Um die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung Berlins nach der Wiedervereinigung zu verstehen, ist ein Blick auf die Geschichte notwendig. Die Teilung der Stadt nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg führte zur Isolation der regionalen Wirtschaft. Zahlreiche Unternehmen verließen Berlin und siedelten sich in West-Deutschland an. Die Bundesrepublik und die DDR subventionierten West- und Ost-Berlin. Berlin gehörte noch zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts zu den größten Wirtschaftsmetropolen Europas und der Welt, zu Beginn der Jahrtausendwende war die deutsche Hauptstadt nur eine normale Großstadt im Herzen Europas. Der regionale Strukturwandel der Wirtschaftsleistung in Berlin vollzog sich dabei in drei Phasen: Einem schnellen Aufschwung nach der Wiedervereinigung von 1991 bis 1995, einer Phase der Stagnation von 1996 bis 2004 sowie einem robusten Wachstum von 2005 bis 2010. Die sektorspezifische und gesamtwirtschaftliche Betrachtung der Shift-Share-Analyse stellen für den Zeitraum von 1991 bis 2010 dar, dass sich die deutsche Hauptstadt bei der Bruttowertschöpfung in jeweiligen Preisen und der Erwerbstätigkeit schlechter entwickelt hat als der Bundesdurchschnitt. Das lag bei beiden Kennzahlen an standortspezifischen Faktoren. Aus diesen Ergebnissen lassen sich drei Thesen ableiten: Die Geschichte prägte die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in der deutschen Hauptstadt, Berlin ist zu einer Dienstleistungsmetropole vor allem wegen des starken Rückgangs des produzierenden Gewerbes geworden und das wirtschaftliche Wachstum der Stadt ist seit dem Jahr 2005 nachhaltig. Mittlerweile sind zahlreiche Unternehmen, die in einzelnen Branchen und Nischen Weltmarktführer sind, in Berlin tätig. Diese Unternehmen sind vor allem in Zukunftsbranchen ansässig und bilden das Gerüst für die weitere Entwicklung Berlins. Durch die starke Diversifizierung der regionalen Wirtschaftsstruktur mit relativ vielen kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen ist die deutsche Hauptstadt weniger anfällig für konjunkturelle und strukturelle Krisen. Das hat die Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise gezeigt. Mit der aktiven Förderung von Zukunftsfeldern durch eine abgestimmte Cluster-Strategie mit dem Land Brandenburg hat Berlin die Weichen für einen wirtschaftlichen Aufschwung der gesamten Region gestellt. / In order to understand Berlins‘ economic development after the reunion, it is necessary to look into the history of the city. Its division after the second world war induced its isolation within the regional economy. Numerous firms left Berlin and settled down in West-Germany. The federal republic and the GDR subsidized West- and East-Berlin. At the beginning of the 20th century Berlin was one of Europe’s’ and the World’s greatest commercial capitals. At the turn of the millennium however, the German capital was nothing more but a big city at the heart of Europe. In Berlin, the economy’s regional restructuration took place in three phases: a rapid boom after the reunion from 1991 til 1995, stagnation from 1996 til 2004 and finally a robust growth from 2005 til 2010. The sector specific and macroeconomic consideration by shift-share-analysis show a beneath average development of the German capitals’ gross value of prices and employment from 1991 til 2010. This was due to location specific factors. Three hypotheses can therefore be derived: the economic development of the German capital was defined by its history, due to the decreasing amount of manufacturing firms Berlin has become a metropolis in the service sector and the economic growth of the city can be considered as sustainable since 2005. Meanwhile, many firms which are world market leaders in different sectors have their headquarters or seat in Berlin. These firms are mainly active in future oriented sectors and build the frame for Berlins’ sustainable development. The strong diversification of the regional economic structure with many small and middle sized firms, make the German capital less prone to cyclical and structural crises. The economic and financial crisis confirmed this. Berlin and Brandenburg have together, by a common cluster strategy in the active advancement of future oriented sectors, put in place a way to economic boom.

