This thesis deals with the determination of economic efficiency of business project, whose subject is the reconstruction of outbuildings at the hospital. The theoretical part is devoted to the business plan and its affiliates. There are also characterized by cash flows, the discount rate. The practical part describes the chosen project, determining cash flows, the assessment of economic efficiency and sensitivity to potential risks.

La décision de détention d’actifs liquides par les entreprises a fait l’objet de rares recherches. Pourtant,les entreprises françaises détiennent des niveaux importants de liquidités parmi leurs actifs. Ce travailvise à étudier théoriquement et empiriquement les motivations et les conséquences de la décision dedétention d’actifs liquides par les entreprises.La première partie de la thèse a pour objectif d’établir un état de l’art des théories explicatives ducomportement accumulateur de liquidités des entreprises. La deuxième partie cherche à testerempiriquement ces théories sur un échantillon de 202 entreprises françaises cotées au SBF 250. Il s’agit,d’un côté, de vérifier s’il existe un niveau optimal d’actifs liquides, de présenter les différents avantageset inconvénients de la détention de liquidités et de déterminer quels facteurs intrinsèques (financiers etorganisationnels) et macro-économiques influencent le niveau de liquidités, et d’un autre côté, d’estimerl’impact des actifs liquides sur l’investissement, la performance économique et financière ainsi que surla valeur de marché de l’entreprise. Le traitement de ces deux questions est articulé autour de l’étudedes rôles modérateurs des contraintes de financement, de la gouvernance d’entreprise et des conditionsmacroéconomiques. / The topic of corporate cash holdings has received relatively little attention from the academicresearchers. Yet, French firms hold significant cash reserves. This research aims to investigate,theoretically and empirically, the motivations and implications of the decision to hold cash.The first part of the thesis aims to provide a state of the art of the theories explaining corporate cashholding behavior. The second part seeks to empirically test these theories on a sample of 202 Frenchcompanies listed on the SBF 250. We first test the existence of an optimal level of liquid assets. Wesubsequently explore the advantages and disadvantages of holding cash before we examine the specific(financial and organizational) and macro-economic determinants of corporate cash levels. Finally, weestimate the impact of liquid assets on firms’ investment, performance and value and then we analyzethe moderating roles of financial constraints, corporate governance and macroeconomic conditions.

In Chapter 1, which is co-authored with Rossella Calvi and Arthur Lewbel, we show that a local average treatment effect (LATE) can sometimes be identified and consistently estimated when treatment is mismeasured, or when treatment is estimated using a possibly misspecified structural model. Our associated estimator, which we call Mismeasurement Robust LATE (MR-LATE), is based on differencing two different mismeasures of treatment. In our empirical application, treatment is a measure of empowerment: whether a wife has control of substantial household resources. Due to measurement difficulties and sharing of goods within a household, this treatment cannot be directly observed without error, and so must be estimated. Our outcomes are health indicators of family members. We first estimate a structural model to obtain the otherwise unobserved treatment indicator. Then, using changes in inheritance laws in India as an instrument, we apply our new MR-LATE estimator. We find that women's empowerment substantially decreases their probability of being anemic or underweight, and increases children's likelihood of receiving vaccinations. We find no evidence of negative effects on men's health. Then, using changes in inheritance laws in India as an instrument, we apply our new MR-LATE estimator. We find that women's empowerment substantially decreases their probability of being anemic or underweight, and increases children's likelihood of receiving vaccinations.In Chapter 2, which is co-authored with Alexander Wolf, we take the Dunbar et al (2013) (DLP) model and explore its strength and weaknesses at recovering information regarding household sharing of resources. DLP develop a collective model of the household that allows to identify resource shares, that is, how total household resources are divided up among household members. We show why, especially when the data exhibit relatively flat Engel curves, the model is weakly identified and induces high variability and an implausible pattern in least squares estimates. We propose an estimation strategy nested in their framework that greatly reduces this practical impediment to recovery of individual resource shares. To achieve this, we follow a shrinkage method that incorporates additional (or out-of-sample) information on singles and relies on mild assumptions on preferences. We show the practical usefulness of this strategy through a series of Monte Carlo simulations and by applying it to Mexican data. The results show that our approach is robust, gives a plausible picture of the household decision process, and is particularly beneficial for the practitioner who wishes to apply the DLP framework.Finally, in Chapter 3, which is co-authored with Bram De Rock and Tom Potoms, we exploit the experimental set-up of a conditional cash transfers (CCT) program in Mexico to estimate a collective model of the household and to investigate how parents allocate household resources. This is important to understand because the success of policies aimed at fighting poverty depends crucially on how parents respond to monetary incentives. If parents allocate resources inefficiently (or non-cooperatively), the resulting level of well-being is likely to fall behind the socially efficient optimum. This is undesirable given the prevalence of CCT programs over the last two decades which have occupied a large percentage of governments' annual anti-poverty budgets. Although there is evidence that they have been beneficial, their effectiveness may still be limited. Our aim is to tackle this research question by estimating a theoretically-consistent demand system and by applying at best a powerful test of household efficiency developed by Bourguignon et al (2009). Contrary to previous results, we show that households make efficient decisions only at the beginning of the program, but fail to cooperate later on. In order to rationalize these results, we propose a simple model of household behaviour where decision makers may change their preferences as a result of a treatment that gives information about the importance of a public good. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This master thesis is focused on operating working capital and its implication towards corporate performance in the retail industry in a relevant business framework that takes into account structural changes in the industry. Our results suggest that there is a negative relationship between cash conversion cycle and corporate performance. Therefore, the management of retail companies should focus on shortening the cash conversion cycle to create value. However, in the apparel retail industry, companies with exceptionally long cash conversion cycles are better off keeping working capital investments high as those companies generate on the WC higher profitability than are the opportunity costs for this allocated capital. Finally, we have not found enough evidence to conclude that investment strategies based on the cash conversion cycle are able to generate alpha. However, there seems to be a sign of persistence for value-weighted portfolios. JEL Classification G31, G32 Keywords Working capital, Working capital management, Cash Conversion Cycle, Retail Author's e-mail michael.dibon@gmail.com Supervisor's e-mail ales.cornanic@gmail.com

