The architecture, engineering and construction industry faces challenges when dealing withprocurement contract design and risk-handling. The optimal contracting practices have beenworldwide studied in areas of contract theory which studies how the optimal incentivemechanism (“contracts”) can be designed to encourage the parties to behave more efficiently.The parties usually consist of a principal and an agent, where the principal hires an agent todeliver goods or services. However, the complexity of contract theory calls for a morepracticable approach in an attempt to understand the procurement problem in the industry andincrease knowledge-sharing between projects. The purpose of this study is to propose a model based on contract theory that can be used inpractice to investigate the effects of project endogenous risks in three different types ofprocurement contracts: fixed-price, time and material, and incentive. Thus, this study usesquantitative methods with the aim to explain the current procurement problem in the Swedisharchitecture, engineering, and construction industry, compare theory and practice, andcontribute to knowledge about the linkage between endogenous risks, optimal risk sharing andcontract design. The conclusions from this study are that the current contracting practices in the industry arenot aligned with the optimal contract design described by the theory. The theory in this researchshowed that, given endogenous project risks, the optimal incentives vary in the agent’saversion to risk resulting in a non-monotone relationship between optimal contract power andproject risk. Further, a contract becomes optimal and efficient when cost savings and qualityincentives are aligned. However, the analysis of real-world projects presented no clearrelationship between contract power and project risk, i.e. some projects with fixed-pricecontracts or time and material contracts presented the same risk level. Hence, this researchproposes a method for computing the optimal incentive contract which can be used in manycases where the other two types of contract are currently being used. Based on the theory, theoptimal incentive contract may add valuable benefits for both parties involved since it aims toefficiently share the project risk between them while providing the agent the right incentivesto work more efficiently to reduce costs and deliver high-quality services or goods. / Byggbranschen står inför utmaningar när det gäller kontraktsdesign och riskhantering. Deoptimala upphandlingsmetoderna har studerats över hela världen inom områden avkontraktsteori som i sin tur studerar hur den optimala incitamentsmekanismen ("kontrakt") kanutformas för att uppmuntra parterna att agera mer effektivt. Parterna består vanligtvis av enprincipal och en agent, där principalen anställer en agent för att leverera varor eller tjänster.Men komplexiteten i kontraktsteori kräver ett mer praktiskt tillvägagångssätt i ett försök attbättre förstå upphandlingsproblemet i byggbranschen samt att öka kunskapsutbytet mellanprojekt. Syftet med denna studie är att föreslå en modell baserad på kontraktsteori som kan användas ipraktiken för att undersöka effekter av endogena risker i tre olika typer avupphandlingskontrakt: fastpris, rörligt pris (time and material) och incitament. Denna studieanvänder därmed kvantitativa metoder i syfte att förklara det aktuella upphandlingsproblemeti den svenska byggbranschen, jämföra teori och praktik, och bidra till utökad kunskap omsambandet mellan endogena risker, optimal riskdelning och kontraktsdesign. Slutsatsen från denna studie är att den nuvarande upphandlingspraxisen i branschen inte är ilinje med den optimala kontraktsdesignen som beskrivs av teorin. Teorin i denna studie visaratt, förutsatt endogena projektrisker, så varierar de optimala incitamenten med agentensriskaversion vilket resulterar i ett icke-monoton förhållande mellan optimal kontraktsdesignoch projektrisk. Dessutom blir ett kontrakt optimalt och effektivt när kostnadsbesparingar ochkvalitetsincitament är i linje med varandra. Men analysen av verkliga projekt visar inget tydligtsamband mellan kontraktsdesign och projektrisk, det vill säga en del projekt med fastpris ellerrörligt pris visade sig ha samma risknivå. Därför föreslår denna studie en metod för beräkningav det optimala incitamentet som kan användas i många fall där de andra två typerna avkontrakt för närvarande används. Teorin säger att det optimala incitamentet kan ge värdefullafördelar för de inblandade parterna eftersom det syftar till att på ett effektivt sätt fördelaprojektrisken mellan dem samtidigt som agenten får rätt incitament att arbeta mer effektivt föratt sänka kostnaderna och leverera högkvalitativa tjänster eller varor.

