The primary purpose of this study is to explore whether changes in oil price are exogenous for small open economy and the significance of the financial variables in accordance with empirical results to discuss the role of monetary policies and implications. Considering the factors of monetary policy of the central banks with respect to the SVAR model, that tries to determine whether oil price shocks have disparaged effects on two small market economies, Taiwan and Korea, and trying to compare the difference and effects of their respective policies. In this paper, the empirical analysis, we found that the oil price shocks is a direct result of a major factor in decline in output, and while the impact of monetary policy effects on output is vague that coincide with Kim and Roubini (2000). In addition, Bernanke et al. (1997) analysis of the central bank encounter with the rise in oil prices in response to raise interest rates, the empirical results in this article: (1) policy implementation between the two countries have a significant impact on oil prices will be affected by the increase in oil prices which led to the implementation of central bank tightening of monetary policy , (2) central bank policy changes on behalf of the discount rate shocks, their impact on the real impact of the output is limited, (3) found that the central bank monetary policy to curb the effect of smaller price increases.

Extr. de: Mémoire de maîtrise--Histoire--Aix-Marseille 1, 2004. / En appendice : "Trois jours de généralat ou Un épisode de la guerre civile dans le Var, décembre 1851", Savone, 1852, impr. F. Rossi / Camille Duteil. "Pierre Camille Duteil : Libourne 1808-Buenos-Aires 1860", communication présentée à Libourne le 25 [ie 23]-10-05, lors du 10ème Colloque du CLEM, Comité de Liaison des associations historiques de l'Entre-deux-Mers / Christian Martin. Bibliogr. des oeuvres de et sur C. Duteil p. 185-187.

Sedan 80-talet har man i Sverige på försöksnivå anlagt små bestånd av masurbjörk, stora kunskapsluckor finns framförallt hur man säljer och vem man säljer virket till. Arbetet syftar till att beskriva marknaden för masurbjörk samt att beräkna virkesvärdet hos två bestånd i Västerbotten. Arbetet bygger på en marknadsundersökning och en fältstudie. I Sverige köper knivtillverkare masurbjörk årligen, det går även att sälja till finska virkesköpare. För de två undersökta bestånden i Västerbotten, 15 år gamla beräknades virkesvärde till ~9400 kr/Ha respektive ~7000kr/Ha. Om man sköter ett masurbjörksbestånd finns det stor chans att få hög avsättning för virket även i framtiden.

Aggregating financial assets together to form a portfolio, commonly referred to as "asset pooling", is a standard practice in the banking and insurance industries. Determining a suitable probability distribution for this portfolio with each underlying asset is a challenging task unless several distributional assumptions are made. On the other hand, imposing assumptions on the distribution inhibits its ability to capture various idiosyncratic behaviors. It limits the model's usefulness in its ability to provide realistic risk metrics of the true portfolio distribution. In order to conquer this limitation, we propose two methods to model a pool of assets with much less assumptions on the correlation structure by way of finding analytical bounds. Our first method uses the Fre??chet-Hoeffding copula bounds to calculate model-free upper and lower bounds for aggregate assets evaluation. For the copulas with specific constraints, we improve the Fre??chet- Hoeffding copula bounds by providing bounds with narrower range. The improvements proposed are very robust for different types of constraints on the copula function. However, the lower copula bound does not exist for dimension three and above. Our second method tackles the open problem of finding lower bounds for higher dimensions by introducing the concept of Complete Mixability property. With such technique, we are able to find the lower bounds with specified constraints. Three theorems are proposed. The first theorem deals with the case where all marginal distributions are identical. The lower bound defined by the first theorem is sharp under some technical assumptions. The second theorem gives the lower bound in a more general setup without any restriction on the marginal distributions. However the bound achieved in this context is not sharp. The third theorem gives the sharp lower bound on Conditional VaR. Numerical results are provided for each method to demonstrate sharpness of the bounds. Finally, we point out some possible future research directions, such as looking for a general sharp lower bound for high dimensional correlation structures.

This paper provides methods to select pairs potentially profitable within the frame of statistical arbitrage. We employ a cointegration approach on pairwise combinations of five large energy companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange for the period 27th September 2012 to 22nd April 2014. We find one cointegrated pair, for which we further investigate both short and long run dynamics. A vector-error correction model is constructed, supporting a long run relationship between the two stocks, which is also supported by the mean-reverting characteristic of a stationary linear combination of the stocks. Impulse response functions and variance decomposition are also studied to further describe the interrelation of the stocks, supporting a unidirectional causality between the stocks.

