A questão se a informação contábil é relevante para o mercado de capitais tem sido investigada, predominantemente, por meio dos pressupostos da Hipótese de Eficiência de Mercado (HEM). Para a HEM, toda informação relevante é refletida nos preços das ações de forma integral e instantânea, a partir da consideração de que as informações são analisadas e interpretadas por indivíduos plenamente racionais. Contudo, a literatura relacionada às áreas de Finanças Comportamentais e de Processos Decisórios tem indicado que os indivíduos, mesmo em condições de interação e de competição, como verificado nos mercados financeiros, são melhor caracterizados como detentores de racionalidade limitada ao tomar decisões. Nesse sentido, o objetivo deste estudo foi examinar a relevância da informação contábil para o mercado de capitais brasileiro sob o pressuposto da racionalidade limitada dos investidores. Para tanto, foram desenvolvidas escalas de complexidade específicas para as ações ordinárias e preferenciais. As escalas foram utilizadas como parâmetros para testar se níveis distintos de incertezas na estimação dos fluxos de caixa futuros estão associados à utilidade da informação contábil para o mercado de capitais. Além disso, no estudo, segregou-se a tomada de decisão nas dimensões dos ganhos e das perdas, tendo como objetivo identificar a relevância da informação contábil, segundo essa classificação. A amostra foi composta por informações de 232 empresas listadas na Bolsa de Valores, Mercadorias e Futuros de São Paulo (BM&FBOVESPA) no período de 2000 a 2015. Os resultados encontrados apontaram evidências de uma associação inversa entre os níveis de complexidade na avaliação das empresas e a relevância da informação contábil para os investidores. Foi identificado, também, que os preços das ações tendem a incorporar as informações contábeis relevantes de forma apenas gradual em condições de maiores níveis de incertezas. Esses resultados mostraram-se robustos para a dimensão dos ganhos. Além disso, os resultados obtidos sugerem que as normas contábeis do International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) reduziram os níveis de complexidade na avaliação das ações, o que resultou em um aumento da relevância da informação contábil para os investidores. De forma geral, as evidências obtidas corroboram a ideia de que os limites cognitivos dos indivíduos em processar informações pode ser um fator relacionado à magnitude com que os preços das ações refletem as informações contábeis. / The question whether accounting information is relevant to the capital market has been investigated predominantly through the assumptions of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). For EMH, all relevant information is reflected in stock prices in an integral and instantaneous way, considering that information is analyzed and interpreted by fully rational individuals. However, the literature related to the areas of Behavioral Finance and Decision Making has indicated that individuals, even in conditions of interaction and competition, as verified in financial markets, are better characterized as having limited rationality when making decisions. In this sense, the objective of this study was to examine the relevance of the accounting information to the Brazilian capital market, under the assumption of investors\' bounded rationality. Therefore, specific complexity scales were developed for common and preferred stocks. The scales were used as parameters to test if different levels of uncertainties in the estimation of future cash flows are associated with the usefulness of the accounting information for the capital market. In addition, the study segregated the decision making in gains and losses dimensions, aiming to identify the relevance of accounting information according to this classification. The sample consisted of information of 232 companies listed on the Brazilian Securities, Commodities and Futures Exchange (BM&FBOVESPA), from 2000 to 2015. The findings brought evidence of an inverse association between levels of complexity in the evaluation of the stocks and the relevance of accounting information to investors. It was identified that stock prices tend to incorporate the relevant accounting information only gradually in conditions of higher levels of uncertainties. These results were robust for the gain dimension. Furthermore, the results suggest that the accounting standards of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) reduced complexity levels in stock valuation, which resulted in an increase in the relevance of accounting information for investors. In general, the evidence obtained corroborates with the idea that cognitive limits of individuals in processing information may be a factor related to the magnitude in which stock prices reflect the accounting information.