The following doctoral thesis, sponsored by Autostrada del Brennero S.p.A. (an Italian highway concession company in charge of managing toll roads) consists on empirical essays at the crossroad between transport and regional economics. They focus on different aspects that directly involve motorways (i.e, safety, intermodality, and commuting dynamics) and they are aimed at providing further evidences that transport institutions and policy makers could take into account throughout their decision-making processes. The first chapter presents a research article that seeks to determine the impact of an average speed enforcement system in reducing highway accidents. Indeed, at the end of 2005, Autostrade per l'Italia (ASPI) and the Italian traffic police progressively deployed along the Italian tolled motorway network an average speed enforcement system, named Safety Tutor, able to determine the average speed of vehicles over a long section to encourage drivers to comply with speed limits and improve safety. To empirically test the extent to which Safety Tutor led to a reduction in both total and fatal accidents on Italian highways during the period of 2001-2017, we carried out a generalized difference-in-differences estimation using a unique panel dataset that exploits the heterogeneous accident data within all tolled motorway sectors in a quasi-experimental setting. To deal with the potential endogeneity of the non-random placement of Safety Tutor sites, we utilized an instrumental variable strategy by using the network of motorway sectors managed by ASPI and its controlled concessionaires from 2005 onwards (i.e., when the technology was available) as an instrument to predict Safety Tutor adoption. We found that a 10% increase in Safety Tutor coverage led to an average reduction in total accidents of 3.9%, whereas there is no evidence of a significant causal effect of Safety Tutor in reducing fatal accidents. The second chapter presents a research article that seeks to investigate the inter-modal competition between motorway and high-speed rail (HSR) services, as the extent to which HSR demand could be the result of a modal shift from motorways is a relevant issue in any cost-benefit analysis of HSR investments. Indeed, the development of HSR has had a notable impact on modal market shares on the routes on which its services have been implemented. To analyse whether the HSR expansion in Italy has led to a modal shift from motorway to HSR, we empirically test i) whether HSR openings adjacent to motorway sectors have reduced the total km travelled by light vehicles on these sectors during the period 2001-2017; and ii) whether this reduction has been persistent or even more evident after the opening of on-track competition between two HSR operators. To do so, we carried out a generalized difference-in-differences estimation, using a unique panel dataset that exploits the heterogeneous traffic data within all tolled motorway sectors in a quasi-experimental setting. Our findings reveal that neither HSR openings nor the opening of on-track competition led to a modal shift from motorway to HSR services, as the two transport modes are non-competing. Conversely, HSR expansion had a slightly positive impact on motorway traffic. The third chapter presents a data article in a “data in brief” format that describes a dataset on municipality-to-municipality commuting patterns in Italy over the 1991, 2001, and 2011 censuses aimed at investigating the role of transport infrastructures and the structural transformation of the economy on worker mobility. At this purpose, a core origin-destination dataset on the number of workers moving between municipalities, or within the same municipality, has been linked with further municipality covariates on jobs location, population, and the distances in meters and journey times in minutes between all municipalities. Even though these data are freely available online, they require some tedious work to organize. Therefore, this data article brings the necessary information together and makes the dataset available on request. The dataset offers applied researchers an alternative source of information to shed new lights on the changing shape of urban systems by analysing i) the impact of infrastructural endowment in providing better job accessibility, or ii) the connection between increasing commuting patterns and the structural transformation of the economy due to the tertiarization process from 1991 to 2011.

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal. / In this thesis, we deal with three particular issues in the literature on nonstationary time series. The first essay deals with various unit root tests in the context of structural change. The second paper studies some residual based tests in order to identify cointegration. Finally, in the third essay, we analyze several tests in order to identify additive outliers in nonstationary time series. The first paper analyzes the hypothesis that some time series can be characterized as stationary with a broken trend. We extend the class of M-tests and ADF test for a unit root to the case where a change in the trend function is allowed to occur at an unknown time. These tests (MGLS, ADFGLS) adopt the Generalized Least Squares (GLS) detrending approach to eliminate the set of deterministic components present in the model. We consider two models in the context of the structural change literature. The first model allows for a change in slope and the other for a change in slope as well as intercept. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the tests as well as that of the feasible point optimal test (PF-Ls) which allows us to find the power envelope. The asymptotic critical values of the tests are tabulated and we compute the non-centrality parameter used for the local GLS detrending that permits the tests to have 50% asymptotic power at that value. Two methods to select the break point are analyzed. A first method estimates the break point that yields the minimal value of the statistic. In the second method, the break point is selected such that the absolute value of the t-statistic on the change in slope is maximized. We show that the MGLS and PTGLS tests have an asymptotic power function close to the power envelope. An extensive simulation study analyzes the size and power of the tests in finite samples under various methods to select the truncation lag for the autoregressive spectral density estimator. In an empirical application, we consider two U.S. macroeconomic annual series widely used in the unit root literature: real wages and common stock prices. Our results suggest a rejection of the unit root hypothesis. In other words, we find that these series can be considered as trend stationary with a broken trend. Given the fact that using the GLS detrending approach allows us to attain gains in the power of the unit root tests, a natural extension is to propose this approach to the context of tests based on residuals to identify cointegration. This is the objective of the second paper in the thesis. In fact, we propose residual based tests for cointegration using local GLS detrending to eliminate separately the deterministic components in the series. We consider two cases, one where only a constant is included and one where a constant and a time trend are included. The limiting distributions of various residuals based tests are derived for a general quasi-differencing parameter and critical values are tabulated for values of c = 0 irrespective of the nature of the deterministic components and also for other values as proposed in the unit root literature. Simulations show that GLS detrending yields tests with higher power. Furthermore, using c = -7.0 or c = -13.5 as the quasi-differencing parameter, based on the two cases analyzed, is preferable. The third paper is an extension of a recently proposed method to detect outliers which explicitly imposes the null hypothesis of a unit root. it works in an iterative fashion to select multiple outliers in a given series. We show, via simulation, that under the null hypothesis of no outliers, it has the right size in finite samples to detect a single outlier but when applied in an iterative fashion to select multiple outliers, it exhibits severe size distortions towards finding an excessive number of outliers. We show that this iterative method is incorrect and derive the appropriate limiting distribution of the test at each step of the search. Whether corrected or not, we also show that the outliers need to be very large for the method to have any decent power. We propose an alternative method based on first-differenced data that has considerably more power. The issues are illustrated using two US/Finland real exchange rate series.

