When there are several possible segmentation variables, marketers must investigate the ramifications of their potential interactions. These include their mutual association, the identification of the best (the distinguished) segmentation variable and its predictability by a set of descriptor variables, and the structure of the multivariate system(s) obtained from the segmentation and descriptor variables. This procedure has been defined as segment congruence analysis (SCA). This study utilizes the information theoretic and the log-linear/logit approaches to address a variety of research questions in segment congruence analysis. It is shown that the information theoretic approach expands the scope of SCA and offers some advantages over traditional methods. Data obtained from a survey conducted by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and Northwest utilities is used to demonstrate the information theoretic and the log-linear/logit approaches and compare these two methods. The survey was designed to obtain information on energy consumption habits, attitudes toward selected energy issues, and the conservation measures utilized by the residents in the Pacific Northwest. The analyses are performed in two distinct phases. Phase I includes assessment of mutual association among segmentation variables and four methods (based on different information theoretic functions) for identifying candidates for the distinguished variable. Phase II addresses the selection and analysis of the distinguished variable. This variable is selected either a priori or by assessment of its predictability from (segmentation or exogenous) descriptor variables. The relations between the distinguished variable and the descriptor variables are further analyzed by examining the predictability issue in greater detail and by evaluating structural models of the multivariate systems. The methodological conclusions of this study are that the information theoretic and log-linear methods have deep similarities. The analyses produced intuitively plausible results. In Phase I, energy related awareness, behavior, perceptions, attitudes, and electricity consumption were identified as candidate segmentation variables. In Phase II, using exogenous descriptor variables, electricity consumption was selected as the distinguished variable. The analysis of this variable indicated that the demographic factors, type of dwelling, and geoclimatic environment are among the most important determinants of electricity consumption.

The Effect of Airbnb on Prague Housing Market Daniel Ondruška This thesis studies multiple topics but its main purpose is research of the effect of home-sharing platform Airbnb on house prices and rents in Prague. Sharing economy in general is still a new sector and it is very hard to uncover and correctly analyze it and therefore there are not yet that many studies on this topic. Using very contained and detailed datasets of Airbnb listings, house transactions and renting, we prove that there is a relationship between Airbnb activity and house prices. The results suggest that the increase of Airbnb listings by 1\% leads to a 0.01\% in house price. We also look at COVID-19 and its impact on house prices and rents. This part will be very theoretical since the pandemic is still an actual topic and its real effect might not be fully visible yet.

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Combined Heat and Power (CHP) is the production of electricity and the simultaneous utilization of the heat produced by the generator prime mover. The energy efficiency advantages of CHP are undisputed, and yet, the continuously changing economic conditions make the implementation of such projects financially not viable if no incentives are available. This thesis attempts to demonstrate the economic benefits associated with DG-CHP. The identification and quantification of both benefits and costs to the different system stakeholders will serve to illustrate that additional DG-CHP installed capacity results in positive system wide benefits. Furthermore, it will be shown that there is justification to re-evaluate a more balanced allocation - among the different system stakeholders - of the benefits resulting from the implementation of DG-CHP technology in the New York State region.

In Fulfilment of the Ph.D. Programme in Finance Graduate School of Business Administration University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa / E.K. 2019

This dissertation focuses on the globalization of audit markets. In particular, this dissertation is studying the entry of the Big Four accounting firms into India post-economic and political reforms of the early 1990s. The dissertation is comprised of three separate, but related studies. Each study appeals to prior research in accounting and related disciplines to examine the entry of the Big Four accounting firms in India. The first study appeals to audit market and economic research on incumbent pricing to examine ways in which local accounting firms in India adapted to the competition introduced by the Big Four accounting firms. The second study is an account of the change in the organizational field of the Indian accounting profession caused by the entry of the multinational accounting firms from 1990 to 2005 from a social constructionist perspective using the model of nonisomorphic change. The third study examines the change in the Indian accounting profession from 1990 to 2005 caused by the entry of the Big Four accounting firms in India from a critical perspective. It appeals to the theories of globalization to examine the change. Taken together, these studies attempt to provide the Big Four accounting firms useful information about the pricing strategies likely to be faced by them from local accounting firms in a new market, provide insights into the multiple roles played by professional associations in the process of radical change in the organizational field, and emphasize that globalization of accounting markets has not been accompanied by a level playing field for the local accounting profession in the globalized markets.

