Magister Commercii - MCom / The private market, if left to its own devices, often fails to achieve economic and social efficiency. Some of the problems relate to the existence of externalities, the inability to provide public _..goodsand services, lack of information and failure to achieve other objectives such as greater equality, sustainable economic growth, higher levels of employment and stable. prices. It is these instances of market failure that provide the major justification for government intervention in the market.

The political connections of businesses bear implications for the economy. This dissertation studies the political connection of railways in the United Kingdom during the 19th century using several novel data sets. The first chapter of the dissertation begins by quantitatively investigating the implications of the political connections of railways for capital investment. Politically connected railways did significantly more capital investment than their non-connected counterparts. In addition, within-firm increases in political connections were associated with increased subsequent capital investment. The latter part of chapter one introduces the private bill process in the legislature as a likely channel relating political connections and capital investment. Politically connected firms proposed and passed considerably more legislation enabling capital investment than non-politically connected firms. Chapter two of the dissertation focuses on consumer and employee safety, relating safety to political connections and showing that politically connected railways were considerably deadlier than non-politically connected railways. A century of fatal railway accidents data is presented along with supplementary data sources to demonstrate this point. Chapter three of the dissertation looks at political connections as the outcome rather than as the explanatory variable. Political connections are related to voting rights in U.K. constituencies across five general elections spanning major franchise reforms. Within-constituency results show that for a given constituency increases in the franchise are associated with decreased likelihood that railway directors will run or win seats in the House of Commons.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T16:44:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Flavia Ponte Bandeira Serrao da Costa.pdf: 1527491 bytes, checksum: 17b63a56736e15009cebfc80e71cb951 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-23 / This current work aimed to study the purchase consumer process and analyze the factors that influence the decision-making products. More specifically, understand whether the consumer understands the concept of traceability and if traceability is a clear choice in the fruits purchasing decisions of consumers.In order to understand such purpose, an organization of the theorical references was sought on consumer behavior and purchasing decision process. Also treated the influence factors on consumer decisionmaking that most suited this study like: values and attitudes, beliefs, opinions, knowledge and learning.After that, this references incorporated the concept of traceability and its influence in ensuring food safety, as well as the existing legislations and an overview of fruit consumption in Brazil. The empirical study was based on the response of 324 consumers and buyers of fruit in the São Paulo region.The field study revealed that the greatest benefit find on traceability is costumer safety and that it is considered important as an inhibitor of risk or harm to health due to comsuption of adultared or contaminated food. This finding confirms that more and more consumers are concerned about their safety.The product has its own history and the customer wants to know it / A presente dissertação teve como objetivo estudar o processo de compra dos consumidores e analisar os fatores que influenciam a tomada de decisão por produtos. Mais especificamente, procurou-se compreender se o consumidor entende o conceito de rastreabilidade e se a rastreabilidade é uma opção clara na decisão de compra de frutas desse consumidor. Para atingir esse objetivo buscou-se organizar o referencial teórico sobre os estudos do comportamento do consumidor e o processo de decisão de compras. Também foram tratados os fatores de influência no processo de tomada de decisão do consumidor que mais se adequavam a este estudo: valores e atitudes, crenças, opiniões e conhecimento e aprendizagem. Na sequência, esse referencial incorporou a conceituação de rastreabilidade e sua influência na garantia de um alimento seguro, bem como as legislações existentes sobre o assunto e um panorama do consumo de frutas no Brasil. O estudo empírico foi baseado na resposta de 324 consumidores e compradores de frutas da Grande São Paulo. O estudo de campo revelou que o maior benefício ligado a rastreabilidade é a segurança do consumidor e que esta é considerada um importante inibidor de riscos ou prejuízos a saúde devido ao consumo de alimentos adulterados ou contaminados. Essa conclusão confirma que cada vez mais o consumidor tem-se preocupado com a sua segurança. O produto tem a sua história e o consumidor quer conhecê-la