Assignment (MComm)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Th.--Sci. de gest.--Rennes 1, 1981.

The developments of new technologies for commercial aviation involve significant risk for technologists as these programs are often driven by fixed assumptions regarding future airline needs, while being subject to many uncertainties at the technical and market levels. To prioritize these developments, technologists must assess their economic viability even though standard methods used for capital budgeting are not well suited to handle the overwhelming uncertainty surrounding such developments. This research proposes a framework featuring real options to overcome this challenge. It is motivated by three observations: disregarding the value of managerial flexibility undervalues long-term research and development (R&D) programs; windows of opportunities emerge and disappear and manufacturers can derive significant value by exploiting their upside potential; integrating competitive aspects early in the design ensures that development programs are robust with respect to moves by the competition. Real options analyses have been proposed to address some of these points but the adoption has been slow, hindered by constraining frameworks. A panel of academics and practitioners has identified a set of requirements, known as the Georgetown Challenge, that real options analyses must meet to get more traction amongst practitioners in the industry. In a bid to meet some of these requirements, this research proposes a novel methodology, cross-fertilizing techniques from financial engineering, actuarial sciences, and statistics to evaluate and study the timing of technology developments under uncertainty. It aims at substantiating decision making for R&D while having a wider domain of application and an improved ability to handle a complex reality compared to more traditional approaches. The method named FLexible AViation Investment Analysis (FLAVIA) uses first Monte Carlo techniques to simulate the evolution of uncertainties driving the value of technology developments. A non-parametric Esscher transform is then applied to perform a change of probability measure to express these evolutions under the equivalent martingale measure. A bootstrap technique is suggested next to construct new non-weighted evolutions of the technology development value under the new measure. A regression-based technique is finally used to analyze the technology development program and to discover trigger boundaries which help define when the technology development program should be launched. Verification of the method is performed on several canonical examples and indicates good accuracy and competitive execution time. It is applied next to the analysis of a performance improvement package (PIP) development using the Integrated Cost And Revenue Estimation method (i-CARE) developed as part of this research. The PIP can be retrofitted to currently operating turbofan engines in order to mitigate the impact of the aging process on their operating costs. The PIP is subject to market uncertainties, such as the evolution of jet-fuel prices and the possible taxation of carbon emissions. The profitability of the PIP development is investigated and the value of managerial flexibility and timing flexibility are highlighted.The developments of new technologies for commercial aviation involve significant risk for technologists as these programs are often driven by fixed assumptions regarding future airline needs, while being subject to many uncertainties at the technical and market levels. To prioritize these developments, technologists must assess their economic viability even though standard methods used for capital budgeting are not well suited to handle the overwhelming uncertainty surrounding such developments. This research proposes a framework featuring real options to overcome this challenge. It is motivated by three observations: disregarding the value of managerial flexibility undervalues long-term research and development (R&D) programs; windows of opportunities emerge and disappear and manufacturers can derive significant value by exploiting their upside potential; integrating competitive aspects early in the design ensures that development programs are robust with respect to moves by the competition. Real options analyses have been proposed to address some of these points but the adoption has been slow, hindered by constraining frameworks. A panel of academics and practitioners has identified a set of requirements, known as the Georgetown Challenge, that real options analyses must meet to get more traction amongst practitioners in the industry. In a bid to meet some of these requirements, this research proposes a novel methodology, cross-fertilizing techniques from financial engineering, actuarial sciences, and statistics to evaluate and study the timing of technology developments under uncertainty. It aims at substantiating decision making for R&D while having a wider domain of application and an improved ability to handle a complex reality compared to more traditional approaches. The method named FLexible AViation Investment Analysis (FLAVIA) uses first Monte Carlo techniques to simulate the evolution of uncertainties driving the value of technology developments. A non-parametric Esscher transform is then applied to perform a change of probability measure to express these evolutions under the equivalent martingale measure. A bootstrap technique is suggested next to construct new non-weighted evolutions of the technology development value under the new measure. A regression-based technique is finally used to analyze the technology development program and to discover trigger boundaries which help define when the technology development program should be launched. Verification of the method is performed on several canonical examples and indicates good accuracy and competitive execution time. It is applied next to the analysis of a performance improvement package (PIP) development using the Integrated Cost And Revenue Estimation method (i-CARE) developed as part of this research. The PIP can be retrofitted to currently operating turbofan engines in order to mitigate the impact of the aging process on their operating costs. The PIP is subject to market uncertainties, such as the evolution of jet-fuel prices and the possible taxation of carbon emissions. The profitability of the PIP development is investigated and the value of managerial flexibility and timing flexibility are highlighted.

In this thesis, we investigate the forecasting problem for option return and future volatility in financial market. The first part of this thesis is to study the option return skewness effect and the negative correlation between asset return and volatility. We propose a measure of ex-ante measure of option return skewness which accommodates the negative return-volatility relationship in asset returns. We investigate how time-to-expiration and moneyness affect the skewness and return of an option. Furthermore, we show that our proposed measure has extra benefits in forecasting option returns. In the second part, we test the information contents of implied volatility derived from stochastic volatility option pricing model and also examine the potential benefit of including the model's implied volatility of volatility in forecasting future volatility and volatility risk premium. Our study finds that the inclusion of volatility of volatility factor has significantly reduced the downward bias of the slope coefficients. Most importantly, the ex-ante volatility of volatility has significant predictive power on the ex-post volatility premium. In the third part, we study the incremental benefit of adding skewness in predicting future realized volatility. The study finds that consistent with the empirical findings in the first part, realized volatility is negatively related to their skewness measure which provides a downward adjustment of the implied volatility forecast.

