<p>Background: An evaluation of analysts´ forecasting ability is interesting since their estimates constitute an important part in stock valuation and investment decisions. The recent years´ development in the stock market has lead to criticism of analysts’ deficient forecasts. </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate analysts´ forecasting ability concerning companies quoted at Stockholmsbörsen between 1987 and 2002. We also intend to discuss possible explanations for analysts’ behavior in case of deficient accuracy. </p><p>Method: Regression analysis is used to compare consensus estimates of earnings per share to actual earnings per share. We attempt to investigate the existence of a relation between forecasting ability and forecast horizon, the volatility at Stockholmsbörsen and the industry in which the firm operates. Behavioral finance and economic incentives is used to discuss the most convincing explanations to analysts´ behavior in cases of deficient accuracy. </p><p>Result: The study indicates over optimistic forecasts and overreaction to earnings information. Analysts tend to give more accurate forecasts closer to earnings announcement. We believe that herding, economic incentives and the fact that analysts get information from the company explains a significant part of analysts’ behavior. In addition, the study shows a possible relation between more accurate forecasts and lower volatility. Concerning industries we find stronger overreaction in healthcare and heavy industry. The study shows the most exceptional optimism in consumer goods/services and IT/telecom.</p>

<p>For emergency service providers, giving their service in least time shows their best performance. Emergency hospitals will be at their best if the ambulance reaches the site in Golden hour where life of injured persons can be saved. Ambulance uses the road network to reach the accident site. Today there are many GIS based systems being developed for routing of ambulance using GPS and other real-time technologies. These systems are useful and play a major role in solving the routing problem. But now roads are so congested that it difficult for the Ambulance drivers to travel and reach the accident.</p><p>In this thesis present study area is studied and problems faced by emergency service providers on road network are identified. In this thesis GIS/GPS/GSM based prototype system has been developed for routing of ambulance on road network of Hyderabad city (AMS). This prototype is designed such that it finds the accident location on the road network and locates the nearest ambulance to incident site using the real-time technologies (GPS/GSM). AMS creates the fastest route from nearest ambulance to accident site, and from there to nearest hospital. Congestion on roads during peak hours is considered, and the fastest route on both major and minor roads is created.</p><p>In this thesis AMS user interface has been developed using VBA, ArcGIS (network analyst). This Ambulance management system has been developed using software engineering model rapid prototyping model and has been evaluated by GIS users</p>

<p>School bus routing and scheduling are among the major problems because school bus transportation needs to be safe, reliable and efficient. Hence, the research question for this thesis is to answer how to transport students in the safest, most economical and convenient manner. The objective of this thesis is to create a GIS based school transport management system which helps in bus-stop allocation, design fastest and safest bus routes with AVL facility. This thesis also aims to investigate how a school transportation management system may improve the transportation security. The result from this study has helped to develop a school bus routing and scheduling prototype model for Sujatha High School, Hyderabad. This prototype model will help the school transportation management to design shortest and fastest school bus routes and they can also allocate bus stops, which will help them in selecting the pick-up stops for the students and staff, according to their concentration in the areas. This thesis has also, through literature study, investigated how a school transport management system can improve the transportation security. For the time being, there is a general belief that ICT contributes to improving the security, although a quantification of such improvements are lacking. The user interface application has been developed by using VBA and ArcGIS 9.1 Network Analyst provided by Environmental Science Research Institute and it has been evaluated by GIS users.</p>

Background: An evaluation of analysts´ forecasting ability is interesting since their estimates constitute an important part in stock valuation and investment decisions. The recent years´ development in the stock market has lead to criticism of analysts’ deficient forecasts. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate analysts´ forecasting ability concerning companies quoted at Stockholmsbörsen between 1987 and 2002. We also intend to discuss possible explanations for analysts’ behavior in case of deficient accuracy. Method: Regression analysis is used to compare consensus estimates of earnings per share to actual earnings per share. We attempt to investigate the existence of a relation between forecasting ability and forecast horizon, the volatility at Stockholmsbörsen and the industry in which the firm operates. Behavioral finance and economic incentives is used to discuss the most convincing explanations to analysts´ behavior in cases of deficient accuracy. Result: The study indicates over optimistic forecasts and overreaction to earnings information. Analysts tend to give more accurate forecasts closer to earnings announcement. We believe that herding, economic incentives and the fact that analysts get information from the company explains a significant part of analysts’ behavior. In addition, the study shows a possible relation between more accurate forecasts and lower volatility. Concerning industries we find stronger overreaction in healthcare and heavy industry. The study shows the most exceptional optimism in consumer goods/services and IT/telecom.

