No description available.

This dissertation is a collection of essays (chapters) on behavioral economics. Behavioral economics—arguably one of the most influential innovations in economics over the last 20 years—is a research paradigm introducing psychologically more realistic assumptions into economics. A common theme throughout the dissertation is the focus on either biased beliefs, or heterogeneous preferences, or both. The first chapter serves as an introduction to some themes in behavioral economics and its implications for market outcomes in industrial organization settings. The next two chapters are theoretical papers on entrepreneurial and managerial overconfidence that can also be thought of as contributions to this newly emerging field of behavioral industrial organization. The last chapter is an empirical contribution on gender differences in preferences and economic behavior at a young age. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2011</p>

SENSTANTI VISUOMENĖ: KONKURENCINGUMO VEIKSNIAI IR PRIEMONĖS EUROPOJE SANTRAUKA Informacinėje visuomenėje demografinių procesų dinamika paspartino senstančios visuomenės procesą ir pakeitė visuomenės amžiaus struktūrą. Technologijų pažanga, globalizacija ir demografinis senėjimas keičia Europos visuomenę ir skatina politikos kūrėjus atsižvelgti į įvairius skirtingų kartų poreikius. Europoje, kurioje labai ryškios senėjimo tendencijos ypač jaučiami socialiniai ir ekonominiai pokyčiai: globalinės užimtumo, kompetencijos bei gebėjimų naudotis informacinėmis technologinėmis stoka, sveikatos, politinės ir bendruomeninio aktyvumo galimybės. Senstančios visuomenės augimas yra kompleksinė problema, kuri pasireiškia nacionaliniu, regioniniu, įmonių ir individualiu lygmeniu. Stiprinant senstančios visuomenės konkurencingumą ir socialinę sanglaudą, remiantis strategijomis kuriamos efektyvios priemonės siekiant kokybiško integravimo į socialinę bei ekonominę politiką. Tezė Europoje senstančios visuomenės problemos sukelia sudėtingus socialinius ir ekonominius pokyčius, kuriuos itin svarbu tikslingai įvertinti ir numatyti, kad būtų galima laiku imtis veiksmų, kurių tikslas – suformuoti naujas realijas, atitinkančias, senstančios visuomenės globaliojo konkurencingumo sampratas. / AGING SOCIETY: FACTORS AND MEANS OF COMPETITIVENESS IN EUROPE SUMMARY Dynamics of demographic processes in information society has accelerated the process of aging society and changed the structure for the age of society. The advancement of technologies, globalization and demographic aging change the European society and encourage the policy makers to regard the demands of different generations. Social and economic alterations are especially felt in Europe where there are very vivid aging tendencies: global employment, a lack of competence and ability to use information technologies, health, possibilities of political and communal activity. The growth of aging society is a complex problem which asserts in national, regional, enterprise and individual level. The effective measures are created by strengthening the competitiveness of aging society and social cohesion as well as referring to strategies in pursuance of integration to social and economic politics. Thesis Problems of aging society in Europe initiates complicated social and economy changes which must be thoroughly appraised and predicted in order to take timely measures aimed at formation of global competitiveness concepts for the aging society which fit to new reality.

This dissertation contains three essays on environmental economics and on credit market imperfections. The literature on carbon tax incidence generally finds that carbon taxes have a regressive impact on the distribution of income. The main reason for that finding stems from the fact that poor households spend a larger share of their total expenditure on energy products than the rich households do. This literature, however, has ignored the impact of carbon taxes on income stemming from changes in relative factor prices. Yet, changes in household welfare depend not only on variations in commodity prices, but also on changes in income. Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive analysis of the distributional impact of carbon taxes on inequality by considering both demand-side and supply-side channels. We use a multi-sector, multi-household general equilibrium model to analyze the distributional impact of carbon taxes on inequality. Using equivalent income as the household welfare metric, we apply the Shapley value and concentration index approaches to decomposing household inequality. Our simulation results suggest that carbon taxes exert a larger negative impact on the income of the rich than that of the poor, and are thereby progressive. On the other hand, when assessed from the use side alone (i.e., commodity prices alone), our results confirm previous findings, whereas carbon taxes are regressive. However, due to the stronger incidence of carbon taxes on inequality from the income side, our results suggest that the carbon tax tends to reduce inequality. These findings further suggest that the traditional approach of assessing the impact of carbon taxes on inequality through changes in commodity prices alone may be misleading. Chapter 2 investigates the economic impacts of creating an emissions bubble between Canada and the US in a context of subglobal participation in efforts to reduce pollution with market based-instruments. One of the advantages of an emissions bubble is that it can be beneficial to countries that differ in their production and consumption patterns. To address the competitiveness issue that arises from the free-rider problem in the area of climate-change mitigation, we consider the imposition of a border tax adjustment (BTA) - a commonly suggested solution in the literature. We develop a detailed multisector and multi-regional general equilibrium model to analyze the welfare, aggregate, sectoral and trade impacts of the formation of an emissions bubble between Canada and the US with and without BTA. Our simulation results suggest that, in the absence of BTA, the creation of the bubble would make both countries better off through a positive terms-of-trade effect, and more importantly, through a significant reduction in Canada’s marginal abatement cost. The benefits of these positive effects would spill over to the non-participating countries, leading them to increase their trade shares in non-emissions-intensive goods. Moreover, the simulation results also indicate that a unilateral implementation of a BTA by any one of the two countries is welfare deteriorating in the imposing country and welfare improving in the other. In contrast, a joint implementation of a BTA by the two countries would make Canada better off and the US worse off. Chapter 3 shows that learning by lending is a potential channel of understanding the business cycle fluctuation under an imperfect credit market. An endogenous link among the learning parameter, lending rates, and the size of investment makes it possible to generate an internal propagation even due to a temporary shock. The main finding of this chapter is the explanation of how ex post non-financial factors such as information losses by individual agents in a credit market may account for a persistence in real indicators such as capital stock and output.

