In this thesis we explore the intensity of adjectives and how it can be predicted by different word features. We investigate how to accurately determine intensity between synonymous adjectives. For this, we look at features such as word frequency, number of senses and syllable length. Our study is inspired by life satisfaction and happiness surveys and the possibility that differences in intensity in the translation of the adjectives used for the questionnaires could explain the high degree of satisfaction that some countries show. We base our hypothesis on the theories of grammaticalization and semantic bleaching and the discoveries made by other researches about the relations between these word features and word intensity. We focus on studying Danish, English and French. Our study points to a statistically significant negative correlation between word frequency and word intensity.

Na WEB, são encontradas postagens sobre assuntos variados, notícias de celebridades, produtos e serviços. Tal conteúdo contém emoções positivas, negativas ou neutras. Minerar o sentimento da população sobre candidatos a eleições e seus aspectos em mídias virtuais pode ser realizado por meio de técnicas de Mineração de Opiniões. Existem soluções para fontes de opinião fortemente estruturadas, tais como revisões de produtos e serviços, no entanto o problema que se apresenta é realizar a mineração de opiniões em nível de aspecto em fontes de opiniões fracamente estruturadas. Além de avaliar conceitos relacionados à mineração de opiniões, o presente trabalho descreve a realização de um estudo de caso, o qual analisa fontes de opiniões fracamente estruturadas e propõe uma abordagem para minerar opiniões em nível de aspecto, utilizando como fontes de opinião comentários de leitores de jornais. O estudo de caso contribui (i) na concepção de uma abordagem para identificação da opinião em nível de aspecto sobre entidades eleitorais em comentários de notícias políticas, (ii) na aplicação de um método baseado em aprendizagem de máquina para classificar a opinião sobre entidades e seus aspectos em três classes (positivo, negativo e neutro), (iii) na representação da sumarização visual de opinião sobre entidades e seus aspectos. São descritos experimentos para identificar comentários que mencionam os aspectos saúde e educação, utilizando co-ocorrência, em que foram obtidos resultados satisfatórios utilizando as técnicas Expected Mutual Information Measure e phi-squared. Já para a polarização de sentenças, são realizados experimentos com duas abordagens de classificação: uma que classifica sentenças em três classes e outra que realiza classificações binárias em duas etapas. / In the WEB are found posts about various subjects like celebrity news, products and services. Such content has positive, negative or neutral emotions. Mining the population’s sentiments about elections candidates and their aspects in virtual media can be performed using Opinion Mining techniques. There are solutions for highly structured opinion sources, such as reviews of products and services, however the problem is how to perform aspect-based opinion mining in less structured opinions sources. Besides evaluating concepts related to opinion mining, this work describes a case study which analyzes weakly structured sources and proposes an approach to mine aspect-based opinions using as sources of sentiment reviews of newspaper readers. The case study contributes (i) designing an approach to identify the aspect-based opinion about electoral candidates in news political comments, (ii) to the application of a machine learning-based method to classify the opinion about entities and their aspects in three classes (positive, negative and neutral) (iii) to the representation of a visual summarization review of entities and their aspects. It describes experiments to identify comments about health and education aspects using co-occurrence where satisfactory results were obtained using the techniques Expected Mutual Information Measure and phi-squared. In which regards sentences polarization, experiments are performed with two classification approaches, one that classifies sentences in three classes and another that performs binary classifications in two stages.

