The Black Box of Mutual Fund Fees

This paper re-examines the determinants of mutual fund fees paid by mutual fund shareholders for management costs and other expenses. There are two novelties with respect to previous studies. First, each type of fee is explained separately. Second, the paper employs a new dataset consisting of Spanish mutual funds, making it the second paper to study mutual fund fees outside the US market. Furthermore, the Spanish market has three interesting characteristics: (i) both distribution and management are highly dominated by banks and savings banks, which points towards potential conflicts of interest; (ii) Spanish mutual fund law imposes caps on all types of fees; and (iii) Spain ranks first in terms of average mutual fund fees among similar countries. We find significant differences in mutual fund fees not explained by the fund’s investment objective. For instance, management companies owned by banks and savings banks charge higher management fees and redemption fees to nonguaranteed funds. Also, investors in older non-guaranteed funds and non-guaranteed funds with a lower average investment are more likely to end up paying higher management fees. Moreover, there is clear evidence that some mutual funds enjoy better conditions from custodial institutions than others. In contrast to evidence from the US market, larger funds are not associated with lower fees, but with higher custody fees for guaranteed funds and higher redemption fees for both types of funds. Finally, fee-setting by mutual funds is not related to fund before-fee performance

Do Credit Ratings Take into Account the Sustainability Performance of Companies?

In the last few decades, sustainability performance measuring has become a widely-studied issue, and various measurement proposals have been put forward. However, it is also important to know whether those measures are actually being used in the real world. In this case, we take one very important indicator used by investors when they make investment decisions: the credit rating of the potential investment. We test whether credit ratings take into account the above-mentioned measures. Following the literature, we conduct a fixed-effects ordered probit analysis, using as controls the variables usually found in the related literature on credit rating analysis. The dependent variables are S&P ratings. We find that companies with higher sustainability performance tend to have higher credit ratings, though having a less consistent performance over time seems to have no effect. To check the robustness of our results, we also perform the analysis for different sectors and sub-periods. In addition, we conduct the analysis using sustainability scores provided by ASSET4 (Datastream) as an explanatory variable and using Fitch credit ratings as the explained variable.M.C.-D. acknowledges research support from the University of the Basque Country, Grants PIF/UPV/12/258 and MOV 16/41. M.A.M.S. acknowledges support from the Basque Government, Grant IT-241-07. Both authors acknowledge research support from the Ministry of Economy and Competitivity, Grant ECO2014-51914-P

Understanding the ex-ante cost of liquidity in the limit order book: A note

This paper estimates a new measure of liquidity costs in a market driven by orders. It represents thecost of simultaneously buying and selling a given amount of shares, and it is given by a single measure of ex-ante liquidity that aggregates all available information in the limit order book for a given number of shares. The cost of liquidity is an increasing function relating bid-ask spreads with the amounts available for trading. This measure completely characterizes the cost of liquidity of any given asset. It does not suffer from the usual ambiguities related to either the bid-ask spread or depth when they are considered separately. On the contrary, with a single measure, we are able to capture all dimensions of liquidity costs on ex-ante basis.Miguel A. Martínez and Gonzalo Rubio on the one hand, and Mikel Tapia on the other, acknowledge the financial support provided by the Dirección General Interministerial Científica y Técnica (DGICYT) grants PB97-0621 and PB98-0030 respectively

Your Teammate Just Sent You a New Message! The Effects of Using Telegram on Individual Acquisition of Teamwork Competence

Students’ acquisition of teamwork competence has become a priority for educational institutions. The development of teamwork competence in education generally relies in project-based learning methodologies and challenges. The assessment of teamwork in project-based learning involves, among others, assessing students’ participation and the interactions between team members. Project-based learning can easily be handled in small-size courses, but course management and teamwork assessment become a burdensome task for instructors as the size of the class increases. Additionally, when project-based learning happens in a virtual space, such as online learning, interactions occur in a less natural way. This study explores the use of instant messaging apps (more precisely, the use of Telegram) as team communication space in project-based learning, using a learning analytics tool to extract and analyze student interactions. Further, the study compares student interactions (e.g., number of messages exchanged) and individual teamwork competence acquisition between traditional asynchronous (e.g., LMS message boards) and synchronous instant messaging communication environments. The results show a preference of students for IM tools and increased participation in the course. However, the analysis does not find significant improvement in the acquisition of individual teamwork competence

