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<p> Eleven facies types, distinguished on the basis of internal grain size and primary sedimentary structure, were obsereved at the central region of the Brampton esker. These facies were then used to perform an empirical test of H.C. Saunderson's model of eskerine sedimentation for this part of the esker. Primarily, the vertical sequence of facies consisted of: (a) cross-bedded gravel representing the front of a prograding delta; (b) delta-front sands that are poorly sorted and characterized by massive structure and parallel lamination; (c) cross-bedded coarse sand recording the migration of sand waves across the topset; (d) trough-shaped cross-laminae of fine sand indicating current ripple migration on top of the sand waves; (e) draped lamination grading into cross-laminae of fine sand showing stoss-side preservation as the ratio of suspended sediment to bed load decreased; and (f) thick layers of silt and clay deposited in stagnant water conditions brought about by delta abandonment. Cut-and-fill structures were also present, giving evidence of distributary channels traversing the delta. </p> <p> Saunderson's model adequately explains the origin of sediments in the central region of the esker, but some modifications were made on the basis of new evidence revealed by a recently uncovered exposure. </p> <p> The sedimentary enviroment was that of a delta which consisted of a topset network of distributary channels prograding into a glaciolacustrine enviroment. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy

[pt] A relação entre orientação para o mercado e desempenho é um tema que desde o início dos anos noventa atrai a atenção de muitos pesquisadores das áreas de marketing e estratégia empresarial. Várias pesquisas nacionais e internacionais comprovam uma relação de causalidade entre os construtos. Esta pesquisa investiga se essa relação é válida no contexto da indústria hospitalar brasileira através do teste empírico da hipótese: O grau de orientação para o mercado é positivamente correlacionado com o desempenho dos hospitais no Brasil. A pesquisa testa e confirma essa hipótese através do uso da técnica de modelagem por equações estruturais (SEM - Structural Equation Modeling). Após a confirmação da relação de causalidade entre os construtos, classifica-se os hospitais em grupos, de acordo com seu tipo de orientação para o mercado, através da técnica de análise de clusters - K means. O passo seguinte é a comparação das médias de desempenho de cada um dos grupos através de análise multivariada da variância (MANOVA). Deste modo, o estudo conclui que não só existe uma relação positiva entre orientação para o mercado e desempenho, como também que o tipo de orientação para o mercado conduz os hospitais a diferentes níveis de desempenho. / [en] The relationship between market orientation and performance is a subject that has been drawing the attention of many researchers in the marketing and business strategy fields. The causality relationship of the mentioned constructs has been confirmed by many national and international studies. The purpose of this study is to determine if this relationship is also valid in the context of the Brazilian hospital industry through the empirical test of the hypothesis: the level of market orientation is positively correlated with the performance of Brazilian hospitals. This study tests and confirms the stated hypothesis employing the Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) technique. After confirming that there is a causality relationship among market orientation and performance, the hospitals are classified into groups according to their type of market orientation, which is done by using the Clusters Analysis technique. The last step of the study is to compare the performance level of each group by use of Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). This study concludes that not only is there a positive relationship among market orientation and performance, but also that the kind of market orientation leads hospitals to different levels of performance.