Submitted by Cássia Santos (cassia.bcufg@gmail.com) on 2017-03-21T12:03:21Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Aline de Fatima Sales Silva - 2017.pdf: 1019570 bytes, checksum: 3c0acdd666f4cad7c661b68bb6309974 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2017-03-21T12:20:28Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Aline de Fatima Sales Silva - 2017.pdf: 1019570 bytes, checksum: 3c0acdd666f4cad7c661b68bb6309974 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-21T12:20:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Aline de Fatima Sales Silva - 2017.pdf: 1019570 bytes, checksum: 3c0acdd666f4cad7c661b68bb6309974 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-03 / This paper approaches the fundamentals of virtuous man in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile in light of the concept of perfectibility, while discussing human formation from a universal perspective. In its totality, the human being is one of reason and emotion, and therefore oscillates between the natural and the civilian dimensions in a trajectory that goes from the moral awakening process to the degeneration of self-love (amour de soi) into a love of self (amour-propre), and natural pity, weakened and vilified by the misfortunes of social life. In the root of this constituted society, I distinguish between Rousseau’s political virtue and moral virtue in the attempt to demonstrate that, in Émile, virtue comprises, too, the whole of man’s reason and sensibility as the mainstay of the formative process, through which new meanings for human existence are constructed. As an advocate for negative education as opposed to the positive model carried on throughout the history of progress, Rousseau sustains it is no good to develop power to reason by flooding the ignorant child with social duties and matters. Instead, the preeminent and harmonic use of senses is a primary role of education and a valuable tool for instilling the ability to reason. Self-knowledge and self-awareness are then particular yet indispensable within a universal order capable of adjusting reason and emotions, duty and will, as well as conforming them to human potentialities by keeping the man in harmony with nature and themself, especially during the development of the moral being. / Esta tese busca, no Emílio de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, os fundamentos da formação do homem virtuoso. À luz do conceito de perfectibilidade discuto a possibilidade da formação humana na perspectiva universal, considerando o homem em sua totalidade como ser de sentimento e razão. Mostro, nesse percurso, os primeiros embates do homem no estado de natureza e o despertar da moralidade no processo civilizatório, trajetória pela qual o amor de si se transformou em amor-próprio, bem como a piedade natural, enfraquecida e vilipendiada pela vida social, é sufocada em meio ao artifício que sucedeu a vida simples e equilibrada do homem natural. Distingo, no seio dessa sociedade constituída, a virtude política da virtude moral em Rousseau e demonstro que a concepção de virtude no Emílio tem um caráter universal, abrange a totalidade do humano como ser de consciência e razão, daí a centralidade do processo formativo como possibilidade de ascensão da vida a outros patamares de existência. Seguindo o curso da natureza, que tudo faz de maneira correta, Rousseau elabora, na contramão da educação construída pela história do progresso, a educação negativa, formação que se diferencia da que ele chama de positiva, aquela que pretende formar o intelecto antes dos sentidos, enchendo as crianças de conhecimentos sobre os quais ela ainda não tem condições de raciocinar. Rousseau demonstra a preeminência do sentimento no homem como necessidade primeira da educação que deve começar por aperfeiçoar na criança os órgãos dos sentidos, desenvolvendo nela a sensibilidade para que possa exercer a razão pelo exercício bem-ordenado dos sentimentos. Conhecer si mesmo, suas necessidades e possibilidades é essencial à compreensão da ordem universal que, no plano do humano, garante o equilíbrio entre a razão e a sentimento, o dever e a vontade, mediando os desejos de acordo com as potencialidades do homem, mantendo-o em sintonia com a natureza e consigo mesmo, consciente dos embates que certamente enfrentará na vida social, especialmente na formação do ser moral.

Na teoria clássica de finanças, o sentimento do investidor não é considerado um fator importante sobre os preços das ações. Embora a existência do sentimento do investidor não seja negada, as teorias normalmente partem do princípio de que, em mercados financeiros competitivos, comportamentos de agentes quase-racionais são rapidamente eliminados. Esta tese tem o objetivo de investigar a relação entre o sentimento de mercado e as taxas de retorno futuras das ações. É proposta uma metodologia para a criação de um índice de sentimento específico para o mercado brasileiro com uso da análise de componentes principais. Com o objetivo de verificar a relação deste índice de sentimento com as taxas de retorno das ações, foi estimado um modelo de apreçamento em que esta variável foi incluída, para o período de 1999 a 2008. A amostra foi composta por empresas não-financeiras com ações listadas na BOVESPA, com uma negociabilidade mínima que garantisse observações suficientes e representativas para validar os resultados encontrados na pesquisa. O modelo de apreçamento foi estimado por GMM, levando em consideração o índice de sentimento de mercado, o risco sistêmico das empresas (medido pelo beta) e fatores como tamanho, índice market-to-book, alavancagem, momentum e crescimento da receita. Empregaram-se diferentes procedimentos para estimar os parâmetros dos modelos empíricos formulados, com o propósito de isolar influências espúrias, ocasionadas pela presença de heterogeneidade não-observada, pela existência de eventuais observações extremas ou mesmo pela possível endogeneidade dos regressores. Os resultados deste estudo empírico sugerem que o sentimento é um fator relevante no apreçamento das ações no mercado brasileiro. A relação negativa e significante entre o índice de sentimento e as taxas de retorno, encontrada consistentemente em diferentes modelos, indica um padrão de reversão nas taxas de retornos, ou seja, após um período de sentimento positivo, o impacto nas taxas de retorno no período seguinte é negativo, e vice-versa. / In classical finance theory investor sentiment is not considered an important factor in asset pricing. Although the existence of investor sentiment is not denied, theories assume that in competitive markets quasi-rational behavior is quickly offset by rational agents. The main goal of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between investor sentiment and future stock return rates. It is proposed a methodology to create a sentiment index specifically to the Brazilian market using principal components analysis. In order to analyze the relationship between this sentiment index and the future stock returns, it was estimated a pricing model including this variable for the period comprehending 1999 to 2008. Considering a negotiability restriction to assure representative and sufficient observations to validate a pricing model, the sample consisted of non-financial firms listed at BOVESPA. The pricing model was estimated by GMM considering the sentiment index, systematic risk (market beta) and factors as firm size, market-to-book ratio, leverage and return predictability measured by momentum or income growth. Different estimation procedures were applied to find empirical models coefficients which are less affected by spurious influence such as unobserved heterogeneity, outliers or possible regressors endogeneity. Results of the empirical study suggest that sentiment is a relevant factor in Brazilian asset pricing models. A negative and statistically significant relationship between the sentiment index and stock returns was consistently found in different models specifications. These findings suggest the existence of a reversion pattern in stock returns, meaning that after a positive sentiment period, the impact on subsequent stock returns is negative and vice-versa.

