In this dissertation, I explain why scholars are unable to conclusively find evidence that divided government is the main determinant of legislative gridlock. I argue this unsettled debate is largely attributable to an imprecise conceptual view of inter-branch tensions, and that these conceptual limitations are exacerbated by unrefined measurement practices. I argue refined measures such as party polarization and gridlock intervals better explain institutional behavior than divided government. Using unique datasets estimating legislator preferences on domestic and foreign policy, findings show that when compared to more refined measures, split-party government is not the sole or even the most important source of partisan conflict. In addition, compared to other studies on divided government, I argue the reason the distinction between unified and divided government is often blurred is that a number of underlying political and institutional pressures make sweeping policy change difficult even for most unified governments. These factors contribute to the public’s growing dissatisfaction with government’s inability to solve many economic and social problems. / text

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This research compares three approaches to land suitability evaluation, Boolean, Fuzzy AHP and Ideal Point, for barley, wheat and maize crops in the north-western region of Jeffara Plain in Libya. A number of soil and landscape criteria were identified to accommodate the three cash crops under irrigation conditions and their weights specified as a result of discussions with local experts. The findings emphasised that soil factors represented the most sensitive criteria affecting all the crops considered. In contrast, erosion and slope were found to be less important in the study area. Using Boolean logic the results indicated only four suitability classes (highly suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable and currently not suitable) for all crops. In contrast, the results obtained by adopting the Fuzzy AHP and Ideal Point approaches revealed that the area of study has a greater degree of subdivision in land suitability classes. Overall, the results of the three approaches indicated that the area under consideration has a good potential to produce barley, wheat and maize under irrigation provided that the water and drainage requirements are met. Comparing the three models showed that each suitability class derived from the Boolean approach is associated with low and high values for joint membership functions when derived from Fuzzy AHP and Ideal Point approaches respectively. In other words, the two fuzzy approaches have shown their ability to explore the uncertainties associated with describing the land properties. The richer overall picture provides an alternative type of land suitability evaluation to Boolean approaches and allows subtle variations in land suitability to be explored. The Fuzzy AHP approach was found to be better than the Ideal Point approach; the latter was biased towards positive and negative ideal values. In the future, field trial plots will be needed to evaluate and validate the results further.

Traditional analyses of agency output are typically performed at the institutional level, characterizing the agency in question as a unitary actor with a singular preference. I test these assumptions using a variety of statistical methods, including a dynamic linear model that estimates ideal points of FCC commissioners for every year, 1975-2000. Voting within the FCC is essentially unidimensional and commissioner preferences are stable over time. Aggregate analyses of the ideal points of individual commissioners suggest that FCC commissioner voting has become profoundly ideological only recently. Future agency research must carefully consider the time period of analysis and previous findings should be reexamined.

This study investigated the efficacy of the lz person fit statistic for detecting aberrant responding with unidimensional pairwise preference (UPP) measures, constructed and scored based on the Zinnes-Griggs (ZG, 1974) IRT model, which has been used for a variety of recent noncognitive testing applications. Because UPP measures are used to collect both "self-" and "other-" reports, I explored the capability of lz to detect two of the most common and potentially detrimental response sets, namely fake good and random responding. The effectiveness of lz was studied using empirical and theoretical critical values for classification, along with test length, test information, the type of statement parameters, and the percentage of items answered aberrantly (20%, 50%, 100%). We found that lz was ineffective in detecting fake good responding, with power approaching zero in the 100% aberrance conditions. However, lz was highly effective in detecting random responding, with power approaching 1.0 in long-test, high information conditions, and there was no diminution in efficacy when using marginal maximum likelihood estimates of statement parameters in place of the true values. Although using empirical critical values for classification provided slightly higher power and more accurate Type I error rates, theoretical critical values, corresponding to a standard normal distribution, provided nearly as good results.

In this study, a method is proposed for decision making for multiobjective recreational areas, by using multi attribute decision making rules within GIS. The method provides integration of ecological, sociocultural and economic considerations of an ecologically valuable area in a systematic way. The first stage of the methodology includes determination of suitable areas for three usages of forest area / outdoor recreation, timber production and protection needed areas. The second stage comprises decision making analyses. In this stage, two of multi attribute decision rule methods / simple additive weighting method and ideal point method, are used. As a result of these analyses alternative proposal maps for study area and ideal areas for recreation and timber production are acquired. Finally, in the third stage these alternative proposal maps and ideal area are compared with each other and with defined protection zone in the study area. Ideal areas for recreation and timber production are defined by also considering the protection needed areas. The methodology is applied on Eastern Black Sea Region. As a result of the study, ideal areas both for recreational usage and timber production are defined. According to these ideal areas, best fitting alternative map is selected. Finally recreation and timber production proposals are compared with protection needed areas. Results of this study provide a general decision for multipurposed areas in regional scale. The suggested protection zones and suitable areas for recreation and timber production should provide a primary information for forest management studies which must be done in more detailed scales.

