The foundation STUNS is investigating a possible move of the Origo office with tenants to a new office space. The Origo office today has a low utilization rate which makes it interesting to investigate the possibility of having an office space based on the ratio of occupancy. The purpose of this study is to calculate a ratio of occupancy with the corresponding risk of overcrowding and estimate the energy reduction. When adapting the new office space to the optimal ratio of occupancy, three office design proposals will be created. With the chosen optimal ratio of occupancy at 68 percent, the risk of overcrowding spanned between 0.3 to 0.6 percent. All proposals based on the optimal ratio of occupancy lead to electricity and cost reductions. An open office design leads to an electricity reduction of 686 kWh and a cost reduction of 168 kSEK per month. An activity based workplace leads to an electricity reduction of 540 kWh and a cost reduction of 132 kSEK per month. An individual office design leads to an electricity reduction of 452 kWh and a cost reduction of 111 kSEK per month. A sensitivity analysis is made by altering input parameters. The analyzed parameters are the unique attending employees, the transition probabilities and the choice of risk of overcrowding. For optimal utilization an open office space is the best alternative because it requires least square meters based on the same ratio of occupancy and workspaces. But when considering more aspects about work habits, employees’ opinions and behaviour the optimal office design may need a different structure.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Zürich. / Includes bibliographical references.

Nowadays, there is a debate about the possibility that sin stocks bring higher returns than other ones to the investors. This thesis is a case study on a mutual fund: The Vice Fund. This US fund has a specific investment strategy: it invests in sin stocks. We compared this mutual fund to The Timothy Fund because they have similar characteristics such as – date of inception, total assets, home country and investment universe, expect the investment strategy. Indeed, The Vice Fund invests in sin stocks and The Timothy Fund does not. Two benchmarks are also used in the study: the S&P 500 Index as a domestic benchmark and the MSCI World Index as an international benchmark. This thesis is a case study using a deductive approach on a quantitative ground. The study is done on ten years long from 2003 to 2012. We divided the entire period into three different sub-periods depending of the S&P 500 Index trend. The first and the last sub-periods are bullish and the second one is bearish. In order to analyse both the financial performances and the risks of The Vice Fund we use several tools. We calculated returns and risk-adjusted ratios: the Treynor’s ratio, the Sharpe’s ratio and the Jensen’s ratio. Because these ratios are less accurate in bearish markets, we calculated the normalized Sharpe ratio by doing linear regressions and we also calculated the modified Sharpe ratio. In order to perform these calculations, we used DataStream as a database to obtain prices and dividends for the two mutual funds and the prices for the two benchmarks. We got also the one-month T-bill to have a risk-free rate. We found that The Vice Fund had a better average returns performance whatever the market conditions over the period studied. However the difference between weekly results with The Timothy Plan Fund and the benchmarks is not statistically significant. The risk- adjusted ratios confirmed the superiority of the risk-adjusted financial performance of the sin fund.

Abstract With the liberalization and globalization, the scope for banks is much more sophisticated in decade. Accompanied with Asian Financial Crisis, the Non-Performing Loan (NPL) ratio of domestic financial institutions has increased significantly. Consequently, this research adopts 2SLS to estimate simultaneous equations and examines the impact of risk-based capital regulation on NPL ratio and operating performance. The empirical results are summarily as following: 1. There exists a negative relationship between capital adequacy ratio and NPL ratio, which means that the higher the capital adequacy ratio is, the lower the NPL loan will be. Therefore, adopting the capital regulation will be helpful to improve the balance-sheet structure. 2. With the change of capital adequacy ratio, ROE moves in the same direction; that is, there is a positive relationship between capital adequacy ratio and ROE. Usually, the high-profit companies have more cash flow to support the capital requirement. 3. Examining the effectiveness of ¡§First-Stage Financial Reform Policy¡¨, we find that only 12% and 26% of the banks are not qualified for capital adequacy ratio and NPL ratio, respectively.. Thus, the ¡§First-Stage Financial Reform Policy¡¨ has achieved the preliminary goal. 4. We adopt t-test to distinguish whether the difference between actual and standard figures is significantly large for those disqualified banks. It shows that the main factor might be because of the essential problem of bad asset-debt structure, and not the lack of time to adapt themselves to the new regulation.

