Most risk perception research has focused on how people view the riskiness or acceptability of particular hazards. Less attention has been paid to how people determine whether or not the decisions taken by other parties (e.g., politicians, government agencies, industry, etc.) to address risk issues are acceptable decisions.After examining the structure of risk perception and acceptability, this study researched the judgement strategies which individuals employ when assessing the acceptability or unacceptability of risk related decisions. It also investigated whether or not individuals directly affected by risk related decisions utilise similar judgement strategies to those of individuals not directly affected by the same decisions. This provided insights as to the reasons why local communities often reject risk related decisions that others in the broader community consider acceptable.Questionnaire data were collected relating to a number of risk scenarios based on real world issues and decisions. The survey included Curtin University students, residents of a Perth suburb, and members of a resident action group involved in a local risk issue at the time of the study.Unlike previous studies of heterogeneous hazard sets, exploratory factor analyses of 8 hazard domains did not reveal a global factor structure that could represent the construct 'risk'. Instead, each of the hazard domains revealed a qualitatively different factor structure, highlighting the context specific nature of risk.Through the use of correlation, linear regression, and path analysis the relationship between perceived riskiness, risk acceptability and other risk attributes or characteristics was explored. These analyses revealed that a relationship between perceived risk and risk acceptability exists to varying but significant degrees across different types of hazards. For a specific risk item, only ++ / a limited number of characteristics appear to significantly influence perceived risk or acceptability with some characteristics influencing both.Respondents used a ranking and weighting procedure to indicate the relative importance of the various qualitative characteristics in determining the acceptability of risk related decisions. This analysis revealed that people utilise both the characteristics of a risk issue as well as aspects of the decision itself when assessing the acceptability of risk related decisions. The study suggests that individuals who are not directly affected by specific decision employ simple judgement strategies not that dissimilar to those of the risk experts. This contrasts with directly affected individuals who appear to employ additional considerations, such as the trust worthiness of the decision makers, when assessing the acceptability of decisions.The thesis identifies a number of areas of future research, such as the role of hazard prototypes, and explores the implications of the study's findings for future risk communication efforts.

In finance the existence of corporate risk management is due to imperfections in financial markets. One of the main imperfections is associated with the cost of corporate risk that firms assume. Costly corporate risk creates a set of frictional costs and thereby decreases corporate value. Financial corporations manage their risk to reduce the expected value of frictional costs and enhance shareholders' value, and do so using a wide variety of tools. This dissertation primarily considers an insurance company as a special type of financial corporation leveraged by risky debt, and investigates the existence of risk management incentives in insurance in the presence of frictional costs such as financial distress costs and costs caused by the convexity of the corporate tax rate. Here one of the main tool of risk hedging is reinsurance, a classical tool for risk transfer in insurance, and this dissertation investigates demand for reinsurance in insurer value creation. Insurer risk management problems are also investigated here in a dynamic setting, where the main objective is to find optimal reinsurance and dividend payments under which the expected present value of future dividends is maximised. This dissertation also generalizes some classic actuarial results of reinsurance optimization under the mean-variance criterion. In this work optimal reinsurance is found endogenously for different reinsurance premium principle using standard methods of convex analysis. Finally this work considers an integrated market consisting of insureds, insurers and reinsurers, and studies the effect of the presence of reinsurance in this market on insurance price.

