The construction industry is a complex sector that places high demands on project management, planning, and implementation. Significant progress has been made in recent decades regarding the delivery of extensive construction projects, including the adoption of new building techniques, improved risk management systems, and enhanced safety measures. However, a lack of efficiency persists in the construction industry in many countries. This is due to issues within projects, such as time and cost overruns, conflicts among stakeholders, limitations in productivity improvement, quality development, and inadequate customer satisfaction. Following this, many researchers and society at large have called for a change in attitudes, behavior, and practices to increase the chances of successful construction projects to improve the result of the final products. With increased complexity, uncertainty, and time constraints in construction projects, there has been a growing need for collaboration among various project stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to describe and explain the choices made by clients in the procurement process and what contractors prefer. Based on other studies finding that collaborative procurement procedures enhance project performance, this thesis wants to analyze clients’ and contractors’ views regarding collaborative procurement procedures. Additionally, moral-hazard is a component of procurement strategies and contracts, particularly in more complex transactions that involve interaction, which significantly affects the construction industry. Therefore, it is an important aspect to look at how the construction industry works to prevent the emergence of moral-hazard. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted with nine respondents, comprising of five respondents from the contractor side, three from the client side, and one consultant. It has provided insight into how collaboration and moral hazard are perceived. We can conclude that the client's choice of procedure in the procurement process is often closely linked to the selected form of contract. When clients select a form of contract or when contractors submit bids, it appears to be based on the company's expertise, tradition, or what best suits the project. Those who feel skilled or comfortable with partnering tend to choose partnering more frequently. The strategic choices are also shaped by a systematic and thoughtful decision-making process, consciously or unconsciously, to reduce the risk of opportunistic behavior that may occur.

Substantial interest resides in identifying sensors, algorithms and fusion theories to detect explosive hazards. This is a significant research effort because it impacts the safety and lives of civilians and soldiers alike. However, a challenging aspect of this field is we are not in conflict with the threats (objects) per se. Instead, we are dealing with people and their changing strategies and preferred method of delivery. Herein, I investigate one method of threat delivery, side attack explosive ballistics (SAEB). In particular, I explore a vehicle-mounted synthetic aperture acoustic (SAA) platform. First, a wide band SAA signal is decomposed into a higher spectral resolution signal. Next, different multi/hyperspectral signal processing techniques are explored for manual band analysis and selection. Last, a convolutional neural network (CNN) is used for filter (e.g., enhancement and/or feature) learning and classification relative to the full signal versus different subbands. Performance is assessed in the context of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves on data from a U.S. Army test site that contains multiple target and clutter types, levels of concealment and times of day. Preliminary results indicate that a machine learned CNN solution can achieve better performance than our previously established human engineered Fraz feature with kernel support vector machine classification.

Wildlife collisions with U.S. civil aircraft (hereafter incidents) pose safety and economic concerns. Terrestrial mammals represented only 2.3% of wildlife incidents, but 59% of these incidents caused damage to aircraft. I examined 2,558 incidents in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Wildlife Strike Database to characterize and analyze overall mammal incidents by airport type, emphasizing white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and bat incidents with U.S. civil aircraft. Mammal incidents caused 5 times greater damage than other wildlife which varied by airport type and appeared associated with species’ behavior. I provided relative hazard scores to determine which species were most hazardous to aircraft. Relative hazard increased with increasing body mass with mule deer (O. hemionus), white-tailed deer and domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) most hazardous to aircraft. White-tailed deer caused 6 times greater damage than all other wildlife and are hazardous to aircraft. In contrast, bats posed a low hazard to aircraft.

Few studies have measured the impacts of mowing on bird use of habitat and the risk of bird collisions with aircraft on North American airfields. The need for this research has increased as airfields become some of the only large contiguous grasslands available to rare migratory birds in some areas. I studied bird abundance, distribution and behaviors at Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts, USA in June and July 2004. I compared my data with bird strike records to discern any patterns associated with mowing of airfield vegetation. There was no difference in total number of birds or species between mowed and unmowed plots adjacent to runways and taxiways. There were more Upland Sandpipers and Eastern Meadowlarks in mowed vegetation and more sparrows (Grasshopper and Savannah) in unmowed vegetation. From 1997 to 2005, swallows were the birds most often struck by aircraft in June and July at Westover, and were also the second most numerous birds in both mowed and unmowed plots. Bird species that pose high Bird/Wildlife Aircraft Strike Hazard (BASH) risk at Westover included Turkey Vulture, Red-tailed Hawk, Great Blue Heron, and Canada Goose. I did not observe those species in paired plots of mowed or unmowed airfield vegetation adjacent to runways and taxiways at Westover. I opportunistically observed 64 incidents where species that pose high BASH risk were in or adjacent to areas where aircraft operate. Birds struck most frequently at Westover between April 1997 and January 2005 were “swallows”, American Kestrel, Killdeer, Horned Lark, Eastern Meadowlark, and Mourning Dove. Current mowing practices at Westover may have adverse effects on Upland Sandpiper and Grasshopper Sparrow, both state-listed, rare, grassland birds, but may not measurably reduce overall risk to aircraft, given the continued presence of large, high BASH risk species. I recommend methods to reduce threats posed by high-risk species at Westover, and further research to seek ways to reduce adverse effects of mowing on state-listed, rare, migratory species of birds.