This thesis investigates the difficulty in making accurate forecasts on opportunistic commercial real estate investments. The purpose is to quantify the differences between unlevered cash flows from underwriting estimates and actual outcomes, analyse them and arrive at conclusions about the difficulty in producing forecasts on opportunistic investments. The data used in this thesis comes from two opportunistic real estate portfolios previously owned by the private equity firm Niam. Both portfolios comprised Swedish office properties. The results from analysing Niam’s investments shows that operating cash flows on individual properties are most difficult to forecast since the strategy for the assets constantly needs to be updated in order to adjust for current events like for example change in demand of office properties. This can have great impact on the profit allocation between property cash flows and exit cash flows in comparison to underwriting. Furthermore the results show of an increased need of diversification for opportunistic investments, since individual investments have high volatility. Also, analysing investments on unlevered level has limitations. On an unlevered level an investment can have actual outcomes worse than in the underwriting, but when adding effects from financial leverage and currency movements the same asset can outperform the underwriting.

This thesis investigates the difficulty in making accurate forecasts on opportunistic commercial real estate investments. The purpose is to quantify the differences between unlevered cash flows from underwriting estimates and actual outcomes, analyse them and arrive at conclusions about the difficulty in producing forecasts on opportunistic investments. The data used in this thesis comes from two opportunistic real estate portfolios previously owned by the private equity firm Niam. Both portfolios comprised Swedish office properties. The results from analysing Niam’s investments shows that operating cash flows on individual properties are most difficult to forecast since the strategy for the assets constantly needs to be updated in order to adjust for current events like for example change in demand of office properties. This can have great impact on the profit allocation between property cash flows and exit cash flows in comparison to underwriting. Furthermore the results show of an increased need of diversification for opportunistic investments, since individual investments have high volatility. Also, analysing investments on unlevered level has limitations. On an unlevered level an investment can have actual outcomes worse than in the underwriting, but when adding effects from financial leverage and currency movements the same asset can outperform the underwriting.

Purpose:This thesis is examining two of the most common valuation methods put into practice on firms of different sizes in order to see if the market capitalization has any impact on said valuations. Relevance: Despite the widespread use of the intrinsic valuation methods both in academia and the professional world the amount of coverage concerning real life usage and analysis seems to be somewhat lacking. The numerous studies that cover the pros and cons of different valuation models and their supposed accuracy towards current stock prices. The studies rarely try to analyze whether or not the invisible hand of the market treats the firms differently depending on the market capitalization. Method: In this thesis the Free Cash Flow to Equity and Dividend Discount Model have been applied to 10 different firms of different sizes. The 10 firms were from a market capitalization perspective viewed as  5 “large”  and 5 “small”. For comparison matter, for each of the “large”  firms there was one corresponding “small” firm that operates in a similar line of business. The future growth projections were based on historical data and for the discount rate the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) was used. Conclusion: The two valuation models showed remarkably similar results, even when applied to firms of greatly different market capitalizations. Within the constraints and delimitations of this thesis, the conclusion is that according to Free Cash Flow to Equity model and Dividend Discount Model models the market does not value the firms differently with regards to market capitalization. In fact the divergencies in terms of absolute numbers of the valuations as a whole only show a 1% percentage unit difference in the Dividend Discount Model and a 2% percentage unit of difference in the Free Cash Flow to Equity model between the large and small cap segments.

