Submitted by Cristiane Oliveira (cristiane.oliveira@fgv.br) on 2012-07-16T22:20:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 1200500173.pdf: 3888021 bytes, checksum: be4090b9ad565975be4daddc2a3c2f50 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2012-07-17T12:42:17Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 1200500173.pdf: 3888021 bytes, checksum: be4090b9ad565975be4daddc2a3c2f50 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-07-17T13:01:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 1200500173.pdf: 3888021 bytes, checksum: be4090b9ad565975be4daddc2a3c2f50 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / The feeling that investments in technology -must increase work productivity has been raising questions addressed in many studies in the past years, but no positive correlation between these applications and firms' revenues have been found. However, it has also been supported by several other authors who have gathered empirica! evidences attesting that the returns from IT investments must be measured by other variables, distinct from aggregate economic industry data. We attempt to analyze this dilemma in the light of Information Economics, testing the hypothesis that well planned innovations in business processes and organizational structure, supported by information technology, do add value and increase firms' productivity and efficiency. Our analysis focuses on the transaction costs of business processes, setting these costs as the core of any productivity variables with which one could measure, with some precision, the impact of new technological resources added to the focal processo / O senso comum de que o investimento em tecnologia deve aumentar a produtividade do trabalho foi questionado por muitos estudos nos últimos anos, que não encontraram correlação positiva entre tais aplicações e as receitas das empresas. Mas foi também apoiado por outros autores que obtiveram provas empíricas de que os retornos desses investimentos deveriam ser medidos por outros indicadores, à parte de dados econômicos setoriais agregados. Procuramos analisar essa dicotomia à luz da Economia da Informação, levantando a hipótese de que as inovações bem planejadas em processos de negócio e na estrutura organizacional, apoiadas pela tecnologia de informação, agregam valor e aumentam a produtividade e eficiência da empresa. Para isso, buscamos centralizar a análise nos custos de transação dos processos de negócio, identificando-os como o núcleo central de qualquer indicador de produtividade com que se possa medir com alguma precisão o impacto de novos insumos ou recursos aplicados aos processos em questão.

Utvecklingen av dagens teknik tilltar i en otrolig hastighet ochvärlden definieras mer och mer av globalisering, digitalisering,uppkoppling och omgående tillgång till information, produkter ochtjänster. Digitaliseringen har en stark inverkan på den finansiellasektorn då många produkter på den finansiella marknaden idag ärinformationsbaserade. Fintech skapar ett nytt paradigm därinformationsteknik fungerar som drivmedel och driver innovationinom finansbranschen. Fenomenet beskrivs som en “gamechanger”, disruptivt och antas bidra grundläggande förändringarinom traditionella finansiella marknaden. Blockchainteknologin ären av många Fintechinnovationer som har gjort avtryck påfinansiella aktörer världen över och sägs ha potential attrevolutionera den finansiella sektorn. Dock så är det fortfarande enrelativt outforskad teknologi. / The development of today's technology is increasing withincredible speed and the world is more and more defined byglobalization, digitization, connectivity and immediate access toinformation, products and services. Digitalization has a strongimpact on the financial sector, as many products in the financialmarket today are information-based. Fintech creates a newparadigm where information technology acts as a fuel and drivesinnovation in the financial industry. The phenomenon is describedas a "game changer", disruptive and supposed to contribute tofundamental changes in the traditional financial market. Theblockchain technology is one of many Fintech innovations that hasimpressed financial players worldwide and is said to have thepotential to revolutionize the financial sector. However, it is still arelatively unexplored technology.

