We run a large-scale natural field experiment to evaluate alternative strategies to enforce compliance with the law. The experiment varies the text of mailings sent to potential evaders of TV license fees. We find a strong effect of mailings, leading to a substantial increase in compliance. Among different mailings, a threat treatment which makes a high detection risk salient has a significant deterrent effect. Neither appealing to morals nor imparting information about others' behavior enhances compliance on aggregate. However, the information condition has a weak positive effect in municipalities where evasion is believed to be common. (authors' abstract)

This dissertation consists of three essays exploring the heterogeneity of gender differences in behavior across contrasting societies. Are women naturally wired to behave differently than men or is it the social context in which the gender roles operate that motivate their behavior? I study this question in the contexts of risk, trust, and trustworthiness, moral hazard and repayment behavior in microfinance. I use the approach of conducting controlled field experiments in neighboring matrilineal and patrilineal societies in rural India. The two societies differ in gender roles but are comparable otherwise. Understanding the societal and cultural factors that drive gender differences in behavior helps to prescribe optimally-targeted policy designs. The first essay evaluates the universal policy of gender targeting to mitigate microfinance loan defaults and studies the reasons for such gender differences in default. I design and conduct microfinance field experiments with individual and group liability treatments in comparable matrilineal and patrilineal societies in India. I observe a reversal of gender effect on loan default across the two societies. I find that women have a lower default in the patrilineal society but higher default in the matrilineal society compared to their male counterparts. I also find that group liability leads to moral hazard among the individual group members but reduces overall default due to risk sharing among them. My results suggest that while women are better clients on average, a universal policy of gender targeting to reduce defaults in microfinance might be suboptimal. The second essay builds on the findings of the first essay that group liability contracts lead to moral hazard among the borrowers. In this essay, I evaluate the policy of gender targeting to mitigate moral hazard problems in microfinance and study the underlying reasons for such gender differences in moral hazard. I address this question by following a similar methodology to the first essay. My experimental design allows decomposing the different moral hazard channels through which default occurs in microfinance and interact them with gender and types of societies (matrilineal and patrilineal). I find that women in matrilineal society are more prone to exhibit moral hazard behavior than patrilineal women. Based on my findings, I argue that the gender differences in moral hazard is driven by the difference in social context, norms and the gender roles between the two societies. The final essay examines what drives gender differences in trust and trustworthiness, by conducting trust experiments in neighboring matrilineal and patrilineal societies in India. I find that on average the matrilineal subjects are more trusting as well as more trustworthy than the patrilineal subjects, but there is a significant heterogeneity in gender effects. Women in matrilineal society are both less trusting and less trustworthy than patrilineal women, compared to their male counterparts. This finding holds true even after controlling for risk preference and other individual characteristics. My findings suggest that societal structures are crucially linked to the observed gender differences in trust and trustworthiness.

Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are a stated preference valuation method. As a ubiquitous component of healthcare delivery, risk is increasingly used as an attribute in DCEs. Risk is a complex concept that is open to misinterpretation; potentially undermining the robustness of DCEs as a valuation method. This thesis employed quantitative, qualitative and eye-tracking methods to understand if and how risk communication formats affected individuals’ choices when completing a DCE and the valuations derived. This thesis used a case study focussing on the elicitation of women’s preferences for a national breast screening programme. Breast screening was chosen because of its relevance to primary care and potential contribution to the ongoing debate about the benefits and harms of mammograms. A DCE containing three attributes (probability of detecting a cancer; risk of unnecessary follow-up; and cost of screening) was designed. Women were randomised to one of two risk communication formats: i) percentages only; or ii) icon arrays and percentages (identified from a structured review of risk communication literature in health).Traditional quantitative analysis of the discrete choices made by 1,000 women recruited via an internet panel revealed the risk communication format made no difference in terms of either preferences or the consistency of choices. However, latent class analysis indicated that women’s preferences for breast screening were highly heterogeneous; with some women acquiring large non-health benefits from screening, regardless of the risks, and others expressing complete intolerance for unnecessary follow-ups, regardless of the benefits. The think-aloud method, identified as a potential method from a systematic review of qualitative research alongside DCEs, was used to reveal more about DCE respondents’ decision-making. Nineteen face-to-face cognitive interviews identified that respondents felt more engaged with the task when risk was presented with an additional icon array. Eye-tracking methods were used to understand respondents’ choice making behaviour and attention to attributes. The method was successfully used alongside a DCE and provided valid data. The results of the eye-tracking study found attributes were visually attended to by respondents most of the time. For researchers seeking to use DCEs for eliciting individuals’ preferences for benefit-risk trade-offs, respondents were more receptive to risk communicated via an icon array suggesting this format is preferable. Policy-makers should acknowledge preference heterogeneity, and its drivers, in their appraisal of the benefits of breast screening programmes. Future research is required to test alternative risk communication formats and explore the robustness of eye-tracking and qualitative research methods alongside DCEs.