The post earnings announcement drift is a market anomaly causing a firms cumulative abnormal returns to drift in the direction of an earnings surprise. By measuring quarterly earnings surprises using two measures. The first based upon a times series prediction and the other based upon on analyst forecast errors. This study finds evidence that the drift ex-ists in Sweden and that investor’s systematically underreacts towards positive earnings sur-prises. Further this study shows that the cumulative average abnormal returns is larger for surprises caused by analyst forecast errors. While previous studies have tried to explain the drift by taking on additional risk or illiquidity in the stocks. This study provides evidence supporting that investors limitations in weighting new information causes an underreaction, hence a drift in the stock prices.

This dissertation investigates the immediate effects of securities analysts' statements on shareholders. Two of the most important questions posed in research on capital markets are when and how analysts matter. A time at which analysts might matter is when they make pronouncements regarding a firm or industry; ways in which they might matter is through their word choices and the context of their words in these pronouncements. The question, "Do analysts matter?," has been explored before and has been answered in terms of the securities analysts' quantitative earnings forecasts and their effects on the capital markets. I investigated the discourse used in these earnings forecasts and other statements regarding the focal firm or industry in analyst reports. Therefore, I answered the question, "Do analysts matter, as defined by their words used, and do they change investors' judgments about a firm's future prospects?" The study employed content analysis of analysts' language to determine whether the words they use in their statements cause a response in the market. The study also investigated how the analysts' language differs based on their affiliations. To examine this question, I drew on the efficient markets theory from finance. Data sources included the Chicago Centre for Research on Security Prices (CRSP) tapes and First Call analyst reports. The research applied quantitative computer text analysis, the event study methodology, and regression to test the hypotheses. By studying statements from the All-American Team analysts, the present work shows that investors do consider the pronouncement of analyst statements significant. The results demonstrate support for the idea that analyst statements have an impact on the stock market. Moreover, the statement characteristics have an incremental effect on the market response. The key findings illustrate that words in the analysts' report matter. The analyst characteristics were instrumental in deciding the words that the analysts use in their reports. Finally, analysts use words to signal information to investors when they are pressured from investment banking relationships. / text

School bus routing and scheduling are among the major problems because school bus transportation needs to be safe, reliable and efficient. Hence, the research question for this thesis is to answer how to transport students in the safest, most economical and convenient manner. The objective of this thesis is to create a GIS based school transport management system which helps in bus-stop allocation, design fastest and safest bus routes with AVL facility. This thesis also aims to investigate how a school transportation management system may improve the transportation security. The result from this study has helped to develop a school bus routing and scheduling prototype model for Sujatha High School, Hyderabad. This prototype model will help the school transportation management to design shortest and fastest school bus routes and they can also allocate bus stops, which will help them in selecting the pick-up stops for the students and staff, according to their concentration in the areas. This thesis has also, through literature study, investigated how a school transport management system can improve the transportation security. For the time being, there is a general belief that ICT contributes to improving the security, although a quantification of such improvements are lacking. The user interface application has been developed by using VBA and ArcGIS 9.1 Network Analyst provided by Environmental Science Research Institute and it has been evaluated by GIS users.

abstract: This thesis describes a synthetic task environment, CyberCog, created for the purposes of 1) understanding and measuring individual and team situation awareness in the context of a cyber security defense task and 2) providing a context for evaluating algorithms, visualizations, and other interventions that are intended to improve cyber situation awareness. CyberCog provides an interactive environment for conducting human-in-loop experiments in which the participants of the experiment perform the tasks of a cyber security defense analyst in response to a cyber-attack scenario. CyberCog generates the necessary performance measures and interaction logs needed for measuring individual and team cyber situation awareness. Moreover, the CyberCog environment provides good experimental control for conducting effective situation awareness studies while retaining realism in the scenario and in the tasks performed. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.C.St. Computing Studies 2011

