For small and medium sized enterprises, portfolio management can be a difficult exercise; especially when the available paths forwards are shrouded in mystery. To overcome this, they are required to research and decide upon the path to follow, but this can be difficult when the information to gather is unclear, leading to ad-hoc processes and inconsistency. The motivation for this project originated from a small and medium sized enterprise experiencing this problem of unknown critical information and a technological portfolio with significant potential. With no procedure or method in place, they conducted the research in an ad-hoc way resulting in uncertainty and low repeatability of decisions. To tackle this problem, innovation structuring frameworks were synthesised with appropriate risks and context to pose a new structure for information capture. The resulting structure was tested within the small and medium sized enterprise to investigate the repeatability of the information capture and the subsequent ranking. The proposed structure was also analysed by — process experts for its wider applicability. For the small and medium sized enterprise, this led to a consistent and repeatable method that delivered increased confidence about selecting a path forwards for its portfolio. In addition, it was found to be applicable to external organisations increasing the model’s worth and applicability. The implications of this work have led to a change in the operational procedure of the small and medium sized enterprise to utilise the defined process for researching new ideas for their portfolio which can lead to repeatable and trustworthy decisions. This also has applicability to other similar companies and could lead them through a repeatable process as presented here.

The manner in which economic outcomes are coded in a value function is critical because it has substantial influence on the evaluation of risky choices. In this paper, we formulate multiple mental accounts in a nonlinear value function and propose a newsvendor problem with mental accounting to predict and explain pull-to-center phenomenon. We show that the distinctive predictions of the proposed model come from the value function with mental accounting. We identify the individual and combined effects of loss aversion, risk aversion, and risk seeking on shaping newsvendor ordering behavior. Our work demonstrates that prospect theory can explain the decision bias and ordering behavior observed in newsvendor experiments. We also provide some additional insights to explain the studies in the literature.

A stochastic service system of finite size M is comprised of identical service facilities, including or not a waiting queue, which simultaneously treats N customers, N ∈ {0, 1, …, M}. Depending on the concepts of system information i and system entropy S = E(i), we promote a risk assessment procedure. By definition, the system entropy is the uncertainty associated with the system, and the system expected loss is the risk associated with the system. Thus, accepting the system information as loss function, we can identify risk and uncertainty, associated with the system, using the entropy as risk function. Further, we differ risk of the system (i.e., risk observed by an outside observer), risk observed by an arriving customer, and risk observed by a departing customer, giving a separate expression for each one. Then, these risks are compared with each other, when the system has the same average number E(N) of customers seen by any viewpoint. The three risk types (together with the three customer means) allow us to distinguish two systems obeying the same probability distribution. This approach enables system operators to choose suitable values for system utilization and size, in view of the three risks ratio. The developed procedure is applied to the information linear system, Erlang loss system, single-server queueing system with discouraged arrivals, Binomial system and Engset loss system.

Based on the minimum loss probability criterion, this paper discusses the optimal strategy in multi-asset liquidation. First, we give the framework of the multi-asset liquidation problem and obtain the boundary conditions of the optimal liquidation strategy under the assumption of linear price impact functions and transform the multi-asset liquidation problem into the portfolio liquidation problem. On this basis, the asymptotic solution and numerical solution of the optimal liquidation strategy are obtained. Then, we simulate the trajectories of the optimal liquidation strategy and analyze the effects of parameters changes.

We investigate the directional volatility and return network connectedness among stock, commodity, bond, currency and cryptocurrency markets. The period of study covers Feb 2006 until August 2018. We utilize and expand Diebold and Yilmaz (2014 2015) connectedness measurement; accordingly, in the variance decomposition structure, we use Hierarchical Vector Autoregression (HVAR) to estimate high dimensional networks more accurately. Our empirical results show that markets are highly connected, especially during 2008–2009. Asian stock markets are the net receiver of shocks, while European and American stock markets are the net transmitter of shocks to other markets. The pairwise connectedness results suggest that among stock markets, DAX-CAC 40, FTSE 100-CAC 40 and S&P 500-S&P_TSX index are more integrated through connectedness than the others. For other markets, WTI crude oil — Brent crude oil, 30-Year bond and 10-Year bond, Dollar Index futures-EUR/USD have notable connections. In terms of cryptocurrencies, they contribute insignificantly to other markets and are highly integrated with each other. Gold and cryptocurrencies seem to be good choices for investors to hedge during a crisis.

The current healthcare system in Hong Kong is experiencing pressure due to constrained resources, with dramatic increases in inpatient services queue lengths, dissatisfaction with the working environment, unacceptable workforce arrangements and high turnover rate of hospital staff. To maintain the robustness of the healthcare system and a sustainable inpatients flow, the Food and Health Bureau launched a public-private partnership programme to utilise the resources of the public and private hospitals. This research investigates the potential for extension of the programme and further enhancing the sustainability of the long-term inpatient services under a mixed public-private healthcare policy via system dynamic modelling. The findings show that an increase of human resources in public hospitals does not substantially improve inpatient flow rate performance. Further, the results from the system dynamic approach provide insights into the expansion of the service areas of the programme and suggest increasing the number of referrals to private hospitals.

A product typically exhibits three different failure rates across its lifetime: increasing, decreasing, or constant. This paper studies how the characteristics of failure rate impact the supply chain coordination for an extendedwarranty programinvolving a manufacturer and a retailer. Atwo-stage Stackelberg game is utilized to model the interaction between these two players. Two extended warranty channel structures are compared depending on whether the manufacturer or the retailer offers the warranty service. The analysis shows that the failure rate trend during the warranty period has different effects on the coordination of the service supply chain. When a product has an increasing or constant failure rate, the optimal length of extended warranty offered by the retailer is longer than that of the manufacturer, while the optimal length is shorter for a product with a decreasing failure rate. If a product during the warranty coverage has an increasing or constant failure rate, a longer extended warranty period will motivate customers to buy the product without the warranty, whereas more customers will buy both the product and the warranty if the product experiences a decreasing failure rate. It is concluded that, if the manufacturer and the retailer incur the same warranty service cost, the total profit in the supply chain is higher when the manufacturer offers the extended warranty. From the game participants’ perspective, the one which sells the extended warranty will obtain more profit.