An asset manager's goal is to provide a high return relative the risk taken, and thus faces the challenge of how to choose an optimal portfolio. Many mathematical methods have been developed to achieve a good balance between these attributes and using di erent risk measures. In thisthesis, we test the use of a relatively simple and common approach: the Markowitz mean-variance method, and a more quantitatively demanding approach: the tail optimization method. Using active portfolio based on data provided by the Swedish fund management company Enter Fonderwe implement these approaches and compare the results. We analyze how each method weighs theunderlying assets in order to get an optimal portfolio.

For larger instances of multi-objective optimisation problems, the exact Pareto frontier can be both difficult and time-consuming to calculate. There is a wide range of methods to find feasible solutions to such problems, but techniques for finding good optimistic bounds to compare the feasible solutions with are missing. In this study, we investigate the use of Lagrangian relaxation to create optimistic bounds to bi-objective optimisation problems with complicating side constraints. The aim is to develop an effective method to produce optimistic bounds that are closer to the Pareto frontier than the commonly used linear programming bounds.  In order to use Lagrangian relaxation on the bi-objective problem, the objectives are combined using the weighted sum method. A Lagrangian dual function is then constructed by relaxing the complicating constraints and the subgradient method is used to optimise the dual problem in order to find an optimistic solution. By solving the single-objective problem for multiple weights, an optimistic bound to the Pareto frontier can be constructed. The subgradient method also includes a heuristic to find feasible solutions. The feasible solutions found by the heuristic form a pessimistic bound to the frontier. The method has been implemented and tested on several instances of a capacitated facility location problem with cost and CO2 emission as objectives. The results indicate that, by using Lagrangian relaxation, an optimistic bound close to the Pareto frontier can be found in a relatively short time. The heuristic used also manages to produce good pessimistic bounds, and hence the Pareto frontier can be tightly enclosed. The optimistic bounds found by Lagrangian relaxation are better and more consistent along the Pareto frontier than the bounds found by linear programming.

Many studies have focused on the insurance industry in the US and other developed countries. Few studies have investigated the efficiency and organizational form in developing countries. This is particularly true for the Takaful insurance industry. Takaful insurance is mutual insurance based on Islamic principles. The rapid growth of Takaful insurers in many countries around the world and their long existence make it important to examine them. Chapter 1 discusses the history and the practice of insurance during the time of ancient Arabs tribes. I discuss the conduct of the Holy Prophet (SAW) relating to insurance practice. I also briefly outlines the development of Islamic insurance in the fourteenth to the seventh centuries, nineteenth century, and the development in the twentieth century. Chapter 2 investigates economies of scope and agency problems for Takaful insurance companies operating in 19 countries. I test the conglomeration hypothesis, which holds that firms can optimize by diversifying across businesses, versus the strategic focus hypothesis, which holds that firms improve by focusing on core businesses. More specifically, I analyze whether it is advantageous for insurers to offer both property-liability insurance and family insurance (life insurance), or to specialize in one major industry segment. I also test for agency problems, which imply that firms must motivate the agent to ensure compliance with the principal's wealth maximization objectives. That is, I analyze whether it is advantageous for insurers to operate under a Mudharaba (profit sharing) model or operate under a Wakala (fee based) model. I estimate cost efficiency utilizing data envelopment analysis (DEA). Then, I test for scope economies and agency problems by regressing efficiency scores on control variables and indicators for strategic focus and the operating model. The results show that the Wakala operating model is cost inefficient and focused Takaful insurers are associated with higher cost efficiency. Chapter 3 investigates the relationship between insolvency risk and efficiency for Takaful insurers. I measure the insolvency risk by computing the z-score which measure distance to default. I calculate the efficiency scores using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). I find that efficient firms have a higher distance to default. I also find that firms which operate in multiple lines are penalized for diversification by being more likely to become insolvent. In addition, I show that investing in sukkuk and real-estate increase the insolvency risk. Chapter 4 analyzes the coexistence of Takaful and conventional insurance. I analyze the efficiency of different organizational forms in 13 countries. Technical, allocative, cost, and revenue frontiers were estimated using data envelopment analysis. I test the expense preference hypothesis and efficient structure hypothesis. I find evidence for the efficient structure hypothesis which claims that the two organizational forms serve different market segments due to differences in managerial discretion and access to capital. I also find evidence for the expense preference hypothesis which states that mutual insurers are less cost efficient than stock insurers due to unresolved agency conflicts (e.g., higher bonus consumption by mutual managers). The results provide insight into the competitiveness of conventional and Takaful insurers from different countries. Finally, chapter 5 concludes the main results of the study. / Business Administration/Risk Management and Insurance

