We test our hypotheses on 186 participants designing their own scarves with an MC toolkit. After completing the process, they submitted binding bids for "their" products in Vickrey auctions. We therefore observe real buying behavior, not merely stated intentions. We find that the subjective value of a self-designed product (i.e., one's bid in the course of the auction) is indeed not only impacted by the preference fit the customer expects it to deliver, but also by (1) the process enjoyment the customer reports, (2) the interaction of preference fit and process enjoyment, and (3) the interaction of preference fit and perceived process effort. In addition to its main effect, we interpret preference fit as a moderator of the valuegenerating effect of process evaluation: In cases where the outcome of the process is perceived as positive (high preference fit), the customer also interprets process effort as a positive accomplishment, and this positive affect adds (further) value to the product. It appears that the perception of the self-design process as a good or bad experience is partly constructed on the basis of the outcome of the process. In the opposite case (low preference fit), effort creates a negative affect which further reduces the subjective value of the product. Likewise, process enjoyment is amplified by preference fit, although enjoyment also has a significant main effect, which means that regardless of the outcome, customers attribute higher value to a self-designed product if they enjoy the process. The importance of the self-design process found in this study bears clear relevance for companies which offer or plan to offer MC systems. It is not sufficient to design MC toolkits in such a way that they allow customers to design products according to their preferences. The affect caused by this process is also highly important. Toolkits should therefore stimulate positive affective reactions and at the same time keep negative affect to a minimum. (authors' abstract)

近年來銀行逾期放款總額劇增，連帶使銀行產生處理龐大不動產擔保品之難題。本文目的希望能幫助銀行事先對擔保品進行分類並選擇適當處理方式，以減輕銀行處理不良資產擔保品之損失。文中以法拍屋個案財務分析模擬方式之結果將擔保品分成三類：一為二拍前拍定者，此類擔保品仍可採法拍處理；另一為第三拍拍定者，此類擔保品銀行可改採銀行自行委託拍賣處理；最後為四拍後拍定者，則可考慮讓售給資產管理公司處理。 實證結果發現，二拍前拍定擔保品之特徵屬性傾向較顯著者為有增建使用，建物持分面積為中坪數者，或建物類型為普通公寓，或位於市區，或有可點交之屬性者。第三拍拍定擔保品之特徵屬性傾向為位於五樓以上，或位於郊區，或有較多競標者參與。四拍後拍定之擔保品特徵屬性傾向為位於一樓，或有多層或多號使用情形，或建物持分面積為小坪數者，或建物類型為一般大廈，或位於舊市區，或有不可點交之屬性者。因此未來銀行可對不良資產依特徵屬性分類後，再採適當方式處理，較能減少損失並達成促進資金流通與健全金融機構之目標。 關鍵字：不良資產、資產管理、法拍屋、銀行拍賣 / Recently, the non-performing loans have become serious problems due to the trouble of the real estate collaterals faced by the financial institutions. This research aims on helping the banks to deal with the collaterals and reduce the loss of banks. According to the financial simulation, the collaterals are divided into three groups: 1.for the collaterals sold before the second bid, the financial institutions could take the way of legal auctions.2.for the collateral sold on the third bid , the financial institutions could take auction by themselves.S.for the collateral sold after the special bid, the financial institutions may consider to sell the AMC. From the empirical result, we found that the obvious characters of the collaterals sold before the second bid include EXFL, MBUSPACE, INCITY, and GIVE. The characters of the collaterals sold on the third bid include UPFL, rural areas, and more bids. The characters of the collaterals sold after the special bid include SBUSPACE, API 2, OLDCITY, and without GIVE. Thus, in the future, the collaterals could be separated by the above three categories and the financial institutions can make the better decision to reduce the loss so that the internal economics structure is well established. Keywords: collateral ' AMC ' foreclosure ' auction