This thesis seeks to contribute to decision support for policy makers in the transport sector. In order to frame the papers and to relate them to the broad field of “policy analysis”, I have structured the papers around a simple framework with three decision levels: responsibility, policy gap, and policy measure. The thesis contains five papers. “Transaction and transition costs during the deregulation of the Swedish Railway market” is a paper in the transaction cost school. We studied the costs associated with the shift from monopoly to competition in the Swedish railway market, and we found that the change resulted in comparatively small transaction costs, but that transition and misalignment costs seem to be larger.  In “Parking policy under strategic interaction”, I examined the effect of strategic interaction between jurisdictions using an analytical model based on Hotelling’s linear city model. I conclude that the procedure for setting supply in most municipalities has a strong downward effect on municipal parking fees and that resource flow competition implies that the fees are higher than the efficient prices (but that the effect of the supply procedures makes this effect incongruous). In “Validation of aggregate reference forecasts for passenger transport”, we followed up the Swedish national forecasts for passenger transport produced from 1975 to 2009 and tried to explain the deviations. We found that the forecasts during the last decades have overestimated car traffic, and that this is due to input errors. The potential problem of using cross-sectional models for forecasting intertemporal changes seems to have been limited. In “The kilometer tax and Swedish industry - effects on sectors and regions”, we estimated factor demand elasticities in the Swedish manufacturing industry and used these to analyze the effects of a kilometer tax for heavy goods vehicles. We found that the kilometer tax leads to factor substitution in that it decreases transport demand and increases labor demand. The effects on output are less pronounced.   In “The effect of minimum parking requirements on the housing stock”, we used a model of the rental, asset, and construction markets. We quality-assured our assumptions and our results through interviews with market actors. In our example suburb, we found that parking norms reduced the housing stock by 1.2% and increased rents by 2.4%. / <p>QC 20171026</p>

Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / This research investigates the performance of private sector participation (PSP) in the water sector from a governance perspective. It is concerned with the role that institutions play in the interaction between the state and the private sector, which occurs with respect to the regulation and implementation of such PSP arrangements. The research takes place within the context of a development debate and practice, which identifies water as a key poverty issue in a substantial part of the developing countries, which advocates private sector participation as a remedy to inadequate water management and which acknowledges good governance as a crucial requirement for development. Nevertheless, few studies have scrutinized the impact of governance and institutions on the outcome of PSP arrangements in the water sector. Most research on the performance of PSP arrangements has examined exogenous and endogenous determinants, such as the price mechanism and the property rights allocation, but these factors proved unsatisfactory as explaining variables in the context of natural resource management. To contribute to filling a gap in research this study aims at evaluating the impact of institutional frameworks on the outcome of private sector participation in water supply and sanitation through a case study of the Management Contract for Water and Wastewater Service in the Amman Governorate, Jordan. At the end of the 1990s the quality of water supply and sanitation in the Jordanian capital Amman was unsatisfactory, as supply was insufficient and entailed high costs. Therefore, in 1999, the government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan contracted a private joint venture to improve water service provision in the Amman Governorate. The research takes into account the specific institutional framework for the mentioned arrangement in Amman, which is comprised of the national judicial and political institutions, the specific regulatory institutions as well as relevant international institutions. These institutions are not limited to laws and regulations only, but also include informal institutions such as traditions. The specific objective of this study is to show how the institutional framework of a transaction affects regulatory processes by abating and amplifying the potential for opportunistic behavior of the contracting parties, and thereby affecting the performance of a privately operated water utility. The examination of the institutional framework of the Amman Management Contract revealed that mainly judicial and international institutions and specific contract rules were constraining the discretion of the contracting parties. Political checks and balances were insufficiently established and the regulatory institutions of the water sector were set up in an improper way. The field study discovered that the resulting discretionary power of certain actor was used opportunistically, which had a detrimental effect on the outcome of the PSP arrangement. Nevertheless the overall performance of the arrangement was good from which the general insight was drawn that regulatory credibility may be developed even in unpropitious environments. However, to be able to judge upon the effect of governance and institutions on a planned or existing PSP arrangement each time a complex assessment of the respective institutional environment is necessary. This is because institutions may not be seen as independent building blocks but rather form a network which is likely to be unique for each country and situation. The mini-thesis is organized as follows. In Chapter 1 an outline of the study and its problem background is provided. Chapter 2 provides a detailed literature review and sets out the theoretical framework and research hypotheses of the study. Chapter 3 outlines the research design and methodology that was used for the study. Chapter 4 provides background detail on the Jordanian political, economic and social situation, on the issues pertaining to the water sector, andon the Amman water contract. Chapter 5 provides a description and analysis of the main research findings. Chapter 6 provides a summary as well as final conclusions and considerations.

