Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-220). Also available online.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiẗat Hamburg, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. xi-xxiii).

No description available.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent Amanor-Boadu / Generally, commodity prices immediately after harvest tend to be low because of supply glut and rise over time away from harvest as supply shrinks and demand remains virtually unchanged. Unfortunately, because many Malawian farmers do not have effective storage, they do not have any commodity for sale when prices are high. To help improve the income Malawian farmers may generate from their activities, this thesis explored the feasibility of hybridizing the two forms of price risk management systems in Malawi to minimize their individual weaknesses and enhance their collective benefits. The two risk management systems are forward contracts and warehouse receipt systems. Forward contracts allow farmers and their buyers to agree on a future delivery date and commodity price. On the agreed date, the farmer delivers the commodity and receives the agreed price. It allows farmers to pass downward price risk to buyers and guarantees a fixed price. As private transactions, forward contracts are not regulated by the Government, and present opportunism and enforcement challenges. Warehouse Receipt System (WRS) enables farmers to deposit their crop in the care of a warehouse operator and sell the crop when and where they choose. Farmers, therefore, incur both upside and downside price movement but avoid some of the opportunism and enforcement challenges presented by forward contracts. The thesis explored the net benefits of developing a hybrid system that allow forward contracts with warehouse receipt enforcement mechanisms. Thus, farmers are guaranteed a minimum price at some future date and the deposited commodity is used as the security supporting the guaranteed minimum price. The buyer also deposits a performance bond as commitment to purchase the commodity. The costs associated with these transactions are real and could affect participation. The thesis provides a process for assessing these transaction costs and incorporating them into the effectiveness of forward contracts, warehouse receipt systems and the hybrid program. The mathematical model example has proved that the hybrid system guarantees a fixed margin to the farmer over and above the harvest price and WRS cost as opposed to fluctuating margins under WRS alone. The thesis has identified three factors that can lead to the successful implementation of this hybrid system in Malawi and they include: the availability of the warehouse receipt bill, reliable warehouse certification which is done by AHCX and ACE on third party warehouse operators; and the availability of performance guarantee assuring that the quantities and quality of goods match those specified by the warehouse receipt. The thesis has also identified two factors that could hinder a successful implementation of this hybrid program and they include: first, low scale of warehousing operations under WRS which could deny most farmers a chance to access and benefit from this hybrid sytem and the commodity exchanges may not benefit from the economies of scale provided by large volumes of commodities produced in rural areas. Second, the absence of a harmonized national grading standard which possess a challenge when engaging in international trade. Finally, the thesis has made three recommendations for the successful implementation of the hybrid program as follows: Taking the system close to the producers to mitigate potentially high transportation costs; educating and selling the system to the stakeholders to increase adoption rate; and push for the implementation of national standardized grading regulations.

This dissertation studies moral hazard problems and an information acquisition problem in dynamic economic environments. In chapter 1, I study a continuous-time principal-agent model in which a risk-neutral agent protected by limited liability exerts costly efforts to manage a project for her principal. Unobserved risk-taking by the agent is value-reducing in the sense that it increases the chance of large losses, even though it raises short-term profits. In the optimal contract, severe punishment that follows a large loss prevents the agent from taking hidden risks. However, after some histories, punishment can no longer be used because of limited liability. The principal allows the agent to take hidden risk when the firm is close to liquidation. In addition, I explore the roles of standard securities in implementing the optimal contract. The implementation shows that driven by the agency conflicts, incomplete hedging against Poisson risk provides incentives for the agent to take the safe project. Moreover, I study the optimality of "high-water mark" contract widely used in the hedge fund industry and find that "distance-to-threshold" is important in understanding the risk-shifting problem in a dynamic context. In chapter 2, I study a continuous-time moral hazard model in which the principal hires a team of agents to run the business. The firm consists of multiple divisions and agents exert costly efforts to improve the divisional cash flows. The firm size evolves stochastically based on the aggregate cash flows.The model delivers a negative relationship between firm sizes and pay-for-divisional incentives, and I characterize conditions under which joint/relative performance evaluation will be used. I also explore the implications of team production on the firm's optimal capital structure and financial policy. In chapter 3, I study a multi-armed bandits problem with ambiguity. Decision-maker views the probabilities underlying each arm as imprecise and his preference is represented by recursive multiple-priors. I show that the classical "Gittins Index" generalizes to a "Multiple-Priors Gittins Index". In the setting with one safe arm and one ambiguous arm, the decision-maker plays the ambiguous arm if its "Multiple-Priors Gittins Index" is higher than the return delivered by the safe arm. In the multi-armed environment, I obtain the "Multiple-Priors Index Theorem" which states that the optimal strategy for the decision-maker is to play the ambiguous arm with the highest Multiple-Priors Index.

