Ao longo dos últimos anos tem se observado no mundo uma expansão do setor leiteiro. Parte dessa expansão se deve a novas tecnologias que foram adotadas nas últimas décadas, mas também ocorreu por causa da queda, ou da anulação de barreiras comerciais. Contudo, notou-se também uma queda no número de fazendas leiteiras. Sendo o leite uma commodity os preços seguem as oscilações de mercado - oferta e demanda - e nenhum dos agentes possui poder para influenciar nos preços de compra e venda dessa mercadoria. Como os boletins do CEPEA mostram, os preços no ano passado têm-se mantido abaixo da média histórica, referente à última década, mas os termos de troca com relação a quantidade de litros de leite para se comprar insumos e defensivos se mantêm em patamares estáveis com tendência de alta. Tendo em vista esse problema, surge a necessidade de buscar compreender melhor como funciona o sistema de produção do setor leiteiro. Este trabalho satisfatoriamente conseguiu detectar através das fronteiras estocásticas de produção simples - leite como único produto de saída - e multi-output - leite e outros produtos animais existentes nas fazendas - além da regressão quantílica para análise de quantis variados da produção de leite, quais os insumos utilizados pelos produtores que oferecem melhores retornos para sua produção bem como analisar fatores de eficiência (BATTESE, COELLI; 1995; CHIDMI; SOLÍS; CABRERA, 2011). Os resultados apresentados apontam para a necessidade de se levar em consideração a inter-relação entre os insumos considerados - função de produção translog - e identificaram os insumos referentes ao capital - quantidade de vacas ordenhadas e gastos com máquinas e equipamentos - e ao trabalho - gastos com salários - como principais insumos da atividade pecuária. Os gastos com medicamentos animais, com energia elétrica e a área disponível para a atividade pecuária se mostraram contraproducentes indicando mau uso ou uso excessivo desses fatores, além de ressaltar a importância do capital na pecuária. Em geral, para quase todos os modelos testados, a produção leiteira apresentou retornos constantes à escala e nível de eficiência em torno de 88% em média para as fronteiras estocásticas e 90% para as estimativas feitas com regressão quantílica. Entre os fatores de eficiência identificados estão a capacidade de armazenamento de silos e tanques de refrigeração para o leite e a margem bruta líquida obtida com a atividade. Os fatores de ineficiência identificados são a prática de queimadas e o percentual de mulheres na administração das unidades produtivas. Com relação aos variados modelos estimados percebeu-se, em suma, a necessidade de se intensificar a produção pecuária e de melhorar a infraestrutura das fazendas. / Over the past few years it has been observed in the world an expansion of the dairy industry. Part of this expansion is due to new technologies that have been adopted in recent decades, but also because of the fall, or the annulment of trade barriers. However, it has also been noted a drop in the number of dairy farms. Being a commodity, milk prices follow the market oscillations - supply and demand - and none of the agents has enough power to influence buying and selling prices of this commodity. As the CEPEA bulletins show, prices last year have remained below the historical average for the last decade, but the terms of trade regarding the amount of liters of milk to buy inputs and pesticides at levels remain stable with uptrend. In view of this problem, there is the need to get a better understanding of how the dairy sector production system works. This work satisfactorily managed to detect, through the single-output stochastic production frontier method - value of milk production as output - and multi-output - value of milk and other existing animal products at the farms - besides quantile regression analysis for multiple production quantiles, which inputs used by farmers offer the best outcome for their production as well as analyzing efficiency factors (BATTESE; COELLI, 1995; CHIDMI; SOLÍS; CABRERA, 2011). The estimated results pointed to the need of considering the interrelation of considered inputs - translog production function - and identified the capital related inputs - quantity of milked cows and expenditure on machinery and equipment - and work related inputs - expenditure on wages - as main production inputs. Expenditure on animal drugs and on electricity and the area available for livestock activity proved counterproductive indicating misuse or overuse of these factors, in addition to emphasizing the importance of capital in livestock. In general, for most of the tested models, dairy production showed constant returns to scale and an average efficiency level of 88% for stochastic frontier models and 90% for estimates done using quantile regression. Among the identified efficiency factors are the storage capacity of silos and cooling tanks for milk and the net gross margin with activity. The identified inefficiency factors are the practice of burning and the percentage of women in the management of production units. With regard to various models estimated it was realized, in short, the need to intensify livestock production and to improve the infrastructure of the farms.