- / The PhD thesis is about measurement and effects of environmental policy in the context of the Porter Hypothesis (PH). The first chapter offers a critical review of the large empirical literature on the Porter Hypothesis. The second chapter presents an empirical investigation of the Porter Hypothesis focusing on the manufacturing sectors of European countries between 1997 and 2009. We look at overall innovation and productivity impact that are the most relevant indicators for the “strong” PH. This approach allows us to account for potential opportunity costs of induced innovations. As a proxy of environmental policy stringency we use pollution abatement and control expenditures (PACE), which represent one of the few indicators available at the sectoral level. We remedy upon its main drawback, that of potential endogeneity of PACE, by adopting an instrumental variable estimation approach. The third chapter represents a novel approach, inspired by the literature on multilevel latent models and Item Response Theory, to assessing countries’ environmental and energy policy performance. We use data on energy efficiency policy targeting industrial sectors in 27 EU countries between 2004 and 2009 and rank countries with respect to their ability to implement policy over time. Unlike previous contributions in this respect, our model accounts for the inherent difficulty of a given policy instrument mix. Moreover, the model is extended to deal with the longitudinal data and to adjust the country ranking as a result of economic and institutional observables, which are likely to affect policy design and implementation.

In einer wissensbasierten Wirtschaft basiert die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit zunehmend auf den intangiblen Unternehmensressourcen. Doch was für eine Relevanz räumen Führungspersonen in der deutschen Wirtschaft dem Wissens- und Intellectual Capital Management (WM/ICM) ein? Im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi) hat die Forschungsstelle für organisationale Kompetenz und Strategie an der Technischen Universität Chemnitz anhand einer repräsentativen Stichprobe von 3401 Unternehmen den Stand der Wissensmanagement-Aktivitäten in der deutschen Wirtschaft erfasst. Desweiteren ist die Studie folgenden Fragestellungen nachgegangen: - Was sind die möglichen Einflussfaktoren für den Einsatz von WM /ICM-Maßnahmen? - Was für eine Bedeutung hat das WM /ICM für den Unternehmenserfolg und die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit zu untersuchen. Ein wesentliches Studienergebnis ist, dass die Ressource Wissen zum zentralen Produktions-/Wettbewerbsfaktor in der deutschen Wirtschaft avanciert ist. Dabei werden WM/ICM-Aktivitäten weniger von Betriebsgrößen und Branchen als von Geschäftsstrategien und Kernkompetenzen bestimmt. Neben dem Studienergebnis, dass Wissensmanagement besonders in den Unternehmen stark ausgeprägt ist, wo eine starke kunden-, qualitäts-, und personalgetriebene Wettbewerbsstrategie im Vordergrund steht, wurden weitere Einflussgrößen eruiert. / In a knowledge based economy competitiveness is primarily based on the intangibles of a firm. But what relevance is actually given to the Management of organizational knowledge and intellectual Capital (KM/ICM) in the German economy? The Institute of Personnel Management and Leadership studies at the Chemnitz University of Technology has conducted a company survey on KM/ICM with a representative sample size of 3401 firms in order to capture the status-quo of KM/ICM- activities within the German economy. Additionally, two other main research questions have been addressed: - What are the potential drivers for the implementation of KM/ ICM? - How do KM/ ICM activities relate to organizational performance? A crucial study result reveals knowledge as a crucial production – and competitive factor in the german economy. Here, the implementation of KM/ICM is rather determined by business strategies and core competencies than firm characteristics like industry sector or firm size. Besides the findings, that KM–activities especially prevail in those firms with a predominant customer, employee and innovation orientated strategy,further KM/ICM drivers have been evaluated.

