In this thesis I contribute to the applied study of households' consumption and saving behaviour. In the first chapter I introduce and explain why it is relevant to understand how households react to income shocks in terms of their consumption and saving decisions. The second chapter is inspired by a recent paper by Krueger and Perri (2011), who argue that the observed response of household wealth to income shocks, which is smaller over long periods, provides evidence in favour of the classic permanent-income model with perfect financial markets. Whether a model with financial market imperfections, however, such as the standard incomplete-markets model with liquidity constraints, can also generate such a wealth response crucially depends on the importance of precautionary wealth accumulation. I structurally estimate a model with a precautionary- savings motive and show that it can generate the observed wealth responses in the data. I further show that the wealth responses to income shocks do not allow us to rule out financial market imperfections. In the third chapter I extend the analysis, studying empirically what can be learned from international evidence on the way in which households react to income. I use detailed panel data from newly available surveys of Chile, Spain and the United States. Although it compares three different countries with dissimilar levels of development in their financial markets, the evidence suggests that the amount of precautionary savings in these economies is low and that household behaviour is not strongly influenced by the presence of borrowing constraints. The structural estimation for all countries suggests a low target level of wealth resulting from high levels of impatience or low levels of risk aversion. In the fourth chapter I extend the analysis to the real estate properties owned by the households. I revisit the Italian data, building on Kaplan and Violante (2014) who have argued that a substantial fraction of wealthy households with illiquid wealth, such as real estate, behave as hand-to-mouth consumers. In exploring the data, I find that, in the Italian sample, households which adjust their illiquid wealth show responses to income shocks like permanent-income consumers. Instead households which do not adjust their illiquid wealth, and whose behaviour in general can thus not be characterised by the first order conditions, show responses to income shocks which suggest a stronger precautionary-saving motive, such as wealthy hand-to-mouth consumers might be expected to show. The fifth chapter provides the conclusions of the thesis.

This thesis explores how consumption impacts on people’s wellbeing in seven Peruvian communities. It draws on social science literature on consumption and incorporates the key factors highlighted by the research on wellbeing determinants. Generally, it is accepted that consumption increases wellbeing by lifting people out of poverty and that it has a negative impact if it fails to place them at a higher social position. Other aspects defining consumption such as the symbolic meaning of goods, its pleasurable dimension, the role of goods and services as basic needs satisfiers, etc. have not been systematically approached from the perspective of their effect on wellbeing. The thesis takes on this challenge by incorporating the most salient features of consumption studied by social scientists through the concepts of motives and satisfiers. It draws on psychologists’ claim that motives are important in understanding the linkages between wellbeing and people’s behaviour. It also integrates the work of human needs theorists stressing the importance of analysing the effectiveness of goods and services as basic needs satisfiers. The research follows a multi-methods approach that takes into account the local specificities of consumption, whilst aiming for a global understanding of the key factors mediating its relationship with human wellbeing; accounting for its objective and subjective dimensions. It uses regression analysis to study how consumption affects happiness through total expenditure and motives, and qualitative methods to explore the efficiency of satisfiers in meeting basic needs. The research finds, as expected, that in the Peruvian communities consumption enhances happiness when it improves basic needs levels and places people at a higher social position. People consuming because of hedonic reasons are also happier, but those consuming for social acceptance and higher status are not. Moreover, being motivated by basic needs is negatively associated with happiness. One of the reasons might be the type of satisfiers used. The exploratory study of needs satisfiers in a Peruvian slum points at their potential inefficiency, which might be contributing to people’s frustration through consumption.