Can the HEXACO personality dimensions and facets be used to explain the principal-agent problem and the disposition effect? The proposed research is designed to address the relationship between personality dimensions and individuals’ propensity to engage in self-interested behavior (agency effect) and irrational investment decisions (disposition effect). This paper proposes a correlational study that will be one of the first to apply Ashton and Lee’s (2009) HEXACO framework of personality to examine the association between the six personality dimensions and measurements of the agency and disposition effect. The HEXACO model of personality dimension includes Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. Total participants in both experiments will be 480 undergraduate college students. Participating students will complete the HEXACO-60 self-report inventory and take part in a stock simulation where measurements of interests are recorded. Higher scores along the Honesty-Humility and Emotionality dimensions are expected to have a strong negative relationship with the agency effect measurement, while Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Extraversion will have a weak to moderate positive association. Higher scores along the Emotionality dimensions are expected to have a strong negative association with the disposition effect measurement, while lower scores of Conscientiousness are expected to have a positive relationship.

<p>Denna uppsats analyserar företagens förändrade vilja att betala skatt efter skattereformen 1990. Reformen 1990 innebar i stort sett en halvering av företagens vinstskattesats. Analysen görs utifrån två hypoteser där den primära av de två hävdar att aktiebolagens skattegrundande inkomst har ökat efter reformen. Den sekundära hypotesen hävdar att reformen har påverkat större företags taxerade inkomst i större utsträckning än för mindre företag. Samtliga beräkningar är inflationsrensade och korrigerade för konjunkturer med hjälp av en deflator.</p><p>Med hjälp av regressionsanalys kan vi visa att företagens skattegrundande inkomst statistiskt signifikant har ökat efter skattereformen. Den ekonomiska betydelsen av reformen uppskattar vi till i genomsnitt 21,7 miljarder per år i ökade skattegrundande inkomster från aktiebolag.</p><p>Vi visar dessutom att reformen fick ett större genomslag i större företag än för mindre, vilket beror på företagens olika ägarstrukturer.</p>

<p>Saudi Arabia is increasingly becoming one of the most attractive areas in the world for foreign investors. At the same time the country has a major influence on the economy in the Middle-East. However there exist reasons for why companies previously have been reluctant to enter this market, these reasons have mainly been related to political turbulence, foreign traditions and culture. In recent years some research has been dedicated to this area however there is still more to investigate.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis has thereby been to identify what problems Swedish companies have encountered when operating in Saudi Arabia in terms of psychic distance, asymmetric information and working towards mutual goals. Hence, what problems they have dealt with during the continuous work and to what extent they have managed to maintain their corporate culture.</p><p>The authors chose to conduct a deductive multiple case study including four Swedish companies with operations in Saudi Arabia, these were Abetong, IKEA, Oriflame and Tetra Pak. The research took a qualitative approach as four in-depth interviews were conducted with managers in suitable positions at respective company.</p><p>The findings of the thesis indicate that the companies to a great extent have been able to maintain their corporate culture, and the adaptations that were made were mainly related to women’s role in Saudi society. In terms of psychic distance, this is something that has been encountered to a certain extent by all of the companies. Challenges have mainly been faced within the areas of religion, political systems, culture and educational level whereas the economic development was generally perceived as an opportunity. As for problems with asymmetric information and working towards mutual goals, these have not been reflected to a greater extent within any of the companies. However the problems that have been encountered have been related to language barriers.</p>