Out-of-vehicle distractions were identified as contributing factors to about 29.4 % of all crashes that were reported between the years 1995 to 1999 (Stutts J. K., 2005; Stutts J. R., 2001).These crash statistics are from a decade ago. With the increase of cars, pedestrians, shops,vendors, billboards and signs over the last decade it can be safely assumed that the driving environment is more complex now and has greater potential for external driver distraction. Given this, it is important to know the effects of out-of-vehicle distraction on drivers’ ability to drive safely in their presence. With this in mind, a driving simulator study was conducted that compared younger novice and older experienced drivers on their ability to maintain their attention on the forward roadway, anticipate potential hazards and maintain vehicle control while performing an out-of-vehicle tasks. The results of the experiment indicate that both age groups took equally long glances away from the forward roadway at the out-of-vehicle task and that these long glances away from the forward roadway had a negative effects on the hazard anticipation performance of both age groups. In addition, these long glances away from the forward roadway did have a significantly negative impact on the lane maintainence ability of younger drivers as compared to their experienced counterparts but these long glances away from the forward roadway did not seem to affect the speed maintainence abilities of either group. No matter what the vehicle measures indicate, it is clear that both age groups are at elevated risk of crashing when they are attending to tasks that are outside the vehicle.

This dissertation studies information economics in strategic and decision settings. In Chapter 1, I introduce flexible endogenous monitoring into dynamic moral hazard. A principal can commit to not only an employment plan but also the monitoring technology to incentivize dynamic effort from an agent. Optimal monitoring follows a Poisson process that produces rare informative signals, and the optimal employment plan features decreasing turnover. To incentivize persistent effort, the Poisson monitoring takes the form of "bad news'' that leads to immediate termination. Monitoring is non-stationary: the bad news becomes more precise and less frequent. In Chapter 2, which is joint work with Qingmin Liu, we analyze a model of strategic exploration in which competing players independently explore a set of alternatives. The model features a multiple-player multiple-armed bandit problem and captures a strategic trade-off between preemption---covert exploration of alternatives that the opponent will explore in the future---and prioritization---exploration of the most promising alternatives. Our results explain how the strategic trade-off shapes equilibrium behaviors and outcomes, e.g., in technology races between superpowers and R&D competitions between firms. We show that players compete on the same set of alternatives, leading to duplicated exploration from start to finish, and they explore alternatives that are a priori less promising before more promising ones are exhausted. In Chapter 3, I study how a forward-looking decision maker experiments on unknown alternatives of spatially correlated utilities, modeled by a Brownian motion so that similar alternatives yield similar utilities. For example, a firm experiments on its size that yields unknown, spatially correlated profitability. Experimentation trades off the opportunity cost of exploitation for the indirect inference from the explored alternatives to unknown ones. The optimal strategy is to explore unknown alternatives and then exploit the best known alternative when the explored becomes sufficiently worse than the best. The decision maker explores more quickly as the explored alternative worsens. My model predicts the conditional Gibrat's law and linear relation between firm size and profitability.

This study analyzed demographic differences and differential mortality between the Mississippi State Asylum (MSA) and the state of Mississippi. Using census records, Biennial Reports, death certificates, and vital statistics from the Mississippi State Board of Health, statistical methods including Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox proportional hazard analysis were employed to explore significant differences in population demographics, hazard of death, and survivorship in general and with tuberculosis. Key results include proportionally more females in the MSA, increased hazard of death/decreased survivorship within the MSA compared to the State, and increased hazard of death/decreased survivorship for Black/AA individuals compared to their White/EA counterparts. This study demonstrates the intersectionality of sex, race, and institutionalization on survivorship and highlights the continued relevance of such issues in modern times, particularly regarding institutional treatment.

This thesis aims to solicit and elicit the view of experienced system safety analysts in the applicability and use of STPA, a hazard analysis derived from the STAMP-framework. The increase in complexity in systems elevates the chance of hazards and risks being obfuscated. Thus, the intention is to expand, deepen and theorize about the STPA-methodology in relation to the role of system safety analysts in Sweden. The results show that the greatest use of STPA might lie in integrating the desired procedural steps with the hazard analysis techniques used today. This is due to individual capabilities, guidance in identification and evaluation of risks, as well as the reductionistic perspective that prevails in society today. Unlike STPA’s claim for completeness, the impression of the system analysts is that absolute safety can never be guaranteed.