Human and animal decision-making is known to violate rational expectations in a variety of contexts. Statistical structures of real-world environments may account for such seemingly irrational behavior. In a computerized experiment, 16 capuchins, 7 rhesus monkeys, and 30 humans chose between up to three options of different value. The options disappeared and became available again with different probabilities. Subjects overwhelmingly chose transitively (A>B, B>C, and A>C) in the control condition, where doing so maximized overall gain. However, most subjects also adhered to transitivity in the test condition, where it was suboptimal but led to negligible losses compared to the optimal strategy. Only a few of the capuchins were able to maximize long-term gain by violating transitivity. Adhering to rational choice principles may facilitate the formation of near-optimal decision rules when short- and long-term goals align. Such cognitive shortcuts may have evolved to preserve mental resources.

Cette thèse porte sur le régime de protection des consommateurs qui vise à prévenir les ventes abusives dans les services de conseil en investissement. Elle examine les conflits d'intérêts dus au comportement des conseillers financiers qui peuvent entraîner des ventes abusives. Le fait que la rationalité du consommateur puisse être limitée signifie que les consommateurs financiers traditionnellement considérés comme des clients de détail ou des investisseurs de détail sont en effet exposés au risque de conflits d'intérêts dans le processus de conseil en investissement et nécessitent donc une protection accrue. La directive MIF a récemment renforcé son dispositif afin de protéger plus efficacement les consommateurs contre le problème persistant des ventes abusives. La modification de la réglementation de la protection des consommateurs est significative en ce qu'elle renforce le régime général de protection des consommateurs de la directive MIF en mettant l'accent sur la vulnérabilité réelle des consommateurs. Elle contribue en outre à la promotion du système de protection du consommateur en imposant des devoirs de comportement aux sociétés financières qui doivent gérer des conflits d'intérêts spécifiques dans le cadre du grand principe de la protection des consommateurs. Cependant, même si l’intention à l’origine de son introduction est largement reconnue, la mise en place et la mise en œuvre pratiques de certains règlements devraient rencontrer des difficultés et donc nécessiter que des mesures supplémentaires soient prises. / The thesis deals with the consumer protection scheme which aims to prevent mis-selling in investment advice services. It examines the conflicts of interest which appear in the behavior of investment advisors which may ultimately cause mis-selling scandals. The research findings of behavioral economics that the consumer’s rationality can be bounded indicate that financial consumers who are traditionally considered as retail clients or retail investors are indeed vulnerable to the risk of conflicts of interest in investment advisory processes and thus need enhanced consumer protection. MiFID I has recently strengthened its scheme with a view to protecting consumers more effectively from persistent problems of mis-selling. The amendment of the consumer protection regulation is meaningful in that it strengthens the overall consumer protection scheme within the MiFID with a focus on the actual vulnerability of consumers. Furthermore, it contributes to the fostering of the consumer protection system by imposing behavioral duties on financial firms which manage specific conflicts of interest under the important principle of consumer protection. However, even though the intention at the origin of its introduction is widely recognized, it is expected that some difficulties will arise when some of the regulations are virtually introduced and implemented, and thus supplementary measures will have to be established.

As economies develop, novel products are created and markets for these products arise. Genetically modified food (GMF) is an example of such a novel product and provides economists with the opportunity to investigate an infant market. Of particular interest with GMF is the impact of consumer reactions on the market. The response of consumers to GMF and their willingness to pay for it has emerged as an important factor in the development of this technology. This research investigates these consumer responses. Prior research suggests that two aspects of consumer behaviour may be relevant for the GMF market. First, consumers may react differently to different types of GMF, so that some products are potentially more economically viable. Secondly, some consumers appear to prefer not having GMF at all. Consumer behaviour is often framed according to neoclassical economic theory. Consumer preferences over goods and the attributes of those goods are generally held to have certain properties. The aspects of consumers’ reactions to GMF noted above, however, may be in conflict with two properties of preferences in neoclassical theory. First, preferences over food attributes are not separable, but may interact with each other. Secondly, some consumers may have preferences regarding GMF that are not continuous. As a result, aggregate impacts of introducing GMF may be difficult to measure, which raises a third issue for investigation, aggregation. Finally, an alternative model of consumer behaviour is bounded rationality, which theorises that choices may be discontinuous as a result of specific protocols. It also suggests that consumers seek to make good-enough choices, rather than attempting to maximise their satisfaction. Thus, optimisation or maximisation is the fourth issue considered in this thesis. In order to investigate these properties of consumers’ preferences, a choice experiment survey was developed. The strength of a choice experiment for examining these issues is its focus on the impact of each product attribute on a respondent’s choices. Thus, it may be possible to identify potentially discontinuous choice patterns and to identify choices affected by interactions between GM technology and other food attributes. Results from a neoclassical analysis of the survey data suggest that some consumers consider the type of benefit created with GM technology in making their choices. In addition, one-quarter to one-half of respondents may have had discontinuous preferences with respect to GMF. Reactions to GMF appear related to respondents’ attitudes, but not to socio-economic or demographic descriptors. As a result, aggregate measures of the impact of GMF may not fully account for consumers’ responses. A boundedly rational model also has reasonable goodness of fit, and may provide a different perspective on consumer behaviour. It is hoped that the results of this research provide a better understanding of consumer behaviour regarding GMF and, by extension, of the process of consumer adoption of novel products. It is further hoped that this attempt to incorporate choice protocols into discrete choice analysis will provide a useful example for further research.

