La naturaleza potencialmente anticompetitiva de las prácticas impartidas desde las organizaciones de profesionales ha sido racionalizada por la literatura económica y ha ocupado un lugar no menor en la agenda de los organismos de defensa de la competencia. Sin embargo, la economía empírica carece de estudios sobre el ejercicio profesional autorregulado. Este trabajo relaciona los mercados de servicios profesionales con los modelos de diferenciación vertical y emplea un modelo Logit Mixto para evaluar la conducta del desempeño médico en Argentina. La evidencia hallada sugiere la existencia de algún acuerdo de precios. / The potentially anticompetitive nature of some practices driven by professional organizations has been approached in economic literature and appears as an important issue in the antitrust organism?s agenda. However, empirical economics lacks of a self-regulated professionals analysis. This work relates the market for professional services with vertical product differentiation models and uses a Mixed Logit model to assess the medical profession behavior in Argentina. The evidence suggests the existence of a price arrangement .

Widespread car usage of around 800 million of cars travelling 30 billion of kilometres on a daily basis has led to many benefits but also to significant environmental and societal impacts such as congestion, air and noise pollution and urban sprawl. This thesis aims to investigate the stakeholder values of car parking in order to support and inform the decision makers who are tasked with how best to resolve challenging car parking dilemmas. A two phase progressive methodology is involved. Phase one begins with conducting a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight academics to identify whom the stakeholders are that are affected by car parking. Then a second series of 20 interviews are conducted with sector leaders of stakeholder groups to establish how the stakeholders are affected by car parking and importantly, how they value car parking. Finally a third series of nine interviews are conducted with nine different experts to help to bridge the gap between phase one and phase two. Phase one found that a broader reach of stakeholders (classified into four different groups) are affected by car parking than the literature might imply, and that they value car parking in eight different key ways. It also found that the values emerged from a context of governmental, social and consumer concerns. Phase two of the methodology was quantitative and used the findings from phase one to develop four additional attributes considered meaningful across all four stakeholder groups, namely: safety, politics, public spaces and weekly household council tax. Choice based conjoint analysis was used to incorporate the attributes into three hypothetical scenarios namely; driver, strategy and social, as these were considered to be reflective of the value context unearthed previously in phase one. The scenarios were disseminated across England as part of a wider survey and achieved a sample size of 1107 responses. The results of which were then interpreted through willingness to pay (WTP) values. Key findings included: how a persistent political undertone can impact on car parking policy setting; that the car parking industry is under pressure to provide a service chiefly motivated by a perceived consumer intolerance of market prices; and that stakeholders can not only appreciate but also experience the impact of car parking choices on other stakeholder groups. Conclusions drawn included that the different stakeholder groups took issue with national government leadership believing it to currently be deficient in setting the standards for British car parking. Moreover, decision makers wrongly perceive that consumers of car parking do not pass between the groups and are therefore hostile to policies which do not directly benefit them. The key implication being that decision makers are cautious to implement policies which are not necessarily advantageous to consumers but which may lead to gains for the remaining stakeholder groups. In short, this thesis recommends amongst others that the governmental stakeholder group should seek to provide direction and guidelines for tariff setting which is reflective of the provision of a service that is conscious of the range of parking industry stakeholder values. Furthermore, as safety is an industry held value, practitioners should seek to better understand how it impacts their market. They should explore the relevance of schemes such as Park Mark to operators and their customers, by fundamentally investigating to what extent safety exists as a valid concern inside car parks and how it applies to personal safety, vehicle safety or general perceptions of safety. In addition, where the governmental stakeholder group remain mindful of the significance of securing political backing, the car parking industry would benefit from appreciating the sensitivities of political challenges faced by the governmental group when lobbying for any changes in parking policy programmes. Indeed, the parking industry should collaborate between the two parties and seek to unite in finding agreeable solutions which benefit constituents either directly or indirectly. As car parking values might differ according to their geopolitical context and lead to the extraction of a different set of attributes, further work would include looking beyond England to first the UK and then to abroad to explore the effects of potential cultural differences and learn the relevant lessons.

