In recent years, judicial elections have undergone a transformation: races once characterized by low levels of competition, interest and participation are now comparable, in some states, to races for governor or senator. Elections for the bench as a whole are now more expensive, competitive and politicized than ever before. Arguably the most influential change in the last ten years has been the emergence of independent expenditures by political action committees and other groups in races for seats on state supreme courts. Despite the growth of this type of spending, our understanding of independent expenditures is rather limited, as the distinction between independent expenditures and direct contributions to candidates is rarely made clear.I address this in this dissertation by examining the patterns of independent spending in states with elected supreme courts. In doing so, I develop a theoretical framework to explain the decision of individual groups to support a judicial candidate independently. I argue that this decision is shaped largely by the campaign regulations imposed on judicial candidates and their potential supporters. Expectations from this theory are tested throughout the remainder of the dissertation using an original set of data drawn directly from state disclosure records. I find that independent expenditures have been concentrated in only a few states in recent years and that campaign regulations are influential in shaping this aggregate behavior. Contribution limits, in particular, redirect money from candidates' campaigns to independent expenditures. This is particularly significant due to the unique nature of judicial elections and the role of a judge in American politics. The results of the statistical and case study analyses should give pause to participants in the normative debates regarding campaign finance and judicial reform as they suggest that regulations can have unintended, but important consequences.

追求顧客滿意度極大化向來是企業提升獲利的首要方法，相關研究中亦顯示提高整體顧客滿意度有助於企業整體營運績效提升。然或囿於資料蒐集不易等因素，針對個別顧客之滿意度高低是否實際上能影響其貢獻度的研究卻付之闕如。本研究欲探討顧客滿意度與其貢獻度是否存在明顯之關聯性，故先依據過去學者針對滿意度所提出的理論基礎，修正調整後進行顧客滿意度調查，再針對相對應顧客之實際交易行為進行分析，期望能為缺乏相關研究的顧客滿意度及顧客貢獻度之關聯性，做出學術上的貢獻，並對現在蓬勃發展的銀行理財業務，提出具體的建議。 / 本研究針對個案銀行顧客發放3,000份滿意度調查問卷，並比對回收有效問卷（有效問卷共373份）之個別客戶實際貢獻度資料。本研究主要發現及建議如下： / 一、提高個別顧客的滿意度無法顯著提升（或僅能微幅影響）其貢獻度。 （一）目前銀行業者為了提高顧客滿意度所進行各式各樣的投資，並不具有太多的實質效益，對於現今銀行業發展財富管理的方向而言，不啻為一種警訊。 （二）未來業者發展財富管理業務，不能只把重心放在如何提高顧客滿意度上，或誤認企業獲利的目標等同於顧客滿意度的提升。 （三）銀行業者未來應該將資源分散，不盲目的集中於提升顧客滿意度的投資上，而是積極的尋找其他能真正創造顧客貢獻度的投資標的，諸如經營體質的強化、風險控管的落實、企業形象的提升等。 / 二、在台灣，由於大多數顧客同時與一家以上的金融機構有存款、投資等業務往來，在銀行業務極為競爭的年代，為免造成客戶的移轉或流失，維持與同業相當的顧客滿意度水準仍十分重要。 / 三、產品品質、服務品質與顧客滿意度皆有正向影響，而由於服務業的行業特性，影響銀行業顧客滿意度的主要因素仍為服務品質。本研究建議銀行業者若要藉由提升產品品質、服務品質，來提升顧客滿意度，應特別重視專業度、實體設施，以及產品多樣性這些方面的提升。 / Increasing customer satisfaction has become the guiding principle for many enterprises in order to maximize their profit. Although many researchers have conducted studies regarding the relationship between customer satisfaction and profitability, these studies are mainly focused on the organizational level, comparing organizational performance with customer satisfaction across firms. In contrast, there is limited evidence of the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer contribution at the individual level. In other words, we are not sure whether more-satisfied customers really bring in more profit. / This empirical study examines the correlation between customer satisfaction and customer contribution at the individual customer level. Combining both customer satisfaction survey results and archived customer contribution data, the study examined responders’ satisfaction with their actual contribution to firm profits. / The case studied is a large bank in Taiwan. By sending out 3,000 questionnaires to customers of the consumer banking services, we collected 373 effective responses. The empirical results of this study are as follows. / Both product quality and service quality have positive effects on customer satisfaction, but service quality is more important than product quality in the retail banking business. It was determined that the top three effective ways to improve customer satisfaction are to improve professionalism of financial advisors, to make the facility more customer friendly and more comfortable, and to offer a greater diversity of financial products. However, the findings also indicate that customer satisfaction has very low correlation or even no significant correlation with individual customer contribution. / Although banks today invest much in creating customer satisfaction, this strategy may not be the way to achieve profit maximization. There are numerous other issues involved in profitability increase, including managerial efficiency, corporate governance, corporate image, etc. In fact, the most important factor that influences bank customers’ investment decisions may be the state of the economy (i.e., the stage of the business cycle) rather than customer satisfaction.