L’élégie chez Rousseau rassemble les époques, elle rend le sens étymologique [l’élégie thrène], celui de l’époque romaine [l’élégie d’amour] et le sens moderne [l’élégie tendre de l’amitié] où on parle plutôt de tonalité élégiaque. Elle rappelle à plusieurs égards le genre classique illustré principalement par Tibulle, Properce et Ovide. Rousseau semble emprunter des motifs à l’héritage antique sans pour autant s’y assujettir. Le ton de la plainte ou du chant est dicté par des personnages vertueux. L’élégie chez Rousseau échappe au stéréotype et à la « spécialisation » : elle n’est pas dans le sillage du modèle pour lequel elle fut réputée, et dont la matière est purement funèbre ; elle n’est pas, également, un paradigme de l’élégie romaine qui s’est associée presque exclusivement à l’expression de la passion amoureuse, elle n’est pas limitée à l’expression tendre de l’amitié. Elle n’est pas seulement une esthétique. L’élégie chez Rousseau est l’ensemble de toutes ses manifestations. C’est l’expression d’une attitude. / Rousseau’s elegy deals with the themes of the lament for the death, of the absence and of the loss of one beloved. Rousseau seems to be influenced by the latin poets such as Tibulle, Propers and Ovide. Nevertheless, he is distinguished from them by the way, with which he treats the motifs. These are submitted to the nature of the characters in the novel of Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. In addition, Rousseau uses these motifs in different other contexts. Then, elegy becomes a source of "tools" to say an idea or a point of view. Rousseau’s elegy is more than a statement of complaints or a sad love story: it is an art of writing.

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Svenska investmentbolag har historiskt sätt handlats till en substansrabatt och flera av investmentbolagen på Nasdaq Stockholm handlas så än idag. Denna studie undersöker om några av de mest diskuterade och studerade faktorerna inom ämnet har någon effekt på de svenska investmentbolagens substansrabatter. Faktorerna som undersöks i denna studie är förvaltningsavgifter, onoterade innehav, ägarstruktur i investmentbolagen och investor sentiment. För att mäta detta används en multipel regression där dessa faktorer används som oberoende variabler och där den beroende variabeln är substansrabatter. Studien mäter substansrabatter på svenska investmentbolag under tidsperioden 2007 - 2016 och inkluderar 13 stycken investmentbolag på Nasdaq Stockholm. Studiens resultat visar på att faktorerna förvaltningsavgifter och andel onoterade innehav har en signifikant påverkan på substansrabatter. Förvaltningsavgifter har en positiv påverkan på substansrabatter och andelen onoterade innehav i investmentbolagens portföljer har en negativ påverkan på substansrabatter.

