nÃo hà / A biblioteca, por ser um bem intangÃvel à de difÃcil mensuraÃÃo, alÃm dos seus benefÃcios nÃo serem capturados por anÃlises de receitas geradas. Diante disso esse trabalho tem como mote identificar o valor econÃmico das bibliotecas do CAEN e LABOMAR na Universidade Federal do CearÃ, aferido a partir das preferÃncias dos indivÃduos que resultam de seus prÃprios interesses. Para alcanÃar esse objetivo, o estudo traz uma abordagem sobre o MÃtodo de ValoraÃÃo Contingente (MVC) e DisposiÃÃo a Pagar (DAP) e, a partir da aplicaÃÃo de questionÃrios nos meses de abril e junho de 2014, com os usuÃrios das respectivas bibliotecas, foi possÃvel verificar que o valor mÃdio da DAP para a biblioteca do CAEN foi de R$ 5,23, enquanto que a do LABOMAR alcanÃou R$ 8,96 ambos ao mÃs. / The library, as it is an intangible good, it is difficult to be measured and its benefits are not captured by the analyses of generated revenues.In the face of this, the work has as theme to identify the economic value of the CAEN and LABOMAR libraries at Federal University of CearÃ, which was gauged from the preferences of individuals , which result from their proper interests. The work is a brief history of the studied libraries. For getting this aim, the work brings an approach about the Contingent Valuation Method(MVC) and willingness to pay (DAP) and, from the questionnaires applied between April and June of 2014 with users from the respective libraries, it was possible to check that the average value of DAP for the CAEN library was of R$ 5,23, while that one for the LABOMAR library got R$ 8,96 monthly.

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Having the author been involved in banking and finance for almost 25 years, this thesis intends to reflect on the role of banks with emphasis on cross border lending and credit rating, their effectiveness and the impacts of cultural differences. Perhaps this would not differ substantially from a researcher or a scholar, yet the exploratory approach taken in this research will be somewhat different as it deliberately seeks to answer a number of questions relevant to practitioners in today’s banking. In trying to achieve this goal, this thesis hopefully may find its way to international bankers wondering about the perspectives of their business in general and their profession in specific. It even may perhaps improve the understanding of their clients. The Basel committee which published the new Basel II framework on bank regulation and supervision was the result of long and careful discussions, wide consultations and comprehensive impact studies. Whereas Basel II covers the entire risk profile and supervision of financial institutions, this research is limited to the cross border lending by banks to companies and provides the views from both practicing international bankers and their customers on their 3 expectations regarding Basel II, credit rating and the relevance of context and culture differences. Bankers all over the world are being trained on how to read balance sheets, yet less attention is being paid as to by whom they are being created and how precisely these balance sheets came into existence, other than the accountancy standards applied. Bankers furthermore seem to agree on the fact that credit risks in large part are related to the management competencies, effective corporate governance and integrity of management and organization. The argument could be made that the assessment of management capabilities, governance and integrity may be hindered in those cases where the culture is little understood. In a three days conferences titled; “The Future of Relationship Banking”, 80 senior executives from international banks and large companies were gathered in Punta del Este, Uruguay and were asked to speak about these aspects. A transcript of the conference is provided as annex to this thesis (Annex 1) and serves to triangulate the findings of the research. Main findings of three management papers were presented by the researcher during the conference. A survey was performed during the conference and in addition, through an online survey, in total over 100 practitioners in the field participated in the survey. Results show a variation of conclusions, but very especially seem to confirm the view, contrary to the approach taken in Basel II, that cultural differences and context are felt to be highly relevant in cross border lending.

Having the author been involved in banking and finance for almost 25 years, this thesis intends to reflect on the role of banks with emphasis on cross border lending and credit rating, their effectiveness and the impacts of cultural differences. Perhaps this would not differ substantially from a researcher or a scholar, yet the exploratory approach taken in this research will be somewhat different as it deliberately seeks to answer a number of questions relevant to practitioners in today’s banking. In trying to achieve this goal, this thesis hopefully may find its way to international bankers wondering about the perspectives of their business in general and their profession in specific. It even may perhaps improve the understanding of their clients. The Basel committee which published the new Basel II framework on bank regulation and supervision was the result of long and careful discussions, wide consultations and comprehensive impact studies. Whereas Basel II covers the entire risk profile and supervision of financial institutions, this research is limited to the cross border lending by banks to companies and provides the views from both practicing international bankers and their customers on their 3 expectations regarding Basel II, credit rating and the relevance of context and culture differences. Bankers all over the world are being trained on how to read balance sheets, yet less attention is being paid as to by whom they are being created and how precisely these balance sheets came into existence, other than the accountancy standards applied. Bankers furthermore seem to agree on the fact that credit risks in large part are related to the management competencies, effective corporate governance and integrity of management and organization. The argument could be made that the assessment of management capabilities, governance and integrity may be hindered in those cases where the culture is little understood. In a three days conferences titled; “The Future of Relationship Banking”, 80 senior executives from international banks and large companies were gathered in Punta del Este, Uruguay and were asked to speak about these aspects. A transcript of the conference is provided as annex to this thesis (Annex 1) and serves to triangulate the findings of the research. Main findings of three management papers were presented by the researcher during the conference. A survey was performed during the conference and in addition, through an online survey, in total over 100 practitioners in the field participated in the survey. Results show a variation of conclusions, but very especially seem to confirm the view, contrary to the approach taken in Basel II, that cultural differences and context are felt to be highly relevant in cross border lending.

