<p>This thesis compares the two different version of public franchise bidding for awarding 3G licenses used in Sweden and the UK, respectively a beauty contest and an auction. The fact is that the Swedish beauty contest has failed to tackle many of the problems discussed in connection with public franchise bidding in an effective way. Sweden has first of all had problems with enforcing the ambitious coverage criteria. The UK has on the other hand succeeded in tackling the problems and raised governmental revenue of £22.5bn through the auction.</p><p>The conclusion is that this thesis confirms the existing literatures’ critique of the Swedish beauty contest. However, this thesis also provides a new perspective to the existing literature. The main conclusion is that the auction has locked the prices at a high level and externalised negative price and investments effects through the international operators’ behaviour onto consumers in other countries.</p>

This thesis compares the two different version of public franchise bidding for awarding 3G licenses used in Sweden and the UK, respectively a beauty contest and an auction. The fact is that the Swedish beauty contest has failed to tackle many of the problems discussed in connection with public franchise bidding in an effective way. Sweden has first of all had problems with enforcing the ambitious coverage criteria. The UK has on the other hand succeeded in tackling the problems and raised governmental revenue of £22.5bn through the auction. The conclusion is that this thesis confirms the existing literatures’ critique of the Swedish beauty contest. However, this thesis also provides a new perspective to the existing literature. The main conclusion is that the auction has locked the prices at a high level and externalised negative price and investments effects through the international operators’ behaviour onto consumers in other countries.

Despite the huge public attention received by the male beauty contest discourse in Hong Kong as reflected in extensive local media coverage, studies on the discourse are rare. Concerning the limited literature in the male gender studies, this dissertation addressed the issue and examined the representation of and sexism against male in male beauty contest discourse in Hong Kong. Two latest publicized major male beauty contests in Hong Kong (TVB Mr. Hong Kong Contest 2011 and ATV Mr. Asia Contest 2012) were analyzed using frameworks of ‘dialectical-relational approach’ to Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2009), the experiential metafunction of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Christian, 2004) and a combination of sexist characteristics suggested by influential theories such as Objectification Theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). This study integrated findings across analyses of the contests in terms of their linguistics and multi-modal texts as well as culture of context. The findings showed that representations of men portrayed were seen to be degrading men. There was also clear evidence of sexism against male realized through language and visual aspects. It was concluded that the representations and sexist elements were possibly generated from the competitive rivalry between the two broadcasting companies and the change in public perception on gender characteristics. It also suggested that stricter regulating guidelines are needed to secure the professional ethics in media production in Hong Kong. This study grounded future research on the application of SFL framework as a useful quantitative analytical tool to supplement qualitative research in gender studies in media discourse. / published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

A dissertação investiga o concurso de beleza fotogênica realizado pela Fox Film no Brasil em 1926-1927, com o fim de levar um casal de atores para Hollywood. A pesquisa tem como fonte jornais e revistas de grande circulação à época e documentos do Acervo Pedro Lima. Consideramos o contexto histórico-social, relações étnicas e de gênero, a incorporação de padrões de beleza ligados à modernidade e a constância de concursos femininos, bem como o estrelismo. Ponderamos a negociação entre nossa imprensa e o star system durante o concurso. / This dissertation investigates the photogenic beauty contest held by Fox Film in Brazil in 1926-1927, in order to choose a couple to integrate the studio\'s casting in Hollywood. The research has as a source mass circulation newspapers and magazines at the time and Pedro Lima Collection documents. We consider the historical and social context, ethnic and gender relations, the incorporation of beauty standards linked to modernity and the constancy of women\'s beauty contests, as well as the stardom. We take into account the negotiation between Brazilian press and the star system during the contest

A dissertação investiga o concurso de beleza fotogênica realizado pela Fox Film no Brasil em 1926-1927, com o fim de levar um casal de atores para Hollywood. A pesquisa tem como fonte jornais e revistas de grande circulação à época e documentos do Acervo Pedro Lima. Consideramos o contexto histórico-social, relações étnicas e de gênero, a incorporação de padrões de beleza ligados à modernidade e a constância de concursos femininos, bem como o estrelismo. Ponderamos a negociação entre nossa imprensa e o star system durante o concurso. / This dissertation investigates the photogenic beauty contest held by Fox Film in Brazil in 1926-1927, in order to choose a couple to integrate the studio\'s casting in Hollywood. The research has as a source mass circulation newspapers and magazines at the time and Pedro Lima Collection documents. We consider the historical and social context, ethnic and gender relations, the incorporation of beauty standards linked to modernity and the constancy of women\'s beauty contests, as well as the stardom. We take into account the negotiation between Brazilian press and the star system during the contest

