Este trabalho se baseia na análise de 125 Laudos de Avaliação emitidos no contexto de Ofertas Públicas de Aquisição (OPAs) no Brasil realizadas no período entre 2006 e 2017. As OPAs movimentaram dezenas de bilhões de Reais, envolvendo companhias avaliadas, no total, em mais de R$ 300 bilhões. Os objetivos principais são três: (i) mapear as metodologias de avaliação utilizadas, (ii) identificar erros cometidos, comparando as metodologias utilizadas com o referencial teórico e (iii) medir vieses de posição na preparação das avaliações. Os resultados indicam (i) diversidade de metodologias aplicadas, o que pode gerar inconsistência e viés nos resultados, (ii) existência de erros, inclusive relacionados a conceitos básicos de avaliação de empresas e (iii) viés de posição por parte dos avaliadores, especialmente empresas independentes de consultoria, que tendem a emitir resultados consistentes com os interesses dos contratantes, potencialmente causando expropriação dos minoritários. Tais resultados mostram a necessidade de aumentar tanto a qualidade técnica dos avaliadores como o nível de controle sobre possíveis conflitos de agência. Possíveis mitigadores incluem a aplicação de legislação e regulação mais rigorosas, com maior controle do processo de avaliação pelos minoritários, e exigências relacionadas à qualificação técnica dos avaliadores, às metodologias aplicadas e à responsabilização do avaliador. / This work is based on the analysis of 125 valuation reports (Laudos de Avaliação) issued in the context of tender offers (OPAs) in Brazil during the 2006-2017 period. Such offers had a total value of tens billions of Reais, with firms valued at over R$ 300 billion. The main objectives are (i) describe the valuation methodologies, (ii) identify errors, comparing the adopted methodologies with the theoretical framework and (iii) measure valuation biases. The results indicate (i) diversity of methodologies used by practitioners, possibly causing inconsistencies and biases in the results, (ii) existence of errors, some of them related to basic valuation concepts and (iii) valuation biases, especially in reports prepared by independent consulting firms, which tend to issue results consistent with the controlling shareholders\' interests, potentially causing expropriation of the minority shareholders. Such results indicate the need to improve the practitioners\' technical quality as well as the controls against agency conflicts. Possible mitigators include stricter legislation and regulation, with greater control by minority shareholders of the valuation process, and minimum requirements regarding the practioners\' technical qualification, acceptable methodologies and accountability of the report\'s issuer.

The use of computed tomography (CT) in the care of patients has grown dramatically since its introduction over 30 years ago. The vast majority of the utilization research has focused on factors associated with the variable use in the outpatient and emergency department settings. This has left much of the inpatient use and variation understudied. This study has multiple aims. The first is to characterize the inpatient variation across multiple states and markets. The second is to evaluate the relationship between inpatient CT use and commercial payers across these areas. The third is to develop a model to evaluate the relationship between inpatient CT use and the characteristics of markets, hospitals, and patients. The study uses a four-state convenience sample of cross-sectional data for hospitals. It included non-Federal, acute care hospitals that reported the performance of inpatient CT exams during 2015 (N=181). The literature review was used to justify the inclusion of variables in the study. The descriptive analyses were used to justify the appropriateness of the variables and methodology for testing. A comparison of means demonstrated the significant differences for inpatient utilization between states. A univariate general linear model demonstrated a negative relationship with a hospital’s proportion of commercially insured patients and the inpatient utilization rate. An ordinary least squares multivariate linear regression was used to test for variable significance within each of three constructs: markets, hospitals, and patients. The results indicated that inpatient CT rates were positively associated with higher level of insurer concentration (market), positively associated with system centralization (hospitals), and negatively associated with a hospital’s increasing proportion of minority patient discharges (patients). The study serves an important function in identifying varying patterns of CT utilization across the full spectrum of inpatients across multiple states, regardless of payer. It also creates new knowledge about how the characteristics of these markets, hospitals, and patients are related to inpatient use. It also provides implications for administrators, researchers, and policy makers. The additional knowledge and understanding provided by this research have the potential to lead to improvements in the appropriate and equitable use of inpatient CT exams.

