The objective of this thesis was to determine the effect of income volatility risk on quota values in the Canadian dairy industry. A quota valuation model was developed to explain the relationship between quota value and its potential determinants, including a risk premium that accounted for dairy producer risk preferences and a measure of income volatility risk. The empirical analysis was applied to the Ontario dairy industry, and monthly data was collected for the period October 1990 through July 2009. Three econometric models were estimated using the ordinary least squares and generalized least squares approaches to estimate the relationship between quota value and the explanatory variables. The generalized least squares estimation approach was applied to the econometric models to account for the presence of autocorrelation. Robust standard errors were reported in the presence of heteroskedasticity. The first model included the discounted flows of expected returns and risk premiums as explanatory variables. The second model expanded on the first by adding policy risk and technological change as explanatory variables. The third model adjusted the second model by replacing the discounted flows of expected returns and risk premiums with the non-discounted values of these variables. Three models were specified and estimated to compare the estimation results and determine which specification best explained quota values over the sample period. The significance test for the first regression under ordinary least squares estimation concluded that the discounted risk premium flows were statistically significant at the 5% significance level. However, the discounted risk premium flows took on an unexpected sign that did not coincide with economic theory. Hypothesis tests for all other regression scenarios concluded that the risk premium was statistically insignificant at the 5% significance level. Therefore, given the functional form of the econometric models, the dataset, and the estimation procedures, the empirical results did not provide definitive evidence that income volatility risk influenced quota values in the Ontario dairy industry for the period October 1990 through July 2009. / October 2016

Det är inte lätt att vara förälder i dagens samhälle eftersom föräldraskapet kräver mycket ansvar. Uppsatsens frågeställning syftar till föräldraskap och barnuppfostran i det senmoderna samhället. Studien är gjord med den hermeneutiska metoden där grunderna bygger på att försöka förstå det tänkta fenomenet. Studiens teoretiska och begreppsliga ramverk är byggt på Giddens teorier om senmodernitet, risk, intimitet, släktskap och föräldraskap samt olika typer av föräldraskap och globalisering. Resultatet består av olika viktiga teman. I den preliminära tolkningen var de olika teman barnföräldrarelationen, barnuppfostran och föräldraskap som vidare utvecklades till ansvar och barndom i den fördjupade tolkningen. Dessa teman utvecklades genom teorierna och kopplingarna till studiens syfte och frågeställning för att uppnå resultatet. I resultatet framkommer de olika upplevelserna av föräldraskap i det senmoderna samhället. Respondenterna knöt an senmodernitet och den snabba utvecklingen med teknologi. Det visade sig att utvecklingen ansågs vara mer riskfylld med fler nackdelar än fördelar som respondenterna associerade med den teknologiska utvecklingen. Resultatet visade även att relationen mellan barn och föräldrar idag upplevs vara starkare tack vare bra kommunikation. Därför använder sig föräldrarna av de enklaste metoderna vilka är kommunikation och gränssättning.

No description available.

