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A substantial number of production assets in the offshore oil and gas industry are facing operation beyond their anticipated design life, thus necessitating a service life extension program in the future. Selection of the most suitable strategy among a wide range of potential options to extend the lifetime of equipment (e.g. re-using, reconditioning, remanufacturing, refurbishing and adding on safety/process control measures) remains a challenging task that involves several technical, economic and organizational complexities. In order to tackle this challenge, it is crucial to develop analytical tools and methods capable of evaluating and prioritizing end-of-life strategies with respect to their associated costs and quantifiable benefits. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper presents a life-cycle cost-benefit analysis approach to identify the most suitable life extension strategy for ageing offshore assets by taking into account all the capital, installation, operational, maintenance and risk expenditures during the extended phase of operation. The potential of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through a case study involving a three-phase separator vessel which was constructed in the mid-1970s.

The results from the application case indicate that the capital expenditure (CapEx) accounts for the largest portion of life cycle cost for the replacement strategy, while risk expenditure (RiskEx) is the major contributor to costs associated with life extension. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to identify factors having the greatest impact on the optimum life extension solution, including oil price, production rate and money interest rate.

In the past, the decisions about life extension or replacement of in-service equipment were often made in a qualitative way based on experience and judgment of engineers and inspectors. This study presents a “quantitative” framework to evaluate and compare the costs, benefits and risks associated with life extension strategies and subsequently to select the best strategy based on benefit/cost ratios.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, no studies before have applied life cycle assessment and cost-benefit analysis methods to prioritize the potential life extension strategies in the oil and gas industry sector. The proposed approach not only assists decision makers in selecting the most suitable life extension strategy but also helps duty holders reduce the costs corresponding to life extension execution.

The cotton industry has seen many technological advances throughout history that have greatly decreased the number of labor hours required to produce a bale of cotton. The latest advancement is a harvesting system that replaces the harvester, boll buggy, and module builder with a single machine. This is an asset replacement decision where there are multiple assets being replaced but the old technology (the defender assets) may all have different remaining lives and optimal lifespans. The purpose of this paper is to find the optimal time to replace the multiple defender assets with a single challenger asset (the improved technology). The goal is to determine if the ages of the boll buggy and the module builder affect the replacement age of the conventional picker.

The paper extends the Perrin model to allow for multiple defender assets.

The paper finds that the supporting assets do sometimes affect the decision to replace a conventional cotton picker. If the supporting assets are newer, then the replacement decision may be delayed and if the supporting assets are older then the replacement decision may be accelerated. Field efficiency can affect the decision as well.

While the Perrin model has been used extensively, the authors believe the application to a multiple asset defender is unique. Although this type of replacement decision is not common, there could be other applications as new technology is introduced on the farm.

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential and cost of policy incentives for individuals to defer public pension (social security) claims.

Using Internet survey experiments, the impacts of introducing three potential policies to defer public pension claims are examined: (1) a tax incentive for private term pension premiums, (2) a tax incentive for private term pension benefits and (3) a tax disincentive for financial asset holdings. Effectiveness of information provision regarding projection of future financial assets is also examined.

Tax incentives have a certain impact on deferment of public pension claims. Among incentives, increase of benefits is the most effective one. Providing information regarding future financial assets reduces incentives.

This study is original in measuring cost for delaying public pension claims according to incentives and information provision.

The present study empirically compares maintenance practices under asset performance management (APM), employed by firms in developed and developing countries (Belgium and Kenya, respectively).

Empirical observations and theoretical interpretations on maintenance practices under APM are delineated. A comparative cross-sectional survey study is conducted through an online questionnaire with 151 respondents (101 Kenya, 50 Belgium). Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics like independent t-test and phi coefficient were used for analyzing the data.

In both countries, reduction of maintenance and operational budget, return on assets, asset ageing and compliance aspects were established as critical factors influencing the implementation of asset maintenance and performance management (AMPM). A significant difference in staff competence in managing vibration, ultrasound and others like predictive algorithms was found to exist between the firms of the two countries. The majority of firms across the divide utilize manual and computer-based tools to integrate and analyse various maintenance data sets, while standardization and maintenance knowledge loss were found to adversely affect maintenance data management.

The study findings are based on the limited number of returned responses of the survey questionnaire and focused on only two countries representing developed and developing economies. This study not only provides practitioners with the practical guidelines for benchmarking, but also induces the need to improve the asset maintenance strategies and data application practices for asset performance management.

The paper provides insights to researchers and practitioners in the articulation of imperative effective maintenance strategies, benchmarking and challenges in their implementation, considering the different operational context.

The paper contributes to theory and practice within the field of AMPM where no empirical research comparing developed and developing countries exist.

The purpose of this paper is to design a framework for asset data management in power companies. The authors consider asset data management from a strategic perspective, linking operational-level data with corporate strategy and taking into account the organizational context and stakeholder expectations.

The authors conducted a multiple case study based on a literature review and three series of in-depth interviews with experts from three Russian electric power companies.

The main challenge in asset data management for electric power companies is the increasing amount and complexity of asset data, which is frequently incomplete or inaccurately collected, hard to translate to managerial language, focused primarily on the operational level. Such fragmented approach negatively affects strategic decision-making. The proposed framework introduces a holistic approach, provides context and accountability for decision-making and attributes data flows, roles and responsibilities to different management levels.

The limitations of our study lie in the exploratory nature of case study research and limited generalization of the observed cases. However, the authors used multiple sources of evidence to ensure validity and generalization of the results. This article is a first step toward further understanding of the issues of transformation in power companies and other asset intensive businesses.

The novelty of the framework lies in the scope, focus and detailed treatment of asset data management in electric power companies.

