The objective of this thesis was to better understand the patterns of IV-pump use throughout the hospital in order to provide guidance to the hospital on alternative pump management methods. In the current system, when the number of available pumps in a department was fewer than the number of pumps required for patient care, the department encountered shortage. In most cases, the personnel were not clear on where available pumps might be stored and had to search for free pumps throughout the hospital. <br /><br /> The system was thoroughly studied and the necessary data were collected. A model reflecting the current flow of patients and pumps was developed. This model was operationalized by constructing a simulation model. The model presented the flow through the hospital on a daily basis. <br /><br /> The output of the simulation model provided the daily number of pumps in use in each of the departments and the distribution of pump use for each department, separately, and overall. Using these distributions, the number of pumps required in each department if maintaining a supply of pumps was quantified to meet certain service levels. In addition, the number of pumps required in the system if the pumps were all shared, was also obtained. It was concluded that the actual number of pumps required in the system is fewer than the number of pumps existing in the hospital. This conclusion confirmed that long searches for free pumps were not due to insufficient quantity of pumps, but were solely due to the behaviour of hoarding extra pumps when available. The simulation also provided the number of pumps short per day and the number of pumps in excess per day, by department. <br /><br /> Two pump management alternatives were suggested to the hospital. The first alternative was to utilize a centralized pool to keep all shared pumps when not in use. The second alternative was to install RFID technology throughout the hospital and equip all pumps with RFID tags so that they could be easily located. The three pump management systems (current, central pooling, and RFID) were compared, and the advantages and disadvantages of each of the alternative techniques were discussed.

The objective of this thesis was to better understand the patterns of IV-pump use throughout the hospital in order to provide guidance to the hospital on alternative pump management methods. In the current system, when the number of available pumps in a department was fewer than the number of pumps required for patient care, the department encountered shortage. In most cases, the personnel were not clear on where available pumps might be stored and had to search for free pumps throughout the hospital. <br /><br /> The system was thoroughly studied and the necessary data were collected. A model reflecting the current flow of patients and pumps was developed. This model was operationalized by constructing a simulation model. The model presented the flow through the hospital on a daily basis. <br /><br /> The output of the simulation model provided the daily number of pumps in use in each of the departments and the distribution of pump use for each department, separately, and overall. Using these distributions, the number of pumps required in each department if maintaining a supply of pumps was quantified to meet certain service levels. In addition, the number of pumps required in the system if the pumps were all shared, was also obtained. It was concluded that the actual number of pumps required in the system is fewer than the number of pumps existing in the hospital. This conclusion confirmed that long searches for free pumps were not due to insufficient quantity of pumps, but were solely due to the behaviour of hoarding extra pumps when available. The simulation also provided the number of pumps short per day and the number of pumps in excess per day, by department. <br /><br /> Two pump management alternatives were suggested to the hospital. The first alternative was to utilize a centralized pool to keep all shared pumps when not in use. The second alternative was to install RFID technology throughout the hospital and equip all pumps with RFID tags so that they could be easily located. The three pump management systems (current, central pooling, and RFID) were compared, and the advantages and disadvantages of each of the alternative techniques were discussed.

This Record of Study presents the development of infrastructure asset management software solutions for municipalities in South Africa. The study was performed within a multidisciplinary engineering consulting company in South Africa with an interest in expanding its infrastructure asset management consultancy services in the local government market. South Africa faces a large backlog in the delivery of basic services to communities; existing infrastructure is showing signs of advanced aging; and municipalities are inadequately staffed to effectively provide services with limited funding. The company identified the opportunity to support South African municipalities with the delivery of sustainable infrastructure services through the implementation of infrastructure asset management best practice. The provision of these services required the development of infrastructure asset management software that satisfies the needs of municipalities. Infrastructure asset management practice around the world and in the context of municipalities in South Africa was reviewed to gain an understanding of the specific requirements of the asset management software solution. The software functionality was conceptualized and the technical requirements were identified to aid development. Finally, a business plan was prepared to assess the commercial viability of the software and to guide its introduction into the market.

In this dissertation I explain the relationship among inflation volatility, rational bubbles, and asset prices. In addition, I investigate the transmission of asset prices and volatility among countries. In the second chapter, which deals with the relationship between inflation volatility and asset prices, my empirical analysis shows that real stock returns tend to co-vary negatively with expected inflation during periods of stable inflation, but co-vary positively with expected inflation during periods of volatile inflation for 16 countries. To investigate the relationship between rational bubbles and asset prices in the third chapter, I formulate an information error model which allows one to derive the measure of non-fundamentals in stock prices in a straightforward manner. This study provides a new method by specifying rational bubble measures that follow the Weibull distribution. As a result, my empirical analysis is the first step in applying survival analysis to bubbles, and it reveals preliminary evidence that there is the increasing bursting rate at a decreasing rate for extraneous or instrinsic bubbles in the U.S. stock market. In the fourth chapter, which deals with the transmission of asset prices and volatility, I investigate how the 1997 crisis has changed the Korean market by focusing on price and volatility spillovers from the U.S., Chinese, and Japanese markets. I have used daily stock prices from January 3, 1995 to July 31, 2007 and employed an EGARCH model. New information on stock prices originated in the U.S. market was more transmitted to the Korean market for all periods. The price spillover effect from the Japanese market to the Korean market became stronger from the crisis period. The influence of U.S. and Japanese innovations on market volatility increased after the crisis period. However, the magnitude of spillover effects from the Chinese market to the Korean market remained small and stable between the prior- and post-crisis periods and the volatility spillover effect remained stable for all periods. Asymmetry in the spillover effects on market volatility was pronounced in the Korean market after the financial crisis.

