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Traditional one-price-for-all extended warranties do not differentiate customers according to their risk attitudes, usage rates or operating environment. These warranties are priced to cover the cost of high usage customers who experience more failures and are willing to pay a risk premium for their risk aversion. This makes traditional warranties economically unattractive to low usage customers and those who are less risk averse. Residual value warranties can help address these issues. Residual value warranties refund a part of the upfront price to customers who have zero or few claims according to a pre-determined refund schedule. However, a warranty with residual values may induce strategic claim behavior as customers may prefer to pay for small failures out of pocket rather than to claim failures now and give up potential refunds later. Taking into account the claim behavior and risk attitudes of customers, we design and price residual value warranties. In a constant absolute risk aversion model, we characterize customers' optimal claim strategy as well as the structure of the net value and support cost for residual value warranties. Surprisingly, the total support cost to the service provider, including repair cost and refund, is lower for more risk-averse customers under the residual value warranties, while their willingness-to-pay is higher. This implies potential profitability of residual value warranties. Moreover, residual value warranties, as contingent contracts, can better price discriminate customers than traditional warranties. We identify conditions under which residual value warranties are strictly more profitable than traditional warranties in a homogeneous market, as well as in heterogeneous markets differing in various dimensions, such as risk attitude, failure rate and repair cost.

The first part of this two-volume set is a highly practical text on how to best approach real-life computations. Coverage includes IT, NIC, corporation tax, CGT, stamp taxes and VAT. Useful guidance tools include Q&As, cross-referencing and comprehensive indexing for fast, effective research. Worked examples are complemented by detailed explanatory notes and there are step-by-step guidelines on the layout of computations. Written by tax experts who are renowned not only for their technical skills but also for their ability to explain complex tax issues in clear and simple terms. Required reading for all students in professional tax examinations.

For those who like adventure. The Flowers go camping on dangerous Volcano Island. Mary Gold wanders off and loses her way.

The essays that comprise Elusive Archives raise a common question: how do we study material culture when the objects of study are transient, evanescent, dispersed or subjective? Such things resist the taxonomic protocols that institutions, such as museums and archives, rely on to channel their acquisitions into meaningful collections. What holds these disparate things together here are the questions authors ask of them. Each essay creates by means of its method a provisional collection of things, an elusive archive. Scattered matter then becomes fixed within each author’s analytical framework rather than within the walls of an archive’s reading room or in cases along a museum corridor. This book follows the ways in which objects may be identified, gathered, arranged, conceptualized and even displayed rather than by “discovering” artifacts in an archive and then asking how they came to be there. The authors approach material culture outside the traditional bounds of learning about the past. Their essays are varied not only in subject matter but also in narrative format and conceptual reach, making the volume accessible and easy to navigate for a quick reference or, if read straight through, build toward a new way to think about material culture.

The first part of this two-volume set is a highly practical text on how to best approach real-life computations. Coverage includes IT, NIC, corporation tax, CGT, stamp taxes and VAT. Useful guidance tools include Q&As, cross-referencing and comprehensive indexing for fast, effective research. Worked examples are complemented by detailed explanatory notes and there are step-by-step guidelines on the layout of computations. Written by tax experts who are renowned not only for their technical skills but also for their ability to explain complex tax issues in clear and simple terms. Required reading for all students in professional tax examinations.