There exists much controversy as to whether international migration in general, and migrant's remittances in particular, increase or decrease economic welfare at origin. Our research contributes to the international discussion on remittances by presenting novel insights on the basis of theoretical and empirical analysis. Analysis of remittances from macro-economic as well as micro-economic point of view reveals that remittances not only have growth enhancing effect but also have an equalizing impact on income distribution of the recipient economy. The first chapter shows how large flows of remittances not only help the receiver to accumulate necessary savings but also reduce the critical level of wealth needed to get access to the capital market to instigate entrepreneurship. The second chapter reveals that the measured impact of remittances on business investment have significant country heterogeneity; remittances facilitate entrepreneurship in those countries where the lenders of the capital market can predict smooth and increasing flow of remittances. The third chapter proposes that remittances work better than aid in enhancing growth of the recipient country and the reason is that remittances are more effective than aid in augmenting capital accumulation.

The main focus of this thesis was to gain a better understanding about the dynamics of risk perception and its influence on people’s evacuation behavior. Another major focus was to improve our knowledge regarding geo-spatial and temporal variations of risk perception and hurricane evacuation behavior. A longitudinal dataset of more than eight hundred households were collected following two major hurricane events, Ivan and Katrina. The longitudinal survey data was geocoded and a geo-spatial database was integrated to it. The geospatial database was composed of distance, elevation and hazard parameters with respect to the respondent’s household location. A set of Bivariate Probit (BP) model suggests that geospatial variables have had significant influences in explaining hurricane risk perception and evacuation behavior during both hurricanes. The findings also indicated that people made their evacuation decision in coherence with their risk perception. In addition, people updated their hurricane evacuation decision in a subsequent similar event.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis was to compare three different methods for regression with binary outcomes. The three methods used for comparison are: Linear Probability Model, Logit and Probit. To compare the methods, data gathered from the World Value Survey when it last was done in Sweden in 2011 was used. The outcome variable in the creation of the models was whether the respondent preferred protecting the environment or economic growth. A Monte Carlo-simulation was also performed to strengthen the arguments in the comparison.  The results from the different models created was very small, but there are still differences. Two examples of the differences are the simplicity of interpretation between the models and errors that argues for not using Linear Probability Model under certain circumstances.

Using paired samples t-tests, this study examines attitudes toward government intervention to decrease the consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and sugar to improve public health in Sweden. The effects of the four sociodemographic variables gender, age, education, and income on attitudes toward health policies are tested using Ordinary Least Squares and ordered probit regressions. The research is performed using cross-sectional data which is supplied by a national survey. The results show that tobacco should be regulated the most, followed by alcohol and lastly sugar. According to the respondents, tobacco and alcohol consumption need clear societal restrictions while individuals should be responsible for their sugar consumption. This implies that tobacco and alcohol restrictions introduced by the government should be effective and should, therefore, reduce the consumption and subsequently decrease a country’s economic costs. The opposite is true for sugar policy. Women, younger people, highly educated people, and people with higher incomes are positively related to support toward tobacco restrictions. Women, younger people, and highly educated people show more support for alcohol restrictions. Lastly, respondents with higher levels of education are more supportive of sugar restrictions.

This study is based on first-league football teams from England, Spain and Russia. It demonstrates that football tourism has a big potential because the attendance on football stadiums has a positive effect over the number of visitors in the city, and this influence is stronger among teams that are historically more popular. Football trips can also contribute to decreasing the seasonality and the centralization of tourism. The questionnaire designed for supporters demonstrates that a higher percentage of fans of currently less competitive teams tend to visit away games, but it is explained through the fact that more successful clubs have supporters located far away, for whom performing such a thing is more troublesome. English supporters spend less money in their football visiting trips, but their journeys are also shorter and without many activities, which makes their habits different from the ones of a typical tourist. At the same time, Spanish football tourists spend more time and money while travelling. The respondents from both countries face similar problems while visiting a match, and the majority of them are infrastructural. Russian football tourists spend the most time and money in their journeys, visiting many places except for the football match itself, which makes their behaviour the closest to a typical tourist. However, during matches they also suffer from more serious issues related to the unfriendliness of police and of hosts.

