A seleção de projetos de investimento é uma das atividades essenciais no dia-a-dia das organizações, e, neste exercício de avaliação, é preciso lidar em geral com uma carga considerável de incerteza. Analisar apenas as características individuais dos projetos é insuficiente diante do impacto que seus aspectos relacionais pode causar nos resultados. Além disso, um fator adicional nesse processo de escolha é a carga informacional já disponível internamente, na forma de conhecimento e percepção de analistas e gestores. Mais ainda, o próprio conceito de valor neste caso depende da perspectiva de quem avalia. Motivado por estas questões, buscou-se neste trabalho elaborar uma proposta de avaliação da carteira de projetos de investimento logicamente estruturada e modular, adaptável a diversas realidades organizacionais possíveis. A montagem do procedimento otimizatório reuniu conceitos de métricas de risco e retorno de projetos, Teoria Moderna de Portfólio, Teoria da Utilidade, simulação de Monte Carlo e decomposição de Cholesky. Por fim, a utilidade da proposta foi testada via sua aplicação em amostra de projetos no segmento de óleo e gás. / The investment projects selection is one of the essential activities in day-to-day operation of companies, and in this evaluation exercise it is generally required to handle a considerable amount of uncertainty. Analysing only the individual characteristics of projects is insufficient considering the possible impact of their relational aspects in results. Furthermore an additional item in this selection process is the informational load already available internally in the form of knowledge and perception of analysts and managers. Moreover even the concept of value in this case depends on the perspective of who evaluates. Motivated by this issues, this study aimed to formulate a proposal for investment projects portfolio evaluation logically structured and modular, adaptable to various possible organizational realities. The conception of optimization procedure brought together concepts of risk and return project metrics, Modern Portfolio Theory, Utility Theory, Monte Carlo simulation and Cholesky decomposition. Finally the proposal utility was tested by its application in a sample of oil and gas projects.

Orientador: Saul Barisnik Suslick / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecanica e Instituto de Geociencias / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-12T07:45:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Galeno_RafaelCosta_M.pdf: 3938770 bytes, checksum: 49ef75103d869f0e95581347bee5e5f3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Um dos principais impactos resultantes dos novos avanços tecnológicos na indústria do petróleo refere-se ao aumento do número de projetos que compõem as carteiras no segmento de exploração e produção (E&P), passando a competir no orçamento das empresas de petróleo. Apesar do aumento de preços do petróleo, observa-se diversos níveis de restrições (recursos humanos, sondas, materiais etc.) para a execução dos projetos, tornando o processo decisório de seleção de projetos uma tarefa bastante complexa. Nesta dissertação, foi desenvolvida uma solução integrada para análise de portfólios de projetos de E&P que levou em consideração um modelo exponencial de aversão ao risco (teoria da preferência) e as características inerentes de risco e retorno, incorporando novas métricas para seleção de portfólios. A metodologia para executar a otimização de portfólios foi baseada minimização do risco, sujeito a um determinado retorno. A ferramenta quantitativa utilizada para otimização de portfólios foram os algoritmos genéticos. A seleção de portfólios foi realizada em diferentes cenário. Como estudo de caso, foram utilizados projetos que envolvem reservas descobertas, mas não desenvolvidas em águas profundas que apresentam diferentes tipos de restrições e incertezas geológicas e tecnológicas para a sua viabilização. Os resultados permitiram a seleção de um portfólio ótimo, baseando-se não somente nas restrições financeiras, mas também incorporando os diversos tipos de componentes geológicas, operacionais, tecnológicas, entre outras. / Abstract: One of the main impacts of the new technological progress in the petroleum companies is the increasing number of projects in E&P portfolios competing in a company's budget constraint. Despite of the increase of oil prices, several types of restrictions (workforce, rigs, materials, etc.) occurs in the project management, making the decision process of projects selection a complex task. In this dissertation was developed an integrated solution for analysis of E&P portfolios projects, considering an exponential model of risk aversion (preference theory) and the characteristics of risk and return, and incorporating new types of metric for projects selection. The methodology used to achieve the portfolio optimization was based on risk minimization for a certain return. The quantitative tool for portfolio optimization was the genetic algorithms. The portfolio selection was build upon different scenarios. Undeveloped oil reserves in deep-waters was used as a casestudy because they present different types of constraints and geological and technological uncertainties in the feasibility analysis. The results of this research allowed the selection of an optimal portfolio using not only the financial restrictions, but also incorporating various types of geological, operational, and technological variables, among others. / Mestrado / Explotação / Mestre em Ciências e Engenharia de Petróleo