This thesis proposes a conceptual framework to analyze the choice of organizational form and assess the shifts in organizational behaviour and form. This thesis argues that the choice of organizational form is an outcome of an individuals or groups mode of identification within the dominant organizational form and property rights structure of society. The framework places/situates the investor-owned firm (IOF) in a position of identification with the dominant ideology and property rights structure of society. The state-owned enterprise (SOE) occupies a position of counter-identification with the dominant ideology and property rights structure of society. The co-operative, on the other hand, represents a dis-identification with both the IOF and the SOE as this form works on and against the ideologies and property rights structures associated with the two former organizational forms.<p>Further, the thesis argues that endogenous and exogenous pressures may cause some organizations to shift their organizational behaviour and form. The researcher examines how internal problems in co-operative organizations (i.e., horizon and principal-agent problems) can exacerbate exogenous pressures (i.e., increasing competition and/or government deregulation) from the market and/or state causing the co-op to imitate the strategies or property rights structure of the IOF in order to cope with these issues. <p>Profiles of the formation of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Wholesale Society and the Consumers Co-operative Refineries Limited and the conversion of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool are used to illustrate the conceptual framework and support the arguments made in this thesis.

A simple asset pricing model with two types of adaptively learning traders, fundamentalists and technical analysts, is studied. Fractions of these trader types, which are both boundedly rational, change over time according to evolutionary learning, with technical analysts conditioning their forecasting rule upon deviations from a benchmark fundamental. Volatility clustering arises endogenously in this model. Two mechanisms are proposed as an explanation. The first is coexistence of a stable steady state and a stable limit cycle, which arise as a consequence of a so-called Chenciner bifurcation of the system. The second is intermittency and associated bifurcation routes to strange attractors. Both phenomena are persistent and occur generically in nonlinear multi-agent evolutionary systems. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

I present a simple model of an evolutionary financial market with heterogeneous agents, based on the concept of adaptive belief systems introduced by Brock and Hommes (1997a). Agents choose between different forecast rules based on past performance, resulting in an evolutionary dynamics across predictor choice coupled to the equilibrium dynamics. The model generates endogenous price fluctuations with similar statistical properties as those observed in real return data, such as fat tails and volatility clustering. These similarities are demonstrated for data from the British, German, and Austrian stock market. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

This thesis proposes a conceptual framework to analyze the choice of organizational form and assess the shifts in organizational behaviour and form. This thesis argues that the choice of organizational form is an outcome of an individuals or groups mode of identification within the dominant organizational form and property rights structure of society. The framework places/situates the investor-owned firm (IOF) in a position of identification with the dominant ideology and property rights structure of society. The state-owned enterprise (SOE) occupies a position of counter-identification with the dominant ideology and property rights structure of society. The co-operative, on the other hand, represents a dis-identification with both the IOF and the SOE as this form works on and against the ideologies and property rights structures associated with the two former organizational forms.<p>Further, the thesis argues that endogenous and exogenous pressures may cause some organizations to shift their organizational behaviour and form. The researcher examines how internal problems in co-operative organizations (i.e., horizon and principal-agent problems) can exacerbate exogenous pressures (i.e., increasing competition and/or government deregulation) from the market and/or state causing the co-op to imitate the strategies or property rights structure of the IOF in order to cope with these issues. <p>Profiles of the formation of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Wholesale Society and the Consumers Co-operative Refineries Limited and the conversion of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool are used to illustrate the conceptual framework and support the arguments made in this thesis.