O contrato de seguro é polarizado pelo risco. Tendo por finalidade neutralizar os efeitos do risco que ameaça o interesse legítimo do segurado, este tipo contratual se estrutura a partir da troca entre prêmio e cobertura: enquanto o segurado se obriga ao pagamento do prêmio, o segurador se obriga à garantia do interesse do segurado, comprometendo-se a uma prestação eventual, em caso de sinistro. Enquanto possibilidade de um evento adverso ao interesse do segurado, o risco justifica a contratação do seguro. Ademais, conforma a estrutura e a base econômica do contrato, assim como o desenvolvimento de toda a relação contratual. O presente trabalho se encontra estruturado em três partes, tendo por objeto a análise do risco no contrato de seguro. Na primeira, examina-se o percurso histórico, os elementos, a causa e a natureza jurídica do seguro. Na segunda parte, são identificadas as características do risco segurável e o papel do risco na conformação da base econômica do contrato. Na terceira parte, examina-se o risco enquanto elemento que conforma o desenvolvimento da relação contratual, em consideração ao qual se estabelecem direitos e deveres a ambos os contratantes, seja na fase pré-contratual (declaração inicial do risco), seja na fase de execução do contrato (agravamento-diminuição do risco). / The insurance contract is polarized by risk. In order to neutralize the effects of the risk which threatens the insurable interest, this contractual type is structured from the exchange between premium and coverage: while the insured undertakes to pay the premium, the insurer undertakes to guarantee the unsurable interest, committing itself to carrying out a specified duty in case of loss. As an event adverse to the insurable interest, the risk justifies the purchase of insurance. In addition, it conforms the structure and economic base of the contract, as well as the development of the entire contractual relationship. This paper is structured in three parts, and its purpose is to analyze the risk in the insurance contract. In the first part, the historical path, the elements, the cause and the legal nature of the insurance are examined. In the second part, the characteristics of the insurable risk and the role of the risk in the conformation of the economic base of the contract are identified. In the third part, risk is examined as an element in the development of the contractual relationship, taking into account the rights and obligations of both contractors, whether in the pre-contractual stage (misrepresentation and nondisclosure) or in the performance of the contract (aggravation-reduction of risk).

O contrato de seguro é polarizado pelo risco. Tendo por finalidade neutralizar os efeitos do risco que ameaça o interesse legítimo do segurado, este tipo contratual se estrutura a partir da troca entre prêmio e cobertura: enquanto o segurado se obriga ao pagamento do prêmio, o segurador se obriga à garantia do interesse do segurado, comprometendo-se a uma prestação eventual, em caso de sinistro. Enquanto possibilidade de um evento adverso ao interesse do segurado, o risco justifica a contratação do seguro. Ademais, conforma a estrutura e a base econômica do contrato, assim como o desenvolvimento de toda a relação contratual. O presente trabalho se encontra estruturado em três partes, tendo por objeto a análise do risco no contrato de seguro. Na primeira, examina-se o percurso histórico, os elementos, a causa e a natureza jurídica do seguro. Na segunda parte, são identificadas as características do risco segurável e o papel do risco na conformação da base econômica do contrato. Na terceira parte, examina-se o risco enquanto elemento que conforma o desenvolvimento da relação contratual, em consideração ao qual se estabelecem direitos e deveres a ambos os contratantes, seja na fase pré-contratual (declaração inicial do risco), seja na fase de execução do contrato (agravamento-diminuição do risco). / The insurance contract is polarized by risk. In order to neutralize the effects of the risk which threatens the insurable interest, this contractual type is structured from the exchange between premium and coverage: while the insured undertakes to pay the premium, the insurer undertakes to guarantee the unsurable interest, committing itself to carrying out a specified duty in case of loss. As an event adverse to the insurable interest, the risk justifies the purchase of insurance. In addition, it conforms the structure and economic base of the contract, as well as the development of the entire contractual relationship. This paper is structured in three parts, and its purpose is to analyze the risk in the insurance contract. In the first part, the historical path, the elements, the cause and the legal nature of the insurance are examined. In the second part, the characteristics of the insurable risk and the role of the risk in the conformation of the economic base of the contract are identified. In the third part, risk is examined as an element in the development of the contractual relationship, taking into account the rights and obligations of both contractors, whether in the pre-contractual stage (misrepresentation and nondisclosure) or in the performance of the contract (aggravation-reduction of risk).