The study aims to identify the influence of socioeconomic factors on the prevalence of type 2 diabetes for individuals aged 27 and older in the Republic of Belarus. We analyze data from the Diabetes Survey conducted by the Endocrinology Medical Center in Minsk and the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Belarus from 2011 to 2015. The association between socioeconomic factors and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is examined using logistic regression with sequential adjustments for clinical and behavioral predictors. Our findings indicate that individuals with lower income and educational levels are more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes than those in higher income and education groups. Moreover, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes decreases as income and educational level go up. Furthermore, this association remains significant even after further adjusting for various behavioral and clinical factors. In addition, we confirm that type 2 diabetes is more prevalent among overweight / obese, physically inactive and older individuals. These findings suggest that strategies for preventive diabetes programs should be focused on socioeconomic environment rather than on individual risky behavior only.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Andrew Barkley / This study examines the effect of extreme climatic conditions (drought, flood, and bushfires) on the livelihood of households in the Bawku West district of Ghana. The research identified the mechanisms with which households cope in such situations, and analyzed factors influencing the adoption of coping strategies for flood, coping strategies for drought, and coping strategies for bushfires. Data for the study were collected in selected villages across the district in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 extreme climatic events (a prolonged drought period followed by an erratic rainfall). A binary logit regression (BLR) model was then specified to estimate factors that influence the adoption of a given coping mechanisms. Results from the BLR model indicate that literacy level, membership with an FBO, household income, and location of households had positive and significant impacts on adaptation to drought. Similarly, source of seeds for planting, membership with an FBO, household income, and farm size had positive significant influence on adaptation to flood. Adaption to bushfire was positively influenced by radio ownership, seed source and income. The main effect of these climatic extreme events on households included destruction of crops, livestock and buildings; food and water shortage; poor yield or harvest and limited fields for livestock grazing. Therefore, government policies should be geared towards creating revenue generating channels and in strengthening institutions that provide access to farm credit, readily available improve seeds and extension. Additionally, policies that expedite information dissemination through radio and other public media will enhance households’ adaptive capacity.

Master of Science / Department of Civil Engineering / Sunanda Dissanayake / In order to improve safety of the overall surface transportation system, each of the critical areas needs to be addressed separately with more focused attention. Statistics clearly show that large-truck crashes contribute significantly to an increased percentage of high-severity crashes. It is therefore important for the highway safety community to identify characteristics and contributory causes related to large-truck crashes. During the first phase of this study, fatal crash data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database were studied to achieve that objective. In this second phase, truck-crashes of all severity levels were analyzed with the intention of understanding characteristics and contributory causes, and identifying factors contributing to increased severity of truck-crashes, which could not be achieved by analyzing fatal crashes alone. Various statistical methodologies such as cross-classification analysis and severity models were developed using Kansas crash data. Various driver-, road-, environment- and vehicle- related characteristics were identified and contributory causes were analyzed. From the cross-classification analysis, severity of truck-crashes was found to be related with variables such as road surface (type, character and condition), accident class, collision type, driver- and environment-related contributory causes, traffic-control type, truck-maneuver, crash location, speed limit, light and weather conditions, time of day, functional class, lane class, and Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT). Other variables such as age of truck driver, day of the week, gender of truck-driver, pedestrian- and truck-related contributory causes were found to have no relationship with crash severity of large trucks. Furthermore, driver-related contributory causes were found to be more common than any other type of contributory cause for the occurrence of truck-crashes. Failing to give time and attention, being too fast for existing conditions, and failing to yield right of way were the most dominant truck-driver-related contributory causes, among many others. Through the severity modeling, factors such as truck-driver-related contributory cause, accident class, manner of collision, truck-driver under the influence of alcohol, truck maneuver, traffic control device, surface condition, truck-driver being too fast for existing conditions, truck-driver being trapped, damage to the truck, light conditions, etc. were found to be significantly related with increased severity of truck-crashes. Truck-driver being trapped had the highest odds of contributing to a more severe crash with a value of 82.81 followed by the collision resulting in damage to the truck, which had 3.05 times higher odds of increasing the severity of truck-crashes. Truck-driver under the influence of alcohol had 2.66 times higher odds of contributing to a more severe crash. Besides traditional practices like providing adequate traffic signs, ensuring proper lane markings, provision of rumble strips and elevated medians, use of technology to develop and implement intelligent countermeasures were recommended. These include Automated Truck Rollover Warning System to mitigate truck-crashes involving rollovers, Lane Drift Warning Systems (LDWS) to prevent run-off-road collisions, Speed Limiters (SLs) to control the speed of the truck, connecting vehicle technologies like Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) integration system to prevent head-on collisions etc., among many others. Proper development and implementation of these countermeasures in a cost effective manner will help mitigate the number and severity of truck-crashes, thereby improving the overall safety of the transportation system.

This paper analyses the role of the spatial structure of migrant networks in the location decision of migrants to the European Union at the regional level. Using a random parameters logit specification, a significant positive effect of migrant networks in neighbouring regions on migrants' location decisions is found. Although this spatial spillover effect is smaller than the effect of networks in the host regions, omitting to control for this spatial dependence results in a 40% overestimation of the effect of regional migrant networks on the location decision of newly arriving migrants.