Em mercados de capitais perfeitos, a decisão de investimento de uma empresa pode ser considerada independente de sua decisão de financiamento, uma vez que recursos externos funcionam como um perfeito substituto para o capital interno. No entanto, em mercados de capitais com imperfeições, tais como custos de transação, custos de falência, problemas de assimetria de informações e problemas de agência, a disponibilidade de capital interno tende a influenciar a decisão de investimento. A insuficiência de recursos internos pode levar empresas a não aproveitarem boas oportunidades de investimento (subinvestimento) e o excesso pode incentivar administradores a investirem em projetos não lucrativos (superinvestimento). Em função de características operacionais, financeiras e administrativas, algumas empresas são mais sujeitas aos impactos de imperfeições de mercados e, por este motivo, seus investimentos devem ser mais sensíveis à geração interna de recursos. O objetivo deste estudo é investigar, no universo de empresas brasileiras de capital aberto, a sensibilidade do investimento em capital fixo - representado pela variação do imobilizado bruto - à geração interna de recursos - representada pelo fluxo de caixa operacional - bem como os fatores (características operacionais, financeiras e administrativas) que afetam essa sensibilidade. Foram considerados os seguintes fatores: tempo de negociação na bolsa de valores; tamanho da empresa; alavancagem financeira; percentual de ações em posse do(s) acionista(s) controlador(es); taxa de pagamento de dividendos e setor de atividade. A abordagem do estudo foi baseada em modelos de regressão múltipla. Dados em painel foram utilizados para estimar os coeficientes dos modelos. Na primeira parte do estudo, foi feita regressão do investimento sobre o fluxo de caixa e variáveis de controle. Na segunda parte do estudo, termos de interação entre o fluxo de caixa e os fatores corporativos foram introduzidos nos modelos. Os resultados da primeira parte deste estudo não mostraram evidências de que geração interna de recursos tem impacto sobre o investimento, sugerindo que nem todas as empresas preferem (ou dependem de) recursos internos para investir. Os resultados da segunda parte mostraram que, dependendo das características das empresas, a geração interna de recursos é bastante relevante para o investimento.Tamanho, alavancagem financeira e percentual de ações ordinárias em posse do(s) acionista(s) controlador(es) afetam a sensibilidade do investimento à geração interna de recursos. Quanto maior o tamanho da empresa, quanto maior sua alavancagem financeira e quanto maior o percentual de ações em posse do(s) acionista(s) controlador(es), menor será o impacto da geração interna de recursos sobre o investimento. Isso é coerente com a existência de custos de transação, custos de falência, assimetria de informações e problemas de agência. Os resultados relativos aos dois últimos fatores sugerem que o problema de superinvestimento é mais crítico que o de subinvestimento em empresas brasileiras de capital aberto. / In perfect capital markets, a firm´s investment decision can be considered independent from its financing decision, because external funds provide a perfect substitute for internal capital. However, in capital markets with imperfections, such as transaction costs, bankruptcy costs, information asymmetries and agency problems, the availability of internal capital tends to have an influence on investment decision. The shortage of internal funds may lead firms to pass up good investment opportunities (underinvestment) and the excess can encourage managers to invest in non-valuable projects (overinvestment). Due to operational, financial and managing features, some firms are more liable to the impacts of market imperfections than others and, for this reason, their investment should be more sensitive to internal funds generation. The aim of this study is to investigate, in the universe of brazilian public firms, the of fixed capital investment – represented by change in gross fixed assets – to internal funds generation – represented by cash flow from operations – as well as the corporate factors (operational, financial and managing features) that affect this sensitivity. The following factors were considered: length of time traded in the stock exchange market; firm size; financial leverage; percentage of common assets detained by controllers; dividend payment rate and industry. The study approach was based on multiple regression models. Panel data was used to estimate models coefficients. In the first part of the study, investment was regressed on cash flow and control variables. In the second part, interaction terms between cash flow and corporate factors were introduced in the models. The results of the first part of this study showed no evidence that internal funds generation has impact on investment, suggesting that not all firms prefer (or depend on) internal funds to invest. The results of the second part showed that, conditioned on firms features, internal funds generation is rather considerable for investment decision. Size, financial leverage and percentage of common assets detained by controllers affect investment sensitivity to internal funds generation. The larger the firm size, the larger its financial leverage and the larger the percentage of common assets detained by controllers, smaller will be the impact of internal funds generation on investment. This is consistent with the existence of transaction costs, bankruptcy costs, information asymmetries and agency problems. The results concerning the two latter factors suggest that the overinvestment problem is more serious than the underinvestment problem in brazilian public firms.

