Kadangi neigiami šalies mokėjimų balanso rodikliai gali būti būsimo šalies ekonominio nuosmukio ar krizės priežastis, todėl būtina suvokti, kokia šių rodiklių įtaka šalies daromiems sprendimams bei nustatyti, ar šių rodiklių pagalba galima prognozuoti būsimas šalies valiutų krizes, kitaip dar vadinamas mokėjimų balanso krizėmis. Atsižvelgiant į tai, magistro baigiamajame darbe analizuojama mokėjimų balanso krizės situacija bei jos pasireiškimo tikimybė Lietuvoje. Atliktas tyrimas aktualus, nes mokslinėje literatūroje Lietuvos mokėjimų balanso krizės susidarymo rizikos analizės per pastaruosius metus nepasitaikė. Ypač Lietuvai tai aktualu dėl pastarųjų metų pasaulinių įvykių, nulėmusių Lietuvos ekonomikos smarkų smukimą. Taip pat pažymėtina, kad užsienio šalyse vis daugėja atvejų, kai šalis dėl išeikvotų užsienio valiutos rezervų patiria mokėjimų balanso krizę, priverčiančią šalį imtis drastiškų veiksmų siekiant išgelbėti šalies ekonomiką. Atsižvelgiant į aukščiau minėtą, iškeliama mokslinė darbo problema klausimu „Ar galima prognozuoti apie Lietuvos mokėjimų balanso krizės reiškinį remiantis mokėjimų balanso sąskaitų pokyčiais bei pagrindiniais makroekonominiai rodikliais, įtakojančiais mokėjimų balanso sąskaitas?“ Darbo tikslas – atlikti Lietuvos mokėjimų balanso krizės rizikos analizę ir ištirti, pagal kuriuos šalies ekonominius ir statistinius rodiklius galima prognozuoti šį reiškinį. Tyrimo objektas – Lietuvos, Latvijos ir Estijos detalūs statistiniai mokėjimų balanso... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / As the country's negative balance of payments indicators may signal the country's future economic downturn or causes of the crisis, it is necessary to understand how these variables influence country’s decisions and determine whether these characteristics can help predict future currency crises in the country, also known as the balance of payments crisis. The paper of master degree analyzes the balance of payments crisis situation and its likelihood of occurring in Lithuania. A study carried out is relevant because the scientific literature does not provide any analysis regarding the Lithuanian balance of payments crisis over the past few years. It is especially relevant in Lithuania as the worldwide events in the recent years have led to a rapid decline of the Lithuanian economy. It should also be noted that there is a growing number of cases of foreign countries experiencing balance of payments crisis, subjecting the country to take drastic action to save the country's economy. According to the above mentioned, the problem is formulated: "Is it possible to predict the Lithuanian balance of payments crisis phenomenon on the basis of balance of payments accounts, and key developments in macroeconomic indicators, influencing the balance of payments accounts?" The main goal is to analyze the Lithuanian balance of payments crisis risk and determine which country's economic and statistical indicators can predict this phenomenon. The object of the research - the detailed... [to full text]

No description available.

Moralės normatyvumo problema yra klausimas, kas pagrindžia moralės mums keliamus reikalavimus ir iš kur jie kyla. Šiame darbe teigiama, jog Christinos Korsgaard neokantiškas atsakas į normatyvumo klausimą yra sėkmingas: kantiškos prielaidos leido Korsgaard produktyviai suformuluoti normatyvumo klausimą, o šių prielaidų sintezė su psichologine praktinės tapatybės koncepcija leidžia vertinti Korsgaard normatyvumo problemos sprendimą kaip novatorišką ir bene sėkmingiausią neokantišką atsaką. Pirma, Korsgaard koncepcija sėkminga būtent dėl neokantiškų prielaidų – tai išryškėja internalizmo / eksternalizmo kontroversijos kontekste. Eksternalistai padalija pagrindimo bei motyvavimo funkcijas atitinkamai įsitikinimui ir troškimui, todėl teorinio reikalavimų pagrindimo sėkmė nelemia motyvacinės sėkmės: ryšys tarp jų atsitiktinis. Didžioji dalis internalistų (intuityvistai, ekspresyvistai, neohiumininkai) moralinių sprendinių pagrindimą laiko neįmanomu iš principo. Neokantiškos pozicijos pamatinė orientacija į pagrindimo užduotį ir proto funkcijų samprata, įgalinanti būtiną ryšį tarp diskursyvaus pagrindimo bei motyvacijos veiksmui, leidžia jiems bene vieninteliams iš kontroversijos dalyvių matyti normatyvumo klausimą kaip prasmingą ir į jį atsakyti. Antra, Korsgaard neokantiškas atsakas sėkmingas dėl to, kad susidoroja su Kanto etikos trūkumais: neredukuoja normatyvumo į formalųjį jo aspektą. Kantiškoje tradicijoje pamatinis veikėjo autonomijos normatyvumas perkeliamas tam tikriems... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Problem of moral normativity is a question of what justifies the claims that morality makes on us and of their source. In this thesis we claim that the answer to this problem proposed by Ch. Korsgaard is a success as a Kantian account. First, the analysis of the internalism / externalism controversy lets us to conclude, that the success of Korsgaard’s conception of normativity was granted, first of all, by its Neo-Kantian premisses. Externalists split justificatory and motivational functions between resp. belief and desire therefore, theoretical success of justifying moral claims does not by itself lead to motivational success: the relation between the two is purely contingent. The majority on the internalist side though (intuitionists, expressivists, the neo-Humeans) consider moral judgements impossible to justify in principle. Therefore, only the Neo-Kantians are able to treat the problem of normativity as a meaningful question and to give an adequate account of it. What enables them is the Neo-Kantian orientation to the task of justification and their conception of the functions of reason, which assures the necessary relation between the discursive justification and the motivation to act. Second, the Neo-Kantian reply by Korsgaard is successful as a solution to the difficulties which the Kantian ethics meets: she does not reduce normativity to its formal aspect only. In the Neo-Kantian tradition the essential autonomy of the agent is transferred to certain fundamental... [to full text]