本文目的為探討影響東亞九個經濟體（台灣、香港、韓國、中國、及東南亞國協五國─印尼、馬來西亞、菲律賓、新加坡、泰國）在國際旅遊觀光市場之相對競爭力的因素及利用國際旅遊觀光統計資料，透過三階段最小平方法（3SLS）及迴歸分析，分別針對東亞九個經濟體，探究相對價格、匯率及供給面變數，對其主要來源國家觀光客─美國、日本做實證分析。實證結果發現：(1) 如果旅遊目的為商務或探親，或者是以觀光團型態旅遊，則國際觀光客對於相對價格變動並不敏感。(2) 如果大部分在目的地國家的旅遊支出是以來源國家貨幣計價，則國際觀光客對於匯率變動並不敏感。(3) 供給面因素的確對經濟體之國際旅遊觀光市場佔有率具有決定性影響，然而其影響視來源國與各目的地國家之相關性而定。

1980年代以來，國家競爭力的概念漸受重視，提升國家競爭力成為各國政府主要的施政目標。雖然國家競爭力因具有一定的重要性而被各界所接受，但時至今日仍缺乏對其共通之定義及衡量方法。本文係以目前最具公信力的衡量機構，即瑞士洛桑國際管理學院 (IMD) 與世界經濟論壇 (WEF) 所做的國家競爭力研究報告加以探討。 本研究以政府活動的內生成長模型為理論基礎，由政府支出面來探討其與國家競爭力的關係及影響國家競爭力的程度。經由具有公信力的國家競爭力評比中，選取具有比較性的國家，研究其支出結構的變動對其競爭力排名是否造成影響。本研究結果，主要發現，一般公共服務及公共秩序支出比重，對國家競爭力的提升有所幫助，但並非具有絕對正向關係；教育支出比重較高，對國家競爭力的提升具有正面效果；保健支出比重及經濟支出比重無法直接影響國家競爭力相關細項指標；政府投入適度的社福支出，對整體社會的穩定有所幫助。並提出可參採建議為，預算支出結構並無各國一體適用的最佳配置，應尋求符合國家整體最大利益的配置方式；參考先進國家預算支出結構，適當調整我國各項職能所占比重；知識經濟時代，宜由增加教育投資，提升國家整體人力素質；今後國家的發展，宜注意各項預算支出對國家競爭力實際可能產生的影響；政府各部門宜重視公共支出如何配合施政目標，以提升政府效率。 / Since the 1980s, the concept of national competitiveness has gradually gained attentions, and how to enhance national competitiveness becomes a major goal for the governments. Although this concept has been widely accepted because of its importance, until today there doesn’t have common definitions and measurements against the competitiveness. This paper is produced by exploration of the reports in regards to the competitiveness of countries of the world which were generated by the most credible unions, the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland (IMD) and the World Economic Forum (WEF). This paper researches, with references to endogenous growth theory, the relationships between the government expenditures and country’s competitiveness. Through the credible comparability assessments, this paper selects major countries to research how the expenditure structures influence the national competitiveness. The important conclusion from this research tells that it’s not always positive correlation between the weighting of government’s general public services expenditure and the improvement of country’s competitiveness, though general public services expenditure is helpful for competitiveness. Education expenditure does positively affect the competitiveness. The weighting of health expenditure and economic affairs expenditure can’t affect relevant competitiveness indicators. Appropriate social welfare from government helps for the stabilization of the society. This research suggests there is no best budget structure fits in with all countries, governments need to assess respective budget allocation approach to maximize the interests for the country. Governments can refer to developed countries for their budget structure in relevant areas to adjust own budget allocation. In the era of knowledge centric economy, governments should lift manpower quality by allocation of more resources in education. In view of country’s development in the future, governments should be aware how budget structure can affect country’s competitiveness. All departments of the government should care how public expenditure can support country’s goals in order to enhance government performance.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:51:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LorenaKSR_DISSERT.pdf: 1168365 bytes, checksum: 84c65d52d5a6558ac4b662d2f0f40ddb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-27 / Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte / The study aims to analyze the perception of managers on intangible assets as strategic and competitive resources in small hotels in Natal/RN, through the theory of the Resource Based View (RBV). This is a qualitative study of exploratory and descriptive, conducted with managers of the means of hosting small the capital of Rio Grande do Norte through semi-structured interviews, which was applied later, the technique content analysis based on the results of the information obtained in the interviews. Thus, research has shown that managers of small hotels visited (A, B, C) are not sufficient and satisfactory knowledge to set as their unique intangible assets of the company and makes use of them, on an occasional basis, without understanding or in essence understand its true value as a resource that can be used strategically for sustainable competitive advantage in the hotel market in Natal/RN. This means that managers do not know how to create new attributes and use them strategically. And they need to expand their partnerships with stakeholders. Given the importance of the subject of the present research, the information achieved by this analysis may contribute to the provision of information to establish a current situation with regard to the attributed to the knowledge and use of resources (intangible assets) importance as a strategic source and competitive for the internal management of the company by managers and thus, enabling a differential and greater economic profit over time in this segment / O estudo tem como objetivo analisar a percep??o dos gestores sobre os ativos intang?veis como recursos estrat?gicos e competitivos em hot?is de pequeno porte em Natal/RN, atrav?s da teoria da Vis?o Baseada em Recursos (RBV). Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa do tipo explorat?ria e descritiva, realizada com os gestores (gerentes e propriet?rios) dos meios de hospedagem de pequeno porte da capital do Rio Grande do Norte por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas, onde foi aplicada, posteriormente, a t?cnica da an?lise de conte?do com base nos resultados das informa??es obtidas nas entrevistas. Assim, a pesquisa mostrou que os gestores dos hot?is de pequeno porte visitados (A, B e C) n?o possuem conhecimento suficiente e satisfat?rio para definir os seus ativos intang?veis como sendo exclusivos da empresa e faz uso deles, de maneira ocasional, sem compreender ou entender em ess?ncia o seu verdadeiro valor quanto um recurso que pode ser utilizado de forma estrat?gica para obter vantagem competitiva sustent?vel no mercado hoteleiro de Natal/RN. Isso significa que os gestores n?o sabem como criar novos atributos e utiliz?-los estrategicamente. E precisam ampliar suas parcerias com os Stakeholders. Haja vista a import?ncia do tema da pesquisa em pauta, as informa??es alcan?adas por esta an?lise poder?o contribuir com o fornecimento de informa??es para estabelecer um panorama atual no que diz respeito ? import?ncia atribu?da ao conhecimento e uso de recursos (ativos intang?veis) como fonte estrat?gica e competitiva para a gest?o interna da empresa pelos gestores e com isso, possibilitar um diferencial e maior lucro econ?mico ao longo do tempo neste segmento

