Esta pesquisa é resultado do reconhecimento, no mercado hoteleiro, de algumas vantagens em se conhecer o conjunto de necessidades específicas de um determinado tipo de hóspede. O turismo de negócios é visto como um importante segmento do mercado turístico e como forte gerador da demanda hoteleira em algumas regiões. A proposta é, a partir da apresentação de características do mercado turístico e do setor hoteleiro, discutir a percepção do turista de negócios quanto aos atributos oferecidos pelos hotéis que justificam a preferência por dado empreendimento para sua estadia. A pesquisa bibliográfica, aliada a um estudo exploratório na cidade de São Paulo, permite algumas conjecturas a respeito do comportamento do turista de negócios no que diz respeito à hospedagem. Em virtude do dinamismo desta demanda, espera-se incentivar com esta pesquisa a continuidade, por profissionais e acadêmicos, dos estudos a respeito do mercado hoteleiro para o turismo de negócios. / business tourist behavior concerning hosting. Due to the dynamism of hotel demand, is expected that professionals and academics be stimulated to prospect and study the hotel market for business tourism. This research is the outcome of the recognition, in the hotel market, of the advantages of knowing the needs of a certain guest profile. Business tourism is an important segment of the tourism market and generates a great demand in some specific regions. The purpose of the research is, from the overview of the characteristics of tourism market and hotels segment, discuss the business tourist perspective of the attributes offered by hotels that justify their preference for a specific project. Research bibliography combined with an exploration in the city of São Paulo, allowed some hypothesis regarding

Master of Science / Department of Statistics / Michael Higgins / The amount of data generated from stock market trading is massive. For example, roughly 10 million trades are performed each day on the NASDAQ stock exchange. A significant proportion of these trades are made by high-frequency traders. These entities make on the order of thousands or more trades a day. However, the stock-market factors that drive the decisions of high-frequency traders are poorly understood. Recently, hybridized threshold clustering (HTC) has been proposed as a way of clustering large-to-massive datasets. In this report, we use three months of NASDAQ HFT data---a dataset containing information on all trades of 120 different stocks including identifiers on whether the buyer and/or seller were high-frequency traders---to investigate the trading patterns of high-frequency traders, and we explore the use of HTC to identify these patterns. We find that, while HTC can be successfully performed on the NASDAQ HFT dataset, the amount of information gleaned from this clustering is limited. Instead, we show that an understanding of the habits of high-frequency traders may be gained by looking at \textit{janky} trades---those in which the number of shares traded is not a multiple of 10. We demonstrate evidence that janky trades are more common for high-frequency traders. Additionally, we suggest that a large number of small, janky trades may help signal that a large trade will happen shortly afterward.

by Chiu Ching-On Paul, Wong Lit-Chor Alexis. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 140-141.