This diploma thesis is concerned with the use of the choice experiment method for modelling the demand for recreation of rock-climbing in Czech Republic. The main scope of this diploma thesis is to find the main atributes for the individual's decision making about the choice of recreation area and derivation of their implicit prices. The next point of this diploma thesis is to find out a socioeconomic sctructure of the respondents. The theoretical part involves an explanation of the main economic terms, a detailed description of the choice experiment method and a list of papers concerned with a rock climbing. The practical part describes the procedure of the aplication choice experiment method step by step -- the questioning preparation, the data survey, the data analysis and the interpretation of results. The conditional logit is used to the choice experiment analysis.

This thesis aplied tools of economic analysis on situation in poker, where players choose to finish tournament or make a deal and take certain amount of money immediately. Theoretical frame consists of economic theories for decesion under risk and poker literature. Hypotheses are tested with regresion analysis on dataset which I obtain by my own observing. Estimations support hypothesis that players are risk-averze and loss-averze. In bigger tournaments are bigger prizepools and that is the reason, why players in bigger tournament make deals more often. Moreover deal is more likely, when players are approximetly equal skilled in poker.

Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are increasingly important subjects in today's society. To measure a company's Corporate Social Performance (CSP); the ESG-rating has been developed throughout the years. As investors and the public are starting to acknowledge a company's sustainable actions and the importance of these, more and more companies choses to be rated using ESG-rating. As the knowledge around the subject has started to increase, we want to find out if it affects the risk of a company or an investment? Theories relating to the topic, such as stakeholder theory, suggests that satisfying all of a company’s stakeholders creates value for a company. Previous studies in the topic has interpreted this as high ESG-ratings should equal lower risks for the company. Additionally, previous studies in the relationship between sustainability and profitability shows a positive correlation between the two, meaning that companies that incorporate sustainability in general have higher profits. The purpose of this study is to investigate if high ESG-ratings could lead to lower firm’s risk in Sweden. There has been a lot of previous research in the area, but none focusing on Sweden. The majority of the previous studies have concluded that there exists a negative relationship between CSP and a firm’s risk, which indicates that if a company would integrate CSR it could lower the risk. This study will include 145 Swedish companies with 2,610 firm-year observations from the period 2001-12-21 to 2019-12-31. The risk measures used are; Total Risk (Volatility), Systematic Risk (Beta) and Idiosyncratic Risk. As for the ESG-ratings, the data is obtained from ASSET4 from the database Thomson Reuters Eikon as the measure of CSP. Furthermore a multiple regression analysis is performed to statistically investigate the relationship between a company's ESG-rate (and the three pillars Environmental, Social and Governance) and risk. The study concluded that there exists a statistically significant positive relationship between Volatility and Idiosyncratic Risk and the ESG-score for Swedish firms. As for the individual pillars; Environmental (ENV), Social (SOC) and Governance (GOV); the result indicated that there existed a statistically significant positive relationship between Volatility and Idiosyncratic Risk with the two pillars; ENV and GOV, respectively. This suggests that the higher ESG-score, ENV and GOV-scores of Swedish firms the higher Volatility and Idiosyncratic Risk. Neither Volatility or Idiosyncratic risk showed a statistically significant relationship with the social pillar. Consequently we are not able to confirm the relationship between Volatility and Idiosyncratic Risk with the Social pillar. Regarding Beta, the study found no statistically significant relationship with the ESG-score, as well as for the individual pillars; Environmental, Social and Governance. Therefore we are not able to confirm a relationship for Beta and the ESG-score, ENV, SOC and GOV-scores. As a final remark this study concluded the opposite as for previous research and consequently this thesis has contributed with new knowledge within the area of ESG-rating and risk for Swedish companies.

