This dissertation deals with three issues that are important to many firms, namely, volatile commodity prices, environmental regulations, and globalization. In the first essay I study the benefit and the coordination of inventory sharing when there are two existing channels for procurement, i.e., the spot and forward markets. I propose a method for sharing inventory such that the decentralized firms get the same benefit per unit of the sharing transactions regardless of whether the firm is borrowing or lending. The procurement cost gap between the centralized and decentralized cases is dramatically small by using this method. In the second essay, I analyze whether imposing carbon costs to retailers and consumers changes the supply chain design or social welfare. I consider three types of players who want to maximize different objectives and three kinds of competitive settings. Different from previous studies, I show that the supply chain design is changed significantly by imposing carbon costs especially when market competition is medium to high. In the third essay, I consider long-term / short-term strategies of multi-national corporations. For the long-term strategy, I show that the correlation between the exchange rate and the market demand in a foreign country affects plant location. For the short-term strategy, I show that manufacturers increase the inventory levels as the exchange rate of the country where the plant is located grows weaker. I confirm these results empirically using plant-level data of Korean multi-national corporations provided by the Export-Import Bank of Korea. / text

It is known that the small commodity markets are influential to people’s life, but their operations are unique. The lack of standard management has become the biggest obstacle for the development of logistics services in a commodity market. How traditional logistics model can be operated effectively in a commodity market is therefore interesting in this study. The purposes of this thesis are to characterize the commodity logistics systems, identify the challenges of logistics systems in the commodity market, and discuss how the use of e-business platform may improve the logistics system. In order to realize the purposes, the qualitative approach was used in this research. Literature review, interview and case study in one Chinese city with a big commodity market are implemented in the research. Survey study has been carried out to collect data for analyzing the logistics systems. As the main results in this thesis, small-volume, short-life cycle, variety and variability are found to be the main characteristics of a logistics system in the commodity market in the case city. The challenges are therefore about how to design and improve the logistics system so that it can adapt to these characteristics. Finally, this thesis presents the analysis on how an e-business platform can provide effective solutions to meet these challenges.

The aim of this thesis is to assess the current situation and propose appropriate marketing management of joint-stock company Moravian ceramic factories with business activities in the field of metallurgy and foundry.

The objective of the thesis is to analyze the copper futures market in London Metal Exchange (LME) and to recommend appropriate hedging strategy in copper futures market to the Erdenet Mining Corporation in Mongolia. It uses daily official settlement copper prices of LME in the spot and 3 month futures markets from 2000-2014. Initially, we use cointegration test and ECM to investigate the copper market efficiency. Then OLS, ECM, GARCH, EGARCH and ECM-GARCH models are employed to compute different optimum hedge ratios. Finally, the hedge effectiveness is measured based on minimization of the value of AIC and SBIC. Our result indicate that copper futures market is inefficient. Hedge effectiveness comparison concludes that ECM model gives the best hedging performance. However, ECM-GARCH is accounted to be the best model for hedging strategy since it captures the time-varying conditional heteroscedasticity to ECM model. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

In long term well-diversified portfolio of commodities is not only profitable as well as a portfolio of stocks, but they are also slightly less risky. Profitability of the portfolio of commodities is negatively correlated with the return of the portfolio of stocks and bonds. This means that commodities are effective in diversifying equity and bond portfolios. And since this yields negative correlation increases with the length of time. The benefits of diversification are greater the longer they are used. Not only that, since the return of the portfolio of commodities depends positively with inflation, commodities are the most appropriate group of assets to protect against inflation.

