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Budgets in organisational units are considered to be traditional management support tools. On the other hand, budgetary control is the essence of control measures, allowing for the increase in the efficiency of an enterprise through appropriate allocation of resources. The methodology used in the analysis of budget variances (obtained as a result of applying budgetary control) undoubtedly influences the management efficiency of almost every organizational unit. The authors indicate a research gap of methodological and application nature in the area of risk measurement in the analysis of budget variances. Therefore, the aim of the article is to create universal and flexible models enabling probabilistic quantification of the risk of budget variance regardless of the nature of the cost, the person budgeting and the budgeting unit. Extreme value theory was used to develop the model. The results of the work are models allowing for the estimation of the limit level of deviation for assumed probabilities and models determining the level of deviation for a given probability level. The application of these models in budgetary control will allow for a synthetic assessment of the degree of budget execution in the company, comparing the quality of budget execution over time as well as between units, defining the limits of materiality of budget variances. For the purpose of model verification, the authors have used budget variances of cost energy consumption, which have been determined on the basis of empirical distributions obtained from data coming from the system of budgetary control implemented at a university located in a larger European city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Management Issues / Problemy Zarządzania is the property of Problemy Zarzadzania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In order to verify some hypotheses concerning decision-making in risky choice, we conducted two experiments with real payoffs (although nonmonetary). The purpose of the article was answering following questions: does the present status influence behavior in risky choice? Does the difference in scenarios (gain/loss) influence behavior? Are people willing to pay more for insurance than an expected value of a loss (paying for transferring risk)? Is there any relationship between ability to earn and risk attitude? Our experiments show that it is possible that people taking decisions involving risk not always act the way to maximize wealth (in our case points), sometimes they are happy enough when they achieve some level of wealth. We also found that people act in a different way when they know how much is missing to achieve their goal and when they do not. Based on the obtained results, we can also say that most people are risk averse. Even in the gain scenario, people were ready to give back so many points to get the rest for sure, that what remained was less than the expected value. It is possible that there is some relationship between risk attitude and ability to get (earn) wealth in another way than lottery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The maximum daily fl ows in the Oder river from the period of 1971 to 2013 were analyzed in Malczyce hydrological station. From the entire data set the maximum annual fl ows were selected and their empirical distributions were fi tted against the three theoretical distribution models: Gumbel, Frechet and the lognormal. The presented case of probabilistic fl ood risk analysis for the Oder catchment in Lower Silesia may become an effective fl ood risk assessment tool. The results may be employed to probability assessment of certain events related to fl ood risk and also to compare the fl ood risk in selected catchment regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Although some hypotheses that attempt to explain the variation in supraorbital region morphology in modern humans have been proposed, this issue is still not well understood. In this study, the craniofacial size and spatial models were tested using a sample of modern human crania from geographically diverse populations, and the co-occurrence of the degrees of glabella (GL) and superciliary arch (ST) expression were analyzed. The two supraorbital structures were examined by visual assessment, and eight quantitative variables were included in the three-way ANOVA, canonical variates analysis and partial rank correlation. The influences of sex and the region of origin of the cranial samples on the relationships between the examined variables and the degrees of supraorbital structures expression were also considered. The results only partially supported the craniofacial size and spatial models and suggested that GL and ST experienced separate influences during development. In the sample of all crania, the neurocranial size more strongly influenced the morphological variation of the ST than of the GL, and sex influenced both of these structures the most. The results suggest that sex may be the main factor (having an influence independent of the other traits) on the morphological variation of the GL and ST. Am J Phys Anthropol 156:110-124, 2015 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Econometrics / Ekonometria is the property of Sciendo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Econometrics / Ekonometria is the property of Sciendo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Financial Sciences / Nauki o Finansach is the property of Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wroclawiu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Measuring the probability of flood risk is a key issue in the economics of natural disasters. This discipline studies actual and potential effects of natural disasters on the functioning of economic systems. In traditional economic understanding, it is assumed that both the decision making processes and market processes operate within a certain level of access to information. It is also assumed that the effects of certain phenomena are predictable. However, a natural disaster is difficult to predict. It is hard to predict the time of its occurrence, its impact, direct exposure to its effects and finally, its social and economic results. Exposure to a random hazard, combined with the amount of damage resulting from its potential materialization, is called risk. In this study, the authors focus on presenting a method for quantification of the random element of flood risk. We are using measurement data for cross-border areas between Poland and Germany who witnessed a flood of the century in the 1990s. The empirical data illustrate the usefulness and universality of probabilistic quantification methods for flood risk analysis. The analysis of water level is interesting in a much broader context than the hydrological-economic one. In Central Europe, river water level is immediately connected with two other disaster-like phenomena: drought and heavy rainfall. Also, the course of the Oder river is typical for North European Plain. Therefore, the conclusions presented by the authors are universal by nature and describe certain broader phenomena. Employment of methods of probabilistic quantification using extreme values yields very interesting results: flood risk changes dynamically. Five-year period measurements themselves indicate that there are periods of relatively low exposure of the areas to the disaster (with negligible probability 0.02) and periods of disproportionately high risk increase. The risk of exceeding alarm levels and warning levels changes rapidly, reaching as much as 30% in some locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to investigate whether the variation in breadth of the cranial base among modern human populations that inhabit different regions of the world is linked with climatic adaptation. This work provides an examination of two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that the correlation between basicranial breadth and ambient temperature is stronger than the correlation between temperature and other neurocranial variables, such as maximum cranial breadth, maximum neurocranial length, and the endocranial volume. The second hypothesis is that the correlation between the breadth of the cranial base and the ambient temperature is significant even when other neurocranial features used in this study (including the size of the neurocranium) are constant. For the sake of this research, the necessary neurocranial variables for fourteen human populations living in diverse environments were obtained from Howells' data (except for endocranial volume which was obtained by means of estimation). The ambient temperature (more precisely, the mean yearly temperature) of the environments inhabited by these populations was used as a major climatic factor. Data were analysed using Pearson correlation coefficients, linear regression and partial correlation analyses. The results supported the two hypotheses, thus suggesting that ambient temperature may contribute to the observed differences in the breadth of the cranial base in the studied modern humans.