Business through e-commerce has become popular recently due to the massive amount of information available on internet. This has resulted in the abnormal number of reviews on websites like www.amazon.com  and www.ebay.com, where customers express their opinions about the purchases they have made. Analyzing customer’s behavior has become very important for the organizations to find new market trends and insights. For the potential customer  it becomes really difficult to get the knowledge about a product in the presence of such huge number of reviews and to sort the useful reviews and make good decision. The reviews available on these websites are in heterogeneous form i.e. structured  and unstructured form and needs to be stored in a consistent format. Since good decision requires quality information in limited amount of time, Yaakub et, al.(2011) have  proposed an ontology that uses a  multidimensional model to integrate customer’s characteristics and their comments about products. This approach first identifies the entities and then sentiments present in the customers reviews related to mobiles are transformed into an attribute table by using a 7 point polarity system (-3 to 3). The research proposed by Yaakub et, al.(2011) is in developing stage. The limitation of their approach is that the ontology proposed by them is too general. The authors have shown their desire that it should be tested for a large group of products. Also, Yaakub et, al.(2011) have used very short and simple comments for the manual extraction of features for which a sentiment has been expressed. Usually comments present on e-commerce websites are not that short and simple. In order to fulfill the aim of this thesis project, a case study has been conducted on websites www.amazon.com and www.ebay.com and the ontology proposed by  Yaakub et, al.(2011) has been refined for the three categories of mobile phones: smart phones, wet and dirty mobile phones and simple mobile phones. Further, sentiment analysis has been conducted by first using the ontology proposed by Yaakub et, al.(2011) and then by using the refined version of the ontologies for the three categories of mobile  in order to compare the results.

Both literature and practice have looked at different strategies to diminish healthcare associated costs. As an extension to this stream of research, the present three paper dissertation addresses the issue of reducing elevated healthcare costs using analytics. The first paper looks at extending the benefits of auditing algorithms from mere detection of fraudulent providers to maximizing the deterrence from inappropriate behavior. Using the structure of the physicians' network, a new auditing algorithm is developed. Evaluation of the algorithm is performed using an agent-based simulation and an analytical model. A case study is also included to illustrate the application of the algorithm in the warranty domain. The second paper relies on experimental data to build a personalized medical recommender system geared towards re-enforcing price-sensitive prescription behavior. The study analyzes the impact of time pressure, and procedure cost and prescription prevalence/popularity on the physicians' use of the system's recommendations. The third paper investigates the relationship between patients' compliance and healthcare costs. The study includes a survey of the literature along with a longitudinal analysis of patients' data to determine factors leading to patients' non-compliance, and ways to alleviate it.

I investigate how career concerns influence banking analysts’ forecasts and find that banking analysts issue relatively more optimistic forecasts early in the year and more pessimistic forecasts later in the year for banks who could be their future employers. This pattern is not observed when the same analysts forecast earnings for banks with no equity research departments. Using the Global Settlement as an exogenous shock on career concerns, I show that this forecast pattern is pronounced after the Settlement. Moreover, I find that analysts benefit from this behaviour as analysts that are more biased in their forecasts towards potential future employers are more likely to move to a higher reputation bank. Textual analysis of analyst reports is also valuable due to the private information and analysis conveyed in the text. Second paper therefore examines analyst reports with consistent and conflicting signals in terms of qualitative and quantitative outputs. I find that investors react more strongly when the sentiment and earnings forecast bias are consistent. Interestingly, when the tone of report text does not coincide with the earnings forecast, investors place greater weight on the text rather than the EPS forecasts. I also find that consistent reports with both optimistic sentiment and forecast bias have a strong positive market reaction but they are low in forecast accuracy. Markedly, forecasts with pessimistic sentiment have higher accuracy than those of optimistic sentiment. Hence, pessimistic sentiment is a good indicator of the quality of forecast reports. Finally, in my last paper, I explore whether there is any association between firm-specific investor sentiment and the subsequent tone of firms' quarterly reports. Firm-specific investor sentiment is measured using the methodology from Aboody et al. (2016), which proxies for market confidence relating to a specific firm. Given the potential cost-benefit trade-off in the reporting strategy, I argue and find different responses from managers in their 10-Qs in terms of their investor sentiment. I focus on the tone of optimism, readability and the proportion of uncertain words in the 10-Q filings. For firms with extremely high levels of investor sentiment, managers tend to be more conservative by using less optimistic words to avoid future disappointment. In comparison, in firms with extremely pessimistic investor sentiment, managers tend to use more optimistic and easy to understand language, and minimize their proportion of uncertainty in their 10-Q filings. By doing so, perhaps they are trying to alter their investor sentiment.