Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references.

The paper sheds some light on the education returns in Germany in the post war period. After describing higher education in Germany the current stand of higher education financing within the single states is presented. In six states tuition fees will be introduced in 2007/08 and discussions are going on in even some more. In the second part of the paper an empirical analysis is done using longitudinal data from the German social pension system. The analysis over the whole lifecycle renders results which proof that the higher education advantages are quite remarkable and might be a justification for more intensified financing by tuition fees. But all this has to be embedded into an encompassing strategy of tax and social policy, especially to prevent a strengthened process of social selection, which would be counterproductive for an increased and highly qualified human capital in Germany.

This dissertation consists of six separate papers dealing with the valuation of financial guarantees and risky debt contract. Each of these papers is independent and distinct. The main theme is the valuation of securities by contingent claims analysis (CCA). Paper 1: Valuation of Financial Guarantees – A Presentation and a Critique.One purpose of this paper is to derive a pricing formula for a deposit guarantee, when the assets of the bank exhibit downward jumps due to extraordinary loan defaults. In this respect, we use the framework of Merton (1976), where a stock option is priced under the assumption of a jump-diffusion process for the underlying stock. Paper 2: Valuation of Deposit Insurance – An Alternative Approach.This paper extends paper 1 in the respect that the guarantor, in this case a deposit insurance agency, will nullify the guarantee contract and liquidate the bank when it gets insolvent. The liquidation is assumed to involve some costs like legal and realization costs. In fact, since the guarantee contract will never get in-the-money, the guarantee will receive value only from these liquidation costs. Paper 3: Financial Guarantees and Asymmetric Information.In this paper, we make the assumption that the guarantor cannot observe the solvency process, unless it carries out audits. This is different from the normal perfect information assumption for this kind of analysis. Since audits are often costly, and this burdens the guarantee value, the guarantor will search for an audit strategy, which minimizes the guarantee value. Paper 4: Valuation of Barrier Contracts – A Simplified Approach.Many types of financial contracts can be classified as "barrier contracts". This description comes from their feature of allowing either contractual part to take some kind of action during the lifetime of the contract contingent on some pre-specified event. In this sense, the deposit insurance contract in analysed in paper 2 can be regarded as a barrier contract. The previous valuation models of barrier contracts are often considerably advanced and have tended to obscure the underlying economics. It is the path-dependence and stopping-time features that primarily make the derivation of these pricing formulas complicated. Our model simplifies this procedure by deriving the important "first passage time" distribution from a binomial model instead of using the reflection principle. Paper 5: Valuation of Risky Debt in the Presence of Jumps, Safety Barriers and Collaterals.This paper deals with different aspects of risky debt valuation with the CCA approach. The term. "risky", refers to the probability of default on the promised payment by the borrower. Paper 6: Portfolio Selection and the Pricing of Personal Loan Contracts.The CCA literature that follows Black and Scholes (1973), has mainly taken the underlying asset dynamics for given. Although it may be appropriate for stock options, we consider this assumption too simplifying with regards to personal loan contracts. It is obvious that the borrower’s consumption-investment decision affects his wealth process, on which the loan contract is contingent. Moreover, we believe that individuals actually have preferences to repay loans for different reasons such as the existence of reputational costs or legal penalties that affect the borrower in case of loan default. / Diss. av båda förf.  Stockholm : Handelshögskolan

The thesis builds a model for pricing the liabilities of a firm. The liabilities - stocks, loans, bonds - fundamentally all depend on the value of the firm's assets. By looking at balance sheet data, such as the nominal amount of debt outstanding, and market prices, such as time series of stock prices, the value and volatility of the assets can be estimated. Finally, e.g. bank loans to the same firm can be priced in terms of these values. Thus, the purpose of the whole exercise is to use the information content in stock prices to infer the value of loans. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

Tidigare forskning har funnit samband mellan självkänsla och olika hälsotillstånd. Forskning har även påvisat att personer med låg självkänsla förklarar misslyckanden med hjälp av inre faktorer till skillnad från personer med hög självkänsla. Detta kan påverka graden av välbefinnande. Syfet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka hur bassjälvkänsla, kompetensbaserad självkänsla samt attributionsstil predicerar subjektivt välbefinnande. En kvantitativ enkätstudie genomfördes på 132 gymnasieungdomar. Resultatet visade att bassjälvkänsla och kompetensbaserad självkänsla korrelerade, positivt respektive negativt med subjektivt välbefinnande. Vidare visade resultatet att bassjälvkänsla var starkast prediktor för subjektivt välbefinnande men även kompetensbaserad självkänsla var av signifikans. Det fanns inget signifikant samband mellan vilken attributionsstil deltagarna uppvisade samt uppmätt subjektivt välbefinnande. Den föreliggande studien påvisade vikten av en god bassjälvkänsla.