This thesis contributes to the issue of why corporations manage risk with insurance and financial derivative contracts. Two different empirical studies are done with data sets from Australian companies: 1) one study on reinsurance demand; and 2) one study on interest-rate-risk hedging demand from non-banking companies listed at the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). Both studies use panel data models. A Monte Carlo simulation replicates the basic characteristics of the original data sets and allows a performance comparison among different panel data models. This thesis provides the first empirical work on insurer demand for reinsurance using Australian data. A panel-data set (1996-2001) is used, which provides 543 observations. The study finds strong evidence that larger insurers, insurers member of a group of companies, reinsurers, and captive insurers reinsure more. The impacts of leverage, taxes, and return on investments are not statistically significant. The second empirical study analyses the interest-rate-risk hedging demand with two panel data sets from 1998 to 2003 (1134 and 465 observations, respectively). Detailed information about interest-rate-risk exposures was available after manual data collection from financial reports, which was only possible due to specific reporting requirements in Australian accounting standards. A probit regression analysis confirms previous empirical results that company size is important to the decision to hedge interest rate risk in Australia. However, in relation to the analysis of the extent of hedging, the proper measurement of interest-rate-risk exposures generates some significant results different from those found in previous studies. For example, this study shows that total leverage (total debt ratio) is not significantly important to interest-rate-risk hedging demand and that, instead, this demand is related to the specific risk exposure in the interest bearing part of debt. This study finds significant relations of interest-rate-risk hedging to company size, floating-interest-rate debt ratio, annual log returns, and company industry type.

[Truncated abstract] The overall aim of the research reported in this thesis was to develop and validate an instrument that would identify young children at educational risk. To achieve this, four separate but interrelated studies were conducted. Study One sought to explore the construct of young children at educational risk from the perspective of school psychologists and teachers through a series of open ended interviews. To this end, four school psychologists in charge of centres for severely disruptive children, and seven psychologists and three teachers involved in alternative education programs for alienated youth were interviewed. The findings of Study One revealed a broad range of factors and issues that contribute to a child being placed at educational risk. Interviewees specifically highlighted the significance of behavioural, learning, social, psychological and family factors which contributed to children's at educational risk status. The findings of Study One were incorporated into Study Two, the overall aim of which was to develop and validate a new instrument for the early identification of children at educational risk. Initially, 152 items were generated from the literature critically reviewed in Chapter Two, existing instrumentation and the Study One interview findings. ... In Study Four the construct validity of the CaERI was investigated by examining whether scores on the instrument differentiated between at educational risk groups of children and a group of not at educational risk children. The total data were first investigated for normality of distribution and returned a Shapiro-Wilk statistic of .99 and a significance level of .069 indicating that the combined data set were normally distributed. The individual CaERI scores for the three individual domains were then investigated and Shapiro-Wilk scores ranging from .96 to .99 and significance levels of .13 to .84, supported the assumption that the data are normally distributed. Significant between groups differences were found on the Behaviour Domain, where LDC children scored significantly lower than the regular class at educational risk and SPER-C children. The regular class at educational risk children also scored significantly lower than the SPER-C children which suggest that in the Behaviour Domain the instrument is sensitive enough to differentiate between the three groups. Significant between group differences were also evident between the LDC and regular class at educational risk and the SPER-C groups, with the LDC children scoring lower than the other two groups in the Social and Psychological Domains. Although the SPER-C group children scored higher than the regular class at educational risk group the difference was not significant. Similarly, a gender comparison of the at educational risk groups showed significant differences between males and females on the Behaviour Domain, however, the differences were not significant on the Social or Psychological Domains. A comparison of 20 not at educational risk students with a matched sample of 20 regular class at educational risk students found significant differences between the v groups on all domains. All findings are discussed and interpreted in line with the current research literature and are used to make suggestions for further research.

This thesis applies innovative methods to the efficiency and productivity analysis of the Australian banking system. Key areas of investigation include the impact of regulatory reforms on bank performance, the impact of firm entry and exit on industry productivity and the changing nature of banking and the role of risk in measuring bank value-added. The latter leads to the construction of a new bank production model, emphasising risk management as part of a bank??s value-added. As such, the proposed bank output framework views risk as a productive service, rather than a bad output or externality, which is often assumed in the literature. Aided with this new framework, several refinements are suggested for the treatment and measurement of bank output by researchers and statistical agencies. A unified regulatory framework combined with a greater level of harmonisation in rules in the Australian banking sector, has meant that a pooled analysis of all deposit-taking institutions has become feasible for the first time. With an enlarged dataset new insights are gained into the relative performance of deposit-taking institutions in Australia. The results challenge commonly held views of bank efficiency and the relevance of scale, size and incumbency when measuring bank efficiency. The new definition of bank output is also applied across the sector using econometric and non-parametric techniques to gauge productivity. Problems with balanced data sets and aggregation of firm level productivity are examined. A new approach to decomposing aggregate industry level productivity is introduced based on strong axiomatic grounds and its ability to attribute productivity between continuing, exiting and entering firms. The technique is applied for the first time and uses the newly developed bank output production model. The analysis provides key information on the relative performance of firms in the Australian banking sector.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