In this dissertation auction formats are developed and discussed that focus on three specific economic environments. Regarding the impossibility results from mechanism design, the main task for the implementation of auction designs is to balance allocative efficiency and incentive compatibility – the main characteristics a mechanism should provide. Therefore, the dissertation investigates the limits of conceivable relaxations of allocative efficiency and incentive compatibility for complex settings such as double auctions, interdependent-valuation environments and electricity market designs. The overall aim is to carefully weigh up the advantages and disadvantages for either relaxing allocative efficiency or respectively incentive compatibility.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, History of Arts, 2013 / This report examines the collecting practices of the private collector of South African art, situated in South Africa, and considers the way in which the act of collecting influences both the contemporary market and the construction of the art historical canon. The report questions the contribution made to the South African art world by collecting practices and considers what is involved in the collecting of fine art. I discuss the collector in relation to Sylvester Ogbechie’s (2010) notion of cultural brokerage; I examine notions of both public and private through the writings of Michael Warner (2002); and I consider what makes into one a collector, with reference to Thomas G. Tanselle’s (1998) text A Rationale of Collecting, while engaging several other sources. The report continues with a comparison between international collectors, with a focus on the ways in which they contribute to what becomes and remains relevant, as well as discussing some local collectors. I conclude with an examination of the way in which auction houses have played a seminal role in the establishment of the canon in South Africa, and the role of the collector in relation to this system. In summary, this paper examines the ways in which the private collector of South African art has a great influence on what is perceived as relevant to the canon, to culture and to art history.

Bien que le transport de marchandises joue un rôle essentiel dans le secteur économique et que la demande de transport de marchandises augmente, les transporteurs sur le marché du fret ont encore du mal à maintenir et à améliorer leurs revenus. Pour répondre aux défis, Revenue Management (RM) et l’Internet Physique (PI) sont adoptés comme solution dans cette thèse. RM est une méthode, issue de l’industrie du transport aérien, qui permet de maximiser les revenus. PI est un système logistique entièrement interconnecté, ouvert et dynamique visant à développer des réseaux logistiques mondiaux interconnectés ouverts afin d'accroître l'efficacité et la durabilité de la logistique. Cette thèse examine l’application de RM dans PI pour améliorer les revenus des transporteurs de chargement partiel. L’application de RM dans PI est étudiée à partir de quatre questions de recherche sur RM : la tarification, le contrôle de capacité, les prévisions et la tarification groupée. De plus, pour chaque question de recherche, une étude expérimentale est menée pour évaluer la faisabilité et les performances des modèles d'optimisation proposés correspondant à chaque question. Les résultats fournissent aux transporteurs des implications en termes de gestion et des conseils constructifs leur permettant d’optimiser leurs revenus à plusieurs niveaux, en tenant compte de situations et de scénarios différents. Dans l’ensemble, cette recherche examine Revenue Management du point des transporteurs de chargement partiel opérant dans un environnement très dynamique tel que l’Internet Physique. Les travaux de cette recherche donnent un aperçu général et systématique de l’application de Revenue Management dans un réseau dynamique de transport de marchandises par route. Les réalisations de cette thèse fournissent une base pour la future étude approfondie sur le problème des revenus dans un environnement dynamique. / Although the freight transport plays vital role in the economic sector and the freight transport demand is increasing, there are still challenges for the carriers in the freight market to keep and improve their revenue. To respond to the challenges, Revenue Management (RM) and Physical Internet (PI) are adopted as the solution in this thesis. RM is a method, which is originated from airline industry, to maximize the revenue. PI is a fully interconnected, open, dynamic logistics system aiming to develop an open global interconnected logistics networks to increase the logistics efficiency and sustainability. This thesis investigates the application of RM in PI to improve the revenue of less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers. The application of RM in PI is studied based on four research questions in RM, i.e. pricing, capacity control, forecasting, and bundle pricing. In addition, for each research question, an experimental study is conducted to evaluate the feasibility and performance of the proposed optimization models corresponded to each question. The results provide the carriers managerial implications and constructive guidance to make decisions to optimize their revenue at several levels, considering different situations and scenarios. Overall, this research investigates the Revenue Management from the point of view of LTL carriers operating in a highly dynamic environment like Physical Internet. The work in this research gives a general and systematical sight to the application of RM in a dynamic network of road freight transport. The achievements of this thesis give a basis for the future in-depth study on the revenue problem in a dynamic environment.