Text in German / The present work deals with the historical and theological foundations of radical evangelicalism and places it within the context of theologies which influenced it and are similar to it. Radical evangelicalism integrates insights from various theological roots into a evangelical basal concept. Radical theology succeeded, through its contextual outworking, in overcoming the narrow focus of European evangelical theology and yet it remains genuinely evangelical. It is in the position of breaking through the sterility of academic theology and the dualistic worldview which is peculiar to wide parts of the evangelical movement by a world view that is turned towards the world. Thus it is proving itself to be a highly relevant theology for the needs of a divided world. The work develops in three steps. First of all the historical development of radical evangelicalism will be traced, from its beginning at the Congress for world evangelism in Lausanne in 1974 to the present day. Thus it will become clear that in the 30 years since Lausanne radical theology has entered the mainstream of evangelicalism. There follows in a detailed section a setting out of the theology of radical evangelicalism by means of several chosen themes. It will deal with radical hermeneutics, eschatology, salvation, the meaning of mission and evangelism and the relationship between Gospel and culture. Finally the social action of radical evangelicalism will be set out and it will be demonstrated that its energetic theology is at its basic level in fact a driving sprituality. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Missiology)

Energy management has been an important function of organisations since the oil crisis of the mid 1970’s led to hugely increased costs of energy. Although the financial costs of energy are still important, the growing recognition of the environmental costs of fossil-fuel energy is becoming more important. Legislation is also a key driver. The UK has set an ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target of 80% of 1990 levels by 2050 in response to a strong international commitment to reduce GHG emissions globally. This work is concerned with the management of energy consumption in buildings through the analysis of energy consumption data. Buildings are a key source of emissions with a wide range of energy-consuming equipment, such as photocopiers or refrigerators, boilers, air-conditioning plant and lighting, delivering services to the building occupants. Energy wastage can be identified through an understanding of consumption patterns and in particular, of changes in these patterns over time. Changes in consumption patterns may have any number of causes; a fault in heating controls; a boiler or lighting replacement scheme; or a change in working practice entirely unrelated to energy management. Standard data analysis techniques such as degree-day modelling and CUSUM provide a means to measure and monitor consumption patterns. These techniques were designed for use with monthly billing data. Modern energy metering systems automatically generate data at half-hourly or better resolution. Standard techniques are not designed to capture the detailed information contained in this comparatively high-resolution data. The introduction of automated metering also introduces the need for automated analysis. This work assumes that consumption patterns are generally consistent in the short-term but will inevitably change. A novel statistical method is developed which builds automated event detection into a novel consumption modelling algorithm. Understanding these changes to consumption patterns is critical to energy management. Leicester City Council has provided half-hourly data from over 300 buildings covering up to seven years of consumption (a total of nearly 50 million meter readings). Automatic event detection pinpoints and quantifies over 5,000 statistically significant events in the Leicester dataset. It is shown that the total impact of these events is a decrease in overall consumption. Viewing consumption patterns in this way allows for a new, event-oriented approach to energy management where large datasets are automatically and rapidly analysed to produce summary meta-data describing their salient features. These event-oriented meta-data can be used to navigate the raw data event by event and are highly complementary to strategic energy management.

