Agency theory, which discusses the conflict between agent and principle, was developed by Jensen and Meckling in 1976. Owing to the separation of ownership and management, shareholders and management authority have agency relationship. The one reason that shareholder hand in company affairs to management authority is that management authority has better management ability. Another reason is that shareholder cannot handle by himself for some reasons and must hand in to other people. Management authority has the advantage of information and they also seek for their own interest. But these behaviors may damage shareholder¡¦s right and agency problems occur in the situation. Agency problems occur not only between shareholder and management authority but also between management authority and lender in a company with debt. Shareholders often supervise management authority more strictly and make more rules to confine management authority in order to reduce agency problem or protect their own interest. But these actions disturb management authority when management authority is full of ambitions and endeavor. If agency problems between shareholder and management authority cannot be solved properly, it will make company operate abnormally and damage the nation¡¦s economic further. On the contrary earning forecast can reduce information asymmetry. If management authority can disclose earning forecast voluntarily, it is helpful to reduce the agency problem and the information asymmetry between shareholder and management authority. The article assumes management authority disclose earning forecast voluntarily in order to get shareholder and debtor¡¦s trust in this point of view and use firm size¡Bfree cash flow¡Bleverage as the proxy of agency cost. In this research we find that the more debt the company have, the higher voluntarily the company discloses earning forecast. It is the same as we expect. But free cast flow is not significant. When firm size is bigger, the management authority is less voluntary to disclose earning forecast. The result is contrary to the view of agency problem.

This study is based on the viewpoint of the intertemporal substitution of the consumption smoothing. Under considering the interactive influences on the international economy, the writer employs the present value model to investigate an estimated model of the current accounts. The basis of the traditional current account model is to apply the traditional single-country VAR estimation, and not to consider the internationally interactive effects among countries. However, with the more and more frequent interactions among nations, the economic development in different countries, for the aspect of economic theory, may have interactive influences on each other. Respecting this viewpoint that the current account theory of the traditionally intertemporal model are actually unable to effectively support the inference of the model, the writer therefore adds the cross-country VAR estimation method analyze the transnational influences. I hope that the model can effectively modify the estimation index for the conventional model. In addition, a good model not only should contain in-sample goodness of fit, but also could reveal the variables of the future by using the out-of-sample. Therefore, according to the method of predictive capability assessment proposed by Diebold and Mariano (1995), I attempt to compare the out-of-sample prediction between the single and the cross-country VAR. From the aspect of the goodness of fit, the finding of this study has proven that the model considered the cross-country VAR indeed has a relatively better goodness-of-fit result in Japan, if compared to the traditional single-country. However, in the U.S., the traditional single-country model does not immensely improve the goodness-of-fit result. The finding shows that either the traditional single-country VAR or cross-country VAR, it possesses the perfect goodness of fit. The reason, perhaps, is that America itself has already been the center of the politics and economy. Also, it seems those Americans representative households have as well as the worldview. Therefore, people in the States might have considered the economic conditions of other countries when they are engaged in consumption behaviors. If this is the case, there are no many opportunities for those people to adjust their behaviors when considering the foreign economic situations. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of the prediction capability, the final result conducted both in the U.S. and in Japan agreeably demonstrates that it is a better method of prediction using the cross-country VAR estimation than the traditional single-country one.

ABSTRACT Long-lasting management is the goal of enterprises. In order to achieve long-lasting management while maintaining competitiveness, CEO has to possess clear operating policies. Utilize the limited resources on core businesses especially those plans which relative financial planning is involved in the operating policies. Essentially, the management achievements and crises of an enterprise reflect on its financial data. Under the tough environment, deliberate financial planning, control, and management are the main key factors in keeping competitiveness and long-lasting management. Management consultant applies different diagnosis methods and techniques to figure out the malpractices and weaknesses of business management. Optimistic approaches are adopted to propose concrete improvement plans. Meanwhile, assistance is provided in the implementation in order to improve enterprise constitution, enhance management effectiveness and thus achieve the expected goal. This research applied system dynamics as the tool to provide enterprise with ¡§Financial Policies Laboratory¡¨. Through dynamic stimulation process, the influence of enterprise profit in setting financial goal is examined. CEO is supplied with the valuable references such as financial forecast, financial analysis, and financial diagnosis to adjust management policies, management principles and implement programs with the use of limited enterprise resources. It is hoping that this symptomatic solution can help the enterprise to improve its constitution. With the research of sample stimulation, conclusions are found as below: (1) The data received from decision function and stimulation results are adopted to construct suitable financial statement. This is for the use of financial executive in ¡§Financial Policies Laboratory¡¨. Assistance is provided to pursue better financial policies in setting the enterprise goal. (2) The timing of statement output can be coordinated as enterprise required. Through the time interval function of internal system, the objective of financial planning is achieved. (3) In accordance with enterprise real condition, financial strategies are made for different situations. Assist the enterprise to modify financial activities in appropriate timing and capacity as to enhance enterprise management achievement, improve financial constitution, and achieve the final goal of long-lasting management and development. Key words: Financial forecast, Five Forces Analysis, financial diagnosis.