Information technology (IT) investment decision makers are required to process large volumes of complex data. An existing body of knowledge relevant to IT portfolio management (PfM), decision analysis, visual comprehension of large volumes of information, and IT investment decision making suggest Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and hypervariate display techniques can reduce cognitive load and improve decision confidence in IT PfM decisions. This dissertation investigates improving the decision confidence by reducing cognitive burden of the decision maker through greater comprehension of relevant decision information. Decision makers from across the federal government were presented with actual federal IT portfolio project lifecycle costs and durations using hypervariate displays to better comprehend IT portfolio information more quickly and make more confident decisions. Other information economics attributes were randomized for IT portfolio projects to generate Balanced Scorecard (BSC) values to support MCDM decision aids focused on IT investment alignment with specific business objectives and constraints. Both quantitative and qualitative measures of participant comprehension, confidence, and efficiency were measured to assess hypervariate display treatment and then MCDM decision aid treatment effectiveness. Morae Recorder Autopilot guided participants through scenario tasks and collected study data without researcher intervention for analysis using Morae Manager. Results showed improved comprehension and decision confidence using hypervariate displays of federal IT portfolio information over the standard displays. Both quantitative and qualitative data showed significant differences in accomplishment of assigned IT portfolio management tasks and increased confidence in decisions. MCDM techniques, incorporating IT BSC, Monte Carlo simulation, and optimization algorithms to provide cost, value, and risk optimized portfolios improved decision making efficiency. Participants did not find improved quality and reduced uncertainty from optimized IT portfolio information. However, on average participants were satisfied and confident with the portfolio optimizations. Improved and efficient methods of delivering and visualizing IT portfolio information can reduce decision maker cognitive load, improve comprehension efficiency, and improve decision making confidence. Study results contribute to knowledge in the area of comprehension and decision making cognitive processes, and demonstrate important linkages between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Decision Support Systems (DSS) to support IT PfM decision making.

This thesis consists of three essays in the field of information economics. The first essay studies manipulation of information by partisan media. The recent increase in partisan media has generated interest in what drives media outlets to become more partisan. I develop a model to study the role of diffusion of information by word of mouth. In the model, a media outlet designs an information policy, which specifies the level of partisan slant in the outlet’s news reports. The news spread via a communication chain in a population of agents with heterogeneous preferences. The slant has an impact on whether the agents find the news credible and on their incentives to pass the news to others. The analysis elucidates how partisanship of media can be driven by political polarisation of the public and by the tendency of people to interact with people with similar political views. The second essay, co-authored by Jakub Redlicki, investigates falsification of scientific evidence by interest groups. We analyse a game between a biased sender (an interest group) and a decision maker (a policy maker) where the former can falsify scientific evidence at a cost. The sender observes scientific evidence and knows that it will also be observed by the decision maker unless he falsifies it. If he falsifies, then there is a chance that the decision maker observes the falsified evidence rather than the true scientific evidence. First, we investigate the decision maker’s incentives to privately acquire independent evidence, which not only provides additional information to her but can also strengthen or weaken the sender’s falsification effort. Second, we analyse the decision maker’s incentives to acquire information from the sender. The third essay analyses competition between interest groups for access to a policy maker. I study a model of lobbying in which two privately-informed experts (e.g., interest groups) with opposite goals compete for the opportunity to communicate with a policy maker. The main objective is to analyse the benefits which competition for access brings to the policy maker as opposed to hiring an expert in advance. I show that competition for access is advantageous in that it provides the policy maker with some information about the expert who did not gain access and gives the experts an incentive to invest in their communication skills. On the other hand, hiring an expert in advance allows the policy maker to use a monetary reward to incentivise the expert to invest more in his communication skills.

