This thesis consists of three different papers summarized as follows. In The political economy of environmental regulation, I study how enforcement of national environmental legislation differ across municipalities in Sweden depending on the local political situation. While the legislation is national, enforcement is decentralized. I find that municipalities where the Green Party joins the ruling political coalition issue more environmental fines than other municipalities. In pricing on the fish market I use Swedish data to study how size affects the price per kilo of fish for several species. In traditional fishery biomass models, fish stocks are treated as homogenous. New theoretical heterogeneous fishery models, where size is allowed to differ in a fish stock, have important implications for regulation, for example that it is optimal to regulate on numbers of fish instead of weight. However, prices in these models are assumed to be constant. My estimates can be used to shed some light on how prices change when the size composition of the catch changes. In my third and final chapter, Settlement under the threat of conflict - The cost of asymmetric information, I present a theoretical model where two players can divide a good peacefully or engage in a contest in order to obtain the entire good. I assume that one player's valuation of the good is private information and show how this affects the expected cost of the contest and thus the probability of peaceful settlement.

People share a big part of their lives and opinions on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The companies behind these sites do their absolute best to collect as much data as possible. This data could be used to extract opinions in many different ways. Every company, organization or public person is probably curious on what is being said about them right now. There are also areas where opinions are related to the outcome of an event. Examples of such events are presidential elections or the Eurovision Song Contest. In these events, peoples’ votes will directly reflect the outcome of the elections or contests. We have developed a simplistic prototype that is able to predict the result of the Eurovision Song Contest using sentiment analysis on tweets. The prototype collects tweets about the event, performs sentiment analysis, and uses different filters to predict the ranks of the contestants. We evaluted our results with the actual voting results of the event and found a Pearson correlation of approximately 0.65. With more time and resources we believe that it is possible to create a highly accurate prediction model. It could be used in lots of different contexts. Politicians and their parties could use it to evaluate their campaigns. The press could use it to create more interesting news reports. Companies would be able to investigate their brand appreciation. A system like this could be used in many different fields.

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The subject of the thesis is children TV contest programs. It analysis selected TV quizzes and contest shows for children and young with regard to what conception of education stands behind the selection of questions in particular TV contests. The work is based on presumption that contest programs, in which contestants answer general knowledge questions, represent general conception of education considering question selection. The work deals mainly with differences in the character, contents and forms of particular quiz questions and tries to come to a conclusion what is the media approach to education in these days and which fields of education they put the emphasis on.

O concurso público no projeto urbanístico é o foco desta pesquisa. Dentro de um universo maior, de intervenções em estruturas urbanas já consolidadas, os concursos representam uma pequena fração destes projetos, mas com diversas particularidades: são eventos de grande visibilidade e divulgação nos meios de comunicação de massa, catalisam discussões sobre a cidade em diversos segmentos da sociedade, geram um envolvimento grande da classe dos arquitetos e democratizam o acesso dos arquitetos a projetos. Este sistema de seleção de projetos tem um processo complexo e que merece atenção. Não apenas focada nos resultados divulgados e projetos vencedores, mas sim para todas as suas etapas: razões históricas que levam à convocação destes eventos, material de base lançado para os participantes, a encomenda do cliente e finalmente o projeto escolhido como vencedor. Os eventos de concurso têm objetivo de gerar discussões sobre uma determinada área a cidade e selecionar o melhor projeto para intervir neste. Grande parte destes resultados não têm se convertidos em melhorias reais e caem em esquecimento pouco depois da sua divulgação. Este trabalho pretende documentar a história de quatro destes eventos e analisá-los. Fundamentados na Cidade de São Paulo, entre os anos de 1998 e 2004. / The public contest in the urbanistic project is the focus of this research. Within a larger universe of interventions in urban structures already consolidated, the contests represent a small fraction of these projects, but with different features: the contests are events of great visibility and dissemination in the media, catalyze discussions about the city in various segments of the society, generate a large involvement of the all architects and make more democratic the access of architects to the projects. This selection system of projects is a complex process and it deserves attention. Not only focused on the published results and winning projects, but also for all its stages: historical reasons that lead the promotion of these events, source material released to the competitors, the client demand and finally the project chosen as winner The contests have the purpose to create discussions in a specific area of the city and select the best to influence on it. The major part of these results doesnt bring real improvements and are forgotten shortly after their publication. This research intends to expose the history of 4 of these events and their analysis. Based in the city of Sao Paulo, between 1998 and 2004.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Dennis L. Weisman / This first essay empirically tests the Peltzman Effect utilizing a unique dataset that is used to investigate the behavior of Formula One race car drivers. The race-level dataset was culled from various sources and includes detailed information from a total of 547 Formula One races. A fixed effects model is used to determine whether or not Formula One race car drivers alter their behavior in response to changes in the conditional probability of a casualty given an accident. The empirical estimates support economic theory; Formula One race car drivers become more reckless as their cars become safer, ceteris paribus. Furthermore, the behavioral response of drivers is larger when the analysis is confined to changes in the conditional probability of a fatality given an accident. The second essay utilizes data from the National Youth Survey to reevaluate key conclusions from Fair (1978). This study supports some of Fair's empirical findings; however, the estimates obtained from this research contradict Fair in several key ways. For example, this paper finds that the coefficients of occupation and education are both statistically significant but the signs are opposite to those in Fair (1978). An even more noteworthy contradiction is the negative relationship between years of marriage and infidelity; this suggests that marriage longevity is positively related to that of match quality of the relationship. Also included in these new specifications are independent variables that better control for individual heterogeneity, factors such as general health, race, and alcohol consumption. This essay presents a simple model to characterize the outcome of a land dispute between two rival parties using a Stackelberg game. This study assumes that opposing parties have access to different technologies for challenging and defending in conflict. Conditions are derived under which territorial conflict between the two parties is less likely to persist indefinitely. Allowing for an exogenous destruction term as in Garfinkel and Skaperdas (2000), it is shown that, when the nature of conflict becomes more destructive, the likelihood of a peaceful outcome, in which the territory's initial possessor deters the challenging party, increases if the initial possessor holds more intrinsic value for the disputed land.