Die vorliegende Dissertation umfasst drei Forschungspapiere, welche sich mit folgenden Bankenthemen beschäftigen: Fehl-/Anreize und Risikoübernahme, Ertragssteuerung und die Regulierung von Aufsichtsräten. „Do cooperative banks suffer from moral hazard behaviour? Evidence in the context of efficiency and risk“: Wir verwenden Granger-Kausalitätstechniken, um die intertemporalen Beziehungen zwischen Risiko, Effizienz und Kapital zu bewerten. Wir verwenden zwei verschiedene Maße der Effizienz, die Kosten- und Gewinneffizienz, da diese unterschiedliche Managementfähigkeiten widerspiegeln. Eine ist die Fähigkeit, Kosten zu steuern, und die andere ist die Möglichkeit, Gewinne zu maximieren. Wir stellen fest, dass eine niedrigere Kosten- und Gewinneffizienz das Liquiditätsrisiko erhöht. Wir stellen ebenfalls fest, dass ein Anstieg des Kreditrisiko nachteilig für die Kosten und Gewinneffizienz ist. Am wichtigsten ist jedoch, dass unsere Ergebnisse eine positive Beziehung zwischen dem Kapital- und Kreditrisiko aufweisen, was zeigt, dass Moral Hazard Verhalten keine Anwendung (aufgrund von Haftungsbeschränkung und Einlagensicherung) bei unsere Stichprobe von Genossenschaftsbanken findet. Im Gegenteil, wir finden Hinweise darauf, dass Banken mit niedrigem Kapital ihre Kreditqualität in den Folgeperioden verbessern können. Diese Erkenntnisse können für die Regulierungsbehörden von Bedeutung sein, die bei der Einführung neuer regulatorischer Kapitalbeschränkungen die Geschäftsmodelle der Banken berücksichtigen sollten. „Earnings Management Modelling in the Banking Industry – Evaluating valuable approaches“: Die Rechungslegungsforschung hat den Bereich Earnings Management (EM) für die nichtfinanzielle und finanzielle Industrie gesondert untersucht. Da EM nicht direkt beobachtet werden kann, ist es für jede Forschungsfrage in jedem Umfeld wichtig, einen überprüfbare Proxy-Größe für EM zu finden. Grundsätzlich fehlt jedoch ein tiefes Verständnis dafür, welche Regressoren den Schätzvorgang verbessern können. Diese Studie versucht, diese Lücke zu schließen, und analysiert vorhandene Modellspezifikationen für diskretionäre Risikovorsorgen im Bankensektor, um gemeinsame und spezifische Muster zu identifizieren. Hierfür verwenden wir einen US-Datensatz, bestehend aus den Jahren 2005-2015 und wenden gängige Testverfahren an, um das Ausmaß von Messfehlern, Verzerrungen aufgrund von Extrembeobachtungen und weggelassenen Variablen sowie die Vorhersagekraft der diskretionären Proxy-Größen zu untersuchen. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass ein gründliches Verständnis des methodischen Modellierungsprozesses von EM im Bankensektor wichtig ist. Die derzeit etablierten Modelle zur Schätzung des EM sind angemessen, jedoch optimierbar. Insbesondere identifizieren wir die Variablen der notleidenden Vermögenswerte als die wichtigste Gruppe, während Variablen der Risikovorsorge und Nettoausbuchungen einen gewissen Wert erbringen können. Darüber hinaus zeigen unsere Ergebnisse, dass die Nichtlinearität bestimmter Regressoren ein Problem sein kann, das in zukünftigen Untersuchungen angegangen werden sollte, während wir weiterhin einige ausgelassene und möglicherweise korrelierte Variablen identifizieren, die einen Mehrwert generieren könnten. Die Ergebnisse zeigen auch, dass ein dynamischer, endogenität berücksichtigender Ansatz nicht unbedingt mit einer besseren Vorhersagekraft verknüpft ist. „Board Regulation and its Impact on Composition and Effects – Evidence from German Cooperative Bank“: In dieser Studie wird ein System-GMM-Schätzer verwendet, um die Auswirkungen möglicher regulatorischer Eingriffe auf die Besetzung von Aufsichtsratspositionen bei Genossenschaftsbanken zu untersuchen. Hierfür werden zwei verschiedene Untersuchungsdesigns angewandt. Zunächst untersucht der Autor die Änderungen der Aufsichtsratsstruktur vor und nach der Einführung des Gesetzes zur Stärkung der Finanzmarkt- und Versicherungsaufsicht (FinVAG). Zweitens schätzt der Autor den Einfluss von Doktoren und beruflicher Konzentration auf Änderungen des Bankrisikos unter Berücksichtigung der Umsetzung der FinVAG. Die untersuchte Stichprobe umfasst dabei 246 deutsche Genossenschaftsbanken in den Jahren von 2006 bis 2011. Bezüglich des Bankrisikos verwendet der Autor vier verschiedene Maße: das Kredit-, Kapital-, Liquiditätsrisiko und den Z-Score, wobei die ersten drei ebenfalls im FinVAG adressiert werden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Umsetzung des FinVAGs zu strukturellen Änderungen in der Zusammensetzung der Aufsichtsräte führt, insbesondere auf Kosten der Landwirte. Darüber hinaus wirkt sich die Umsetzung risikoreduzierend und damit wie beabsichtigt auf alle Risikokennzahlen und Beziehungen zwischen Risikokennzahlen und Aufsichtsratsmerkmalen aus. Um die komplexe Beziehung zwischen Charakteristika der Aufsichtsräte und Risikomessgrößen aufzudecken, verwendet