The problem considered involved assessing willingness of educators to participate in a study offering monetary incentives. Determination of willingness was implemented by sending educators a packet requesting return of a postcard to indicate willingness to participate. The purpose was twofold: to determine the effect of a monetary incentive upon willingness of educators to participate in a research study, and to analyze implications for mail questionnaire studies. A sample of 600 educators was chosen from directories of eleven public schools in north Texas. It included equal numbers of male and female teachers and male and female administrators. Subjects were assigned to one of twelve groups. No two from a school were assigned to different levels of the inducement variable.

The railway system is often considered to be an industry where a monopoly occurs “naturally”, which can explain the public ownership and the use of regulations. However, railways in Europe have been subject to reforms during the last three decades. The use of tendering has increased, which is a way of introducing competition for the market in absence of competition within the market. Still, contracting out services previously produced in-house places a heavy burden on the client, where contract design and its incentive structures can be decisive for the outcome of the reform. This dissertation provides empirical evidence on costs and incentives in a publicly owned monopoly that is subject to reforms, namely the provision of railway maintenance in Sweden. Essay 1 estimates the effect of exposing rail infrastructure maintenance to competitive tendering. The results show that this reform reduced maintenance costs in Sweden by around 11 per cent over the period 1999-2011, without any associated fall in the available measures of quality. Essay 2 estimates the relative cost efficiency between and within maintenance regions in Sweden. The results indicate considerable efficiency gaps together with economies of scale not being fully exploited. Essay 3 analyses the effect of incentive structures in railway maintenance contracts. An increase in the power of the incentive scheme reduces the number of infrastructure failures according to the results. In addition, the estimated effect of the performance incentive schemes suggests that more effort towards preventing train delays is made at the expense of preventing other failures. Essay 4 comprises an estimation of marginal costs of rail maintenance. The static model produces slightly lower marginal costs compared to previous estimates on Swedish data. The results from the dynamic model show that an increase in maintenance costs in year t - 1 predicts an increase in maintenance costs in year t. Indeed, there is an intertemporal effect that depends on the performed maintenance activities (governed by the contract design).

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Full service family physicians in British Columbia (BC) are claiming financial incentives in return for providing enhanced care for patients with chronic diseases. These same physicians are also being actively encouraged to adopt electronic medical record systems (EMRs) with an expectation that their adoption will, among other things, aid in improved chronic disease management (CDM). Indeed, both incentives and clinical information systems have been demonstrated in the literature to be crucial components in effective CDM programs. However, within BC little evidence is available that demonstrates whether EMR adoption is in fact associated with improved provision of CDM services. Furthermore, it is not well understood how the CDM incentive program affects a family practice’s adoption of CDM-related EMR functionality. Through a mixed methods study the relationship between EMR adoption and CDM incentives in a small family practice is explored. Additionally, an audit and feedback intervention is used to test the hypothesis that both incentive use and EMR adoption can simultaneously be improved. Results of the study suggest that the presence of an EMR may not guarantee improvements in delivery of incentivized CDM services; that the incentive program has limits in its ability to promote adoption of CDM-related EMR features; and, that a program of audit and feedback may promote improvements in aspects of EMR adoption and incentive utilization. / Graduate / 0723 / 0769