Une des marques du développement est la résorption du décalage entre la distribution spatiale de l’activité économique et celle de la population. Cette thèse étudie les conséquences d’une telle résorption sous l’effet de la migration ou d’une redistribution géographique de l’activité économique. Le premier chapitre s’intéresse à la relation entre migrants internationaux et foyers d’origine. Il met en lumière l’importance, pour les envois de fonds et les investissements, des croyances des migrants et de l’asymétrie d’information, aggravée par la distance, entre migrants et destinataires de ces envois. Le deuxième chapitre explore la transformation de l’économie d’accueil sous l’effet d’un afflux de migrants venus des campagnes en ville, en Chine. Il mesure d’abord leur impact sur le marché du travail à destination, puis examine comment ils affectent l’allocation des facteurs de production et les contraintes rencontrées par les entreprises sur les marchés du travail et du capital. Le troisième chapitre étudie l’impact sur le long terme d’un vaste programme d’industrialisation réalisé en Chine, et montre un retour de fortune. Ce renversement est imputé aux distorsions introduites sur le marché du travail local par la présence de grands complexes manufacturiers. Ce chapitre met en évidence le rôle de la migration pour surmonter ces imperfections et amener l’étape ultérieure de la transformation structurelle : le passage de l’industrie lourde à la production de biens de consommation et de services. / A key characteristic of the process of economic development is the shrinking spatial mismatch between economic activity and population. This thesis analyzes what happens when this spatial mismatch is reduced, as people’s places of residence and work or the geographical distribution of economic activity is altered. Chapter I deals with the relationship between international migrants and their households of origin. It sheds light on the importance for remittances and investments of migrants' beliefs and the information asymmetry between remittance senders and recipients that distance aggravates. Chapter II explores the transformation of the receiving economy due to an influx of rural-to-urban migrants in China. It first quantifies the effect of immigrants on the labor market at destination, and then investigates their impact on the reallocation of production factors and factor-market constraints faced by urban firms. Chapter III focuses on the long-term impact of a large industrialization plan in China. It reveals a reversal pattern due to the distortions in local labor markets induced by the presence of big plants. It highlights the role of migration in overcoming such imperfections and in bringing about the later stage of structural transformation—from heavy industry to consumption goods and services.

This study is a contribution to the limited knowledge of how different types of media content (about Muslims and extremism) posted and shared on Facebook might influence corresponding user comments. Through analyzing the discourse of user comments this study aims to identify how comments might reflect certain characteristics of Islamophobia, and to which themes in Facebook posts commentators relate to the most. The linguistic analysis is guided by the use of critical discourse analysis. For the purpose of this study, three different types of articles/video and the corresponding comments are analyzed. Two of the articles/video that I will analyze are from unreliable media sources, and one of the articles is from a credible media source. The linguistic analysis showed that the majority of commentators expressed that they believe the claims made in the articles/video about Muslims and extremism are true. The discourse analysis further showed, the majority of articles/video and the majority of the analyzed corresponding comments reflected the [in the study] defined characteristics of Islamophobia. My findings confirmed similar studies done in the past.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-21T18:53:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lucas Stiegler Ribeiro.pdf: 498760 bytes, checksum: 74d931442efdc4e3e5b729a86d5c6b76 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-06-02 / The "Pinhão" bagasse, a residue from the starch extraction, has similar rheological characteristics to the main product. Many sources of starch modifications are investigated for various botanical sources, and worth mentioning, the enzymes modifications have been extensively studied due to their potential to form products with minimal waste. The study aims to characterize and modify the "Pinhão" bagasse, obtained after the starch extraction, using enzymatic treatment at different times. The centesimal composition results were very similar between the treated and untreated samples. Through the TG-DTA curves, it was observed the three characteristic steps of starch samples and confirmed their degradation complexity by the appearance of an asymmetric deformation ("shoulder") in some samples. DSC had an increase in the To and a decrease of Tp, Tc and ΔHgel for the modified samples. In RVA it was observed an increase of retrogradation after the modification. Most of the X-ray diffractograms of the ‘’pinhão’’ bagasse samples have shown starch A-type pattern. The SEM was confirmed an isolation of the starch granules of other compounds as fibre and protein, which were present in the native sample.The enzymatic treatment approached the properties of the bagasse to ones of the ‘’pinhão’’ starch, with similarities among the studied properties.With the obtained results , it can be affirmed that this treatment technique of the ‘’pinhão’’ bagasse may aggregate value to this biomass, which will increase the efficiency of the starch extracted from the Araucaria seed. / O bagaço de pinhão, resíduo decorrente da extração do amido desta semente, tem características reológicas