1,721,065 research outputs found
Average rates of return, working capital, and NPV-consistency in project appraisal: A sensitivity analysis approach
No full textIn project appraisal under uncertainty, the economic reliability of a measure of financial efficiency such as a rate of return depends on its strong NPV-consistency, meaning that the performance metric (i) supplies the same recommendation in accept–reject decisions as the NPV, (ii) ranks competing projects in the same way as the NPV, (iii) has the same sensitivity to perturbations in the input data as the NPV. In real-life projects, financial efficiency is greatly affected by the management of the working capital. Using a sensitivity analysis approach and taking into explicit account the role of working capital, we show that the average return on investment (ROI) is not strongly NPV-consistent in accept–reject decisions if the working capital is uncertain and changes under changes in revenues and costs. Also, it is not strongly NPV-consistent in project ranking. We also show that the internal rate of return (IRR) is not strongly NPV-consistent and economic analysis may even turn out to be impossible, owing to possible nonexistence and multiplicity caused by perturbations in the input data, as well as to possible shifts in the financial meaning of IRR under changes in the project's value drivers. We introduce the straight-line rate of return (SLRR), based on the notion of average rate of change, which overcomes all the problems encountered by average ROI and IRR: It always exists, is unique, strongly NPV-consistent for both accept–reject decisions and project ranking, and has an unambiguous financial nature
Performance attribution, time-weighted rate of return, and clean finite change sensitivity index
No full textWe propose an innovative methodology for decomposing the value added generated by a money manager within a given assessment interval into the contributions of the manager’s investment decisions made in the various periods, in order to identify the most (and the least) impactful period decisions. To this end, we benchmark an actively-managed investment against a reference portfolio replicating the client’s contributions and distributions and earning the benchmark returns. We apply the Clean Finite Change Sensitivity Index method (Borgonovo in Eur J Oper Res 200:127–138, 2010a, Risk Anal 30(3):385–399, 2010b; Magni et al. in J Oper Res Soc 71(12):1940–1958, 2020) to the investment’s value added in order to obtain a complete decomposition of it into the contributions of the investment decisions made in the various periods; we rank the period decisions according to their contributions and show that, if the contribution-and-distribution policy changes, the effect of the investment choices made in the various periods on the value added changes as well, which testifies of the interaction between the manager’s decisions and the client’s decisions, the former affecting the financial efficiency and latter affecting the investment scale. In particular, neutralizing the contributions and distributions (and, therefore, the investment scale), we show that the Time-Weighted Rate of Return (TWRR) can be arithmetically obtained from the value added and can be decomposed into the same period contributions of the value added, thereby providing a reconciliation between the value added notion and the TWRR
Impact of financing and payout policy on the economic profitability of solar photovoltaic plants
No full textThis paper introduces an innovative comprehensive evaluation model for appraising an investment in a solar photovoltaic plant which encompasses both operational and financial management. We illustrate the intricate network of logical relations among technical (estimated) variables and financial (decision) variables and show that establishing transparent links between the former and the latter enhances the accuracy and soundness of the model. The results indicate that understanding the conceptual and formal relations of operating variables and financial decisions is necessary for correctly measuring shareholder value creation and making rational decisions, even for those projects (such as solar energy projects) where the operating, technical component is of paramount importance. We show how a firm's decision of replacing conventional energy with solar energy may be affected by managerial decisions regarding the firm's payout/retention policy and its financing policy to support the project. The model discloses insights on how to fine-tune the financing and distribution decisions in order to maximize the value creation for shareholders. We apply the model to a real-life photovoltaic project to be located in the province of Modena, in Northeast Italy, and quantify the effect of financial decisions on the project's net present value, showing that the financing and distribution policies may amplify or shrink the impact of changes in other inputs and may even revert an otherwise unprofitable project into a value-creating one. Finally, we allow operational variables as well as financial variables to change in order to measure their importance via the application of the Clean Finite Change Sensitivity Indices (Magni et al., 2020)
The Attribution Matrix and the joint use of Finite Change Sensitivity Index and Residual Income for value-based performance measurement
No full textLa NIV nel paziente con insufficienza respiratoria cronica, la gestione domiciliare - Competenza specialistica nelle patologie pneumologiche pure
No full textQuesto capitolo ha lo scopo di revisionare la letteratura in merito ai meccanismi dell’insufficienza respiratoria cronica e gli effetti fisiologici e l’efficacia della ventilazione meccanica non invasiva nei pazienti affetti da BPCO in fase di stabilità clinica, cercando di dare indicazioni sulla selezione dei pazienti che potrebbero maggiormente beneficiare di questo trattamento
Impatto delle trasformazioni nel mondo del lavoro e del lavoro atipico sull'identità dei lavoratori: ripercussioni sulla rappresentanza collettiva, implicazioni giuridiche e psicopatologiche
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Subspace Energy Monitoring for Anomaly Detection @Sensor or @Edge
Full text linkThe amount of data generated by distributed monitoring systems that can be exploited for anomaly detection, along with real time, bandwidth, and scalability requirements leads to the abandonment of centralized approaches in favor of processing closer to where data are generated. This increases the interest in algorithms coping with the limited computational resources of gateways or sensor nodes. We here propose two dual and lightweight methods for anomaly detection based on generalized spectral analysis. We monitor the signal energy laying along with the principal and anti-principal signal subspaces, and call for an anomaly when such energy changes significantly with respect to normal conditions. A streaming approach for the online estimation of the needed subspaces is also proposed. The methods are tested by applying them to synthetic data and real-world sensor readings. The synthetic setting is used for design space exploration and highlights the tradeoff between accuracy and computational cost. The real-world example deals with structural health monitoring and shows how, despite the extremely low computations costs, our methods are able to detect permanent and transient anomalies that would classically be detected by full spectral analysis
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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