<p>Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att ta del av revisorers uppfattning om det förekommer självgranskningshot vid utfärdandet av apportintyg, samt vilka rådgivningstjänster som kan utövas utan att det hotar revisorns självständighet och opartiskhet.</p><p>Metod: Vi har i vår studie använt oss av en kvalitativ forskningsmetod, där vi har intervjuat fyra stycken auktoriserade revisorer. Detta har givit oss en bra grund för att kunna reda ut syftet med uppsatsen.</p><p>Teori: Uppsatsens teoridel består främst av fakta från Krister Moberg samt tidningen Balans, då dessa har varit relevanta för att kunna forska i det valda ämnet.</p><p>Empiri: Denna del består av fyra stycken intervjuer med auktoriserade revisorer som besitter erfarenhet av apportuppdrag. Dessa revisorer kommer från två olika byråer som ligger i två olika städer.</p><p>Resultat: Vår studie visar att det råder delade meningar om att apportuppdrag kan leda till självgranskningshot. Men alla revisorerna var överrens om att självgranskningshot blir ett faktum om revisorn själv värderar apportegendomen. Detta eftersom revisorn vid bokslutet kommer att granska sin egen värdering. En annan anledning till varför revisorn inte själv ska värdera apportegendomen är att revisorn ej besitter den kompetens som kan krävas vid en sådan värdering. Därför är det viktigt att värderingen sker av en pålitligt, oberoende samt kunnig värderingsman.</p> / <p>Purpose: The purpose with our thesis is to understand if the auditors think that it occurs a self-audit threat about the issue of capital contribution, and which service can an auditor perform without not disturb and threat the auditor’s independence.</p><p>Methodology: We have used a qualitative method in our thesis. We carried out four interviews with auditors from two different auditing firms.</p><p>Theory: Our thesis theory part is based especially on facts from Krister Moberg and the newspaper Balans, because these facts have been relevant to our study.</p><p>Empirical foundation: This part exists of four interviews with four chartered accountants, who have experience capital contribution. Our four auditors were from two different auditor firms in two different towns.</p><p>Conclusions: Our study shows different pictures about capital contribution that can lead to a self-audit threat. But every one of the auditors is agree that a self-audit threat can occur if the auditor himself appraises the property. The reason is that the auditor is going to review his own appraises in the final account. Another reason is that the auditors not have the competence to do appraise like this. It is important that appraise performs by a reliable, independent and competent appraiser.</p>

Background: In newspaper articles, we can nowadays read headlines as"Stop the robbing!"and"They pay extra tax through rent". A column in Göteborgsposten describes enormous amounts of money, pouring between municipal companies. Numerous of local newspapers have started to pay attention to their municipal companies and the transfer of profits from municipal housing enterprises and electric power companies. What are upsetting these journalists then? Both Hyresgästföreningen (The Swedish tenants’ association) and Boverket (The Swedish National Housing Board) indicate that the fiscal purpose of transactions within the group no longer is primary for municipalities. They allege that the transactions are improperly exploited by transferring inappropriate amounts of money from municipal housing enterprises. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to map transactions between municipal group companies and also evaluate if they are consistent with the accounting regulation in the domain. Delimitation: The case study will have a geographical delimitation by only including the group of Linköpings Stadshus. The study will only include the years during 1997-2003. The transactions that will be examined are group contributions, shareholders’ contribution and dividend. The case study will also process the interest expense of the parent company because of the promissory note loan that was raised from the municipality of Linköping in connection with the formation of the group. Realisation: In the form of a case study, the thesis was realised through the collection of annual reports, obtained from the companies concerned. These data was complemented through qualitative interviews with representatives from the parent company and the municipality. The complementation was made to increase the comprehension of the problems. Results: The municipality is primarily using competition and focus in result as important factors when trying to imitate private companies. This does not harmonize with the purpose of the municipal transactions. It is also clear that municipal groups may be composing strategies dealing with empty the subsidiary companies out on capital. This applies particularly to electric power companies. In the case study, compared to a payment of tax, Tekniska Verken has not recovered enough shareholders’ contribution. With that, these companies financial position is clearly deteriorating compared to if they would pay tax. Regulations of housing enterprises were not created until 1999. That means that violations of the regulations were not possible before that either. Obviously, the groups were using this opportunity, and the dividend that has been discussed in the case study, is a clear example of the municipality not giving priority to the clients of the housing enterprise. Though, it is important to point out the legality of a dividend of that kind.