<p>Principal agent theory is widely used to model supply chain relationship, in which a supplier is the agent and a manufacturer is the principal. Both the manufacturer and supplier can influence product quality and consequentially share costs of product failures. Rich theoretical results under the principal agent model framework have been accumulated in the last two decades, but empirical evidence on whether the Stackelberg’s leadership game truly imitates practical supply chain relationship remains unfound. We study the domestic automobile industry in the last decade and provides to our best knowledge the first empirical evidence to assess the validity and practicality of principal agent theory and draw the implications of principal agent theory on supply chain relationship costs. Our empirical results suggest that Japanese OEMs behave more like principal agent theory suggests than the US OEMs in general and thus gain significant benefits in terms of marginal effort costs in motivating suppliers’ quality improvement behaviors and reducing overall manufacturer’s quality costs. Specifically, Toyota behaves closest to the optimal solution in the principal agent theory and therefore has the lowest manufacturer effort costs in improving product quality and achieves the overall lowest manufacturer’s quality costs in supply chain. Honda and Nissan are ranked 2^nd and 3^rd in terms of principal agent behaviors, but their marginal quality improvement effort costs are 33% and 61% higher than Toyota, and their total manufacturer’s quality costs are both around 17% higher compared to industrial leader Toyota by our estimate. US OEMs GM, Ford and Chrysler are believed to behave inconsistent to principal agent theory suggest, and consequently suffer a much higher marginal effort cost in motivating supplier’s quality improvement than Toyota as well as the overall manufacturer’s quality costs. GM and Ford are estimated doubled marginal effort costs than Toyota, and Chrysler is even higher at 1.6 times. GM’s overall manufacturer’s quality cost is 24% higher than Toyota, Ford is around 31% higher and Chrysler is around 48% higher. Our analysis gives a new perspective from principal agent theory to explain why Japanese OEMs especially Toyota has a better supply chain quality costs than US OEMs as literature and consensus suggested. In addition, we contribute in literature by linking the principal agent theory with automotive industrial data and first ever empirically validate the legitimacy of principal agent theory in modeling manufacturer-supplier relationship and quantitatively derive practical conclusions on marginal effort costs and manufacturer’s total supply chain quality cost implications. To guarantee the robustness of the empirical results, various sensitivity analyses are conducted and our main conclusions remain unchanged. </p>

Under den senare delen av 1900-talet inträffade ett antal företagsskandaler, såsom Enron och Worldcom, vilket föranledde ett bristande förtroendet för såväl styrelsers som revisorers arbete. För att återfå förtroende på den svenska marknaden introducerades Koden och en uppdatering av Aktiebolagslagen gjordes. En av de förtroendehöjande åtgärderna innebar att revisionsutskotten introducerades. Revisionsutskottens införande innebar ett tydliggörande av styrelseledamöternas arbetsuppgifter, men medförde samtidigt att huvudmannaskapsproblematiken i styrelsen aktualiserades. Vilket leder till vår problemformulering: Hur har revisionsutskottens införande påverkat ansvarsfördelning i styrelsen?För att kunna besvara vår frågeställning har vi genomfört kvalitativa intervjuer utifrån ett expertperspektiv. Expertperspektivet har företrätts av institutionella ägare, revisorer och en advokat. Respondenternas olika relationer till fenomenet har bidragit till ett brett perspektiv.Empiriinsamlingen påvisar tydligt att införandet av revisionsutskott har aktualiserat huvudmannaskapsproblematiken. Empirin påvisar att en dualism, i styrelsen, kan ha uppstått utifrån vem som agerar i vems uppdrag. Dock åberopar respondenterna likt lagrum och rekommendationer att styrelsens huvudansvar i helhet kvarstår.Vår slutsats är att styrelsen inte har skapat sig ett alibi genom införandet av revisionsutskott, och att styrelsens ansvar i helhet kvarstår. Därmed kan vi konstatera att införandet av revisionsutskott har belyst ansvarsfrågan, men att ansvaret kvarstår hos styrelsen i sin helhet. Vi har även konstaterat att forskning om huvudmannaskapsproblematiken inom styrelsen är bristfällig och att mer forskning skulle berika området. / Program: Civilekonomprogrammet