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.

Background: The consequences of poor nutrition are well known and of wide concern. Governments and public health agencies utilise food and diet surveillance data to make decisions that lead to improvements in nutrition. These surveys often utilise complex sample designs for efficient data collection. There are several challenges in the statistical analysis of dietary intake data collected using complex survey designs, which have not been fully addressed by current methods. Firstly, the shape of the distribution of intake can be highly skewed due to the presence of outlier observations and a large proportion of zero observations arising from the inability of the food diary to capture consumption within the period of observation. Secondly, dietary data is subject to variability arising from day-to-day individual variation in food consumption and measurement error, to be accounted for in the estimation procedure for correct inferences. Thirdly, the complex sample design needs to be incorporated into the estimation procedure to allow extrapolation of results into the target population. This thesis aims to develop novel statistical methods to address these challenges, applied to the analysis of iron intake data from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey Rolling Programme (NDNS RP) and UK national prescription data of iron deficiency medication. Methods: 1) To assess the nutritional status of particular population groups a two-part model with a generalised gamma (GG) distribution was developed for intakes that show high frequencies of zero observations. The two-part model accommodated the sources of data variation of dietary intake with a random intercept in each component, which could be correlated to allow a correlation between the probability of consuming and the amount consumed. 2) To identify population groups at risk of low nutrient intakes, a linear quantile mixed-effects model was developed to model quantiles of the distribution of intake as a function of explanatory variables. The proposed approach was illustrated by comparing the quantiles of iron intake with Lower Reference Nutrient Intakes (LRNI) recommendations using NDNS RP. This thesis extended the estimation procedures of both the two-part model with GG distribution and the linear quantile mixed-effects model to incorporate the complex sample design in three steps: the likelihood function was multiplied by the sample weightings; bootstrap methods for the estimation of the variance and finally, the variance estimation of the model parameters was stratified by the survey strata. 3) To evaluate the allocation of resources to alleviate nutritional deficiencies, a quantile linear mixed-effects model was used to analyse the distribution of expenditure on iron deficiency medication across health boards in the UK. Expenditure is likely to depend on the iron status of the region; therefore, for a fair comparison among health boards, iron status was estimated using the method developed in objective 2) and used in the specification of the median amount spent. Each health board is formed by a set of general practices (GPs), therefore, a random intercept was used to induce correlation between expenditure from two GPs from the same health board. Finally, the approaches in objectives 1) and 2) were compared with the traditional approach based on weighted linear regression modelling used in the NDNS RP reports. All analyses were implemented using SAS and R. Results: The two-part model with GG distribution fitted to amount of iron consumed from selected episodically food, showed that females tended to have greater odds of consuming iron from foods but consumed smaller amounts. As age groups increased, consumption tended to increase relative to the reference group though odds of consumption varied. Iron consumption also appeared to be dependent on National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NSSEC) group with lower social groups consuming less, in general. The quantiles of iron intake estimated using the linear quantile mixed-effects model showed that more than 25% of females aged 11-50y are below the LRNI, and that 11-18y girls are the group at highest of deficiency in the UK. Predictions of spending on iron medication in the UK based on the linear quantile mixed-effects model showed areas of higher iron intake resulted in lower spending on treating iron deficiency. In a geographical display of expenditure, Northern Ireland featured the lowest amount spent. Comparing the results from the methods proposed here showed that using the traditional approach based on weighted regression analysis could result in spurious associations. Discussion: This thesis developed novel approaches to the analysis of dietary complex survey data to address three important objectives of diet surveillance, namely the mean estimation of food intake by population groups, identification of groups at high risk of nutrient deficiency and allocation of resources to alleviate nutrient deficiencies. The methods provided models of good fit to dietary data, accounted for the sources of data variability and extended the estimation procedures to incorporate the complex sample survey design. The use of a GG distribution for modelling intake is an important improvement over existing methods, as it includes many distributions with different shapes and its domain takes non-negative values. The two-part model accommodated the sources of data variation of dietary intake with a random intercept in each component, which could be correlated to allow a correlation between the probability of consuming and the amount consumed. This also improves existing approaches that assume a zero correlation. The linear quantile mixed-effects model utilises the asymmetric Laplace distribution which can also accommodate many different distributional shapes, and likelihood-based estimation is robust to model misspecification. This method is an important improvement over existing methods used in nutritional research as it explicitly models the quantiles in terms of explanatory variables using a novel quantile regression model with random effects. The application of these models to UK national data confirmed the association of poorer diets and lower social class, identified the group of 11-50y females as a group at high risk of iron deficiency, and highlighted Northern Ireland as the region with the lowest expenditure on iron prescriptions.