Background – This study is an attempt to explore the relationship between microcredit and the socio-economic empowerment of women in rural Bangladesh. Microcredit is simply the extension of a small amount of collateral-free institutional loans to jointly liable poor group members to generate employment and income enhancing activities. As it is too difficult for poor members to get loan from the formal credit institutions, Grameen Bank (GB) or other Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) provide small loans to vulnerable groups of the society by which they are expected to empower over his counterparts. Research questions – RQ1: How does micro-credit affect different indicators of women empowerment in the rural areas of Bangladesh? RQ2– Is the impact different from the male counterparts in the sample households? Purpose – This study is an effort to find the impact of microcredit on a number of indicators of women’s empowerment in the rural areas in Bangladesh. Methodology – Quantitative Regression Techniques such as Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Instrumental Variable (IV) method have been applied to get the relationship between microcredit and women empowerment. Conclusion – Applying nationally representative cross-section survey data, Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) 2015, this thesis is intended to find the causal linkage between microcredit and women empowerment’s with different dimensions of women’s decisions are taken as empowerment indicators: production, resources, income, leadership, savings and time. The analysis has been conducted at the household level. The study assumes that women empowerment is endogenous. After controlling for endogeneity in the estimation by using an instrumental variable (IV) ‘distance to the market’ this study finds a significant relationship between microcredit and different dimensions of women’s empowerment. Participation in the microcredit program is found to be significant in explaining some of the outcome indicators of empowerment for the sampled households.

There are several well-known negative side effects associated with pesticide use such as health problems and environmental pollution.  Integrated Pest Management (IPM) seeks to minimize pesticide use while reducing pest infestation to economically tolerable levels.  The introduction of IPM CRSP activities in Ecuador to institutionalize IPM methods focused on priority crops in the country. This study analyzes adoption and the economic impacts of IPM technologies on potato production in the province of Carchi. A model is estimated in which IPM adoption is discrete and ordered and pesticides expenditures are estimated as a function of education, farming experience, wealth, plot size and farmer being sick due to pesticide use for each level of IPM adoption. Results indicate that farmers who were exposed to certain IPM information sources increased adoption of IPM practices on potatoes, but farmers\' education and experience were not important factors in explaining IPM adoption. The calculated economic benefits in terms of aggregate cost savings per production cycle were $823,000. / Master of Science

Anhand einer Monte-Carlo-Simulation wird der Einfluss verschiedener Versuchsführung und Auswertemethoden auf die Treffsicherheit von experimentell bestimmten Bauteil- bzw. Werkstoffdauerfestigkeiten betrachtet. Anhand verschiedener Fehlergrößen werden die Auswerteverfahren verglichen und bewertet.

This thesis presents an analysis of subjective risk information and participation in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Data are taken from a survey of residents in flood-prone coastal regions in the southeastern U.S. Regression models are constructed to better understand factors affecting individuals’ perceived risk ambiguity related to flood risk and the role of risk preferences, risk perceptions, and especially risk ambiguity, on the decision to purchase flood insurance. This is the first study not only of the influence of risk ambiguity on NFIP participation, but also of the impact of using different risk perception measures. Results indicate that NFIP participation is significantly affected by mean perceived risk, but the influence of range/variance of perceived risk, which presents one’s perceived ambiguity, is mixed.

The probit function is the inverse of the cumulative distribution function associated with the standard normal distribution. It is of great utility in statistical modelling. The Carleman embedding technique has been shown to be effective in solving first order and, less efficiently, second order nonlinear differential equations. In this thesis, we show that solutions to the second order nonlinear differential equation for the probit function can be approximated efficiently using a variant of the Carleman embedding technique.