I analyze a large number of investment decisions based on theories that have been developed and formalized over the past 50 years. Previous work in this field unveils a number of biases which affect ones choices when the outcome is uncertain. In my thesis I find evidence of these already known biases and focus on finding rational explanations for their existence. I also introduce two unexplored biases; the homeboy bias and the menu bias. The results clearly indicate that sophisticated investors are generally less subject to these biases. Since pension schemes in many nations are shifting towards defined contribution schemes, investment decisions and risk preferences will be of great consequence to investors’ personal economy and ability to consume, affecting the economy in general. It is therefore of great importance that policy makers do all that they can to increase investors sophistication and create a playing field which facilitates economically sound investing.

Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att ta del av revisorers uppfattning om det förekommer självgranskningshot vid utfärdandet av apportintyg, samt vilka rådgivningstjänster som kan utövas utan att det hotar revisorns självständighet och opartiskhet. Metod: Vi har i vår studie använt oss av en kvalitativ forskningsmetod, där vi har intervjuat fyra stycken auktoriserade revisorer. Detta har givit oss en bra grund för att kunna reda ut syftet med uppsatsen. Teori: Uppsatsens teoridel består främst av fakta från Krister Moberg samt tidningen Balans, då dessa har varit relevanta för att kunna forska i det valda ämnet. Empiri: Denna del består av fyra stycken intervjuer med auktoriserade revisorer som besitter erfarenhet av apportuppdrag. Dessa revisorer kommer från två olika byråer som ligger i två olika städer. Resultat: Vår studie visar att det råder delade meningar om att apportuppdrag kan leda till självgranskningshot. Men alla revisorerna var överrens om att självgranskningshot blir ett faktum om revisorn själv värderar apportegendomen. Detta eftersom revisorn vid bokslutet kommer att granska sin egen värdering. En annan anledning till varför revisorn inte själv ska värdera apportegendomen är att revisorn ej besitter den kompetens som kan krävas vid en sådan värdering. Därför är det viktigt att värderingen sker av en pålitligt, oberoende samt kunnig värderingsman. / Purpose: The purpose with our thesis is to understand if the auditors think that it occurs a self-audit threat about the issue of capital contribution, and which service can an auditor perform without not disturb and threat the auditor’s independence. Methodology: We have used a qualitative method in our thesis. We carried out four interviews with auditors from two different auditing firms. Theory: Our thesis theory part is based especially on facts from Krister Moberg and the newspaper Balans, because these facts have been relevant to our study. Empirical foundation: This part exists of four interviews with four chartered accountants, who have experience capital contribution. Our four auditors were from two different auditor firms in two different towns. Conclusions: Our study shows different pictures about capital contribution that can lead to a self-audit threat. But every one of the auditors is agree that a self-audit threat can occur if the auditor himself appraises the property. The reason is that the auditor is going to review his own appraises in the final account. Another reason is that the auditors not have the competence to do appraise like this. It is important that appraise performs by a reliable, independent and competent appraiser.

This paper seeks to examine the failures of the current retirement plan structure, focusing on the structure’s reliance on unpredictable future market returns and the unwillingness of the parties involved to negotiate in order to further enhance their own self-centered interests. Currently, both defined contribution and defined benefit plans encounter a funding crisis in both the public and the private sectors. This paper will discuss how retirement plans, by nature, rely on assumptions of market returns, which naturally depend on the volatility of the market and increase the risk and uncertainty in retirement plans. In addition, since defined benefit plans mostly exist in the public sector today, this paper will examine defined benefit plans in relation to the public sector’s funding crisis and hope to shed light on the politics and tensions between the parties involved in public retirement plans that are preventing effectiveness and efficiency. Finally, this paper will also present alternative retirement plan strategies for which academics and scholars have advocated. However, at the end of the day, as opposed to relying on others to dictate one’s future benefits, which are based on the goodwill of others and uncertainty in the market, Americans should recognize their lack of savings and improve their personal financial literacy and develop individualized savings plans.

