Personal discount rates can be defined as the rate at which Marines trade current dollars for future dollars. This research attempts to fill in the gaps in previous discount rate studies where Marine Corps data were omitted, by determining the personal discount rates for each individual who separated from the Marine Corps under the SSB or VSI voluntary separation payment programs between 1992 and 1997. This study also determined those personal, professional, and economic traits that had a significant influence on Marines during their separation payment option decisions. The findings of this research are similar to previous studies, indicating that the methodology applied in this study is accurate. The implications of this research for the Marine Corps are that manpower planners can use the determined personal discount rates to create policies that can target Marines who possess certain personal or professional characteristics for reduction or retention, thereby assisting the efforts to create a balanced and capable Marine Corps in the future. Planners can also use this research to anticipate the effect of policy changes on Marines with specific professional or personal traits. / US Marine Corps (USMC) author.

Course: Master thesis in Business Administration and Economics, Major of Logistic, 30 hp, 4FE19E, VT17 Authors: Daniella Pavkovic & Alexandra Valhed Supervisor: Hana Hulthén Examiner: Helena Forslund Title: How to eliminate non-value added activities within eGrocery - a case study at a global grocery supplier Background: An increase in eGrocery usage has occurred due to a more stressful every day living with busy schedules and the desire to save time (Emec, Catay and Bozkaya 2015). Companies are getting involved with eGrocery primary to strengthening the consumer loyalty (Saskia, Marei and Blanquart 2016). Jaca et al., (2012) claim that well-functioning processes within eGrocery will contribute to economic development of the company which in turn can lead to higher level of consumer satisfaction, higher return on investments and a greater efficiency in processes. However, in order to enable improvements of a process and increase the efficiency, non-value added activities need to be eliminated (Librelato et al., 2013). Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to propose a framework for elimiating non-value added activities related to information sharing in the eGrocery order fulfilment process. Method: The study has a qualitative approach and, in order to answer the purpose of the study, the authors have performed a case study at a global grocery supplier. Empirical data has been collected through focus groups and interviews. Conclusion: An amount of 81 % of the activities within the order fulfilment process towards Shopr are considered to be non-value added. These were identified by a creation of a Value Stream Mapping. The non-value added activities depend primary on manual handling of the operations and insufficient information sharing within the own company as well as between the global grocery supplier and Shopr. In order to eliminate these non-value added activities a Future State Map should be created. Furthermore, focus should be on elimination of the silos within the company and integration of an integrated information system. This applies for the global grocery supplier as well as other global companies involved with eGrocery. Key words: Non-value added activities, eGrocery, Order fulfilment process, information process, silos

The focus of my research has been computationally efficient means of computing measures of risk for portfolios of nonlinear financial instruments when the risk factors might be possibly non-Gaussian. In particular, the measures of risk chosen have been Value-at-Risk (VaR) and conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). I have studied the problem of computation of risk in two types of financial portfolios with nonlinear instruments which depend on possibly non-Gaussian risk factors: 1. Portfolios of European stock options when the stock return distribution may not be Gaussian; 2. Portfolios of sovereign bonds (which are nonlinear in the underlying risk factor, i.e. the short rate) when the risk factor may or may not be Gaussian. Addressing both these problems need a wide array of mathematical tools both from the field of applied statistics (Delta-Gamma-Normal models, characteristic function inversion, probability conserving transformation) and systems theory (Vasicek stochastic differential equation model, Kalman filter). A new heuristic is proposed for addressing the first problem, while an empirical study is presented to support the use of filter-based models for addressing the second problem. In addition to presenting a discussion of these underlying mathematical tools, the dissertation also presents comprehensive numerical experiments in both cases, with simulated as well as real financial market data. Backtesting is used to confirm the validity of the proposed methods.

This thesis shows how the appeal to the transcendent characterizes aspects of the debate amongst leading contemporary philosophers of science regarding the value-free ideal and the attendant aim of attaining objective knowledge. It compares the positions of leading feminist philosophers of science (Longino and Harding) with influential figures in the historically rooted Western belief who appeal to the transcendent in the pursuit of knowledge of the necessary and of the contingent. Chapter 2 relates the historically rooted Western belief in appeal to the transcendent in the pursuit of knowledge and includes two components: the pursuit of knowledge of the necessary and knowledge of the contingent. Chapter 3 assesses how contemporary leading feminist philosophers of science have contended with beliefs of influential 20th century thinkers (Weber, Kuhn and Quine) regarding this problem. Through this comparison, I provide commentary on how current leading philosophers of science have addressed the value-free ideal issue through the prism of appeal to transcendent reason as justification, as opposed to the historically rooted appeal to the transcendent itself via reason as justification and how this apparent disparity has bearing on the debate concerning the value-free ideal and the attendant goal of achieving objective knowledge. / Graduate / 0727 / jahn712002@yahoo.ca

This study used component R-analysis factor technique with orthagonal rotation to investigate the construct validity of the Values for Working, Values for Teaching, and Values for Helpers value system analysis instruments, by a factor analysis of the items on each. Random selection was used to compile a sample of 100 for each. Items measured tribalism, existentialism, sociocentrism, egocentrism, and manipulativeness on the first test, egocentrism and existentialism on the second, and only two items, measuring egocentrism, on the third. The study recommends that other items be eliminated or revised, and that data be reanalyzed for the presence of higher order or obligque factors corresponding to the value systems.