die Studie einen „two-step system-gmm“ Schätzer, um nicht beobachtete Heterogenität zu berücksichtigen, um Endogenitätsprobleme zu reduzieren. Die Ergebnisse können für Stakeholder, Aufsichtsbehörden, Vorgesetzte und Manager besonders relevant sein. / The present dissertation includes three research papers dealing with the following banking topics: (dis-) incentives and risk taking, earnings management and the regulation of supervisory boards. „Do cooperative banks suffer from moral hazard behaviour? Evidence in the context of efficiency and risk“: We use Granger-causality techniques to evaluate the intertemporal relationships among risk, efficiency and capital. We use two different measures of bank efficiency, i.e., cost and profit efficiency, since these measures reflect different managerial abilities. One is the ability to manage costs, and the other is the ability to maximize profits. We find that lower cost and profit efficiency Granger-cause increases in liquidity risk. We also identify that credit risk negatively Granger-causes cost and profit efficiency. Most importantly, our results show a positive relationship between capital and credit risk, thus displaying that moral hazard (due to limited liability and deposit insurance) does not apply to our sample of cooperative banks. On the contrary, we find evidence that banks with low capital are able to improve their loan quality in subsequent periods. These findings may be important to regulators, who should consider banks’ business models when introducing new regulatory capital constraints. „Earnings Management Modelling in the Banking Industry – Evaluating valuable approaches“: Accounting research has separately studied the field of Earnings Management (EM) for non-financial and financial industries. Since EM cannot be observed directly, it is important for every research question in any setting to find a verifiable proxy for EM. However, we still lack a thorough understanding of what regressors can add value to the estimation process of EM in banks. This study tries to close this gap and analyses existing model specifications of discretionary loan loss provisions (LLP) in the banking sector to identify common pattern groups and specific patterns used. Thereupon, we use an US-dataset from 2005-2015 and apply prevalent test procedures to examine the extent of measurement errors, extreme performance and omitted-variable biases and predictive power of the discretionary proxies of each of the models. Our results indicate that a thorough understanding about the methodological modelling process of EM in the banking industry is important. The currently established models to estimate EM are appropriate yet optimizable. In particular, we identify non-performing asset patterns as the most important group, while loan loss allowances and net charge offs can add some value, though do not seem to be indispensable. In addition, our results show that non-linearity of certain regressors can be an issue, which should be addressed in future research, while we identify some omitted and possibly correlated variables that might add value to specifications in identifying non-discretionary LLP. Results also indicate that a dynamic model and endogeneity robust estimation approach is not necessarily linked to better prediction power. „Board Regulation and its Impact on Composition and Effects – Evidence from German Cooperative Bank“: This study employs a system GMM framework to examine the impact of potential regulatory intervention regarding the occupations of supervisory board members in cooperative banks. To achieve insights the study proceeds in two different ways. First, the author investigates the changes in board structure prior and following to the German Act to Strengthen Financial Market and Insurance Supervision (FinVAG). Second, the author estimates the influence of Ph.D. degree holders and occupational concentration on bank-risk changes in consideration of the implementation of FinVAG. Therefore, the sample consists of 246 German cooperative banks from 2006-2011. Regarding bank-risk the author applies four different measures: credit-, equity-, liquidity-risk and the Z-Score, with the former three also being addressed in FinVAG. Results indicate that the implementation of FinVAG results in structural changes in board composition, especially at the expense of farmers. In addition, the implementation affects all risk-measures and relations between risk-measures and supervisory board characteristics in a risk-reducing and therefore intended way. To disentangle the complex relationship between board characteristics and risk measures the study utilizes a two-step system GMM estimator to account for unobserved heterogeneity, and simultaneity in order to reduce endogeneity problems. The findings may be especially relevant for stakeholders, regulators, supervisors and managers.

No description available.