by Wai-Man Leung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-112). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Problems of Cointegration Analysis --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Contributions of this Research --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- Applications of this Research --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4 --- Organization of this Thesis --- p.3 / Chapter 2 --- Foreign Exchange Features --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- Spot Exchange Rate Markets --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2 --- Development of International Monetary System --- p.6 / Chapter 2.3 --- Determinants of Foreign Exchange Rates --- p.7 / Chapter 2.4 --- Description of Foreign Exchange Data --- p.9 / Chapter 3 --- Literature Overview --- p.17 / Chapter 3.1 --- Model Selection --- p.17 / Chapter 3.2 --- Line and Curve Detection......................................................' --- p.20 / Chapter 3.3 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.23 / Chapter 4 --- Regression by Minor Component Analysis --- p.24 / Chapter 4.1 --- Regression by Ordinary Least Squares --- p.24 / Chapter 4.2 --- Regression by Total Least Squares --- p.27 / Chapter 4.3 --- The comparison of PCA and MCA --- p.28 / Chapter 4.4 --- Experiment 4A : Regression on Artifical Data --- p.29 / Chapter 4.5 --- Experiment 4B : Regression on FX Data --- p.30 / Chapter 4.6 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.32 / Chapter 5 --- Cointegration Test by Minor Component Analysis --- p.33 / Chapter 5.1 --- Concept of Cointegration --- p.33 / Chapter 5.2 --- MCA Based Cointegration Test --- p.34 / Chapter 5.3 --- Experiment 5B : Cointegration Test on FX Data --- p.36 / Chapter 5.4 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.38 / Chapter 6 --- Model Selection by Minor Component Analysis --- p.44 / Chapter 6.1 --- Hypothesis Test on Minor Component Coefficients --- p.44 / Chapter 6.2 --- Experiment 6B : Forward Selection on FX Data --- p.46 / Chapter 6.3 --- Experiment 6B : Backward Elimination on FX Data --- p.50 / Chapter 6.4 --- Experiment 6C : MCA Based Selection on FX Data --- p.53 / Chapter 6.5 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.54 / Chapter 7 --- Cointegration by Modular MCA --- p.55 / Chapter 7.1 --- Ordinary Modular MCA Based Cointegration --- p.56 / Chapter 7.2 --- Experiment 8A : OMMCA on Artificial Data --- p.58 / Chapter 7.3 --- Experiment 8B : OMMCA on FX Data --- p.63 / Chapter 7.4 --- Variable-Dependent Modular MCA Method --- p.71 / Chapter 7.5 --- "Experiment 8C : VMMCA on Artificial Data," --- p.73 / Chapter 7.6 --- Experiment 8D : VMMCA on FX Data --- p.80 / Chapter 7.7 --- Adaptive Modular MCA Based Cointegration --- p.89 / Chapter 7.8 --- Experiment 8E : AMMCA on Artificial Data --- p.90 / Chapter 7.9 --- Experiment 8F : AMMCA on FX Data --- p.94 / Chapter 7.10 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.103 / Chapter 8 --- Conclusions and Future Works --- p.105

Financial and industrial economists are increasingly recognising the interaction between capital structure and firms' strategies in the product market. A debate exists regarding the nature of the relationship between firms' product market power and financial leverage. Particularly, researchers have asked whether the relationship is positive, negative or non-linear. This thesis contributes to this research agenda by developing game-theoretic models, and conducting empirical tests. Specifically, the thesis examines the effects of market power on a firm's use of long-term debt.

48 pages / Policy on the parallel imports of medicines is being debated currently in Korea. This paper looks at several countries' trends, the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement, and the Korean golf market to search for policy ideas. A simple consumer welfare benefit-cost and sensitivity analysis shows that parallel imports give not only consumers' surplus on parallel imported golf clubs, but also a much larger consumers' surplus on authorized brand versions.This paper makes the following recommendations: First, parallel imports should be permitted according to the principle of free trade, if the cost of parallel imports to the country is not much larger than the benefit. Second, even if parallel impmts are pem1itted, some exceptional cases should be allowed where international exhaustion is problematic. Third, governmental intervention, a clear labeling system, for example, is required to protect consumers, and help consumers make rational choices. / Note: This digital copy was scanned from a personal copy, and contains some underlining and marginalia.