Die Arbeit setzt sich das Ziel, den Ursache-Wirkungs-Zusammenhang zwischen den zahlungsbilanzrelevanten Transaktionen aufzudecken. Dieses Vorhaben legt eine zweigeteilte Analyse der Zahlungsbilanz nahe: Es wird zunächst über die Buchungsmechanik der nach ihrem wirtschaftlichen Charakter unterschiedenen internationalen Transaktionen aufgeklärt und anschließend folgt eine fundierte Zahlungsbilanzdiskussion, die Klarheit in die Ursache-Wirkungs-Beziehung bringt. Grenzüberschreitende Transaktionen werden eingeteilt in (reine) Finanztransaktionen und Leistungstransaktionen. Somit bezieht sich die Kausalitätsfrage auf den Zusammenhang zwischen diesen beiden Transaktionsarten. Das Ergebnis verkehrt gängige Vorstellungen über die Wirkungsrichtung ins Gegenteil und lautet: Die Leistungsbilanz bestimmt die Kapitalbilanz.

Tax evasion has been happening for decades, but after the highly publicized cases with two foreign banks, LGT and UBS, the United States (US) is cracking down on tax evaders. The latest addition to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)’s repertoire of enforcement tools is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, otherwise known as FATCA. The Act was enacted to incentivize tax information release by foreign financial institutions (FFIs) who would otherwise face a 30% withholding tax on any US source income. The question was whether or not the design of the Act and its implementation successfully met this goal. This paper explores the history leading up to FATCA’s creation, beginning from the basic data underlying tax evasion. With the US losing approximately $100 billion a year of tax revenue, the IRS is keen on reducing the money flow out of the US. It will dig deeper into the facts of the LGT and UBS cases which led to Congress’s realization that their other enforcement mechanisms were not sufficient and describe FATCA’s unintended impact. Through researching articles on the predicted impact of FATCA, surveys of FFIs, testimonials from US citizens, this paper will explain how FATCA has unfortunately detrimentally impacted FFIs and US citizens living abroad.

This thesis by the name To create oneself: Carl Peter Thunberg’s persona constructed by means of his travel account draws inspiration from recent studies within the history of science regarding the concept of persona. It seeks to expand the notion of persona to examine how it could be constructed and refined by individuals. In doing so, it offers an alternative approach to persona. Not as intellectual standard types but as a joining together of qualities that through the joining creates unique personae to each individual. Furthermore, the essay looks at change, and how it could function as an aspect of a persona. In order to examine this, I will look at how the persona of Carl Peter Thunberg was constructed in his travel account which was published in four parts and covered his travels in Europe, Africa and Asia in the 1770s. Thunberg was one of Carl von Linné’s students and a natural historian and physician in his own right. His travel account was widely anticipated and offered an opportunity for him to introduce himself to a wider audience. This source is exemplary for this kind of analysis as all four parts of the travel account existed within the same genre and was written for the same public, yet changes occurred in how Thunberg was portrayed. Rather than explaining these changes in how Thunberg was portrayed by changes in his personal circumstances, I will argue that they are best understood by considering the aspect of change as a central strategy in constructing Thunberg’s persona as a evolving scientist and natural historian.