Em mercados de capitais perfeitos, a decisão de investimento de uma empresa pode ser considerada independente de sua decisão de financiamento, uma vez que recursos externos funcionam como um perfeito substituto para o capital interno. No entanto, em mercados de capitais com imperfeições, tais como custos de transação, custos de falência, problemas de assimetria de informações e problemas de agência, a disponibilidade de capital interno tende a influenciar a decisão de investimento. A insuficiência de recursos internos pode levar empresas a não aproveitarem boas oportunidades de investimento (subinvestimento) e o excesso pode incentivar administradores a investirem em projetos não lucrativos (superinvestimento). Em função de características operacionais, financeiras e administrativas, algumas empresas são mais sujeitas aos impactos de imperfeições de mercados e, por este motivo, seus investimentos devem ser mais sensíveis à geração interna de recursos. O objetivo deste estudo é investigar, no universo de empresas brasileiras de capital aberto, a sensibilidade do investimento em capital fixo - representado pela variação do imobilizado bruto - à geração interna de recursos - representada pelo fluxo de caixa operacional - bem como os fatores (características operacionais, financeiras e administrativas) que afetam essa sensibilidade. Foram considerados os seguintes fatores: tempo de negociação na bolsa de valores; tamanho da empresa; alavancagem financeira; percentual de ações em posse do(s) acionista(s) controlador(es); taxa de pagamento de dividendos e setor de atividade. A abordagem do estudo foi baseada em modelos de regressão múltipla. Dados em painel foram utilizados para estimar os coeficientes dos modelos. Na primeira parte do estudo, foi feita regressão do investimento sobre o fluxo de caixa e variáveis de controle. Na segunda parte do estudo, termos de interação entre o fluxo de caixa e os fatores corporativos foram introduzidos nos modelos. Os resultados da primeira parte deste estudo não mostraram evidências de que geração interna de recursos tem impacto sobre o investimento, sugerindo que nem todas as empresas preferem (ou dependem de) recursos internos para investir. Os resultados da segunda parte mostraram que, dependendo das características das empresas, a geração interna de recursos é bastante relevante para o investimento.Tamanho, alavancagem financeira e percentual de ações ordinárias em posse do(s) acionista(s) controlador(es) afetam a sensibilidade do investimento à geração interna de recursos. Quanto maior o tamanho da empresa, quanto maior sua alavancagem financeira e quanto maior o percentual de ações em posse do(s) acionista(s) controlador(es), menor será o impacto da geração interna de recursos sobre o investimento. Isso é coerente com a existência de custos de transação, custos de falência, assimetria de informações e problemas de agência. Os resultados relativos aos dois últimos fatores sugerem que o problema de superinvestimento é mais crítico que o de subinvestimento em empresas brasileiras de capital aberto. / In perfect capital markets, a firm´s investment decision can be considered independent from its financing decision, because external funds provide a perfect substitute for internal capital. However, in capital markets with imperfections, such as transaction costs, bankruptcy costs, information asymmetries and agency problems, the availability of internal capital tends to have an influence on investment decision. The shortage of internal funds may lead firms to pass up good investment opportunities (underinvestment) and the excess can encourage managers to invest in non-valuable projects (overinvestment). Due to operational, financial and managing features, some firms are more liable to the impacts of market imperfections than others and, for this reason, their investment should be more sensitive to internal funds generation. The aim of this study is to investigate, in the universe of brazilian public firms, the of fixed capital investment – represented by change in gross fixed assets – to internal funds generation – represented by cash flow from operations – as well as the corporate factors (operational, financial and managing features) that affect this sensitivity. The following factors were considered: length of time traded in the stock exchange market; firm size; financial leverage; percentage of common assets detained by controllers; dividend payment rate and industry. The study approach was based on multiple regression models. Panel data was used to estimate models coefficients. In the first part of the study, investment was regressed on cash flow and control variables. In the second part, interaction terms between cash flow and corporate factors were introduced in the models. The results of the first part of this study showed no evidence that internal funds generation has impact on investment, suggesting that not all firms prefer (or depend on) internal funds to invest. The results of the second part showed that, conditioned on firms features, internal funds generation is rather considerable for investment decision. Size, financial leverage and percentage of common assets detained by controllers affect investment sensitivity to internal funds generation. The larger the firm size, the larger its financial leverage and the larger the percentage of common assets detained by controllers, smaller will be the impact of internal funds generation on investment. This is consistent with the existence of transaction costs, bankruptcy costs, information asymmetries and agency problems. The results concerning the two latter factors suggest that the overinvestment problem is more serious than the underinvestment problem in brazilian public firms.

