Due to fierce competition and customer demand, manufacturers have started selling products with different warranty policies and pro-rata warranty is one of the most widely used warranty policy. In this paper we propose a warranty model for pro-rata, fixed period warranty policy with risk averse manufacturer that determines optimal warranty price under inflationary condition.This model has been proposed for products with time dependent failure intensity with Non homogeneous Poisson’s process for failure intensity function, and concave utility function. Using the exponential utility function, the decision model is developed to maximize the manufacturer’s certainty profit equivalent. Risk preference model is developed to find the optimal warranty price through the use of the manufacturer’s utility function for profit. Finally, the sensitivity of the warranty price models is analyzed using numerical examples with respect to such factors as (1) the manufacturer's risk preferences, (2) product failure rate parameters, (3) warranty period length, and (4) inflation and discount rate.

New monetary literatures widely concentrates on the importance of institutional arrangements in the effectiveness of monetary policy. The debate regarding the optimal institutional design of central banks, independence and conservatism are usually considered to be the most important ingredients for a stable and successful monetary policy. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to deal with the institutional arrangements of monetary policy especially Central Bank Independence (CBI) and Central Bank Conservatism (CBC). Indices used by Grilli et al. (1991), Cukierman (1992), Mathew (2006) and Dumiter (2009) were applied to calculate the CBI during 1961-2016, and CBC in Iran using a dynamic optimal solution under commitment in Barro-Gordon and New-Keynesian forward looking Philips Curve models. Results show that the relative concern on inflation is smaller than that on output gap for the central bank of Iran. Also results regarding the calculations of CBI based on different indices reveals the fact of insufficient independence of central bank in Iran.

It is usual for a production environment to encounter uncertainty and variable data that causes generating random parameters. Failure to pay attention to these changes will make the scheduling not adequately match the reality and cause many losses in production environments. Considering the importance of the issue, in this article we use the Robust Optimization Approach to deal with uncertainty in the aggregate production planning parameters. In this paper, in a robust model, it is assumed that the uncertainty of non-deterministic parameters is continuous and a completely new and innovative approach is proposed for Robust Optimization for risk-averse managers and then, an optimization strategy is used to examine the uncertainty. In order to investigate the model results, examples have been made in small and large sizes and the problem has been solved and analyzed using the GAMS software and Lagrange relaxation method. The results of the implementation of the proposed robust models in this paper, compared to the basic model, show that the results have more stability against uncertainty and this causes a significant reduction in risk.

This research analyzes the competition of two risk-neutral and risk-averse centralized financial chains (FCs) while the government regulates the market to prevent the disproportionately costly interest rates by eliminating unreasonable arbitration of transactions. Each FC consists of an investor and a broker, helping to fund the financial needs of the capital-constrained firms. Utilizing the Stackelberg game theory method, we formulate two-level and three-level optimization models for four potential scenarios and create an integrative structure for evaluating scenarios through the perspectives of both FCs’ risk orientations (i. e. risk-neutral and risk-averse) and two policies of the government (i. e., deregulation and regulation to mitigate the effect of arbitration). We found that under the government’ s regulation policy, risk-averse FCs cause a lower amount of arbitration than risk-neutral FCs. We also realized that the increased volume of risk-free interest rate results in less arbitration. Results also demonstrate that the regulator can organize the competing FCs in the market by enforcing limits on interest rate and restricting costly interest rates by controlling the impacts of arbitration, which ensures a steady economy and encourages the funding of capital-constrained businesses.

Background: In many sub-Saharan African countries the rate of antenatal care (ANC) has been increased but skilled birth attendance rate is still low. The objective of this study was to evaluate the reasons why women prefer home deli-very when facility based delivery is available at minimal cost.Methods: This study was conducted in Northwest Nigeria using a qualitative method (phenomenology) among five categories of women in April – May 2013. This study investigated different categories of women (those that never attend ANC nor deliver in the facility, those that attend ANC but delivered at home and those that delivered once in the facility but fail to return in subsequent deliveries, the in-laws and facilities staff).Results: Through focus group discussions and In-depth interviews several reasons why women are averse to hospital deliveries were identified. Women reported ignorance, abuse, illiteracy, and poverty, and low esteem, poor attitude of health workers, few working hours and some integrated health services like preventing mother to child transmission of HIV testing as deterrents, while cheap and accessible services were reasons for preference to traditional birth attendants.Conclusions: The findings highlighted important entrenched barriers to facility deliveries among women, which is basically socio-cultural and economic. Therefore emphasis must be given to health education program to ensure com-prehensive and target specific messages that will address individual needs of the groups.

Loss-averse behavior makes the newsvendors avoid the losses more than seeking the probable gains as the losses have more psychological impact on the newsvendor than the gains. In economics and decision theory, the classical newsvendor models treat losses and gains equally likely, by disregarding the expected utility when the newsvendor is loss-averse. Moreover, the use of unbounded utility to model risk attitudes fails to explain some decision-making paradoxes. In contrast, this paper deals with the utility maximization of the newsvendor using a class of bounded utility functions to study the effect of loss aversion on the newsvendor certainty equivalents and risk premiums. New formulas are introduced to find the utility-optimal order quantity of the normal distribution. The results show that when an exponential loss aversion exists, the classical newsvendor optimal quantity serves as a lower bound when the overage costs are high and as an upper bound when the underage costs are high. In addition, we show that high loss aversion entails higher risk premiums. Similar conclusion holds when the overage/underage costs increase. Higher standard deviations, on the other hand, mean lower utility-optimal quantities and higher risk premiums. The presented formulas are advantageous in finding the optimal order quantities and risk premiums of a stochastic short-shelf life inventory when the loss is a key factor in the decision-making process.

The goal of this research is to study how tax justice improvement is considered in financial statements preparation and calculated accounting income by inflation effects decreasing or write-off. In order to do this research methodology used in this research is a deductive-descriptive method which is confirmed by literature study to have access to the best strategy of decreasing inflation effects on accounting income. Studies show that horizontal justice as the most important dimension of tax justice is affected by accounting income distortion because of inflation effect. According to investigations two strategies are suggested to inflation effects decreasing or write-off. First, specific inflation effect decreasing accounting procedures and the other one is to utilizing inflation accounting system. Studies indicate that adjusted current cost system is the best system for general price level variation. However, studies hold that according to Iranian tax regulations, firms have to report their income on the basis of historical cost and non of the two suggested strategies are not allowed to report tax income and horizontal justice will not achieved afterward. Finally, studies indicate that if tax system does not get adjusted because of inflation, no access to tax justice will appear and firms’ wrong valuation will be occurred.