This study is focused on the transfer accounts and the prototype accounts, and examines aspect through looking at L1 Swedish learners of Spanish who are at early stages of acquisition. The prototype accounts postulate that adult learners will acquire the most prototypical forms of a grammatical feature first, and then, as proficiency increases, less prototypical features, called extended meanings, will be acquired incrementally (Shirai & Andersen, 1995, Geeslin & Fafulas, 2012). The transfer accounts claim that all grammatical features of the L1 will transfer at initial stages, and that this will either facilitate or impede acquisition, depending on if there are structures that are realized differently or similarly in the L1 and in the L2 (Kellerman, 1979, Gass & Ard, 1984, Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996, Gabriele et al., 2015). The study uses the stimuli and experiment used in Gabriele et al. (2015), a study that tested L1 English learners of Spanish and found evidence that support the transfer accounts. Results from the present study shows positive evidence of L1 transfer, which is taken as support for the transfer account. The results are not compatible with the prototype accounts. A finding of a marginal difference might be indicative of L2 transfer, which is also taken as evidence for the transfer accounts.

A maioria dos trabalhos sobre o impacto macroeconômico da abertura da conta de capital não encontra nenhum efeito da liberalização sobre as variáveis reais. No entanto, uma leitura cuidadosa desta literatura revela que a maioria destes estudos não trata realmente da teoria que se propõe a testar. Aqueles que defendem um impacto positivo da liberalização financeira sobre o crescimento econômico aceitam as previsões do modelo de crescimento neoclássico de redução permanente no custo do capital e aumento temporário no investimento nos mercados emergentes, quando estes liberalizam suas contas de capital. A maior parte dos artigos que não encontram efeitos da liberalização sobre as variáveis reais não testa estas previsões. Uma ramificação pequena, mas crescente, desta literatura sobre a relação entre liberalização da conta de capital e crescimento econômico, que leva em conta a natureza temporal das previsões do modelo neoclássico (os artigos que adotam o chamado enfoque do experimento de política), encontra evidências de que a abertura da conta de capital em um país emergente gera efeitos significativos sobre o investimento e crescimento econômico. A desagregação dos dados, ou seja, a aplicação do enfoque do experimento de política a dados de firmas, fornece uma ligação mais forte com a teoria e graus de liberdade suficientes para se adotar uma nova estratégia de identificação que permite testar a eficiência na alocação dos recursos dentro do país em desenvolvimento que abriu sua conta de capital. O objetivo desta dissertação é tratar das teorias e evidências do impacto da liberalização da conta de capital nos países emergentes sobre o crescimento de suas economias, analisando-se as metodologias empíricas existentes aplicadas no teste desta relação, enfatizando as teorias que dão suporte a seus testes empíricos, bem como suas principais descobertas. Os efeitos da abertura da conta de capital no Brasil, na década de 90, serão analisados, utilizando-se uma estratégia de identificação recente a partir de dados de firmas, para se checar a validade empírica das previsões do modelo de crescimento neoclássico nesta situação. / Most writings on the macroeconomic impact of capital account openness find no effects of liberalization on real variables. However, a critical reading of this literature reveals that most of these studies do not really address the theory they set out to test. Those who defend a positive impact of financial liberalization on economic growth accept the neoclassical growth model’s predictions of permanent reduction on the cost of capital and temporary increase in investment in emerging markets when they liberalize their capital account. The lion’s share of papers that find no effect of liberalization on real variables do not test these predictions. A small but growing branch of this literature on the relationship between capital account liberalization and economic growth that takes the time series nature of the neoclassical model’s predictions seriously (papers that adopt the policy-experiment approach) find that opening the capital account within an emerging country generates significant effects on investment and economic growth. Disaggregating the data, that is to say, applying the policy-experiment approach to firm-level data, provides a tighter link to the theory than aggregate data and enough degrees of freedom to adopt a new identification strategy that allows of the test on the efficiency of capital allocation within the developing country that opened its capital account. The objective of this dissertation is to address the theories and evidences of the impact of capital account liberalization in emerging countries on their economic growth, analyzing the existing empirical methodologies applied to test this relationship, emphasizing the theories that support their empirical tests as well as their main findings. The effects of capital account opening in Brazil, in the 90’s, will be analyzed, using the recent firm-level data identification strategy, to check the empirical validity of the neoclassical growth model’s predictions in this situation.