<p>1.3. Research Questions.</p><p>With this in mind, the research questions of this work are:</p><p>1. Is the Capital Asset Pricing Model still applicable despite the heavy impact of the financial crisis on the financial systems?</p><p>2. What happens to this model when the risk free rate approaches zero?</p><p>3. Is there a relationship between the riskiness of an asset and the risk-free interestrate when the latter is approaching the zero level?</p>

1.3. Research Questions. With this in mind, the research questions of this work are: 1. Is the Capital Asset Pricing Model still applicable despite the heavy impact of the financial crisis on the financial systems? 2. What happens to this model when the risk free rate approaches zero? 3. Is there a relationship between the riskiness of an asset and the risk-free interestrate when the latter is approaching the zero level?

Paper 1: Give More Tomorrow Many charities ask donors to commit to monthly contribution schemes. Monthly contributors give a fixed sum every month, which is automatically deducted from their bank account. These donors are the most profitable ones for a charity. On average, they give more than donors who contribute sporadically. They also facilitate the long-run financial planning of the charity, and they reduce the administrative and fundraising costs. What will influence a donor's decision to commit to a monthly contribution scheme? If the costs and benefits associated with contributing to a charity occur at different points in time, the answer will depend on the donor's inter-temporal preferences. More specifically, it will be of importance whether donors are time consistent or whether they exhibit present-biased preferences.  This paper designs and tests a fundraising strategy that allows for present-biased preferences among donors. The strategy, Give More Tomorrow, was implemented as a randomized field experiment in collaboration with a large charity. 1134 donors that make monthly contributions were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. In the first group, monthly donors were asked to increase their donation starting immediately. In the second group, monthly donors were asked to increase their donations starting two months later. Mean donations were 32 percent higher in the latter group, a highly significant difference. Donations conditional on giving were also significantly higher in the latter group. The effect of the GMT strategy is economically large and highly profitable to the charity. Paper 2: Crowding Out or Crowding In? The crowding-out hypothesis says that private givers, who are also taxpayers, will use their tax-financed donations as a substitute for their voluntary donations, thus reducing the net effectiveness of grants (Warr, 1982, 1983; Roberts, 1984; Bernheim, 1986; and Andreoni, 1988). While theory predicts a one-to-one relationship between government grants and private donations, econometric and experimental studies have found evidence of partial or no crowding out (see, e.g., Khanna et al., 1995; Payne, 1998; Khanna and Sandler, 2000; and Okten and Weisbrod, 2000). A recent contribution to this literature argues that government grants reduce the organizations' fundraising efforts, which may indirectly cause a decrease in private contributions (Andreoni and Payne, 2003). This paper employs a previously unexplored panel dataset to test whether government grants crowd out private donations to charitable organizations, controlling for changes in the organizations' fundraising behavior. The data covers all registered charitable organizations in Sweden between 1989 and 2003. We have a total of 361 organizations where the largest group is health related. The panel data allows us to control for unobserved organizational heterogeneity and time fixed effects. Furthermore, we use a 2SLS specification to control for possible endogeneity in government grants and fundraising expenditures. Complete crowding out can be strongly rejected. In the 2SLS regression, the estimated crowd-out is small and highly significant in the full sample, on average 5.0%. In the disaggregated sample, we cannot reject zero crowding out for any type of organization in the 2SLS regressions. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that organizations are net revenue maximizing, indicating that fundraising activities are efficient. Paper 3: Is Foreign Aid Paternalistic? (with Ola Granstrom and Felix Masiye) In this paper, we experimentally investigate whether donors are paternalistically altruistic when contributing to foreign aid. A paternalist may be defined as someone who advances other people's interests, such as life, health, or safety, at the expense of their liberty or autonomy. In economic theory, a donor is said to be paternalistically altruistic if he cares about a recipient's wellbeing, but does not fully respect the recipient's preferences (Pollak, 1988; Jones-Lee, 1991, 1992; Jacobsson et al., 2005). In a double-blind experiment, a subject chooses whether to make a monetary or a tied transfer (mosquito nets) to an anonymous household in Zambia. Recipients have revealed preferences for money, as their willingness to pay for mosquito nets is positive but below the market price. A monetary transfer will therefore preserve the household's preferences while a tied transfer is paternalistic. The mean donation of mosquito nets differs significantly from zero, thereby implying paternalistic preferences among donors. Paternalistic donors constitute 65 percent of the total sample, whereas purely altruistic donors constitute 15 percent. We conclude that health-focused paternalistic rather than purely altruistic preferences dominate the foreign-aid giving of individuals. Paper 4: Altruism without Borders? (with Ola Granstrom) Why do individuals contribute to foreign aid? Does the willingness to give increase the more we know about the recipients? Although there is some literature on the strategic interests of countries in providing foreign aid, (see, e.g., Alesina and Dollar, 2000) very little is yet known about which preferences guide the foreign-aid giving of individual donors. This paper experimentally tests altruism over borders. We design a cross-country dictator game where the degree of identification of the recipient is varied in four treatments: (1) anonymity, (2) photo, (3) information and (4) photo and information. In addition, questionnaire data on donor characteristics is gathered. The mean donation is 55%, which is considerably higher than in standard dictator games. In contrast to previous within-country experiments, we find no significant effect of identification on donations. Furthermore, we find that women donate significantly more than men (64 compared to 50 percent) and that those who state that aid is too large donate significantly less than those who state that aid is too small (24 compared to 67 percent). / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2006 S. 5-7: Summary of Papers, S. 13-125: 4 papers

Abstract Increasing information systems (IS) security breaches require investments in terms of IS security techniques/practices or personnel. Prior research on IS security investment has provided economic models based on neoclassical economics to assess how much to invest in IS security. These models assume that the goal of IS security investment is only benefit maximization, and that all of the actors involved are unbiased rational actors with complete information. It is argued in this thesis that these prior models for IS security investment are flawed for two reasons. First, benefit maximization is not an appropriate goal for IS security investment, because the benefits and costs of IS security investment cannot be reliably calculated. Second, decision makers are not unbiased rational actors, because they do not have enough information to make IS security investment decisions. To address these concerns, this thesis outlines a framework for IS security investment, which is based on behavioral economics. This framework makes new assumptions about IS security investment decision makers, and redefines the contextual nature of IS security investment. As an example of how to operationalize this framework in IS research, this thesis examines IS security investment decision-making by using a theoretical model drawn from reputational herding theory. A field study for empirical testing of the model was conducted, which involved surveying 88 information security experts in Finland. The results of the field study not only confirm the new framework, but also identify several motives that strongly predict IS security investment. In this thesis the assumptions proposed for the framework have also been also tested in a different research setting: the unauthorized uploading behavior of digital goods. This study involves 220 respondents, and the