similares ao produto principal. Muitas modificações em amidos foram investigadas de várias origens botânicas. As modificações enzimáticas têm sido extensivamente estudadas devido ao seu potencial de formar produtos com o mínimo de desperdício. Esse estudo teve como objetivo caracterizar e modificar o bagaço de Pinhão obtido após a extração do amido, usando tratamento enzimático por 12, 24 e 36h. Os resultados da composição centesimal foram muito similares entre as amostras tratadas e não tratadas. Por meio das curvas TG-DTA foram observadas as três etapas características da perda de massa para amostras de amido, confirmando a complexidade da degradação pela aparência de uma deformação assimétrica (ombro) nessas amostras. No DSC foi observado um aumento no valor de To e uma diminuição de Tp, Tc e ΔHgel para as amostras modificadas. Na análise RVA foi observado um aumento na retrogradação depois da modificação. A maioria dos difratogramas das amostras de bagaço de pinhão foram semelhantes aos padrões de amido do tipo ‘A’, característico de cereais, como milho e trigo. As micro-imagens MEV confirmaram o isolamento dos grânulos de amido dos outros compostos, como fibra e proteína, que estão presentes na amostra nativa. O tratamento enzimático possibilitou a aproximação das propriedades do bagaço às do amido de pinhão, com semelhança entre as propriedades estudadas. Com os resultados apresentados pode-se afirmar que esta técnica de tratamento do bagaço do pinhão pode agregar valor a essa biomassa, o que poderá aumentar o rendimento de amido extraído da semente da Araucária.

Educational institutions have not yet succeeded in their quest to formally educate Aboriginal students with success. In an effort to increase the graduation levels, many school districts have implemented mandates to hire more Aboriginal teachers and administrators. Through sharing her lived experience as an Indigenous elementary principal the researcher argues that although many bureaucratic organizations have formal policies to hire Aboriginal people into leadership positions, they still seek to maintain their power to keep the status quo in their organizations. This qualitative autoethnographic study acknowledges Indigenous ways of knowing through the sharing of stories and experience. The experiences will highlight emotional and cultural struggles that one can face when differing cultures and values emerge in a bureaucratic system based on colonialist viewpoints. Due to the vantage point of an insider, the researcher has traced her life from childhood and shared experiences and stories as a mixed-blood Mohawk woman and leader in the education system. Through an examination of signifying moments these stories depict a personal struggle for identity in her role as a female Mohawk principal in a school with a predominant Aboriginal student population. Chosen stories and incidents are recounted to reveal the social, political, historical, institutional, and cultural systems that are embedded within society. Both the researcher and her mother’s stories are universal in terms of experience that transcends understanding among Aboriginal people who are aiming to create organizational change. This genre of qualitative research will allow the reader to see the ongoing transformation that has occurred in the researcher’s first five years as an administrator in the public school system. Her upbringing and her mother’s teachings are internalized and become the catalyst for navigating through turbulent times and allow for continuing growth as an Indigenous leader in education. / Graduate

In this dissertation, I focus on the development and application of nonparametric methods in econometrics. First, a constrained nonparametric regression method is developed to estimate a function and its derivatives subject to shape restrictions implied by economic theory. The constrained estimators can be viewed as a set of empirical likelihood-based reweighted local polynomial estimators. They are shown to be weakly consistent and have the same first order asymptotic distribution as the unconstrained estimators. When the shape restrictions are correctly specified, the constrained estimators can achieve a large degree of finite sample bias reduction and thus outperform the unconstrained estimators. The constrained nonparametric regression method is applied on the estimation of daily option pricing function and state-price density function. Second, a modified Cumulative Sum of Squares (CUSQ) test is proposed to test structural changes in the unconditional volatility in a time-varying coefficient model. The proposed test is based on nonparametric residuals from local linear estimation of the time-varying coefficients. Asymptotic theory is provided to show that the new CUSQ test has standard null distribution and diverges at standard rate under the alternatives. Compared with a test based on least squares residuals, the new test enjoys correct size and good power properties. This is because, by estimating the model nonparametrically, one can circumvent the size distortion from potential structural changes in the mean. Empirical results from both simulation experiments and real data applications are presented to demonstrate the test's size and power properties. Third, an empirical study of testing the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis is conducted in a functional-coefficient cointegration model, which is consistent with equilibrium models of exchange rate determination with the presence of trans- actions costs in international trade. Supporting evidence of PPP is found in the recent float exchange rate era. The cointegration relation of nominal exchange rate and price levels varies conditioning on the real exchange rate volatility. The cointegration coefficients are more stable and numerically near the value implied by PPP theory when the real exchange rate volatility is relatively lower.