Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / The enlisted personnel assignment process is a major part in the United States Navy's Personnel Distribution system. It ensures warfighters and supporting activities receive the right sailor with the right training to the right billet at the right time (R4) and is a critical element in meeting the challenges of Seapower 21 and Global CONOPS. In order to attain these optimal goals the ways-to-do-it need to be customer-centered and should optimize both, the Navy's needs and the sailor's interests. Recent studies and a detailing pilot in 2002 used a web-based marketplace with two-sided matching mechanisms to accomplish this vision. This research examines the introduction of an Assignment Incentive Pay (AIP) as part of the U.S. Navy's enlisted personnel assignment process in a simulation environment. It uses a previously developed simulation tool, including the Deferred Acceptance (DA) and the Linear Programming (LP) matching algorithm to simulate the assignment process. The results of the sensitivity analysis suggested that the Navy should mainly emphasize sailor quality rather than saving AIP funds in order to maximize utility and the possible matches. When adopting such an introduction policy also the percentage of unstable matches under the LP as the matching algorithm was reduced. / Commander, German Navy

Background: Recently, health plans have initiated pay-for-performance (P4P) programs to incentivize pharmacies to focus on medication-related quality measures. Little research exists as to what attributes help a pharmacy to perform well in a P4P program. Objectives: This study aimed to: (1) propose a conceptual framework evolved from theories pertaining to economic, psychology, and organizational behavior disciplines that may contribute to a pharmacy's performance in a financial incentive program; (2) develop theoretically-derived questionnaires designed to elicit from pharmacists and pharmacy management pharmacy characteristics and pharmacy personnel factors thought to be associated with achieving quality measures specified for a pharmacy P4P program; (3) psychometrically assess these two newly developed questionnaires designed to collect information from community pharmacies eligible to participate in a pharmacy P4P program; (4) assess the magnitude of the relationship between pharmacy-related and construct redundancy of latent variables identified in objective 3; and (5) examine pharmacy factors' association with community pharmacies achieving quality measures in a pharmacy P4P program. Methods: Two survey instruments were created from a theoretically-derived conceptual framework to measure pertinent pharmacy characteristics and pharmacy personnel factors using a multi-step, mixed-methods process. Questionnaire development entailed semi-structured interviews, item generation, expert content validation, and cognitive debriefings. Developed questionnaires were evaluated in a non-experimental, cross-sectional survey of pharmacists and pharmacy management. Pharmacy personnel surveyed for this study were affiliated with pharmacies in Inland Empire Health Plan's (IEHP's) community pharmacy network. Using items measured in each questionnaire, specified groups of items were hypothesized to have a certain underlying latent variable. Latent variables hypothesized for items measured in the pharmacist questionnaire included: (1)"adherence management -services," (2)"adherence management-counseling," (3) "asthma management," (4) "pharmacist-prescriber relationship," (5) "chronic disease management," (6) "non-dispensing ability," and (7) "workload impact". For items measured in the pharmacy management questionnaire, eight latent variables were hypothesized: (1) "program understanding," (2) "program financial salience," (3) "program involvement," (4) "organization's adaptability," (5) "organization's innovativeness," (6) "organization's proactiveness," (7) "organization's risk-taking." and (8) "organization's focal emphasis." For hypothesized latent variables with four or more items, the value thresholds of three assessment indexes were employed as criteria to evaluate each measurement model's goodness-of-fit. Indexes included: (1) 2 test statistic (i.e.,>0.05), (2) root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (i.e., 0.05), and (3) comparative fit index (CFI) (i.e.,>0.95). The statistical significance of item factor loadings was assessed for latent variables with (1) four or more items deemed to have adequate model fit per index criteria and (2) only three items, for which goodness-of-fit may not be assessed. Structural modeling was used to explore associations between (1) pairs of latent variables with adequate model fit and/or statistically significant factor loadings; and (2) latent variables with medication-related quality measures. The strength of associations among latent variable pairs was measured with correlation coefficients. Latent variable pairs with significant correlations greater than 0.50 were evaluated for construct redundancy, for which a change in CFI was used as the comparison criteria to determine whether the latent variables are better represented as one (i.e., (CFI<-0.01) or two constructs (i.e., (CFI ≥ -0.01). Mediation-related quality measures specified as dependent variables in structural models included: diabetes medication adherence, hypertension medication adherence, hypercholesterolemia medication adherence, absence of controller therapy in patients with asthma, use of high-risk medications in elderly, and generic dispensing rate. Results: The empirically derived conceptual framework outlined four major domains proposed for consideration when evaluating pharmacy P4P programs: (1) incentive; (2) pharmacy; (3) other influencing factors; and (4) P4P program measures. From this framework, two questionnaires were developed with the aim of measuring pharmacists' and pharmacy management's pharmacy attitudes and perspectives of a community pharmacy P4P program. The pharmacist survey instrument consisted of five sections: (i) community pharmacy P4P program; (ii) pharmacy services; (iii) pharmacist workload; (iv) pharmacy practice site; and (v) pharmacist's background. The pharmacy management questionnaire consisted of four sections: (i) pharmacy P4P program; (ii) pharmacy organization's characteristics; (iii) pharmacy practice site; and (iv) respondent's background information. Among the 604 pharmacies invited to participate, pharmacists from 114 unique pharmacies (19%) and pharmacy management from 100 unique pharmacies (17%) participated in the survey. This study identified psychometrically validated measurement models for latent constructs with items measured in the pharmacist ("adherence management-counseling," "asthma management," "workload impact" ) and pharmacy management ("program involvement," "organization's innovativeness," "organization's proactiveness," "organization's risk-taking" ) questionnaires). With the exception of "program involvement," the latent constructs measured in the pharmacy management questionnaire were identified to be significantly correlated (𝛹>0.50, p<0.001) and more parsimoniously represented as one factor rather than two (∆CFI<-0.01). No significant associations were identified in exploratory analyses of validated measurement models from the pharmacist questionnaire with targeted medication-related quality measures in IEHP's community pharmacy P4P program. Conclusion: This study collected data for two questionnaires evaluating (1) pharmaceutical care services conceptualized to be associated with targeting medication-related quality measures and (2) pharmacy management's attitudes toward a pharmacy P4P program. Furthermore, psychometric assessment of each questionnaire supplied initial validity evidence for three constructs for the pharmacist questionnaire ("adherence management-counseling," "asthma management," and "workload impact" ) and four constructs for the pharmacy management questionnaire ("program involvement," "organization's innovativeness," "organization's proactiveness," and "organization's risk-taking" ). Subsequent validation of these latent constructs in larger sample sizes is required. Continued study of pharmacy factors and their association with medication-related quality measures is needed to improve our understanding of pharmacies' performance in financial incentive programs. As pharmacy organizations are increasingly integrated into more financial incentive programs aimed at targeting process- and outcomes-related quality measures, it is essential to be able to measure pharmacy and management factors in order to determine which factor(s) impact pharmacy performance.

The adequacy of existing transport infrastructure to four distinct clusters in Austria's key regions is tested by examining the willingness of logistics managers to pay for additional service improvements. Findings show an overall willingness to pay for multiple service improvements; this reveals a general dissatisfaction with current shipping options, regardless of transport mode, where rail mode services ("Bahn") provoke the greatest dissatisfaction. Willingness to pay for improvements generally increases by degrees of regional EU remoteness and relative youth of cluster industries, as hypothesized from Schumpterian assumptions concerning infrastructure innovation. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Using international data (15,786 obs.) from industrial companies from 28 countries over an 11-year period (2003–2014), this research contributes to the area of institutional heterogeneity, CEO compensation and investment opportunities. More precisely, we use three perspectives in order to investigate whether investment opportunities explain CEO compensation structures. We compare (i) U.S. and non-U.S. firms, (ii) Common law and Civil law firms, and (iii) firms operating with similar cultural characteristics. Overall, after controlling for firm governance and board characteristics, we find that investment and growth opportunities in terms of book-to-market ratio, research and development (R&amp;D), and capital expenditures (CAPEX) explain the percentage equity and non-salary CEO compensation. These findings suggest that firms with higher information asymmetries associated with their growth opportunities pay CEOs higher incentive-based compensation.

