O objetivo desta dissertação foi analisar o mercado de saúde suplementar no Brasil e avaliar as regulamentações da Agência Nacional de Saúde Suplementar – ANS, órgão regulador do setor, no contexto da teoria da informação assimétrica. Para tanto, utilizou-se a teoria da informação assimétrica através dos problemas de seleção adversa e risco moral a fim de analisar os problemas regulatórios. Também foram levantados dados e referenciais teóricos do mercado de planos de saúde no Brasil, principalmente no que se refere a sua regulação e suas implicações. A revisão bibliográfica deste trabalho indica que diversos estudos já evidenciaram a presença de assimetria de informação no mercado de saúde suplementar. A avaliação econômica de quatro resoluções normativas da ANS também corrobora para com essa evidência e explicam a presença de seleção adversa e risco moral evidenciados da literatura. Este trabalho conclui que a regulação desse mercado falhou, no que tange a redução das falhas de mercado, mais precisamente com relação com relação à assimetria de informação, onde sua presença tornou-se mais acentuadas com suas constantes intervenções, comprometendo a sustentabilidade do mercado e reduzindo o nível de bem-estar econômico. / The objective of this dissertation was to analyze the health insurance market in Brazil and evaluate the regulations of the National Health Agency - ANS, regulatory agency, in the context of the theory of asymmetric information. Therefore, we used the theory of asymmetric information through the problems of adverse selection and moral hazard in order to analyze the regulatory problems. Also data and theoretical of the health insurance market benchmarks in Brazil, especially in relation to regulation and its implications were raised. The literature review of this work indicates that several studies have demonstrated the presence of asymmetric information in the supplementary health market. The economic evaluation of four legislative resolutions ANS also corroborates with this evidence and explain the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard evidenced literature. This paper concludes that the regulation of the market has failed, as regards the reduction of market failures, specifically with respect with respect to information asymmetry, where their presence has become more pronounced with their constant interventions, compromising the sustainability of the market and reducing the level of economic welfare.