No description available.

No description available.

En el presente artículo le explicamos al lector, la manera del calculo e interpretación de los principales ratios de liquidez, utilizados en el diagnóstico de la situación financiera de una empresa, a fin de brindarles una herramienta para administrar exitosamente los recursos de esta.

Sex ratio theory makes predictions about how sexually reproducing organisms should allocate their reproductive efforts towards sons and daughters. Fisher predicted that the optimal strategy is one of equal investment (i.e. the 50:50 sex ratio). Subsequent analysis has shown that Fisher's equilibrium sex ratio is contingent on a number of assumptions such as autosomal inheritance of sex ratio alleles, large population size, additive offspring costs, etc. When any of these assumptions are violated the equilibrium sex ratio is not necessarily the one predicted by Fisher. To test sex ratio theory requires systems that exhibit variation for the primary sex ratio. The harpacticoid copepod, Tigriopus californicus is one such system. I have repeatedly detected a large, extra-binomial variance component in the primary sex ratio among full sib families in several natural populations on Vancouver Island. Environmental factors such as temperature and larval density have a mild effect on the primary sex ratio but are not likely to drive sex ratio variation at the population level. Cytoplasmic sex ratio distorters such as Wolbachia are known to cause sex ratio fluctuations in the populations of other crustaceans but were not detected in T. californicus. In the absence of sex-biased mortality, lineage analysis revealed that the sex ratio trait in a local population of T. calijornicus was paternally transmitted. Uniparentally transmitted sex ratio factors are generally under strong selection to increase the proportion of the transmitting sex in their host population. This observation may provide an explanation as to why the population-wide primary sex ratio in T. californicus and other harpacticoid copepods is often male-biased.

A Thesis submitted to The University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine. / Importance: This study proposed a new radiographic measure of obesity that is a better predictive indicator of obesity‐related risk: Fat/Bone Ratio. Primary Objective: Does the Fat/Bone Ratio correlate with obesity. Secondary Objective: Does the Fat/Bone Ratio correlate more closely with the comorbidities of obesity as compared to BMI. Design: Retrospective review of 2703 upright posterior‐anterior (PA) and lateral chest radiographs obtained from June 2013 through May 2014. The soft tissue height overlying the acromioclavicular joint was calculated and divided by the mid‐clavicle width to determine the Fat/Bone Ratio. Comorbidities of obesity were determined through chart review. Setting: Adult community emergency department. Participants: All adults (age greater than 18). Main Outcomes and Measures: BMI, Fat/Bone Ratio, comorbidities: hypertension, obstructive sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, hyperlipidemia, atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular accident, and myocardial infarction. Results: Fat‐to‐Bone ratio and BMI were both significantly associated with hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, obstructive sleep apnea, and osteoarthritis (P < .05). However, only Fat/Bone Ratio is associated with atherosclerosis (p = 0.02), coronary artery disease (p = 0.001), myocardial infarction (p = 0.002), and peripheral vascular disease (p = 0.01); BMI is not associated with these comorbidities (p = 0.90, 0.42, 0.25, and 0.50, respectively). Conclusions and Relevance: Findings suggest that Fat/Bone Ratio is an improved measure of obesity as compared to BMI.

This thesis focuses on the comparison of financial performance of the Czech voluntary private pension scheme with five other reformed private pension schemes in the region of Central Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Slovak Republic). The current state and the recent development of the Czech private pension scheme are analyzed in the first part of the thesis. In the main part of this work we construct the dataset of periodic scheme returns covering the last decade, and estimate the schemes Sharpe ratios (SR) for four reference benchmarks. To complement the analysis we also employ the Sharpe style analysis to evaluate the impact of managerial decisions of market selection/timing on the scheme returns. The findings suggest that except for Poland none of the schemes managed to beat its long-term domestic benchmark (10-year government bonds) as the SRs estimates turn out to be negative. The highest underperformance was found in the case of Czech Republic. The results of style analysis suggest a modest positive influence of the active managerial decisions on the scheme returns with respect to the passive investment strategies.