I find that median wealth plummeted over the years 2007–2010, and by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply from 2007 to 2010. Relative indebtedness continued to expand from 2007 to 2010, particularly for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. In fact, the average debt of the middle class actually fell in real terms by 25 percent. The sharp fall in median wealth and the rise in inequality in the late 2000s are traceable to the high leverage of middle-class families in 2007 and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after remaining more or less stable from 1983 to 2007, widened considerably between 2007 and 2010. Hispanics, in particular, got hammered by the Great Recession in terms of net worth and net equity in their homes. Households under age 45 also got pummeled by the Great Recession, as their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply from 2007 to 2010.

This paper is about best practice in managing legacy drainage assets to support sustainable urban regeneration. The purpose of this paper is to describe best practice sewer asset management (AM) and to adjust the current reactive maintenance approach for sewers, to one that accommodates long-term operational and town planning needs. The development of an improved sewer deterioration model (DM) provided an important tool for this.

This research adopts a mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches to analyse a total network length of 24,252 km which represents 703,156 records of historic sewer structural condition inspection data. This was used to build an improved DM. These models were used as inputs into a proactive AM approach that improves upon recommendations in the Sewerage Rehabilitation Manual developed by Water Research Centre.

This is a paradigm shift and goes beyond the current culture of OFWAT (Water Services Regulation Authority) supervision, five-year asset management period and occasional environmental penalties. A new legislative model may be needed; especially because a report by UKWIR (Water Industry Research) in 2015 identified that nationally the rate of sewer network deterioration is outpacing available investment and significant health problems may arise in addition to those from developmental pressures.

The authors have researched and managed old sewer networks and present a review of the new issues raised by intensive development, particularly for the London region, but applicable elsewhere, and how these must lead to a modified risk, and novel incentive-based approach to AM, if the system is not to fail.

Large, legacy databases of several decades of sewer network performance records have been combined and analysed as stratified, heterogeneous sets with Gaussian distributions; thereby improving on previous assumptions of homogeneous data. The resulting rigorous DMs are the foundation of new approaches to sustainable risk management of large urban networks.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences in KiwiSaver portfolio composition between investors who receive financial advice and those who do not.

Using proprietary data which contain information of 405,107 individual KiwiSaver accounts, this paper examines who receives advice, compares the asset allocations of advised accounts with non-advised accounts, explores the relation of asset allocation with demographic characteristics and compares differences in returns between advised and non-advised investors.

Three key findings are presented in this paper. First, female investors, relatively older investors and investors with higher levels of funds under management (invested wealth) are more likely to receive financial advice. Second, advised investors hold more equity assets. Third, differences in performance between advised and non-advised accounts are marginal.

Panel data are not used, which prohibit investigating asset allocation choices overtime. The time series for returns is short, as KiwiSaver has only been operating since 2007. The total portfolio that people own is not known; thus, the values on investment fund information do not represent the total wealth of each person, as other accounts elsewhere may exist.

There are broad implications for the New Zealand capital market, retirement policy, financial advice industry and development of financial literacy programmes.

The paper examines individual investor behaviour on a nationwide sample and explores how receiving financial advice relates to asset allocation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance.

This paper performs an empirical test on the association between CSR and financial performance of a firm.

The regression analysis reveals a significant and positive association between CSR and financial performance. In addition, it finds that the age of long‐term assets is highly correlated with CSR.

This paper extends Cochran and Wood by using a larger and more recent sample to examine the association between CSR and financial performance of a firm. It contributes to the CSR literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between leverage and firm performance using small business data from France by estimating the effects of leverage on both average firm performance and the variance of firm performance.

Focusing on French small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which tend to be dependent on bank loans, the authors examine the relationship between leverage and firm performance. This study was based on a unique panel data set of more than 2,157 manufacturing SMEs covering the years 2007-2015. The authors estimate the effects of leverage on both average firm performance and the variance of firm performance.

Focusing on the average effects of leverage, the authors find that highly leveraged firms suffer from poor performance. In addition, the variance in firm performance is higher if firms are highly leveraged. Results also underline that leveraged firms are better performers when they have sufficient collateral assets.

The study, however, has also some limitations. The first one is that the findings were obtained for only one industry sector, so attempts should be made to study the issue, as it applies to other sectors as well. Second is the context where the study was conducted. This study has been conducted based on data gathered from SMEs in France within a specific socioeconomic context (2007-2008 global financial crisis), which may also limit the generalizability of the results for different contexts with different socioeconomic situations. It would also be useful, to have a better explanation for the performance of SMEs, to add to the model more financial variables or other types of variables such as those related to managerial skills or to the macro-economic environment. Finally, further research could examine the joint impact of both leverage and ownership structure on firm’s performance as a large number of French firms are family firms. The limitations of this study, however, can in fact be an opportunity for future researchers to conduct studies addressing those limitations.

This research has some implications for small business lending. SME owners and managers may, on the one hand, be encouraged by the fact that collateral assets can reduce agency costs, thereby positively affecting firm performance. On the other hand, high leverage can facilitate firm growth if firms have collateral assets. This implies that policymakers interested in stimulating SMEs should develop more suitable collaterals for high-risk SMEs with low asset tangibility.

The results also have implications for financial institutions. To prevent unexpected and extensive bankruptcies, banks might classify firms with negative cash flows as borrower in danger of bankruptcy. However, the results show that highly leveraged firms with good investment opportunities and high collateral assets reduce the probability of bankruptcy. This implies that banks need to evaluate the credit risk of very highly leveraged small businesses more carefully.

It should be noted that the case of France remains marginal in terms of the conducted studies.