Yes / The classical generation scheduling problem defines on/off decisions (commitment) and dispatch level of all available generators in a power system for each scheduling period. In recent years researchers have focused on developing new approaches to solve nonclassical generation scheduling problems in the newly deregulated and decentralized electricity market place. In this paper a GA-based approach has been developed for a system operator to schedule generation in a market akin to that operating in England and Wales. A generation scheduling problem has been formulated and solved using available trading information at the time of dispatch. The solution is updated after information is obtained in a rolling fashion. The approach is tested for two IEEE network-based problems, and achieves comparable results with a branch and bound technique in reasonable CPU time.

In this thesis the author investigate the overreaction effect of Asian country exchange traded funds (ETFs) to US stock market returns, trading strategies of leveraged exchange traded funds (LETFs), and the regime switching behavior of emerging market sovereign credit default swaps. In the Asian country ETF paper the author studies the overreaction effect of US investors towards US market return when they formulate Asian country ETF prices. The Asian country ETFs are special because when the ETF shares are traded in the US the underlying Asian stock markets are closed resulting in stale Net Asset Values (NAVs) of ETFs. This feature of Asian country ETFs offers a unique setting to study the relation between security price and market sentiment. With a dynamic contrarian trading strategy the author records economically significant abnormal returns over the buy-and-hold benchmark suggesting that US investors’ sentiment does lead to abnormal returns in the Asian country ETF market. The author also studies the correspondence of the abnormal return with US market sentiment index and finds that they are positively correlated. Furthermore the author documents asymmetric responses of overreaction in bullish vs. bearish market sentiment. The results pose significant implications for both the academics and practitioners. iii The LETF trading strategy paper is a joint work with my supervisor Dr. Peter Miu and my supervisory committee member Dr. Narat Charupat. The authors investigate the market conditions that tip the balance between the market trending effect and the volatility drag in governing the performance of LETFs. The market conditions that promote a stronger former effect than the latter will result in a positive compounding effect, thus enhancing the profitability of a long LETF position at the expense of a short one. On the other hand, those market conditions that promote a dominating latter effect will result in a negative compounding effect, which benefits the short LETF position as opposed to the long position. To address our research questions, we conduct a series of simulation exercises by gauging the sensitivity of the LETF returns on key parameters of the return generating process of the underlying benchmark as represented by the GJR model. We first study the return distributions of a long strategy in a +3x LETF, a short strategy in a -3x LETF, and the pair strategy of a 50% short position in the +3x LETF together with a 50% short position in the -3x LETF, all on the same S&P 500 index. We examine different performance measures and study the risk-return trade-offs of LETF investment. We contribute to the literature by establishing the link between the performance of LETFs and characteristics of the return dynamics of the underlying benchmark through pinpointing the underlying drivers of the compounding effects to facilitate the decision-making process of LETF investors. In the sovereign Credit Default Swap (SCDS) paper the author investigates the dependency of sovereign CDS spread change on a sovereign’s country specific fundamental, local, regional and macro global factors. Using Markov regime switching model the author reveals that in a tranquil state a sovereign market’s fundamental factors mainly determine the direction of the SCDS spread movement, while in a turmoil state the global factors become dominant. Cross sectional analysis to examine the behavior of the same explanatory variable on countries of different macroeconomic characters and reveal that more “open” countries are more integrated with the regional economies with the contagion effect being more salient in the bad state, and smaller countries with less diversified economies would be more affected a global crisis because economic links are more important for such countries than larger countries. Furthermore, it shows that the influence of rating is more significant for “closed” than for “open” countries, and the market sentimental effect of flight-to-quality magnifies in the bad state that US equity market return has the strongest influence for small countries indicating stronger economic ties of smaller countries to larger countries with diverse economies in the bad state. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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