在金融自由化、國際化的趨勢下，市場競爭日益激烈，外商銀行有必要在行銷策略上 作最佳的規劃與調整，使其各項金融服務能夠在最適當的時機，利用深中顧客心理的 溝通方式和促銷手段，提供給適當的目標市場。 本論文研究以登錄在中華徵信所出版之７６年度Top 500 民營企業廠商為研究母體， 探討下列研究目的： 一、Top 500 廠商可區分為幾個不同的訴求取向區隔﹖發掘顧客未滿足之需求及可能 之市場區隔，從而設計適當的行銷組合。 二、Top 500 廠商各市場區隔在考慮外商銀行取向構面下是否有顯著差異，提供外商 銀行明瞭各市場區隔的服務需要。 三、Top 500 民營廠商對六家外商銀行，九個屬性的看法，藉此分析六家外商銀行的 競爭態勢。 四、Top 500 民營廠商在選擇外商銀行往來時的屬性理想點（Ideal Point ）在產品 （服務）空間圖中的位置，分析外商銀行與顧客認知差異。 五、探討上述分析結果對於外商銀行在整體行銷策略上的涵義，包括： （一）外商銀行應建立何種形象，以吸引顧客。 （二）對外商銀行及其所提供的特定服務而言，何種訴求可以有效性吸引顧客。

O Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) é uma das instituições mais importantes do país, e tem recebido cada vez mais atenção da sociedade brasileira. Ano a ano, a corte é acionada para julgar dezenas de milhares de casos, muitos deles com impacto direto na vida econômica, política e social do país. Investigar quais são os fatores que influenciam o comportamento dos ministros do STF é fundamental para compreendermos o processo de tomada de decisões do Tribunal. Apesar de existirem estudos importantes sobre o resultado das ações de controle de constitucionalidade, ainda existe espaço para estudar o comportamento individual dos ministros. O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar o comportamento individual dos ministros do STF, utilizando-se as votações dos ministros frente às ações de controle de constitucionalidade que foram decididas de forma colegiada. A proposta de trabalho é verificar como os ministros se agrupam e quais fatores influenciam sua divisão. Para isso, propomos a utilização do método de estimação de pontos ideias. Nossa hipótese primária de trabalho é que existe uma influência da indicação presidencial no comportamento dos ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal. Dessa forma, haveria uma divisão da Corte entre os ministros nomeados por diferentes partidos. A hipótese secundária seria que as trajetórias profissionais dos ministros também influenciam em sua forma de decidir, sendo possível, portanto, identificar divisões entre os ministros a partir desta variável. Os resultados do presente trabalho indicam que variáveis associadas aos modelos atitudinais do comportamento judicial, partidos dos presidentes que indicaram os ministros, ideologia e filosofia judicial dos ministros, são variáveis mais relevantes para explicar as agrupamentos e dissensos no STF do que as que dizem respeito as trajetórias profissionais dos juízes. / The Supremo Tribunal Federal - STF (Federal Supreme Court) is one of the most relevant institutions in Brazil, and it has increasingly gained attention from Brazilian society. Year after year, the Court is demanded to rule thousands of cases, a lot of them with direct impact in the countrys economic political and social life. To investigate which factors influence the Justices behavior is paramount to understand the decision-making process of the Court. The goal of this work is to analyze the Justices individual behavior, by looking at the Justices individual vote in Constitutional Review cases that were decided in collegiate manner. This dissertation verifies how the Justices cluster themselves and which factors influence their division. For that, we employ the ideal point estimation method. Our primary hypothesis states that the presidential nomination exerts influence in the Justices behavior. In this way, it would be possible to identify a division in the Court among Justices nominated by different parties. Our secondary hypothesis states that the Justices professional background also exerts influence in how they decide, therefore making possible to identify divisions among Justices by taking this variable as a dividing line. The results of the present work indicate that the variables associated with the attitudinal models of judicial behavior, presidential party responsible for Justice nomination, ideology and Justices judicial philosophy are more relevant variables to explain the clusters and dissensus in STF than variables linked to magistrates professional background.

O Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) é uma das instituições mais importantes do país, e tem recebido cada vez mais atenção da sociedade brasileira. Ano a ano, a corte é acionada para julgar dezenas de milhares de casos, muitos deles com impacto direto na vida econômica, política e social do país. Investigar quais são os fatores que influenciam o comportamento dos ministros do STF é fundamental para compreendermos o processo de tomada de decisões do Tribunal. Apesar de existirem estudos importantes sobre o resultado das ações de controle de constitucionalidade, ainda existe espaço para estudar o comportamento individual dos ministros. O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar o comportamento individual dos ministros do STF, utilizando-se as votações dos ministros frente às ações de controle de constitucionalidade que foram decididas de forma colegiada. A proposta de trabalho é verificar como os ministros se agrupam e quais fatores influenciam sua divisão. Para isso, propomos a utilização do método de estimação de pontos ideias. Nossa hipótese primária de trabalho é que existe uma influência da indicação presidencial no comportamento dos ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal. Dessa forma, haveria uma divisão da Corte entre os ministros nomeados por diferentes partidos. A hipótese secundária seria que as trajetórias profissionais dos ministros também influenciam em sua forma de decidir, sendo possível, portanto, identificar divisões entre os ministros a partir desta variável. Os resultados do presente trabalho indicam que variáveis associadas aos modelos atitudinais do comportamento judicial, partidos dos presidentes que indicaram os ministros, ideologia e filosofia judicial dos ministros, são variáveis mais relevantes para explicar as agrupamentos e dissensos no STF do que as que dizem respeito as trajetórias profissionais dos juízes. / The Supremo Tribunal Federal - STF (Federal Supreme Court) is one of the most relevant institutions in Brazil, and it has increasingly gained attention from Brazilian society. Year after year, the Court is demanded to rule thousands of cases, a lot of them with direct impact in the countrys economic political and social life. To investigate which factors influence the Justices behavior is paramount to understand the decision-making process of the Court. The goal of this work is to analyze the Justices individual behavior, by looking at the Justices individual vote in Constitutional Review cases that were decided in collegiate manner. This dissertation verifies how the Justices cluster themselves and which factors influence their division. For that, we employ the ideal point estimation method. Our primary hypothesis states that the presidential nomination exerts influence in the Justices behavior. In this way, it would be possible to identify a division in the Court among Justices nominated by different parties. Our secondary hypothesis states that the Justices professional background also exerts influence in how they decide, therefore making possible to identify divisions among Justices by taking this variable as a dividing line. The results of the present work indicate that the variables associated with the attitudinal models of judicial behavior, presidential party responsible for Justice nomination, ideology and Justices judicial philosophy are more relevant variables to explain the clusters and dissensus in STF than variables linked to magistrates professional background.

過去大部分研究都認為人們偏好多樣化的選擇，在商店內提供越多的商品，會吸引到更多的消費者來做購買。但近年來，消費者的購物環境充斥著各式各樣的不同資訊，在這樣的情況下，賣方如果再給消費者增加更多的產品選擇，是否有可能會使消費者的購物會產生障礙，而反而延遲消費者的購買行為？近幾年，紛紛有學者發現，產品多樣化所帶給消費者的效益有一定的限制，並不往往是「越多越好」，許多研究試圖找出影響消費者對商品數量偏好的因素，而其中有文獻指出，商店的評價差異，將會影響消費者對不同數量商店的偏好；另外，消費者做選擇前，是否已對產品存有特定的理想偏好，也可能會影響到消費者的選擇結果。 目前過去對消費者商品數量偏好的研究多以實體零售商店作為探討目標，而近幾年網路購物盛行，網路商店往往會提供消費者數量眾多的商品做選擇，因此本研究則改以網路商店作實驗探討，且參考過去文獻所探討之變數，加入不同產品類型來探討對消費者所造成的影響，此外也探討極大化程度對消費者偏好是否具有影響。 本研究結果則發現： 1. 有無理想選擇與產品類型對消費者不同品數量的偏好影響具有交互作用。 2. 當消費者購買的是享樂品時，有理想選擇的消費者會偏好產品數量較少的網路商店。 3. 當消費者購買的是實用品時，有理想選擇的消費者會偏好產品數量較多的網路商店。