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No description available.

Ce travail de thèse a pour objet l’étude des principes gouvernant la coordination par « et » de deux mots en français. Il a pour but d’observer l’émergence de facteurs actifs dans la sélection d’un ordre préférentiel de coordination binaire directe par « et », hors contexte, selon un angle essentiellement phonologique ; et ainsi de tenter d'en proposer une pré-hiérarchisation en français. Il apparaît, en effet, que pour des exemples tels que « Cul et chemise », « Modes et travaux », « Émilie et Nathan », l'ordre adopté ici est l'ordre préférentiel en français, et ceci que l'on se base sur le jugement intuitif des locuteurs, ou qu'on l'atteste au moyen de relevés statistiques. Les locuteurs privilégient souvent spontanément un ordre à un autre dans ce type de formations, le jugeant plus naturel. Partant de ce constat, la question qui se pose est celle de savoir quels sont les facteurs qui régissent l'ordre de ces constituants en français. De nombreuses études se sont intéressées à cette problématique pour d'autres langues, spécifiquement pour l'anglais (Cooper et Ross (1975), Pinker et Birdong (1979), Wright, Hay et Bent (2002, 2005)). Toutes tendent à prouver que de nombreux facteurs phonologiques et extra-phonologiques jouent un rôle important dans le processus de formation de deux mots coordonnés. Néanmoins, à notre connaissance, l'étude des facteurs phonologiques actifs dans la coordination binomiale par « et » en français demeure à ce jour inédite. Nous tenterons de combler cette lacune. Pour ce faire, dans une approche empirique et expérimentale, nous avons rassemblé des données statistiquement valides, à partir desquelles nous avons ensuite dégagé des principes généraux. Puis, nous avons proposé une analyse phonologique dans le cadre d'une approche en terme d'interactions de contraintes inspirée par Plénat [1996,1997] dans laquelle nous appréhendons la sélection d'un ordre binomial préférentiel de coordination par « et » comme le résultat de conflits entre des principes ou des contraintes. / The concerns of this work are : first, to bring out the factors controlling two-word coordinating in French (nouns, adjectivies, tensed verbs and adverbs), second, to demonstrate the existence of active principles in choosing a preferential order to coordinate two nouns with “et”, third, to propose a study of coordinated words permutation, from a mainly phonological point of view. It seems indeed that, in examples such as “Cul et chemise”, “Mode et travaux” or “Emilie et Nathan”, the order displayed is the preferred one in French, either considering native speakers’ intuitive judgement or confirming it by a statistics survey. Speakers often spontaneously prefer an order, judged more natural, over the other in such structures. With this observation in mind, we asked ourselves a question: what are the factors that affect the order of those components in French. Many studies have taken an interest in that issue for other languages and in particular for English (Cooper and Ross (1975), Pinker and Birdong (1979), Wright, Hay and Bent (2002, 2005)). All of them tend to prove that several phonological and extra-phonological factors play an important part in the process of coordinating two words. There is however no study yet, as far as we know, about the phonological factors active in coordinating two words with “et” in French. We’ve this shortcoming. Aiming to that, with an empirical and experimental approach, we gathered statistically valid data, from which we drew general principles. Then, we made a phonological analysis in a constraint interaction framework inspired by Plénat [1996,1997], for which we looked at the “et”-coordinated two-word order preferred choice as the result of a conflict between principles or constraints.

