Sharif Digital Repository

“Sustainable development” is a frequently used phrase, but the idiom has been experienced little since it was coined by the Brundtland, due to its intrinsic complications. The issue is going to compromise two key components; economy and ecology. One of the solutions based on concept of sustainable development that has been proposed for maintaining water quality at acceptable levels is to cap pollutant emissions at a sustainable level, then establish an economic market in which the right to discharge pollutants is traded according to market supply and demand mechanisms. Water quality trading or pollution trading is one such kind of market-based program that has also been described using names... 

Today service sector is an important part of economy in many countries and it accounts for a great portion of GDP in developed countries. The importance of the service sector has led to an expansion in research worldwide on services. Service has some unique specifications that make it different from product and research in this field is more challenging than production field. Pricing is one of the great challenges in service sector. Due to its intangibility and perishability, managing and pricing of service is complicated and ervice firms consistently seek for method and approaches to better manage their demand, capacity and prices. Advance sale is an effective approach which is commonly... 

In recent years capital requirement has become an important matter between financial institutions in developed countries. The reason lies in the increasing need for evident information from performance and financial status of institutions in order to maximize efficiency of financial markets. Another reason is that by increasing financial instruments in market, institutions face more risks in their operations so they need enough capital to cover the upcoming risks in future. In insurance market this requirement becomes more essential because first, in insurance companies customers are who are expected to receive their loss from the insurer and insurance company is under debt to its customers.... 

In this work, effects of information aggregation on risk attitude of Iranian individuals is being studied through two experiments. In these experiments a risk-free asset with a guaranteed revenue and a risky asset is introduced to each individual. Then the individual has to allocate a certain amount of money between two assets. In both experiments three treatments of control, separation and aggregation are defined in a way that the degree of information aggregation increases respectively. Given the specific treatment assigned to each individual, complementary information is presented, in orderto finalize the decision. Next a financial market simulation for a five year horizon is conducted to... 

Portfolio is a collection of different stocks for investment. The investors' objectives in portfolio formation are to get the highest return against exposure to the lowest risk. Portfolio Optimization Problem is one of the most complicated problems in investment and finance. It may be simply explained as follows: Let's imagine a set of N stocks for selection. We would like to see what percentage of the total amount of investment should be dedicated to each stock to maximize portfolio's total return and minimize its total risk.
Portfolio Optimization Problem is a NP-Hard problem and generally there exists no polynomial-time deterministic algorithm to find a precise solution to such a... 

Asset management involves making decisions related to selecting the most cost-effective asset improvement strategies. There is an increasing interest of risk-based approaches in the field of asset management. During the asset life various risk factors might influence the asset performance and the maintenance cost, therefore, it is important to incorporate these risk factors, which affect the necessity and timing of various activities. This study develops a systemic risk-based asset management methodology (framework) to manage the maintenance of infrastructure assets. This paper presents an overview of uncertainty problems in cost estimating of bridge in the future and also discusses... 

Risk management, one of the knowledge areas in project management, plays a key role in the success of projects in today’s unstable situation. The massive cost reduction achieved by risk management can manifest its importance even more in huge construction projects in gas and oil industry such as developments of power plants and petrochemical complexes. In this research, the effect of considering the correlation between risks and consequently the effect of risk action plans on other risks in their execution cost reductions has been demonstrated. A questionnaire has been designed, many experts have been interviewed, and using statistical methods, the risks’ interdependencies have been... 

Volatility of returns in financial markets is a potential source of market risk. The volatility either is originated from fundamentals or transmitted from other financial markets. Present study aims to empirically investigate upward and downward risk spillover between the returns of chemical and pharmaceutical shares over 28/Mar/2009 and 01/Nov/2014. We use Hong et al. (2003) causality test approach as econometric tool. Our findings reveal that the most accurate modeling procedure for return’s volatility is GJR-GARCH with skewed GED distribution for error terms. Also, inferring the causality tests confirm presence of causality from chemical toward pharmaceutical market returns  

Recent years of capitalism bold role and the competitive environment of variant fields of our life, sparking the idea which considers the electricity (one of the most crucial human requirement) as a commodity of a competitive market to be traded between confident subscribers by easy access. Therefore, by converting the exclusive structure of electricity supply system to a competitive one, some new roles are created to fulfill the electricity generation, transmission and distribution processes. Retail is one of the new roles, defined as a power system restructuring development helper by support of electricity trading, which can be involved in different transactions according to the market... 