Prepay or pay-as-you-go programs are an increasingly popular type of rate plan offered by electric utilities. Under these plans, ratepayers must keep a positive balance at all times to avoid being automatically disconnected, they are charged daily for their usage, and they are provided with a means to monitor their consumption. One of the suggested benefits of these plans is that they allow electricity consumers to better manage their usage. Using household level monthly usage data from customers enrolled in prepay programs at two Kentucky rural electric cooperatives, we investigate whether there is a change in consumption after these customers enrolled in the program. To address this question, we employ a fixed-effects model. The results of our model indicate that prepay customers reduce their consumption by an average of 11% after enrolling in the program. We also find that this response is larger during periods of high or low temperatures than during mild weather. Furthermore, we find evidence that the prepayment effect diminishes over the length of time that a customer is enrolled in the program.

Problembakgrund &amp; problemdiskussion: I dagens informationssamhälle finns det oändligt med möjligheter att nå information. Dels genom traditionell media i form av papperstidningar, men också genom webbaserade plattformar i mobiltelefonen, surfplattan och datorn. För investerare innebär detta att de dagligen möts av information om företag de äger och har ett intresse för. En stor del av den information som publiceras innehåller inte något fundamentalt värde. Enligt teori om en effektiv marknad och rationella investerare påverkas investerare inte av denna information. Inom beteendevetenskapen är detta däremot fullt tänkbart. Med en beteendevetenskaplig utgångspunkt önskar vi därmed undersöka om synligheten av bolagsnamnen i press påverkar likviditeten i deras aktier. Problemformulering: Påverkar synligheten av företagsnamnet i press, och i så fall hur, likviditeten i aktierna för bolagen listade på First North? Syfte: Huvudsyftet med studien är att utreda om handelsvolymen i aktierna för bolagen listade på First North påverkas av att bolagsnamnet syns i pressen. Om vi finner ett samband i huvudsyftet vill vi även som delsyfte undersöka om påverkan skiljer sig mellan tryckt och webbaserad press. Teori: Studien inkluderar teorin om den effektiva marknaden, bounded rationality samt behavioral finance teorier om övertro, social påverkan och flockbeteende, representativitet och familjaritet. Bounded rationality diskuterar människors verkliga beslutsfattande kontra de finansiella teoriernas uppfattning om effektiva marknader och rationella individer. Behavioral finance avser förklara investerarnas beteende. Grundtanken i teorin om övertro är att det finns investerare som överskattar sin egen förmåga. Social påverkan och flockbeteende är teorier om hur investerares beslut kan påverkas av omgivningen. Representativitet och familjaritet beskriver hur investerare tar investeringsbeslut utifrån sin känsla eller koppling till företaget. Metod: I utförandet av studien har en kvantitativ metod och deduktiv ansats använts. Vår studerade marknad är First North under åren 2011-2013. Urvalspopulationen består av 15 bolag listade på den svenska delen av denna. För dessa har vi samlat in data för antalet omnämnanden i tryckt och webbaserad press för årens alla dagar och finansiell information för samtliga 753 handelsdagar. Empiri/analys: Resultatet av undersökningen visar att handelsvolymen ökar vid ytterligare ett omnämnande av bolagen i den webbaserade pressen. Efter att ha inkluderat kontrollvariabler för bolagsstorlek, fundamentala nyheter, marknadssentiment med flera anser vi att ett orsakssamband styrkts. Studien visar att likviditeten i aktierna höjs vid ökad synlighet i webbaserad press. Utifrån detta har vi dragit slutsatsen att det finns investerare på First North vars beslutsprocess är betydligt mer invecklad än vad som antas i teori om effektiva marknader och rationella investerare. Investerarnas beteenden kan bättre förklaras av teorier inom behavioral finance. Slutsats: Vi anser att vi besvarat vår problemformulering och uppfyllt studiens syften. Studien har visat att likviditeten i aktierna för bolagen listade på First North påverkas av synlighet i webbaserad press.