Research Seminar 2008-2009

Titles, abstracts and documents :

  • August 2009, wednesday 26 : Vehicle loading optimization with stochastic supply – models, by David Kronus, visinting researcher of QuantOM, HEC-ULg. (B31, 11:00 AM)
  • August 2009, friday 28 : Vehicle loading optimization with stochastic supply – implementation in AIMMS, by David Kronus, visinting researcher of QuantOM, HEC-ULg. (B31, 14:00 AM)

    Abstract : In this technical presentation we describe our implementation of solution techniques based on the deterministic and stochastic models introduced in the previous seminar. We present a project in AIMMS which contains the implementation and we focus on features related to stochastic aspects of the model. In particular we explain in detail how scenarios can be generated in AIMMS using a built-in support module and how scenario-based deterministic equivalent of a stochastic model can be automatically created. Part of the implementation in AIMMS is also a testing framework which we use to evaluate the performance of the indiviual solution techniques.

  • June 2009, wednesday 24 : Operations research methods for electricity markets, by Yves Langer, HEC-ULg and Belpex (Séminaire 11 -B31, 12:00-14:00)
  • June 2009, monday 15 : Constraint programming: hands on COMET software, by Pierre Schaus, BeCool Group UCL (Medialab – B31, 9:00 – 12:00). Inscription required (attendants have to bring their laptop with COMET installed) : contact vanessa.rosso@ulg.ac.be.
  • June 2009, friday 5 : Innovation and Marketing Research Day (Salle du Conseil, 9:00 – 18:00) with scholars from Belgian and Dutch universities and
    • Prof. Erik Hultink: Delft University
    • Prof: Chantal De Morloose : Louvain la neuve
    • Prof: Jhan Van Rekom : Rotterdam School of Management
    • Prof  Hans Ouwersloot :Maastricht University
    • Prof: Sandra Strukens: Haaselt University
    • Prof: Allard Van Riel: University of Liege
    • Prof: Charles Pahud de Mortanges: University of Liege
  • June 2009, friday 5 : L’innovation sociale dans le modèle québécois : la part de la société civile , par M. Pr. Denis Harrisson, Directeur du CRISES – Centre de recherche sur les innovations sociales, UQAM – Université de Québec à Montréal, Québec (Trifac 3 – B33, 12:30 – 14:00). Séminaire conjoint avec la Chaire Cera en Entrepreneuriat et Management de l’Economie Sociale
  • May 2009, friday 15 : Risk indifference pricing and backward stochastic differential equations, by Xavier De Scheemaekere, Solvay Business School, ULB (334 – N1, 12:30 – 14:00)
  • May 2009, tuesday 12 :Market Liquidity as Dynamic Factors, by Charles Mathias, ULB (315-N1, 12:30 – 14:00)
  • May 2009, friday 8 : « So pensions in Europe will remain sustainable. But will they remain adequate? » by Raphael Desmet and Gijs Dekkers (Bureau du Plan). (TriFac 2, 13:30-15)
  • April 2009, Monday 20 : Dynamiques d’apprentissage inter-organisationnel : étapes critiques, enjeux et bonne pratiques, par Julie Degré (LENTIC) (12h00-14h00, SDC, B31)
  • March 2009, friday 27 : « Réduction de la pauvreté » , par F. Bourguignon (Directeur PSE). (9h00-12h00, Auditoire Laurent (B31)
  • February 2009, thursday 19 : Culturele verschillen in de zakenwereld: het geval België – Nederland, by Paul Verluyten, professeur à l’Universiteit Antwerpen et spécialisé en communication interculturelle (17h – 18h30, room 126, N1)
  • February 2009, wednesday 11 : Constraint Programming, Mathematical Programming and Local Search : the COMET Project, by Pascal Van Henteryck, Brown University, USA.(16h00-18h00, SDC, B31)
  • February 2009, thursday 5 : Règlementation et modèle de prévision de difficultués bancaires en zone CEMAC, par Duclaux Soupmo Badjio, HEC-ULg (12h30-14h, room 315, N1)
  • February 2009, tuesday 3 : Appointment Scheduling with Discrete Random Durations (abstract – presentation), by Maurice Queyranne, Sauder School of Business, Canada (14h30-16h, room seminaire12, B31)
  • December, friday 19 : Gender and entrepreuneurship, by Mrs. Teresa Nelson, Simmons School of Management, Boston, Massachusetts. (room 315 / N1, 9h – 13h)

    abstract (in french : invitation):
    Professor Nelson’s recent research is focused on the intersection of gender and entrepreneurship and the project she will discuss involves the ways that successful women entrepreneurs perceive gender as a factor they must manage as they seek to acquire essential organizational resources. Nelson and her colleagues interviewed 20 women founder/CEOs in California and Massachusetts who had successfully accessed venture capital for their firms. The results of the research show how being a woman is relevant to women’s entrepreneurial business success, and how women strategize and manage the gendered landscape. Nelson will also discuss generally the status of women entrepreneurs in the United States and the particular opportunities and challenges they face.