This dissertation consists of three essays that adopt both theoretical and empirical methods of analysis to study certain economies in which the incomplete information and the strategic complementarities between players are important. Chapter 1 explains the topics discussed in the subsequent chapters and gives a brief survey on the literature. In Chapter 2, I revise a traditional global game model by dividing the continuum of players into a group of speculators and a group of stakeholders. It is found that the uniqueness property remains in the new game. Then I extend the static game to a two-stage game and investigate the efficacies of certain label changing mechanisms proposed by the authority to stabilize the regime in the dynamic context. It is shown that a label changing mechanism allowing for downward social mobility may not work, whereas a label changing mechanism allowing for upward social mobility generally makes the regime more stable. In Chapter 3, I add a speculator and an authority to a bank-run model to investigate how the speculator endangers a business or an economy, and what the authority can do about it. In particular, I show that the speculator can increase the financial system's vulnerability by serving as a coordinating device for the investors and thus triggering the crisis. It is further shown that deterring the speculator may not undo the speculator's impact because of multiplicity problem; rewarding holding investors is useless; and eliminating the preemption motives among investors works given enough effort. A discussion of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the IMF's role in it is also included. Chapter 4 develops a repeated beauty-contest game to investigate the effect of previous winners' actions on the spread of subsequent players' actions. I first characterize the unique equilibrium of the game. Then I focus on the equilibrium dynamics of several variances depicting different forms of action variability. It is found that whether or not a specific variance diminishes over time depends on the relative precision of public and private signals. To illustrate the theoretical results, I conduct an empirical study on the Miss Korea contest. It is found that the contestants' faces have been converging to the ``true beauty'' overall, but diverging from each other over the last 20 years. Chapter 5 concludes. / Ph. D.

本文研究的主要目的為研究學習行為與智能的相關性，採經驗加權吸引模型(Experience-Weighted Attraction)來描述受測者在選美競賽賽局(Beauty Contest Game)實驗下的決策及行為，不單只選擇強化學習或信念學習模型，其理由為經驗加權吸引模型綜合了以上兩個學習的特點；在智能的部分，本文以實驗所得的工作記憶能力(Working Memory Capacity)分數的高低，來代表智能高低。 　　從研究結果發現，智能高與低兩類受測者的初始吸引分配，皆與其在第一期的選擇類似，而低智能的受測者在初始吸引部分，所估計的分配結果會與第一期之後期間的分配較不相似，這可能代表著低智能的受測者對於類似賽局實驗以及此實驗的分析或想像較差；在ψ的參數估計上，由於低智能的初始吸引與最後一期猜測的分配較不相似，以理論來說會遞減較快，也就是說會小於高智能所估計的結果，而真實的估計結果也顯示如此，此外，ψ的估計結果，也表示低智能受測者，對於之前吸引遞減較快，遺忘地較快。本文在δ的部分，高智能的受測者明顯地大於低智能的受測者，這表示高智能的受測者，對於失去的報酬比較敏感，會較關心沒有選擇到的數字所能得到的報酬，本文認為此結果可能隱含高智能受測者的認知階層較高。在受測者對於吸引敏感度λ的參數部分，本研究發現，此兩類受測者並無太大差異，也就是此兩類受測者對於吸引的變動，敏感度差距不大，也就代表影響人們對於吸引敏感度的原因，可能不是來自於智商高低。由本文的實證結果，可以發現學習行為與智能的相關性，因此本文建議在往後與學習行為有關的研究上，也許可以納入智能為主要研究探討的核心。 / The purpose of this paper is to explore possible relationships between individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and behavioral heterogeneity revealed in a repeated beauty contest experiment. We use ‘experience-weighted attraction’ (EWA) learning, to describe the decision-making and learning behavior of subjects in the beauty contest game (BCG) experiment. In the intelligence section, the level of the experiment from the working memory capacity score, to represent the intelligence high or low. We found high and low intelligent of the subject's initial attract allocated all its similar to the first period choice. In parameter estimation of ψ, due to the initial attraction of low intelligence subject is less similar to the choice of the following periods. According to theory,ψ of the low intelligence subjects will decrease faster, and the estimate of the results also show that. In addition, part of δ, high intelligence subjects was larger than the low intelligent subjects, which means that subjects of high intelligence, more sensitive to lost revenue. We think that may be implied the higher intelligent subjects are higher cognitive hierarchy. The sensitivity of players to attractions λ, we found that these two types of intelligent is not much difference. This means that the impact of the sensitivity of players to attractions, may not be from the intelligent level. By the empirical results, we can find the relationship between behavioral heterogeneity and intelligence, so we suggests that it may be incorporated into the intelligent as the main research.