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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
81

Peace in Space for Our Time? : United States Strategical Considerations in Outer Space Policy

Bergesen, Oskar January 2016 (has links)
The politics of outer space has in recent years been given attention from political elites and scientist due to increasing usage and reliance on space based assets, and due to increasing numbers of actors trying to utilize the benefits of space. Concerns have been raised if the increasing military usage of space will lead to a future weaponization of space, making some political leaders and scholars claiming the inevitability of space weaponization.  In this thesis I investigate why the United States of America this far has chosen not to weaponize space based on the strategical setting of outer space politics. The research question guiding this thesis reads: What strategic considerations explain the US decision not to weaponize outer space? In order to evaluate the strategic setting and US strategical considerations I apply Game Theory and Non-Formal Rational Choice Theory to highlight what is causing the greatest space faring nation not to weaponize space. I empirically base this study on official space policy documents and one report written by an official commission to asses US national security space management.  Based on the strategic setting of outer space politics and US strategical considerations it is found that the US has not commenced a process leading to the weaponization of space since such development would not increase its national security, but rather in several ways decrease it. I conclude that a process of space weaponization is not likely to be initiated by the US in the current strategical setting.
82

Compounding the Sacred and the Profane: How Economic Theory Brings New Insight to the Growth and Decline of American Protestantism

Chad, Bretton 01 January 2016 (has links)
In this thesis, economic theory and models will be used to analyze trends of religious growth and decline within the United States. These theories and models, such as Rational Choice Theory, will be applied in order to better understand and gain new insight into shifts and changes within the religious landscape of the United States. Recent trends of growth and decline within Protestantism, the most prominent Christian tradition in America, will be the focus of the investigation. As its main focus, this thesis will ultimately demonstrate that the trends of decline in the mainline Protestant tradition opposed to the trends of growth in the evangelical Protestant tradition can be best understood by focusing on the unique relationship between a religious organization’s degree of tension with society and that organization’s congregational attendance.
83

The paradox of anarchy : Why anarchy is a rational choice

Lundqvist, Martin January 2017 (has links)
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.
84

Medborgarlöften inom Lunds kommun : en brottspreventiv samverkansmodell? / Civic promises in Lund County : a crime prevention collaboration model?

Sheruye, Arash, Sjösten, Johan January 2016 (has links)
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.
85

Ensaios sobre a expansão da igreja Universal do Reino de Deus no Brasil / Essays on the expansion of Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Brazil

Komatsu, Bruno Kawaoka 14 June 2019 (has links)
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.
86

Factors Influencing the Purchase Willingness towards Electric Vehicles in China

Jian, Wang, Wei, Zhou January 2019 (has links)
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
87

Gemenskap, individualism och andlighet : Tro och församlingsliv bland unga vuxna i den samtida svenska pingströrelsen

Sand, Harald January 2019 (has links)
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>
88

Policyacceptans i skogssektorn : Ett fall av idésystem inom policyacceptans

Nordlund, Lucas January 2019 (has links)
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.
89

Bra lön eller barn? : En studie av hur kvinnors lön påverkas av föräldraskap

Lindberg, Josefine, Schröder, Josefin January 2019 (has links)
Sammanfattning Kvinnors ekonomiska förutsättningar har förbättrats enormt de senaste decennierna, men än idag råder det skillnader i lön mellan kvinnor och män. Många tror att denna skillnad beror på att kvinnor väljer att fokusera på familjelivet då de får barn. Om det faktum att kvinnor får barn faktiskt leder till dessa löneskillnader, så innebär det inte bara att män och kvinnor har olika lön, men också att kvinnor som har barn och kvinnor som inte har barn har olika lön. Detta är studiens syfte, alltså att undersöka om en kvinnas lön påverkas negativt av att hon får barn. För att kontrollera detta jämförs lönen mellan kvinnor med barn och kvinnor utan barn. Vidare så studeras även om lönen för kvinnor med barn påverkas olika mycket beroende på hur många barn hon har. Detta formuleras till två frågeställningar; ”Finns det en genomsnittlig skillnad i lön mellan kvinnor som har barn och kvinnor som inte har barn?” och ”Finns det genomsnittliga skillnader i lön beroende på hur många barn kvinnor har?”. För att kunna besvara dessa frågeställningar har olika teoretiska perspektiv använts, nämligen humankapitalteorin samt rational choice theory. Båda dessa förklarar olika tänkbara aspekter av varför en kvinnas lön skulle påverkas negativt av att hon skaffar barn. Vidare har även tidigare forskning som beskriver “The Wage Penalty of Motherhood” använts genomgående i studien, för att ge ytterligare eventuella förklaringar till att kvinnor med barn har en lägre lön. Studien använder en kvantitativ ansats med ett sekundärt datamaterial från Levnadsnivåundersökningen år 2010. Med detta datamaterial har regressionsanalyser genomförts, för att kunna studera sambanden mellan kvinnor, barn och lön. Resultatet visar, i motsats till tidigare forskning och teorier, ett positivt samband mellan att ha barn och lön, och även ett positivt samband mellan antalet barn och lön.
90

Rational Fools: (Ir)rational Choices of Humans, Rhesus Macaques, and Capuchin Monkeys in Dynamic Stochastic Environments

Watzek, Julia 01 May 2017 (has links)
Human and animal decision-making is known to violate rational expectations in a variety of contexts. Statistical structures of real-world environments may account for such seemingly irrational behavior. In a computerized experiment, 16 capuchins, 7 rhesus monkeys, and 30 humans chose between up to three options of different value. The options disappeared and became available again with different probabilities. Subjects overwhelmingly chose transitively (A>B, B>C, and A>C) in the control condition, where doing so maximized overall gain. However, most subjects also adhered to transitivity in the test condition, where it was suboptimal but led to negligible losses compared to the optimal strategy. Only a few of the capuchins were able to maximize long-term gain by violating transitivity. Adhering to rational choice principles may facilitate the formation of near-optimal decision rules when short- and long-term goals align. Such cognitive shortcuts may have evolved to preserve mental resources.

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