A central paradox in neorealism is that the absence of world government is assumed to imply a dangerous security dilemma, and yet few realists have argued in favor of world government while great powers have historically resisted delegation of military force to supranational institutions. If international anarchy causes costly security competition and war, powerful states should have a strong incentive to unify and neorealist explanations for why states resist peaceful unification are either underdeveloped or implicit. This paper develops a rational choice realist model which suggests that anarchy is not a structural constraint which forces states to compete intensely for power, but a rational choice that state leaders make to avoid the costs of world government. The model assumes that state leaders face a delegation constraint which implies a tradeoff between eliminating the military burden necessary to deter attacks in anarchy, and abstain from world government to avoid forced redistribution of material resources pushed by poorer states or risk that the world government might turn tyrannical and coerce the subjects it has been mandated to protect. The paper uses deductive method to deduce actor preferences and illustrate the plausibility of the central predictions of the model. The model predicts that income equality, democratization, nationalism and military defensive advantage makes anarchy stable, a condition under which states have little reason to unify. On the other hand, high income inequality, lack of democratic accountability, territorial revisionism, and military offensive advantage make anarchy costly, but unification more difficult to achieve given the underlying conflicting preferences. Hence, states rather take the risk of fighting in hopes of eliminating future military competition than to agree on a world government where redistribution and cultural conflicts are likely to make wealthy great powers with modest population sizes worse off than they would be in anarchy. The paper concludes that anarchy is not a tragedy that makes world government impossible, but world government is a potential tragedy that makes anarchy rational.

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Kriminaliteten i universitetsstaden Lund har alltid varit ett förekommande fenomen. Vid medborgardialoger framhäver de lokala medborgarna till polis och kommun vad de upplever som otryggast. Baserat på fyra frågeställningar har studiens syfte varit en blottläggning av samverkan mellan medborgarna, kommunen och polisen som har gett upphov till medborgarlöftet i kampen mot brottsligheten i Lund. Denna samverkan har ett brottsförebyggande syfte. För att kunna besvara frågeställningarna har arbetet koncentrerats på två kriminologiska teorier, rational choice- och rutinaktivitetsteorin. I vår studie har vi använt oss av en kvantitativ metod som gör gällande sekundäranalys av offentlig statistik. Valet av den här metoden föll sig naturligt då den är lämpar sig väl för den studie av brottslighet inom Lunds kommun som vi ämnat att beakta. Metodvalet är även motiverbart utifrån ett tids- och ekonomiskt perspektiv då den stora mängden av kvantitativa data i form av inrapporterade polisanmälningar, som vi analyserat, upptas av polismyndigheterna och sedermera bearbetas av Brottsförebyggande rådet och presenteras i statistisk form. Som en avgränsning har vi valt att fokusera på åren 2010-2015. Vi har analyserat fyra olika brott inom kommunen: brott mot trafikbrottslagen, tillgrepp av icke motordrivet fortskattningsmedel, cykel, brott mot narkotikastrafflagen samt en analys av samtliga anmälda brott inom kommunen. Den totala mängden anmälda brott indikerar under perioden 2010-2015 en svag eskalerande trend och tendens gällande brottsutvecklingen och den totala mängden anmälda brott. En genomsnittsberäkning visar att det i snitt anmäls 14 924 st. brott årligen mellan åren 2010 till och med 2015.

The dynamics of demand for energy goods such as gasoline are complicated by investment decisions and behavioral habits. Both types of complication can be captured by a habits model, in which past consumption enters into an agent's current utility function. If the agent is forward-looking, or 'rational', then habits imply his consumption of the habit-forming good will be sensitive to his expectation of future market conditions, in particular future prices. This sensitivity implies, in turn, that demand and price elasticity will depend upon price volatility, and that the agent will respond differently to different types of price changes. Price elasticity measured over the mixture of price changes that occur in a given market will therefore underestimate the power of policy instruments that act through permanent or long-run price changes. This thesis examines the implications of rational habits on demand behavior in a multi-good setting, drawing motivation from and considering applications to gasoline demand. Chapter 1 introduces the theory of rational habits, examines a simple perfect-foresight model, and uses microeconometric techniques to look at an application to U.S. gasoline demand. Chapter 2 builds a theory model in which agents have rational habits and future prices are uncertain. The implications of this model are then utilized in Chapter 3, which uses macro-type econometric techniques to test for rational habits in international gasoline demand. The empirical evidence suggests that rational habits may indeed shape demand for gasoline and that traditionally-measured price elasticity should not be used to project consumers' responses to policy interventions.

