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

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

Eliciting the Functional Taxonomy from protein annotations and taxa

The advances of omics technologies have triggered the production of an enormous volume of data coming from thousands of species. Meanwhile, joint international efforts like the Gene Ontology (GO) consortium have worked to provide functional information for a vast amount of proteins. With these data available, we have developed FunTaxIS, a tool that is the first attempt to infer functional taxonomy (i.e. how functions are distributed over taxa) combining functional and taxonomic information. FunTaxIS is able to define a taxon specific functional space by exploiting annotation frequencies in order to establish if a function can or cannot be used to annotate a certain species. The tool generates constraints between GO terms and taxa and then propagates these relations over the taxonomic tree and the GO graph. Since these constraints nearly cover the whole taxonomy, it is possible to obtain the mapping of a function over the taxonomy. FunTaxIS can be used to make functional comparative analyses among taxa, to detect improper associations between taxa and functions, and to discover how functional knowledge is either distributed or missing. A benchmark test set based on six different model species has been devised to get useful insights on the generated taxonomic rules

BIVIB: A Multimodal Piano Sample Library Of Binaural Sounds And Keyboard Vibrations

An extensive piano sample library consisting of binaural sounds and keyboard vibration signals is made available through an open-access data repository. Samples were acquired with high-quality audio and vibration measurement equipment on two Yamaha Disklavier pianos (one grand and one upright model) by means of computer-controlled playback of each key at ten different MIDI velocity values. The nominal specifications of the equipment used in the acquisition chain are reported in a companion document, allowing researchers to calculate physical quantities (e.g., acoustic pressure, vibration acceleration) from the recordings. Also, project files are provided for straightforward playback in a free software sampler available for Windows and Mac OS systems. The library is especially suited for acoustic and vibration research on the piano, as well as for research on multimodal interaction with musical instruments