  • December, monday 15 : Does Volatility matter? Expectations of price return and variability in an asset pricing experiment. Miss Francesca Pancotto, PhD. Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Pisa (f.pancotto@sssup.it). (local 315 /N1, 16:00 -18:00)

    abstract: We present results of an experiment on expectation formation in an asset market. We consider a simple market with a riskless bond and a risky stock.
    In the market, six experimental subjects must provide forecasts of the stock future return to computerized utility-maximizing investors, and are rewarded according to how well their forecasts perform in the market. We run two treatments to test the influence of perceived volatility on aggregate dynamics. In the Baseline treatment subjects must only forecast the stock future return one period ahead; in the Variance treatment, we also elicit subjects confidence intervals for their forecasts, which we take as a proxy for perceived volatility. The realized asset price is derived from a Walrasian market equilibrium equation with non-linear feedback from individual forecasts. Our experimental markets exhibit high volatility, fat tails and other properties typical of real financial data. Eliciting confidence intervals for predictions has the effect of reducing price fluctuations and increasing subjects’ coordination on a common prediction strategy.

  • December, thursday 4 : Global Sourcing Strategies and Their Impacts on the Supplier Performance & Innovation. by M. Aydin INEMEK, PhD, Dokuz Eylul University. (ainemek@yahoo.com) au séminaire 3 (B31) de 13h à 15h30.

    abstract: Intense competitive pressures, in the global markets, have forced companies to find and select new supply sources in the worldwide for reducing cost and improving quality while simultaneously achieving high technology in the long term. On the other hand, realizing the impacts of suppliers and supplier relationships on the firm’s performance and competitiveness has motivated firms to develop long-term strategic sourcing relationships with suppliers. The purpose of this study is to examine global sourcing relationships and to investigate the impacts of global buyers’ sourcing strategies on the supplier performance and innovation. …

  • November, thursday 20 : On the price elasticity of demand for patents
    by Gaétan de Rassenfosse, FNRS Research Fellow, ULB, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (SBS-EM), ECORE (ECARES) and Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, ULB, Solvay SA Chair of Technological Innovation, SBS-EM, ECORE (ECARES), Bruegel, Brussels and CEPR, London
    presented by Gaétan de Rassenfosse.
  • November, thursday 13 : A closer look at the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth, by Theophile Azomahou (Maastricht)(13:30 – 15:00, room « séminaire 10 »)

    abstract: We first provide a nonparametric inference of the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth on an historical data for 18 countries over the period 1820-2005. The obtained shape shows up convexity for low enough values of life expectancy and concavity for large enough values. We then study this relationship on a benchmark model combining “perpetual youth » and learning-by-investing. In such a benchmark, the generated relationship between life expectancy and economic growth is shown to be strictly increasing and concave. We finally examine two models departing from “perpetual youth » by assuming successively age-dependent earnings and age-dependent survival probabilities. With age-dependent earnings, the obtained relationship is hump-shaped while agedependent survival laws do reproduce the convex-concave shape detected in the prior empirical study.

  • November, thursday 6 : Correlation between the Recovery Rate and the Arrival Rate of Default. Application on the iTraxx. Joint work with G. Hübner, presented by Jean Roch Sybille (HEC-ULg).

    abstract:We study the effect of the relationship between the recovery rate (RR) and the probability of default (PD) in the traditional Monte Carlo credit risk model introduced by Li (1999) for the pricing of structured credit derivatives. The influence of this effect is particularly important if we consider extreme tranches of CDOs, because they are only reached when numerous defaults have arrived. This could be an explanation of the observed correlation smile on the market. The model is applied on a generic cash CDO and on the European iTraxx synthetic CDO index.

  • October, thursday 23 : (EC) Residential Segregation and Unemployment: The Case of Brussels, by Claire Dujardin (UCL). (13:30 – 15:00, room « séminaire 10 »)

    abstract: This paper investigates the causal effects of the spatial organization of Brussels on unemployment propensities. Using Census data at the individual level, we estimate the unemployment probability of young adults while taking into account personal, household and neighbourhood characteristics. We solve the endogeneity of residential locations by restricting our sample to young adults residing with their parents, and evaluate the potential remaining bias by conducting a sensitivity analysis. Our results suggest that residing in a deprived neighbourhood significantly increases a youngster probability of being unemployed, a result which is quite robust to the presence of both observed and unobserved parental covariates.

  • October, thursday 16 : Explaining returns on venture capital backed companies: evidence from Belgium! Yan M. Alperovych and Georges Hübner, HEC-ULg Management School – University of Liège , presented by Yan Alperovych (12:30, room315,N1)
  • October, monday 6 : Interval representations of Boolean functions, presented by David Kronus, Post-Do student at HEC-ULg (12h30, Salle du Conseil,B31)

    abstract: Boolean function on n variables is a mapping of Boolean vectors of length n to Boolean values (Boolean vectors contain just Boolean values 0,1, traditionally denoted as false and true). Boolean functions can be represented in many ways, the most usual forms are logical formulae and decision trees. One of the fundamental problems in the field of Boolean function is Boolean minimization where the task is to find a short representation of a given function. In my talk I will present a non-traditional representation of Boolean functions – the interval representation, its properties and relation to Boolean minimization.