The aim of the thesis is to afford a complex perspective of a parallel development of psychology and economics to the readers. It is suggested, how psychological experiments could be used for the overall enrichment of the classical theory of economics. In the thesis, readers are introduced to the development of economic theories over time, and also to what role a human takes as a personality. Including the thesis is the part engaging in consumer decision process.

There has been an increasing relevance of the cultural sector in the economic and social development of different countries. However, this sector continues without much input from multi-criteria decision-making (MDCM) techniques and sustainability analysis, which are widely used in other sectors. This paper proposes an MCDM model to assess the sustainability of a musical institution’s program. To define the parameters of the proposed model, qualitative interviews with relevant representatives of Catalan cultural institutions and highly recognized professionals in the sector were performed. The content of the 2015–2016 season of the ‘Palau de la Música Catalana’, a relevant Catalan musical institution located in Barcelona, was used as a case study to empirically test the method. The method allows the calculation of a season value index (SVI), which serves to make more sustainable decisions on musical season programs according to the established criteria. The sensitivity analysis carried out for different scenarios shows the robustness of the method. The research suggests that more complex decision settings, such as MCDM methods that are widely used in other sectors, can be easily applied to the sustainable management of any type of cultural institution. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this method was never applied to a cultural institution and with real data. / Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Background: Since the emergence of Covid-19 has it reaped and created havoc within every segment of society on a national and global scale. The financial market experienced significant declines and losses but some asset items handled the fluctuations better than others. Moreover, since some asset items are associated with different risk levels will various investors with contrasting risk attitude allocate dissimilar proportion of their disposable capital between these alternatives. Especially during low and high levels of economic uncertainty which is related to the volatile market of Covid-19. Although, little to no research has been conducted aimed at understanding how Covid-19 impacted Swedish students asset allocation prior and post the pandemic with different risk profiles.   Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate if students with different risk attitudes (risk-preference, risk-neutral and risk-averse) conduct statistically different asset allocation prior and post the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, investigate shifts in asset holdings prior and post the pandemic. Moreover, in order to fill the identified literature gap and add to the current body of knowledge regarding asset allocation and variability concerning risk attitudes since its exclusion of Swedish student’s risk attitudes and impact of Covid-19 on preferable asset items.                                    Method: This investigative study concerns a quantitative survey of 81 different students attending Jönköping University. The survey was structured in a way to uncover whether students with different risk attitudes conduct asset allocation statistically different prior and post the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, incorporate sociodemographic factors of students in order to measure its relation to risk attitudes and uncertainty changes. This will be done through non-parametric tests (distribution free) such as the Chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis and Bonferroni adjusted p-value approach. The data is later discussed and interpreted through various academic sources and in the context of the frame of reference (expected utility theory).                              Conclusion: The impact of Covid-19 resulted into increased asset allocation of less risky and “safe” asset in order to deal with the declining stock market and future economic uncertainty. The study also suggest that students liquidated some of their current/fixed deposits and re-invested their disposable capital into a more conservative money management strategy, which was a continuous identified pattern.  Furthermore, the results indicate that students with different risk attitudes conduct significantly different asset allocation concerning commercial insurance, stocks/funds and various bond types prior to Covid-19. However, post the eruption has the statistical identified differences in bonds asset allocation reduced which refers to that the statistical power and dissimilar allocated proportion amongst asset items has diminished. Further multiple comparison reinsures this conclusion. Thusly, the study implies that the differences between asset allocation and student risk profiles are diminished post Covid-19 and therefore students perceived and allocated more similar capital proportions into various asset items. Hence answer the initial stated research question and empirically state that risk attitude of students impact how they conduct asset allocation prior to and to a lesser extent post Covid-19