Este trabalho analisou os leilões de comercialização de energia elétrica no ambiente de contratação regulada no Brasil, realizados entre 2005 e 2011, com o objetivo de propor aperfeiçoamentos em sua metodologia. Para tanto, foram estudadas três linhas de pesquisa: teoria de leilões, internalização (adicionais) de custos não privados (externalidades) e organização de mercados de capacidade. Após a análise dos 21 leilões de novos empreendimentos realizados no período, conclui-se que o desenho do leilão com fase discriminatória final é adequado aos objetivos de modicidade tarifária, mas que também permite melhoras. As fraquezas da sistemática atual identificadas foram: metodologia de contratação termelétrica por disponibilidade, com viés das fontes de maior custo variável unitário, adoção de preço-teto nem sempre adequado, dificuldade em mitigar o exercício de poder de mercado da Eletrobras nos leilões de energia existente e licitação pelo custo econômico privado. De forma a aprimorar os leilões, as seguintes ações foram sugeridas: realização de uma etapa adicional e prévia ao desenho de leilão híbrido atual visando contornar a problemática de estabelecimento de preço-teto adequado; utilização de adicionais ao lance do leilão para internalizar os custos de transmissão não recolhidos pelo gerador; substituição do mecanismo de contratação termelétrica pelo modelo Colombiano de opções; condução de leilões de energia nova e existente em conjunto, e segmentação de produtos no leilão pela ótica da demanda com possibilidade de lances em pacotes. Com a adoção destas propostas entende-se que o valor negociado nos leilões de comercialização de energia elétrica refletirão melhor o custo social dos projetos, aumentando a eficiência dos certames. / This study analyzes the regulated electricity procurement auctions conducted between 2005 and 2011 in Brazil, in order to propose improvements in its methodology. Thus, it was reviewed three research areas: auctions design, internalization of externalities, and capacity markets. After analyzing the 21 new energy auctions that period, it is concluded the auction design with a second discriminatory bid is appropriate to the aims at achieving as low as possible prices, however there is room for improvement. Identified weaknesses are: (1) thermal availability capacity hiring method biased in favor of energy sources with higher variable costs; (2) inadequate price cap, unable to mitigate Eletrobras market power in existing power auctions, (3) and bidding by private economic cost. So, it is suggested the following actions to improve the efficiency of energy auctions: (a) carrying out an additional step prior to the current hybrid auction design in order to solve the problem of establishing appropriate ceiling price; (b) use of additional to internalize transmission costs not paid by generator; (c) replacement of the bid mechanism used for thermal power plants to Colombian options model; (d) driving new and existing energy auctions together, and (e) segment auctions products by the demand side with the possibility of bidding in packages. In adopting these proposals it is expected the value traded in the electricity procurement auction conducted in Brazil will better reflect the social cost of projects and so improving its efficiency.

Este trabalho adota a técnica de simulação baseada em agentes para analisar o processo de precificação de energia comercializada no ambiente de contratação regulada (leilões) do mercado elétrico do Brasil. Nesse contexto, são simulados leilões de energia nova - produto fonte eólica. O simulador dos leilões de energia do Brasil foi construído através de programação realizada em matlab. Nesse programa, é possível comparar a escolha de lances de vendedores participantes nos pleitos. Os agentes (vendedores) participantes dos leilões aprendem com o decorrer dos leilões simulados. A aprendizagem é determinada através da utilização de variação do algoritmo Q-learning. Os resultados claramente demonstram que as técnicas de aprendizagem consideradas têm resultados mais favoráveis do que escolhas aleatórias (sem aprendizagem). Considerando outro ponto de vista, é possível verificar diferença de média de preços nos leilões entre os perfis de geradores públicos e privados. Além disso, é possível afirmar que o preço da energia se altera dada alteração na participação relativa de vendedores públicos ou privados nos pleitos. / This thesis adopts an agent based simulation in order to analyses the pricing process of energy that is negotiate by auctions in Brazil. In this work, wind energy power auctions are simulate. The model was developed in Matlab platform, and so, it was possible to compare the bidding process of the players in those auctions. The players learn during the auctions, and the process of learning is defined by a variation of the Q-learning algorithm. The results of the research show that when Q-learning is considered by generators there are more benefits than it is not. From another point of view, it is possible to say that there is difference between the prices of public and private players (enterprises that sell Wind energy). Besides it is possible to say that when the number of public and private players in an auction change the energy price.