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This dissertation provides evidence on the risk factors that are priced in bank equities. Alternative empirical models with precedent in the nonfinancial asset pricing literature are tested, including the single-factor Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), three-factor Fama-French model, and Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM). The empirical results indicate that an unconditional two-factor Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) model, that includes the stock market excess return and shocks to the slope of the yield curve, is useful in explaining the cross-section of bank stock returns. I find no evidence, however, that firm specific factors, such as size and book-to-market ratios, are priced in bank stock returns. These results have a number of practical implications for event studies of banking firms, estimation of bank cost of capital and investment performance, as well as regulatory initiatives to utilize market discipline to evaluate bank risk under Basel II.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Transportation infrastructure, a vital component to sustain economic prosperity, represents the largest public-owned infrastructure asset in the U.S. With over a trillion invested dollars invested into long-lived physical assets such as roads and bridges, transportation agencies are tasked with maintenance and rehabilitation efforts to ensure that the access to transportation facilities is readily available and that the infrastructure is properly preserved. The management of these assets and the determination of their value, however, have been at the forefront of discussions in many state agencies and local governments. As a consequence, asset valuation has become a key component in asset management because it links the performance of infrastructure and deterioration process with the value of the infrastructure and its depreciation, providing critical information for decision makers at various levels to make more informed decisions. A utility-based methodological framework for the valuation of transportation infrastructure is presented along with a case study to demonstrate its applicability. A general framework is presented with emphasis on the valuation of pavement infrastructure. The results from the framework is then compared to existing valuation methods in addition to a series of sensitivity analysis on the variation of performance measures and their effect on the value of an asset. The development of this valuation approach serves as a starting point for assessing, in addition to the physical condition of an asset, the operational measures that can often make an asset less useful to its customers and managing agency. Utility theory can be utilized to combine the effect of performance indicators of varying measures and scales on the value of an asset. The proposed framework can assist state and local transportation agencies in the optimization of resource allocation procedures for better coordination of asset investments, facilitating benefit-cost analyses to quantify the impact of infrastructure investments. This tool allows agencies to detect deficiencies if any, in the management of its assets, providing a feedback mechanism that can foster an introspective review of its current management practices that may need further refinement or possibly elimination. / text

published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Insurance companies offer business and individuals the possibility to reduce the financial impact of a risk occurring by transferring it away from themselves onto someone. For taking on risk on behalf of someone else the insurance company requires a premium from the policyholder which is pooled and invested in order to meet future obligations towards the policyholder. However, the importance of the European insurance industry goes beyond economic protection of the policyholder as the industry with its EUR8.4 trillion or 58 percent of EU GDP in assets is the largest institutional investor in Europe. As the financial system has undergone dramatic transformation over time, so have the role and function of intermediaries changed. While traditional tasks like reducing transaction costs and asymmetric information became less relevant, facilitating of risk transfer and dealing with the increasing breadth and depth of financial markets are gaining more and more importance. While insurers have been able to hold illiquid asset to a larger extent arguments from the industry are made that the planned introduction of Solvency II will limit insurers and overlook their investment abilities, which is something that can affect the region’s economic development. The above mention aspect combined with the limited research that has been conducted on insurers’ asset allocation and the performance of it resulted in the following research question: Does asset allocation impact insurance company's performance? The question focuses on insurers within the European Union (EU) which is enlarged by the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland, where performance is measured as the return on investment (ROI). To answer the research question in the best possible way, relevant theories such as Modern Portfolio Theory or Efficient Market Hypothesis are presented and discussed as well as previous research on asset allocation. Earlier studies about asset allocation policy and its power to explain the investment return came to different conclusions which can be due to variation in the interpretation of the findings or difficulties by distinguishing between asset allocation policy and active asset allocation. Census is used to investigate in the topic as the population of listed insurance companies within the selected region was rather small which finally came down to 42 firms due to the timeframe of 11 years. Data regarding insurer’s asset class weights in debt securities, equity, real estate, derivatives, cash and equivalent, loans and receivables and the category of others were collected. The return on investment was also collected for each year of the time period and for each insurance company. Benchmarks were constructed in order to replicate what the return of a passive investment of the same proportion would have yielded. The result was inconclusive as it was not possible to determine if asset allocation policy or active management have the greatest impact on the return on investment. This is contradicting previous research of asset allocation and performance as researchers have found that asset allocation policy explains most or all of the return.