This research investigates political risk in the context of service offshoring and the corresponding impact on risk management decisions. The first stage of the study uses the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT), to explore key post-contract political risks experiences within offshore outsourcing activities. Twelve key political risks affecting offshore outsourcing decisions are identified, and the moderating effect of offshoring activity types (BPO, ITO or KPO) on political risk exposure and impact perceptions is highlighted. The research also explores the conditioning effect of industry specific exposure to political risk and enhances the explanatory ability of the Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) constructs, offering a re-operationalization of the political risk component of external uncertainty. The second stage of the research introduces a series of hypotheses between offshoring flows and political risk profiles, and applies multiple regression to analyse political risk affecting offshore activities in low cost countries across contract-based offshoring engagements and FDI. The findings highlight that political risk is a genuine business concern for offshore contract-based outsourcing modalities, and identify concerns with Intellectual Property protection, Quality of Bureaucracy and Corruption as key considerations affecting location decisions in low-cost countries. The research further suggests a positive relationship between strong country level institutional and regulatory systems and high knowledge content in offshoring engagements. From a practical perspective, the research highlights the need for managerial tools to determine diversified firm and industry specific political risk impact on global service outsourcing engagements. The key practical contribution is the development of differentiated political risk typologies that can capture the nuances of external risks in offshoring, allowing for more accurate risk assessment of offshoring decisions.

La présente thèse rentre dans le cadre de la gouvernance des entreprises familiales malgaches. Il s’agit d’identifier, dans le cadre malgache, les relations entre l’incertitude et le degré d’ouverture des entreprises familiales. Nous avons procédé à l’analyse des cartes cognitives idiosyncratiques de cinq dirigeants-propriétaires d’entreprises familiales.Les résultats révèlent que la prise en compte des différentes dimensions de l’incertitude en tant qu’attribut des transactions, apporte une meilleure compréhension du degré d’ouverture de ces firmes en tant que mode de gouvernance. Par ailleurs, des variables exogènes qui relèvent de l’Institution influencent le choix des modes de gouvernance. De plus, le profil de l’entrepreneur ainsi que les caractéristiques de l’entreprise ont montré leurs capacités explicatives dans la détermination des limites de la firme.En somme, le travail a débouché sur un modèle intégré de la gouvernance sur une base cognitive. Ce modèle prend en compte la perception des attributs des transactions, les institutions mises en place pour encadrer ces transactions, tout ceci dans un contexte bien déterminé. / This thesis is part of the global issue of malagasy family business’ governance. Our goal is to identify, in the malagasy context, the relationship between uncertainty and the degree of openness of those companies. We proceed through the analysis of the idiosyncratic cognitive cards of five owner-directors of family owned companies.The results show that by taking into account the different dimensions of uncertainty as an attribute of the transactions, bring a better understanding of the degree of openness as a choice of governance. Moreover, exogenous variable, part of Institution, influence the governance model. In addition of that, the entrepreneurs’ profile or the characteristics of the companies have shown their explaining abilities while determining the firms’ limits.In summ, we arrive to an integrated model of governance in a cognitive basis. This model consider the attributes of transaction, the institution and the particular context of the study.

During the last decade, the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market altered substantially. Significant investments have been realized, traded volumes increased and contracting structures gained in flexibility. Various governance forms co-exist, including the poles of spot market transactions and vertical integration as well as numerous hybrid forms such as long-term contracts, joint ventures, and strategic partnerships. This dissertation empirically investigates, based on transaction cost economics and recent extensions thereof, which motivations drive companies towards the choice of hierarchical governance forms. First, the likelihood of vertical integration and the impact of inter-organizational trust as a shift parameter accounting for differences in the institutional environment are analyzed. Estimation results confirm transaction cost economics by showing that relationship-specific investments in an uncertain environment drive LNG companies to invest in successive stages along the value chain. Furthermore, the presence of inter-organizational trust increases the likelihood of less hierarchical governance modes. Second, alternative theories of the firm are linked in order to explain the menu of strategic positions recently observed in this dynamic market. Estimation results support the positioning-economizing perspective of the firm. The three strategic choices of target market position, resource profile, and organizational structure are interdependent. Third, the determinants of optimal contract length as a trade-off between the minimization of transaction costs due to repeated bilateral bargaining and the risk of being bound in an inflexible agreement in uncertain environments is discussed. Estimation results show that the presence of high asset specificity results in longer contracts whereas the need for flexibility in today’s LNG market supports shorter agreements. When firms have experience in bilateral trading, contract duration decreases. In addition, countries heavily reliant on natural gas imports via LNG are often willing to forgo some flexibility in favor of supply security. Contracts dedicated to competitive downstream markets on average are shorter than those concluded with customers in non-liberalized importing countries.