findings suggest that the proposed assumptions for the framework are also applicable in that new research setting. Overall, this doctoral thesis contributes to IS research by providing a framework to increase the overall understanding of how IS security managers make decisions with regard to IS security investment; moreover, this thesis presents empirically-grounded implications for how practitioners can improve the quality of their IS security investments. / Tiivistelmä Jatkuvasti lisääntyvät tietoturvaloukkaukset edellyttävät investointeja tietoturvatekniikoihin/käytänteisiin tai henkilöstöön. Aikaisempi tietoturvainvestointitutkimus on kehittänyt neoklassiseen taloustieteeseen perustuvia taloudellisia malleja tietoturvainvestointien määrän arvioimiseksi. Nämä mallit olettavat, että tietoturvainvestointien tavoitteena on ainoastaan hyötyjen maksimointi ja että kaikki toimijat ovat täydellisen tiedon pohjalta toimivia, puolueettomia ja rationaalisia. Tässä väitöskirjassa esitetään, että aikaisemmat tietoturvainvestointimallit ovat puutteellisia kahdesta syystä. Yhtäältä hyödyn maksimointi ei sovellu hyvin tietoturvainvestointien tavoitteeksi, koska sen hyötyjä ja kustannuksia ei voida luotettavasti laskea. Toisaalta päätöksentekijät eivät ole puolueettomia rationaalisia toimijoita, koska heillä ei ole käytettävissään tarpeeksi tietoa tietoturvainvestointipäätösten tekemiseksi. Nämä asiat huomioidaan tässä väitöskirjassa kehittämällä käyttäytymistaloustieteeseen perustuva tietoturvainvestointien viitekehys. Viitekehys esittää uusia olettamuksia tietoturvainvestointeja tekevistä päätöksentekijöistä ja tietoturvainvestointien kontekstuaalisesta luonteesta Väitöskirjassa havainnollistetaan kehitetyn viitekehyksen soveltamisesta tietojärjestelmätieteen tutkimuksessa tarkastelemalla tietoturvainvestointeihin liittyvää päätöksentekoa maineeseen perustuvan laumateorian (reputational herding theory) pohjalta laaditun teoreettisen mallin näkökulmasta. Kenttätutkimuksessa mallin testaamiseksi empiirisesti laadittiin kysely, johon vastasi 88 tietoturva-asiantuntijaa Suomessa. Kenttätutkimuksen tulokset sekä vastasivat uutta viitekehystä että toivat esiin useita tietoturvainvestointeja vahvasti ennustavia motiiveja. Väitöskirjassa kehitetyn viitekehyksen olettamuksia testattiin myös toisentyyppisessä tutkimusasetelmassa: digitaalisten hyödykkeiden luvaton lataaminen. Tähän tutkimukseen osallistui 220 vastaajaa, ja löydökset osoittavat esitettyjen olettamusten olevan hyödynnettävissä myös tässä uudessa tutkimusasetelmassa. Kaiken kaikkiaan tämän väitöskirjan kontribuutio tietojärjestelmätieteelle on sen tarjoama viitekehys, joka lisää ymmärrystä siitä, kuinka tietoturvapäälliköt tekevät tietoturvainvestointeihin liittyviä päätöksiä. Väitöskirja esittää myös empiiriseen tutkimukseen pohjautuvia käytännön implikaatioita tietoturvainvestointien laadun parantamiseksi.

Asymmetric information is a large potential problem for insurance markets, especially for markets insuring health risk. Despite a large theoretical attention over the last 30 years, the empirical evidence of the extent of the problem is still limited. In part this is due to methodological problems. The fundamental problem being that the private information, on which agents' act, is generally not observable to the researcher. This thesis provides empirical evidence on selection and moral hazard, using a private dental insurance natural experiment that solves many of the methodological problems. The initial decision to select into the insurance is analyzed in the first paper. Interestingly, results indicate both adverse selection and its opposite, advantageous selection, in different parts of the sample. These results are captured in a theoretical model where agents differ in their degree of risk aversion. In the second paper the decision to opt out of insurance is related to new information on risk. Results indicate that updating is asymmetric. Agents do not take the insurer's information fully into account, even though it is public. Finally, the moral hazard effect of dental coverage is analyzed in the last paper. The treatment effect of insurance coverage is separated from self-selection, using propensity score matching, IV and difference-in-differences. The results give strong empirical evidence of moral hazard. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2004 xii s., s. 3-12: sammanfattning, s. 13-104: 3 uppsatser