This qualitative research study determined the effectiveness of Measuring Up, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education's national state based higher education report card, as a tool for state leaders in developing postsecondary educational policy. The researcher interviewed state postsecondary leaders in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia, including state government leaders and administrative officials. Interviews were conducted with nine participants.The participants in this study collectively identified the most pressing issues impacting higher education access. Affordability was identified as the predominant factor impacting access to postsecondary education; the preparation of secondary students was also identified as an issue of concern for policymakers and leaders. In addition, the participants cited policies and initiatives undertaken to address these as well as other areas of concern.Measuring Up was identified as helpful as a data resource in developing policy; however, participants expressed concerns over the methodology used in report development. The methodology used in developing affordability measures was of particular concern and interviewees felt the metrics did not accurately reflect state attempts to address the issue.Recommendations include implications for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE) and state governing/coordinating bodies. The NCPPHE should conduct conversations with state higher education leaders or representatives prior to the issuance of subsequent reports to enhance effectiveness and utilization by policymakers. State coordinating bodies need to be assertive in addressing the interests of its student constituents and aggressive in developing state data through assessments and research.

The Chinese are the largest ethnic minority in Canada. As a group, they are well-known for not being able to speak fluent English, including those well-educated individuals who immigrated to Canada mainly in the 2000s. There is a rich literature in applied linguistics about immigrants’ second language learning. Nevertheless, studies on second language practice of this particular group of well-educated Chinese immigrants are lacking. This enquiry is aimed at exploring the reasons why well-educated professional Chinese immigrants, who constitute a large portion of the Chinese population in Canada, do not put more effort into improving their English after settling down there, even though a better level of proficiency can bring apparent benefits to their economic and social success in the new host country. Nineteen well-educated professional Chinese immigrants took part in in-depth interviews, the sole method of data collection of this exploratory study which has a conceptual framework capitalizing on such concepts as motivation/demotivation, value, capital, investment, community and identity. The findings reveal that the principal reason for a dearth of efforts is that they do not deem such efforts very necessary and worthwhile. The contribution of this study to knowledge lies in the conceptualization of non-investment, which complements the existing notion of investment by incorporating into it motivational/demotivational factors that the latter dismisses, and which addresses the issue as to what resources an individual depends on when making investment decisions. In addition, this concept is also a contribution to the under-researched area of demotivation. The immigration of well-educated Chinese professionals to Canada is one of the trends in human migration on the global scale which is a part of globalization. Therefore, the comprehension of the rationale behind their second language practice is significant to the applied linguists who work in the realm of globalization.

This thesis reviews the UK life insurance industry comprehensively in terms of performance and business behaviour. One major contribution of the thesis is to challenge the conventional view on evaluation of investment funds from a shareholders’ perspective. The accounting valuation techniques to evaluate investment from the policyholder’s perspective have not been advanced to the same extent as methods designed to evaluate investment from the shareholder’s perspective, due partly to the accounting complexity of the investment management. Against this context, the thesis develops a valuation method on the basis that policyholders’ basic expectation that their saved funds shall be invested with value growth higher than inflation in the real goods market, and the thesis takes this as the benchmark to assess the reported value of policyholders’ assets. The thesis employs this valuation to assess the performance of different life assurance products (conventional vs. modern) and examine whether the transformation (from conventional to modern) has any impact on insurer performance and behaviour. The thesis also examines whether product diversification impacts realised and unrealised investment income homogenously; the result suggests that the effect of product diversification on performance varies across different measurements of realised and unrealised gain. The second major contribution of the thesis is to test the validity of different output proxies and compare efficiency scores based ranking for competitive firms to the value creation based ranking. Overall, the thesis suggests that different output proxies give consistently similar ranking for competitive firms, and cost efficiency based on different proxies are closely related to conventional measurers of firm performance and value creation in terms of value and ranking.

Hydraulic tomography (HT) has become a mature aquifer test technology over the last two decades. It collects nonredundant information of aquifer heterogeneity by sequentially stressing the aquifer at different wells and collecting aquifer responses at other wells during each stress. The collected information is then interpreted by inverse models. Among these models, the geostatistical approaches, built upon the Bayesian framework, first conceptualize hydraulic properties to be estimated as random fields, which are characterized by means and covariance functions. They then use the spatial statistics as prior information with the aquifer response data to estimate the spatial distribution of the hydraulic properties at a site. Since the spatial statistics describe the generic spatial structures of the geologic media at the site rather than site-specific ones (e. g., known spatial distributions of facies, faults, or paleochannels), the estimates are often not optimal. To improve the estimates, we introduce a general statistical framework, which allows the inclusion of site-specific spatial patterns of geologic features. Subsequently, we test this approach with synthetic numerical experiments. Results show that this approach, using conditional mean and covariance that reflect site-specific large-scale geologic features, indeed improves the HT estimates. Afterward, this approach is applied to HT surveys at a kilometerscale- fractured granite field site with a distinct fault zone. We find that by including fault information from outcrops and boreholes for HT analysis, the estimated hydraulic properties are improved. The improved estimates subsequently lead to better prediction of flow during a different pumping test at the site.

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