Measuring the impact of haptic feedback in collaborative robotic scenarios

[EN] In recent years, the interaction of a human operator with teleoperated robotic systems has been much improved. One of the factors influencing this improvement is the addition of force feedback to complement the visual feedback provided by traditional graphical user interfaces. However, the users of these systems performing tasks in isolated and safe environments are often inexperienced and occasional users. In addition, there is no common framework to assess the usability of these systems, due to the heterogeneity of applications and tasks, and therefore, there is a need for new usability assessment methods that are not domain specific. This study addresses this issue by proposing a measure of usability that includes five variables: user efficiency, user effectiveness, mental workload, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use. The empirical analysis shows that the integration of haptic feedback improves the usability of these systems for non-expert users, even though the differences are not statistically significant; further, the results suggest that mental workload is higher when haptic feedback is added. The analysis also reveals significant differences between participants depending on gender.SIPublicación en abierto financiada por el Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de Castilla y León (BUCLE), con cargo al Programa Operativo 2014ES16RFOP009 FEDER 2014-2020 DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN, Actuación:20007-CL - Apoyo Consorcio BUCL

Hybrid optimization approach for the design of mechanisms using a new error estimator

A hybrid optimization approach for the design of linkages is presented. The method is applied to the dimensional synthesis of mechanism and combines the merits of both stochastic and deterministic optimization. The stochastic optimization approach is based on a real-valued evolutionary algorithm (EA) and is used for extensive exploration of the design variable space when searching for the best linkage. The deterministic approach uses a local optimization technique to improve the efficiency by reducing the high CPU time that EA techniques require in this kind of applications. To that end, the deterministic approach is implemented in the evolutionary algorithm in two stages. The first stage is the fitness evaluation where the deterministic approach is used to obtain an effective new error estimator. In the second stage the deterministic approach refines the solution provided by the evolutionary part of the algorithm. The new error estimator enables the evaluation of the different individuals in each generation, avoiding the removal of well-adapted linkages that other methods would not detect. The efficiency, robustness, and accuracy of the proposed method are tested for the design of a mechanism in two examples.This paper has been developed in the framework of the Project DPI2010-18316 funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Advanced tools for ITER Tritium Plant System Modeling & Design

Chemical plant system modeling experience based on the use of largely validated commercial modeling tools such as the Aspen HYSYS is adapted and exploited to develop numeric routines for unitary isotopic operations, including permeation, cold trapping, reversible absorption, and cryogenic distillation, for the ITER tritium plant systems. Model prediction capabilities and isotopic database inputs for first-principle models are discussed. Numeric implementation of the Aspen HYSYS routines are presentedPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

RoboSTEAM Project Systematic Mapping: Challenge Based Learning and Robotics

STEAM Education is nowadays a key element for our current digital society. Integrating STEAM and developing competences such as Computational Thinking is highly demanded by the industry and higher education institutions. In order to do so new methodological approaches are required. RoboSTEAM project is an Erasmus+ project defined to address these topics by using of physical devices and robotics employing Challenge Based Learning methodology. One of the first steps in the project development is the definition of current landscape in the research field. Which means to carry out a literature mapping that considers previous applications of Challenge Based Learning in STEAM education and use of robots and physical devices to do so. This paper shows the mapping review process and the main results obtained. The mapping analyze 242 candidate works from the most relevant bibliographic sources and selected 54. Form them it was possible to see that there are not many initiatives on STEM Education related to Challenge base learning and the most of them are specially focused on the application of specific tools and in the development of concrete competences