This research would like to study the influence that US has on the global market by proving the global stock and commodity markets are correlated to the Fed's interest rate policy. Meanwhile, hope this research can help investors to evaluate the market trend and make appropriate investment decision. we look into detail by examining the correlation between the US stock market and different periods of rate hike, rate cut and neutral, respectively. The results are : (1) In rate hike period, normally, the US stock market performed well. It's the time with economy booming at high growth rate and strong domestic demand that the Fed needs to take action, hiking rate, to cool down the market. (2) In the rate cut period, the US stock market was not good. That is because the rate cut decision is normally adopted due to slowing down economy, weak domestic demand, and stock market underperformance. Thus, the accumulated performance won't be too exciting during the rate cut period. (3) In the neutral period, the stock market performed excellently. Especially at the time after Fed's rate cut period, the stock market is booming due to the high liquidity and low interest rate environment, stimulating consumers spending and enterprises investment. (4) In the rate hike period, the oil price and commodity index (comprised by Reuters by averaging19 different commodity future index) were at the best performance. Besides, it also benefited the energy related share price. However, in the rate cut or neutral period, they were up and down without clear trend. (5) At the last, we further study the unexpected rate cut will surprise the market in upside. Given the results of these examinations, it is a good timing to buy when it's approaching the end of rate cut period. If the rate cut is unexpected or the extent is over expectation, investors shouldn't be too pessimistic. Instead, they should believe the government will continuously introduce favorable policy to boost the economy and it is good timing to invest in stock market.

The goal of this diploma thesis is the analysis of current situation of communication agency Aetna, s.r.o., and following suggestion of a suitable strategy, which should provide successful development of the company and its implementation in the market of communication agencies. The emphasis was put especially on the analysis of the current situation and on the basis of its evaluation, new vision and new direction for the agency to follow in order to be successful and competitive even in the future.

This work is focused on the description of the commodity market as a market in which a lot of opportunities are hidden. This market is an attractive investment for obtaining and saving money. The aim is to clarify the attractiveness of commodities to investors and through the historical development to analyze the commodity market in today's society. Another goal is to introduce commodities as instruments, which have become a competitor to other forms of investment (eg shares, bonds or real estate). Based on the findings from the analysis of the history, current market expert and major investors and investment opportunities will be filled with the main objective of the thesis, ie, prediction of future market development of selected commodities - gold, oil, coffee and wheat - in the next decade.

The main intention of this thesis is to provide theoretical and practical insight on commodity markets, specifically on gold and silver markets. The introductory section defines the basic characteristics and relationships between commodity and financial markets.The second section describes in detail the fundamentals of commodity markets. From a view on history, definition and distribution of basic commodities, it specifies the largest operators organizing trade with commodities. The last sub chapter of the second section is a description of the most popular ways of investing in commodities. In the third section, the content of the work reaches its core -- an analysis of the gold market. The first chapter of this section gives a picture of the general determinants of demand, supply and price of gold. The following analytical chapter discusses these essential characteristics from a dynamic perspective -- the development over time. Based on the dependencies and calculations, the work analyzes the rate of return and risk of gold and compares them with alternative investments. Final passage of the third section brings the specific investment opportunities in gold. In particular, for their inclusion in the core group of precious metals, as in the case of gold, the fourth section is devoted to the definition a marginal nature of the silver market.

In the recent years, there has been growing talk of investing in commodities in the financial markets. In the past, the commodity markets served for purposes of the producers and the end-users of commodities. With gradual innovation of the financial markets in the 19th and 20th century the modern commodity markets evolved and became more standardized. This process was accompanied by the increasing interest of financial speculators. In contrast with the commercial participants, the goal of these new investors in the commodity markets is not to hedge against adverse changes in commodity prices but to profit on the price movements of commodities. The inflow of this group was intensified by the development of new financial instruments enabling these investors to enter the commodity markets. It is undisputable that speculators have positive effect on the markets, by providing liquidity and lowering transaction costs. What remains to be answered is the real effect which the speculators have on the commodity prices, and if their action does not create distortion in the commodity prices. The price development on the commodity markets during the recent financial crisis gives strong arguments in the hands of those accusing the speculators of the negative impact on the commodity prices, which sometimes lead to creation of price bubbles. The goal of this thesis will be the analysis of the effect of speculators on the commodity markets, and if this prejudice is justified.