Um dos desafios da educação brasileira é a grande quantidade de jovens que deveriam estar matriculados no Ensino Médio, mas que não estão frequentando a escola. Além disso, a taxa de abandono escolar nos anos iniciais do ensino médio é muito superior àquela encontrada no último ano do ensino fundamental. Nesse sentido, esse trabalho se propõe a investigar qual o papel da família no processo de transição e permanência no ensino médio. Para tanto, devido a disponibilidade de dados, será investigada uma coorte de alunos aprovados em 2010 no 9° ano do Ensino Fundamental no Estado do Ceará. Será estimado um sequential logit model, cujos regressores serão, além de algumas características individuais, informações referentes ao status socioeconômico da família e ao ambiente familiar. Existe uma vasta literatura que vem se desenvolvendo desde Mare (1980) buscando compreender o papel do background familiar na desigualdade educacional, tratando o processo de escolarização como uma sequência de decisões. Os resultados aqui encontrados, além de dialogar com essa literatura, apontam que a família é determinante, tanto para a entrada, como para a permanência no ensino médio, principalmente por meio da escolaridade dos pais. Esse efeito, todavia, é maior para aqueles que se defrontam com a decisão de entrada no ensino médio fora da idade ideal ou que exercem atividade remunerada quando não estão na escola. / One of the challenges of Brazilian education is the large amount of young people who should be enrolled in high school, but who are not attending school. In addition, the drop-out rate in the early high school years is much higher than that found in the last grade of elementary school. Thus, this study aims to investigate the role of the family in transition and permanence in high school. Therefore, due to data availability, a cohort of students approved in 2010 in the last grade of elementary school in the state of Ceará will be investigated. Will be estimated to sequential logit model, whose covariates are, individual characteristics, information regarding socioeconomic status of the family and the family environment. There is a vast literature, that has been developing since Mare (1980), trying to understand the role of family background on educational inequality, treating the educational process as a sequence of decisions. The results found here, as well as dialogue with the literature, show that the family is crucial both for entry and for staying in high school, mainly through parental education. This effect, however, is higher for those who are faced with the decision to enter high school outside the ideal age or to engage in paid work when they are not in school.

Depuis que la libéralisation financière a été adoptée par la plupart des pays de la région Moyen Orient et Afrique du Nord (MENA), le nombre de crises bancaires n’a pas cessé d’augmenter. Ce qui nous amène à analyser la relation entre libéralisation financière et les crises bancaires. Notre thèse s’attache à mettre en évidence le rôle important de la libéralisation financière sur les crises bancaires. Ce travail traite l’une des principales causes de l’échec de processus de libéralisation financière, à savoir la négligence du rôle primordial que jouent les institutions juridiques, économiques et politiques dans la réalisation de la stabilité financière. Afin de démontrer l’importance de l’organisation institutionnelle, nous avons vérifié l’impact négatif des défaillances institutionnelles présentes dans les pays de la région MENA sur l’occurrence des crises bancaires systémiques. L’objectif de notre recherche est de démontrer que les pays de la région MENA détiennent des caractéristiques institutionnelles très différentes et que pour favoriser l’application des réformes financières libérales, il est désormais indispensable d’envisager des réformes institutionnelles et règlementaires bien adéquates avec les conditions sociales, politiques de chacun des pays de la région MENA. / Since financial liberalization has been adopted by most countries of the Region Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the number of banking crises has not ceased to increase. This leads us to analyze the relationship between financial liberalization and banking crises. Our thesis aims to highlight the important role of financial liberalization on banking crises. This work addresses one of the main causes of the failure of liberalization process Financial namely the negligence of the primordial role played by legal institutions, economic and political in achieving financial stability. To demonstrate the importance of institutional organization, we verified the pejorative impact of institutional failure present in the countries of the MENA region on the occurrence of systemic banking crises. The objective of our research is to demonstrate that the countries of the MENA region hold very different institutional characteristics and to facilitate the implementation of financial reforms liberal, it is henceforth essential to consider well adequate institutional and regulatory reforms with, social political conditions of each country of the MENA region.

Submitted by Caroline Xavier (caroline.xavier@pucrs.br) on 2017-11-14T11:59:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DIS_MICHELLE_SERPA_DA_SILVA_COMPLETO.pdf: 913725 bytes, checksum: 33731cc27e2f8ece7c5c9c0c4fdcdeb0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Caroline Xavier (caroline.xavier@pucrs.br) on 2017-11-14T11:59:18Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DIS_MICHELLE_SERPA_DA_SILVA_COMPLETO.pdf: 913725 bytes, checksum: 33731cc27e2f8ece7c5c9c0c4fdcdeb0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-11-14T11:59:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DIS_MICHELLE_SERPA_DA_SILVA_COMPLETO.pdf: 913725 bytes, checksum: 33731cc27e2f8ece7c5c9c0c4fdcdeb0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-30 / Female entrepreneurship is a form of income generation in the face of the unemployment faced in our country. In addition, it is the way that women find to assume their multiple roles in our society. This work is about the determinants of female entrepreneurship in Brazil based on the model of occupational choice, using the data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) of 2015. The empirical strategy adopted employed the discrete choice model in the estimation of occupational choice. The estimated model of occupational choice showed that there are significant effects on the variables: schooling, presence of children under ten at home and marital status. / O empreendedorismo feminino ? uma forma de gera??o de renda frente ao desemprego enfrentado no nosso pa?s. Al?m disso, ? a maneira que a mulher encontra de assumir a seus m?ltiplos pap?is em nossa sociedade. Este trabalho ? sobre os determinantes do empreendedorismo feminino no Brasil a partir de modelo de escolha ocupacional, usando os microdados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domic?lios (PNAD) do ano de 2015. A estrat?gica emp?rica adotada empregou o modelo de escolha discreta na estima??o da escolha ocupacional. O modelo estimado de escolha ocupacional demonstrou que existem efeitos significativos para as vari?veis: escolaridade, presen?a de crian?as menores de dez anos no domic?lio e estado civil.

Promover a segurança viária no entorno escolar é uma estratégia que contribui para que sejam construídas cidades seguras, saudáveis e sustentáveis. Nesse sentido, este estudo é dedicado a identificar a influência das características da estrutura urbana na frequência e na severidade dos acidentes no entorno de escolas de educação básica de Porto Alegre. A análise da frequência e da severidade de acidentes foi conduzida através da estimação de modelos econométricos: binomial negativo e logit ordenado, respectivamente. Para esses, foram calculados os efeitos marginais, permitindo a observação da magnitude dos impactos das variáveis explicativas sobre as variáveis dependentes. As variáveis dependentes frequência e severidade foram extraídas dos acidentes registrados em Porto Alegre entre 2012 e 2014. Foram incluídas, simultaneamente, variáveis da estrutura urbana, das escolas, socioeconômicas e dos acidentes (para a severidade). A partir do geoprocessamento dos dados existentes, os entornos escolares puderam ser caracterizados para três diferentes áreas circulares de análise (buffer ring) de raios de 100, 150 e 200 metros, permitindo a comparação do uso das diferentes áreas. O conjunto de estimativas indica que áreas menores produzem modelos de melhor desempenho para ambas as técnicas empregadas. No entanto, áreas maiores permitem a análise de maior quantidade de variáveis relativas à estrutura urbana. Essa relação sugere os benefícios da escolha a partir do trade-off entre ajuste do modelo e sua capacidade de propiciar análises de variáveis. Foi identificado que a frequência e a severidade de acidentes podem estar relacionadas a uma única variável explicativa de formas opostas – a partir de sinais contrários. Essa diferença de resultados para frequência e severidade de acidentes indica que há maiores benefícios em analisá-las em conjunto. Identificou-se ainda que existem benefícios para a segurança viária em áreas de estrutura urbana com quarteirões menores e maior quantidade de interseções de quatro vias, em frequência e severidade, respectivamente. Já as áreas mais arborizadas tendem a apresentar acidentes de menor severidade nos casos de usuários de modos ativos. / Fostering road safety nearby schools is a strategy that contributes to build safe, healthy and sustainable cities. The aim of this study is to identify the influence of the built environment characteristics in the frequency and severity of accidents nearby elementary and secondary schools in Porto Alegre. The frequency and severity of the accidents were analyzed using econometric models: negative binomial and ordered logit, respectively. The evaluation of their marginal effects allowed the magnitude of the impact caused by the explanatory variable on the dependent variables to be observed. The measured variables frequency and severity were extracted from accidents registered in Porto Alegre from 2012 and 2014. Built environment, socioeconomic and school variables were also included, as well as accident data (for severity). Data geoprocessing allowed school surroundings to be characterized for three different buffer rings, measuring 100, 150 and 200 meters of radius. Thereby it was possible to compare the inclusion of different areas in the study. The estimations indicates that models based on smaller areas have better performances for both employed techniques, whereas larger areas allow the study of a bigger quantity of urban infrastructure variables. That indicates the benefits of choosing based on a trade-off between model adjustment and capacity to engender the analysis of variables. It was shown that frequency and severity of accidents could be related to a single explanatory variable in opposite ways – based on contrary signs. This difference in the results found for frequency and severity indicates that there are more benefits when analyzing them together. Moreover, there are benefits for road safety in areas where the city blocks are shorter and where there are more four-way intersections, in frequency and severity of accidents, respectively. Also, areas of more important afforestation tend to decrease the severity of accidents involving users of active modes.