The practice of parent-initiated school choice in China is characterized by the involvement of substantial amounts of money, various forms of capital, the explicit government policy of banning the practice in words but accommodating it in deeds. This research investigates the school choice situation in three middle schools in Nanning, China. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the forms of capital and cultural and social reproduction and Brown’s Positional Conflict Theory, this thesis argues that the use of cultural, social and economic capital is widespread in the school choice process. With more capital of various types available, middle class families are at a competitive advantage compared to their working class counterparts in the current struggle to gain a place in a good school. The resources of the former families enable their children to gain more cultural capital through extracurricular enrichment activities, exercise more social capital through existing guanxi1 networks and focus more economic capital with which to pay large sums for choice fees, all of which result in the greater chances of entering a desired school. The change of the school admission policy since the mid-1990s from universal entrance examination for junior middle schools to the present school place assignment by proximity has resulted in an unintentional shift from meritocracy to “parentocracy”2. School choice effectively closes out opportunities for quality education for working class families, because they lack the cultural, social and economic capital that is necessary to “work the system”. As a result, school choice tends to insure the intergenerational transmission of existing social classes and to decrease the possibility of upward mobility for the next generation. 1 A network of contacts which an individual may draw upon to secure resources or advantage in the course of social life (see 4.1.2 for detail). 2 See Brown (1990).

Dopo l’analisi delle modalità di misurazione del potere di mercato e della competizione tra brand nel contesto di un mercato caratterizzato dalla presenza di prodotti differenziati, viene presentata l’applicazione dei modelli a scelta discreta nel mercato del latte alimentare in Italia. Ho utilizzato dati scanner per analizzare i comportamenti nelle scelte di acquisto dei consumatori e le dinamiche competitive tra i due maggiori brand presenti nel mercato e le marche commerciali. Ho considerato il mercato del latte alimentare suddiviso in due sottocategorie, quella del latte a lunga conservazione (UHT) e quella del latte refrigerato. Ho quindi proceduto alla stima della domanda del latte alimentare utilizzando un nested logit model, appartenente alla categoria dei modelli a scelta discreta. Utilizzando i coefficienti stimati è possibile sia calcolare le elasticità di sostituzione tra i diversi brand e le elasticità dirette, nonché i margini di profitto dei brand presi in analisi considerando differenze nelle strategie di prezzo e nella struttura di mercato. / This work first gives an overview of the measurement of market power and brand competition in a differentiated products market, secondly applies discrete choice models to asses the Italian milk market. I use scanner data to estimate consumer purchasing decisions and competitive relationships between two major industry-level brands and (as a third category) supermarket private labels. I divide all milk sold in Italian market into two distinct classes of products: “UHT” and “Refrigerated” milk. I employ a well-known “discrete choice” nested-logit model to estimate consumer demand. Then, using the estimated coefficients, it is possible to calculate both consumer substitution patterns between products, and the profit-margins of the three major retail-level brands across the different sub-categories of milk under different pricing strategies and market structure.

The master´s thesis deals with a proposal of a business plan for setting up a small family business, stone shop, focusing on the sale of cakes devices. The proposal is based on theoretical background of this area and market analysis.

Final work of the University Undegraduate Studies, 60 pages, 9 figures, 11 tables, 52 references, 16 appendixes. Key words – total index of item competitiveness, total index of item group competitiveness, competition, competition limiting, competition conditions, competition strategy, competition market, competitiveness, competitiveness evaluation, competitiveness factors, competitive advantage, competitors, summary economical parameters index of competitiveness, summary qualitative parameters index of competitiveness, summary index of company’s goods competitiveness. Research object – agricultural equipment selling companies. Research subject – competitiveness in agricultural equipment selling companies. Research aim – to identify possibilities of creating competitiveness in agricultural equipment selling companies. Research tasks: - to dispute theoretical principals of competitiveness; - to prepare methodology of evaluation competitiveness of agricultural equipment; - to analyse market of agricultural equipment; - to estimate competitiveness of chosen agricultural equipment; - to identify conditioning to obtain the competitive advantage. Research methods: - comparative analysis of special literature sources; - comparative analysis of agricultural equipment competitiveness based on counting relative indexes; - interview with companies managers and other employees; - statistical analysis, graphic, data grouping other methods. Research period : year 2000 – 2004. In this final... [to full text]