The economic criteria to be applied in selecting investments

Submitted by the International Union of Producers and Distributors of Electric Power (UNIPEDE)

América Latina y el Caribe: financiamiento de las inversiones relacionadas con los recursos hídricos en el decenio de 1980 = Latin America and the Caribbean: financing water-related investments in the eighties

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Microstructural, physical, and fluid dynamic assessment of spinel-based and phosphate-bonded investments for dental applications

This work reports the experimental evaluation of physical and gas permeation parameters of four spinel-based investments developed with or without inclusion of sacrificial fillers. Data were compared with those of three commercial formulations. Airflow tests were conducted from 27 to 546°C, and permeability coefficients were fitted from Forchheimer's equation. Skeletal densities found for spinel- (ρs = 3635 ± 165 kg/m3) and phosphate-bonded (ρs = 2686 ± 11 kg/m3) samples were in agreement with the literature. The developed investments were more porous and less permeable than commercial brands, and the differences were ascribed to the different pore morphologies and hydraulic pore sizes of ceramic matrices. The inclusion of both fibers and microbeads resulted in increases of total porosity (42.6–56.6%) and of Darcian permeability coefficient k1 (0.76 × 10−14–7.03 × 10−14 m2). Air permeation was hindered by increasing flow temperatures, and the effect was related to the influence of gas viscosity on ΔP, in accordance with Darcy's law. Casting quality with molten titanium (CP Ti) was directly proportional to the permeability level of the spinel-based investments. However, the high reactivity of the silica-based investment RP and the formation of α-case during casting hindered the benefits of the highest permeability level of this commercial brand.

Evaluation Method for Strategic Investments

Real Options Analysis (ROA) has become a complimentary tool for engineering economics. It has become popular due to the limitations of conventional engineering valuation methods; specifically, the assumptions of uncertainty. Industry is seeking to quantify the value of engineering investments with uncertainty. One problem with conventional tools are that they may assume that cash flows are certain, therefore minimizing the possibility of the uncertainty of future values. Real options analysis provides a solution to this problem, but has been used sparingly by practitioners. This paper seeks to provide a new model, referred to as the Beta Distribution Real Options Pricing Model (BDROP), which addresses these limitations and can be easily used by practitioners. The positive attributes of this new model include unconstrained market assumptions, robust representation of the underlying asset‟s uncertainty, and an uncomplicated methodology. This research demonstrates the use of the model to evaluate the use of automation for inventory control.

Gold and the Stock Market: 3 Essays on Gold Investments

This thesis gives an overview of the history of gold per se, of gold as an investment good and offers some institutional details about gold and other precious metal markets. The goal of this study is to investigate the role of gold as a store of value and hedge against negative market movements in turbulent times. I investigate gold’s ability to act as a safe haven during periods of financial stress by employing instrumental variable techniques that allow for time varying conditional covariance. I find broad evidence supporting the view that gold acts as an anchor of stability during market downturns. During periods of high uncertainty and low stock market returns, gold tends to have higher than average excess returns. The effectiveness of gold as a safe haven is enhanced during periods of extreme crises: the largest peaks are observed during the global financial crises of 2007-2009 and, in particular, during the Lehman default (October 2008). A further goal of this thesis is to investigate whether gold provides protection from tail risk. I address the issue of asymmetric precious metal behavior conditioned to stock market performance and provide empirical evidence about the contribution of gold to a portfolio’s systematic skewness and kurtosis. I find that gold has positive coskewness with the market portfolio when the market is skewed to the left. Moreover, gold shows low cokurtosis with the market returns during volatile periods. I therefore show that gold is a desirable investment good to risk averse investors, since it tends to decrease the probability of experiencing extreme bad outcomes, and the magnitude of losses in case such events occur. Gold thus bears very important and under-researched characteristics as an asset class per se, which this thesis contributed to address and unveil.