HEC Montréal

About: HEC Montréal is a education organization based out in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Vehicle routing problem. The organization has 1221 authors who have published 5708 publications receiving 196862 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montreal & HEC Montreal.

American Option Pricing using GARCH models and the Normal Inverse Gaussian distribution

Abstract: In this paper we propose a feasible way to price American options in a model with time varying volatility and conditional skewness and leptokurtosis using GARCH processes and the Normal Inverse Gaussian distribution. We show how the risk neutral dynamics can be obtained in this model, we interpret the effect of the riskneutralization, and we derive approximation procedures which allow for a computationally efficient implementation of the model. When the model is estimated on financial returns data the results indicate that compared to the Gaussian case the extension is important. A study of the model properties shows that there are important option pricing differences compared to the Gaussian case as well as to the symmetric special case. A large scale empirical examination shows that our model outperforms the Gaussian case for pricing options on three large US stocks as well as a major index. In particular, improvements are found when considering the smile in implied standard deviations.

In the Eye of the Beholder: An Exploration of Managerial Courage

Abstract: There is growing interest in the positive organizational literature in the complex interplay between the positive and negative facets of organizations, individuals, and situations The concept of courage provides fertile ground to study this interplay, since it is generally understood to be a positive quality that is manifested in challenging situations The empirical study presented here looks at courage in a strategic decision-making context and takes an interpretive perspective; it focuses on the cognitive structures and subjective understandings of managers and administrators involved in merger projects as a way to understand the dynamics surrounding managerial courage Our study makes several contributions: it shows that managers consider courage to have a moral dimension, eg, to be a positive and ethical response to a risky or difficult situation in which there is an interplay between organizational and personal interests; it identifies two kinds of managerial moral courage; it proposes a conceptual model with which to understand how evaluations of what is courageous and what is not are made; and finally, it offers four schemas developed from the data that add to our understanding of moral courage in management

Underwriter Quality and Long-Run IPO Performance

Abstract: We analyze the relationship between the quality of underwriters and the long-run performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) in light of underwriter marketing, certification and screening, and information production. We find that higher underwriter quality (measured by the number of managing underwriters, underwriter reputation, and absolute price adjustment) predicts better long-run performance, even when returns are value weighted. We compare underwriter quality measures and find that the effects of the number of managing underwriters and underwriter reputation are mutually complementary and are especially strong among IPOs with high uncertainty, while absolute price adjustment, which is more likely to be associated with information production than marketing or certification/screening, loses significance. Our findings are consistent with the marketing and certification and screening roles of investment banks but lend little support for the information production role of underwriters.

A Reliable Affine Relaxation Method for Global Optimization

Abstract: An automatic method for constructing linear relaxations of constrained global optimization problems is proposed. Such a construction is based on affine and interval arithmetics and uses operator overloading. These linear programs have exactly the same numbers of variables and inequality constraints as the given problems. Each equality constraint is replaced by two inequalities. This new procedure for computing reliable bounds and certificates of infeasibility is inserted into a classical branch and bound algorithm based on interval analysis. Extensive computation experiments were made on 74 problems from the COCONUT database with up to 24 variables or 17 constraints; 61 of these were solved, and 30 of them for the first time, with a guaranteed upper bound on the relative error equal to $$10^{-8}$$ . Moreover, this sample comprises 39 examples to which the GlobSol algorithm was recently applied finding reliable solutions in 32 cases. The proposed method allows solving 31 of these, and 5 more with a CPU-time not exceeding 2 min.