This thesis examines the joint impact of earnings management incentives (i.e., income smoothing, solvency management and tax management) and reinsurance, together with other institutional factors, on the magnitude and direction of claim (loss) reserves errors in the UK’s property-liability insurance industry. Two reserve error definitions, found in literature, are employed to conduct the analysis. Furthermore, a panel data generalised methods of moments (GMM) estimator is employed to incorporate the dynamic nature of current and past loss reserving errors. Using the GMM estimator in a panel of 151 firms over a period from 1991 and 2005, the study finds support for the conclusions of some prior studies but also inconsistencies with other previous research. The present study finds that the inferences drawn from empirical analyses can be influenced by the definition of loss reserving errors and to some extent how other incentive variables are defined. The results of this study suggest that discretionary loss reserving behaviour tends to persist from one year to another. Therefore, ignoring the dynamic nature of loss reserving errors could lead to biased and unreliable conclusions. The empirical results of this study also find that property-liability insurance managers manipulate claims reserves in order to smooth company’s earnings across accounting periods. Furthermore, empirical evidence is found which indicates that high levels of reinsurance ceded help to reduce the incidence of error in loss reserves. Contrary to expectations, the evidence presented in this thesis suggests that highly solvent insurers under-estimate their claims liabilities. However, no empirical support is found to indicate that insurers over-reserve in order to reduce and/or postpone period tax liabilities. The study also produced mixed results regarding the relation between the type of reinsurance cover used and claim reserve errors. Nevertheless, the empirical results show that firm-specific effects, such as company size and product mix, can have effect on the accuracy of insurers’ reserves. Finally, as this study gives an important insight on discretionary loss reserve manipulation, its conclusions could be of interest and relevance to the business decisions of investors, policyholders, regulators, and other interested parties (e.g., credit rating agencies and accounting standard settlers).

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Bibliography: leaves 93-96. / by Betsy Hannah Gordon. / M.C.P.

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier différents aspects du vieillissement tant normal que pathologique afin de mieux comprendre les différents facteurs de ce qu'il est devenu habituel d'appeler le "vieillissement réussi". Ce concept de vieillissement réussi s'articule autout de trois grandes notions, la première étant le maintien d'un haut niveau fonctionnel tant sur le plan cognitif que physique, nos résultats soulignant l'importance de rester actif le plus longtemps possible afin de maintenir un bon niveau de fonctionnement cognitif. Le deuxième axe suppose la conservation d'un niveau de bien-être subjectif optimal. Nous nous sommes intéressée à la problématique de l'accompagnement au quotidien d'une personne atteinte de démence et les répercussions que cela entraîne au niveau de la qualité de vie et du sentiment de fardeau ressenti. Le troisième axe nécessaire à un vieillissement réussi nécessite une faible probabilité de maladies, et nous avons investigué la problématique de la douleur chronique chez la personne âgée. Nos résultats ont montré que ce problème était fréquent chez la personne âgée et qu'il avait un impact négatif important sur leur qualité de vie et leur fonctionnement cognitif. Le fonctionnement cognitif, la qualité de vie et la santé des personnes âgées sont des concepts hautement interconnectés qui nécessite une investigation minutieuse et conjointe.

Independence and objectivity are the cornerstones of the auditing profession. Even though internal auditing is generally not mandatory for companies to set up, its importance these days has increased phenomenally due to the fact that it assists companies to systematically evaluate and improve their risk management, internal controls and governance processes. Internal auditors are therefore expected to be independent and objective in order to provide unbiased and reliable reports, and to win the trust and confidence of people though admittedly, independence and objectivity are not easy to achieve in reality since the internal auditors are employees of the company they audit and report on.  The purpose of this study was thus, to critically investigate if independence and objectivity can truly be achieved in practice by employing a case study of the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM). Accordingly, empirical data was gathered from the above-mentioned bank via the administration of questionnaire to seven internal auditors.  The study revealed through a qualitative content analysis of the data collected that, the internal auditors of RBM are indeed independent and objective in their profession because the bank has instituted the right organizational structures and the Internal Audit Department has made tremendous effort in complying with best practices in the internal audit profession. This has created a proper work environment as well as developed an appropriate attitude within staff that has allowed a high level of independence and objectivity to be achieved. Based on the evidence of RBM, we can therefore say that the independence and objectivity of an internal auditor can truly be achieved in practice.

This research addresses sizing and dimensioning of a forward-reserve warehouse, a strategic design problem that has important implications on warehouse life cycle costs including construction, inventory holding and replenishment, and material handling. Large mixed integer nonlinear models are developed that capture the complex tradeoffs among the different costs in order to achieve a global optimal design satisfying throughput requirements. We first consider the situation where the forward area includes all SKUs so that order picking is performed only in the forward area. In this case, the problem can be decomposed. The resulting sub-problem is convex and can be solved very efficiently based on the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. This property enables the use of a Generalized Benders Decomposition (GBD) method to solve the sizing and dimensioning problem exactly. We then extend the problem to more general situations where the forward area contains a subset of SKUs. This requires integrating the sizing and dimensioning decisions with the decision to assign SKUs to the forward area based on their flow characteristics (i.e., the forward reserve allocation). A similar decomposition strategy can be employed, but the sub-problem (incorporating the forward reserve allocation) is no longer convex. A bi-level hierarchical heuristic approach is proposed that integrates a pattern search method for the master problem and optimal and heuristic algorithms for the sub-problems. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed solution methods can efficiently find optimal or near optimal solutions for the sizing and dimensioning problem, and the resulting solutions are robust with regards to possible forecasting errors in design parameters.

Reserve Required System, a monetary policy manipulated by Taiwanese Government has been gradually reduced or even abandoned in global financial market, which eliminates the international competiveness of domestic banking industry. However, the government has no intention in implementing Zero Reserve Requirement. Given current domestic monetary policies as well as system of banking supervision, I propose "Risk-Based Deposit Reserves" for financial authorities implement. Current international usage sets an absolute value of reserve ratio, not in accordance with its operating risk. Therefore I designed a ¡§Five-Level Differential Deposit Reserve System¡¨ based on Capital Adequacy Ratio and Composite Risk Rating Score of the bank. Such innovation will help increase the quality of banks and eliminate unhealthy banks which will strengthen domestic banking industry in challenges of Basel ¢» and its competitiveness.

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Thesis--School of Advanced Airpower Studies. / Title from title screen (viewed Nov. 3, 2003). "June 1995." Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

There is two different ways to react to a disease like Mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, pathological and clinical. What if there was a way to delay the clinical expression of a disease through pathology? The cognitive reserve has been proven to show a more rapid decline in the individuals that had higher reserve. The purpose of this study was to see if the cognitive reserve actually had an impact on the outcome of Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. A total of 53 patients with varying degrees of disease pathology and clinical symptoms participated in the study. The results demonstrated that the cognitive reserve makes an impact on the clinical expression, the individuals with high cognitive reserve have a delayed clinical expression comparatively with those with low reserve. Studies of the cognitive reserve may point the way to successful interventions that can help maintain successful aging and slow the onset of dementia.