Content delivery networks (CDNs) depend on distributed cache servers to reduce the content delivery distance and latency to end users. Nevertheless, a CDN's cache footprint is greatly limited by the high cost in deploying and maintaining large- scale cache servers. To break the limit, CDN providers adopt a new content caching strategy that allows end users to share their storage/bandwidth resources with each other. Two core questions need to answer in this CDN strategy: (1) how to incentivize end users to contribute their resources? and (2) how to facilitate transparent, secure content exchange among end users? We propose a new CDN solution, called SmartSharing, where users contribute their Over-the-top (OTT) devices as mini cache servers. With SmartSharing, an OTT device can share the content the OTT owner is downloading and in addition can cache content for neighboring OTT devices in the same area. To incentivize end users to contribute their resources, SmartSharing uses game theory and the Expectation- Maximization (EM) algorithm to determine content delivery schedule and the pricing scheme. To facilitate content trading among end users, SmartSharing uses smart contracts in Ethereum to create a transparent and safe transaction platform. We evaluate SmartSharing with real-world trace driven simulation as well as smart con- tract prototype in Ethereum using content meta-data and the derived pricing scheme. By disclosing the internal dynamics in content delivery schedule and pricing scheme and analyzing the overhead in content trading, we show that SmartSharing is an effective new CDN solution that benefi ts content providers, CDN, and end users. / Graduate

Os institutos clássicos do direito das obrigações, notadamente os conceitos de obrigação, adimplemento e inadimplemento precisam ser relidos à luz dos valores da Constituição Federal de 1988 e dos princípios e das cláusulas gerais trazidos pelo Código Civil de 2002, em especial a boa-fé objetiva. A noção tradicional de obrigação, consubstanciada na ideia de uma submissão do devedor ao credor, vem sendo paulatinamente abandonada em favor de um novo conceito de relação obrigacional, composto por direitos e deveres recíprocos que convergem para a consecução de um objetivo comum: o adimplemento. Assim examinado, o adimplemento consiste em um processo dinâmico dentro do qual o devedor deve executar uma série de atos e observar inúmeros deveres (principais, secundários e laterais) necessários ao adimplemento. Foi diante dessa premissa que a doutrina moderna começou a sustentar que a infringência de deveres de conduta e de deveres anexos ao longo da relação obrigacional pode configurar um inadimplemento antecipado do contrato, que se refere às hipóteses em que o inadimplemento resta configurado a despeito de ainda não se ter atingido o termo contratual. Esse estudo visará analisar o conceito e demonstrar a necessidade da consolidação do inadimplemento antecipado como um mecanismo de proteção do credor, examinando a sua possibilidade de aplicação no direito brasileiro, os seus requisitos, a sua natureza jurídica, os seus limites e os seus efeitos. / The classic institutes of contract law, notably the concepts of obligation, performance and breach of contract need to be reread pursuant to the values of the Federal Constitution of 1988 and the principles and general clauses brought by the Civil Code of 2002, in special the good faith. The traditional notion of obligation, based on the idea of the debtors submission to the creditor, has been gradually abandoned in favor of a new concept of obligatory relationship, composed of reciprocal rights and duties converging to achieve a common goal: performance. Thus, performance consists of a dynamic process in which the debtor must perform a series of acts and observe numerous duties (primary, secondary and lateral duties arising of good faith) necessary for performance. It was under this premise that modern legal scholars began to argue that any breach of duties along with the obligatory relationship can configure an anticipated breach of contract, which refers to cases in which the breach is affirmed before the contractual term. This essay aims to analyze the concept and demonstrate the need for consolidation of the anticipated breach as a creditor protection mechanism, examining its application possibility under Brazilian law, along with its requirements, legal status, limits and effects.