Small to Mid-size Enterprises (SMEs) typically are slow/late to adopt new technologies due to a conservative bias, cost factors and possible lack of knowledge. Implementation of a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is a major, costly undertaking for a company of any size, especially SMEs, but there is the potential for huge paybacks touted by advantages afforded by the cloud. Cloud based ERP technology for SMEs is relatively new and poses a potential large risk-reward payoff. Given that these SMEs are currently functioning with their existing systems, why would they want to risk switching to "Bleeding Edge" Cloud ERP technology? Prior ERP research has focused primarily on an ERP’s implementation success and the relevant critical success factors (CSFs) important throughout the various stages of an ERP’s lifecycle. The focus of these studies has been on post-selection variables and the success or failure of the ERP’s adoption or implementation. Inherent in these studies are firms who already selected ERP technology which provides no insight into any potential barriers that prevent selection. ERP research in the area of SME cloud/SaaS ERP systems is nascent. This paper adds methodological, empirical and theoretical contributions to this existing stream of research about the motives and barriers in the selection of cloud ERP systems for SME’s. In particular, this research paper proposes to help bridge these gaps by operationalizing and testing Saeed, Juell-Skielse, and Uppström (2012)’s Unified Framework (UF) of the motives and barriers to the selection of cloud ERP systems. This current study uses Value Added Resellers (VARs) as subjects. They are arguably the most knowledgeable and in the best position to assess both the motives and more importantly barriers since there are in direct contact with the cloud ERP prospective purchasers.

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This thesis investigates the portfolio optimization problem using Value-at-Risk (VaR) as a risk measure, when m sample scenarios are given. Minimizing VaR of a portfolio is computationally difficult: it is non-convex, non-smooth, and has many local minima. Recently Gaivoronski and Pflug define a quantile-based smoothed VaR function to approximate the original VaR; this smoothed VaR function is then minimized to obtain the minimal VaR portfolio. Unfortunately this method suffers two problems. Firstly, computational cost of minimization is high since each function evaluation requires O(m^3) work, where m is the number of scenarios. Secondly, it is difficult to determine the smooth parameter. We propose a new gradual non-convexation penalty method which can efficiently solve a VaR minimization problem. We first introduce an auxiliary variable and formulate the VaR minimization problem as an optimization problem with a probabilistic constraint, which involves a sum of step functions. A continuously differentiable piecewise quadratic function is used to approximate the step function. An exact penalty method is used to solve the constrained optimization problem. In an attempt to reach the global minimize, we also use a gradual non-convexation process with the initial problem close to a convex problem. The solution of the kth optimization problem is used as the starting point of the k+1th problem. As the indexing parameter increases, the problem becomes non-convex. Our new method has three advantages. Firstly, our formulation is structurally simpler. Secondly, our method has three computationally more efficient since each function evaluation requires O(m) work. Thirdly, we use a gradual non-convexation process in an attempt to track the global minimum; this also avoids the difficulty in choosing the smooth parameter. Both historical and synthetic data are used to test our VaR minimization method. We compare our method with both Uryasev and Rockafellar’s CVaR minimization method and Gaivoronski and Pflug’s quantile-based smoothed VaR method in terms of VaR, CPU time, and efficient frontiers. We show that our gradual non-convexation penalty method yields better minimal VaR portfolio than the other two methods. In addition, we show that the proposed gradual non-convexation penalty method is computationally much more efficient than Gaivoronski and Pflug’s quantile-based smoothed VaR method, especially when the number of scenarios is large.

No description available.

This thesis builds on the established body of research into the suitability of a country joining other countries in a monetary union by focusing on the potential costs resulting from the loss of monetary policy independence that is a corollary to forming a monetary union. We continue in the tradition of several other authors by extracting supply and demand shocks for a range of countries from VAR analysis and comparing the symmetry of these economic shocks between potential members of a monetary union. The theoretical contribution of this thesis is that we explicitly incorporate the size of each potential currency union member in the analysis. This contribution is motivated by the observation that a large country would be a more significant part of a given currency union than would a small country. Thus the monetary policy settings of a given currency union would to a larger extent reflect the economic dynamics of a given country the larger that country is relative to the size of the union overall. Previous authors have largely neglected this issue. We explicitly incorporate the size of each potential members' economy in our analytical framework and re-assess the merits of a range of regions forming a currency union. Using the framework developed, we also inquire into the optimality of current monetary regimes in two regions, the North American continent and in Australia. The first of these is motivated by Mundell's seminal article on currency unions where he asked in largely qualitative terms whether the US and Canada are better currency realms than a hypothetical north south divide of the continent. The second is motivated by the observation that Australia’s economy embodies (economically) very different sub-regions due to the difference importance of commodities production in different parts of the country. We ask whether these different regions experience symmetrical or largely idiosyncratic shocks and find support for the latter.