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Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Daniel M. O'Brien / In recent years, the price volatility in agricultural commodity prices, as well as agricultural input costs, has drastically increased. Today’s famer is faced with difficult decisions concerning when to market their crop, as well as when to secure various inputs. An increase in information availability, coupled with increasing price fluctuations, can make these decisions even more difficult for producers. Although seasonal trends, forecasts, and technical market analysis can be helpful, market efficiency prevents accurate prediction of agricultural prices. Because marketing decisions can be difficult to make, the easiest decision for a producer to make is to not make one at all. However, failure to make sound risk management decisions can be extremely costly to a producer. There are two primary factors that impact a producer’s bottom line: cost of production and grain marketing decisions. Each producer has their own unique cost of production that changes throughout the year. Variable input costs can be volatile within a single growing year, and often the need for certain inputs changes. Marketing decisions and timing can be an even bigger factor in a producer’s gain or loss. Since price prediction is impossible, a producer’s time may be better spent focusing on information they can control. The purpose of this thesis was to test and evaluate a cost of production, crop insurance, and grain marketing calculator with a group of corn and soybean producers in Southeast Nebraska. It is hypothesized that providing customers with a multifaceted, integrated farm management and marketing decision making tool should help them be able to make more profitable risk management and marketing decisions. By knowing how factors as changing expenses impact cost of production and how grain sales impact revenues and profitability per acre, it is hypothesized that users will make more profitable farm management and marketing decisions. In October and November of 2014, twenty corn and soybean farmers were presented with the Grain Marketing Calculator. Grain sales in the 2014 and 2015 crop years were to be entered into the calculator by participating producers as they make their grain sales. Annual production history (APH), revenue protection insurance information, actual or expected yields, and total acres of each crop were entered into the calculator during the initial producer calculator rollout. Generalized costs were entered into the calculator prior to the producer rollouts. Participants were able to change the generalized costs to their actual costs if they chose to do so. Data were gathered from the participants using the Grain Marketing Calculator in March of 2015. Participants weighted average futures sales, weighted average cash sales, percent of APH sold, and percent of total production sold were collected. In March of 2015, the same information from another group of producers who did not use the Grain Marketing Calculator was collected. The two groups average results were compared to each other and regression analyses were done to determine statistical significance of the impact on the test groups’ results. At the end of the experiment, feedback was gathered from participants and improvements were suggested.

A teoria de opções propicia um vasto campo de aplicações. No Brasil, a aplicação desta teoria à estabilidade financeira vem se tornando cada vez mais favorável: 1) pela relativa estabilidade da economia, 2) pela determinação do Banco Central do Brasil no sentido de controlar o risco das instituições financeiras e 3) pelo natural desenvolvimento do mercado financeiro brasileiro. Esta tese está dividida em três ensaios e os dois primeiros focaram numa abordagem de poder de previsão. No primeiro, compararam-se volatilidades estimadas por diferentes modelos vis-à-vis a volatilidade realizada e encontrou-se alguma evidência empírica de que as implícitas do modelo de Vasicek-Estendido são informacionalmente superiores às dos outros modelos. No segundo, mostrou-se que é possível utilizar medidas da classe “distância ao default” para atribuir classificação de risco a bancos dentro do setor bancário brasileiro. No terceiro ensaio, analisou-se a nova Lei de Falência usando a teoria de opções e a teoria dos contratos. Conclui-se dos três ensaios que a teoria de opções é uma boa ferramenta para avaliar questões de estabilidade financeira. / The option pricing theory provides a myriad of applications. In Brazil, the application of this theory to financial stability is becoming more and more favourable: 1) for the increasing stability of the economy, 2) for the commitment of the Central Bank of Brazil in controlling the risk of the financial institutions and 3) for the development of the Brazilian financial market. This thesis is divided in three essays and the first two focused on a predictive-power approach. In the first one, volatilities estimated by different models were compared vis-à-vis the realized volatility and we obtained some empirical evidence that the Extended-Vasicek’s implied volatility is informationally superior to the other models’. In the second one, it was argued that it is possible to use measures of the class “distance to default” in order to rank the banks of the Brazilian banking sector in terms of risk. In the third essay, the new Brazilian Bankruptcy Law is analysed by using the option pricing theory and the theory of contracts. The three essays conclude that the option pricing theory is a good tool to evaluate financial stability issues.

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M.Comm. (International Accounting) / The study investigates the potential effect of applying a fair value model after the grant date to employee share options. The research assesses the appropriateness of the requirements of IFRS2 Share-Based Payment transactions with a specific focus on equity-settled Employee Share Options. The researcher has calculated the percentage movements or changes of fair value between each financial year including the overall percentage change. The study was mainly triggered by the IFRS2 Share-Based Payment rules and various arguments from different authors challenging the appropriateness of IFRS2 Share-Based Payment on employee share options (ESOs) transactions in capturing the full economic value transferred to the option holder at exercise date when applying a grant date accounting model. The study provides insights into whether a grant date accounting model is appropriate in measuring ESOs and capturing the full economic value transferred to the option holder. The application of a static fair value model in measuring the value of ESOs has the potential for both positive and negative effects on the compensation cost recognised in the financial statements over the vesting period. After analysing the descriptive financial data on fair value per option over the six year period included in the sample selection, a conclusion was reached that, IASB should consider to true-up or make a restatement of the opening balance of the fair value reserves account in order to minimise the potential permanent error in equity accounts and to minimise the potential effect of understating or overstating the compensation cost. The IASB should further consider the proper classification of equity instruments issued to employee ESOs which comply with other financial instrument accounting standards such as the IAS32 – Financial Instruments: Presentation, and IFRS9 Financial Instruments. This will ensure that transactions viewed as economic equivalents of each other are treated in the same way from an accounting perspective, and the correct measurement basis of ESOs may be achieved.

No description available.