This thesis focuses on private information dissemination and its impacts on financial markets. Specifically, we study issues arising when there are skilled individuals able to extract anticipative information about future prices. The first model considers a continuous time economy that is populated by informed and uninformed investors as well as active unskilled investors, and investigates the existence of noisy rational expectations equilibria and their properties. Equilibria are derived in closed form and their properties analyzed. Informed trading is found to reduce price volatility. The second model is based on the idea that besides exploiting their private information for trading purposes, informed agents might want to offer wealth management services to uninformed investors in exchange for a fee. A market for active funds emerges, and the process of anticipative information dissemination is endogenized. In this chapter, heterogenous risk averse investors can invest in the active fund. Low risk tolerance investors are found to be strictly better off with the active fund. Fund size is not a reliable indicator of managerial skill. The market reacts to the manager's increasing risk-taking behavior by reducing the volatility and risk premium.

The view of the author presented in this dissertation is that the integration of modern railway technologies and information technology systems establishes effective maintenance management and ensures continuous asset management improvement. In conjunction with the integration of different technologies is the requirement to implement these technologies and strategies in a systematic process according to a prioritised order of value adding, to improve the required service objectives (Mitchell et al., 2007; Woodhouse, 2001). The dissertation describes the planning of maintenance activities on railway assets. It involves various aspects through the asset management life cycle from asset inventory and condition data acquisitioning methods and the utilization of maintenance history to assist in the work identification, planning and work execution of maintenance activities. The challenge in the railways includes a large geographic area resulting in challenges to minimize maintenance visits and resulting costs. It further provides details on the integration and efficient utilisation of information and presents the value it adds to ensure maintenance effectiveness. The study focuses on methods for data collection and a systematic process for decision-making analysis with the ultimate aim of producing an effective maintenance plan (specifically for mechanised tamping) based on all available infrastructure management data including operational requirements. Lastly the effect of condition-based maintenance is illustrated, demonstrating that this strategy increases maintenance effectiveness (doing the right things), resulting in a decrease in maintenance cost and an increase in capacity. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Civil Engineering / unrestricted

No description available.

No description available.

The recent decades have seen many periods of economic uncertainty. During uncertain periods characterized by inflation where the real value of assets tends to depreciate, investors usually look for assets that can reduce the risk for their overall portfolio. This study aims to investigate whether copper can act as a hedge against the U.S. inflation. This purpose will be investigated through an econometric analysis (OLS) where time series data over the timespan 1990-2023 are analyzed. The result suggests and argues that copper should be considered a hedge against inflation in the U.S. However, the results from the analysis must be viewed with caution, due to the fact that multicollinearity exists in the model and that an OLS regression gives a simplified picture of a complex topic.

No description available.

Under the background that China's economy has entered the new normal, de-leveraging, structural adjustment, and resolution of various risks have become an essential part of macro-control. The unique advantages of PPP asset securitization make this tool widely recognized and respected by the government, enterprises, and investors. On December 21st, 2016, the National Development and Reform Commission and the China Securities Regulatory Commission jointly issued the Notice on Promoting the Asset Securitization of Government and Social Capital Cooperation (PPP) Projects in the Field of Traditional Infrastructure. This prompted the PPP asset securitization process to enter the express train. Therefore, it is particularly important to strengthen the research on the securitization of PPP assets.The author mainly uses the literature review method and a comparative analysis method to study the securitization of PPP assets. This paper first carries out theoretical research on PPP asset securitization, and then studies cash flow analysis theory, asset reorganization theory, risk isolation theory, and credit enhancement of PPP asset securitization; and then participates in the subject, operation model of PPP asset securitization, The operating mechanism is studied; the related cases are used to analyze the cases, and then the research conclusions are drawn, and policy recommendations are proposed. It was found that PPP asset securitization can improve the creditworthiness of the issuer and reduce the issuance cost. Further suggestions include strengthening cash flow management for PPP asset securitization projects; encouraging enterprises to restructure assets through PPP asset securitization; strengthening risk control of PPP asset securitization projects; strengthening statutory construction; Change government functions. / Bakom bakgrunden att Kinas ekonomi har gått in på den nya normala, de-hävstången, strukturanpassningen och upplösningen av olika risker har blivit en viktig del av makrokontrollen. De unika fördelarna med värdepapperisering av värdepapperstillgångar gör det här verktyget allmänt erkänt och respekterat av regeringen, företagen och investerarna. Den 21 december 2016 utfärdade National Development and Reform Commission och China Securities Regulatory Commission gemensamt meddelandet om att främja värdepapperisering av projekt för offentliga och sociala kapital (PPP) inom området för traditionell infrastruktur. Detta ledde till att värdepapperiseringsprocessen för PPP-tillgången skulle komma in i expresståget. Därför är det särskilt viktigt att stärka forskningen om värdepapperisering av PPP-tillgångar.Författaren använder huvudsakligen litteraturgranskningsmetoden och en jämförande analysmetod för att studera värdepapperisering av PPP-tillgångar. I detta papper utförs teoretisk forskning om värdepapperisering av PPP-tillgångar, och sedan studeras analysen av kassaflödesanalys, tillgångsreorganisationsteori, riskisoleringsteori och kreditförbättring av värdepapperisering av PPP-tillgångar. och sedan delta i ämnet, operation modell av PPP tillgång värdepapperisering, Operativ mekanismen studeras; De relaterade fallen används för att analysera fallen, och sedan slås forskningsundersökningarna och politiska rekommendationer föreslås. Det konstaterades att värdepapperisering av värdepapper för värdepapper kan förbättra emittentens kreditvärdighet och minska emissionskostnaden. Ytterligare förslag inkluderar att stärka kassaflödeshanteringen för PPP-värdepapperiseringsprojekt. uppmuntra företag att omstrukturera tillgångar genom PPP-tillgångs värdepapperisering stärka riskkontrollen av PPP-värdepapperiseringsprojekt stärka lagstadgad konstruktion Ändra regeringsfunktioner.