De acordo com a teoria de equity market timing, as companhias tendem a emitir ações ou dívidas de modo a explorar janelas de oportunidade e esse comportamento é um determinante significativo da estrutura de capital das empresas, reflexo das decisões de financiamento. Com base nessa assertiva e nas evidências recentes, esta dissertação investiga a ocorrência de equity market timing na decisão de emissão primária de ações (IPO e Follow-on) no mercado de capitais brasileiro. Em um primeiro momento, analisaram-se os determinantes da estrutura de capital das companhias brasileiras, com base em variáveis comuns na literatura: índice market-to-book, tamanho, tangibilidade, rentabilidade e setor. Mais tarde, para averiguar a existência do comportamento de market timing na decisão de emitir ações, utilizou-se a relação dos retornos anormais, antes e após a emissão, com o volume total de capital levantado por meio da oferta desses títulos, além da quantidade de ações que a empresa emitiu e o preço inicial de negociação, medidas relativas utilizadas por Alti (2006). A amostra analisada leva em conta características setoriais e compreende 123 empresas de capital aberto que emitiram novas ações na BM&FBOVESPA entre 2004 e 2015, somando 165 emissões primárias durante esse período. Foram utilizadas análises descritivas de dados, testes de diferença de médias e regressões lineares para prover evidências da ocorrência desse fenômeno. Os resultados indicam que mais da metade das emissões de ações no Brasil ocorre nos meses que antecedem o prazo máximo de divulgação dos demonstrativos contábeis das empresas, e que 75% das emissões aconteceram depois de retornos anormais positivos. Ademais, as empresas que tiveram retornos anormais negativos depois da emissão de ações foram as que captaram mais recursos por essa via de financiamento, indo a favor da prática de equity market timing na decisão de emissão de ações no mercado brasileiro. Destaca-se, ainda, a constatação de que esse comportamento oportunista está mais claramente ligado à oferta inicial de ações (IPO), ou seja, quando a empresa utiliza essa fonte de financiamento pela primeira vez do que quando a emissão é subsequente (Follow-on), além das evidências de que o setor tem papel importante no comportamento de market timing dos gestores, indicando que as empresas de um mesmo ramo setorial tomam decisões semelhantes com a finalidade de explorar janelas de oportunidades possivelmente relacionadas aos seus respectivos setores. / According to the equity market timing theory, companies tend to issue stocks or debts in order to explore windows of opportunity, and this behavior is a significant determinant of the capital structure of companies, which reflects from financing decisions. Based on this assertion and on recent evidence, this dissertation investigates the occurrence of equity market timing in the decision of primary issuance of shares (IPO and Follow-on) in the Brazilian capital market. First, determinants of the capital structure of Brazilian companies were analyzed, based on common variables in the literature: market-to-book ratio, size, tangibility, profitability and industry. Later, in order to determine the occurrence of market timing behavior in the decision to issue shares, it was investigated the relation of abnormal returns - both before and after the issue - with the total volume of capital raised through securities\' offers and also the quantity of shares issued by the company and the initial trading price, relative measures used by Alti (2006). The analyzed sample takes into account industrial characteristics and comprises 123 public companies that issued new shares on BM&FBOVESPA between 2004 and 2015, resulting in to 165 primary issues during this period. Descriptive data analyzes, mean difference tests and linear regressions were used to provide evidence of the occurrence of this phenomenon. The results indicate that more than half of Brazil\'s equity issues occur in the months leading up to the maximum disclosure period of the companies\' financial statements, and that 75% of the issues occurred after abnormal positive returns. In addition, the companies that had negative abnormal returns after the issuance of shares were the ones that captured more resources through this financing channel, favoring the practice of equity market timing in the decision to issue shares in the Brazilian market. It should also be pointed out that this opportunistic behavior is more clearly linked to the initial public offering (IPO), that is, when the company uses this source of financing for the first time than when the issue is secondary (Follow- on). Also, there is evidence that the industry plays an important role in the manager\'s market timing behavior, indicating that the companies belonging to a same industry make similar decisions with the purpose of exploring windows of opportunities that possibly related to their respective industries.

China's futures market has undergone a significant structural change. It was a 'vertical silo' and now it is being developed into a 'horizontal' structure with Chinese characteristics. Such a change involves a series of changes in institutional arrangement. If researching the phenomenon when it was settled, the observation and, consequently, the conclusion would likely to see it was the state that had led the change. However, participated and observed through the change, this thesis is going to argue that the grassroots heroes, the practitioners from a marginalized sub-sector, have contributed significantly. The state is powerful and dominant whereas the regional exchanges leveraged their resources to corral the state and shape the institutional field. The focus of organizational and management studies can be roughly categorized as three dimensions: how changes occur within organizations, how the institutional environment shapes organizations and how organizations influence the sociocultural context within which they operate (Parsons, 1956). In the recent decades, organizational studies have made significant progress in the first two but little in the third (Barley, 2010). Research should progress in the third dimension regardless of the untidy and unaesthetic nature of the reality, as organizations have influenced the sociocultural context substantially. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the third dimension by arguing that institutional bricolage characterizes the process by which individuals and organizations change institutions to fulfil their purposes, be it changing the institutions, building a market or protesting the constraints imposed upon them. Institutional bricolage is the strategy, mentality and philosophy for grassroots heroes who have no political power but are still ambitious to have their voices heard and hence influence the change from the lower strata. The ideas in this paper are informed by the experience of China's futures market, where the researcher participated as a strategy manager for about a year. The organization in question is a regional exchange that previously had no place in China's official market structure and became legitimized as the outcome of a regulatory crackdown. This thesis, therefore, uncovers the underexplored part of China's financial market, the regional exchanges, and sheds light on China's institutional change.

