Expected Profit (expected + profit)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


RISK-REWARD OPTIMIZATION WITH DISCRETE-TIME COHERENT RISK

MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 4 2010
Alexander S. Cherny
We solve the risk-reward optimization problem in the discrete-time setting, the reward being measured as the expected Profit and Loss and the risk being measured by a dynamic coherent risk measure. [source]


The economic potential of precision nitrogen application with wheat based on plant sensing

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2009
Jon T. Biermacher
Nitrogen fertilizer; Precision agriculture; Stochastic plateau; Wheat Abstract Plant-based precision nitrogen fertilizer application technologies have been developed as a way to predict and precisely meet nitrogen needs. Equipment necessary for precision application of nitrogen, based on sensing of growing wheat plants in late winter, is available commercially, but adoption has been slow. This article determines the expected profit from using a plant-sensing system to determine winter wheat nitrogen requirements. We find that plant-sensing systems have the potential to be more profitable than traditional nonprecise systems, but the existing system simulated was roughly breakeven with a traditional system. [source]


IS FISHING COMPATIBLE WITH ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION: A STOCHASTIC MODEL WITH AN ELEMENT OF SELF-PROTECTION

NATURAL RESOURCE MODELING, Issue 3 2008
D. AMI
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to introduce the impact of fishing activity on a marine ecosystem. The fishing activity is considered not only through annual harvest but also through a second component, called the degree of protection of the fishery environment. This characterizes the environmental impact of fishing. A stochastic dynamic programming problem is presented in infinite horizon, where a sole owner seeks to maximize a discounted expected profit. The main hypothesis states that the stock,recruitment relationship is stochastic and that both components of the fishing activity have an impact on the probability law of the state of the fishery environment. The optimal fishing policy is obtained and compared with standard models. This optimal policy has the following properties: is not a constant escapement policy and indicates an element of self-protection by the fishery manager. The paper ends with a discussion on the existence of degrees of protection of the fishery environment that take into account the environmental conservation and preservation of economic activity. [source]


A single-period inventory placement problem for a serial supply chain

NAVAL RESEARCH LOGISTICS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 6 2001
Chia-Shin Chung
Abstract This article addresses the inventory placement problem in a serial supply chain facing a stochastic demand for a single planning period. All customer demand is served from stage 1, where the product is stored in its final form. If the demand exceeds the supply at stage 1, then stage 1 is resupplied from stocks held at the upstream stages 2 through N, where the product may be stored in finished form or as raw materials or subassemblies. All stocking decisions are made before the demand occurs. The demand is nonnegative and continuous with a known probability distribution, and the purchasing, holding, shipping, processing, and shortage costs are proportional. There are no fixed costs. All unsatisfied demand is lost. The objective is to select the stock quantities that should be placed different stages so as to maximize the expected profit. Under reasonable cost assumptions, this leads to a convex constrained optimization problem. We characterize the properties of the optimal solution and propose an effective algorithm for its computation. For the case of normal demands, the calculations can be done on a spreadsheet. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 48:506,517, 2001 [source]


Economic Evaluation of Scale Dependent Technology Investments

PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2005
Phillip J. Lederer
We study the effect of financial risk on the economic evaluation of a project with capacity decisions. Capacity decisions have an important effect on the project,s value through the up-front investment, the associated operating cost, and constraints on output. However, increased scale also affects the financial risk of the project through its effect on the operating leverage of the investment. Although it has long been recognized in the finance literature that operating leverage affects project risk, this result has not been incorporated in the operations management literature when evaluating projects. We study the decision problem of a firm that must choose project scale. Future cash flow uncertainty is introduced by uncertain future market prices. The firm's capacity decision affects the firm's potential sales, its expected price for output, and its costs. We study the firm's profit maximizing scale decision using the CAPM model for risk adjustment. Our results include that project risk, as measured by the required rate of return, is related to the inverse of the expected profit per unit sold. We also show that project risk is related to the scale choice. In contrast, in traditional discounted cash flow analysis (DCF), a fixed prescribed rate is used to evaluate the project and choose its scale. When a fixed rate is used with DCF, a manager will ignore the effect of scale on risk and choose suboptimal capacity that reduces project value. S/he will also misestimate project value. Use of DCF for choosing scale is studied for two special cases. It is shown that if the manager is directed to use a prescribed discount rate that induces the optimal scale decision, then the manager will greatly undervalue the project. In contrast, if the discount rate is set to the risk of the optimally-scaled project, the manager will undersize the project by a small amount, and slightly undervalue the project with the economic impact of the error being small. These results underline the importance of understanding the source of financial risk in projects where risk is endogenous to the project design. [source]


