Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-08-25T13:11:13Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Luiz Felipe Jostmeier Vallandro_.pdf: 1279034 bytes, checksum: 2e83e11ab40a6df49542fe7525f4485f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-25T13:11:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luiz Felipe Jostmeier Vallandro_.pdf: 1279034 bytes, checksum: 2e83e11ab40a6df49542fe7525f4485f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-14 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Este estudo investigou os fatores determinantes da direção da estratégia de diversificação de grupos empresariais no Brasil. Utilizando a teoria dos custos de transação (WILLIAMSON, 1975; 1979; 1985) e a teoria da agência (JENSEN e MECKLING, 1976) como pilares teóricos, o estudo se propôs a analisar a influência de um conjunto de fatores sobre a escolha da direção da estratégia de diversificação de grupos empresariais brasileiros, que ocorre no sentido de negócios relacionados ou não relacionados (diversificação relacionada X diversificação não-relacionada) à atividade principal do grupo. A estratégia empírica considerou uma amostra de 51 grupos empresariais identificados entre os 200 maiores grupos do Brasil entre 2009 e 2014, de acordo com a publicação do anuário Valor Grandes Grupos. A direção da diversificação tomou a forma de uma variável binária, com valor igual a 1 para a diversificação não-relacionada e zero para a diversificação relacionada. As variáveis utilizadas como os determinantes da direção da diversificação foram: lucratividade, endividamento, capex, risco, ativos físicos, ativos intangíveis, estrutura de propriedade considerando apenas um acionista controlador com ao menos 50% +1 das ações com direito a voto (Definido1), estrutura de propriedade formada por um grupo de acionistas compartilhando o controle (Definido2) e controle familiar. Duas variáveis de controle foram adicionadas: tamanho e oportunidades de crescimento. Os testes empíricos foram executados utilizando regressões probit painel para dados empilhados. As evidências sugerem que existe um conjunto de fatores que influencia a direção da estratégia de diversificação perseguida por grupos empresariais brasileiros. A principal conclusão é que fatores como endividamento, risco, capex e controle acionário exercido por um grupo de acionistas compartilhando o controle do grupo empresarial influenciam positivamente a probabilidade da escolha da diversificação não-relacionada. Por outro lado, fatores como ativos intangíveis e estrutura de propriedade considerando apenas um acionista controlador com ao menos 50% +1 das ações com direito a voto do grupo influenciam negativamente a probabilidade da escolha da diversificação não-relacionada. / This study investigated the determinants of the direction of diversification strategy of business groups in Brazil. Using both transaction costs theory (WILLIAMSON, 1975; 1979; 1985) and agency theory (JENSEN & MECKLING, 1976) as theoretical pillars, this study aimed to analyze the influence of a set of factors on the choice of the direction of diversification strategy of Brazilian business groups, that occurs towards related or unrelated businesses (related vs. unrelated diversification, respectively) to the main activity of the group. The empirical strategy considered a sample of 51 business groups identified among the 200 largest business groups in Brazil between 2009 and 2014, according to the publication of the yearbook Valor Grandes Grupos. The direction of diversification took the form of a binary variable, with the value of one for unrelated diversification, and zero for related diversification. The variables used as the determinants of the direction of diversification were: profitability, debt, capex, risk, physical assets, intangible assets, ownership structure considering only one shareholder holding at least 50% +1 of the shares with voting rights (Definido1), ownership structure formed by a group of shareholders sharing the control (Definido2), and family control. Two control variables were set: size and growth opportunities. Pooled probit panel regressions were used to run the empirical tests. The evidence suggest that a set of factors influences the direction of diversification strategy pursued by Brazilian business groups. The main conclusion is that factors like debt, risk, capex, and ownership structure formed by a group of shareholders sharing the control of the business group influence positively the probability of the choice of unrelated diversification. On the other hand, factors like intangible assets and ownership structure considering only one shareholder holding at least 50% +1 of the shares with voting rights influence negatively the probability of the choice of unrelated diversification.