本研究欲以分量迴歸的方法估計出台灣上市櫃金融控股公司的VaR、CoVaR及其對台灣金融市場的風險溢出，做為總體審慎監理原則下具有抗景氣特色之風險衡量參考指標。我們亦透過金控公司間之CoVaR，觀察金控公司間風險交互影響程度，盼可提供各金控公司做為個體審慎監理原則下風險管理之參考指標。 本研究包含四大特色：一、運用前期市場資料可估計下期含有條件、共變、傳染、貢獻等特性之風險值，也就是CoVaR；二、透過各家金控對市場之∆CoVaR可觀察各金控公司系統風險貢獻程度差異；三、可觀察金控公司間相互交叉影響程度；四、運用金融機構特性預測未來系統風險。 本研究以信用利差、長短期利差、流動性利差、匯率變動、加權指數報酬、隱含波動度變動、金控股價報酬等市場資料，透過分量迴歸估計損失機率為1%及5%之台灣金融控股公司VaR及CoVaR，並計算市場風險溢出─∆CoVaR研究各金融機構對系統風險之邊際貢獻。且以槓桿比率、市值帳面比、相對規模及資產負債不對稱比例等金融機構特性相關變數預測未來∆CoVaR，做為總體審慎監理原則下之風險管理參考指標。 本研究結果發現對台灣金融市場系統風險溢出貢獻較大的為玉山金、中信金、台新金及國泰金；國票金、永豐金、第一金及元大金則為系統風險溢出貢獻較低者。預測結果部分發現損失機率為1%時，以預測未來兩季之∆CoVaR效果較佳，預測損失機率為5%時則以預測未來三季之∆CoVaR效果較佳，顯示資料對不同的尾端損失機率分配影響顯現時間也不相同。 / In this thesis, we intend to estimate Taiwanese financial holding company’s VaR, CoVaR and risk spillover to Taiwan financial market, and apply these to macroprudential risk management. In addition, we intend to develop crossover CoVaR between financial holding companies, offering risk management referral benchmark under microprudential principle to those companies. There are four features in this thesis. First, we use previous market data to estimate the conditional, comovement, contagion, and contributing VaR - CoVaR. Second, by ∆CoVaR of the institutions to the market, we can observe the holding companies’ systematic risk contribution. Third, we can observe the crossover effect of the holding companies. Last, we could use the characteristics of the institutions to predict future systematic risk. We particularly use credit spread, slope of yield curve, liquidity spread, change of exchange rate, return of market stock index, change of implied volatility and holding company’s stock price, by quantile regression, to predict the VaR and CoVaR of Taiwan’s holding companies when the probability to loss is 1% and 5%. Then we calculate market systematic risk spillover, ∆CoVaR, to observe the marginal systematic risk contribution of the institutions. Moreover, we use leverage, market-to-book ratio, relative size and maturity mismatch to predict forward ∆CoVaR, offering a reference to macroprudential risk management. Our empirical results show that in Taiwan financial market, the top four systematic risk contributors of holding companies are Esun Financial Holding, Chinatrust Financial Holding, Taishin Financial Holding and Cathay Financial Holding; the smallest ones are Waterland Financial Holding, Sino Financial Holding, First Financial Holding and Yuanta Financial Holding. We also find out that when loss probability is 1%, predicting ∆CoVaR after two seasons is better; when loss probability is 5%, predicting ∆CoVaR after three seasons is more significant. It shows that when the tail is different, the effect time is also different.

