Submitted by Sarah Helena Moya (moya.sarah@gmail.com) on 2012-09-03T01:28:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 20120831 Dissertação Sarah Moya.pdf: 438276 bytes, checksum: 4f3ffa26ca7e793e571d9243882c9a79 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2012-09-03T12:55:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 20120831 Dissertação Sarah Moya.pdf: 438276 bytes, checksum: 4f3ffa26ca7e793e571d9243882c9a79 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-09-03T13:07:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 20120831 Dissertação Sarah Moya.pdf: 438276 bytes, checksum: 4f3ffa26ca7e793e571d9243882c9a79 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-08-02 / This paper estimates the impact of hiring structured teaching methods on evolution and dispersion of performance of students in primary public schools of São Paulo State municipalities to evaluate whether the structured teaching methods, besides increasing the average performance of students in contracting municipalities, also provide homogenization of score of students in a higher level. To this end, we used data from 2005, 2007 and 2009 of Prova Brasil exam for Portuguese and Mathematics and the difference in differences estimation method with fixed effects for municipality. The results obtained showed that the structured teaching methods contribute to increase the average performance of municipalities, and that was not observed different benefit to students with higher or lower initial performance. About the effect of structured teaching methods in the standard deviation of scores, the results did not show sufficient robustness to allow us to affirm that the methods contribute to the homogenization of the performance. / Neste trabalho analisamos o efeito da contratação de sistemas de ensino para métodos estruturados sobre a evolução e dispersão do desempenho dos alunos das escolas públicas municipais do estado de São Paulo. O objetivo da análise é avaliar se os métodos estruturados de ensino, além de aumentar o desempenho médio dos alunos nos municípios contratantes, também servem com meio para homogeneizar a nota dos alunos em um nível mais elevado. Para este fim utilizamos os dados dos exames de português e matemática dos anos de 2005, 2007 e 2009 da Prova Brasil e, pelo método de estimação de diferenças em diferenças com, efeito fixo por município, avaliamos o incremento no desempenho médio e no desvio padrão do desempenho dos municípios devido à posse de contrato para método estruturado em relação àqueles que não o possuem. Os resultados obtidos revelaram que os métodos estruturados de ensino contribuem para o aumento do desempenho médio dos municípios, e que não foi observado benefício diferenciado a alunos com maior ou menor desempenho inicial. Sobre o efeito da contratação de sistemas de ensino sobre o desvio padrão do desempenho, os resultados não apresentaram robustez suficiente que nos permitissem afirmar que os métodos contribuem para a homogeneização do desempenho.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions l'effet de l'auto-sélection des salariés sur l'estimation de la productivité, des différentiels de salaires et de qualité du travail entre les secteurs. Afin de prendre en compte l'auto-sélection des employés dans l'estimation des différentiels le long de la distribution des salaires, nous construisons une approche innovante composée de trois caractéristiques: (i) nous nous intéressons aux effets par quantile inconditionnel; (ii) nous incorporons des effets fixes spécifiques à chaque quantile; (iii) nous proposons une méthode de correction de l'incidental parameter bias. Cette approche permet de produire des résultats exploitables en terme de politiques publiques. Nous montrons dans un premier temps que la sélection positive dans le secteur public tend à se dégrader. Elle disparaît totalement en haut de la distribution des salaires dans la période récente, suggérant un effet négatif du gel des salaires nominaux. Dans notre deuxième article, nous mettons en évidence une sélection négative substantielle dans le secteur informel concernant les hommes et les bas salaires. Cette sélection négative apparaît à la suite de la Grande Récession, indiquant une réallocation des salariés les moins productifs vers le secteur informel. Dans le dernier article, nous montrons pour la période récente que le niveau de productivité des SCOP n'est pas significativement différent de celui des autres entreprises. Nous confirmons l'hypothèse selon laquelle les motivations non-pécunières des employés expliquent une partie importante de la productivité des SCOP dans deux des secteurs étudiés (secteur manufacturier et secteur des transports). / This PhD thesis studies the effect of workers' self-selection when estimating productivity, wages and job quality differentials between sectors. In order to account for the self-selection of employees in the estimation of differentials along the wage distribution, we develop an innovative approach comprising three features: (i) we rely on unconditional quantile effects ; (ii) we incorporate quantile-specific fixed effects; (iii) we suggest a treatment of the incidental parameter bias. This method allows to provide public policies relevant comparisons. We show first that the positive selection into public jobs tends to decline. It totally disappears among top earners in the recent period, suggesting the detrimental effect of nominal wage freeze. In the second paper, we unveil that there is a substantial negative selection into informal salary work for men on average and particularly at low wages. It arises in the wake of the Great Recession, pointing to a shakeout of less productive workers in the formal sector. In the last paper, we account for employees' non-pecuniary motives in our comparison of the productivity of labour-managed firms and other for-profits company. We confirm for the recent period and on a large scale that the SCOP total factor productivity level is not significantly different from the other firms'. We find also results that support the hypothesis that employees non-pecuniary motives accounts for a substantial part of French labour-managed firms productivity in two of the three industries studied (manufacturing and transports).