Melt runoff (MR) contributes significantly to the total runoff in many river basins. Knowledge of the meltwater contribution (MCR, defined as the ratio of MR to the total runoff) to the total runoff benefits water resource management and flood control. A process-based land surface model, Noah-MP, was used to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of MR and MCR in the Upper Changjiang River (as known as Yangtze River) Basin (UCRB) located in southwestern China. The model was first calibrated and validated using snow cover fraction (SCF), runoff, and evapotranspiration (ET) data. The calibrated model was then used to perform two numerical experiments from 1981 to 2010: control experiment that considers MR and an alternative experiment that MR is removed. The difference between two experiments was used to quantify MR and MCR. The results show that in the entire UCRB, MCR was approximately 2.0% during the study period; however, MCR exhibited notable spatiotemporal variability. Four sub-regions over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) showed significant annual MCR ranging from 3.9% to 6.0%, while two sub-regions in the low plain regions showed negligible annual MCR. The spatial distribution of MCR was generally consistent with the distribution of glaciers and elevation distribution. Mann-Kendall (M-K) tests of the long-term annual MCR indicated that the four sub-regions in QTP exhibited increasing trends ranging from 0.01%/year to 0.21%/year during the study period but only one displayed statistically significant trend. No trends were found for the peak time (PT) of MR and MCR, in contrast, advancing trend were observed for the center time (CT) of MR, ranging from 0.01 months/year to 0.02 months/year. These trends are related to the changes of air temperature and precipitation in the study area.

This thesis explores mathematical optimization techniques to address the computeraided molecular and mixture design problems (CAMD/CAMxD). In particular, we leverage the power of mixed-integer linear programs (MILPs) to quickly and efficiently design over the massive chemical search space. These MILPs, when coupled with state-ofthe- art derivative-free optimization (DFO) methods, make for an efficient optimization strategy when designing mixtures of molecules or when considering a single molecule design problem that involves difficult thermodynamics or process models. In the first chapter, we provide a very general overview of the field of CAMD as addressed from the perspective of mathematical optimization. We discuss many relevant quantitative structure-property relationships (QSPRs) and provide constraints typically used in CAMD/CAMxD optimization problems. The second chapter introduces our DFO-based molecular/mixture design algorithm and describes how this approach enables a much greater molecular diversity to be considered in the search space as compared to traditional methods. Additionally, this chapter looks at a few case studies relevant to crystallization solvents and provides a detailed comparison of 27 different DFO algorithms for solving these problems. The third chapter introduces COSMO-RS/-SAC as alternatives to UNIFAC as the method used to capture mixture thermodynamics for a variety of CAMD/CAMxD problems. To fully incorporate COSMO-RS/-SAC into CAMD, we introduce group contribution (GC) methods for estimating a few necessary parameters for COSMO-based methods. We demonstrate the utility of COSMO-RS/-SAC in a few case studies for which UNIFAC-like methods are insufficient. In the fourth chapter, we investigate reaction solvent design using COSMO-based methods. COSMO-RS is particularly suitable for these problems as they allow for modeling of many relevant species in chemical reactions (transition states, charges, etc.) directly at the quantum level. This information can be immediately passed to the CAMD problem. We investigate a number of solvent design problems for a few difficult reactions. We summarize the work and provide a few future directions in the final chapter. Overall, this thesis serves to push the field of CAMD forward by introducing new methods to more efficiently explore the massive chemical search space and to enable a few new classes of problems which were previously untenable.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Předkládaná diplomová práce se zabývá problematikou transakcí s pohledávkami v daňovém právu a to se zaměřením na postoupení a vklady pohledávek a poskytuje ucelený pohled na danou oblast, jak z pohledu obecné právní úpravy, tak z pohledu finančněprávních norem. Problematika je řešena nejdříve v obecné části, kde jsou vymezeny základní právní normy a pojmy v dané oblasti spojené s pohledávkami. Vzhledem k rekodifikaci soukromého práva účinné počínaje 1. lednem 2014 jsou rovněž analyzovány změny, které přináší nový občanský zákoník a zákon o obchodních korporacích. Rovněž je pojednáno o ekonomických aspektech možných způsobů (forfaiting, faktoring, vklad) financování prostřednictvím pohledávek. V aplikační části diplomové práce jsou analyzovány jednotlivé právní normy daňového práva z pohledu zvoleného tématu s hlavním zaměřením na zákon o daních z příjmů, který obsahuje nejobsáhlejší úpravu a pokrývá velké množství odlišných situací v případě transakcí s pohledávkami (např. speciální režim pro obchodníky s pohledávkami). Vzhledem k otevřenosti české ekonomiky jsou rovněž rozebírány daňové implikace v případě účasti daňových nerezidentů na transakcích s pohledávkami. Ekonomická realita se vyvíjí velmi rychle a daňová legislativa nemusí být vždy schopna reflektovat tyto změny včas, proto je velmi...