Due to increasing skill and awareness of overall functions in programs such as Excel, an increasing number of analysts at real estate firms and consultancies have started developing "desktop" versions of valuation models used for professional appraisal of property value. Due to personal preferences, differences in schools and professional backgrounds, these so called desktop models vary in quality, robustness, accuracy, design and user friendliness. Professional software suites are not suitable either, as they are expensive, hard to learn, hard to adapt to specific needs of the business, outdated design and need of additional IT resources. At a multinational Real Estate consultancy such as Jones Lang LaSalle, requirements on tools used for professional opinions on questions as important as property value, are rigorous. Therefore, decision was made to develop a new DCF model which would be closely monitored by management and have a prismatic approach meaning that the model would satisfy the needs of more than one division at Jones Lang LaSalle. When reviewing existing models and practices at the company, the result became a tailored DCF valuation model that was focused on increasing efficiency of appraisers at Jones Lang LaSalle. Aside from being robust and technically sophisticated, the result also suited the specific needs of Jones Lang LaSalle in terms of features and user interface. Development of the model involved several divisions to ensure that the needs were met for Research & Valuation, Capital Markets, Corporate Solutions and Asset Management at Jones Lang LaSalle.

Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att kartlägga vilka krisåtgärder och vilken likviditetshantering som företag inom besöksnäringens boendesektor tillämpat för att överleva under Covid 19-krisen. Detta för att generera en djupare förståelse för vilka lärdomar som kan dras för att möta framtida kriser på ett mer effektivt sätt. Metod: Denna kvalitativa studie baseras på semistrukturerade intervjuer med informanter från företag inom besöksnäringens boendesektor. Resultat: Studiens slutsats är att företagen i studien har drabbats i olika hög utsträckning av pandemins ekonomiska följder. Företagens omsättning, beläggning samt lönsamhet har för många av verksamheterna kraftigt reducerats till följd av krisen och dess restriktioner. Företagen har arbetat på ett flertal olika sätt för att förändra sina verksamheter och hantera sin likviditet och de ekonomiska följderna under Covid-19 pandemin. Några av de åtgärder som har vidtagits är att reducera verksamhetens kostnader, tagit del av statliga stöd, diskuterat och omförhandlat villkor med leverantörer och långivare, säkrat likviditeten genom en ökad upplåning, introducerat nya koncept och attraherat nya målgrupper, sänkt försäljningspriset, ett ökat arbete med kampanjer samt skapat förutsättningar för att möjliggöra trygga upplevelser som besökare. Kunskapsbidrag: Studien undersöker en aktuell och pågående kris med nedstängningar av en karaktär som aldrig tidigare skådats i modern tid. Krisen har drabbat samhället, näringslivet samt många företag och medarbetare väldigt hårt särskilt inom besöksnäringen där många företag gått i konkurs och många medarbetare blivit uppsagda. Genom att kartlägga de krisåtgärder och den likviditetshantering som verksamheterna har tillämpat under krisen kan en djupare förståelse för de lärdomar som kan dras för att hantera framtida kriser på ett mer effektivt sätt.

This thesis aims to answer the question how our relation to money will look like in a potential cashless society.  In a world where all cash has disappeared and the only existing way of paying is digital, what will the notion of money be? How are we interacting with it? How is it affecting our way of spending and saving? With the digitalization of money comes a lot of potential problems that may not be as clear in the beginning, and are being over shadowed by the much clearer and easier to grasp benefits. People tend to spend much more when using a card instead of paying with cash. Overspending a budget is easy when borrowing money through services such as “Buy now, Pay later” - payments. There is no difference between paying 50 units and 5000 units when doing it through the internet.  What will this do to us in a future society? By using Sweden as a context, this thesis is exploring how the transition to a cashless society will look like and the consequences it may have. Initially having a user centered-focus, trying to solve problem, the project takes a turn and switches to a more speculative point of view, exploring different possibilities of how we can connect and interact with money. The final proposal includes three probes acting as conversation pieces, enabling a discussion regarding the removing of cash.