Background: In today's society, there is more pressure to be sustainable and not least in the financial world. Several agreements, such as the Paris Agreement, have been created to steer countries towards more sustainability. When it comes to the economy, several SRI strategies have been developed to serve the same purpose. However, the problem that emerges is that investors who invest sustainably and use these strategies can lose returns and thus depart from their main goal of maximizing profits.   Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how SRI strategies are used by investors when constructing their portfolios in terms of profit maximization. The paper will thus conclude if the underlying motivation behind the choice of strategy is affected by maximizing profit.   Method and implementation: By conducting a qualitative study and interviewing several fund managers at the largest banks and fund companies in Sweden, the authors aim to answer the research question. The answers provided by the respondents are presented and analyzed in the empirical section and linked to the study's theory.   Conclusion: In this study, there is clearly shown that by investing, according to SRI, a professional investor is still able to profit maximize. The authors, therefore, see that the new way of being rational as an investor is to include SRI strategies. The relationship with being both sustainable and profit-maximizing can be seen as a significant motivating factor. The same can be said about reduced ESG risk and creating legitimacy towards customers. Furthermore, a combination of strategies can be seen as a way to create an optimal portfolio by the investors. This further proves that sustainable investing is the most rational way of investing and a way to achieve an investors main goal to profit maximize.

The objective of the study was to examine the relationships between the concepts of personal fairness and social fairness and hotel cancellation policies. These relationships will be explored using the framework of Prospect Theory in terms of consumer patronage (willingnessto-purchase and word-of-mouth). This study begins with a brief history of the development of the lodging industry in the United States from inns and taverns to the modern hotel industry that is a critical sector of the hospitality and tourism economy. Current statistics are provided regarding the U.S. and Central Florida hotel industry in order to provide both a national and local economic perspective. The study also provides relevant statistics regarding U.S. domestic traveller information. The included literature review consists of concepts of mental accounting theory, economic utility theory, prospect theory, personal fairness, social fairness, and consumer patronage. The study also discusses how the lodging industry is unique in its implementation of reservation cancellation policies when compared against other industries. Research regarding merchandise return policies is also discussed here. The study was designed to investigate three separate components of both personal and social fairness. The first component investigated the effects of hotel rate price increases and discounts on personal fairness when compared against an existing reference price. The second component studied the perceptions of social fairness on three established hotel cancellation policies. The third component introduces a treatment of distributive and procedural fairness violations as a moderator to observe the effects on consumer patronage for the same three hotel cancellation policies. iv The data were collected from 415 hotel guests staying in Central Florida hotels near the Orlando international airport using an experimental method which provided different written scenarios regarding hotel pricing and three different hotel cancellation policies. The data was then analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), MANOVA and Tukey’s Post Hoc test to provide results that allowed the comparison of effects on each in terms of consumer patronage. The study results indicated that that price increases against established reference prices had a significant negative effect on consumer patronage whereas discounts of the same magnitude had a significant effect only in the middle range. Included smaller and large discounts did not have a significant effect on consumer patronage outside of the middle range. The study results also indicated that there was significant difference in consumer patronage between an Open cancellation policy and a 48 Hour Cancellation Policy. There is a significant difference in consumer patronage when a No Refund policy is compared against both the Open Cancellation Policy and the 48 Hour Cancellation Policy. The study results also show that a violation of either Distributive Fairness or Procedural Fairness has a significant negative effect on consumer patronage for both an Open Cancellation policy and 48 Hour Cancellation Policy. However, when Distributive Fairness or Procedural Fairness violations are introduced as a moderator, there is no significant effect on a No Refund Cancellation Policy. The study and its ensuing results are of importance to the academic community in that it provides additional scholarly support to both Prospect Theory and the theory of mental accounting and the roles that each plays in consumer behavior. From an industry practitioner perspective, the current results provide insight into hotel consumer’s attitudes regarding rate increases/ discounts and the implementation of the three different hotel cancelation policies. The v results can be utilized to provide justification and guidance in altering or establishing hotel cancellation policies that hotel consumers consider to be fair.