Orientador: Auro Aparecido Mendes / Banca: Silvia Aparecida Guarnieri Ortigoza / Banca: Márcio Antonio Cataia / Resumo: Os Arranjos Produtivos Locais (APLs) têm alcançado grande destaque nos estudos da Geografia Econômica por representarem uma proposta de resposta da dimensão local aos novos desafios de competitividade presentes em mercados de constantes inovações e mudanças tecnológicas. As empresas aglomeradas em torno de um setor produtivo específico, ao compartilharem características comuns e trabalhando em estreita cooperação e interação com os atores envolvidos, ampliam a capacidade produtiva, a difusão de inovações e o aumento da competitividade. Ao longo dos últimos anos, a apicultura vem se destacando no segmento do agronegócio, especialmente em 2002, quando o Brasil passou de importador a exportador. Este fato deixa claro que existe um potencial para o desenvolvimento da atividade apícola e o crescimento do seu mercado. Encontrando na apicultura uma viabilidade econômica na geração de renda e inserção social, para regiões economicamente deprimidas, o APL apícola de Picos, no Piauí, coloca-se entre os maiores produtores de mel do país, em virtude da grande concentração de apicultores e entrepostos, e das condições naturais propícias para a produção de mel. Essa realidade remete à atualidade dos questionamentos que envolvem a possibilidade e o significado de um desenvolvimento que considere as especificidades locais. Buscou-se com o presente trabalho compreender a importância dos vínculos de cooperação, interação e aprendizagem, entre as empresas e instituições integrantes do APL apícola de Picos, como fatores de desenvolvimento e competitividade da economia local / Abstract: The Local Productive Arrangements (LPA) have reaches major highlight in studies concerning economic geography once they represent a response proposal of the local dimension to the new challenges of competitiveness present in markets of constant inovations and technological changes. The companies around a specific productive sector, when sharing common characteristics and working with the cooperation and interaction of the actors involved, broaden their productive capacity, the broadcast of innovation, the increase of competitiveness. In the past years, the beekeeping is increasing in the agribusiness scenario, specially in 2002, when Brazil became an exporter and no longer importer. This fact confirms the huge potential for the development of the honey bee culture as well as the growth of its market. The honey bee culture presents great economic viability in providing income and social enhancement for the socially deprived regions. The LPA in honey culture in Picos, Piaui, is among the major honey producers in Brazil, due to the greats concentration of honey bee producers and warehouses not to mention the natural conditions favorable to the production of honey. This reality demands the reasoning concerning the possibility and meaning of a development which considers the local characteristics. This paper aimed at understanding the importance of cooperation, interaction and learning ties among the companies and institutions part of the LPA, honey culture in Picos as development factors for the local economy competitiveness / Mestre