Esta dissertação aborda a expansão da oferta de crédito e o consequente endividamento da população ocorridos no Brasil ao longo das últimas duas décadas. Os principais objetivos constituem analisar: o processo que conduz os consumidores ao superendividamento, estabelecendo as principais causas e eventos relacionados ao fenômeno; as formas como os endividados respondem ao endividamento, em termos de mecanismos e estratégias de enfrentamento; as percepções, sentimentos e significados atribuídos à condição de superendividado; e as consequências do superendividamento. A partir de uma perspectiva metodológica qualitativa, realizamos 18 entrevistas com roteiro semiestruturado com consumidores superendividados atendidos pelo Projeto Piloto de Prevenção ao Superendividamento, no Fórum Central em Porto Alegre. Os sujeitos foram selecionados tomando como critérios a conveniência e acessibilidade e os dados analisados através da técnica de análise de conteúdo. Os resultados encontrados corroboram as hipóteses que levantamos: o endividamento não se explica unicamente em função do consumismo, fator chave elencado na literatura; o fenômeno é complexo e possui uma multiplicidade de causas, relacionadas a elementos estruturais, entre os quais destacamos a desregulamentação das finanças, a estrutura do mercado de trabalho e os níveis de rendimento; estratégias de enfrentamento diversas são adotadas com efeitos distintos que guardam relação com as percepções que os indivíduos têm de suas dívidas, a severidade dos problemas e com seus efeitos. As consequências negativas também são variadas, destacando-se algumas de caráter econômico, como a redução do nível de vida e de consumo. Além desses outros efeitos encontrados são problemas de saúde física e mental, como stress, ansiedade e depressão, que decorrem dos sentimentos negativos de culpa em relação ao endividamento. Enfim, de modo geral, nossa investigação oferece um panorama das discussões teóricas e conceituais no campo da sociologia do crédito e do endividamento. A partir desses debates realizamos uma análise empiricamente fundamentada desses fenômenos constatando que a oferta de crédito, num contexto desfavorável aos consumidores, pela cobrança de altas taxas de juros e inexistência de regulação jurídica, quando direcionada a indivíduos em situação de vulnerabilidade econômica e social, dificultam a administração do orçamento em momentos de crise ou situações não esperadas. Esses elementos em conjunto contribuem na condução ao superendividamento, especialmente de indivíduos com baixos rendimentos ou em situação instável e precária de inserção no mercado de trabalho. Como resultado, essa condição gera um ciclo de pagamento de dívidas e juros capaz de exacerbar condições de pobreza e vulnerabilidade social, contribuindo, assim, para a reprodução das desigualdades sociais. / This research deals with the expansion of consumer credit and the indebtedness in Brazil that has occurred over the last two decades. The main objectives are to analyze the processes that leads consumers to over-indebtedness, establishing the main causes and events related to these phenomena; the ways in which indebted respond to the debts in terms of mechanisms and coping strategies; perceptions, feelings and meanings attributed to over-indebtedness condition; and their consequences. From a qualitative methodological perspective, we conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with over-indebted consumers seeking help in the Projeto Piloto de Prevenção ao Superendividamento, in Porto Alegre. Sample selection considered as criteria convenience and accessibility to interviewed subjects. Data treatment used content analysis techniques. Our results corroborate the raised hypothesis. Firstly, indebtedness cannot be explained solely based on a consumerism perspective, a key factor in the literature. Second, the phenomena are complex and has multiple causes related to structural elements, among which we highlight the deregulation of finance, the structure of the labor market and income levels. Third, various coping strategies are adopted with different effects, related to the perceptions that people have about their debts, the severity of the problems and their effects. Fourth, negative consequences are also varied. Reductions on standards of living and consumption can be highlighted, among others, as the main economic effects. In addition, other consequences found were physical and mental health problems such as stress, anxiety and depression arising from negative feelings of guilt about debt. Furthermore, in general terms, our research provides an overview of the theoretical and conceptual discussions in the field of sociology credit and debt. From these debates, we conducted an empirically based analysis of these phenomena. We conclude, among other founding that credit supply, when offered to individuals in economic and social vulnerable circumstances, particularly, in an unfavorable context featured by charging high interest rates and lacks of legal regulation, hamper budget management in times of crisis or unexpected situations. These elements occurring together can drive to overindebtedness, especially those people with low incomes or in precarious labor conditions. As a result, this condition generates a cycle of debt and interest repayments capable to reproduce or make worse the conditions of poverty and social vulnerability.

Thesis. 1977. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Vita. / Bibliography : leaves 130-133. / Ph.D.