<p>The financial crisis started in 2007 caused a global recession. Firms have been facing an extremely difficult time since then. A lot of them experienced a severe drop and fluctuation of profitability. Even so some firms still performed well during the hard time. In this study we are searching for the determinants of comparatively good performance (including both profitability and profit stability) for firms. With an empirical study on Swedish firms, we explored the relationship between several firm variables and firms' performance during the crisis. The result showed that some variables indeed has an impact on performance, among which industry effect was the most influential variable, while diversification strategy also has a positive impact on performance. We stress the benefits of diversification strategy as it is a strategic choice directly made by managers of firms. We suggest that diversification strategy plays an important role in the long-term success of firms, as it has a positive effect on profitability not only when economy is in stable stage, which has been proved by some further literature, but also when the economy is experiencing a recession, which is the result of our study.</p>

<p>Investors in the financial market are supposed to hold diversified portfolios to minimize their risk adjusted for expected return. However, several researchers have pointed out that most investors are over weighted in their home market. This means that most diversification happens in terms of choosing stocks in the home market which means that further possible diversification through international diversification is unused. One can therefore expect that foreign investors have preferences for securities with specific characteristics once they go abroad. An earlier study of the Swedish stock market over the years 1993-1997 has shown that foreign investors, in greater extent than domestic investors, have a preference for large firms, firms paying low dividend and firms with low leverage. With the steep up-turn of the Swedish stock market before the millennium and the down-turn in year 2000 in mind, this study examine whether the investment patterns between 1996 and 2005 are consistent with the results of earlier investigations. In general the results are consistent with earlier investigations. However, this study also shows that foreign investors seem to be more interested in choosing securities with relatively high fundamental value and lower level of leverage during market down-turns.</p>

Demand for domestic tobacco has decreased over the past two decades. In 2004, the tobacco buyout program terminated marketing quotas and price support established under the federal tobacco program in 1938. Additionally, in 2003, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WTO FCTC) acknowledged the importance of supply control in conjunction with demand control strategies to eliminate or reduce the consumption of tobacco products. According to the Census of Agriculture, the number of tobacco farms in the US fell by 40 percent between 2002 and 2007. Tobacco farmers are looking for alternative on-farm and off-farm sources of income. This study uses a rank-ordered logit model (ROLM) to explore factors affecting farmers’ perceptions about the potential for grain crops, cotton, peanuts, hay, fruits and vegetables, cow/calf, dairy, beef cattle and, other crops/livestock to replace tobacco production. Results suggest that hay is one of the on-farm enterprises perceived as having the highest potential to replace tobacco among burley tobacco farmers. Age, education, farm size and farm cash receipts were found to affect farmers’ perceptions about the potential for different alternative enterprises to replace tobacco. Additionally, results suggest that researchers should be careful when designing ranking questions in order to maximize rate of response and quality of the data obtained from this type of questions.

<p>This paper uses a new measure of volatility based on extreme day return occurrences and examines the relative prevailing volatility among worldwide stock markets during 1997-2009. Using several global stock market indexes of countries categorized as an emerging and developed capital markets are utilized. Additionally this study investigates well known anomalies namely Monday effect and January effect. Further using correlation analysis of co movement and extent of integration highlights the opportunities for international diversification among those markets. Evidences during this time period suggest volatility is not the only phenomena of emerging capital markets. Emerging markets offer opportunities of higher returns during volatility. Cross correlation analysis depicts markets have become more integrated during this time frame; still opportunities for higher returns prevail through global portfolio diversification.</p>

This thesis is composed of three chapters. The first two chapters provides novel approaches for modeling and estimating the dependence structure for a large portfolio of assets using rating data. In both chapters a natural form of organizing a portfolio in terms of the levels of exposure to economic sectors and geographical regions, plays a key role in setting up the dependence structure. The last chapter investigates weather financial strategies that exploit sector or geographical heterogeneity in the asset space are relevant in terms of portfolio optimization. This is also done in a context of a large portfolio but with data on stock returns.

