O objetivo desta dissertação consiste sobretudo em estabelecer as conexões entre o recente aumento no uso relativo de trabalhadores qualificados (em comparação aos não qualificados) e medidas de tecnologia, capital físico e tarifas, com especial enfoque para a manufatura brasileira nas últimas duas décadas. Para tanto, faz-se uso da metodologia de Berman, Bound & Griliches (1994), tendo a intensidade de P&D como proxy para progresso técnico. A evidência de complementaridade entre tecnologia e trabalho qualificado aparece mais robusta e fortemente entre 1994 e 1997, enquanto que o capital físico mostrou-se bastante correlacionado com o emprego de qualificados em todo o período considerado (1989-97). Já os impactos do comércio internacional mostraram-se limitados e pouco robustos. / The main goal of this dissertation is to investigate the relationship between skill upgrading and measures of technology, physical capital and tariffs, with emphasis on Brazilian manufacturing for the last two decades. We use Berman, Bound & Griliches’s (1994) methodology, with R&D intensity as a proxy for technological change. We found robust evidence of technology-skill complementarity for 1994-97, and positive correlation between physical capital and use of skilled labor for 1989-97. The impacts of international trade were weaker and less robust.

Existing research demonstrates that corporate financing decisions influence the cash-flow rights and control rights of the securities issued by companies differently and that the same corporate capital structures and/or ownership patterns have diverse effects and aims across countries, especially when emerging countries are analysed. The 1research purpose of this investigation is to understand how corporate financing decisions are affected by ownership structure in emerging countries. For this purpose, two game-theoretic models are developed and an empirical test is carried out. The first theoretical model analyses a number of key factors inducing a separation of ownership and control in emerging countries. This model argues that large private benefits of control, extreme risk, low investor protection, inefficient capital markets, and governments sympathetic to incumbent management at the expense of outside investors are factors contributing to create a separation of ownership and control in emerging markets. The second model examines the positive side of network creation through the analysis of the interaction of empathy and economic gains. This model identifies important factors promoting the formation of business groups in emerging countries. The empirical study is a two-fold analysis. Firstly, it tests the effects of well-known determinants of capital structure on debt; secondly, the effects of ownership and control in the financial policies of emerging countries are analysed. To do so, corporate financial data and firm-level data of Mexican publicly traded companies for was gathered. As expected, asset tangibility, company size, profitability and market to book ratio proved to be important firm-specific capital structure determinants, similar to the case of developed countries. Business risk and effective tax rate are key firm-specific capital structure determinants, as emerging markets research has identified. The two factors proposed by this researcher, viz. consolidation and liquidity are significant in the determination of capital structure of the Mexican publicly traded companies. Further, almost two thirds of Mexican publicly traded companies are family controlled. When families are large shareholders, they favour debt financing; whereas when families are the majority controlling shareholder they prefer issue shares, the latter supports the risk management argument proposed by Hagelin et al. (2006) and Céspedes et al. (2010).

This thesis investigates the profitability of the Momentum and Contrarian strategies in international equity markets. In particular, I introduce for the first time the use of countries' indices performance to momentum and contrarian portfolio selection. I show that investors can switch back and forth from one country to the other in designing worldwide strategies. The global momentum strategy is consistently profitable between 1969 and 2014. The most successful momentum strategy selects stocks based on their previous performances over 9 months and then holds the portfolio for the next 3 months. This strategy yields 3% per month (42.57% per year). Interestingly, countries' indices' portfolios formed based on prior 48 months; prior losers outperform prior winners by 0.83% per month (10.40% per year) during the subsequent 60 months. The reversal effect is substantially stronger for emerging countries where it yields 1.37% per month (17.70% per year). It remains profitable in the period post-globalization. In addition, I examine for the first time the role of world risks factors in explaining the global momentum and contrarian profits and find that the global momentum strategies obtain significant abnormal returns after adjusting consecutively for world Fama and French risks (0.9% per month or 11.35% per year), and world market states risks (1.31% per month or 16.76% year). Of particular interest, I find a strong relation between world macroeconomic risks factors, notably world industrial production and the momentum return. Second, I find no substantial relation between world risks factors and the contrarian profit. These results suggest that excess return can be earned in the long run by using global investment strategies based on historical prices, challenging the weak form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. In Chapter 1, I explain the momentum and the contrarian strategies, motivate the importance of what I propose as global momentum and contrarian strategies, and present the results obtained. In chapter 2, I review the Efficient Market Hypothesis' literatures in conformity with the Standard Finance theory. Additionally, I review the Behavioural Finance literatures with a focus on the psychology of investor decision, and the stock market under-reaction and overreaction approach of explaining the momentum and contrarian profitability. In chapter 3, I explain in details the main methodologies used to examine the global momentum and contrarian strategies profitability, and motivate the dataset used. In Chapter 4, I examine the new global momentum strategy profitability internationally. In Chapter 5, I examine the new contrarian strategy profitability internationally. In Chapter 6 I examine the role of global risks factors in explaining the momentum and contrarian profits. Finally, in Chapter 7 I conclude and highlights the limitations of the thesis.