Advances in information technology have made a significant influence on healthcare. Among technological breakthroughs, Internet has revolutionized the way people have access to health information. People increasingly use the Internet to search for, exchange and post health information on various types of websites. Internet offers invaluable benefits to its users; nevertheless, this very freedom to post information and the resulting enormous body of information is also one of the major sources of concerns. There have been misgivings about the quality of online health information since the Internet has been introduced. The 'top-down' approaches to control the quality of online health information proved to be neither practical nor desirable. The advent of web 2.0 (read and write version of web) enables user-driven approaches to improve the quality of information through 'bottom-up' approaches. The critical question is what type of bottom-up approach is suitable to provide online users with high quality health information. Drawing on the market design literature, this research proposes a framework to understand and address (improve) the problem of quality of online health information. The research aims to identify the conditions under which a market for exchange of online health information works efficiently and then study the mechanisms to achieve the efficiency conditions and maximise quality. It also highlights the literature gaps for designing an online market that ensure the quality of exchanged health information. The research collected data from question and answer platforms to carry the empirical analysis. One hundred actual question and answers from nine platforms (900 in total) were collected. The quality of health information was determined by medical expert assessors and related design features were collected form Internet. Statistical algorithmic modelling was adopted for data analysis. Supervised learning methods and mainly regression tree method was used to investigate the relationship between design and quality of health information. The study uncovers the mechanisms and design features that are associated with the quality of health information. It reveals the interaction between design features that lead to high quality health information. The results particularly highlight the importance of experts' participation in the platform for increasing health information quality. It also shed light on the importance of financial incentives in enhancing health information quality. Building on the empirical findings, the research proposes four design scenarios of an online health information market and their respective outcome in terms of quality. The research opens a new perspective for researchers on how to tackle the problem of quality of online health information by framing this problem as a 'market design' issue. It provides important design lessons for managers and designers on how to enhance the quality of online health information in their platforms. It gives policy makers empirically supported guidance for recognising and promoting online procedures that lead to production of high quality online health information.

This thesis presents three essays on the motives for mergers and the determinants of U.S. horizontal merger antitrust case selection. These essays contribute to the debate on whether mergers increase social welfare and on the efficiency of antitrust intervention. The first essay explores the market power motive for horizontal mergers by examining the relation between the announcement wealth effects to merging firms and their reliant corporate customers. Large sample studies generally conclude that efficiency considerations drive horizontal mergers and find little market power, which implies a non-negative wealth effect relation between these two parties along the supply chain. When I examine the endogenous stock market reactions to merger announcements with instrumentation, however, my results overturn this inference: I find that greater abnormal returns to merging firms systematically relate to lower abnormal returns to reliant customers. This wealth transfer effect exists for deals in industries with little foreign competition but not for deals in industries with intense foreign competition. These results suggest that increased market power is a key driver of horizontal mergers. In the second essay, I investigate the determinants of U.S. antitrust invention by examining horizontal merger antitrust case selection in the U.S. manufacturing sector during 1980-2009. I find no evidence supporting the consumer protection claim of the government's antitrust agencies. Instead, I find that the likelihood of antitrust intervention is negatively related to foreign import pressure. Hitting a market concentration hurdle criterion also predicts intervention. In addition, industry rivals seem able to exert pressure for antitrust intervention to avoid a competitive disadvantage. I identify two rival groups that account for the demand for antitrust regulation, local rivals and rivals producing less specialised products. The third essay examines the motives for related mergers from the perspective of product market similarity. Using Hoberg and Phillips' (2014) text-based product similarity measure, I find that when an acquirer's product is more similar to those of its rivals, a related merger results in a greater post-merger product price and lower market share for the combined firm. Moreover, for related mergers in more homogenous product markets, the stock market reactions to the merger announcement are higher for the combined firm and for product market rivals, but lower for reliant corporate customers. Overall, the evidence on both product market real performance and stock market reactions is consistent with the wealth transfer effect of related mergers, and suggests that the primary motive for firms to merge with product market competitors is to gain market power rather than to achieve efficiencies.