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The case is intended for a class relatively early in a decision analysis or a risk analysis class module. The case can be used as the very first case in the course if students are familiar with the concepts of NPV. Alternatively, students can be given a short technical note on calculating NPV for cash flows as pedagogy for the case. The analysis requires use of NPV calculations to determine the outcomes of different options in the case and to choose one of the given options. Using the choices that students make, the instructor can lead a rich discussion on effects of risk-seeking and risk-averse behavior in situations that managers face in real life.

This technical note, based on the more comprehensive note, "Eliciting and Evaluating Expert Forecasts" (UVA-QA-0734), provides a streamlined presentation of Brier and log scores as tools for assessing forecasting records among a pool of experts. The note is designed to be used in conjunction with a forecasting exercise.

In this case series, Margaret Ballis, a soon-to-be Darden School of Business graduate, is about to begin her dream job at a leading investment management firm. On her way to becoming a fund manager, she cannot help wondering about her future success. Ballis is trying to assess her ability to consistently outperform the stock market; she questions whether it is even possible to achieve persistent performance as a fund manager. Using data downloaded from Morningstar, Inc., on 2,852 mutual funds, students are prompted to investigate whether funds that beat the S&P 500 Index benchmark during a five-year period are more likely to beat the Index over the next five-year period. Students are asked to take a closer look at the "hot hand" phenomenon by investigating investors' reactions to streaks of outperformance and examining whether funds that outperformed their peers several years in a row also outgrow their peers in terms of size.

Spreadsheet Supplement for cases UV5612 and UV5616.

In this case series, Margaret Ballis, a soon-to-be Darden School of Business graduate, is about to begin her dream job at a leading investment management firm. On her way to becoming a fund manager, she cannot help wondering about her future success. Ballis is trying to assess her ability to consistently outperform the stock market; she questions whether it is even possible to achieve persistent performance as a fund manager. Using data downloaded from Morningstar, Inc., on 2,852 mutual funds, students are prompted to investigate whether funds that beat the S&P 500 Index benchmark during a five-year period are more likely to beat the Index over the next five-year period. Students are asked to take a closer look at the "hot hand" phenomenon by investigating investors' reactions to streaks of outperformance and examining whether funds that outperformed their peers several years in a row also outgrow their peers in terms of size. The A case (UVA-F-1621) and its supplement (UVA-F-1623) can be used to support an introductory class in data analysis with an emphasis on PivotTables, data filtering, and regressions. The B case (UVA-F-1622) can be used to support a more advanced financial analysis for students with some exposure to the CAPM model. There are two supplemental spreadsheets: one for students (UVA-F-1621X) and one for instructors (UVA-F-1621TNX).

Spreadsheet for case UV6277

A small start-up company must make additional investments to maximize its firm value. But the company owner will not make this investment unless she can renegotiate outstanding debt claims. Solving this "debt overhang" problem through negotiation is the focus of the case. In this context, students are exposed to a variety of issues: the nature of financial claims, bargaining and negotiation fundamentals, and agency costs of debt.

This note emphasizes the idea that managers will often want to ask experts to express their opinions about important business risks using the precise language of probability. Examples are drawn from the 2008 financial crisis and involve value-at-risk financial reporting. The second half of this note explains how a manager might use a scoring rule to evaluate the quality of experts' probability forecasts. This note is intended to accompany an instructor's own real-time forecasting exercise where students forecast, at the beginning of a week, quantities and events that will be realized by the end of the week. The quantities and events may include stock prices, commodity prices, interest rates, exchange rates, bond ratings, political votes, movie box-office revenues, Nielsen television ratings, weather events, athletic event attendance, and so on.

Set in 1999, this case allows students to put themselves in the positions of both Airbus and Boeing as Boeing considered how to respond to Airbus's decision to announce its plans to proceed or not with the $10 billion development of the world's first commercial superjumbo jet, the Airbus A3XX. Boeing was considering a development effort to "stretch" its 747 jumbo jet into a larger superjumbo version, the 747-X. At the time, the two companies' widely available 20-year forecasts for jumbo- and superjumbo-jet demand were particularly divergent. In light of this very public "agreement to disagree," Boeing could pursue several alternatives, all of which were related to Airbus's decision about whether or not to develop the A3XX. This case presents an opportunity for students to make a real downstream decision. It was prepared as a final exam for an introductory decision analysis course involving subjective probability assessment, decision tree modeling, simulation, real options, and game theory. In the analysis of this case, a student is expected to utilize ideas from all five of these areas.

This case is intended to work well as an exam or a capstone for a course on decision analysis, simulation, real options, and game theory. It explores a conventional snack-chip marketer's strategy in China for promoting and advertising a recently acquired healthy snack-chip brand in mid-2002. The marketer has some key decisions to make, now and in the future, about a range of marketing expenditures in the context of an exciting emerging market and in the face of a formidable competitive threat from its chief rival. The case allows students to consider how two parties' decisions about marketing expenditures and market entry interact and to extend the notion of a single party's downstream decision (or real option) to multiple parties' "interactive" real options. The case's competitive situation can be modeled as a dynamic game of imperfect information, or a multiperiod decision situation with continuous uncertainties and a strategic interaction embedded downstream. Monte Carlo simulation of both parties' payoffs under equilibrium play in the downstream subgame yields a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium, which entails "interactive" threshold policies for both parties.

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV1302.

Spreadsheet for case UV1312