The eighteenth century is primarily known for the development of codes of etiquette, the refinement of manners and the artistic cultivation of the beautiful and the sublime, but there is at the same time a strand of highly visceral, often stomach-turning texts and images that coexist alongside the push for a much more polite and urbane culture. My dissertation, “Evoking Disgust in the Eighteenth Century,” looks at a wide range of scientific, literary and ephemeral texts to excavate the ways that disgust both persisted and transformed across the century. These range from the poems of Jonathan Swift, the novels of Tobias Smollett, Evelina by Frances Burney, and George Psalmanazar’s An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa. I argue that disgust served as both a boundary line that can tell us the kinds of behaviors, objects and bodies that should not be tolerated in society, and as an emotion that could be trained and cultivated to guide the disgust reactions of readers.

[pt] Com o advento do novo modelo do setor elétrico a partir de 2004, foi permitida aos agentes de mercado a comercialização de energia no ambiente de contratação livre. Considerando a natureza destas operações e a influência de variáveis meteorológicas na formação e volatilidade dos preços, as decisões no âmbito da comercialização de energia são tomadas sob condições de incerteza, levando os agentes a buscarem estratégias de contratação para maximização do retorno dos ativos e/ou mitigação dos riscos envolvidos. No setor elétrico brasileiro, a gestão do risco de mercado é realizada principalmente por contratos a termo, de forma a reduzir os impactos adversos da flutuação do PLD. Neste contexto, os objetivos deste estudo são avaliar a aplicabilidade de dois modelos de otimização sob incerteza, estágio único e estocástico de dois estágios, na tomada de decisão de uma comercializadora e comparar as decisões recomendadas pelos modelos. Estes modelos utilizaram uma função de preferência que permite representar a variação do nível de aversão ao risco considerando diferentes bandas de preferência, tendo os seus parâmetros determinados pelo método Analytic Hierarchical Process. Para a construção das curvas forward do modelo estocástico de dois estágios, foi ponderado o preço de mercado observado e as 2.000 séries do PLD da previsão oficial do ONS. Os resultados evidenciaram a efetividade na mitigação do risco para os produtos avaliados. Ademais, devido à redução do custo do arrependimento a partir da modelagem do problema de otimização em dois estágios, este modelo apresentou soluções mais rentáveis quando comparado ao modelo de único estágio. / [en] With the advent of the new model for the electricity sector in 2004, market agents were allowed to sell energy in the free market. Considering the nature of these operations and the influence of meteorological variables on the formation and volatility of prices, energy trading decisions are taken under conditions of uncertainty, leading agents to seek contracting strategies to maximize the return on assets or mitigation of the risks involved. In the Brazilian electricity sector, market risk management is mainly accomplished through forward contracts, in order to reduce the adverse impacts of PLD fluctuation. In this context, the objectives of this study are to evaluate the applicability of two optimization models under uncertainty, single-stage and two-stage stochastic, in the decision making of a trading company and to compare the decisions recommended by the models. These models used a preference function that allows representing the variation of the risk aversion level considering different preference groups, having its parameters determined by the Analytic Hierarchical Process. For the construction of the forward curves of the two-stage stochastic model, the observed market price and the 2,000 PLD series of the ONS official forecast were weighted. The results evidenced the effectiveness in risk mitigation for the evaluated products. Furthermore, due to the reduction in the cost of regret from the two-stage optimization problem modeling, this model presented more cost-effective solutions when compared to the single-stage model.

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Financial advisory services currently face many challenges such as adapting to regulations, competing against robot advisors and offering qualitative advice. We use a utility function based on the clients' risk preferences and investigated the value added by advisory services. The data represents real clients that received financial advisory services from an advisory firm, which gives this thesis a unique accuracy. For the calculations we simulated outcomes of the portfolios and computed key values pertaining to the investors' financial positions. Our calculations show that investors on average gain corresponding 1.66 % per year in risk free return on their investments from advisory services. In addition, we show that the client's value of advisory service increased with respect to the investor's risk level and time horizon of investment. / Aktörerna inom finansiell rådgivning står för närvarande inför flera utmaningar, att anpassas efter regleringar, konkurrera mot robotrådgivare och erbjuda hög kvalitet i rådgivningen. Vi har använt en nyttofunktion baserad på kunders riskpreferenser och utrett vilket värde som finansiell rådgivning tillför. De data som använts representerar verklig kunddata från ett rådgivningsföretag, vilket ger denna studie en unik träffsäkerhet. Beräkningarna av nyckeltal för investerarnas finansiella position har gjorts genom simulering av portföljer. Våra beräkningar visar att finansiell rådgivning ger investerare i genomsnitt motsvarande 1.66 % i ökad riskfri avkastning per år efter avgifter och skatter. Dessutom vi visa att rådgivarnas tillförda värde ökar med avseende på investerarnas risknivå och tidshorisont.

