Critical decision areas in corporate financial policy

The argument in this paper rests on the assumption that the prime objective of any corporate activity must in some way be related to a profitability goal, however this may be measured, however this may be defined, and however this may be constrained by the relevance of a times-cale.

The paper makes some comments on the selection of a corporate objective or goal but mainly it considers the direct contribution that financial management can make to achievement of this goal. It distinguishes this from the accounting rôle which is more appropriately concerned with measuring and monitoring progress towards the goal.     

Multicriterion linear programming problems : (Analytical survey)

An analytical survey of man-machine interactive procedures is presented. A decision maker's capabilities to carry out some information processing operations are discussed. A list of a decision maker's elementary operations used in different interactive procedures is given and their estimations from a psychological point of view are suggested. Three main criteria for estimation of man-machine procedures are proposed: reliability of information elicitation from decision maker, insignificant sensitivity to random decision maker's errors, and good speed of convergence to solution. Some procedures are evaluated in terms of these criteria.     

A METHOD FOR SOLVING LINEAR PROGRAMS WITH VARIABLE RESOURCES

This paper is concerned with the solution of linear and linear goal programming problems in which the values of the right-hand side parameters are not fixed constants. Specifically, we are concerned with linear optimization problems in which the right-hand sides of the constraining equations are free to vary subject to a set of linear constraining equations. By formulating a relaxed linear program wherein the right-hand sides are treated as variables, we show how it is possible to solve one larger linear program that yields as a solution not only the optimal values for the decision variables, but also the optimal values for the right-hand sides.     

A RECONSIDERATION OF THE ‘GREAT RATIOS’ OF ECONOMICS

Autocorrelations are found in the disturbance terms of regressions employed by L. R. Klein and R. F. Kosobud in a global model of growth employing five celebrated ratios of economics. This paper summarizes the Klein-Kosobud conclusions, modifies them by removing the autocorrelations, and extends the model to include more recent years. The modified conclusions hold even with the added observations.     

A new heteroscedastic regression to analyze mass loss of wood in civil construction in Brazil

A heteroscedastic regression based on the odd log-logistic Marshall–Olkin normal (OLLMON) distribution is defined by extending previous models. Some structural properties of this distribution are presented. The estimation of the parameters is addressed by maximum likelihood. For different parameter settings, sample sizes and some scenarios, various simulations investigate the performance of the heteroscedastic OLLMON regression. We use residual analysis to detect influential observations and to check the model assumptions. The new regression explains the mass loss of different wood species in civil construction in Brazil.