A Meal for the Man on the Redline

These words will bite, Acid bubbling At the pit of your bowels Vowels volatile won’t Be easy to swallow. [excerpt

Own Your Experience

This is a computer-generated message from the Campus Navigation Portal (CNAV), which can be accessed via the URL: Campus Navigation Portal (CNAV). It was sent to you to inform you of a significant event. I received this email when I was a young, nervous First Year student. I took advantage of the clean slate I got from attending a new school and was scrolling through the Digest in search of a new identity. Maybe I could be one of those quirky unicycle riding, juggling, circus kids—it was all up in the air. I wasn’t going to let the past hold me back anyway. Then I read this: You have been added to the group, IRC_Asian_Students You do not have the ability to unsubscribe yourself from this group. [excerpt

Precious Knowledge

An essay about my name and its true meaning..

Stop Ducking

When I joined the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, a small voice in my head kept saying that it was a bad idea. “Don’t become part of the system, Stephen.” But I defended my decision and believed in the idea of Phi Kappa Psi returning to campus with a clean slate. The possibilities far outweighed the cons. I dreamt of the potential of what Phi Psi could become and how we would stand above the traditional expectations of Greek organizations. I wanted to tell everyone about this dream and I couldn’t wait to find like-minded people. I felt inspired by how we might define ourselves. [excerpt

Least-Squares Covariance Matrix Adjustment

We consider the problem of finding the smallest adjustment to a given symmetric $n \times n$ matrix, as measured by the Euclidean or Frobenius norm, so that it satisfies some given linear equalities and inequalities, and in addition is positive semidefinite. This least-squares covariance adjustment problem is a convex optimization problem, and can be efficiently solved using standard methods when the number of variables (i.e., entries in the matrix) is modest, say, under $1000$. Since the number of variables is $n(n+1)/2$, this corresponds to a limit around $n=45$. Malick [{\it SIAM J. Matrix Anal.\ Appl.,} 26 (2005), pp. 272--284] studies a closely related problem and calls it the semidefinite least-squares problem. In this paper we formulate a dual problem that has no matrix inequality or matrix variables, and a number of (scalar) variables equal to the number of equality and inequality constraints in the original least-squares covariance adjustment problem. This dual problem allows us to solve far larger least-squares covariance adjustment problems than would be possible using standard methods. Assuming a modest number of constraints, problems with $n=1000$ are readily solved by the dual method. The dual method coincides with the dual method proposed by Malick when there are no inequality constraints and can be obtained as an extension of his dual method when there are inequality constraints. Using the dual problem, we show that in many cases the optimal solution is a low rank update of the original matrix. When the original matrix has structure, such as sparsity, this observation allows us to solve very large least-squares covariance adjustment problems

Are Under- and Over-reaction the Same Matter? A Price Inertia based Account

Theories on under- and over-reaction in asset prices fall into three types: (1) they are respectively driven by different psychological factors; (2) they are driven by different types of investors; and (3) they reflect un-modeled risk. We design an asset market where information arrives sequentially over time and is revealed asymmetrically to investors. None of the three hypotheses is supported by our data: (1) Investors do not respond differently to public information and private information, and they do not behave in ways that are claimed by multiple psychological models; (2) no groups of investors are identified to drive under- or over-reaction in particular; (3) price deviation from expected payoff cannot be justified by risk metrics. We find that prices react insufficiently to news surprises, possibly because of cautious conservatism on the part of investors and under-reacting drifts outnumber overreacting reversals substantially. Contrary to common beliefs, we find that over-reaction is caused by slow adjustment of prices to surprises, similar to the cause of under-reaction. It is the degree of price inertia that drives the relative frequencies of under- and over-reaction. We propose a simple price inertia theory of under- and over-reaction: when information arrives sequentially over time, the market is characterized by a slow convergence toward intrinsic value; when news surprises are of the same signs, prices falls behind newly updated intrinsic values, manifesting under-reacting drifts; when news surprises change signs, prices again do not adjust quick enough to catch up with the new intrinsic values, manifesting a temporal pattern of overreacting reversals.Experimental finance, under-reaction, overreaction, behavior, price inertia, risk aversion

Information technology and electronics firms from Taiwan Province of China in the United Kingdom: Emerging trends and implications

This article examines the modal choices, key activities and motivations of non-dominant information technology and electronics firms from Taiwan Province of China in the United Kingdom, against the backdrop of recent trends in the global economy. Its main findings include the limited prospects of the sample firms' evolution into manufacturing activity in the United Kingdom and the increasing importance of inter-firm logistics collaboration. Among the key policy implications discussed in the article are: the need for appropriate measures to support the United Kingdom's positioning as a gateway to, and a preferred base for intelligence gathering on, other European markets; the need for "high-wage" advanced economies to capitalize upon their not-easily-replicable location-specific advantages (e.g. reputable research-anddevelopment clusters; substantial domestic market) in targeting foreign direct investment in the research and development, design and sales-related areas; and the importance of a more balanced investment attraction strategy that actively targets major global players (and their capacity to attract secondary inward investment) without compromising support for indigenous growth companies. Future research should pay greater attention to the intra-regional, rather than intra-country, context of firms' evolution in international markets