This PhD thesis consists of three empirical papers. Each paper can be read independently. However, all three papers investigate different factors affecting the performance of firms involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and initial public offerings (IPOs). A private firm seeking to become listed and who also wish to grow through acquisition can do so with an IPO followed by acquisitions or a reverse takeover (RT). In a RT, a private firm is acquired by a public firm, but the private firm controls the combined public entity after completion of the deal. Chapter 2, 'Post-acquisition performance when firms list and acquire simultaneously versus sequentially: Reverse takeover versus IPO-M&As', examines the differential performance of firms conducting an IPO prior to undertaking follow-on acquisitions (IPO-M&As) versus firms that combine the process of obtaining the listing and acquiring another firm by conducting a RT. I investigate how acquirers' choices affect their post-acquisition performances. In this paper, I also investigate the impact of board structure changes on firm performance in IPO-M&A and RT deals. This event study covers RTs and acquisition-motived IPOs listed on the London Stock Exchange during 1995-2012. Challenging the theoretical expectation that IPOs increase the likelihood of optimal exercise of acquisition options by reducing valuation uncertainty, my results show that an IPO does not alleviate the stock market underperformance of acquirers within 3 years post-acquisition. Private firms seem to self-select into different listing-and-acquisition routes depending on firm-specific characteristics and the board members keep the same level of control preference. However, the choice of listing-and-acquisition does not appear to significantly affect performance. I find no significant difference in the post-acquisition performance of firms undertaking IPO-M&As or RTs. Chapter 3, 'Post-acquisition performance of target firms: The impact of management turnover', investigates the efficiency of the takeover market and the impact of management turnover on target firm performance. Investigating separately the operating performance of targets and acquirers in U.K. domestic acquisitions during 2006-2014, I find that the post-acquisition peer-adjusted profits significantly improve in the unprofitable targets but do not change significantly in profitable targets. Both profitable and unprofitable targets experienced high management turnovers, but the improvement in profits does not appear to be driven by the management turnover. The reason of management turnovers is more complex than the acquisitions' market discipline function or resource-based management hypothesis. However, a complete turnover of top management in target firms seems to hurt the post-acquisition performance of acquirers, suggesting target management team may possess valuable information to facilitate the integration process. This study sheds light on the post-acquisition restructuring of target firms and their management teams, especially in private targets. Chapter 4, 'Identifying leaders among IPO firms: a content analysis of analyst coverage reports', investigates how analysts identify firms as a leader and whether leader firms go on to generate superior operating performance to non-leaders. Using a content analysis approach, I extract sentences including the keyword 'lead' from initial coverage reports and pick out sentences where the IPO firm is identified as either an 'industry leader' or 'partial leader'. I examine the textual content of initial coverage reports on U.S. IPOs during 1999-2012 and find that lead-underwriter analysts appear not to be more optimistic than non-lead-underwriters in their leadership identification of IPO firms, however, nor are they more accurate than non-lead-underwriters in identifying leader firms. I find that neither firms identified by analysts as industry leaders nor firms identified as having partial leadership advantages tend to generate superior peer-adjusted net sales or profit margins compared to non-leaders. The Global Settlement in 2003 significantly reduced the likelihood, frequency and intensity of partial leadership identification. Although there is no explicit regulation requirement on the text content in analyst reports, analysts have become more conservative in identifying a firm as a leader after the Global Settlement. This study helps investors to understand the incremental information of leadership identification in analyst reports, beyond the quantitative outputs such as stock recommendations.