L'émergence des systèmes pair-à-pair et la possibilité de réaliser des calculs et d'échanger des données par des services web conduit à des systèmes d'intégration de données à large échelle où l'évaluation de requêtes et d'autres traitements complexes sont réalisés par composition de services. Un problème important dans ce type de systèmes est l'absence de connaissances globales. Il est difficile par exemple de choisir le meilleur pair pour le routage des requêtes, le meilleur service lors de la composition de services ou de décider parmi les données locales à un pair celles à rafraîchir, à mettre en cache, etc. La notion de choix implique celle de classement. Bien qu'il soit possible de comparer et classer des entités d'après leur contenu ou d'autres métadonnées associées, ces techniques sont généralement basées sur des descriptions homogènes et sémantiquement riches. Une alternative intéressante dans le contexte d'un système à large échelle est le classement basé sur les liens qui exploite les relations entre les différentes entités et permet de faire des choix fondés sur des informations globales. Cette thèse présente un nouveau modèle générique de classement de services fondé sur leurs liens de collaboration. Nous définissons une importance globale de service en exploitant des connaissances spécifiques sur sa contribution aux autres services à travers les appels reçus et les données échangées. L'importance peut être calculée efficacement par un algorithme asynchrone sans génération de messages supplémentaires. La notion de contribution est abstraite et nous avons étudié son instanciation dans le cadre de trois applications: (i) le classement de services basé sur les appels où la contribution reflète la sémantique des services ainsi que leur utilisation avec le temps; (ii) le classement de services par l'utilisation des données où la contribution des services est fondée sur l'utilisation de leurs données pendant l'évaluation des requêtes dans un entrepôt distribué; (iii) la définition des stratégies de cache distribuées qui sont basées sur la contribution d'une mise en cache des données à réduire la charge du système.

This thesis describes the research conducted on the use of historical performance data in assessing the financial risk for a power distribution utility in a performance based regulation (PBR) regime. The historical utility data used in this research are taken from the Canadian Electrical Association (CEA) annual reports. The individual utility data in these reports are confidential and only provided to the participating utilities. Thirteen utilities that participate in the CEA data reporting activity agreed to provide their individual utility data for the research described in this thesis. These utilities are anonymous and are referred to by numerical designations in accordance with the CEA protocol. This research could not have been conducted without the support of these utilities. The objectives of the research described in this thesis are to examine and analyze the variations in the annual performance indices of the thirteen participating utilities and the aggregated systems including the overall indices and the cause code contributions, and to examine the possible utilization of historic utility reliability indices to create suitable reward/penalty structures in a PBR protocol. The potential financial risk and actual financial payment analyses for these selected utilities are conducted using their historical performance data imposed on a number of possible reward/penalty structures developed in this thesis. An approach to recognize adverse utility performance in the form of Major Outage Years (MOY) is developed and the influence of the MOY performance in PBR decision making is examined.