O setor de saúde suplementar brasileiro operou desde os anos de 1940 sem regulação. Em 1998, o governo estabeleceu a regulação deste setor. Na regulamentação das atividades foram estabelecidas a ilimitação do número de consultas médicas, proibição de seleção de risco, entre outras medidas. O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar se a regulação resultou em aumento do número de consultas médicas por parte dos subscritores de planos de saúde, ou seja se ocorreu aumento do risco moral ex-post. Além disto, analisar alterações nos determinantes da demanda por posse de plano de saúde antes e após a regulação visando encontrar indícios de seleção adversa. Para isto, foram utilizados quatro métodos econométricos: regressão de Poisson, regressão binomial negativa e regressão quantílica de dados de contagem e um modelo Probit. O estimador de diferenças-em-diferenças foi utilizado para estimar o impacto da regulação sobre o número de consultas médicas. O modelo de regressão Probit foi utilizado para analisar os determinantes da demanda por posse de plano de saúde. Os dados utilizados provêm da Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra de Domicílios de 1998 (antes da regulação) e 2003 (depois da regulamentação). Os dados foram divididos por sexo e também pelo perfil epidemiológico, sendo selecionados os dados daqueles indivíduos que declararam ser portadores de doença renal crônica. Os resultados dos modelos mostraram que após a regulamentação ocorreu um aumento geral do número de consultas. Contudo, o sinal da principal variável de interesse, a dummy associada ao efeito da regulamentação sobre o número de consultas médicas dos subscritores de planos de saúde foi negativo e estatisticamente significativo - tanto no caso dos homens como no das mulheres - , nos três modelos e nas duas amostras. Isto indica que após a regulamentação ocorreu uma redução do número de consultas médicas dos possuidores de planos de saúde em relação àqueles que não possuíam plano de saúde. O uso da regressão quantílica possibilitou mostrar que o número de doenças crônicas e a posse de um plano de saúde são os fatores que mais afetam o número de consultas. Permitiu também mostrar que os efeitos dos regressores são diferentes entre os sexos e que não são uniformes ao longo dos quantis. Os resultados dos modelos para dados de contagem mostraram que, mesmo quando se controlam as características epidemiológicas, existe risco moral, antes e após a regulamentação. Os resultados do modelo Probit sugerem a existência de seleção adversa após a regulamentação, pois mostram que os indivíduos com maior número de morbidades têm maior probabilidade de adquirir um plano de saúde. Em suma, os resultados mostraram que após a regulamentação ocorreram dois importantes problemas no mercado de saúde suplementar: seleção adversa e risco moral. A conjunção destes dois problemas pode comprometer a sustentabilidade do setor de saúde suplementar brasileiro. / The Brazilian private health insurance sector operated since 1940’s without regulation. In 1998, the government established the regulation of this sector. The reform improved the health insurance coverage level, stating no limit to physician visits and forbiddance of the cream skimming, among others measures. The objective of this thesis is to investigate if the regulation resulted in an increase of physician visits from consumers of health insurance, that is to say, if there has been an increase of moral risk ex-post. Besides, to investigate alterations in the determinants of demand for the health insurance - before and after the regulation - seeking to find evidence or clues of adverse selection. Four econometric methods have been used for this: Poisson Regression, Negative Binominal Regression and Quantile Regression for counts and Probit Regression. The estimator of difference-in-difference was used to estimate the impact of regulation on the amount of physician visits. The Probit model regression was used to analyze the determinants of the demand for health insurance. The data used come from the 1998 Brazilian Household Survey (Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra de Domicílios-PNAD) (before the regulation) and 2003 (after the regulation). The data was divided by gender and also by the epidemiologic characteristics, selecting the data of those individuals who declared being bearers of chronic renal disease. The results of the models showed that, after the regulation, there was a general increase in the amount of consultations. However, the sign of the main variable of interest (year*regulation), the dummy associated to the effect of the regulation on physician visits of the consumers of health insurance, was negative and statistically significant – both in men and in women – in the three models and in both samples. These results suggest that after the regulation there was a reduction in the amount of physician visits of the consumers of health insurance in relation to those who did not hold a health insurance plan. The results of Probit Regression showed that after regulation there is adverse selection, since the number of chronic diseases variable after regulation was positive and statistically significant. The use of quantile regression for counts made possible showing that the number of chronic diseases and the possession of a health insurance plan are the factors which mostly affect the amount of consultations. It also allowed showing that the effects of regressors are different between the genders and also that are different in different parts of the outcome distribution. The results for the models for count data showed that, even when controlling the epidemiologic characteristics, there is a moral hazard, before and after the regulation, since individuals covered by insurance had more physician visits. The results of the Probit Model suggest the existence of adverse selection after a regulation, since it shows that individuals with a higher number of morbidities, are more likely to buy a health insurance plan. In sum, the main findings suggest that after the regulation there are two important problems: adverse selection and moral hazard. The conjunction of these two problems may generate inefficient outcomes and might compromise the sustainability of the Brazilian private health insurance market.