This dissertation is composed of three essays; the first two examine the decisionmaking of potato producing households in Bolivia and the third examines well-being changes among Zimbabwe households. The first essay entitled “The role of risk mitigation in production efficiency: A case study of potato cultivation in the Bolivian Andes” estimates the costs of self-managing environmental risk through activity and environmental diversification. Risk management has the potential to reduce income variability but at the cost of increasing production inefficiency, which we measure employing a stochastic production frontier. Among variables capturing environmental diversification, discontinuity between fields has the most detrimental effect on production efficiency. Activity diversification, measured by the ratio of potato to total crop revenue, has a stronger impact on inefficiency and yield losses than any of the environmental diversification variables. The second essay entitled “Determinants of market participation decisions and marketing choices in Bolivia” examines three decisions related to potato market participation: market entry, volume sold, and market choice. The first two are analyzed using a Heckman selection model. Results indicate that isolation, measured by population density and distance to markets, negatively impacts market entry. The most important determinant of quantity sold is land holding. Market choices are judged according to second-order stochastic dominance (SOSD). Market choices meeting the SOSD criterion are referred to as optimal marketing strategies as they have the higher expected payoff for a minimal income variance. Results suggest that the probability of selecting an optimal marketing strategy increases with quantity sold, access to market information, and access to liquidity while it decreases with distance to markets. The third essay entitled “A profile of changes in well-being in Zimbabwe, 2001- 2007/8, using an asset index methodology” shows that it is possible to examine intertemporal and spatial changes in well-being in the absence of consumption expenditures data by using an asset index. The asset index was constructed using Polychoric Principal Component Analysis. Results indicate that poverty and extremely poverty grew significantly in rural Zimbabwe while in urban areas, poverty diminished and extreme poverty grew. / Ph. D. / LTRA-7 (Pathways to CAPS in the Andes)

Highly deteriorated U.S. road infrastructure, major budgetary restrictions and the significant growth in traffic have led to an emerging need for improving efficiency and effectiveness of highway maintenance practices that preserve the road infrastructure so as to better support society's needs. Effectiveness and efficiency are relative terms in which the performance of a production unit or decision making unit (DMU) is compared with a benchmark (best practice). Constructing the benchmark requires making a choice between an "estimation approach" based on observed best practices (i.e., using data from input and output variables corresponding to observed production units (DMUs) to estimate the benchmark with no elaboration on the details of the production process inside the black box) or an "engineering approach" to find the superior blueprint (i.e., focusing on the transformation process inside the black box for a better understanding of the sources of inefficiencies). This research discusses: (i) the application of the estimation approach (non-parametric approach) for evaluating and comparing the performance of different highway maintenance contracting strategies (performance-based contracting versus traditional contracting) and proposes a five-stage meta-frontier and bootstrapping analytical approach to account for the heterogeneity in the DMUs, the resulting bias in the estimated efficiency scores, and the effect of uncontrollable variables; (ii) the application of the engineering approach by developing a dynamic micro-level simulation model for the highway deterioration and renewal processes and its coupling with calibration and optimization to find optimum maintenance policies that can be used as a benchmark for evaluating performance of road authorities. This research also recognizes and discusses the fact that utilization of the maintenance budget and treatments that are performed in a road section in a specific year directly affect the road condition and required maintenance operations in consecutive years. Given this dynamic nature of highway maintenance operations, any "static" efficiency measurement framework that ignores the inter-temporal effects of inputs and managerial decisions in future streams of outputs (i.e., future road conditions) is likely to be inaccurate. This research discusses the importance of developing a dynamic performance measurement framework that takes into account the time interdependence between the input utilization and output realization of a road authority in consecutive periods. Finally, this research provides an overview of the most relevant studies in the literature with respect to evaluating dynamic performance and proposes a classification taxonomy for dynamic performance measurement frameworks according to five issues. These issues account for major sources of the inter-temporal dependence between input and output levels over different time periods and include the following: (i) material and information delays; (ii) inventories; (iii) capital or generally quasi-fixed factors and the related topic of embodied technological change; (iv) adjustment costs; and (v) incremental improvement and learning models (disembodied technological change). In the long-term, this line of research could contribute to a more efficient use of societal resources, greater level of maintenance services, and a highway and roadway system that is not only safe and reliable, but also efficient. / Ph. D.