The river Göta Älv reaches between Vänern and Gothenburg and is the main raw water source for Gothenburg that supplies about 700 000 people with water. To protect and maintain a high water quality, continuously samples and water analyses are made throughout the river. In 1998 a protection area was founded between surte and Lärjeholm where the raw water intake is. This was made to increase the awareness of the importance to protect the water. However, there is a lot of contribution of untreated stormwater to Göta Älv within the protection area. Göteborg Water and Sewage Works commissioned this thesis where two areas, Tagene industrial area and Kärra residential area, with untreated stormwater outlets within the protection area are studied. The areas have been divided according to surface composition with different rates of pollutant contribution. Then the stormwater flow and the contribution of pollutants was simulated with the model SEWSYS. The future aim is that the model will be able to simulate the contribution of pollutants for a variety of rains, for the whole protection area. SEWSYS (Sewer System) is built in MATLAB/Simulink and consists of three modules, a stormwater module, a sanitary wastewater module and a treatment plant module. This project only includes the stormwater module. The model simulates the stormwater flow and the pollutants total phosphorous, total nitrogen, copper, zinc, lead, cadmium and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Samples and analysis for the two areas has been carried out for another thesis work during the same period. The results from those analyses have been used for the model settings for the areas. Simulations have been performed to adjust the model and evaluate its ability to describe the stormwater flow and the pollutant contribution within the areas. The amount of stormwater and the runoff are well simulated by the model. However, the measured and analysed data has not been enough to get reliable simulations over the pollutant contribution. Further development of the model is necessary. Generally the model simulates lower values compared to measured values, especially in the industrial area. For a more general understanding over how SEWSYS works for the two areas, simulations were carried out on a yearly basis. Those simulations have been compared with general data for stormwater pollutants. Even though the results from the simulations have shown lower values than the measured values, the model shows clearly that the contribution of pollutants from the industrial site is greater than the contribution from the residential site. / Göta Älv sträcker sig från Vänern ner till Göteborg och är Göteborgs huvudsakliga råvattentäkt som försörjer ca 700 000 personer med vatten dagligen. För att säkra råvattenkvaliteten görs kontinuerliga provtagningar utmed älven. Dessutom beslutade Länsstyrelsen 1998 om ett skyddsområde med skyddsföreskrifter för avrinningsområdet mellan Surte i norr till vattenintaget vid Lärjeholm i söder. Ett mål med skyddsområdet är att det ska öka medvetenheten hos boende och de som är verksamma inom området om behovet att värna om vårt vatten. Dock leds det på flera ställen ut orenat dagvatten till älven inom skyddsområdet. Examensarbetet är ett uppdrag av Göteborgs Va-verk där två områden med orenade dagvattenutsläpp till Göta Älv studeras, Tagene industriområde samt Kärra bostadsområde. Dessa områden har karterats och dagvattenflödet samt föroreningsbelastningen från dagvattnet har simulerats med modellen SEWSYS. Målet på lång sikt är att modellen ska kunna användas för att simulera föroreningsbelastningen vid olika regn för hela skyddsområdet. Modellen SEWSYS (Sewer System) är uppbyggd i MATLAB/Simulink och bygger på tre moduler, en dagvattenmodul, en spillvattenmodul och en reningsverksmodul. För detta projekt har endast delen för dagvatten använts. Modellen simulerar dagvattenflödet och behandlar föroreningarna totalfosfor, totalkväve, koppar, zink, bly, kadmium samt polycykliska aromatiska kolväten (PAH). I ett examensarbete parallellt med detta har provtagning och analyser av föroreningar för de båda områdena ägt rum och dessa värden ligger till grund för inställningen av modellen. Simuleringar har utförts för att anpassa modellen samt utvärdera dess förmåga att beskriva dagvattenflödet och föroreningsbelastningen inom de aktuella områdena. Simuleringarna visar att avrinningen och dagvattenflödet simuleras bra av modellen. Det har dock visat sig att de gjorda mätningarna inte har varit tillräckliga som underlag för att få en tillförlitlig beskrivning av föroreningsbelastningen och vidare utveckling är nödvändig. Detta gäller särskilt i industriområdet där modellen generellt simulerar för låga föroreningsmängder. För en mer allmän uppfattning av SEWSYS modellen för de två områdena, har även simuleringar på årsbasis utförts och jämförts med schablonhalter för dagvattenföroreningar. Trots att simuleringsvärdena har legat lägre än de uppmätta värdena på föroreningsmängderna har det gått att visa att industriområdet bidrar till högre föroreningsbelastning än bostadsområdet på recipienten Göta Älv.