A frequent problem that appears in practical survival data analysis is censoring. A censored observation occurs when the observation of the event time (duration or survival time) may be prevented by the occurrence of an earlier competing event (censoring time). Censoring may be due to different causes. For example, the loss of some subjects under study, the end of the follow-up period, drop out or the termination of the study and the limitation in the sensitivity of a measurement instrument. The literature about censored data focuses on the i.i.d. case. However in many real applications the data are collected sequentially in time or space and so the assumption of independence in such case does not hold. Here we only give some typical examples from the literature involving correlated data which are subject to censoring. In the clinical trials domain it frequently happens that the patients from the same hospital have correlated survival times due to unmeasured variables like the quality of the hospital equipment. Censored correlated data are also a common problem in the domain of environmental and spatial (geographical or ecological) statistics. In fact, due to the process being used in the data sampling procedure, e.g. the analytical equipment, only the measurements which exceed some thresholds, for example the method detection limits or the instrumental detection limits, can be included in the data analysis. Many other examples can also be found in other fields like econometrics and financial statistics. Observations on duration of unemployment e.g., may be right censored and are typically correlated. When the data are not independent and are subject to censoring, estimation and inference become more challenging mathematical problems with a wide area of applications. In this context, we propose here some new and flexible tools based on a nonparametric approach. More precisely, allowing dependence between individuals, our main contribution to this domain concerns the following aspects. First, we are interested in developing more suitable confidence intervals for a general class of functionals of a survival distribution via the empirical likelihood method. Secondly, we study the problem of conditional mean estimation using the local linear technique. Thirdly, we develop and study a new estimator of the conditional quantile function also based on the local linear method. In this dissertation, for each proposed method, asymptotic results like consistency and asymptotic normality are derived and the finite sample performance is evaluated in a simulation study.

A frequent problem that appears in practical survival data analysis is censoring. A censored observation occurs when the observation of the event time (duration or survival time) may be prevented by the occurrence of an earlier competing event (censoring time). Censoring may be due to different causes. For example, the loss of some subjects under study, the end of the follow-up period, drop out or the termination of the study and the limitation in the sensitivity of a measurement instrument. The literature about censored data focuses on the i.i.d. case. However in many real applications the data are collected sequentially in time or space and so the assumption of independence in such case does not hold. Here we only give some typical examples from the literature involving correlated data which are subject to censoring. In the clinical trials domain it frequently happens that the patients from the same hospital have correlated survival times due to unmeasured variables like the quality of the hospital equipment. Censored correlated data are also a common problem in the domain of environmental and spatial (geographical or ecological) statistics. In fact, due to the process being used in the data sampling procedure, e.g. the analytical equipment, only the measurements which exceed some thresholds, for example the method detection limits or the instrumental detection limits, can be included in the data analysis. Many other examples can also be found in other fields like econometrics and financial statistics. Observations on duration of unemployment e.g., may be right censored and are typically correlated. When the data are not independent and are subject to censoring, estimation and inference become more challenging mathematical problems with a wide area of applications. In this context, we propose here some new and flexible tools based on a nonparametric approach. More precisely, allowing dependence between individuals, our main contribution to this domain concerns the following aspects. First, we are interested in developing more suitable confidence intervals for a general class of functionals of a survival distribution via the empirical likelihood method. Secondly, we study the problem of conditional mean estimation using the local linear technique. Thirdly, we develop and study a new estimator of the conditional quantile function also based on the local linear method. In this dissertation, for each proposed method, asymptotic results like consistency and asymptotic normality are derived and the finite sample performance is evaluated in a simulation study.

No description available.