The ability of auditors to detect fraud, including intentional material misstatements in earnings, remains key to the credibility of audit firms and confidence in capital markets. The PCAOB concludes from its most recent inspections of public company audits that auditors often fail to assess and respond to risks of material misreporting by management. In a behavioral experiment, this study concludes that auditors can increase sensitivity to management motivation to misreport by actively seeking to transform identified risk factors focused on the organization, into factors focused on top managers, and to evaluate whether these manager-focused risk factors represent incentives for personal gain or pressures to avoid a personal loss on the managers. Currently, auditing standards use incentive and pressure as interchangeable constructs, but auditors in this study assess pressure on managers to avoid a loss as a greater risk than an incentive to managers to attain a gain. Results also demonstrate that auditors will be made more sensitive to fraudulent financial reporting risk when focusing on pressure on top managers, than they will be by engaging in a traditional process of assessing total fraud risk based on the three fraud triangle elements. This study is the first to propose a theoretical explanation for why prior studies reflect auditor insensitivity to organizational level fraud risk factors. This study is also the first to enhance knowledge about auditor risk assessment and decision-making through the application of prospect theory and through disaggregation of one of the three elements of the fraud triangle model, by differentiating between incentive and pressure for misreporting earnings.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Dennis L. Weisman / This empirical dissertation consists of three essays on mergers and regulation in the U.S. telecommunications industry. An abstract for each of the three essays follows. Essay 1: This study has attempted to measure the productivity growth associated with 25 incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) over the period 1996-2005 using a Malmquist productivity index. The average efficiency scores for our sample companies have not changed significantly between 1996 and 2005, which indicates that the average ILECs shows no measurable improvement in terms of optimizing their input-output combinations over time. We find some empirical evidence of a positive merger effect, although this effect diminishes over time. In addition, we find that non-merged firms underperform in terms of average productivity growth. Essay 2: This study analyzes the merger effects for 25 ILECs over the period 1996-2005 using stochastic frontier analysis with a time-varying inefficiency model. In addition, we conduct a comparison of indices between the stochastic frontier analysis and the Malmquist index method. The empirical results indicate that the sample of telecommunications firms has experienced deterioration in average productivity growth following the mergers. In addition, both approaches suggest that firms that do not merge underperform in terms of average productivity growth. Essay 3: This essay investigates whether the substitution of price cap regulation (PCR), along with other regulatory regimes, for traditional rate of return regulation (RRR) has had a measurable effect on productivity growth in the U.S. telecommunications industry. A stochastic frontier approach, which differs from previous studies, is employed to compute efficiency change, technological progress, and productivity growth for 25 LECs over the period 1988-1998. By examining the relationship between the change in productivity growth and regulatory regime variables, while controlling for other effects, we find that PCR and other regulatory regimes have a positive effect on productivity growth. However, only PCR has a significant and positive effect in both contemporaneous and lagged model specifications.

Dans cette thèse, nous développons une méthode d’estimation de l’effacement de consommation électrique d’un groupe de clients résidentiels. L’effacement, correspondant à une réduction de la puissance électrique sur une certaine durée, est désormais valorisé sur les marchés électriques et contribue à équilibrer le système électrique. Pour le quantifier, il faut estimer qu’elle aurait été la puissance appelée, i.e. la baseline, en l’absence de l’effacement. Ce dernier s’obtient alors par différence de la baseline et de la puissance réalisée. Les méthodes d’estimation de la baseline reposent sur des profils de consommation, des modèles de régression et des méthodes fondées sur un groupe de contrôle. Ces dernières offrent les résultats les plus précis mais déployer un groupe de contrôle aléatoire pour un usage opérationnel n’est pas envisageable.On s’intéresse donc à sélectionner un groupe de contrôle non-expérimental selon deux approches : la première emploie les caractéristiques observables des clients contrôles et la seconde leurs courbes de charge individuelles. Cette dernière idée consiste à sélectionner ces individus tels que la distance entre leur courbe de charge moyenne et celle du groupe recevant les effacements soit minimale. A cette fin, nous proposons un algorithme de sélection et adaptons les méthodes de régression sous contrainte, ridge et Lasso. Ces nouvelles méthodes procurent les meilleurs résultats. Enfin, pour estimer l’effacement en ligne, nous mettons en place un outil innovant qui associe un système de gestion de flux de données à un logiciel statistique / In this thesis, we develop a method in order to estimate the residential electricity demand reduction. The demand reduction or the curtailment, aiming at reducing the energy use during a short period, is currently enhanced on electricity markets and contributes to balance the electric system. To quantify it, one has to estimate the consumption, i.e. the baseline, which would have been used in the absence of the demand reduction. The curtailment is then obtained by subtracting the metered load during the demand reduction event from the baseline. The baseline estimation methods rely on day or weather matching methods, regression models and control group approaches. These one give the more accurate results but deploying a randomized control group is not possible for an operational use.We are then interested in selecting a non-experimental control group according to two approaches: the first uses the observable characteristics of the control customers and the second their individual load curves. This last idea consists in selecting those individuals such that the distance between their average load curve and that of the demand reduction group is minimal. To this end, we develop a forward selection algorithm and apply the constrained regression methods, ridge and Lasso. These methods provide the best results. Finally, we set up an innovative process which links a data flow module with a statistical software and allows to estimate the demand reduction on-line.