Submitted by Cristiane Oliveira (cristiane.oliveira@fgv.br) on 2012-07-16T22:20:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 1200500173.pdf: 3888021 bytes, checksum: be4090b9ad565975be4daddc2a3c2f50 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2012-07-17T12:42:17Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 1200500173.pdf: 3888021 bytes, checksum: be4090b9ad565975be4daddc2a3c2f50 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-07-17T13:01:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 1200500173.pdf: 3888021 bytes, checksum: be4090b9ad565975be4daddc2a3c2f50 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / The feeling that investments in technology -must increase work productivity has been raising questions addressed in many studies in the past years, but no positive correlation between these applications and firms' revenues have been found. However, it has also been supported by several other authors who have gathered empirica! evidences attesting that the returns from IT investments must be measured by other variables, distinct from aggregate economic industry data. We attempt to analyze this dilemma in the light of Information Economics, testing the hypothesis that well planned innovations in business processes and organizational structure, supported by information technology, do add value and increase firms' productivity and efficiency. Our analysis focuses on the transaction costs of business processes, setting these costs as the core of any productivity variables with which one could measure, with some precision, the impact of new technological resources added to the focal processo / O senso comum de que o investimento em tecnologia deve aumentar a produtividade do trabalho foi questionado por muitos estudos nos últimos anos, que não encontraram correlação positiva entre tais aplicações e as receitas das empresas. Mas foi também apoiado por outros autores que obtiveram provas empíricas de que os retornos desses investimentos deveriam ser medidos por outros indicadores, à parte de dados econômicos setoriais agregados. Procuramos analisar essa dicotomia à luz da Economia da Informação, levantando a hipótese de que as inovações bem planejadas em processos de negócio e na estrutura organizacional, apoiadas pela tecnologia de informação, agregam valor e aumentam a produtividade e eficiência da empresa. Para isso, buscamos centralizar a análise nos custos de transação dos processos de negócio, identificando-os como o núcleo central de qualquer indicador de produtividade com que se possa medir com alguma precisão o impacto de novos insumos ou recursos aplicados aos processos em questão.