<p>We analyse several facets of bilevel decision problems under uncertainty. These problems can be interpreted as an extension of stochastic programming problems where part of the uncertainty is attributed to the behaviour of another actor.</p><p>The field of decision making under uncertainty with bilevel features is quite new and most approaches focus on the interactions and relations between the decision makers. In contrast to these studies, the approach of bilevel stochastic programming pursued here stresses the stochastic programming aspect of the problem formulation. The framework enables a direct application of stochastic programming concepts and solution methods to the bilevel relationship between the actors. Thus more complex problem structures can be studied and the aspect of uncertainty can be treated adequately.</p><p>Our analysis covers both theoretical and more practically oriented issues. We study different formulations of one and two stage bilevel stochastic programming problems and state necessary optimality conditions for each of the problem instances. Additionally we present a solution algorithm utilising a stochastic quasi-gradient method. A further study is concerned with the uniqueness of the minima of a convex stochastic programming problem with uncertainty about the decision variables. We state conditions on the distribution of the parameters representing the uncertainty such that the minima of the optimisation problem are unique. We formulate a model of competition and collaboration of two different types of telecom service providers, the owner of a bottleneck facility and a virtual network operator. This represents an application of a bilevel stochastic programming formulation to a liberalised telecommunications environment. Furthermore, the utilisation of the bilevel stochastic programming framework and the developed solution concepts for the analysis of principal agent models is demonstrated. Also here the background of a regulated telecom environment, more specific the relations between a regulator and a regulated telecommunications company, was chosen.</p>

<p>This dissertation explores delegation and democracy within the European Union (EU). The EU now constitutes one of the cornerstones of the democratic systems of its member states. The most vital instrument of democracy is lawmaking, which increasingly occurs at the European level. Many different actors contribute to the shaping of EU legislation. Among the most important of these are national bureaucrats representing their member states in Council negotiations. This thesis focuses on these bureaucrats. In particular it analyzes the delegation and accountability relationship between member states’ governments and their national bureaucrats stationed at the permanent representations (PRs) in Brussels. It is based on semi-structured elite interviews with 80 French and Swedish senior civil servants in Brussels, Paris and Stockholm.</p><p>Using an explorative and descriptive comparative case study of two EU member states, France and Sweden, the dissertation seeks to describe and analyse how delegation between member states’ capitals and Brussels are affected by: i) the coordination and preparation of EU issues in member states’ government offices, ii) the organisation and functioning of the permanent representations, and, most importantly, iii) existing accountability mechanisms. Applying a principal-agent approach, this study shows that the delegation between governments and their Brussels-based bureaucrats is adequate, despite relatively weak delegation and accountability designs. The study identifies institutional divergence between France and Sweden as regards the design of national systems of EU delegation, particularly monitoring and reporting requirements, where Sweden seems to have a more developed system. Both countries have similar contract design and screening and selection systems for employing national agents stationed at the PRs. The impact of domestic coordination of EU affairs is important in order to understand processes of both preference formation precedent to delegation and of preference transfer through instructions. In this case it is obvious that French coordination is more efficient. The functions of the permanent representation also influence delegation between national and European levels. For example, administrative procedures in the PRs in Brussels have had effects on the drafting of instructions, something that is particularly notable in the Swedish case.</p><p>The study identifies several central problems as regards delegation between bureaucrats in Brussels and governments in member states’ capitals. The first problem has to do with the ongoing blurring of political and bureaucratic dimensions. This inhibits the ability of principals (in our case member state governments) to hold their agents (Brussels-based bureaucrats) accountable. The second problem identified by this study as regards the working of democracy is the distinction between formal and informal processes. One conclusion is that informal processes should be formalised or made more transparent. Opacity in lawmaking processes has detrimental effects on long-term legitimacy of democratic systems. Holding de facto lawmaking bureaucrats, caught in a cross-pressure between national demands and European ambitions, accountable is essential for democracy. The dissertation includes practical suggestions as to how to improve delegation, and argues that additional research on both the roles and power of bureaucrats as well as issues of cross-pressure is necessary.</p>