Computer models or simulators are becoming increasingly common in many fields in science and engineering, powered by the phenomenal growth in computer hardware over the past decades. Many of these simulators implement a particular mathematical model as a deterministic computer code, meaning that running the simulator again with the same input gives the same output. Often running the code involves some computationally expensive tasks, such as solving complex systems of partial differential equations numerically. When simulator runs become too long, it may limit their usefulness. In order to overcome time or budget constraints by making the most out of limited computational resources, a statistical methodology has been proposed, known as the "Design and Analysis of Computer Experiments". The main idea is to run the expensive simulator only at a relatively few, carefully chosen design points in the input space, and based on the outputs construct an emulator (statistical model) that can emulate (predict) the output at new, untried locations at a fraction of the cost. This approach is useful provided that we can measure how much the predictions of the cheap emulator deviate from the real response surface of the original computer model. One way to quantify emulator error is to construct pointwise prediction bands designed to envelope the response surface and make assertions that the true response (simulator output) is enclosed by these envelopes with a certain probability. Of course, to be able to make such probabilistic statements, one needs to introduce some kind of randomness. A common strategy that we use here is to model the computer code as a random function, also known as a Gaussian stochastic process. We concern ourselves with smooth response surfaces and use the Gaussian covariance function that is ideal in cases when the response function is infinitely differentiable. In this thesis, we propose Fast Bayesian Inference (FBI) that is both computationally efficient and can be implemented as a black box. Simulation results show that it can achieve remarkably accurate prediction uncertainty assessments in terms of matching coverage probabilities of the prediction bands and the associated reparameterizations can also help parameter uncertainty assessments. / Science, Faculty of / Statistics, Department of / Graduate

The role of a roof on any building is to separate the interior environment of the building from the exterior environment, thereby making it a crucial component of the building design. Metal roof edges are the first line of defense against wind-induced loads on the roof system; however, data on the nature of these loads acting on the roof edge system is scarce. Previous studies with field measurements of wind pressure acting on the roof edge reported that metal flashings experienced negative pressure. These findings suggest that current building codes in North America (i.e. NBCC and ASCE codes) do not accurately identify wind design loads acting on roof edge systems. The Roof Edge Systems and Technologies (REST) project is a consortium of academia, government and roof industries, which was created to develop testing protocols and design guidelines for roof edges. The work presented in this thesis contributes to the collection and analysis of wind loads acting on metal roof edges, which were installed on the Canada Post building in Vancouver, Canada. The thesis presents the findings and analysis of the measured wind-induced pressure acting on all surfaces of three different edge configurations, namely the Anchor Clip Configuration (ACC), Continuous Cleat Configuration (CCC) and Discontinuous Cleat Configuration (DCC). The analysis showed the presence of negative pressure acting on all three faces of the configurations, in which the type of configuration had minimum effect on the magnitude and nature of the wind-induced loads. Furthermore, the top face of the edge configurations was found to experience the highest suction, and the front face of the edge coping was subjected to a net outward suction force due to the combination of the suction experienced by the coping front face and the positive pressure acting on the cleat. Comparison of these results with current NBCC and ASCE building codes highlight a need to update these codes in order to adequately design metal roof edges against wind action.

Thesis deals with measurement of positioning in marketing, specifically the method of semantic differential. The main objective of this work is to verify how it changes the semantic profile of selected wine samples tasted by young wine consumers in changing contextual conditions of this experiment. The experiment consists of two separate measurements, during which there is a change in the contextual conditions. The theoretical part is description of his positioning and measurement, which continuously follows the method of semantic differential, where he presented Seman-tick differential as a tool by which we can measure and record the positioning of his value by creating semantic profiles. The practical part explains the connection and answer research questions determined through experiment, where it was shown that the change in the contextual conditions tasted wine samples young wine consumers, changes the semantic profile of the wine samples.

Diplomová práce se zabývá simulací výrobního procesu, zejména stanovením potřebného počtu personálu. Popisuje jednotlivé části simulačního projektu. Teoretická část je věnována generování náhodných čísel a jejich transformaci v požadované statistické rozdělení.