No description available.

The asset management industry constitutes a vital part of the economy thanks to its financing role. The sector has profoundly changed since its establishment and, nowadays, changes in organization, investors’ behaviour and regulatory framework are deeply reshaping the industry. In this context, also the Italian market, which has traditionally been characterised by some distinguishing features, is being influenced by a series of modifications at both European and national level. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the Italian Asset Management industry’s structure and organisation, understand how it is evolving and grasp the factors that can affect its market to then draw implications influencing the business and operations of an asset servicer. This work divides the Italian Asset Management market into two parts, the Asset Managers segment, including collective management and discretionary mandates, and the Pension Schemes segment. These two composing parts are analysed from an Asset Servicer’s perspective, presenting data over the financial instruments they contain. The paper follows the Case Study approach employing mainly secondary quantitative data. In Italy, the distribution of Asset Management products as well as trading activities remain based on banking networks. In recent years, among collective management products, foreign-law mutual funds are the ones that grew the most. This, along with the fact that the asset servicers’ market is dominate by few specialized players operating on a global scale, puts the spotlight on asset servicers’ cross-border level of integration. Even tough discretionary mandates are struggling to recover and have grown at a slower pace, due to “MiFID II” upcoming rules, financial intermediaries will be encouraged to place these products on the market. Lastly, the Italian pension system is underdeveloped if compared to other European countries and few players own the majority of the complementary pension schemes market. The paper highlights how technology innovations, policies of the ruling governments, interest rates levels and national and communitarian regulation are the factors driving the asset management industry.

This paper has four chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction. The second chapter studies the transaction fees in the bitcoin system. The transaction fees and transaction volume in the bitcoin system increase whenever the network is congested and results from a simple VAR show that it is indeed the case. To account for the empirical findings, we build a model where users and miners together determine the transaction fee and transaction volume endogenously. Even though the fluctuating transaction fee mechanism in bitcoin introduces the extra cost of uncertainty to users, a back-of-envelope calculation shows that the cost of using the bitcoin network for transactions is still smaller than the cost of using the current conventional payment system with a fix transaction fee rate. The second chapter studies the time-varying price dispersion among different bitcoin exchanges. We identify the sources of price dispersion using a standard time-varying vector autoregression model with stochastic volatility. The results show that shocks to transaction fees and bitcoin price growth explain on average 20%, and sometimes more than 60%, of the variation of price dispersion. The third chapter studies the relationship between connections and returns in the bitcoin investor network. Using transaction data from the bitcoin blockchain, we reach three conclusions. First, on average, the annualized returns of connected addresses in the network are 20.75% above those of their unconnected peers. Second, returns also differ among those connected addresses. By dividing the connected ad- dresses into ten deciles based on their centrality, we find that addresses in the two most-connected deciles earn higher returns than the other connected addresses. Third, eigenvector centrality is more related than degree centrality to higher returns, implying that quality of connections matters. / Doctor of Philosophy / This paper has four chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction. The second chapter studies the transaction fees in the bitcoin system. The transaction fees in the bitcoin system can fluctuate given the amount of unconfirmed transactions in the bitcoin network. Our results show that the transaction fees and transaction volume in the bitcoin system increase whenever the network is congested. To account for this findings, we build a model and show that users and miners together can determine the transaction fee and transaction volume. Even though the fluctuating transaction fee mechanism in bitcoin introduces the extra cost of uncertainty to users, a back-of- envelope calculation shows that the cost of using the bitcoin network for transactions is still smaller than the cost of using the current conventional payment system with a fix transaction fee rate. The second chapter studies the price dispersion among different bitcoin exchanges. Our results show that transaction fees and bitcoin price growth can be important explanatory factors for the price dispersion among different bitcoin exchanges. The third chapter studies the relationship between connections and returns in the bitcoin investor network. Using transaction data from the bitcoin blockchain, we reach three conclusions. First, on average, those connected addresses in the network earn higher returns than their unconnected peers. Second, returns also differ among those connected addresses. By dividing the connected addresses into ten groups based on their centrality, we find that addresses in the two most-connected groups earn higher returns than the other connected addresses. Third, eigenvector centrality, which measures the quality of connections, is more related than degree centrality, which measures the quantity of connections, to higher returns, implying that quality of connections matters.