Indoor Localization Systems (ILS), also known as Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS), has been created to determine the position of individuals and other assets inside facilities. Indoor Localization Systems have been implemented for monitoring individuals and objects in a variety of sectors. In addition, ILS could be used for energy and sustainability purposes. Energy management is a complex and important challenge in the Built Environment. The indoor localization market is expected to increase by 33.8 billion in the next 5 years based on the 2016 global survey report (Marketsandmarkets.com). Therefore, this thesis focused on exploring and investigating "depth sensors" application in detecting occupants' indoor positions to be used for smarter management of energy consumption in buildings. An interconnected passive depth-sensor-based system of occupants' positioning was investigated for human-building interaction applications. This research investigates the fundamental requirements for depth-sensing technology to detect, identify and track subjects as they move across different spaces. This depth-based approach is capable of sensing and identifying individuals by accounting for the privacy concerns of users in an indoor environment. The proposed system relies on a fixed depth sensor that detects the skeleton, measures the depth, and further extracts multiple features from the characteristics of the human body to identify them through a classifier. An example application of such a system is to capture an individuals' thermal preferences in an environment and deliver services (targeted air conditioning) accordingly while they move in the building. The outcome of this study will enable the application of cost-effective depth sensors for identification and tracking purposes in indoor environments. This research will contribute to the feasibility of accurate detection of individuals and smarter energy management using depth sensing technologies by proposing new features and creating combinations with typical biometric features. The addition of features such as the area and volume of human body surface was shown to increase the accuracy of the identification of individuals. Depth-sensing imaging could be combined with different ILS approaches and provide reliable information for service delivery in building spaces. The proposed sensing technology could enable the inference of people location and thermal preferences across different indoor spaces, as well as, sustainable operations by detecting unoccupied rooms in buildings. / Master of Science / Although Global Positioning System (GPS) has a satisfactory performance navigating outdoors, it fails in indoor environments due to the line of sight requirements. Physical obstacles such as walls, overhead floors, and roofs weaken GPS functionality in closed environments. This limitation has opened a new direction of studies, technologies, and research efforts to create indoor location sensing capabilities. In this study, we have explored the feasibility of using an indoor positioning system that seeks to detect occupants’ location and preferences accurately without raising privacy concerns. Context-aware systems were created to learn dynamics of interactions between human and buildings, examples are sensing, localizing, and distinguishing individuals. An example application is to enable a responsive air-conditioning system to adapt to personalized thermal preferences of occupants in an indoor environment as they move across spaces. To this end, we have proposed to leverage depth sensing technology, such as Microsoft Kinect sensor, that could provide information on human activities and unique skeletal attributes for identification. The proposed sensing technology could enable the inference of people location and preferences at any time and their activity levels across different indoor spaces. This system could be used for sustainable operations in buildings by detecting unoccupied rooms in buildings to save energy and reduce the cost of heating, lighting or air conditioning equipment by delivering air conditioning according to the preferences of occupants. This thesis has explored the feasibility and challenges of using depth-sensing technology for the aforementioned objectives. In doing so, we have conducted experimental studies, as well as data analyses, using different scenarios for human-environment interactions. The results have shown that we could achieve an acceptable level of accuracy in detecting individuals across different spaces for different actions.