Internet a profondément changé la manière dont les entreprises interagissent avec leurs clients. Le développement d’une relation client en ligne a mené les organisations à repenser l’idée qu’elles se faisaient de cette relation, ainsi que leurs pratiques en termes de marketing relationnel. Cette recherche vise à mieux comprendre la manière dont les utilisateurs d’espaces clients de sites web évaluent la qualité de la relation client en ligne, et inclut une dimension importante dans l’évaluation de la qualité de la relation en ligne, l’appropriation de l’espace client.Une étude qualitative a été menée auprès de 15 personnes, afin d’étudier les variables permettant de construire le modèle de recherche et de proposer une échelle de mesure de l’appropriation des espaces clients de sites web. Par la suite, un modèle de recherche a été créé et un questionnaire en ligne a été administré. Un échantillon final se composant de 534 personnes, utilisatrices d’espaces clients de sites web dans le secteur bancaire et dans le secteur de la téléphonie mobile, a permis de tester les hypothèses de recherche. Il en résulte que l’appropriation de l’espace client du site web joue un rôle médiateur entre deux variables - la facilité d’utilisation perçue et l’utilité perçue - et la qualité de la relation client en ligne, que ce soit pour les utilisateurs d’espaces clients de sites web dans le secteur bancaire ou dans le secteur de la téléphonie mobile. De même, la sécurité/confidentialité perçue de l’espace client du site web exerce une influence positive sur la qualité de la relation client en ligne. L’hypothèse postulant que l’interactivité perçue de l’espace client du site web exerce une influence positive sur la qualité de la relation client en ligne est partiellement validée. En revanche, la présence sociale de l’espace client du site web n’exerce pas une influence positive sur la qualité de la relation client en ligne. / The Internet has dramatically changed the way companies interact with their customers. Because of the importance of e-customer relationship management, companies have to reconsider their strategies in terms of relationship marketing. The purpose of this research is to investigate the way users of personal websites’ accounts evaluate e-relationship quality within two sectors: the banking sector and the mobile phone sector. This research deals with an important concept: appropriation.A qualitative study has been conducted in order to build a research model and to create a measurement scale to study the appropriation of a personal websites’ account. Therefore, an online survey (N=534) was conducted to test the hypothesis. The findings suggest that the appropriation of a personal websites’ account is a mediating variable between perceived ease of use, perceived usability and relationship quality, both in the banking sector and in the mobile phone sector. In the same way, privacy has a positive influence on e-relationship quality. Moreover, perceived interactivity has a positive influence on e-relationship quality, but that particular hypothesis is partially validated. Finally, social presence does not have a positive influence on e-relationship quality.

[pt] O termo imunização denota a construção de uma carteira de títulos de forma a torná-la imune a variações nas taxas de juros. No caso das entidades de previdência complementar, o objetivo da imunização é distribuir os recebimentos intermediários e finais dos ativos de acordo com o fluxo de pagamentos dos benefícios. Em geral, quanto maior a classe de alterações na estrutura a termo das taxas de juros (ETTJ), mais restritivo se torna o modelo. Embora exista uma vasta literatura sobre o aspecto estatístico e sobre o significado econômico dos modelos de imunização, esse trabalho inova ao prover uma análise detalhada do desempenho comparado dos modelos, sob três perspectivas complementares: o método escolhido, a dimensionalidade e, ainda, o horizonte de investimento. Entretanto, a decisão final do gestor não está restrita à escolha do método de imunização, como também ao horizonte de investimento a ser imunizado, uma vez que outros instrumentos financeiros podem garantir tanto a solvência econômica quanto a financeira. Os limites não operacionais à imunização são analisados por meio da comparação das medianas do relativo de riqueza e da probabilidade de exaustão da carteira. A análise permite concluir que os modelos de imunização tradicional são mais eficientes, especialmente no médio e longo prazo, que os modelos multidimensionais de gestão do risco de taxa de juros. Ademais, demonstra-se que não existem limites naturais à imunização, quando aplicada ao mercado previdenciário brasileiro por um período igual ou inferior a 10 anos. / [en] Immunization is defined as the investment in assets in such a way that the fixed income portfolio is immune to a change in interest rates. In the special case of pension funds, immunization seeks the distribution of the cash inflows in accordance with the outflows represented by the fund´s liabilities. The article compares distinct alternative methods of immunization against the traditional duration-matching strategy. All portfolios were obtained as a result of mathematical programming problems, where the choice of the immunization strategy led to the restrictions imposed on the evolution of the term structure of interest rates. Despite the intensive research related to this subject, there are some gaps to be filled yet, especially those concerned with the investment horizon. That is exactly the main objective of this thesis. The work provides the basis for selecting the most appropriate method for immunization and also demonstrates the superiority of the traditional duration-matching strategy, especially in the medium and long run. Moreover, it is demonstrated that there is no limit other than operational to the immunization process concerning Brazilian markets for investment horizons of less than 10 years.