This volume consists of four papers, which in principle could be read in any order. The common denominator is that they deal with contingent claims models of a firm's securities or related derivatives. A Framework for Valuing Corporate Securities Early applications of contingent claims analysis to the pricing of corporate liabilities tend to restrict themselves to situations where debt is perpetual or where financial distress can only occur at debt maturity. This paper relaxes these restrictions and provides an exposition of how most corporate liabilities can be valued as packages of two fundamental barrier contingent claims: a down-and-out call and a binary option. Furthermore, it is shown how the comparative statics of the resulting pricing formulae can be derived.A New Compound Option Pricing ModelThis paper extends the Geske (1979) compound option pricing model to the case where the security on which the option is written is a down-and-out call as opposed to a standard Black and Scholes call. Furthermore, we develop a general and flexible framework for valuing options on more complex packages of contingent claims - any claim that can be valued using the ideas in chapter 1. This allows us to study the interaction between the detailed characteristics of a firm's capital structure and the prices of for example stock options.Implementing Firm Value Based ModelsThis paper evaluates an implementation procedure for contingent claims models suggested by Duan (1994). Duan's idea is to use time series data of traded securities such as shares of common stock in order to estimate the dynamics of the firm's asset value. Furthermore, we provide an argument which allows us to relax the (common) assumption that the firm's assets may be continuously traded. It is sufficient to assume that the firm's assets are traded at one particular point in time.Asset Substitution, Debt Pricing, Optimal Leverage and MaturityChapters 1-3 have focused on the problem of pricing corporate securities.They have thus abstracted strategic aspects of corporate finance theory. This paper is an attempt to combine the contingent claims literature with the non-dynamic corporate finance literature. I allow the management of the firm to alter its investment policy strategically. This yields a model which allows us to examine the relationship between bond prices, agency costs, optimal leverage and maturity. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

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Contingent Claim Pricing with Applications to Financial Risk Management By Hua Chen 2008 Committee Chair: Samuel H. Cox and Shaun Wang Major Academic Unit: Department of Risk Management and Insurance This is a multi-essay dissertation designed to explore the contingent claim pricing theory with non-tradable underlying assets, with emphasis on its applications to insurance and risk management. In the first essay, I apply the real option pricing theory and dynamic programming methods to address problems in the area of operational risk management. Particularly, I develop a two-stage model to help firms determine optimal switching triggers in the event of an influenza epidemic. In the second essay, I examine mortality securitization in an incomplete market framework. I build a jump-diffusion process into the original Lee-Carter model and explore alternative model with transitory versus permanent jump effects. I discuss pricing difficulties of the Swiss Re mortality bond (2003) and use the Wang transform to account for correlations of the mortality index over time. In the third essay, I study the valuation of the non-recourse provision in reverse mortgages. I model the various risks embedded in the HECM program and apply the conditional Esscher transform to price the non-recourse provision. I further examine the premium structure of HECM loans and investigate whether insurance premiums are adequate to cover expected claims.

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In these years, more and more organizations adopt ¡§pay for performance programs¡¨ to encourage employees to increase their performance in order to survive from the intensively industrial competition. For the organizations which value the sales performance as nuclear operating target, pay for performance programs seem to work out fairly. However, organizations still need to figure out if the pecuniary compensation really relate to employees¡¦ performance and if the pecuniary compensation really encourage employees for better performance which are also the main discussions for this research. The characteristics of real estate industrial is that the realtors¡¦ performance directly relate to the continuity of the organization. Therefore, this research conducts realtors to discuss the connection between performance contingent compensation and sales personnel performance. This research also discusses if performance contingent compensation would indirectly affect sales personnel performance by working motivation. At the same time, it discuesses how the performance contingent compensation affects sales personnel performance accroding to the differentiation of their personal reward orientation and sales control system in the organizations. This research is conducted through opinion survey to realtors in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung City. Within the total number of 500 copies of questionnaires, 425 copies are retrieved, and 346 copies are valid. With statistics analysis, the findings of the research are summarized as follows: 1.Performance contingent compensation has positive impact on behavioral performance. 2.Performance contingent compensation has positive impact on outcome performance. 3.Performance contingent compensation has positive impact on task enjoyment and compensation seeking from the aspect of working motivation, but it has unapparent impact on challenge seeking and recognition seeking. 4.Behavioral performance has positive impact on challenge seeking, task enjoyment, and compensation seeking from the aspect of working motivation, but it has unapparent impact on recognition seeking. 5.Outcome performance has positive impact on challenge seeking, task enjoyment, compensation seeking, and recognition seeking from the aspect of working motivation. 6.Working motivation mediates the relationship between performance contingent compensation and sales personnel performance. a. Working motivation mediates the relationship between performance contingent compensation and sales personnel behavioral performance. b. Working motivation mediates the relationship between performance contingent compensation and sales personnel outcome performance. 7.Reward oriented has unapparent interference effect on performance contingent compensation and behavioral performance. a. Intrinsic reward oriented has unapparent interference effect on performance contingent and behavioral performance. b. Extrinsic reward oriented has unapparent interference effect on performance contingent and behavioral performance. 8.Reward oriented has unapparent interference effect on performance contingent compensation and outcome performance. a. Intrinsic reward oriented has unapparent interference effect on performance contingent and outcome performance. b. Extrinsic reward oriented has unapparent interference effect on performance contingent and outcome performance. 9.Sales control system has interference effect on performance contingent compensation and behavioral performance. a. Activity control has negative interference effect on performance contingent and behavioral performance. b. Capability control has negative interference effect on performance contingent and behavioral performance. 10.Sales control system has interference effect on performance contingent compensation and outcome performance. a. Activity control has unapparent interference effect on performance contingent and outcome performance. b. Capability control has negative interference effect on performance contingent and outcome performance.