i Charles University Faculty of Social Sciences Institute of Economic Studies MASTER'S THESIS Are Sharks Worth More Alive Than Dead? A Stated Preference Study on Shark Ecotourism in Costa Rica. Author: Bc. Alicia Maria Berrios Supervisor: Mgr. Milan Ščasný PhD. Academic Year: 2016/2017 ii Declaration of Authorship The author hereby declares that he compiled this thesis independently; using only the listed resources and literature, and the thesis has not been used to obtain a different or the same degree. The author grants to Charles University permission to reproduce and to distribute copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Prague, January 01st , 2017 Signature iii Acknowledgments With boundless appreciation, I would like to extend my gratitude to Mgr. Milan Ščasný PhD., for his incredible support in writing this research. He spent a countless number of hours on this thesis work, and ultimately, this research wouldn't have been possible without him. I would also like to express my gratitude to Carlos Avila, for his generosity in helping me conduct the in-person interviews. I would also like to express my gratitude to Prof. Melville Saayman, who helped tremendously in the experimental design of this work. Thank you to Mgr. Martin Kryl for programming the survey instrument. Lastly, I would like to...

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Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Glynn Tonsor / Recent predictions estimate that the global population will reach more than 9 billion by the year 2050 (Kochhar, 2014). Coupled with this challenge, environmental issues and climate change influence agricultural production over the globe (Jacobsen et al., 2013). Changes in the food chain have been in response to consumers becoming interested in how their food is produced as it relates to food safety. Some of these changes have come in the form of labeling of production methods and the increasing volume of organic products in the marketplace. In the livestock sector, production methods include administration of antibiotics and hormones to prevent disease, increase gains and increase the health of animals (Allen et al., 2013; Thornton, 2010). A potential solution of decreasing the amount of antibiotics and hormones in the future is the use of ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi). RNA interference is a method of silencing a targeted gene and suppressing expression (Bradford et al., 2016). The focus of this research is to explore the determinants of acceptance and willingness to pay for beef products utilizing RNAi technology in the food system. Through the means of a national survey, consumers were asked their demographic, food purchasing habits, and food safety concerns to identify potential acceptors of the technology. Respondents received information treatments and external articles regarding RNAi technology as well as information about governmental labeling regulations of the beef steaks. Choice experiment questions, and a dichotomous choice sequence were utilized to determine willingness to pay estimates of beef steak attributes by consumers. Results showed that respondents likely require a discount for beef steaks produced with RNAi technology. In some instances, some consumers would be willing to pay a premium for beef steaks with RNAi in certain label settings. These results of this study could be used in the realm of animal science to help with the introduction of this technology in the food system. The survey results could assist with future promotion and framing of the technology to a wide variety of consumers.

investment evaluation of solar electric power station, two main parts, first focus on evaluation before positive decision about making investment, second part reflects the present situation, use economic criterion: net present value, internal rate of return, pay-off period and additional indices

The goal of the diploma thesis is to make analysis of the remuneration system and to identify motivation tools vhich are used by the company. The output of the diploma thesis is summary of areas which are motivated, reasonable and transparent for employees or not. As a part of the diploma thesis are improvement suggestions which are focus on problematical areas.

Throughout the last two years the revenues from in-game transactions in video-games have increased due to its growing presence both in traditional retail games as well as digital due to the fact that more and more games have become free. This growing presence is the basis for answering the question of what motivates players to spend money on in-game purchases in freeto-play games. The research found that having a well designed game is a very important factor that makes players purchase content. Many respondents made purchases based on emotional reasons such as wanting to look cool. People also made purchases to avoid grinding and to gain competitive advantages. In summary people think that their purchases were justifiable since the games are free but the common consensus is that while cosmetic items are acceptable, pay-towin items which provide a competitive advantage are not.