The main aim of this project is to develop a model for risk assessment of energy service companies (ESCO) using energy efficiency and emission trading markets. For this purpose, structure of the market has been developed and then by explaining the interactions between ESCO and other members of the market, ESCO's cash flows have been determineded. In the next stage, probability distribution of the cash flows have been extracted and risk assessment have been performed. The differences in energy prices coming from subsidies is the foundation of this market. In this market, ESCO will sell the saved energy rights which has been achieved in the low price level sector to the other sector with high... 

The present survey study aims at investigating and comparing risk indices in highway and freeway projects implemented through Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) and Design-Bid-Build (DBB) delivery methods. In this regard, two distinct questionnaires were developed (one for BOT and one for DBB delivery method) and interviews were conducted, too. The questionnaires were, then, sent to the target population, i.e. all the experts and agents involved in highway and freeway construction projects implemented through either BOT or DBB method. The collected data were then submitted to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 22.00, to be analyzed. The results showed that risks had generally... 

This research is about raffles held by firms. Nowadays raffles are used by some firms as a mean to attract more customers and obtain more profit to the extent that they compete on their prize instead of their price. In order to investigate this phenomenon, we introduce a model based on spatial competition. This model explains the reason firms have incentive to offer raffles when consumer is risk neutral. According to this model we conclude competing on prize reduces consumers’ surplus considerably. Because of this, the intervention of policy maker can prevent the reduction in consumers’ surplus  

Knowledge Based Firms are considered to be important for the economic development of a country in regards to both employment growth and innovative activity. The latter is believed to contribute significantly to the increase in productivity and therefore the competitiveness of Iran’s economy. This study contributes to the above literature by investigating the factors that are believed to treat the growth of such firms in Iran. The purpose of this study is to identify functional risks of vital signs monitors via Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) method to use as a guide for manufacturers to identify and control hazards. Therefore, 30 knowledge based firms were selected as sample. Then, based on a... 

Due to the importance of hazardous materials (hazmat) transportation, this problem should be programmed and solved appropriately. Hazardous materials are substances that may endanger the health of humans, animals and the environment. One of the most important parameters in hazmat transportation problem is risk, since other routing researches don’t involve risk as an influencing parameter. In the scientific literature of the transport of hazardous materials, the risk is defined by the calculation of the probability and severity of damage to the endangered recipient through unwanted warnings from hazardous substances. In the model of this research, the accident rate is considered as the... 

In this research, portfolio risk management methodology has been developed based on the portfolio management standard. This document is applicable as a template and standard for the organizations managing their projects in a portfolio structure since the methodology is based on portfolio standards and risk management, and it is being benefitted from their synergy. The most essential goal of portfolio management is to protect the organization against damages and to prepare it for responding to risks. In order to realize the goal of portfolio risk management, a well-developed and operational framework shall be provided. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to express the details of the... 

In earthquake-prone communities, the post-earthquake functionality of hospitals is crucial. Hospitals can dramatically reduce earthquake casualties if they can remain functional and retain service continuity. A variety of earthquake-induced problems such as damage to hospital components, unavailability of medical staff, disruption in medicine supply, and failure of supporting infrastructure systems can negatively affect the functionality of a hospital. Hospital administrators and facility managers require appropriate tools to assess the effect of these problems on hospital functionality. This research presents a probabilistic framework to assess the functionality of hospitals following... 

This study provides a probabilistic framework for assessing and quantifying flood damage to infrastructure. This framework models the state of the community's infrastructure after the occurrence of possible floods in five steps. The first step is to model the hazard using a set of models that determine the characteristics of potential floods. The second step is to model and estimate the damage to community buildings and infrastructure. In the third step, infrastructure serviceability is modeled. The infrastructures that are modeled in this study are water distribution network, power network, transportation networks and industrial facilities for processing agricultural products. In the fourth... 

this research aims to identify interests, goals, and structures which involve privatization. The importance of this research is that the root of numerous firms' inefficiency after privatization lies in the privatization process. The goals of privatizing firms are to improve the efficiency of privatized firms, maintain employment levels, and finally raise funds from privatizing public firms. It could be some conflicts between these goals. On the other hand, managers of public firms will resist privatizing these firms, because they will see their job situation and future in danger. Also, the privatization organization is one of the economic ministry’s subsets which has not enough power and... 

The fundamental objective of this study is to present seismic hazard, risk and resilience assessment of a virtual city using sampling and agent-based simulation in two levels of refinement. In this context, hazard is the exceedance probability of ground shaking intensity, risk is exceedance probability of measures such as loss, and resilience is the ability to quickly recover after a hazard event. This study utilizes the Rtx risk and resilience assessment framework established at the Center for Infrastructure Sustainability and Resilience Research (INSURER) at Sharif University of Technology. This framework employs multiple interacting probabilistic models to quantify the risk and...