Thesis advisor: Hideo Konishi / The majority of this work focuses on the theoretical analysis of collective action, group efficiency, and incentive mechanisms in team contests where individual outlays of heterogeneous agents are not observable. The reward allocation within the group is instead dependent on observable worker characteristics, modeled as individual abilities, as well as on the observable level of aggregate output. I study the incentives for free-riding and the group-size paradox under a very general set of intra-team allocation rules. I further derive the optimal allocation mechanism which rewards agents according to a general-logit specification based on their relative ability. I derive conditions under which a team's performance is most sensitive to the ability of its highest-skill members, while at the same time higher spread in the distribution of ability has a positive effect on group output. In the final chapter I shift attention to the problem of optimal player order choice in dynamic pairwise team battles. I show that even if player order choice is conducted endogenously and sequentially after observing the outcomes of earlier rounds, then complete randomization over remaining agents is always a subgame perfect equilibrium. The zero-sum nature of these type of contests implies that expected payoffs for each team are independent of whether the contest matching pairs are determined endogenously and sequentially or announced before the start of the game. In both cases the ex-ante payoffs are equivalent to those when an independent contest organizer randomly draws the matches. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Parasites often have profound effects on the survival and evolution of their hosts, and hence on the structure and health of entire ecosystems. Yet basic questions, such as the degree of virulence of a given parasite on its host, and factors influencing which hosts in a population are at the greatest risk of infection, are vexingly difficult to resolve. The western blacklegged tick-western fence lizard (Ixodes pacificus-Sceloporus occidentalis) system is important, primarily because I. pacificus, a vector of the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, is dependent on S. occidentalis for blood meals in its subadult stages, and this lizard possesses an innate immune response that removes the Lyme disease pathogen from attached ticks. My study focused on two aspects of the I. pacificus-S. occidentalis interaction. In Chapter 1, I investigated factors correlating with the intensity of I. pacificus infestations on S. occidentalis. Infection intensity (parasites per host) is often highly variable within a host population, though certain individuals, such as males, tend to be more heavily infected. Previous work in the I. pacificus-S. occidentalis system suggests that differences in behavior, such as the frequency of territorial patrols, may contribute to variation in tick intensity among lizards. I therefore hypothesized that lizard traits that correlate with dominance would also correlate with infestation intensity. Specifically, I predicted that larger and more colorful males would have higher infestation intensities than less impressive animals. In this chapter, I also focused on site selection by ticks infesting S. occidentalis. Skin folds on the necks of these lizards (nuchal pockets) may function to divert ectoparasites away from eyes, ears, and other potentially vulnerable structures. I therefore also looked for factors correlating with tick attachment in these pockets. I sampled ticks on adult male S. occidentalis in the spring and summer, which is the seasonal peak for both S. occidentalis territorial behavior and subadult I. pacificus abundance. After determining the site of infestation and intensity of ticks on these lizards, I re-infested lizards with laboratory-reared I. pacificus larvae, and again quantified tick intensity and attachment location. Contrary to expectation, no host traits correlated with tick intensity among ticks naturally infesting lizards, and lab-reared larval intensity was negatively correlated with lizard body size. As expected, ticks acquired by lizards naturally concentrated inside nuchal pockets, and I also observed this site preference among ticks in lab-based experimental infestations. Although the general pattern, lab-reared ticks were more varied in the sites on which they fed. There was a negative correlation between infestation intensity and the proportion of ticks attached in nuchal pockets. Unsurprisingly, the most reliable predictor of tick intensity and site selection was the season. In Chapter 2, I explored how tick attachment affects male S. occidentalis contest behavior. I. pacificus infestation has been shown to have negative physiological impacts on S. occidentalis, but mechanisms linking physiological changes to ultimate fitness consequences have been largely underexplored. I hypothesized that tick infestation reduces male S. occidentalis fighting ability by reducing O2 carrying ­­capacity­, or by obstructing or damaging vulnerable structures on their hosts. I held fifty half-hour trials between pairs of size- and ventral badge-matched male S. occidentalis, with one male in each pair infested with lab-reared I. pacificus larvae. I found that tick infestation negatively correlated with aggressive behavior in these staged contests. In support of reduced O2 capacity as the mechanism of reduced aggression, my ecologically relevant infestation intensities seemed to cause significant declines in hematocrit among experimentally infested lizards relative to controls. However, the site at which ticks attached did not significantly correlate with the aggressiveness of their lizard hosts. This is one of only a handful of studies to address the direct effect of I. pacificus on S. occidentalis. My study demonstrates that tick infestation can be detrimental to the fitness of their lizard hosts even without the transmission of pathogens. This insight may prove informative in future work on the ecology of I. pacificus-borne diseases in the western United States. This study is also one of only a few to use parasite infection to induce an asymmetry in fighting ability in intrasexual contests.

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