Burnout is a psychological concept that have got much attention since it was first defined in the middle of the 1970s. Although the definition of burnout differ there is consensus about exhaustion as the most important part of the concept. Burnout have also been in focus in sport psychology research. Mostly athletes have been studied but interest the coach profession have also been of interest. Research on coach burnout have mostly been directed towards demographic variables, organizational issues, behaviors and emotions and more holistic perspectives covering larger models or theories. The aims with this thesis was to try to fill some of the knowledge gaps from earlier coach burnout research with three studies. Study 1 aimed to study subjective experiences associated with perceived causes and symptoms of burnout and the subsequent recovery process. Eight elite soccer coaches who previously had been troubled with high scores of the exhaustion was interviewed. We found two burnout profiles that matched the coaches’ perceived causes of burnout. The first was associatedwith problems in handling the performance culture itself and the second had to do with the overall situation, including workload, family and health. Our findings describe coach burnout as stemming from a combination of issues, related to both home and work. When combined with work overload, coaches who have problems handling the performance culture in elite sports, and who lack the tools to enhance recovery, are particularly vulnerable to burnout. Study 2 focused on evaluating three self-report burnout measures that are available for researchers to use. Our analysis included Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) and Coach Burnout Questionnaire (CBQ). The main findings were that there are psychometric problems with all three measures and that MBI and OLBI cover similar definitions of burnout and CBQ cover somewhat different dimensions. Of the three methods that were tested CBQ seem to be most suitable for the coaching context. However, CBQ also have several problems and other burnout measures need to be evaluated in the coach context. Study 3 focused on the associations between workaholic tendencies and combining coaching job with having a family or a spouse, which can be a stressor since the work situation and family situation can be hard to combine. The main findings were that work seem to interfere more with family life than family life interfere with working live. Further workaholic tendencies and exhaustion was not associated. When interpreting the aggregated results from the thesis there are two main findings. First, the way coach burnout has been measured until now is unsatisfying. Although the development of a coach specific measure (CBQ) is promising, further development is needed, both when it comes to the theoretical aspects of the burnout construct and psychometric issues. Second, the symptoms and perceived causes in coach burnout is highly individual and makes burnout a very personal experience. Future research should focus on both the origins as well as the measurement of thisdetrimental concept. / Utbrändhet är ett psykologiskt begrepp som har fått mycket uppmärksamhet sedan den först introducerades i mitten av 1970-talet. Även om synen på vad utbrändhet är skiljer sig åt finns en enighet om att utmattning är huvudsymptomet. Utbrändhet har studerats inom idrottspsykologisk forskning sedan början av 1980-talet. Mestadels har intresset legat på idrottare men intresse har också riktats mot tränaryrket. Forskning om tränares utbrändhet har främst intresserat sig för demografiska variabler, organisationens påverkan, beteenden och känslor samt mer övergripande modeller eller teorier som täcker flera områden. Syftet med denna avhandling var att försöka fylla en del av de kunskapsluckor som funnits i tidigare forskning med tre studier. Studie 1 syftade till att studera tränares subjektiva upplevelser av utmattning kopplat till upplevda orsaker och symptom av utbrändhet samt vägen tillbaka från utbrändhet. Åtta elitfotbollstränare som tidigare hade haft problem med utmattning intervjuades. Huvudresultatet i studien var att det fanns två sätt att uppfatta utbrändhetsprocessen. Antingen såg man miljön runt elitfotbollen som den stora orsaken eller så upplevdes hela livssituationen med små stressande händelser kopplade till arbetsbelastning, familj och hälsa som problematiska. Studie 2 fokuserade på att utvärdera tre frågeformulär som är lämpliga i en tränarkontext. I analysen ingår Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), som oftast använts, Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) och Coach Burnout Questionnaire (CBQ). De viktigaste resultaten var att det dels finns problem med alla tre samt att MBI och OLBI täcker liknande definitioner av utbrändhet medan CBQ mäter lite andra aspekter. Slutsatsen från studien är att CBQ verkar passa bäst för den kontext där idrottstränare arbetar även om CBQ också har en del problematiska inslag. Studie 3 fokuserade på arbetsnarkomani och att kombinera tränarjobb med familjeliv har ett samband med utmattning. Huvudresultaten i studie 3 var att det framförallt verkar vara arbetet som störa familjelivet än familjelivet som stör arbetslivet. Ytterligare fanns inget statistiskt stöd att arbetsnarkomani skulle ha ett samband med utmattning. När det sammanlagda resultatet från hela avhandlingen tolkas utifrån vilken ny kunskap denna avhandling tillför finns två huvudbidrag. Det första är att problemen med de frågeformulär som hittills använts för att mäta utbrändhet har lyfts upp. Även om det är lovande att det utvecklats ett idrottsspecifikt formulär finns tillgängligt så finns det både teoretiska och mättekniska aspekter som behöver utvecklas. Det andra bidraget är att de symptom som ingår i upplevelsen av utbrändhet verkar vara olika för olika individer. Framtida forskning bör fokusera både på hur teoretiska och mättekninska aspekter av utbrändhetsbegreppet.