Det senaste decenniet har användandet av sociala medier exploderat och blivit en plattformdär information och tips om aktier och investeringar delas ut. Unga personer är de störstaanvändarna av sociala medier, och tidigare studier visar att denna åldersgrupp uppvisar ettmer riskfyllt beteende på aktiemarknaden. Syftet med denna studie var således att undersökahuruvida det finns ett samband mellan aktivitet på sociala medier och riskbenägenhet. Vidareundersöktes om tre variabler - överdrivet självförtroende, ångeraversion och kognitivdissonans - hade en medierande effekt i sambandet mellan aktivitet på sociala medier ochriskbenägenhet. En kvantitativ metod med en enkätstudie användes för studiensdatainsamling. Statistiska mått, däribland regressionsanalys och medieringsanalys, användesför att besvara forskningsfrågan. Resultaten visade att sociala medier har en statistisktsignifikant effekt på riskbenägenhet på aktiemarknaden, och att överdrivet självförtroende haren statistiskt signifikant medierande effekt på relationen. Det fanns inga belägg ellerindikationer på att kognitiv dissonans och ångeraversion har en medierande effekt.Sammanfattningsvis visade studien att aktivitet på sociala medier i investeringssyfte kanbidra till ökad riskbenägenhet, och att överdrivet självförtroende har en viktig roll sommedierande variabel i förhållandet. / The last decade, the use of social media has escalated and become a platform whereinformation and tips about stocks and investments are shared. Young individuals aregenerally the most frequent users of social media, and studies also show that the same agegroup displays a more risk-prone behavior in financial markets. Therefore, the purpose of thisstudy was to examine the potential effect of social media activity on risk propensity on thestock market. Furthermore, the study investigated whether the three variables -overconfidence, regret aversion, and cognitive dissonance - could be classified as a mediatingvariable between social media activity and risk propensity. The study was conducted using aquantitative method, employing a survey, where 130 people responded. Statistical measuressuch as regression analysis and mediation analysis were used to answer the research question.The results showed that social media has a statistically significant effect on risk propensity onthe stock market, and that overconfidence has a statistically significant mediating effect onthe relationship. There was no evidence or indication that cognitive dissonance or regretaversion has a mediating effect. In summary, the study demonstrated that use of social mediain investment purposes can increase risk willingness, and that overconfidence plays animportant role as a mediating variable in this relationship.

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This thesis investigates the market rules of the European carbon market (EU ETS) during 2005-2007. We provide theoretical and empirical analyses of banking and borrowing provisions, price drivers and risk hedging strategies attached to tradable quotas, which were introduced to cover the CO2 emissions of around 10,600 installations in Europe.In Chapter 1, we outline the economic and environmental effects of banking and borrowing on tradable permits markets. More specifically, we examine the banking and borrowing provisions adopted in the EU ETS, and the effects of banning banking between Phases I and II on CO2 price changes. We show statistically that the low levels of CO2 prices recorded until the end of Phase I may be explained by the restriction on the inter-period tranfer of allowances, besides the main explanations that were identified by market observers.In Chapter 2, we identify the carbon price drivers since the launch of the EU ETS on January 1, 2005. We emphasize the central role played by the 2005 yearly compliance event imposed by the European Commission in revealing the net short/long position at the installation level in terms of allowances allocated with respect to verified emissions. The main result of this study features that price drivers of CO2 allowances linked to energy market prices and unanticipated weather events vary around institutional events. Moreover, we show the influence of the variation of industrial production in three sectors covered by the EU ETS on CO2 price changes by applying a disentangling analysis, that has also been extended at the country-level.In Chapter 3, we focus on the risk hedging strategies linked to holding CO2 allowances. By using a methodology applied on stock markets, we recover the changes in investors' average risk aversion. This study shows that, during the time period considered, risk aversion has been higher on the carbon market than on the stock market, and that the risk is linked to an increasing price structure after the 2006 compliance event. With reference to Chapter 1, we finally evaluate how banking may be used as a risk management tool in order to cope with political uncertainty on a tradable permits market. We detail an optimal risk-sharing rule, and discuss the possibility of pooling the risk linked to allowance trading between agents.Overall, this thesis highlights the inefficiencies following the creation of the European carbon market that prevented the emergence of a price signal leading to effective emissions reductions by industrials. However, in a changing institutional environment, these inefficiencies do not seem to have been transfered to the period 2008-2012.