This research has led to a novel methodology for assessment and quantification of supply risks in the supply chain. The research has built on advanced Knowledge Discovery techniques and has resulted to a software implementation to be able to do so. The methodology developed and presented here resembles the well-known consumer credit scoring methods as it leads to a similar metric, or score, for assessing a supplier’s reliability and risk of conducting business with that supplier. However, the focus is on a wide range of operational metrics rather than just financial, which credit scoring techniques typically focus on. The core of the methodology comprises the application of Knowledge Discovery techniques to extract the likelihood of possible risks from within a range of available datasets. In combination with cross-impact analysis, those datasets are examined for establish the inter-relationships and mutual connections among several factors that are likely contribute to risks associated with particular suppliers. This approach is called conjugation analysis. The resulting parameters become the inputs into a logistic regression which leads to a risk scoring model the outcome of the process is the standardized risk score which is analogous to the well-known consumer risk scoring model, better known as FICO score. The proposed methodology has been applied to an Air Conditioning manufacturing company. Two models have been developed. The first identifies the supply risks based on the data about purchase orders and selected risk factors. With this model the likelihoods of delivery failures, quality failures and cost failures are obtained. The second model built on the first one but also used the actual data about the performance of supplier to identify risks of conducting business with particular suppliers. Its target was to provide quantitative measures of an individual supplier’s risk level. The supplier risk scoring model is tested on the data acquired from the company for its performance analysis. The supplier risk scoring model achieved 86.2% accuracy, while the area under curve (AUC) was 0.863. The AUC curve is much higher than required model’s validity threshold value of 0.5. It represents developed model’s validity and reliability for future data. The numerical studies conducted with real-life datasets have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and system as well as its future potential for industrial adoption.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / Since the end of the Cold War, reduced budgets have limited technology growth in the defense industry making the use of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software the accepted way to build systems. Twenty years ago, almost all DOD software-intensive systems were built by awarding large multimillion-dollar contracts to defense contractors to build systems from scratch. Consequently, with dwindling budgets, the military has recognized that they can no longer build an infrastructure independent of commercial industry. The use of commercial items does not reduce or eliminate the risks associated with the traditional development of software systems. Numerous programs have stumbled for the lack of careful consideration and identification of the unique risk factors imposed by commercial items. Even though the types of programs are diverse, there are common risk factors that can be identified from the past experiences of these programs. This thesis focuses on the critical risk factors and lessons learned associated with integrating commercial items into DOD software programs. It summarize lessons learn from programs that have made extensive use of commercial items, provides a risk checklist/questionnaire to assist PMs and developers in understanding the risks associated with their developments of a system using commercial items, and suggests mitigation strategies, which can be used as guidelines for the risk factors, to consider when adopting commercial components. Providing the starting point for a systematic structure approach to the risk management of commercial items. / Major, United States Army

M.Com. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Comm.

M.Comm. / Every modern-day company is faced with challenges on a daily basis to improve its performance. This challenge stretches further than the financial target that is received from the shareholders every year and boils right down to the day to day operations of a company. How does the company perform according to the market, does the company have a uniqueness that will allow for a competitive advantage, how can costs be reduced in order to create value in terms of shareholders and how to stay the blueprint company with its competitors seen as followers. The objective of this study is to determine the effect that financial risk management in terms of a cell captive insurance facility has on a company, especially the financial side and ultimately to provide a framework on the implementation of a cell captive insurance facility. A cell captive insurance facility stems from the self insurance principle and is tailored to a unique product offered by various insurance companies. It enables a company to insure its frequent losses at a lower premium than the insurance market and all surpluses resulting from the Captive can be regarded as profit to the owner of the captive or used to lower the following year's contribution. In order to obtain a Cell Captive's insurance facility, a company must purchase shares in an insurance company, known as a sponsor, and hereby receive certain insurance amenities. The captive that is now formed enables a company to insure all business related activities against possible risks with a further extension of the definition 'business related activities'. Due to the unlikely event to completely self insure, with regards to the cost implication and bearing the size of the captive in mind to cover all possible financial losses, an underwritten agreement between the cell captive owner and the sponsor insurance company should cater for all catastrophic risks which protects the captive from collapsing, due to a massive loss. With the creation of a cell captive insurance facility, the owner of the captive can extend on all its business related activities and offer insurance products to its employees and clients, with a reasonably reduce rate compared to the insurance market. The success of theses products can be so-good that the financial impact on the captive proofs the products to be self-reliant and even generates an income for the cell captive insurance facility. As a result of the objective to implement effective risk management via a cell captive insurance facility and to create profit by doing so, the results of the Vodacom Group was used in order to emphasize the successfulness of a cell captive insurance facility. Vodacom Group saved or rather refer to the term as "created" a net underwriting profit that amounts to R 3,385,275 in the first three months by using its Cell Captive Insurance Facility. Thats more than enough to prove the financial gain, but the company also benefited from the fact that it now has the ability to educate its managers and their management styles. The captive can no act as the focal point of the Group's risk management effort, by focusing the minds of senior management on the causes of claims and means to combat that.

No description available.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, April 2013. / No abstract provided