This paper studies the contribution behavior and cooperation of subjects in different immigration situations via a dynamic public good game. This dynamic environment, in which a subject’s income at the end of the decision will become an endowment for the next decision, also offers an opportunity to study growth as measured by group income and inequality via the Gini coefficient. Overall, contribution does not converge to zero, nor does it decrease over time, and subjects are very contributive in nature. The best scenario to boost contributions among subjects is when immigrants reduce a subject’s income in the current period, but promise to increase growth in the future. In all treatments, inequality significantly increases over time for the unsuccessful group (below the median group income), while the successful group (above the median group income) mostly has lower inequality with a constant, or slightly increasing, trend. There is a positive relationship between growth and inequality in the treatment where immigrants have no impact on subjects’ income, and also where immigrants reduce subjects’ income without future promise. This positive relationship implies that the group growth can be achieved only with an increase in inequality (or less cooperation between subjects). However, a slightly negative relationship occurs in the scenario where the immigrants reduce subjects’ income in the current period, but promise to increase growth in the future. This negative relationship implies that group growth can be achieved without any inequality (or more cooperation between subjects). The overall findings in this paper provide insights into the contribution behavior and cooperation of subjects, when considering the different economic impacts of immigrants in their society.

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Orientador: Ana Mariza Benedetti / Banca: Nelson Viana / Banca: Maria Helena Vieira Abrahão / Resumo: Este trabalho se insere no projeto "Teletandem Brasil: línguas estrangeiras para todos", um contexto colaborativo e virtual de ensino e aprendizagem de línguas estrangeiras, em que pares interagentes de diferentes países aprendem uma língua estrangeira e auxiliam o parceiro na aprendizagem da língua materna (ou língua de proficiência). Objetiva-se, por meio da observação das interações em teletandem e do levantamento das concepções de autonomia trazidas por um par interagente (uma brasileira e um estadunidense) e por uma mediadora, participantes do projeto Teletandem Brasil, verificar como se desenvolve a autonomia em ambiente virtual de ensino e aprendizagem de línguas, bem como o papel do mediador no desenvolvimento da autonomia dos interagentes na aprendizagem de línguas estrangeiras. O referencial teórico exposto nesta investigação encontra-se fundamentado em três pilares principais, sendo eles a autonomia, as tecnologias da informação e comunicação e o tandem. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, de natureza etnográfica, em que procura-se estabelecer um diálogo entre pesquisador e participantes de pesquisa, já que é feito o uso de estratégias e procedimentos considerando as experiências de acordo com as perspectivas dos participantes. As asserções que são reveladas por meio da triangulação dos dados gerados nos instrumentos e procedimentos de pesquisa (gravações das interações, análise das sessões de aconselhamento, questionário semiaberto, diários reflexivos, mensagens informais e entrevista semiestruturada) valem-se de dados qualitativos e etnográficos. O estudo revelou que a mediadora e a interagente brasileira compartilham concepções de autonomia que vão ao encontro das adotadas pelo projeto teletandem; já o interagente estadunidense demonstrou trabalhar colaborativamente ao decorrer das sessões, após compreender seu funcionamento... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This work is part of the thematic research project "Teletandem Brazil: foreign languages for all", a context of collaborative and virtual learning of foreign languages, where students from different countries learn a foreign language and help their partners learn their native language. The objective of this investigation is to study the conceptions of autonomy brought by the participants, two students (a Brazilian and an American) and a mediator teacher, and to verify how the autonomy is built in this particular virtual learning environment of foreign languages, as well as the role of the mediator teacher in the constitution of the development of the students' autonomy. This investigation is based on three main pillars: autonomy, information and communication technologies and tandem. This study is consisted of qualitative research with ethnographic basis, where a dialogue among researcher and research participants is established, due to the use of strategies and procedures considering the participant experiences. The results revealed through the data triangulation of research instruments and procedures (session recordings, analysis of the mediation sessions, questionnaire, diaries, informal exchange of messages and interview) came from qualitative and ethnographic data. The study revealed that the mediator teacher and the Brazilian participant shared autonomy conceptions that meet the ones followed by the teletandem project, on the other hand the American participant started working collaboratively during the sessions, after understanding their functioning. Both participants verified their commitment to their own learning and the partner's learning, demonstrating responsibility in the preparations of the sessions, worrying about their partner's objectives, questioning the partner when it was needed, using teaching and learning strategies, working collaboratively... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Essa pesquisa utilizou o método dogmático, instrumental, para estudar as contribuições para a seguridade social à luz da Constituição, com objetivo de investigar sua origem, natureza jurídica e classificação, identificar o regime jurídico que lhes é peculiar e as limitações à sua instituição, inclusive, no que diz respeito à destinação que lhes é própria, por meio de emenda à Constituição. Ao fim da pesquisa, concluí tratar-se de tributos vinculados, destinados e não restituíveis, que constituem espécie tributária autônoma, dotada de regime jurídico próprio, cuja instituição encontra limites nos princípios da igualdade, irretroatividade, anterioridade, vedação ao confisco, uniformidade geográfica e deve observar as imunidades previstas nos arts. 195, II; §§ 2º e 7º e 149, § 2º, da Constituição, não lhes sendo aplicáveis as do art. 150, VI, da Constituição, cuja observância é reservada aos impostos. Os arts. 149 e 195 da Constituição atribuem competência exclusiva à União para instituir as contribuições objeto deste trabalho, podendo alcançar os rendimentos do trabalho pagos a e recebidos por pessoa física, a receita ou o faturamento, o lucro, a receita dos concursos de prognósticos, as operações de importação, tendo por base o valor aduaneiro, e o resultado das atividades do produtor, parceiro, meeiro e arrendatário rurais e do pescador artesanal, e seus respectivos cônjuges. Permite-se, ainda, por meio da competência residual, criar novas contribuições, desde que por lei complementar e que não possuam base de cálculo própria dos impostos ou contribuições já previstos na Constituição. Foi possível perceber também que os princípios do benefício e da capacidade contributiva tem importante relação com as contribuições para a seguridade social, servindo-lhe tanto para definir o sujeito passivo possível, quanto na graduação das alíquotas, vedada a progressividade. Por fim, concluí haver um possível desvirtuamento por parte da União na utilização das contribuições sociais como um todo e das para a seguridade social em particular, que estão por isso a demandar maior atenção e rigor da doutrina e da jurisprudência, a fim de impedir que a União desvirtue o fim que lhes é próprio, pondo em risco a autonomia dos demais entes federados, além, é claro, das notórias insegurança jurídica e injustiça fiscal a que são submetidos os contribuintes em razão dos desvirtuamentos encontrados. / This research used the instrumental dogmatic method to study the contributions to social protection according to the Constitution. Its goal was to investigate the origin of these contributions, its legal nature and categorization, as well as to identify its specific legal regime and the limitations of its implementation, including what concerns the resources that must be fully applied to social protection through constitutional rule and the consequences of its disrespect by through constitutional amendment. At the end of the research, I concluded that it is a matter of taxes related to specific Government activities set for specific purposes and that are non-refundable. These are autonomous taxation endowed with its own legal regime, and since its establishment is limited on the principles of equality, non-retroactivity, precedency, confiscation prohibition, geographic uniformity and must observe the immunities in article. 195, II, § § 2 and 7 and 149, § 2, of the Constitution. This is not applicable to the article 150, VI of the Constitution, which is related to the three classic Brazilian taxes. The articles 149 and 195 of the Constitution confer exclusive jurisdiction to the Union to establish the contributions, which was the basis of this research, and it might encompass labor income paid to and received by an individual, income or revenue, profit, lottery income, import operations based on customs value, and the result of the activities of producers, partners, sharecroppers, rural tenants and fishermen, as well as their spouses respectively. New contributions, besides the ones foreseen in the Constitution, might be added as long as it is done through supplementary law. However, these contributions cannot have their own taxation system or contributions calculation assessment as of that already contemplated in the Constitution. It was also possible to notice that the benefit and the tax-paying ability principles have an important relationship with the contributions for social protection, suited to define the possible taxable individuals, and also to define the contribution amount, progressivity is prohibited. Finally, I concluded that there is a possible misuse of the revenue generated by individual contributions that should be fully applied to social protection, funding all the government spending on social security, welfare and health. Therefore, greater attention and severity is needed regarding the doctrine and the jurisprudence in order to avoid that the Union misuse the resources that must be allocated to social protection as this would endanger the autonomy of other federal entities. Moreover, it could be the cause of notorious legal insecurity and injustice which tax payers are subjected to because of this poor administration of resources.