Regional integration gained popularity and is prioritised globally, especially in developing economies, including those on the African continent. This is based on its potential to accelerate trade, stimulate economic growth, and increase access to basic necessities and to induce a sustainable increase in economic output and improved standards of living. Regional integration in the context of developing economies is entirely implicit. Modern literature observes it as a policy option for dealing with a wide variety of issues related to politics, economic factors, and societal welfare. The SACU, existing since 1910, made several trade agreements globally. The union aims at reducing inequalities, ensuring continuous improvement in the general welfare of the population, and sustainable economic growth. Research, though, indicates that the region persistently reflects poor socio-economic conditions. This is accompanied by limited development in infrastructure, lowly skilled and experienced workforce. Primary sector activities dominate their economies, such as mining and agriculture, high levels of inequalities and poverty. Regional integration was implemented differently in several countries globally, and Africa in particular. The research noted that literature on regional integration and its implications on socio-economic development lacks, especially in the context of SACU. A deficiency was also emphasised the universal measurement of regional integration, which is not standardised. Some research employed single variables as a proxy, whilst some composite indices were also compiled and implemented, suiting the diverse setups and environments. The development measurements, therefore, cannot universally be applied attributable to context-specific concerns, prevalent in regions or countries. This study developed the SACU Regional Integration Index (SRII) because the existing indices on regional integration are limited concerning applicability. Most of the indices established in the literature were developed for specific countries and regions with diverse characteristics from those of the SACU region. In addition to a detailed literature review and closing methodological divergencies, this study evaluated the effects of regional integration on socio-economic development in the SACU countries. The objectives of the study were first, to produce the SACU Regional Integration Index. Second, the study aimed at evaluating the effect of regional integration on various socio-economic development factors listed as economic growth, investments, and the Human Development Index (HDI), inequalities and poverty. Third, the study provided policy recommendations to the socio-economic problems encountered by the SACU countries; and lastly, to implement the proposed SRII as a way of providing policymakers with the actual impacts. The study employed the principal component analysis (PCA) to construct the SRII. The Ordinary Least Squares (LSDV), fixed effects and random effects were employed to ascertain the effect of regional integration on socio-economic development in the SACU countries. The constructed SACU index comprises four dimensions. These are trade integration; productive integration; infrastructure integration; and financial and macroeconomic policies integration. The index revealed that SACU countries are dominated by trade and productive integration. Further analysis of the results indicated that collaboration on the financial and macroeconomic policies is lacking and the infrastructure dimension is lagging in the SACU region. Based on the second objective, the results indicate that regional integration is critical in improving trade openness and HDI, especially in Lesotho, Botswana, and Namibia. The effect of regional integration on real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, inequalities, and poverty reduction was realised in the long run through the interaction of all variables under study. This supported the dynamic effects posited by the dynamic theory of regional integration. It was established that growth, though, in infrastructure is insignificant compared to other dimensions of regional integration. This explains why regional integration was unsupportive concerning stimulating investments in all the economies forming the SACU region. The third objective was to proffer policy recommendations. Several practical policy recommendations emerged from this study, based on the literature findings and review. These recommendations include implementing inclusive development programmes, promotion private sector participation in economic activities, and policies, to boost production capacity in the countries in this region. Based on the fourth objective, this study further recommends SACU as a region, to integrate into the global economy. This can be conducted by participating in global production networks for manufacturing and taking advantage of emerging economies. This would diversify their export markets and their sources of finance development. SACU countries should make regional integration and trade a part of their national and sectoral development plans, ensuring coherent trade and industrial policies. They should also improve their labour, education, social protection, and safety nets. With data availability, this research can be extended to incorporate quarterly data or more years of study. Time-series methods can be applied, such as the Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) method. This will increase the sample size and the number of observations, which can improve the outcome from the statistical and econometric analysis. Future studies may also evaluate the applicability of the index constructed in this study. / Economics / D. Phil. (Economics)