The presented work is intended to serve as a teaching material in particular for pupils of the first year of secondary school, focusing on the basic knowledge of mathematics. The first part of the thesis is devoted to an analysis of existing web page, which corresponds to the theme of the diploma thesis. The evaluation takes into account the expertise as well as the scope of use of interactive elements. In the next part, the created teaching material in a form of web page is presented. It deals with the subject matter of powers, roots, polynomials and rational expressions. In accordance with current trend, the emphasis is put on both visualisation of curriculum (charts, use of graphics) and interactivity. All exercises to practise involve solution, therefore users are allowed to gain immediate feedback and thus to study individually. Web page is free available.

O crescimento do pentecostalismo no mundo constitui uma das principais mudanças religiosas do Século XX e a América Latina possui um papel importante nessa expansão. Naquela região, houve uma acelerada redução na proporção de católicos e crescimento dos protestantes nas últimas décadas, com forte participação de igrejas pentecostais. Os pentecostais brasileiros diferem dos católicos em várias dimensões em relação às suas atitudes e visões do mundo, sendo no geral religiosamente mais ativos e mais conservadores em questões sociais como aborto, casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo, meios contraceptivos artificiais, sexo fora do casamento, divórcio e consumo de álcool; eles também são mais propensos a acreditar que os líderes religiosos devem ter influência na política. Nesta tese, contribuímos para o entendimento da expansão pentecostal no Brasil focando em uma das maiores denominações pentecostais, a Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (IURD). Examinamos, em dois estudos, o impacto de duas estratégias principais de expansão da IURD, cobrindo um ramo ainda pouco explorado na literatura econômica sobre religião e procurando entender como cada uma delas contribuiu para a expansão dessa igreja desde sua fundação. No primeiro estudo, examinamos os impactos das redes de rádio e televisão ligadas à IURD (a Rede Aleluia e Record TV) sobre suas afiliações, explorando uma variação possivelmente exógena na qualidade do sinal daquelas redes devido aos acidentes geográficos entre as antenas transmissora e as áreas receptoras. Com dados da Anatel e modelos técnicos de densidade de sinal, analisamos os efeitos da cobertura das mídias nas áreas de ponderação do Censo Demográfico de 2010 (IBGE). Nossos resultados de benchmark mostram que a Rede Aleluia tem um impacto de cerca de 13% do número médio de afiliações no interior dos estados (fora das capitais e Regiões Metropolitanas), enquanto a Record TV tem um impacto geral de 26%. Esses efeitos são mais fortes para grupos que são descritos na literatura como mais propensos a frequentar a igreja. A robustez dos resultados é verificada com teste de placebo com uma rede de rádio não religiosa. Encontramos evidências de que a competição entre veículos de mídia pode ter um papel importante nos efeitos da mídia religiosa e da existência de complementaridade entre templos e mídias religiosas em áreas rurais. Além disso, encontramos efeito positivo da Rede Aleluia sobre empreendedorismo, impacto negativo da mídia religiosa sobre a fertilidade, o que é consistente com a posição da IURD sobre o aborto e o uso de métodos contraceptivos, e impacto positivo na proporção de votos para o Partido Republicano Brasileiro, com o qual a IURD possui uma forte ligação. No segundo estudo, estimamos o efeito da presença de templos da IURD sobre as afiliações. Exploramos a diferença no tempo de entrada e nos anos de permanência dos templos nos municípios brasileiros entre 1991 e 2010, com uma especificação de diferenças-em-diferenças e dados do CNPJ (Receita Federal) e dos Censos Demográficos (IBGE). A presença de templos da IURD aumenta os adeptos dessa denominação em 15%, comparando com a média da amostra, e esse efeito é devido ao interior dos estados. Nossos resultados também mostram que leva alguns anos para os templos da IURD começarem a ter impacto positivo depois que entram. Testamos a robustez de nossos resultados usando dados de outra fonte, a Relação Anual de Informações Sociais, e com um teste de falsificação no momento da entrada da IURD no município. / The growth of Pentecostalism in the world is one of the major religious changes of the 20th Century and Latin America plays an important role in this expansion. In that region, there has been an accelerated reduction in the proportion of Catholics and a Protestant growth in the last decades, with strong participation of Pentecostal churches. Brazilian Pentecostals differ from Catholics in various dimensions regarding their attitudes and views of the world, being generally more religiously observant and more conservative on social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, artificial contraceptive methods, sex outside marriage, divorce and alcohol consumption; they are also more likely to believe that religious leaders should have influence in politics. In this thesis, we contribute to the understanding of the Pentecostal expansion in Brazil focusing on one of the largest Pentecostal denominations, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG). We have examined the impact of two major strategies of expansion of the UCKG, covering a branch still little explored in the economic literature on religion and trying to understand how each of them contributed to the expansion of this church since its foundation, in two studies. In the first study, we examined the impacts of the radio and television networks linked to UCKG (Aleluia Network and Record TV) on its affiliations, exploring a possibly exogenous variation in the signal quality of those networks due to geographical accidents between the transmitting antennas and the receiving areas. With data from Anatel and technical models of signal density, we analyzed the effects of media coverage on the weighting areas of the 2010 Demographic Census (IBGE). Our benchmark results show that Aleluia Network has an impact of about 13% of the average number of affiliations on the countryside (outside state capitals and Metropolitan Regions), while Record TV has an overall impact of 26%. These effects are stronger for groups who are described in the literature as more likely to attend church. The robustness of the results is verified with placebo test with a non-religious radio network. We find evidence that competition among media vehicles can play a significant role in the effects of religious media and evidence of complementarity between temples and religious media in rural areas. In addition, we find a positive effect of Aleluia Network on entrepreneurship, a negative impact of religious media on fertility, which is consistent with UCKG\'s position on abortion and the use of contraceptive methods, and a positive impact on the vote share of the Brazilian Republican Party, with which UCKG has a strong connection. In the second study, we estimated the effect of the presence of UCKG temples on affiliations. We explored the difference in time of entry and in the years of residence of UCKG temples in Brazilian municipalities between 1991 and 2010, with a specification of differences-in-differences on CNPJ (Federal Revenue Office) and Demographic Censuses (IBGE) data. The presence of temples of UCKG increases the adepts of this denomination by 15%, compared to the average of the sample, and these effects due to the countryside. Our results also show that it takes a few years for the UCKG temples to start having a positive impact after their entry. We tested the robustness of our results using data from another source, the Annual Social Information Report, and with a falsification test at the time of UCKG\'s entry into the municipality.