In incomplete market models, agents with homothetic preferences over one non-durable consumption good and exposed to idiosyncratic income shocks use precautionary savings as an instrument to smooth consumption across different contingencies. The magnitude and role of precautionary savings is therefore essential in the understanding of savings behavior of agents in such an economy. In this dissertation, I study the effects of consumption commitments on aggregate savings behavior within an otherwise standard incomplete market framework. In the first chapter, I explore the impact of a consumption commitment good like housing in an incomplete market framework (Aiyagari(1994), Huggett(1997)). Conceptually, I concentrate on the argument whether consumption of housing is associated with changes in risk aversion and therefore reflected in precautionary savings behavior of agents. I study an analytical framework that captures key elements in the data like (i) heterogeneity in earnings through fixed effects and uninsurable idiosyncratic shocks, (ii) fraction of income spent on housing, (iii) magnitude of moving costs. In the second chapter, I present a dynamic incomplete market model with a key feature: a commitment good (housing) with positive transaction (moving) costs. I focus on a stationary recursive equilibrium for agents in the benchmark economy. I calibrate the benchmark model to the US economy. I find that the benchmark economy replicates (i) the fraction of income spent on housing services, (ii) the fraction of people moving in each period. In the third chapter, I quantitatively evaluate the magnitude of precautionary savings in the presence of housing consumption in the benchmark economy and compare it to the standard incomplete market model. Results indicate that the presence of housing leads to higher aggregate precautionary savings by nearly 13% when compared to the Aiyagari specification. I find transaction costs to have significant impact on aggregate savings behavior.

This dissertation presents three empirical studies on the distribution and role of social capital among immigrants in the United States. Using data from two national datasets – the New Immigrant Survey (NIS 2003, 2007) and the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS 2000) – it examines the implications of social capital for immigrants’ social and economic integration. In doing so, it addresses several key limitations within migration research. The first limitation it addresses is the focus of prior research on migrants’ co-ethnic (bonding) social capital and the limited research on immigrants’ “bridging” social capital and distributional inequities across immigrant groups. Second, while most research has focused on role of social capital in economic integration, relatively little is known about the short-run and long-term implications of immigrants’ social capital for their health and well-being. Third, prior research has generally focused on specific immigrant groups, particularly Hispanic and Asian immigrants, and it is unclear if prior findings are generalizable to immigrants overall or if they are simply capturing group and/or context-specific effects of social capital. This dissertation includes three studies that provide pieces of evidence that address these limitations and contribute to the migration literature. In the first study, I explore the link between race, immigration status and social network diversity. Using data on personal network characteristics from the SCCBS (2000), I examine the role of race and immigration status in the distribution of ethnicity and status-bridging social capital. Findings confirm the double disadvantage of minority and outsider status for minority immigrants when it comes to access to network diversity, which is to say group (i.e. race) differences in native-immigrant gaps in access to ethnicity-bridging social capital. The findings also show that this double disadvantage is explained away by group differences in network ethnic diversity, and that race and immigrant status are a factor in determining the return from network ethnic diversity in terms of network quality, which is reflective of the extant socioeconomic stratification system in the United States. In the second study, I use a nationally representative data of immigrants from the NIS (2003), to examine the link between reliance of new immigrants on “bonding” social capital for job search and two indicators of labor market performance: earnings and occupational prestige. I find that while using a “relative” to find a job generally has a negative effect on both earnings and occupational prestige, this effect is not shared across all immigrants, which explains inconsistent findings in prior studies of the role of co-ethnic social capital in the labor market outcomes of Hispanic and Asian immigrants. In the third study, I turn my attention to the immigrant health literature, which has largely focused on the acculturation-health relationship and largely ignored the significance of network processes, particularly the interethnic integration of new immigrants, for the short-term and long-term health outcomes of immigrants. I use longitudinal data from the NIS (2003, 2007), which includes various measures of health status and behaviors, and examine the contemporaneous and longitudinal associations between interethnic social capital and health. I find positive cross-sectional associations with negative health behaviors (smoking, drinking and dietary change), on the one hand, and positive long-term (lagged) effects on health status (self-rated health and the incidence of chronic diseases), on the other. These results find evidence for the time-dependent health implications of interethnic network integration for the health status of immigrants in the United States.