Thesis (M.S. - Hydrology and Water Resources)--University of Arizona. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-176).

This dissertation examines the forecast model selection problem in economics in both theoretical and empirical settings. The forecast model selection problem is that there often exists a menu of different suitable models to forecast the same economic variable of interest. The theoretical portion of this dissertation considers agents who face this problem in two distinct scenarios. The first scenario considers the case where agents possess a menu of different forecast techniques which includes rational expectations but where the selection of rational expectations is costly. The assumptions that are necessary to include rational expectations as a choice are characterized and the equilibrium dynamics of a model under the appropriate assumptions is studied and shown to exhibit chaotic dynamics. The second scenario considers agents who possess a menu of econometric forecast models and examines the equilibrium outcomes when agents combine the different forecasts using strategies suggested by the forecasting literature. The equilibrium outcomes under these forecasting assumptions are shown to exhibit time-varying volatility and endogenous structural breaks, which are common features of macroeconomic data. The empirical portion of the dissertation proposes a new dynamic combination strategy for the forecast model selection problem to forecast inflation. The procedure builds on recent research on inflation persistence in the U.S. and on explanations for the efficacy of simple combination strategies, often referred to as the forecast combination puzzle. The new combination strategy is shown to forecast well in real-time out-of-sample forecasting exercises.

The forecasting of Eskom transmission electrical network demands is a complex task. The lack of historical data on some of the network components complicates this task even further. In this dissertation a model is suggested which will address all the requirements of the transmission system expansion engineers in terms of future loads and market trends. Suggestions are made with respect to ways of overcoming the lack of historical data, especially on the point loads, which is a key factor in modelling the electrical networks. A brief overview of the transmission electrical network layout is included to provide a better understanding of what is required from such a forecast. Lastly, some theory on multiple regression, neural networks and qualitative forecasting techniques is included, which will be of value for further model developments. / Computing / M. Sc. (Operations Research)

nÃo hà / This work presents a scale-space based approach to assist dynamic resource provisioning. The application of this theory makes it possible to eliminate the presence of irrelevant information from a signal that can potentially induce wrong or late decision making. Dynamic provisioning involves increasing or decreasing the amount of resources allocated to an application in response to workload changes. While monitoring both resource consumption and application-specic metrics is fundamental in this process since the latter is of great importance to infer information about the former, dealing with these pieces of information to provision resources in dynamic environments poses a big challenge. The presence of unwanted characteristics, or noise, in a signal that represents the monitored metrics favors misleading interpretations and is known to aect forecast models. Even though some forecast models are robust to noise, reducing its inuence may decrease training time and increase eciency. Because a dynamic environment demands decision making and predictions on a quickly changing landscape, approximations are necessary. Thus it is important to realize how approximations give rise to limitations in the forecasting process. On the other hand, being aware of when detail is needed, and when it is not, is crucial to perform ecient dynamic forecastings. In a cloud environment, resource provisioning plays a key role for ensuring that providers adequately accomplish their obligation to customers while maximizing the utilization of the underlying infrastructure. Experiments are shown considering simulation of both reactive and proactive strategies scenarios with a real-world trace that corresponds to access rate. Results show that embodying scale-space theory in the decision making stage of dynamic provisioning strategies is very promising. It both improves workload analysis, making it more meaningful to our purposes, and lead to better predictions.