Cette thèse aborde le problème de la surcharge des réseaux des données des opérateurs mobiles. La croissance des abonnements au haut débit mobile engendre aujourd'hui de nombreux goulots d'étranglement dans ces réseaux. Plus particulièrement, la disponibilité de la bande passante sur les stations de bases est de plus en plus réduite. Pour faire face à cette problématique, les opérateurs mobiles essaient de décharger le trafic des données de leurs infrastructures en déployant des réseaux de substitution à petites cellules, tels que les femtocells ou réseaux WiFi publics. Ces réseaux restent néanmoins très localisés et ne résolvent donc que très partiellement le problème. Ainsi, plus récemment, nous voyons l'émergence des réseaux opportunistes qui visent à transmettent les données en ne se basant que sur les dispositifs mobiles, c-à-d, de dispositif à dispositif. Cette thèse vise à évaluer la faisabilité de décharger le trafic de données mobile à l'aide des hotspots WiFi en étendant leur champs de couverture par l'utilisation des réseaux opportunistes. Pour ce faire, cette thèse propose un cadre pour le déchargement (offloading) de données de façon opportuniste et un mécanisme d'incitation pour encourager la coopération des utilisateurs des dispositifs mobiles. Dans une première partie de cette thèse, nous avons tracé la couverture 3G et WiFi à travers plusieurs lignes de bus à Paris afin d'évaluer la façon dont les utilisateurs et les opérateurs mobiles peuvent bénéficier des réseaux WiFi existants pour le déchargement des données. Nos résultats indiquent que les points d'accès WiFi déployés par les fournisseurs de service Internet peuvent décharger une partie non négligeable du trafic de données, cependant des restrictions telles que le temps de l'association et le processus d'authentification peuvent diminuer la quantité de données transmises. Dans une tentative d'offrir une nouvelle approche pour le déchargement mobile, nous proposons dans un second temps un cadre décisionnel multi-critères, appelé OppLite, pour décharger les données des réseaux de mobiles 3G grâce à des communications dispositif à dispositif opportunistes. Nous avons montré par des simulations qu'un tel déchargement mobile opportuniste peut étendre la couverture et l'efficacité des réseaux cellulaires, permettant un déchargement pouvant aller jusqu'à 36% des données dans certains scénarios. L'efficacité du déchargement mobile par les réseaux opportunistes dépend principalement de la tolérance au délai par l'application et de la coopération des utilisateurs mobiles. Le déchargement opportuniste dépend de la volonté de l'utilisateur d'offrir ses ressources aux autres. Nous avons donc proposé, dans un troisième temps, un mécanisme d'incitation, appelé MINEIRO, qui calcul un rang de réputation basée sur la source des messages reçus par les nœuds intermédiaires. MINEIRO permet à des réseaux composés d'un pourcentage important, allant jusqu'à 60%, de nœuds avec un comportement égoïste sans dégradation des performances dans un scénario de mobilité aléatoire. Au delà de ce pourcentage, MINEIRO permet maintenir un taux de livraison et des délais de livraison constants / This thesis addresses the overload problem of the Wireless Internet service Providers' (WISP) network. The growth of mobile broadband subscription has been leading several bottlenecks to WISPs, such as, bandwidth availability and resource sharing of over a single cellular cell. WISPs can move off data traffic from its infrastructure by deploying small cells, such as femtocells, to public WiFi networks or, more recently, to device-to-device opportunistic networks. This work evaluates the feasibility to offload mobile data traffic using WiFi hotspots, proposes a framework to opportunistic data offloading and an incentive mechanism to encourage users cooperation. We mapped 3G and WiFi coverage through several bus routes in Paris in order to evaluate how users and WISPs can benefit from the existing infrastructure. Our results indicate that the deployed WISPs access points can offload part of the data traffic, however restrictions such as association time and the authentication process may reduce the amount of offloaded data. We propose a multi-criteria decision-making framework, called OppLite, to offload data from 3G networks using opportunistic device-to-device communications. Trace-driven simulations showed that opportunistic mobile offloading can expand coverage and network efficiency, offloading up to 36% of data in certain scenarios. Thus, the effectiveness of opportunistic mobile offloading depends mainly of the delay tolerance of the applications and whether the user cooperates. Since opportunistic offloading depends on the user's willingness to offer his/her resources to others, we propose a message-based incentive mechanism that builds a reputation rank based on the source of messages received by the forwarding nodes, called MINEIRO. The network supports up to 60% of nodes with selfish behavior without performance degradation in a random mobility scenario. After this threshold, MINEIRO kept the delivery rate and the delay constant. Meanwhile, in a scenario with social-based mobility, selfish behavior degrades the network performance quickly

