Browsing by Author "Perera, S.S.N."

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    Development of an Actuarially Fair Crop Insurance Model for Paddy Fields in Hambantota and Ampara Districts
    (Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Wickramaarachchi, W.P.T.M.; Perera, T.N.S.; Perera, S.S.N.
    Note: See the PDF Version Sri Lanka, like most of the countries in the Asian region has an agricultural economy and plays a huge role in the nation's economy and social development. Rice is the dominant food in Sri Lankan society for thousands of years, according to many historical sources. That was identified by all the governments came into power after 1948 and has implemented various programs to develop the rice production in the country. At present rice has become the staple food of the 19 million people in Sri Lanka and its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is approximately 18%. It is the livelihood of more than 1.8 million farmers and more than 30% of the total labor force is directly or indirectly involved in the paddy field sector. Agro-Climatically, the year is divided into two seasons coinciding with the monsoons as "Maha" and "Yala" and rice lands are cultivated in these two seasons. But annual losses in paddy field sector is huge in Sri Lanka due to unexpected bad weather, adverse prices of paddy, damages from insects and other various diseases. If the farmers come across with huge losses, they are helpless and always looking for a financial assistant from an external party. All over the world, the use of Crop Insurance as a risk management tool has grown rapidly in recent years (Munich Re, 2009). In most countries, this kind of insurance policy was introduced almost four decades ago. But Sri Lanka, even though we have a great agriculture history, still been seeking for a proper insurance program to fulfill poor farmers by financing them if they incurred a loss in their paddy production. This research is based on development of a Group Crop Insurance Model for paddy field sector in Hambantota and Ampara districts by using farm visited data gathered in the month of June, 2011.The samples were not randomly selected according few limitations. Our budget was not satisfactory to conduct a huge survey by assigning reasonable number of human resources. The other main problem we came across was the limited available time. However, two samples with sample sizes of fifty were selected from each districts such that Damana division in Ampara and Tissamaharama division in Hambantota.
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    Forecasting Foreign Direct Investment Inflow to Sri Lanka: Hybrid ARIMA-Neural Network model
    (Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Perera, S.S.N.; Karunathunge, G.N.; Chathurdarshi, G.T.B.G.
    Note: See the PDF Version FDI is known as that "Investment made by multinational business enterprises in foreign countries to control assets and manage production activities in those countries" (Bashier and Talal, 2007). Foreign direct investment consists of three major components. Those are equity capital, reinvestment earnings and other capital used in various intra company debt transactions. In 1977, the Sri Lankan government made changes in its economic policies to establish an investment friendly economic environment. Sri Lanka reached its highest FDI inflow of US dollars 752.2 million in 2008. The objective of the research is to build a model to forecast future FDI inflow to Sri Lanka. Research has been carried out using different methods such as the univariate ARIMA model (Bashier and Talal, 2007), the double exponential smoothing model (Kumar et al., 2009) and the neural network model (Pradhan, 2010) to forecast FDI inflow to other countries. To the best knowledge of the authors, this study could be the first to forecast FDI inflows in Sri Lanka using a combination of an ARIMA model and a neural network model. In this study, an ARIMA model is fitted through the Box-Jenkins procedure and then the back propagation neural network procedure is applied to remove the lack of accuracy due to the small sample size. The data set employed consists of annual foreign direct investment inflow to Sri Lanka from 1978 to 2010.
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    Promoting Value-added Tourism in Sri Lanka using Michael Porter’s Value chain model
    (Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Perera, S.S.N.; Fernando, M.T.N.; De Silva, Y.R.P.
    Note: See the PDF Version Tourism has been identified as one of the booming industries in Sri Lanka. In fact, revenue of U.S. $ 585m is projected to be earned through tourism in 2011. The study focuses on adding value to the tourism industry whenever it is possible. Michael Porter's value chain analysis (1985) has been used as the key model in identifying the value triggers. While the research reveals many positive aspects of the tourism industry as a whole, there are main weaknesses such as the inappropriate behavior of the locals at the presence of tourists that tarnishes the image of the country. For a tourism-based economy to sustain itself in local communities, the residents must be willing partners in the process. Their attitudes toward tourism and perceptions of its impact on community life must be continually assessed (Allen et al., 1988). Value addition in this industry should be viewed as a collective effort. The extent of vertical integration of the value chain is very significant for a number of the international tour operators (Kreag. 2001).Tourism businesses depend Extensively on each other as well as on other businesses, government and residents of the local community (Stynes., 1999). All the human resources, services and the products that tourists consume should be reviewed to ensure that they are willing to pay extra for the satisfaction that they receive. These linkages, however, only benefit the local economy if local products and services contribute significantly to the value added (Granzin & Jesupatham., 1999). On the other hand, it is the responsibility of the country to ensure that the revenue thus generated retains in the country. The long-term sustainability of tourism rests on the ability of community leaders and tourism professionals to maximize its benefits and minimize its costs. The achievement of maximum value addition in tourism by stimulating the synergies between the public sector agencies and ministries that impact on tourism is compounded by the fact that the role of the private sector will also have to be taken into consideration.
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    Quality evaluation of an Airline: A Modeling Approach
    (Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Perera, S.S.N.; Dissanayake, Suranga; Pradeep, B.N.P.
    Note: See the PDF Version The delivery of high quality service became a marketing requirement among air carriers as a result of competitive pressure. Empirical studies on demand for airline services show that service quality is central to the choice of airlines fot both business and leisure travelers (Bureau of Transport and communications Economics, 1994). According to Butler and Keller (1992), only the customer can truly define service quality in the airline industry. Some argue that quality in the airline industry is difficult to describe and measure due to its heterogeneity, intangibility and inseparability. Most of the work done on service quality has assumed the attributes of service quality are independent. However, intuitively it would seem that many of attributes have some degree of inter-dependence which is not properly evaluated using conventional additive measures. This study aims to evaluate the service quality of an airline using a mathematical modeling approach. Service quality is a composite of different attributes; among them many intangible attributes are difficult to measure. Factor analysis is initially used to extract some independent common factors and fuzzy measures were calculated to evaluate the performance of inter-dependent attributes in each common factor. The study also examines the positioning of the airline relative to three other airlines. A pair-wise comparison approach was adopted to determine the relative weights between each factor to position the three airlines. The result suggests that other than a few service attributes like In-flight entertainment and seating comfort, passengers are satisfied with most of the attributes.