Over the recent decade the world has seen an increase in businesses launching new, or changing theirbusiness model to, digital platforms. New and established businesses are flocking to digital platformsin order to evolve their business model and keep up with advancements in technology, such as cloudcomputing, which enables commerce and communication on a much faster and more streamlinedlevel. Digital platforms with two-sided markets often face fierce competition from market incumbentswhich benefit from traditional supply-side economies of scale, as well as from other digital platforms.Therefore, the competitive strategy adopted at market launch and under operations will have a greatimpact on the platform performance in terms of firm financial performance.This study is divided into two parts and is performed with the objective to gain insight into thecompetitive strategies adopted by digital platform businesses with two-sided markets, and how suchstrategic decisions may be informed in favor of profitability. The first part investigates the influence ofinternal factors, such as debt ratio, quick ratio, sales growth, and capital turnover ratio, on the firmfinancial performance (measured by return on assets) of digital platforms with two-sided markets inthe Nordics. The second part investigates the relationship between the firm financial performance(measured by return on assets) of digital platform businesses with two-sided markets after launch andthe type of strategy adopted. Subsequently, two hypotheses are presented. Subsequently, twohypotheses are presented. A panel data regression model is developed to evaluate these relationships,allowing the authors to test the null hypotheses. The data set used in the panel data regression modelcomprise an unbalanced sample of 27 companies who have launched their platforms in Norway,Sweden, and Denmark. Financial data was gathered in the form of return on assets (dependentvariable), capital turnover ratio, quick ratio, debt ratio, and sales growth (explanatory variables).These companies were grouped depending on which strategy was adopted on market launch and underearly operations. These strategies are subsidy, seeding and marquee users, micro market launch andpiggybacking (categorical ‘dummy’ variables).Studying the firm financial performance of businesses which adopt digital platforms will help us tobetter understand the efficacy of strategies adopted and how these strategies impact financialperformance. Both null hypotheses tested may be partially rejected. The authors conclude that theinternal factors debt ratio, quick ratio, and sales growth have a significant influence on theprofitability (measured by return on assets) of digital platforms with two-sided markets in the Nordics.The influence of the internal factor capital turnover ratio on profitability is statistically insignificant.Quick ratio has a positive significant influence on profitability, whereas debt ratio and sales growthhave a negative influence. The authors also conclude that companies which have business modelsallowing them to adopt a subsidy strategy yields stronger profitability than those which adopt otherstrategies. Companies which entice seed & marquee users to their platform as a strategy yields thesecond strongest profitability. Companies which choose a micro market launch strategy yield theweakest profitability. The authors of this study will not draw conclusions on the efficacy of theadoption of a piggybacking strategy on profitability due to the limited number of observationsattributed to the piggybacking dataset.Future studies may expand upon this research with the inclusion of a wider catchment of businesses,as well as the inclusion of a wider data set to include other geographical locations and improvestatistical significance of the data set. An improvement to the study may also be to analyze thecorrelation between the strength of competitors upon market entry and the efficacy of the strategiesadopted.

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This study aims to investigate the effects of the integration in global value chains on the specialization in the production of services and the relative demand for high-skilled labor in the Swedish manufacturing industry. The empirical model and the predictions are based on theories and findings such as the phenomenon of servicification, the Hecksher-Ohlin theorem, and the Stolper-Samuelsson theorem. The study is conducted using a regression analysis of panel data and employs a fixed effects model to control for unobserved heterogeneities between the entities. An interaction variable based on the initial ICT capital stock of each sector is used in an attempt to establish causality. The results show that there is a positive and significant correlation between the growth of intermediate imports and the growth value added through total services and business services between 2000 and 2018. The results also display a positive and significant correlation between the growth of intermediate trade and the value added through total services between 1995 and 2018. The direction of causality of the relationships are not established. Furthermore, the results for growth of relative employment and relative wage are insignificant. Based on these findings it is concluded that there is a correlation between increased participation in global value chains and the growth of value added through services.