We analyse several facets of bilevel decision problems under uncertainty. These problems can be interpreted as an extension of stochastic programming problems where part of the uncertainty is attributed to the behaviour of another actor. The field of decision making under uncertainty with bilevel features is quite new and most approaches focus on the interactions and relations between the decision makers. In contrast to these studies, the approach of bilevel stochastic programming pursued here stresses the stochastic programming aspect of the problem formulation. The framework enables a direct application of stochastic programming concepts and solution methods to the bilevel relationship between the actors. Thus more complex problem structures can be studied and the aspect of uncertainty can be treated adequately. Our analysis covers both theoretical and more practically oriented issues. We study different formulations of one and two stage bilevel stochastic programming problems and state necessary optimality conditions for each of the problem instances. Additionally we present a solution algorithm utilising a stochastic quasi-gradient method. A further study is concerned with the uniqueness of the minima of a convex stochastic programming problem with uncertainty about the decision variables. We state conditions on the distribution of the parameters representing the uncertainty such that the minima of the optimisation problem are unique. We formulate a model of competition and collaboration of two different types of telecom service providers, the owner of a bottleneck facility and a virtual network operator. This represents an application of a bilevel stochastic programming formulation to a liberalised telecommunications environment. Furthermore, the utilisation of the bilevel stochastic programming framework and the developed solution concepts for the analysis of principal agent models is demonstrated. Also here the background of a regulated telecom environment, more specific the relations between a regulator and a regulated telecommunications company, was chosen.

This dissertation explores delegation and democracy within the European Union (EU). The EU now constitutes one of the cornerstones of the democratic systems of its member states. The most vital instrument of democracy is lawmaking, which increasingly occurs at the European level. Many different actors contribute to the shaping of EU legislation. Among the most important of these are national bureaucrats representing their member states in Council negotiations. This thesis focuses on these bureaucrats. In particular it analyzes the delegation and accountability relationship between member states’ governments and their national bureaucrats stationed at the permanent representations (PRs) in Brussels. It is based on semi-structured elite interviews with 80 French and Swedish senior civil servants in Brussels, Paris and Stockholm. Using an explorative and descriptive comparative case study of two EU member states, France and Sweden, the dissertation seeks to describe and analyse how delegation between member states’ capitals and Brussels are affected by: i) the coordination and preparation of EU issues in member states’ government offices, ii) the organisation and functioning of the permanent representations, and, most importantly, iii) existing accountability mechanisms. Applying a principal-agent approach, this study shows that the delegation between governments and their Brussels-based bureaucrats is adequate, despite relatively weak delegation and accountability designs. The study identifies institutional divergence between France and Sweden as regards the design of national systems of EU delegation, particularly monitoring and reporting requirements, where Sweden seems to have a more developed system. Both countries have similar contract design and screening and selection systems for employing national agents stationed at the PRs. The impact of domestic coordination of EU affairs is important in order to understand processes of both preference formation precedent to delegation and of preference transfer through instructions. In this case it is obvious that French coordination is more efficient. The functions of the permanent representation also influence delegation between national and European levels. For example, administrative procedures in the PRs in Brussels have had effects on the drafting of instructions, something that is particularly notable in the Swedish case. The study identifies several central problems as regards delegation between bureaucrats in Brussels and governments in member states’ capitals. The first problem has to do with the ongoing blurring of political and bureaucratic dimensions. This inhibits the ability of principals (in our case member state governments) to hold their agents (Brussels-based bureaucrats) accountable. The second problem identified by this study as regards the working of democracy is the distinction between formal and informal processes. One conclusion is that informal processes should be formalised or made more transparent. Opacity in lawmaking processes has detrimental effects on long-term legitimacy of democratic systems. Holding de facto lawmaking bureaucrats, caught in a cross-pressure between national demands and European ambitions, accountable is essential for democracy. The dissertation includes practical suggestions as to how to improve delegation, and argues that additional research on both the roles and power of bureaucrats as well as issues of cross-pressure is necessary.