Sugere-se neste trabalho que o irrealismo constitui uma característica marcante da corrente dominante na ciência econômica que explica o desempenho decepcionante das atividades de previsão e explanação realizadas com base nesse paradigma. Após desenvolver o pouco claro conceito de irrealismo na ciência econômica, mostrando quando ele ocorre e quais são suas causas, busca-se relacionar sua presença com aquele desempenho decepcionante. Defende-se que ele pode ser explicado pela negligência da maior parte da corrente dominante em relação ao realismo de suas proposições, negligência traduzida na utilização amplamente difundida nas práticas dessa corrente de modelos irrealistas, que são aqueles que não buscam ou, se o fazem, não são bem-sucedidos em capturar uma parcela relevante da realidade. Sugere-se que o emprego de modelos irrealistas é geralmente - mas não sempre - o resultado da insistência do mainstream na ciência econômica em aderir à abordagem dedutivista em um mundo caracterizado pela não-ubiqüidade de regularidades estritas que ela invariavelmente pressupõe, e se manifesta tipicamente na aplicação generalizada em situações concretas de modelos econômicos fortemente abstratos cujos pressupostos implicam a operação de mecanismos que são inválidos nessas situações específicas. A explicação para esta tendência ao irrealismo do mainstream, por sua vez, se encontra no fato de que a grande maioria dos modelos elaborados a partir dessa perspectiva pressupõe a onipresença de estruturas de mercado competitivas a despeito de que em muitas - e mesmo na maioria das - situações reais elas estão claramente ausentes, o que decorre do viés ideológico que os economistas associados à corrente dominante possuem e que se caracteriza pela crença inequivoca nas insuperáveis virtudes do mecanismo de mercado e da propriedade privada como princípios orientadores centrais da organização da produção e mesmo da vida em sociedade. Essa crença se encontra na origem do liberalismo econômico tradicional e do neoliberalismo, e sua defesa obrigatoriamente requer que os mercados sejam, pelo menos em sua grande maioria, competitivos. Para satisfazer essa hipótese a ideologia neoliberal impõe à realidade a onipresença de estruturas de mercado competitivas, possíveis em abstrato mas geralmente ausentes em situações reais, o que faz com que os modelos construídos a partir da abordagem que a ela adere assim como a própria abordagem sejam freqüentemente irrealistas. / This work suggests that irrealism is a remarkable feature of mainstream in economics and explains the poor performance of both activities of prediction and explanation that heavily draw from this paradigm. After elaborating the unclear concept of irrealism in economics, showing when it occurs and what are its causes, I try to relate its presence to that poor performance. It\"s sustained that this performance can be explained by the negligence of most of mainstream practioners concerning the realism of their propositions, negligence that translates into the widely spread use of unrealistic models, those that do not try or, if they do, they don\"t succeed in capturing a relevant portion of the reality, in their practices. It\"s suggested that the use of such an unrealistic models is mostly - but not always - due to the insistence of mainstream economics in sticking to the deductivistic approach in a world where the strict regularities that it inevitably assumes are extremely scarce, and tipically shows itself in abstract models widely applied to concrete situations where their assumptions imply the operation of mechanisms that happen to be invalid in those specific situations. The account of that tendency to irrealism in mainstream economics should be looked for in the fact that the large majority of models they create assumes the ubiquity of competitive market structures despite in many real situations - probably in most of them - they are clearly absent, what is a result of the ideological bias that mainstream economists have, defined by the strong belief in the insurmountable virtues of the market mechanism and private property as general principles for the organization of production and even for life in society. This belief is found in the origin of traditional economical liberalism and of neoliberalism, and its defense inevitably requires markets to be, at least in their large majority, competitive. In order to satisfy that assumption neoliberal ideology imposes into reality the ubiquity of competitive market structures, possible as an abstraction but generally absent in real situations, what frequently making those models that heavily draw from this paradigm as well as the whole approach totally unrealistic.

Master of Science / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Anil Pahwa / Electricity generation capacity from different renewable sources has been significantly growing worldwide in recent years, specially wind power. Fast dispatch of wind power provides flexibility for spinning reserve. However, wind is intermittent in nature. Thus, stable grid operations and energy management are becoming more challenging with the increasing penetration of wind in power systems. Efficient forecast methods can help the scenario. Many wind forecast models have been developed over the years. Highly effective models with the combination of numerical weather prediction and statistical models also exist at present. This study intends to develop a model to forecast hourly wind speed using an artificial neural network (ANN) approach for effective and fast operation with minimum data. The procedure is outlined in this work and the performance of the ANN model is compared with the persistence forecast model.

Logistický řetězec farmaceutického průmyslu je čím dál tím více složitější a propojenější a tak je nezbytné pro většinu společností disponovat spolehlivým a bezpečným distribučním systémem. Pod rostoucím tlakem na snižování cen je pro každou společnost nutné řídit svůj dodavatelský řetězec tak, aby byla schopna dodávat na trh kvalitní produkty za příznivé a konkurenceschopné ceny. Jen takto je schopna obstát v tvrdé konkurenci.