The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyze the potential in a new and foreign market and the market we chose to define is Lebanon. We want to see if there is any potential for Swedish fashion companies to establish there and what kind of problems and barriers the companies could bump into if they decide to expand their operations to Lebanon.The theories that the study is based on are Push & Pull, The Uppsala-model, the Internationalization model, international market environments and the entry modes.Lebanon is a potential market for Swedish fashion companies. It is a market with a big consumer group that likes to spend money on fashion. Since Sweden is famous for fashion that comes with both good quality and price, it would profit them if they entered the Lebanese market. Companies should travel to Lebanon and experience the market and the potential there by themselves, before they enter it. It is important that companies which are in the starting hole to expand to a newmarket collect as much information as possible about it before establishing there to be able to succeed. / Program: Magisterutbildning i Fashion Management

Este trabalho propõe um modelo para estimativa do custo de capital próprio ex-ante baseado no índice lucro/preço, E/P, na taxa de crescimento esperada para o lucro na perpetuidade, g, e no coeficiente ?, o qual mede a taxa de conversão de crescimento em rentabilidade e, portanto, em valor. Tal modelo é testado com base em uma amostra brasileira, utilizando metodologia econométrica de regressões multivariadas em primeira diferença de séries temporais. São utilizadas como variáveis explicativas medidas alternativas para a taxa livre de risco e para a taxa esperada de crescimento do lucro na perpetuidade. Diversas das medidas utilizadas foram relevantes para explicar os índices E/P no Brasil, corroborando as hipóteses formuladas. Os resultados mostram, também, que as medidas mais individualmente adequadas para a taxa livre de risco a serem utilizadas para precificação de ações no Brasil são aquelas baseadas em yields de títulos soberanos emitidos pelo governo dos EUA adicionados do prêmio pelo risco Brasil, medido com base no índice EMBI+ Brazil. Identifica-se que as taxas de juros locais, apesar de apresentarem poder explicativo individualmente inferior, são fatores com poder explicativo conjunto significativo, resultando em um modelo com uma taxa livre de risco média ponderada. Quanto à taxa esperada para o crescimento na perpetuidade, a variável mais significativa foi a projeção de consenso de mercado de curto prazo para o crescimento do PIB. Por fim, estima-se o prêmio pelo risco de mercado ex-ante no Brasil, com base no modelo proposto, utilizando coeficientes e variáveis identificadas nos testes econométricos. Tal estimativa mostrou-se substancialmente mais precisa quando comparada àquelas baseadas em retornos ex-post, inclusive em mercados internacionais, bem como quando comparada a outras metodologias ex-ante no Brasil. / This work proposes a model for the estimation of the implied cost of equity. Such model is based on earnings/price ratios, E/P, on the expected perpetual earnings growth rate, g, and on the ? coefficient, which measures the rate of conversion of growth to return, and, therefore, to value. The proposed model is tested on a Brazilian sample, using multivariate first-difference time series regressions. The explanatory variables include several alternative measures for the risk-free rate and the expected perpetual earnings growth rate. The results show that most of the selected measures were relevant in explaining E/P ratios in Brazil, confirming the proposed hypothesis. The results also show that US sovereign bonds, combined with a measure for the Brazilian risk premium, the EMBI+ Brazil index, are the most relevant measures for the risk-free rate to be used in equity valuation in Brazil. Additionally, we conclude that local interest rates, albeit having individually lower explanatory power, remain relevant in conjunction with international bond yields, resulting in a weighted average risk-free rate. The most significant measure for the expected perpetuity growth rate was the short term consensus forecast for the GDP. Finally, we estimate the ex-ante market risk premium in Brazil, using the proposed model with coefficients and variables selected based on the econometric results. Such estimate is substantially more accurate when compared to ex-post estimates, including those for international markets, as well as other ex-ante estimates for the Brazilian market.

The saturation of Western markets, strong and predatory competition, and the end of supranational state units, all these factors have contributed to eminent interest of multinational companies in the newly created markets of the Commonwealth of Independent States. For that reason, the thesis discusses marketing theories as well as a wide range of marketing strategies and tools tailored to local specific cosmetics markets based on executed situation analysis.

The thesis focuses on the employment structures and employment trends within the EU Member States using the ICSO-88 classification for the detailed analysis of the German and Czech labour markets. The aim of the thesis is the prove the readiness of the Lisbon process to fullfil its main goal - to kepp the high employment rates eitihin the EU.