The thesis deals with tpopics which refer to the term Foreign Direct Investment within the bounds of the Central European region or the "Visegrád group" (Czech republic, Slovak republic, Poland and Hungary) respectively. First, a detailed examination is conducted from a theoretical point of view in relation with the term Foreign Direct Investment. This part is then followed up by an analysis of the Foreign Direct Investments inflow into the mentioned region and a profound analysis of the Investment Incentives provided by the Visegrád group countries.

Notre travail a cherché à éclairer une partie des éléments qui peuvent agir sur la productivité du travail, notamment les contrats incitatifs, les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TICS) et les pratiques organisationnelles. Nous avons naturellement tenu compte de la présence d’asymétries d’information, susceptibles d’influencer la relation d’emploi et les choix de l’entreprise en matière de pratiques organisationnelles et d’introduction des technologies de l’information et de la communication. La thèse se divise donc en deux grandes parties : la première se penche sur les contrats incitatifs optimaux ainsi que sur l’effet des différents modes de rémunération sur la productivité. La deuxième partie, quant à elle, met l’accent sur l’introduction et les effets des TICS et des pratiques organisationnelles. Les résultats empiriques tirés de la première partie montrent que l’effet de la rémunération sur la productivité dépend de la forme de rémunération choisie et de la catégorie socioprofessionnelle des employés concernés. Ils mettent également en évidence un effet de la durée du contrat de travail ainsi que du taux d’endettement à court terme sur la productivité. Les résultats issus des études faites dans le cadre de la deuxième partie de la thèse indiquent que les entreprises ont eu besoin d’un temps d’adaptation, entre 1998 et 1999, avant que les effets positifs des TICS et des pratiques organisationnelles puissent se répercuter sur la productivité des salariés. Leurs effets sont intervenus plus rapidement en 2004, compte tenu de ces délais d’accumulation du capital humain. Enfin, nous avons également pu montrer que le gain de productivité s’avère plus important si l’entreprise choisit de mettre en œuvre les deux changements en même temps. / Our work has tried to identify some elements which may have an effect on labor productivity, among which the incentive contracts, the information and communication’s technologies (ICT) and the organizational practices. We took into account the presence of asymmetric information, susceptible to influence the employment relationships and the firm’s choices concerning the organizational practices or the introduction of ICT. The dissertation is divided into two parts: the first one considers the optimal incentive contracts as well as the effect of various remuneration systems on labor productivity. The second part is devoted to the introduction of ICT and the organizational practices. The empirical results drawn from the first part show that the remuneration’s effect on productivity depends on the adopted type of payment and on the social and occupational group of the beneficiaries. They also indicate that the length of the employment’s contract and the rate of short term debts have an effect on productivity. The results obtained within the framework of the second part of the dissertation show that the employees needed some time to adapt, between 1998 and 1999, before the positive effects of the ICT and organizational practices could appear on their productivity. However given the delays of human capital’s accumulation, the effect on labor productivity of various ICT and organizational practices occurred more quickly in 2004. Finally, we showed that the productivity increases more if the company chooses to undertake both changes at the same time.