limited in calculating
decay rates.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Information and Opportunistic Behavior in Federal Crop Insurance Programs
Opportunistic behavior in crop insurance can arise due to asymmetric information between producers and the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. Producers who insure fields using transitional yields based on county average yields or who select options such as buy-up coverage or revenue insurance may increase their return from crop insurance. Using field-level crop insurance contract data for several crops in five growing regions, we find evidence that producers can profit from using buy-up coverage, revenue insurance, and transitional yields and that the level of producer opportunism is crop but not necessarily land-quality specific and is greater due to premium subsidization.opportunistic behavior, crop insurance, buy-up, revenue, transitional yields
The Effects of Transitional Yields on Adverse Selection in Crop Insurance
Transitional yields based on county average can be used by producers as the basis to obtain crop insurance on fields that have not previously produced the crop. Using field-level crop insurance contract data for several crops in five different growing regions we examine the impact of this asymmetric information on adverse selection. Our results indicate that adverse selection does exist from the use of transitional yields and that it is crop specific but not land-quality specific.adverse selection, crop insurance, transitional yields, Risk and Uncertainty, Q18,
Propellant feed systems transients
Program was written to assist in analysis of fluid feed line transients initiated by operation of valves. Program output consists of printout of transient pressures and velocities through feed system as function of time. Optional CRT plot output provides for display of transient pressures and velocities as function of time at any desired location in feed system
Good Day Sunshine: Stock Returns and the Weather
Psychological evidence and casual intuition predict that sunny weather is associated with upbeat mood. This paper examines the relation between morning sunshine at a country's leading stock exchange and market index stock returns that day at 26 stock exchanges internationally from 1982- 97. Sunshine is strongly positively correlated with daily stock returns. After controlling for sunshine, other weather conditions such as rain and snow are unrelated to returns. If transactions costs are assumed to be minor, it is possible to trade profitably on the weather. These results are difficult to reconcile with fully rational price-setting.market efficiency, mood and securities prices, psychology and finance
Tuning biexciton binding and anti-binding in core/shell quantum dots
We use a path integral quantum Monte Carlo method to simulate excitons and
biexcitons in core shell nanocrystals with Type-I, II and quasi-Type II band
alignments. Quantum Monte Carlo techniques allow for all quantum correlations
to be included when determining the thermal ground state, thus producing
accurate predictions of biexciton binding. These subtle quantum correlations
are found to cause the biexciton to be binding with Type-I carrier localization
and strongly anti-binding with Type-II carrier localization, in agreement with
experiment for both core shell nanocrystals and dot in rod nanocrystal
structures. Simple treatments based on perturbative approaches are shown to
miss this important transition in the biexciton binding. Understanding these
correlations offers prospects to engineer strong biexciton anti-binding which
is crucial to the design of nanocrystals for single exciton lasing
applications.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure
Autocorrelations in the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process and Nagel-Schreckenberg model
We study via Monte Carlo simulation the dynamics of the Nagel-Schreckenberg
model on a finite system of length L with open boundary conditions and parallel
updates. We find numerically that in both the high and low density regimes the
autocorrelation function of the system density behaves like 1-|t|/tau with a
finite support [-tau,tau]. This is in contrast to the usual exponential decay
typical of equilibrium systems. Furthermore, our results suggest that in fact
tau=L/c, and in the special case of maximum velocity 1 (corresponding to the
totally asymmetric simple exclusion process) we can identify the exact
dependence of c on the input, output and hopping rates. We also emphasize that
the parameter tau corresponds to the integrated autocorrelation time, which
plays a fundamental role in quantifying the statistical errors in Monte Carlo
simulations of these models.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
Kalman-filter control schemes for fringe tracking. Development and application to VLTI/GRAVITY
The implementation of fringe tracking for optical interferometers is
inevitable when optimal exploitation of the instrumental capacities is desired.
Fringe tracking allows continuous fringe observation, considerably increasing
the sensitivity of the interferometric system. In addition to the correction of
atmospheric path-length differences, a decent control algorithm should correct
for disturbances introduced by instrumental vibrations, and deal with other
errors propagating in the optical trains. We attempt to construct control
schemes based on Kalman filters. Kalman filtering is an optimal data processing
algorithm for tracking and correcting a system on which observations are
performed. As a direct application, control schemes are designed for GRAVITY, a
future four-telescope near-infrared beam combiner for the Very Large Telescope
Interferometer (VLTI). We base our study on recent work in adaptive-optics
control. The technique is to describe perturbations of fringe phases in terms
of an a priori model. The model allows us to optimize the tracking of fringes,
in that it is adapted to the prevailing perturbations. Since the model is of a
parametric nature, a parameter identification needs to be included. Different
possibilities exist to generalize to the four-telescope fringe tracking that is
useful for GRAVITY. On the basis of a two-telescope Kalman-filtering control
algorithm, a set of two properly working control algorithms for four-telescope
fringe tracking is constructed. The control schemes are designed to take into
account flux problems and low-signal baselines. First simulations of the
fringe-tracking process indicate that the defined schemes meet the requirements
for GRAVITY and allow us to distinguish in performance. In a future paper, we
will compare the performances of classical fringe tracking to our Kalman-filter
control.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A&
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