Abstract: As China is facing environmental problems, they are producing positive policies in order to stimulate the sales of electric vehicles. In addition, China is one of the largest electric vehicle markets in the world and the electric vehicles market has a promising growth potential. In light of this, this thesis aims to investigate the factors affecting Chinese consumers’ willingness to purchase electric vehicles. This thesis draws on rational choice theory to analyze the six determining factors including driving range of electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, purchase cost, government financial incentives, individual environmental awareness and perceived social influence, as electric vehicles are not cheap goods and make consumers take full consideration before buying. This study adopts a quantitative approach and conducts a survey to investigate this topic. Based on 249 online questionnaires from Chinese consumers, this study employs SPSS to conduct a regression analysis to test the six determining factors. The empirical results indicate that charging infrastructure, government financial incentives, individual environmental awareness and perceived social influence have significant impact on Chinese consumers’ willingness to purchase electric vehicles, while our results do not show that the driving range of electric vehicles and purchase cost matters in influencing Chinese consumers’ willingness to purchase electric vehicles. Meanwhile, this study contributes to the research on the consumption of electric vehicles by providing an empirical context of China, considering rational choice theory and understanding perceived social influence. Also, this study provides relevant suggestions to electric vehicle manufacturers and the Chinese government about how to encourage the Chinese to adopt electric vehicles in China. Keywords: Electric Vehicles, Willingness to purchase, SPSS, Rational choice theory, China

This thesis studies how young adults in today's Swedish Pentecostal congregations describe their beliefs and their congregational life. The thesis applies a theoretic frame of Rational Choice Theory and compares the results with previous research/adjacent studies close to the field. The relevance of this thesis lies in that research on young adults in the Swedish Pentecostal movement is a comparatively unexplored area. The reason to write about young adults in the Swedish Pentecostal movement is rooted in the prospect that this thesis could be a starting point for further studies on young adults in the Swedish Pentecostal movement. The thesis was a qualitative and quantitative multi-method study. The thesis is based on interviews and a questionnaire survey in order to present how young adults in today's Swedish Pentecostal churches describe their beliefs and their congregational life. The thesis identifies some issues that can be raised and investigated in further research on thistopic. Summary of the results The young adults describe that their faith becomes stronger by being part of a Pentecostal congregation. The community of the congregation, both in the smaller and the broader context, confirms the faith which makes their belief stronger. They perceive God as a protector and caretaker, and that God listens to their prayers and cares about them. The subjective part of the faith (the personal relationship with God) they experience as necessary, but they feel that the subjective relationship with God both can be experienced in the church community and solitude. Most of the young adults say they would consider switching the congregation (leave the congregation) if they would not thrive in the congregation or if it would not meet their expectations and needs. The interviews show that the respondents indicate certain preferences that they want to get satisfied and they want to belong to a congregation that can fulfil this. Getting their preferences and needs met is the key to the congregations if they want young adults to stay. The young adults are investing and giving time and commitment to their congregations and want this to generate something back. Most of them thrive in their congregations, but there is room for improvement. Their faith is strong. They are willing to invest in God and then consequently also in their congregations. / <p>Godkännandedatum 2019-06-05</p>