<p dir="ltr">The rise of digital media has allowed for unprecedented access to information. In particular, people are able to form beliefs based on information sources that span the full spectrum of reputation, information quality, and motivated biases. Such access is a double-edged sword because “with great power, comes great responsibility” (“Spider-Man”, 2002). Heterogeneity in information quality may be due to a variety of factors, and it is often up to the consumer to consider quality signals when evaluating the quality of information. My research explores this complicated process, and contributes to the understanding of how people demand and utilize information in different environments. I do so over three chapters. The first studies how people respond to signals of information quality in a sequential prediction game. In the second chapter, biased incentives are introduced in a prediction game experiment to test how intrinsic and extrinsic biases affect demand and utilization of information. The third chapter contains a survey in which subjects report their valuations of an X account that varies on political affiliation, occupation credentials, and number of followers.</p><p dir="ltr">My first chapter focuses on how subjects respond to signals of information quality. In it, subjects predict which of two urns was randomly chosen in each of 30 rounds. They observe a private ball drawn from the selected urn each round to help them make their prediction. The color of the ball signals the urn it came from. The subjects then sequentially broadcast their belief about which urn was selected for the session without revealing the color of the observed ball. Future subjects can use the previous broadcasts to infer additional information that may help them accurately predict the urn.</p><p dir="ltr">In the control, subjects exhibit very low utilization of previous predictions when informing their own behavior. While consistent with prior research, behaving in such a manner is suboptimal. To experiment on the malleability of subjects’ beliefs about the rationality of others, I implement two novel treatments. In the first, the subjects’ prediction order in the last 15 rounds is determined by their accrued earnings in the first 15 rounds, with highest earners predicting first. The prediction order is similarly determined in the second treatment, except a quiz on conditional updating ability is used. Subjects who score the highest on the quiz predict first. In both cases, the sorting mechanism is explained to the subjects.</p><p dir="ltr">Sorting on earnings yields a modest increase in valuations of previous subjects’ predictions. A much more significant increase is observed when sorting on ability. Additionally, the subjects who make the fewest irrational predictions (ones against the color of the ball when they do not have additional information to suggest otherwise) are the ones who score the best in the ability sort. Placing them at the beginning of rounds increases the entire round’s average earnings.</p><p dir="ltr">My second chapter uses a similar environment to study the role that bias plays in demanding and utilizing information. In it, participants predict which of two states (red or blue) each of 30 rounds was assigned. To aid them, participants observe two predictions from ‘experts,’ who are informed by a private signal with a known precision. Participants can bid to receive additional information about the state from two sources: a private signal and another independent expert’s prediction. Both sources’ precision is known. This method is the first of its kind, and allows for direct comparison between information types. The bid results are revealed once this process is complete. Participants then predict the state.</p><p dir="ltr">Two innovative treatments are implemented to implement bias into the basic environment exogenously. In the first, participants receive a small bonus each time they predict the state is blue. In the second, experts receive the same bonus each time they predict the state is blue instead of the participants. Surprisingly, participants value the private signal and additional expert’s prediction similarly, except when the experts are biased. This is a departure from most research using similar environments, which assume that some sub-optimal behavior can be attributed to mistrust in others’ ability to understand the environment. That assumption may warrant further and more careful evaluation. The most striking valuation behavior is when participants are biased. Their bids are higher when their existing information set already favors their bias, relative to when it is against it. Doing so is antithetical to the rational equilibrium and inconsistent with prior research on confirmation bias.</p><p dir="ltr">Participants generally utilize information obtained from a successful bid at a lower rate when it is against the initial experts than with it. No difference is detected between information sources. This is expected, albeit inconsistent with rational decision-making. One exception is noted. When participants are biased, they use the newly obtained information at a much higher rate when it is consistent with their bias than against it. Doing so is at odds with bidding behavior, as it implies participants bid more to receive information that they utilize less. Participants generally do a much better job of rationalizing and responding to the experts’ bias than their own in the experiment.</p><p dir="ltr">My third chapter is motivated partly by the findings in my first two chapters, using a more contextualized setting. In it, subjects are presented with a series of X account versions. The versions vary on political affiliation, occupation credentials, and number of followers. Subjects are asked to rate how much they would value information from each account version. Subjects value account versions with an unrevealed political party affiliation more than their analogs which report a party affiliation, regardless of the party or the subject’s beliefs.</p><p dir="ltr">A partisan penalty is uniformly implemented. Additionally, credentials are insufficient to overcome bias concerns. The penalty assessed to an account version aligning with a party is similar when the version has high credentials versus when it does not. Followers are also a valuable resource, regardless of political affiliation or credential levels. The marginal value that followers provide is similar for all account versions, meaning that even relative experts in a field should seek validation if they want to be valued by others.</p><p dir="ltr">Previous research would expect subjects to value versions more when they are congruent with their own beliefs, so these findings are surprising. Two groups are identified as the most likely to deviate and value same-typed account versions more: subjects who believe echo chambers are good and subjects who are concerned they have believed fake news in the past. The former group does not require a significant number of followers to highly value a politically congruent account version. The latter value politically unaffiliated accounts even more, but are more skeptical of opposition account versions and are even more sensitive to the number of followers they have.</p><p dir="ltr">These three chapters explore new avenues for researching how biases and expertise are evaluated and responded to. People are generally much better at considering the potential biases that others have than rationalizing their own biases. I also find good news in an era of heightened concern about eroding trust in experts. In each case, subjects respond to signals of expertise, and demonstrate efforts to exploit the information that experts provide.</p>

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Magister Artium - MA / The study concludes that the existence of HTAs in the USA is explained by the socially enforced institution of the hijos del pueblo (sons of the town) having a duty to help their hometowns, as well as the private benefits of preserving Garífuna traditions and the possibility of helping repatriate dead immigrants. Fulfilling this duty (and the consequent prestige attained) provides the incentives to send CRs home. In the cases studied, CRs were used to partly finance potable water projects, electricity projects, road paving, a community centre and the construction of a Catholic temple. In most of the cases HTAs worked with a local development organisation, known as Patronato, which formed specific committees for executing projects, for example the water and the electricity committees. For the construction of the temple, a religious organisation known as Pastoral was the local partner. The term Collective Remittances (CRs) refers to the money sent by migrant associations, known as Hometown Associations (HTAs), to Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) in their hometowns for financing public works projects. Few cases of CR are known in Honduras. The only ones reported are among the Garífunaethnic group living on the Caribbean Coast, and with a large migrant community in New York City (NYC). This mini-master’s thesis is the first study written on CRs in Honduras. It studies CR experiences in four Garífuna hometowns and their corresponding HTAs in NYC. It answers three questions: How do CRs work in each case? What are the determinants for HTAs to provide CRs to the hometowns? And what are the determinants for local CBOs in the hometowns to use the CRs effectively to provide public goods in the hometowns? CR is conceptualised as a that chooses which local group and project to finance, and the local CBO, which is the agent