Submitted by Darllan Collins da Cunha e Silva null (darllanamb@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-11-09T18:01:50Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Doutorado (Tese) - Revisão final pós banca.pdf: 4023802 bytes, checksum: 681d7fd51b0d17026ff027af6a129e0a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Felipe Augusto Arakaki (arakaki@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-11-10T18:22:39Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 silva_dcc_dr_soro.pdf: 4023802 bytes, checksum: 681d7fd51b0d17026ff027af6a129e0a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-10T18:22:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 silva_dcc_dr_soro.pdf: 4023802 bytes, checksum: 681d7fd51b0d17026ff027af6a129e0a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-11-04 / Fundação de Apoio ao Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas (FIPT) / Índices e indicadores ambientais são importantes mecanismos para a comunicação de informações resumidas sobre o estado em que se encontra uma Bacia Hidrográfica. A escolha da Bacia Hidrográfica como unidade de gestão territorial neste estudo foi baseada na Lei 9.433/97, enquanto que, a utilização de índices e indicadores se deve ao fato de sua comprovada eficiência em processos de gestão. Visto isso, elaborou-se um Índice de Sustentabilidade Ambiental de Bacias Hidrográficas (ISABH) que integrou informações sociais, econômicas e ambientais visando analisar a sustentabilidade dessas unidades de gestão territorial e servir de instrumento de comparação entre as Bacias Hidrográficas. Além disso, avaliou-se a correlação espacial entre as Sub-Bacias Hidrográficas com objetivo de identificar padrões ou agrupamentos que possam facilitar a gestão pública dessas unidades. Dentro das dimensões adotadas, os indicadores e índices foram selecionados considerando-se as bases territoriais definidas pelo recorte dos setores censitários municipais bem como pelo recorte das Sub-Bacias Hidrográficas. Nesse caso, o índice privilegiou as variáveis que pudessem gerar uma superfície de distribuição espacial dos dados ao longo da Bacia Hidrográfica. Para o estudo do ISABH escolheu-se a Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Una, que está localizada no interior do Estado de São Paulo a aproximadamente 75km da capital do Estado de São Paulo, no município de Ibiúna. A partir dos resultados obtidos, foi possível verificar que os valores mais baixos do ISABH ocorrem ao sul da Bacia Hidrográfica e estão inseridos na zona rural do município de Ibiúna/SP sob influência de atividades agrícolas e péssimas condições de saneamento básico. Ainda, essas áreas apresentam altas taxas de analfabetismo e baixas taxas de renda per capita dos residentes. Além disso, apenas 19,4% da área de estudo apresentaram valores de ISABH iguais ou acima de 0,60, indicando uma qualidade razoável, longe da desejável, isto é, superior a 0,9. Com relação a qualidade da água, verificou-se uma baixa concentração de oxigênio dissolvido nos corpos hídricos, isto é, abaixo do permitido pela legislação, especialmente nas áreas onde a presença das atividades agrícolas é intensa. Em relação à perda de nutrientes (fertilidade), pode-se afirmar que há uma carência de fósforo no solo ao longo da Bacia Hidrográfica devido a perda desse nutriente por erosão hídrica, resultando em um custo elevado para sua reposição na área de estudo. Esse índice demonstrou ser uma importante ferramenta para fornecer subsídios à formulação de políticas públicas e servir de apoio à tomada de decisão por atores públicos e privados. / Environmental index and indicators are important mechanisms for report summarized information about the state of Watershed. The choice of the Watershed as a territorial management unit in this study was based on Law 9,433/97, while the use of index and indicators is because its proven efficiency in management processes. Therefore, was prepared an Environmental Sustainability Index of Watershed (ISABH) that integrated social, economic and environmental information to analyze the sustainability of these territorial management units and serve as a comparison tool between the Watershed. Furthermore, we evaluated the spatial correlation between the Micro-Watersheds to identify patterns or groups that can facilitate public management of these units. Within the adopted dimensions, indicators and index were selected considering the territorial bases defined by the limits of the municipal census tracts as well as the outline of the Micro-Watersheds. In this case, the index favored the variables that could generate a spatial distribution of surface data along the Watershed. To study the ISABH was choose the Una River Watershed, which is located in the State of São Paulo, approximately 75km from the capital of São Paulo, in the city of Ibiúna. From the results, was found that the lowest values of ISABH occur on south of the watershed and are inserted in the rural city of Ibiúna/SP under the influence of agricultural activities and poor sanitation conditions. Still, these areas have high rates of illiteracy and income per capita lower of the residents. Furthermore, only 19.4% of the study area shows of ISABH values equal or above 0.60, indicating a reasonable quality, far from desirable, i.e, greater than 0.9. Regarding water quality, was verified a low concentration of dissolved oxygen in the water bodies, i.e, below those permitted by law, especially in areas where the presence of agricultural activities are intense. About the loss of nutrients (fertility), it can be checked that there is a phosphorus deficiency in the watershed soil due to loss of this nutrient by water erosion, resulting in a high cost for their replacement in the study area. This index proved to be an important tool to provide input to the formulation of public policies and provide support to decision-making by public and private actors.