Den svenska skogspolitiken sammanfattas till de jämställda målen av miljö respektive produktion. När dessa mål riskerar att motverka varandra är det möjligt att motstånd inför politiska åtgärder uppstår. Syftet med denna studie har därmed varit att undersöka vilken roll idésystem har för acceptansen av skogspolitikens målsättningar med avgränsning till nyckelbiotopspolitiken, samt att pröva huruvida egenintresse har någon inverkan. För studien har det teoretiska ramverket Advocacy Coalition Framework samt Rational Choice perspektivet tillämpats. Resultatet från den kvalitativa textanalysen visar att både idésystem och egenintresse förklarar policyacceptans i lika stor utsträckning. Det antyds även att korresponderande idésystem tillsammans med egenintresset samtidigt har varit styrande hos två aktörer. Vidare tyder resultatet på att mekanismerna kompletterar varandra genom att förklara policyacceptans när den andra misslyckas. De slutsatser som dras är att vidare forskning krävs för en fördjupad förståelse av dessa mekanismer och huruvida det existerar någon bakomliggande koppling sinsemellan föreställningar och egenintresse.

O farmacêutico, uma vez inserido na equipe multidisciplinar, tem um papel importante a desempenhar na educação em saúde com o objetivo de melhorar o conhecimento sobre as condições crônicas, refletindo positivamente na adesão ao tratamento e em conseqüência nos resultados clínicos e na qualidade de vida dos indivíduos. O objetivo deste estudo foi elaborar, implementar e avaliar o modelo de intervenções educativas para o uso racional de medicamentos. O estudo clínico longitudinal, prospectivo, randomizado foi conduzido por uma equipe multidisciplinar com 119 pacientes asmáticos (60/grupo controle e 59/grupo intervenção) atendidos no Ambulatório Especializado em Asma do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto. A elaboração do modelo foi composto de cinco módulos contendo informações básicas sobre a doença, adesão ao tratamento proposto, medicamentos, técnicas de uso de dispositivos e cuidados com os medicamentos, complementado com material impresso e visual. O modelo foi implementado por meio de reuniões de educação dirigidas por profissional farmacêutico e avaliado de acordo com as recomendações da Organização Mundial da Saúde. As intervenções educativas para o uso racional de medicamentos proporcionaram ao grupo intervenção o aumento de 21% no conhecimento sobre a doença e aprimoramento das técnicas de utilização dos dispositivos inalatórios com significância estatística intra e intergrupos (p<.0001). Os resultados também mostraram aumento do número de pacientes classificados como mais aderentes após a intervenção mensurada pelo Teste de Morisky Green com significância estatística (p. 0.0244) e pelo reabastecimento da receita com significância intragrupo (p = 0.0113). Em relação à função pulmonar, a diferença intergrupos de CVF (p=0.0287) e de 8% do valor de VEF1 (p. 0,0461) sugerem relevância clínica. Os resultados mostram aumento das pontuações com significância estatística intragrupo em todos os domínios do questionário de qualidade de vida com significância estatística. Após a finalização do estudo o modelo foi implementado para o grupo controle e a avaliação mostrou aumento do conhecimento em asma e melhoria da qualidade de vida. Este modelo foi eficaz e economicamente viável para ser implantado pelo SUS quando testado para pacientes com a condição clínica asma e poderá ser adaptado e reproduzido para outras condições crônicas. / The pharmacist, once inserted into the multidisciplinary team has an important role to play in health education with the goal of improving the knowledge about the chronic conditions, reflecting positively on treatment adherence and consequently clinical outcomes and quality of life individuals. The aim of this study was to develop, implement and evaluate a model of educational interventions for the rational drug use. The clinical study longitudinal, prospective, randomized study was conducted by a multidisciplinary team with 119 asthmatic patients (60/control group and 59/ intervention group) in the Specializing in Asthma Clinic of the University Hospital, Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto. The development of the model was composed of five modules containing basic information about the disease, treatment compliance, drugs, techniques and drug cares and supplemented with visual and printed material. The model was implemented through educational meetings led by pharmacist professional and evaluated according to the recommendations of the World Health Organization. Educational interventions for the rational drug use provided to the intervention group 21% increase in knowledge about the disease and improvement of inhalers techniques with statistical significance within and between groups (p <.0001). The results also showed an increase patients number classified as more adherent after the intervention measured by test Morisky Green with statistical significance (p. 0.0244) and the replenishment of medical prescription with intragroup significance (p = 0.0113). Regarding lung function, the difference between groups in FVC (p = 0.0287) and 8% of the value of FEV1 (p. 0.0461) suggest clinical relevance. The results show increase in scores statistically significant intragroup in all domains of quality of life questionnaire with statistical significance. After completion of the study, the model was implemented for the control group and the evaluation showed an increase in asthma knowledge and quality of life improvement. This model was effective and economically viable to be implemented by the SUS when tested for patients with asthma and the clinical condition may be reproduced and adapted for other chronic conditions.