Frederick Jackson Turner was a prominent American Historian who lived during America's Progressive Movement of the early twentieth century. Turner's most seminal piece, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, commonly referred to as The Frontier Thesis, challenged the accepted assumption that American culture stemmed from European ancestors. Turner resisted conventional wisdom that did not take into account the struggles and advances of the pioneers of the West. Turner believed the experiences of the pioneers forced them to adapt and modify their European roots, thus developing a distinct and separate culture from Europe. As a university professor, training a plethora of doctoral students in the field of history, Turner embraced the changes in educational thought of the time; including the importance of lifelong learning and the need to continually re-evaluate previously held beliefs. To Turner, a university professor's priority was to facilitate learning experiences that helped develop students into independent and competent critical thinkers. One way Turner differed from his contemporaries was the way he studied and wrote about history. Turner subscribed to the ideal that all aspects of historical events, incorporating information that set a complete context of the event itself was essential. The historiography Turner employed is considered a standard today. The Progressive Era also brought a wave of reformation in political, social and educational thought. Adult education programs began to develop throughout the nation. Adults for the first time had low cost opportunities outside of collegial studies to expand their professional expertise, literacy skills, and appreciation for art and entertainment. Adult education thinkers also began to systematically research and study ways in which adults best learn. The impetus of this study was to examine Turner's educational and career efforts juxtaposed with adult learning theory, principles and practices as an embedded university elite and active planner and participant of alternative adult education programs. As such, this study investigated Turner as an educator outside the field of adult education, who emulated the principles, practices and value structure of adult learning theory. / Ph. D.

Yes / We assess, for the first time in the literature, the impact of green credit on bank efficiency. We find that green credit has a negative impact on bank efficiency. However, the effect is heterogeneous among different types of banks. While small and low capitalized banks are more affected, the impact is lower in banks with higher levels of risk. On the other hand, we find that highly capitalized banks can offset the negative effects of green credit, while large banks and those highly involved in green credit, benefit from this activity.

No / The Bala Hisar of Charsadda is a 23m high mound covering an area of some 25 hectares close to the confluence of the Swat and Kabul rivers in North West Frontier Province's Vale of Peshawa. Astride one of the arteries of the Silk Road, the uttarapatha, the mountain passes to its north and west link south Asia with central and western Asia. Strewn with thousands of ceramic sherds, cobbles and brickbats, the Bala Hisar was identified in 1863 as the city of Pushkalavati, one of the ancient capitals of Gandhar. Although not as formally investigated as Taxila to its south-east, it has been subject to antiquarian and archaeological interest for over 100 years on account of its historical links with the Achaemenid Empire and Alexander the Great. The focus of this research may have changed significantly over time, mirroring broader methodological and theoretical changes, but all researchers have attempted to identify when this great tell site was founded and occupied, and whether there is evidence of Alexander's siege of the site. These issues are not merely of interest to ancient historians but are of great interest to archaeologists of both southern and western Asia as the origins of South Asia second urbanisation are also under scrutiny, in Sir Mortimer Wheeler's words 'The outstanding importance of Charsadda lies in its earlier phases, when it was a metropolitan centre of Asiatic trade and meeting-place of oriental and occidental cultures'. Indeed, most archaeologists would agree that the Bala Hisar of Charsadda and Taxila are amongst the earliest cities that emerged during the subcontinent's second urbanization.

This thesis examines the rise of image culture in the 1920’s and its impact on American national identity. I demonstrate that, perhaps surprisingly, the central figure in these debates was not a past or present prominent American but instead an indeterminate Other which is read in ambivalent ways and for varied purposes. It is the central claim of this project that in order to trace the modern American subject that emerges from the 1920s national rift, one must attend to the ways in which a felt need to view and position oneself in relation to “the Other” was essential to defining the nature and future of the nation. More specifically, I argue that the film Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925) offers a solution to this national divide by providing viewers a popular culture form of “evidence” of the Westerner’s capacity to exhibit both premodern and modern qualities. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection