This research, aimed at advancing the theory of environmental hazard adjustment processes by contrasting households from three cities in a high seismic hazard area with households from three other cities in a moderate seismic hazard area. It identified seven types of stakeholders namely, the risk area residents and their families (primary group), the news media, employers, and friends (secondary group), and federal, state, and local governments (tertiary group), and explained why they are relevant to the adoption of seismic hazard adjustments. It also addressed three key attributes— knowledge, trustworthiness, and responsibility for protection—ascribed to these multiple stakeholders and the relationships of these stakeholder attributes with risk perception, hazard intrusiveness, hazard experience, gender, resource adequacy, fatalism and hazard adjustment adoption. It was specifically concerned with the effects of nested interactions due to trust and power differentials among the seven stakeholders, with the self reported adoption of 16 earthquake protective measures at two points in time (1997 and 1999). Some of the key findings indicate that risk perception, gender, fatalism, city activity in earthquake management and demographic characteristics did not significantly predict hazard adjustment adoption. However, all stakeholder characteristics had significant positive correlations with risk perception and hazard adjustment, implying a peripheral route for social influence. Hazard intrusiveness, hazard experience, and stakeholder knowledge, trustworthiness, and responsibility affected the increased adoption of hazard adjustments by households. Particularly important are the peer groups’ (employers, friends and family) knowledge, trustworthiness and responsibility. These findings suggest, hazard managers cannot count only on the federal, state, and local government advisories put out through the news media to affect community decisions and thereby households’ decisions to take protective actions. Instead, hazard managers need to shift focus and work through peer group networks such as service organizations, industry groups, trade unions, neighborhood organizations, community emergency response teams, faith-based organizations, and educational institutions to increase the knowledge, trustworthiness and responsibility of all in the peer group. This will assure higher household hazard adjustment adoption levels, thus facilitating a reduction in post disaster losses and recovery time.

I use the German Socio-Economic Panel to explore three dimensions of couples' career success: career input (hours), career output (wages) and happiness. I focus on West German parents because, until recently, they faced low levels of state-level childcare support and adverse attitudes towards maternal employment. I investigate the extent to which couples specialize in paid work in the long term. Previous approaches – even those using couple-level longitudinal data – failed to explore this fully, instead examining men and women separately, or a single transition. I develop a “dual curve” approach and find that even among the 1956-65 female birth cohort (which faced low state-level support for dual employment) only a fifth of all couples adopt full specialization in later life. A sizable proportion – a third – moves into dual fulltime employment, while half of highly educated couples adopt such employment. Highly educated women are not only less likely to permanently specialize but also more likely to try working full-time, possibly because their partners' comparative advantages are lower. I explore whether the take-up of work hour flexibility relates to rises in both the respondent’s and their partner’s wages. Men and women benefit from working flexibly, even when controlling for selection into work hour flexibility with growth-curve and fixed effects analysis. Moreover, there is a positive cross-partner wage effect, which is particularly pronounced for mothers, suggesting that men – the main users of the policy – use this measure to support their wives' careers. Are dual career couples (equal human capital investment) happier than specializing couples? I create a human capital measure to account for differential human capital during periods of non-employment, which has been ignored in past analyses. I find that women in dual career couples are unhappier when the child is young but happier later in life. Conversely, women who give precedence to their partner’s career in terms of human capital investment grow unhappier.

It has been suggested that commuting behaviours become habitual and that changes to commute mode are more likely at the time of major life events. However, evidence to support this has so far been limited to analyses of small-scale samples. To address this evidence gap, we use two waves of panel data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009/10 and 2010/11) to identify and explain the prevalence of individual change in commute mode from year to year amongst a representative sample of the English working population (n = 15,200). One third of those that cycle or get the bus to work, and one quarter of those that walk to work, are shown to change commuting mode by the following year. Car commuting is more stable, with only one in ten car commuters changing mode by the following year. Commute mode changes are found to be primarily driven by alterations to the distance to work which occur in association with changing job or moving home. Switching to non-car commuting becomes much more likely (9.2 times) as the distance to work drops below three miles. High quality public transport links to employment centres are shown to encourage switches away from car commuting and mixed land uses are shown to encourage switches to active commuting (walking and cycling). Switches away from car commuting are found to be more likely (1.3 times) for those with a pro-environmental attitude. The attitude orientation is shown to precede the behaviour change, demonstrating evidence of ‘cause and effect’. Overall, the study shows that changes in commuting behaviour are strongly influenced by life events, spatial context and environmental attitude.

O processo de avaliação de empresas por modelos e técnicas formais tem por objetivo nortear a gestão e os grupos de interessados quanto à tomada de decisão ótima. Em geral, no processo de avaliação estes modelos são utilizados seguindo pressupostos acerca do valor dos benefícios da firma, dando a conotação de que o valor do negócio é o valor destes benefícios. Em empresas que atuam em mercados com alta competitividade e elevado nível de desenvolvimento e emprego de tecnologias e inovações, a utilização isolada de técnicas focadas em benefícios dos negócios atuais se mostram inadequadas para avaliar a habilidade da organização na resposta às variáveis mercadológicas. Sob este prisma, as vantagens advindas de estratégias competitivas e minimização das possibilidades de perdas do negócio, principalmente conquistadas através de estratégias de flexibilização e de geração de oportunidades de novos negócios se mostram importantes direcionadores de valor. O valor gerado por oportunidades e flexibilidades em empresas de telecomunicações é o foco da presente pesquisa que objetiva fundamentar em suas discussões e testes a viabilidade de incorporação do modelo de opções reais no processo de avaliação das empresas do setor, partindo do pressuposto de que o mercado, visualizando a importância das estratégias de gestão dos investimentos e da estrutura da empresa para o seu sucesso na geração de valor, remuneram estas organizações, atribuindo o valor de acordo com suas expectativas. Foram testados os modelos de efeitos fixos e aleatórios de dados em painel para verificar a significância das variáveis explicativas geradoras de valor potencial de opções reais. Os testes demonstram significância estatística das variáveis, embasando o modelo. Não obstante, a pesquisa posiciona estudos e levantamentos teóricos acerca dos modelos de avaliação abordados para contextualizar a utilidade do modelo de opções reais em processos de avaliação, bem como destaca a aplicabilidade procedimental do modelo de opções reais em conjunto com a técnica de fluxo de caixa descontado na avaliação de empresas do setor. Seus objetivos de discussão e averbação da aplicabilidade da teoria são alcançados, dado o conjunto de métodos empíricos e ilustrativos de sua técnica. / The process of business valuation for formal models and techniques aims to guide the management and stakeholder groups as to the optimal decision-making. In general, in the evaluating process these models are used following assumptions about the value of the firm benefits, giving the connotation that business value is the value of these benefits. In companies that operate in markets with high competitiveness and high level of development and use of technologies and innovations, the isolated use of techniques focused on the benefits of today\'s businesses have shown inadequate to assess the organization ability in response to marketing variables. From that perspective, the benefits arising from competitive strategies and minimization of business loss chances, mainly won through relaxation strategies and generating new business opportunities to show important value drivers. The value generated by the opportunities and flexibilities in the firm\'s telecommunications companies is the focus of this research that aims to support in their discussions and tests the feasibility of incorporating the real options model in the evaluation of companies in the sector, on the assumption that the market, seeing the importance of strategies for investment management and company structure for its success in generating value, remunerate these organizations, assigning the value according to your expectations. Models of fixed and random effects panel data were tested to assess the significance of the explanatory variables generating potential value of real options. The tests demonstrate statistical significance of the variables, basing the model. Nevertheless, this research positions studies and theoretical surveys about the valuation models addressed in order to contextualize the usefulness of the real options model in evaluation processes, and highlights the applicability of the real options model procedural in conjunction with the technique of cash flow discounted in evaluating companies. The goals for discussion and annotation of the theory applicability are achieved, given the set of empirical and illustrative of this technique.

O processo de avaliação de empresas por modelos e técnicas formais tem por objetivo nortear a gestão e os grupos de interessados quanto à tomada de decisão ótima. Em geral, no processo de avaliação estes modelos são utilizados seguindo pressupostos acerca do valor dos benefícios da firma, dando a conotação de que o valor do negócio é o valor destes benefícios. Em empresas que atuam em mercados com alta competitividade e elevado nível de desenvolvimento e emprego de tecnologias e inovações, a utilização isolada de técnicas focadas em benefícios dos negócios atuais se mostram inadequadas para avaliar a habilidade da organização na resposta às variáveis mercadológicas. Sob este prisma, as vantagens advindas de estratégias competitivas e minimização das possibilidades de perdas do negócio, principalmente conquistadas através de estratégias de flexibilização e de geração de oportunidades de novos negócios se mostram importantes direcionadores de valor. O valor gerado por oportunidades e flexibilidades em empresas de telecomunicações é o foco da presente pesquisa que objetiva fundamentar em suas discussões e testes a viabilidade de incorporação do modelo de opções reais no processo de avaliação das empresas do setor, partindo do pressuposto de que o mercado, visualizando a importância das estratégias de gestão dos investimentos e da estrutura da empresa para o seu sucesso na geração de valor, remuneram estas organizações, atribuindo o valor de acordo com suas expectativas. Foram testados os modelos de efeitos fixos e aleatórios de dados em painel para verificar a significância das variáveis explicativas geradoras de valor potencial de opções reais. Os testes demonstram significância estatística das variáveis, embasando o modelo. Não obstante, a pesquisa posiciona estudos e levantamentos teóricos acerca dos modelos de avaliação abordados para contextualizar a utilidade do modelo de opções reais em processos de avaliação, bem como destaca a aplicabilidade procedimental do modelo de opções reais em conjunto com a técnica de fluxo de caixa descontado na avaliação de empresas do setor. Seus objetivos de discussão e averbação da aplicabilidade da teoria são alcançados, dado o conjunto de métodos empíricos e ilustrativos de sua técnica. / The process of business valuation for formal models and techniques aims to guide the management and stakeholder groups as to the optimal decision-making. In general, in the evaluating process these models are used following assumptions about the value of the firm benefits, giving the connotation that business value is the value of these benefits. In companies that operate in markets with high competitiveness and high level of development and use of technologies and innovations, the isolated use of techniques focused on the benefits of today\'s businesses have shown inadequate to assess the organization ability in response to marketing variables. From that perspective, the benefits arising from competitive strategies and minimization of business loss chances, mainly won through relaxation strategies and generating new business opportunities to show important value drivers. The value generated by the opportunities and flexibilities in the firm\'s telecommunications companies is the focus of this research that aims to support in their discussions and tests the feasibility of incorporating the real options model in the evaluation of companies in the sector, on the assumption that the market, seeing the importance of strategies for investment management and company structure for its success in generating value, remunerate these organizations, assigning the value according to your expectations. Models of fixed and random effects panel data were tested to assess the significance of the explanatory variables generating potential value of real options. The tests demonstrate statistical significance of the variables, basing the model. Nevertheless, this research positions studies and theoretical surveys about the valuation models addressed in order to contextualize the usefulness of the real options model in evaluation processes, and highlights the applicability of the real options model procedural in conjunction with the technique of cash flow discounted in evaluating companies. The goals for discussion and annotation of the theory applicability are achieved, given the set of empirical and illustrative of this technique.