Today there is a great interest in the strategic markets or priority markets in the world. The list includes such countries as Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, USA, Vietnam. World find them priority because they hide a great potential and dispose of large amount of wealth, important for the future prosperous development of the whole world. It is clear that other economies that are not in the list, try to establish business relations with these countries and strengthen their positions on their markets. All BRIC countries are currently considered as the priority markets. In my work I tried to describe the current situation in the development of bilateral trade relations between the Czech republic and the BRIC countries. BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) - a young forum of strengthening dialogue and cooperation with major countries among the dynamically developing countries, whose role in the global economy and politics is constantly increasing. During the last decade the BRIC countries became the "locomotive" of economic development in the world. Approximately 50% of world GDP growth in 2010, including the period after the crisis, was produced by BRIC countries. The Czech Republic is a relatively small economy, for which penetration to international trade plays an important role, and therefore for Czech exporters should BRIC markets become in the near term the main object of concentration.

Society’s efforts to ‘manage’ the problem of human-induced climate change – for example through setting targets, tracking progress, imposing sanctions and incentives, and creating markets in emission rights and offsets – have given rise to numerous calculation, measurement, attribution, monitoring, reporting and verification challenges, which are being addressed by many different communities (including scientists, governments, businesses and accountants) in many different ways. Carbon accounting – this diverse and ever-expanding assemblage of calculative practices – is a rapidly evolving phenomenon, which has only recently become a subject of academic accountancy-related research. This thesis explores what carbon accounting means, who it involves, and how different communities define and lay claim to competence in the field. It also examines, through case studies on the emergence of the Climate Disclosure Standards Board and the controversies around generating tradable carbon offsets from forestry projects in the UK, the immense technical, cognitive, social and political work required to make carbon measurable, commensurable and thereby amenable to various forms of management. The thesis contributes to both conceptual and practical understanding of carbon accounting as an emerging field of study. Bringing together a wide range of empirical examples of different types of carbon accounting practices, it proposes a unique definition of carbon accounting which expands the horizons of the field. It provides a conceptual basis for making sense of carbon accounting by considering it not as a unitary phenomenon but rather as a set of overlapping frames, each associated with different communities of practice. It shows that competence in carbon accounting is contested, particularly where these frames overlap, and that boundary organisations are emerging that offer the opportunity to negotiate such tensions and lead to more productive policy-making. Finally, it makes the case that engagement with the detail of the ‘nuts and bolts’ of carbon accounting is essential, as these apparently technical details can have major implications for the effectiveness of society’s response to climate change, and it is only by opening them up to rigorous scrutiny that we can make progress, both conceptually and practically.

Filmmakers first received widespread academic attention as case studies into the increasing casualisation of labour in post-industrial economies. Their precarious existence in project-based labour markets provided much food for thought about the future of work, while their status as artists and producers of culture entered them into debates around just what art is and how to approach it. But in light of recent transformations in the cultural industries and the accompanied blurring of boundaries between production and consumption, academic understandings of the lives filmmakers lead have also been somewhat blurred. This ethnography of networks of cultural production in Beirut re-introduces filmmakers into the very sociological debates that they helped spark. Might a return to the situated experience of these theoretically and methodologically challenging people, who form workgroups and collaborate with each other repeatedly across projects as they craft their own careers, shed productive light on academic understandings of precarity, cultural production and indeed our increasingly confusing relationships with the objects around us? With that in mind, in this thesis I ask the following research question: how are networks of film production formed and maintained in Beirut? Based on an 'insider' ethnography of various film projects weaved into a mixed-methods social network analytic methodology, I adopt a relational sociological approach that conceives of production networks as akin to social worlds and find three analytic planes to delve deeper into: markets, objects and relationships. In relation to markets, I echo the argument that current classification systems of cultural production are too consumption-based and adopt a social network markets framework more sensitised towards production. Here, I find that the cyclical, project-based relationship of patronage that ties production networks to their clients is highly varied and contingent, shaping not only the process of cultural production but also its organisational structure. Further, I argue that the management of these contingencies is key to the potential repeat collaboration not just with clients (and their own social networks), but fellow producers as well. But past projects do not simply disappear once completed, they might well come back to haunt their makers. Drawing upon ethnographic and recent historical data on a number of web-series that emerged out of Beirut between 2009 and 2012, I compare using two-mode networks the past and more recent projects my interlocutors were involved in. Here, I find that one's past projects shape one's future by conducing or hindering their chances of finding new work. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, I find that filmmakers (and those around them) increasingly define themselves (and are defined by others) in relation to the past projects they have done. Over time, though, as filmmakers collaborate on an increasing number of films, their relationships take on deeper characteristics than monochrome economic considerations. Here I draw upon the notion of embeddedness to shed light on emergent meaning at the network level across a number of projects and, therefore, the emergent social world-ness of networks. While the first set of findings relates to debates in the sociology of work and the second to those in the sociology of cultural production, my final analysis shows just how intimately the two are connected. I conclude by highlighting the potential of empirically-grounded relational sociological approaches to finessing our understandings of cultural work in its economic, social, but also material and technical contingencies.