The performance of an optimal-weighted portfolio strategy is evaluated when transaction costs are penalized compared to an equal-weighted portfolio strategy. The optimal allocation weights are found by maximizing a modified Sharpe ratio measure each trading day, where modified refers to the expected return of an asset in this context. The leverage of the investment is determined by a conditional expectation estimate of the number of portfolio assets of the next-coming day. A moving window is used to historically measure the transition probabilities of moving from one state to another within this stochastic count process and this is used as an input to the estimator. It is found that the most accurate estimate is the actual trading day’s number of portfolio assets and this is obtained when the size of the moving window is one. Increasing the penalty parameter on transaction costs of selling and buying assets between trading days lowers the aggregated transaction cost and increases the performance of the optimal-weighted portfolio considerably. The best portfolio performance is obtained when at least 50% of the capital is invested equally among the assets when maximizing the modified Sharpe ratio. The optimal-weighted and equal-weighted portfolios are constructed on a daily basis, where the allowed VaR0:05 is €300 000 for each portfolio. This sets the limit on the amount of capital allowed to be invested each trading day, and is determined by empirical VaR0:05 simulations of these two portfolios.

Since the financial- and real estate crisis in 1990-1993, the Swedish real estate market has changed a lot. Companies that earlier considered themselves as technical-oriented has shifted towards being service-oriented with increased customer focus, which in turn has amplified the competitiveness within the industry. The organizational development in the Swedish real estate business has historically been neglected compared to other industries, but has changed as an effect of the increased competitiveness. There are organizational variations between companies operating on the Swedish real estate market where each company’s perception of optimal organizational structure affects the organizational operations and ultimately the profitability of the firm. This master thesis investigates how organizational differences, in terms of real estate management, between Swedish real estate companies impact the competitiveness of the firm. / Den svenska fastighetsmarknaden har förändrats mycket sedan finans- och fastighetskrisen som ägde rum mellan 1990-1993. Företag som tidigare ansett sig vara teknik-inriktade tvingades ändra sitt fokus till att vara mer service – inriktade, vilket ökade den interna konkurrensen på fastighetsmarknaden. Den organisatoriska utvecklingen har historiskt sett varit eftersatt jämfört med andra branscher men har också förändrats till följd av den ökade konkurrensen. Det finns organisatoriska skillnader mellan fastighetsbolag på den svenska marknaden som speglar varje bolags uppfattning av vad som är ”den ultimata organisationen” som i förlängningen påverkar organisationens struktur och lönsamhet. Denna masteruppsats utreder hur organisatoriska skillnader, vad gäller organisering av fastighetsförvaltning hos svenska fastighetsbolag i sin tur påverkar deras konkurrenskraft.

The amount of food packaging waste is one of the issues associated with increasing global population and corresponding increase in consumption rate of packaged foods. Traditional plastic food packaging derived from fossil fuels imposes a significant environmental threat. There are sustainable bio-based alternatives developed to substitute traditional plastic packaging that are implemented in circular economy business models. These solutions often utilise collaboration to be implemented, however, there is a lack of research on the collaborative processes that enable circular economy in bio-based food packaging. In this thesis we examine what collaborative processes are being used in the bio-based packaging supply chain and how these processes help with facilitating the implementation of circular economy in the packaging production. Moreover, this thesis also investigates what are the barriers that the packaging producers face as they collaborate toward a circular economy. Therefore, we use qualitative interviews with representatives of bio-based food packaging companies and study the theories of supply chain collaboration and circular economy such as resource based view, transaction cost economics and various iterations of circular supply chain management models. We find that bio-based food packaging producers collaborate externally with customers, suppliers and internally among organisational teams to enable the circular economy of bio-based alternatives to conventional plastics. We also find that collaboration for circular economy in bio-based food packaging solutions is challenged by cultural differences, varying regulations among countries, opportunistic behaviour across the supply chain, insufficient organisation of communication between collaborators as well and misalignment of their interests. We contribute empirical evidence of collaborative processes across bio-based food packaging supply chains providing a ground for further research streams across the aspects of collaboration for circular economy.