O objetivo desta dissertação foi analisar o mercado de saúde suplementar no Brasil e avaliar as regulamentações da Agência Nacional de Saúde Suplementar – ANS, órgão regulador do setor, no contexto da teoria da informação assimétrica. Para tanto, utilizou-se a teoria da informação assimétrica através dos problemas de seleção adversa e risco moral a fim de analisar os problemas regulatórios. Também foram levantados dados e referenciais teóricos do mercado de planos de saúde no Brasil, principalmente no que se refere a sua regulação e suas implicações. A revisão bibliográfica deste trabalho indica que diversos estudos já evidenciaram a presença de assimetria de informação no mercado de saúde suplementar. A avaliação econômica de quatro resoluções normativas da ANS também corrobora para com essa evidência e explicam a presença de seleção adversa e risco moral evidenciados da literatura. Este trabalho conclui que a regulação desse mercado falhou, no que tange a redução das falhas de mercado, mais precisamente com relação com relação à assimetria de informação, onde sua presença tornou-se mais acentuadas com suas constantes intervenções, comprometendo a sustentabilidade do mercado e reduzindo o nível de bem-estar econômico. / The objective of this dissertation was to analyze the health insurance market in Brazil and evaluate the regulations of the National Health Agency - ANS, regulatory agency, in the context of the theory of asymmetric information. Therefore, we used the theory of asymmetric information through the problems of adverse selection and moral hazard in order to analyze the regulatory problems. Also data and theoretical of the health insurance market benchmarks in Brazil, especially in relation to regulation and its implications were raised. The literature review of this work indicates that several studies have demonstrated the presence of asymmetric information in the supplementary health market. The economic evaluation of four legislative resolutions ANS also corroborates with this evidence and explain the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard evidenced literature. This paper concludes that the regulation of the market has failed, as regards the reduction of market failures, specifically with respect with respect to information asymmetry, where their presence has become more pronounced with their constant interventions, compromising the sustainability of the market and reducing the level of economic welfare.

Multi-target incentive contracts are widely observed in practice to stimulate salesforce effort. However, little is known about their effectiveness and the issues involved in designing them. In this thesis, we investigate the incentive contracting problem between a manufacturer and an agent when the realized sales of a product are affected by both the agent's selling effort and the type of the agent. The agent's type is uncertain to the manufacturer, whereas the agent can observe the actual type when exerting her selling effort. Again, this is unobservable by the manufacturer. For contract design problem, we develop a principal-agent model with both moral hazard and adverse selection. We examine the manufacturer's optimal contract parameter decisions employing a single multi-target contract for the agent who can be of different types. Because menu contracts are commonly studied in literature for the adverse selection problem, we also study a menu of single-target contracts; and examine the manufacturer's optimal contract parameter decisions. We then compare the performance between the two types of contract. We arrive at a number of managerial insights regarding the design and the performance of multi-target contract and menu contract.

Nous prenons l’approche d’annonce des salaires avec la recherche d’emploi à étudier trois problèmes dans le marché du travail. Le premier problème concerne l’arrêt de travail prématuré des travailleurs. Tel arrêt de travail prématuré crée des risques de chiffre d’affaires pour les entreprises, donc les entreprises veulent proposer des profils de salaire pour minimiser ces risques. Dans ce problème, l’asymétrie de l’information joue un rôle important. Nous adoptons une approche du mécanisme design et considérons les différents timings auxquels l’information privée est réalisée. Dans un papier de suivi, nous proposons une politique d’Age spécifique par laquelle cette inefficacité peut être atténuée, et étudions son implication sur le bien-être et la production globale. Dans le deuxième problème, nous revisitons l’analyse du bien-être de l’impact de la discrimination sur le choix des compétences sous une norme d’embauche multidimensionnelle le long des caractéristiques qui sont soit liées à la productivité soit indépendantes de la productivité. Nous montrons comment l’investissement de compétences stratégique entre le groupe favorise et discrimine se pose. Nous comparons également deux mécanismes de détermination des salaires (salaire annoncé et négocié) pour vérifier la robustesse de résultats. Dans le troisième problème, nous considérons dans quelle mesure l’allocation de chômage et le salaire minimum peuvent corriger les répartitions inefficaces découlant du pouvoir de marche des firmes. Notre contexte concerne les petits marchés ou le ratio travailleurs/firmes ne soit pas grand. L’imperfection de marche vient du fait qu’au marché du travail à petite échelle les firmes paient un niveau de salaire moins que le niveau compétitif. Nous procédons à partir d’un point de vue d’organisation industrielle, et proposons en se concentrant sur la mauvaise répartition d’emploi et de surplus lors de l’analyse de l’efficacité de l’instrument de la politique. / We take the wage posting approach with search friction to study three issues in labor market. The first issue concerns the premature quitting of workers. Our framework is suitable for contexts such as disability shock, retirement, maternity leaves etc. Such premature quitting creates turnover risks for firms, hence the firms propose wage profiles to minimize or avoid it. In this issue, the asymmetric information plays an important role. We adopt an approach of mechanism design and consider different timings at which the private information is realized. In a follow-up paper, we propose an age-directed policy by which this inefficiency can be alleviated and study its implication on welfare and aggregate output. In the second issue, we revisit welfare analysis of impact of discrimination on skill choice under a multi-dimensional hiring norm along both productivity-related and -unrelated characteristics. We show how strategic skill investment between favored and discriminated group arise. We compare also two wage determination mechanisms (posted and bargained wage). In the third issue, we consider to which extent can the roles of unemployment benefit and minimum wage correct inefficient allocations arising from firms’ market power. Our context concerns small markets where the workers/firms ratio is not large. The market imperfection comes from the fact that in such a small market firms pay less than competitive level of wages. We proceed from an industrial organizational perspective and suggest focusing on both misallocation of labor and surplus when analyzing the effectiveness of the policy instrument.

