The process of value creation out of the acquisition, transfer and exploitation of scientific knowledge has become a major challenge for developed economies. Knowledge institutions like universities and R%D centres are important actors in this context. This paper offers a novel contribution to...

This paper analyzes the safety-first portfolio model under two different target assumptions, the fixed target, which is commonly assumed in the literature, and the random target, which has played only a minor role so far. As both targets can be easily motivated, the open question is, which...

Safety-first portfolio optimization is concerned with maximizing the expected portfolio return subject to a safety-first constraint, which is defined as the probability of failing to achieve a specified target. Commonly the target is assumed to be fixed, which, however, leads to significant...

The need for monitoring countries’ overall performance in sustainable development (SD) is widely recognized, but the methods for aggregating vast amounts of empirical data remain rather crude. This paper examines the so-called ‘benefit of doubt’ weighting method as a tool for identifying...

The report gives a rather gloomy picture of the current state of the Lisbon process, even though there has been some progress during the last year, such as the spread of new technology in society and the liberalisation of several markets, e.g. the energy market. However, in many areas action is...