Powering Kenya's agricultural economy, the Kenyan flower industry is prided as an example of successful African integration into global agricultural trade. Export markets are bifurcated due to a marked shift from the Dutch flower auctions and an increase in trade within 'direct markets' which includes supermarkets and florists. While flower production is dominated by a few vertically integrated, large scale flower farms (>100 ha), mid-scale (20-80 hectares) and small-scale (>0.25 hectares) flower farms which are the focus of the thesis, face a unique set of challenges in terms of navigating access to the more stable direct markets. The overall narrative is that even in a buyer-driven market, Kenyan cut flower producers at the mid and small scale have agency, and they exercise their bargaining power for favourable export access by diversification and differentiation in strategies and networks. Two meta-narratives framing the sector coalesce around the development angle which showcases contestations around labour and environmental abuses and the political economy angle focusing on governance structures and power relations of production. This thesis goes deeper than these meta narratives by introducing micro-level, relational perspectives using the GPN framework, and asks what strategies Kenyan mid and small scale cut flower producers employ to navigate the shifts in export markets as producers diversify from the Dutch auctions towards supermarkets. My findings identify diversification as the common factor in mid and small scale producers' strategies for securing a range of lucrative export markets. Producers' enhance their bargaining power to access diverse markets through adaptable production, relationally through collective action, and in the regulatory sphere by circumvention, compliance or contestation for more favourable 'rules of the game'. Going beyond labour and environmental analyses, the thesis uniquely analyses the knowledge economy originating from the cut flower sector as an undertheorized aspect of its development impact.

Då den svenska offentliga sektorn handlar kontorsmaterial, idrottsarenor, tjänster eller andra former av inköp hamnar detta under benämningen offentlig upphandling. Den totala summan av offentlig upphandling i Sverige uppskattas överstiga 500 miljarder svenska kronor årligen. När en offentlig upphandling skall genomföras skapas ett förfrågningsmaterial från upphandlaren genom vilket leverantörer får lämna anbud om att kunna slutföra det kontrakt som erbjuds. När anbuden kommer in är det upphandlarens uppgifter att avgöra vilket anbud som är det mest fördelaktiga, detta genom att väga olika faktorer emot varandra. Denna studie undersöker ifall faktorn pris prioriteras i denna beslutsfattande situation från upphandlaren. Resultaten visar på att pris först i slutändan är den faktor som avgör vilken leverantör som blir vinnare i budgivningen, men detta är först efter att andra faktorer redan har blivit beaktade och påverkat faktorn pris. / Program: Civilekonomprogrammet

Wireless spectrum is a limited resource that must be used efficiently. It is also a broadcast medium, hence, additional procedures are required to maintain communication over the wireless spectrum private. In this thesis, we investigate three key issues related to efficient use and privacy of wireless spectrum use. First, we propose GAVEL, a truthful short-term auction mechanism that enables efficient use of the wireless spectrum through the licensed shared access model. Second, we propose CPRecycle, an improved Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) receiver that retrieves useful information from the cyclic prefix for interference mitigation thus improving spectral efficiency. Third and finally, we propose WiFi Glass, an attack vector on home WiFi networks to infer private information about home occupants. First we consider, spectrum auctions. Existing short-term spectrum auctions do not satisfy all the features required for a heterogeneous spectrum market. We discover that this is due to the underlying auction format, the sealed bid auction. We propose GAVEL, a truthful auction mechanism, that is based on the ascending bid auction format, that avoids the pitfalls of existing auction mechanisms that are based on the sealed bid auction format. Using extensive simulations we observe that GAVEL can achieve better performance than existing mechanisms. Second, we study the use of cyclic prefix in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing. The cyclic prefix does contain useful information in the presence of interference. We discover that while the signal of interest is redundant in the cyclic prefix, the interference component varies significantly. We use this insight to design CPRecycle, an improved OFDM receiver that is capable of using the information in the cyclic prefix to mitigate various types of interference. It improves spectral efficiency by decoding packets in the presence of interference. CPRecycle require changes to the OFDM receiver and can be deployed in most networks today. Finally, home WiFi networks are considered private when encryption is enabled using WPA2. However, experiments conducted in real homes, show that the wireless activity on the home network can be used to infer occupancy and activity states such as sleeping and watching television. With this insight, we propose WiFi Glass, an attack vector that can be used to infer occupancy and activity states (limited to three activity classes), using only the passively sniffed WiFi signal from the home environment. Evaluation with real data shows that in most of the cases, only about 15 minutes of sniffed WiFi signal is required to infer private information, highlighting the need for countermeasures.