The presence of toxic order ow and predatory HFT strategies in a multi-market setting are scarcely researched in the academic world. This thesis studies the toxicity levels of a set of markets by examining unconsolidated quote data and firm specific trade data. A method for deducing the markets toxicity levels is presented along with proxies for toxic order ow, namely: changes in spread and quoted volume, following a trade in a given market. We find both signs of toxicity and different toxicity levels between the markets. However, the results are lacking in statistical significance but they show that this field is of great interest for further research. Also, the methods proposed for deducing the toxicity levels are rudimentary but could serve well as a premise for further development. / Närvaron av toxic order flow och predatoriska HFT-strategier i en flermarknadsmiljö är föga studerat i den akademiska världen. Denna avhandling studerar detta på en uppsättning marknader genom att undersöka okonsoliderad quote data och firma specifika trades, och på så vis ta fram marknadernas toxicity-nivåer. En metod för att fastställa marknadernas toxicity-nivåer presenteras tillsammans med proxys för toxic order flow, mer specifikt: förändringar i spread och quotad volym, efter en handel på en given marknad. Vi finner både tecken på toxicity och olika toxicityniv åer mellan marknaderna. Resultaten saknar dock statistisk signifikans men de visar ändå på att detta område är av stort intresse för ytterligare forskning. De metoder som föreslås för att fastställa toxicity-nivåerna är rudimentära, men kan tjäna som en utgångspunkt för vidare utveckling.

The thesis examines factors that influence sustainability and success of microfinance institutions in Ghana. The topic is important, particularly in poverty stricken Africa, where microfinance institutions play a significant role in supporting governments¿ initiatives to reduce/alleviate poverty. The developed model is tested using data collected from 14 face-to-face interviews and 114 questionnaires. The data is analysed using different techniques- descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and regression analysis. The research design and scale of the study are appropriate to both the problem addressed and doctoral level research. A number of factors in the model developed were found to be influencing the sustainability and success of microfinance institutions. A model was proposed that seeks to offer an explanation of sustainability and success of Microfinance Institutions in Ghana. The proposed model identified five categories being: institutional characteristics, agency costs, business strategy, environment/governance and success. Single factor analysis established positive relationships between sustainability and all the five factors but placed more emphasis on three out of the five factors namely; success, business strategy and environment/ governance. Multiple factor analysis established no significant differences in the sustainability with respect to the type of MFI, ownership and source of funding. Multiple Regression which allows for the testing of theories or models established a significant relationship between the Operational Self Sufficiency (OSS) and the predictors, especially the drop-out rate of clients and average loans. The Subsidy Dependence Index (SDI) was calculated for the various types of MFIs and the result was a high dependency ratio especially among the FNGOs. Though the dependency is on the decline, it is very slow indicating that most MFIs will depend on subsidies for a very long time to come. Finally it was observed that the relatively high interest rates charged by most of the MFIs tended to defeat the purpose for which the microfinance movement came about. Not only did the study confirm the research model, but it also revealed that most owners did not exhibit a deep sense of involvement and used general knowledge to practice in Ghana. The study concluded that success factors, business strategy, and environment/governance were the most critical of the sustainability factors in Ghana. It is therefore important that managers develop institutional capacities especially in managing the agency problem effectively if they have to be sustainable and successful.