In the current water resources scientific literature, a wide variety of engineering design problems are solved in a simulation-optimization framework. These problems can have single or multiple objective functions and their decision variables can have discrete or continuous values. The majority of current literature in the field of water resources systems optimization report using heuristic global optimization algorithms, including evolutionary algorithms, with great success. These algorithms have multiple parameters that control their behavior both in terms of computational efficiency and the ability to find near globally optimal solutions. Values of these parameters are generally obtained by trial and error and are case study dependent. On the other hand, water resources simulation-optimization problems often have computationally intensive simulation models that can require seconds to hours for a single simulation. Furthermore, analysts may have limited computational budget to solve these problems, as such, the analyst may not be able to spend some of the computational budget to fine-tune the algorithm settings and parameter values. So, in general, algorithm parsimony in the number of parameters is an important factor in the applicability and performance of optimization algorithms for solving computationally intensive problems. A major contribution of this thesis is the development of a highly efficient, single objective, parsimonious optimization algorithm for solving problems with discrete decision variables. The algorithm is called Hybrid Discrete Dynamically Dimensioned Search, HD-DDS, and is designed based on Dynamically Dimensioned Search (DDS) that was developed by Tolson and Shoemaker (2007) for solving single objective hydrologic model calibration problems with continuous decision variables. The motivation for developing HD-DDS comes from the parsimony and high performance of original version of DDS. Similar to DDS, HD-DDS has a single parameter with a robust default value. HD-DDS is successfully applied to several benchmark water distribution system design problems where decision variables are pipe sizes among the available pipe size options. Results show that HD-DDS exhibits superior performance in specific comparisons to state-of-the-art optimization algorithms. The parsimony and efficiency of the original and discrete versions of DDS and their successful application to single objective water resources optimization problems with discrete and continuous decision variables motivated the development of a multi-objective optimization algorithm based on DDS. This algorithm is called Pareto Archived Dynamically Dimensioned Search (PA-DDS). The algorithm parsimony is a major factor in the design of PA-DDS. PA-DDS has a single parameter from its search engine DDS. In each iteration, PA-DDS selects one archived non-dominated solution and perturbs it to search for new solutions. The solution perturbation scheme of PA-DDS is similar to the original and discrete versions of DDS depending on whether the decision variable is discrete or continuous. So, PA-DDS can handle both types of decision variables. PA-DDS is applied to several benchmark mathematical problems, water distribution system design problems, and water resources model calibration problems with great success. It is shown that hypervolume contribution, HVC1, as defined in Knowles et al. (2003) is the superior selection metric for PA-DDS when solving multi-objective optimization problems with Pareto fronts that have a general (unknown) shape. However, one of the main contributions of this thesis is the development of a selection metric specifically designed for solving multi-objective optimization problems with a known or expected convex Pareto front such as water resources model calibration problems. The selection metric is called convex hull contribution (CHC) and makes the optimization algorithm sample solely from a subset of archived solutions that form the convex approximation of the Pareto front. Although CHC is generally applicable to any stochastic search optimization algorithm, it is applied to PA-DDS for solving six water resources calibration case studies with two or three objective functions. These case studies are solved by PA-DDS with CHC and HVC1 selections using 1,000 solution evaluations and by PA-DDS with CHC selection and two popular multi-objective optimization algorithms, AMALGAM and ε-NSGAII, using 10,000 solution evaluations. Results are compared based on the best case and worst case performances (out of multiple optimization trials) from each algorithm to measure the expected performance range for each algorithm. Comparing the best case performance of these algorithms shows that, PA-DDS with CHC selection using 1,000 solution evaluations perform very well in five out of six case studies. Comparing the worst case performance of the algorithms shows that with 1,000 solution evaluations, PA-DDS with CHC selection perform well in four out of six case studies. Furthermore, PA-DDS with CHC selection using 10,000 solution evaluations perform comparable to AMALGAM and ε-NSGAII. Therefore, it is concluded that PA-DDS with CHC selection is a powerful optimization algorithm for finding high quality solutions of multi-objective water resources model calibration problems with convex Pareto front especially when the computational budget is limited.

This thesis describes the research conducted on the use of historical performance data in assessing the financial risk for a power distribution utility in a performance based regulation (PBR) regime. The historical utility data used in this research are taken from the Canadian Electrical Association (CEA) annual reports. The individual utility data in these reports are confidential and only provided to the participating utilities. Thirteen utilities that participate in the CEA data reporting activity agreed to provide their individual utility data for the research described in this thesis. These utilities are anonymous and are referred to by numerical designations in accordance with the CEA protocol. This research could not have been conducted without the support of these utilities. The objectives of the research described in this thesis are to examine and analyze the variations in the annual performance indices of the thirteen participating utilities and the aggregated systems including the overall indices and the cause code contributions, and to examine the possible utilization of historic utility reliability indices to create suitable reward/penalty structures in a PBR protocol. The potential financial risk and actual financial payment analyses for these selected utilities are conducted using their historical performance data imposed on a number of possible reward/penalty structures developed in this thesis. An approach to recognize adverse utility performance in the form of Major Outage Years (MOY) is developed and the influence of the MOY performance in PBR decision making is examined.