Experiences of the development and use of scenarios for evaluating Swedish national environmental objectives

The aim of the present paper is to present and evaluate a method for encouraging long-term thinking and considerations of a variety of scenarios in environmental policy processes. The Swedish environmental policy is based on 16 environmental objectives that national authorities are responsible for. They are evaluated annually and also in-depth every fourth year. Here we describe and explore a futures study project for introducing a more long-term thinking in the work with the environmental objectives, tested in the in-depth evaluation 2008. An experience was that it is difficult to design a collective scenario work in a case with a wide variety of objectives and with individuals with different backgrounds. However, this difficulty makes it even more important to incorporate futures studies in authorities work. Scenario work is often subcontracted, leading to a constant lack of futures studies competence and thinking at the authorities. Another experience is that despite the difficulties, experts at the authorities did start thinking more in terms of opportunities with futures studies. A general conclusion from the work was that there is an interest and need for futures studies at the authorities in charge of the environmental objectives. The possibly most important conclusion from this project was that the authorities need to build up their own competences in futures studies.     

Ruin probabilities under general investments and heavy-tailed claims

In this paper, the asymptotic decay of finite time ruin probabilities is studied. An insurance company is considered that faces heavy-tailed claims and makes investments in risky assets whose prices evolve according to quite general semimartingales. In this setting, the ruin problem corresponds to determining hitting probabilities for the solution to a randomly perturbed stochastic integral equation. A large deviation result for the hitting probabilities is derived that holds uniformly over a family of semimartingales. This result gives the asymptotic decay of finite time ruin probabilities under sufficiently conservative investment strategies, including ruin-minimizing strategies. In particular, as long as the insurance company invests sufficiently conservatively, the investment strategy has only a moderate impact on the asymptotics of the ruin probability.     

Prices vs. Quantities: The Irrelevance of Irreversibility*

We explore the efficacy of price and quantity controls in a dynamic setup in which the decisions of some agents are irreversible. The assumption of irreversibility is shown to improve the performance of a tax relative to that of a system of tradable quotas and significantly alter the equilibrium behavior of agents. We nevertheless conclude that taking into account the fact that agents’ decisions may be irreversible does not lead to policy implications significantly different from those reached in a simpler model in which irreversibility is ignored.     

The purchasing market entry process—A study of 10 Swedish industrial small and medium-sized enterprises

While an area of importance and concern to managers, international purchasing remains an under researched phenomenon, especially in the context of small and medium-sized firms. Therefore, this article presents a study of the international purchasing market entry processes of 10 industrial SMEs. The findings indicate that managers of SMEs are often reluctant to source abroad. Purchasing markets entries are generally more reactive than proactive, occurring as a consequence of needs for certain products that cannot be found domestically, high domestic costs, unsolicited opportunities and pressures from owners and customers. Nearby purchasing markets typically dominate throughout the process unless cost savings motivate firms to explore more remote markets.     

CEO contract design: How do strong principals do it?

We study changes in chief executive officer (CEO) contracts when firms transition from public ownership with dispersed owners to private ownership with strong principals in the form of private equity sponsors. The most significant changes are that a significant portion of equity grants performance-vests based on prespecified measures and that unvested equity is forfeited by fired CEOs. Private equity sponsors do not reduce base salaries, bonuses, and perks, but redesign contracts away from qualitative measures. They use some subjective performance evaluation, do not use indexed or premium options, and do not condition vesting on relative industry performance. We compare the contracts to predictions from contracting theories, and relate our results to discussions of executive compensation reform.     

Zwei Ungleichungen sur Ergänzung des Tchebycheffschen Lemmas

Abstract

Sei ?(x) eine für ? ∞ < x < + ∞ definierte reelle nichtnegative Funktion und