Having the author been involved in banking and finance for almost 25 years, this thesis intends to reflect on the role of banks with emphasis on cross border lending and credit rating, their effectiveness and the impacts of cultural differences. Perhaps this would not differ substantially from a researcher or a scholar, yet the exploratory approach taken in this research will be somewhat different as it deliberately seeks to answer a number of questions relevant to practitioners in today’s banking. In trying to achieve this goal, this thesis hopefully may find its way to international bankers wondering about the perspectives of their business in general and their profession in specific. It even may perhaps improve the understanding of their clients. The Basel committee which published the new Basel II framework on bank regulation and supervision was the result of long and careful discussions, wide consultations and comprehensive impact studies. Whereas Basel II covers the entire risk profile and supervision of financial institutions, this research is limited to the cross border lending by banks to companies and provides the views from both practicing international bankers and their customers on their 3 expectations regarding Basel II, credit rating and the relevance of context and culture differences. Bankers all over the world are being trained on how to read balance sheets, yet less attention is being paid as to by whom they are being created and how precisely these balance sheets came into existence, other than the accountancy standards applied. Bankers furthermore seem to agree on the fact that credit risks in large part are related to the management competencies, effective corporate governance and integrity of management and organization. The argument could be made that the assessment of management capabilities, governance and integrity may be hindered in those cases where the culture is little understood. In a three days conferences titled; “The Future of Relationship Banking”, 80 senior executives from international banks and large companies were gathered in Punta del Este, Uruguay and were asked to speak about these aspects. A transcript of the conference is provided as annex to this thesis (Annex 1) and serves to triangulate the findings of the research. Main findings of three management papers were presented by the researcher during the conference. A survey was performed during the conference and in addition, through an online survey, in total over 100 practitioners in the field participated in the survey. Results show a variation of conclusions, but very especially seem to confirm the view, contrary to the approach taken in Basel II, that cultural differences and context are felt to be highly relevant in cross border lending.

This paper aims to analyze the phenomenon of adverse selection of its presence and potential short-term impact on the Swedish stock market. Adverse selection refers to a situation where information asymmetry among market participants might lead to potential imbalances in information and unfairness among all market participants. The primary objective of this paper is to determine and analyze the potential existence of adverse selection and to explore its effects on the short-term trading volume before announcements.  This study's research design and approach are through data collection, to analyze the relationship between traded volume and disclosures. Five highly traded stocks, Atlas Copco AB, Evolution AB, Swedbank AB, Hexagon AB and AB Volvo are selected for the analysis, representing different sectors. A historical data analysis method and event studies are being used to identify abnormal fluctuations in trading volume before announcements. Data on volume and stock prices are collected over one year, between 11 May 2022 - 11 May 2023. By utilizing various statistical methods and econometric techniques, abnormal volume fluctuations before announcements could be measured and analyzed.  This paper concludes the existence of short-term adverse selection on the Swedish stock market cannot confidently be determined considering this analysis only, as indicated by nonsignificant abnormal fluctuations in the short-term trading volume before announcements. However, the results of the data collection in the period between 11 May 2022 - 11 May 2023, on five high-market capitalization companies, still emphasize and illuminate the importance of ensuring and maintaining efficient and fair markets.

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