The dissertation is an investigation of the Swedish engineering company AGA’s inventive activity during the years 1904-1959. Inventive activity denotes the company’s efforts in rying to develop innovations. Operations such as patents, experiments, business methods, business co-operations, technical development and other related activities have been studied. Through its lighting system for beacons, which emanated from the international gas industry, AGA had a strong economic base, and could thus go through periods of strong diversification. This led to the growth of more branches on the company’s product tree, and the aim of this dissertation has been to map out and understand how this AGA tree developed. One point of departure for this study has been to investigate how the inventive activity at AGA reacted to changes in the demand side of the economy. According to the American economist Jacob Schmookler the demand determines the development of innovative activity. The American economic historian Nathan Rosenberg has criticised Schmookler, however, arguing that it is the resources of knowledge which dictate the innovative course, since technology transfers are costly to put into economic practice. A third perspective, partly bridging these differences of opinions, is the discussion on the influence of technology procurement, which, among others, the Swedish innovation researcher Charles Edquist has presented. These perspectives frame my study, which maps AGA through two major changes in technology during the first half of the twentieth century. The AGA product tree consists of path dependent shifts in technology; possibilities to develop new technology opened up in the interaction between the company and the market. Among other things, the main innovation, the AGA flasher, originally developed for the lighting in beacons, proved to be functional for railway signalling devices and respirators. Through general market changes outside the company, similar opportunities arose for AGA to develop already existing technique for new markets. During the period of research the inventive activity was characterized by a constant experimenting, where the company’s success to a large extent rested on the engineers’ ingenuity. AGA, being product diversified, had little room to act independently on the market. Thus, to a high degree the company had to adjust its inventive activity to market demand. By cooperating with initiated customers, above all public ones, AGA had the opportunity to continuously develop products in demand, despite limited resources.

The Nordic media market has since the end of the 1990’s experienced a number of consolidations and the market has become increasingly integrated. Some companies within the market are diversified, meaning they are involved in many different kinds of businesses, while other are focused, which implies that they are focused on one business segment. Different research views explain different motives for diversification. The resource view explain diversification by claiming that a company having underused resources needs to profitably employ them elsewhere in order to expand. The agency view explains diversification with the agent’s different incentives compared to the principal. The market power view implies that by having more resources a company can strengthen its competitiveness. Furthermore, there may be financial and synergetic motives behind diversification. This thesis investigates the relation diversification has with size, sales growth, financial efficiency ratios, and stability. By doing this we can explain the motives behind diversification in the Nordic media market through using existing theories and hence applying a deductive research approach. The thirty largest media companies in the Nordic media market were analyzed. The degree of diversification had a positive relationship with the total revenue of the investigated firms. Furthermore, diversified firms on average had higher revenues than its focused counterparts. The more diversified the firms are the higher sales growth they have and diversified companies had a higher average sales growth than the focused firms. A higher degree of diversification did not increase the firms’ financial efficiency and diversified firms did not have a higher average efficiency. However, one of the measured ratios, ROA, was higher for focused firms. Based on knowledge gained from portfolio theory we believed, before conducting the statistical analyses, that a higher degree of diversification would stabilize the cash flows for the investigated companies. However, no statistical evidence was found supporting that a higher degree of diversification would improve cash flow stability.

The financial crisis started in 2007 caused a global recession. Firms have been facing an extremely difficult time since then. A lot of them experienced a severe drop and fluctuation of profitability. Even so some firms still performed well during the hard time. In this study we are searching for the determinants of comparatively good performance (including both profitability and profit stability) for firms. With an empirical study on Swedish firms, we explored the relationship between several firm variables and firms' performance during the crisis. The result showed that some variables indeed has an impact on performance, among which industry effect was the most influential variable, while diversification strategy also has a positive impact on performance. We stress the benefits of diversification strategy as it is a strategic choice directly made by managers of firms. We suggest that diversification strategy plays an important role in the long-term success of firms, as it has a positive effect on profitability not only when economy is in stable stage, which has been proved by some further literature, but also when the economy is experiencing a recession, which is the result of our study.

Investors in the financial market are supposed to hold diversified portfolios to minimize their risk adjusted for expected return. However, several researchers have pointed out that most investors are over weighted in their home market. This means that most diversification happens in terms of choosing stocks in the home market which means that further possible diversification through international diversification is unused. One can therefore expect that foreign investors have preferences for securities with specific characteristics once they go abroad. An earlier study of the Swedish stock market over the years 1993-1997 has shown that foreign investors, in greater extent than domestic investors, have a preference for large firms, firms paying low dividend and firms with low leverage. With the steep up-turn of the Swedish stock market before the millennium and the down-turn in year 2000 in mind, this study examine whether the investment patterns between 1996 and 2005 are consistent with the results of earlier investigations. In general the results are consistent with earlier investigations. However, this study also shows that foreign investors seem to be more interested in choosing securities with relatively high fundamental value and lower level of leverage during market down-turns.