Competing Mechanisms in a Common Value Environment

ECONOMETRICA, Issue 4 2000
Bruno Biais
Consider strategic risk-neutral traders competing in schedules to supply liquidity to a risk-averse agent who is privately informed about the value of the asset and his hedging needs. Imperfect competition in this common value environment is analyzed as a multi-principal game in which liquidity suppliers offer trading mechanisms in a decentralized way. Each liquidity supplier behaves as a monopolist facing a residual demand curve resulting from the maximizing behavior of the informed agent and the trading mechanisms offered by his competitors. There exists a unique equilibrium in convex schedules. It is symmetric and differentiable and exhibits typical features of market-power: Equilibrium trading volume is lower than ex ante efficiency would require. Liquidity suppliers charge positive mark-ups and make positive expected profits, but these profits decrease with the number of competitors. In the limit, as this number goes to infinity, ask (resp. bid) prices converge towards the upper (resp. lower) tail expectations obtained in Glosten (1994) and expected profits are zero. [source]


Activity-Based Pricing in a Monopoly

JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 3 2003
V. G. Narayanan
abstract In this article, I study the interaction between cost accounting systems and pricing decisions in a setting where a monopolist sells a base product and related support services to customers whose preference for support services is known only to them. I consider two pricing mechanisms,activity-based pricing (ABP) and traditional pricing,and two cost-accounting systems,activity-based costing (ABC) and traditional costing, for support services. Under traditional pricing, only the base product is priced, whereas support services are provided free because detailed cost-driver volume information on the consumption of support services by each customer is unavailable. Under ABP, customers pay based on the quantities consumed of both the base product and the support services because detailed cost-driver volume information is available for each customer. Likewise, under traditional costing for support services the firm makes pricing decisions on cost signals that are noisier than they are under ABC. I compare the equilibrium quantities of the base product and support services sold, the information rent paid to the customers, and the expected profits of the monopolist under all four combinations of cost-driver volume and cost-driver rate information. I show that ABP helps reduce control problems, such as moral hazard and adverse selection problems, for the supplier and increases the supplier's ability to engage in price discrimination. I show that firms are more likely to adopt ABP when their customer base is more diverse, their customer support costs are more uncertain, their costing system has lower measurement error, and the variable costs of providing customer support are higher. Firms adopt ABC when their cost-driver rates for support services under traditional costing are noisier measures of actual costs relative to their cost-driver rates under ABC and when the actual costs of support services are inherently uncertain. I also show that cost-driver rate information and cost-driver volume information for support services are complements. Although the prior literature views ABC and activity-based management (ABM) as facilitating better decision making, I show that ABC and ABP (a form of ABM) are useful tools for addressing control problems in supply chains. [source]


Pricing training and development programs using stochastic CVP analysis

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2005
James A. Yunker
This paper sets forth, analyzes and applies a stochastic cost-volume-profit (CVP) model specifically geared toward the determination of enrollment fees for training and development (T+D) programs. It is a simpler model than many of those developed in the research literature, but it does incorporate one advanced component: an ,economic' demand function relating the expected sales level to price. Price is neither a constant nor a random variable in this model but rather the decision-maker's basic control variable. The simplicity of the model permits analytical solutions for five ,special prices': (1) the highest price which sets breakeven probability equal to a minimum acceptable level; (2) the price which maximizes expected profits; (3) the price which maximizes a Cobb,Douglas utility function based on expected profits and breakeven probability; (4) the price which maximizes breakeven probability; and (5) the lowest price which sets breakeven probability equal to a minimum acceptable level. The model is applied to data provided by the Center for Management and Professional Development at the authors' university. The results suggest that there could be a significant payoff to fine-tuning a T+D provider's pricing strategy using formal analysis. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Moral Hazard and Optimal Subsidiary Structure for Financial Institutions

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 6 2004
CHARLES KAHN
ABSTRACT Banks and related financial institutions often have two separate subsidiaries that make loans of similar type but differing risk, for example, a bank and a finance company, or a "good bank/bad bank" structure. Such "bipartite" structures may prevent risk shifting, in which banks misuse their flexibility in choosing and monitoring loans to exploit their debt holders. By "insulating" safer loans from riskier loans, a bipartite structure reduces risk-shifting incentives in the safer subsidiary. Bipartite structures are more likely to dominate unitary structures as the downside from riskier loans is higher or as expected profits from the efficient loan mix are lower. [source]