企業初次公開發行(IPO，Initial Public Offering)向來是股票市場炙手可熱的話題之一，在財務經濟領域中，探討股票初次上市發行的相關議題更是多如過江之鯽，而關於IPO期初報酬率影響因素之探討更可溯及至1970年代。本研究主要係探討台灣初次上市企業期初報酬率的影響因素及影響情形，並以2005年承銷新制上路以後、直至2011年的初次上市企業為研究對象，除利用傳統的最小平方法觀察影響期初報酬的因素外，有鑑於期初報酬率普遍具有右偏分配的現象，本研究亦輔以分量迴歸分析法觀察影響期初報酬的因素，經由分量值的變動，可將解釋變數影響被解釋變數的各種情形加以估計出。再來，本研究在探討期初報酬率影響因素之基礎上，以分量迴歸分析法尋找出交易準則，並進一步檢驗當投資人遵循交易準則下，是否得以獲取顯著異於同期間大盤指數之報酬績效。在上市首日買入並持有至第五日收盤賣出之案例中，以分量迴歸結果所設定之交易準則並無法為投資人帶來顯著優於大盤指數之報酬水準；然而，在上市首日買入並持有至第二十日收盤賣出之案例，以分量迴歸結果所設定之交易準則卻可為投資人帶來顯著優於大盤指數之報酬水準。總體而言，本研究試圖將近年影響台灣企業IPO期初報酬率之因素加以剖析，進而從中尋找一些潛在規則，讓投資人得以一窺初級市場的變化及其所可能帶來之潛在獲利良機。

[pt] Esse estudo examina a estrutura de dependência do mercado de ações do Brasil, Chile, Colômbia, México e Peru em relação aos retornos do preço de commodities, do mercado de ações global e sua volatilidade e do índice de incerteza político-econômica americana. A metodologia empregada é a regressão quantílica por permitir o exame da dependência nos diferentes quantis de distribuição dos retornos, ou seja, sob diferentes circunstâncias de mercado. Os resultados mostraram que há dependência em relação ao mercado global de ações em todos os países. De uma maneira geral, os preços das commodities também influenciam no retorno do mercado acionários da América Latina, sendo a estrutura de dependência, por vezes, assimétrica. O índice de incerteza político-econômica americano não impacta o mercado acionário de Chile e Peru, ao passo que a estrutura de dependência é assimétrica e negativa no Brasil, Colômbia e México. Por fim, o índice VIX não é significante para os retornos do mercados de ações de Brasil e Peru. Como uma contribuição adicional, foi examinada a relação de dependência do mercado acionário brasileiro em relação ao índice de incerteza político-econômico brasileiro. O estudo identificou que variações positivas do índice de incerteza político-econômico brasileiro levam a quedas no retorno acionário, quando o mercado está em ascensão. Os resultados desse estudo contribuem para a compreensão dos movimentos dos retornos do mercado acionário do Brasil e de outros países da América Latina em relação a diversos fatores, os quais são do interesse de diversos stakeholders, tais como investidores internacionais e gestores de portfólio. / [en] This study examines the dependence structure between the stock markets of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru and the commodity price, the global stock market and its volatility, and the U.S. economic-policy uncertainty index. The methodology employed is the quantile regression because it allows to exam the dependence in different quantiles of the returns distribution, that is, under different market circumstances. The results showed that there is dependence on the global stock market in all countries. In general, commodity prices also influence the stock markets of Latin America, with the dependence structure being often asymmetric. The U.S. economic-policy uncertainty index doesn t impact the stock markets of Chile and Peru, while the dependence structure is negative and asymmetric in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. Finally, the VIX index is not significant for the stock market returns in Brazil and Peru. As an additional contribution, the dependence of the brazilian stock market in relation to the Brazil economic-policy uncertainty index. The study identified that positive changes in the political-economic uncertainty index lead to declines in shareholder returns, when the market is bullish. The results of this study contribute to understand the movements of stock market returns in Brazil and other Latin American countries in relation to several factors, which are of interest to several stakeholders, such as international investors and portfolio managers.