<p>Date: 12-June-2008</p><p>Authors: Muhammad Saeed – 760721</p><p>Västerås – Sweden</p><p>Mehmood Ziauddin – 830730</p><p>Västerås – Sweden</p><p>Title: A Structured Approach for Evaluating Risk Impacts in IT Projects</p><p>Introduction: Risk is an integral part of any project and it’s more appropriate to say for IT because it is changing with a very fast pace. Different surveys, reports and researches show astonishing statistics about the risks in IT projects. Through proper risk assessment techniques most of the uncertainties can be reduced while initiating, implementing and improving IT projects. Different authors talk about different risks and different strategies to respond to them. It becomes difficult at times to keep in check all the risks. Often risk management is over hyped, and often it’s totally neglected. Their needs to be a balanced approached in risk management.</p><p>Problem: How a structured approach will be beneficial for an organization in assessing risk impacts on IT Projects?</p><p>Purpose: The aim of this report is to develop and analyze a structured approach which will permit an organization in identifying & categorizing risks and measuring their impact on IT Projects.</p><p>Method: Exploratory research approach is used and data collection is done using secondary sources. Our thesis is qualitative research based. Qualitative research is the one which is not relying on statistical data as compared to quantitative research.</p><p>Besides our text books and study material, the main source of information was internet databases and university library from where we read different articles, thesis and books. Majority of the material studied was collected from Mälardalen University Library’s online databases like, Elin@Mälardalen, Compendex, Emerald and Ebrary. We also consulted some books which we got by inter-library loan from Mälardalen University.</p><p>Conclusion: With the help of Remenyi’s approach for categorizing risks and Applegate’s approach of measuring risk impact, we have managed to develop a structured approach and reached a conclusion that proper identification and categorizing of risks can be very beneficial for an organization in numerous ways. This systematic way assists top management, project managers, IT & non IT Personnel is taking preemptive measures for managing risks. The benefits it brings is that it gives an equal understanding within the organization and this structured approach gives an in-depth and clear understanding of the risks associated with IT projects.</p>

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<p>In April 2010 Vägverket (the Swedish National Road Agency) andBanverket (the Swedish National Railway Agency) will merge intoTrafikverket (the Swedish National Traffic Agency). Trafikverket willassume unified responsibility for the risk management that atpresent is responsibility of Vägverket and Banverket separately. Atpresent, as it will be shown in this thesis, Vägverket and Banverketshare the same theoretical background for risk management but usedifferent implementations often within the same agency. The use ofdifferent implementations results in a reduced transparency of therisk management both within and outside the agencies: this willbecome even more problematic when they will be fused intoTrafikverket.</p><p>The aim of this thesis is to review the current risk managementmethodologies used at Vägverket and Banverket and to suggest aunified tool for the risk management at Trafikverket. This will bedone by focusing in particular on construction projects, one fromVägverket (Partihallsförbindelsen) and one from Banverket(Nynäsbanan). In this thesis a particular emphasis will be put on theimportance of communication for risk management within anadministration. Better bottom-up and top-down communication andfeedback will enable improvements and more transparent riskmanagement especially at higher levels in the agency such as theboard of the project managers. The tool that will be proposed in thisthesis builds on the current tools used at Vägverket and Banverketthus assuring a smooth transition towards a unified tool.</p>