The three chapters of my dissertation study imperfect competition, multiproduct firms, and consumer demand. Chapter 1 estimates a structural model of consumer demand and oligopolistic retail competition in order to study three mechanisms through which retailers affect allocative efficiency and consumer welfare. First, variable markups across retail stores within a location induce a misallocation of resources. The deadweight loss from this retail misallocation can be large since a significant fraction of household consumption comes from retail goods. Second, across locations, retail markups may vary with market size. This regional variation plays an important role in recent economic geography models as an agglomeration force. In the limit, models predict that the distortion from variable markups disappears in large markets, although it is an open question, How Large is Large? Third, since retail stores are differentiated, differences in the variety of retail stores available to consumers matters for consumer welfare across locations. To quantify the importance of these mechanisms, I estimate my model using retail scanner data with prices and sales at the barcode level from thousands of stores across the US. I find that the deadweight loss and consumption misallocation from variable retail markups are economically significant. I estimate that retail markups are smaller in larger cities, and that markets the size of New York City and Los Angeles are approximately at the undistorted monopolistically competitive limit. My results show that retail store variety significantly impacts the cost of living and could be an important consumption-based agglomeration force. The second chapter of my dissertation develops and structurally estimates a model of heterogeneous multiproduct firms that can be used to decompose the firm-size distribution into the contributions of costs, quality, markups, and product scope. In this joint work with Stephen J. Redding and David E. Weinstein, we find that variation in firm quality and product scope explains at least four fifths of the variation in firm sales using Nielsen barcode data on prices and sales. We show that the imperfect substitutability of products within firms, and the fact that larger firms supply more products than smaller firms, implies that standard productivity measures are not independent of demand system assumptions and probably dramatically understate the relative productivity of the largest firms. Although most firms are well approximated by the monopolistic competition benchmark of constant markups, we find that the largest firms that account for most of aggregate sales depart substantially from this benchmark, and exhibit both variable markups and substantial cannibalization effects. The final chapter of my dissertation develops a new integrable demand system, called the Doubly-Translated CDES demand system, which is well suited to theoretical and empirical work. Commonly used analytically and computationally tractable demand systems severely restrict key properties of demand, which parametrically pins down the answers to many important economic questions. The Doubly-Translated CDES demand system is flexible in important ways that common demand systems are not, while maintaining effective global regularity and global consistency. Using data, I provide examples of this demand system's flexibility by calibrating different parameter values. I discuss how this demand system can be estimated with regularity imposed and correcting for the endogeneity of prices using constrained Nonlinear GMM.

Turismo é uma atividade que pode ser definida como uma prática social cooptada pelo mercado e que tem no espaço sua maior especificidade. De um lado, o turismo é apresentado enquanto uma atividade econômica como aporte ao desenvolvimento; de outro, ele se apresenta como uma atividade geradora de impactos. Enquanto atividade econômica, cada vez mais o turismo se afirma como consumo do/no espaço e do lazer, pautado em um tempo rápido, racionalizado e caro, independentemente dos lugares onde ele se realiza. No campo, o modo de vida camponês se realiza em um tempo lento, em oposição ao próprio turismo. As políticas brasileiras de implementação do turismo no campo tem como discurso a melhoria de condições de vida e aumento de ganhos para o pequeno agricultor familiar. Mas por trás da noção de agricultor familiar há uma tradição de análises da existência, desaparecimento e resistência do camponês em meio a projetos políticos de modernização do campo, a partir de uma tentativa de transformar o camponês em agricultor familiar. Uma análise do turismo não pode desconsiderar a complexidade das relações e dos processos sociais que ele engendra, sob o risco de produzir-se uma análise reducionista. Tivemos por objetivo geral analisar em que medida o avanço do turismo no município de Colombo/PR, com apoio de políticas públicas, se desenvolve com participação camponesa. Utilizamos o método dialético materialista, levando em consideração a complexidade da vida social e da coexistência de relações sociais que tem datas desiguais. Turismo e campesinato são analisados a partir de suas contradições, percebidos em constantes movimentos. Como resultado de nossa pesquisa, foi possível observar que, de maneira geral, não há desenvolvimento do turismo com participação camponesa. Isso porque há uma oposição entre a implementação da atividade turística e o modo de vida camponês, que acaba resistindo ao próprio turismo. / Tourism is an activity that can be defined as a social practice co-opted by the market and which has its major specificity in the space. On one hand, tourism is presented as an economic activity contributing to development; on the other hand it is presented as an activity that generates impacts. Tourism as an economic activity is increasingly seen as a consumption of/in space and of leisure, enjoyed in a quick, rationalized and expensive time, independently of the places where it takes place. In the countryside the peasants life style is slow paced, to the opposite of tourism itself. The Brazilian implementation policies for countryside tourism argue that it is to improve living conditions and earnings for the small family farmer. However behind the family farmer notion there is a tradition of analyses of the existence, disappearance and resistance of the peasants in the midst of political projects for the modernization of the countryside, to try and transform the peasants into farming families. An analysis about tourism must consider the complexity of the relationships and social processes that it generates, under the risk of producing a reductionist analysis. We had the general objective of analyzing just how the advance of tourism in the municipality of Colombo/PR, with the support of government policies, is developing with peasant participation. We utilized a materialistic dialectic method, taking into consideration the complexity of social life and of the coexistence of social relationships that have unequal dates. Tourism and countryside family social groups are analyzed from their contradictions, perceived in constant movements. It was possible to observe as a result, after our research, that in general there is no tourism development with peasant participation. This is because there is opposition between the implementation of tourist activity and the peasants way of life, which ends up resisting tourism itself.

No description available.

The Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing is a promising technology for the Next Generation Networks. This technique was selected because of the flexibility for the various parameters, high spectral efficiency, and immunity to ISI. The OFDM technique suffers from significant digital signal processing, especially inside the Inverse/ Fast Fourier Transform IFFT/FFT. This part is used to perform the orthogonality/De-orthogonality between the subcarriers which the important part of the OFDM system. Therefore, it is important to understand the parameter effects on the increase or to decrease the FPGA power consumption for the IFFT/FFT. This thesis is focusing on the FPGA power consumption of the IFFT/FFT uses in the OFDM system. This research finds a various parameters effect on FPGA power of the IFFT/FFT. In addition, investigate the computer software used to measure and analyse the FPGA power consumption of OFDM transceivers, and selects the target hardware used in the computer software. The researched parameters include the number of bits used in calculating the phase factor precision; Cyclic Prefix length effected on IP core IFFT, Subcarrier modulation type, word length width, Real and Complex Value IFFT, IFFT length, and subcarriers sampling frequency. The real value IFFT is proposed in 1987 and implemented in this thesis. These parameters above are discussed by comparing the result between the Real and Complex value IFFT used inside the OFDM system.

The development of relevant and engaging advertising message appeals is a critical element of retail marketing strategy. Achieving advertising resonance with female consumers is beneficial to brand building, and eliciting positive feelings and emotions lies at the heart of effective advertising development. This is particularly important at Christmas when retailers need to attract attention, engage consumers and encourage women to buy. This thesis addresses the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of retailer Christmas TV advertising in the UK. It seeks to understand women’s perceptions of the Christmas advertisements of four retailers over a three year period 2011-2013 in order to examine the way in which advertising message appeal engages consumers and reflects the retailer. It therefore illuminates the relationship between female consumers, the advert and retailer. Research in the area of advertising relies heavily on quantitative studies that reflect the often normative approach to advertising planning and development. This thesis, through its social constructionist theoretical standpoint, informs the methodological nature of the study. Such an approach offers insight and meaning in connection with the advertising message appeals used by retailers as it seeks to interpret the Christmas advertisement phenomenon from a consumer perspective. The Christmas TV advertisements of four retailers (John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Matalan, and TK Maxx) are selected as an empirical focus and the study offers a longitudinal approach in its design. Dialogues are subsequently maintained with the primary consumer targets of the retailers’ advertisements over a three year period. The study evidences the most effective advertising appeals and the power of emotional advertising that reflects both consumer and brand. The findings demonstrate the ways in which consumers use Christmas advertising in their festive preparations, how women consume Christmas advertising and its associated images of family and feelings of love and illustrate the relationship between the advert and perceptions of the retailer. This thesis makes contributions in a number of ways. First it is an original qualitative study that examines women’s constructions of retailer Christmas TV advertising message appeals and their effects. Second it extends insight into the field of retailer brand research through its social constructionist approach. Finally the consumer narratives illuminate the ways in which advertising is received by consumers and in doing so addresses a lack of qualitative research in the field. The constructionist approach to investigating this phenomenon has further applications in the field of advertising research which provides a wealth of opportunity in terms of its breadth. In particular the approach has value in the area of retailer advertising.

There has been a steadily growing concern by governments, NGO's and international agencies regarding the rising rate of consumption in industrialised countries. Despite warnings and evidence showing the relationship between rising consumption and climate change, and the uptake of initiatives and education at business and consumer levels, the trend towards consuming more and more continues unabated. Questions have been raised regarding the relationship between marketing and rising consumption. In line with this, the research will investigate the responsibility of marketing to encourage consumers to moderate their consumption behaviour.  The research will address three broad objectives:· To identify whether marketing professionals feel responsible for encouraging consumers to moderate their consumption· To identify and explain the reasons why marketers would encourage moderation of consumption· To understand the construct 'marketing responsibility to encourage moderation of consumption' and explain the influences upon the acceptance of responsibilityThe research adopted a mixed-methods design. Qualitative research methods were used to explore perceptions of responsibility and develop a typology of motivations to explain why marketers would encourage moderation. An online, quantitative survey (n=359) was conducted in the USA and UK in January 2011. The results evidenced an acceptance of responsibility which is suggestive of a changing role for the marketing discipline. The results found support for the typology of motivations which were developed during the qualitative phase of the research, in particular, highlighting the importance of ethical and cost-saving motivations. The level of environmentalism in the workplace, and in the private life of the marketer, was found to influence the acceptance of marketing responsibility to encourage moderation. Finally, the motivation to remain competitive was also associated with the acceptance of marketing responsibility. The acceptance of responsibility to encourage moderation of consumption highlights a changing role for marketing which could potentially signify far-reaching changes in practical terms, in the way marketing is taught, and in the public policy domain.