Market integration testing is important to agricultural marketing, industrial organization, international trade, and international model design. With reliable market integration information, decision makers can undertake appropriate actions to maximize profits, welfare, or both. Level I market analysis, which uses price data solely, has proved unreliable especially in the presence of discontinuous or bidirectional trade, or significant or nonstationary transaction costs. Level II market analysis methods, which incorporate both transactions costs and prices, permit spatial markets to be integrated in some periods and segmented in others, thereby obviating many level I method problems. However, level II methods still fail to distinguish between market integration and spatial market equilibrium. Both level I and level II methods omit the rich information provided by trade flow data. This dissertation develops the first level III method-combining price, transactions costs, and trade flow data, and thus can move beyond the flaws remaining in levels I and II methods. The full information parity bounds model (FIPBM) enables researchers to distinguish between market integration, a concept of market "conduct," and spatial market equilibrium, one of market "performance." FIPBM also shows real promise in signaling the importance of unobservable transactions costs, the frequencly of nontrading periods of competitive disequilibrium likely due to nontariff trade barriers, and the effects of asymmetric trade policies. FIPBM seems better suited to international markets analysis than do other existing methods. This dissertation applies levels I,II, and III methods to analyze price, trade, and market relationships in the product and factor markets of pork industries in key Pacific Rim countries. This empirical work highlights the superiority of the FIPBM approach. FIPBM finds that pork, hog, and feed grain markets between Canada and the United States are almost always integrated. But they are not in competitive equilibrium, implying that there frequently exist positive accounting profits to arbitrage. By contrast, markets between Asian (Taiwan and Japan) and North American countries (Canada and the United States) are integrated less frequently than are intra-North American markets. This reflects greater trans-Pacific transactions costs that reduce tradability. However, markets between Asian and North American countries are commonly in competitive equilibrium.

Significant changes have taken place in the distribution of dairy products during recent years. These changes have been marked by the increased importance of milk distribution through grocery stores, specialized dairy stores, institutions such as schools and military establishments, and the corresponding decline of home delivery. Many small food stores have been replaced by large, self-service supermarkets, most of which are operated by chain store merchandisers wielding increased market power. Specialized milk delivery systems have been developed to meet the needs and demands of supermarkets, such as limited service or dock delivery. Because of differences in costs of servicing various customers, volume delivered, and competitive pressures, wholesale price discounts have been introduced and extensively used. Dairies have consolidated or merged operations to capture economies of scale in processing and distributing and to increase market power. More mergers will likely follow. The areas served by processing plants have expanded as a result of the development of super highways, mechanically refrigerated trucks, and increased use of single service containers.

Importance of lamb marketings The production and marketing of lambs is important in Utah's economy. In 1956, Utah ranked fifth in the United States in lambs produced and saved, with 1,038,000 head produced and 840,000 marketed for consumption, table 1. Cash receipts from the lamb marketings during the year amounted to over 10 million dollars, and in addition, the state's economy benefited through revenues, employment, and raw materials which were provided by the lamb industry. Marketing decisions Lamb producers and handlers are faced with many decisions in marketing their lambs. They not only must decide when and where to sell, but the question of what method of transportation to use must be answered. In essence, the producer or handler can make direct ranch sale to slaughterers, lamb feeders, or speculators and can thereby pass on some of the decision making to the buyer; or he can sell through commission firms and competitive bidding at public livestock markets and retain the decision making himself. In the case of direct sale at the ranch, the buyer usually assumes the cost of marketing from that point until he relinquishes title. Generally, the buyer charges for this service by giving a lower price to the seller than would be received if the seller were to ship to the public livestock market.

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This thesis focuses on five of the founding nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The countries are Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines (ASEAN5). Asset pricing for the ASEAN5 equity markets is the main focus of this thesis, although we also develop vector error correction models (VECM) for GDP, trade and local equity market returns for the ASEAN5. While this allows further analysis of the robustness of asset pricing models, it also facilitates study of the fundamental links that exist within these economies. The traditional CAPM and the four factor-model that include market, size, value and momentum effects (Fama and French, 1993; Carhart, 1997) are employed in testing the variation in size/book-to-market equity (size-BTME) and industry portfolio returns for these markets for the period from January 1990 to March 2006. Three macro factors as well as world excess returns are then added to the basic four-factor asset pricing model. These macro factors include unexpected GDP, unexpected total trade and unexpected equity market returns, which are derived from VECM or VAR estimates for ASEAN5 GDP, total trade and equity market returns. This model is referred to as the macro-factor model. The results suggest that the explanatory power of the four-factor model consistently exceeds those of the one-factor CAPM in explaining size-BTME and industry portfolio returns. Further, the macro-factor model analysis suggests that collectively, this model does not substantially improve the explanatory power of the basic four-factor model, suggesting that the variation in portfolio returns is mostly captured by the four-factor model. There is some cross-country variation in these results. Regardless, these macro factors − taken as a group or individually − are statistically significant, particularly for Thailand and Malaysia. In addition, the cointegration test results document evidence of long-run linkages for the equity markets within the ASEAN5. This is also true for GDP within the ASEAN5. In both cases, closer links prevail in the post-crisis period. This is not the case for trade where there is little consistent evidence of close links between the countries. Mixed results are found for different ASEAN5 trade measures where the linkages for total trade, import and exports vary substantially according to the selected period of study, whether full period, pre-crisis or post-crisis period.

To date little empirical research has been undertaken into relationship atmosphere, yet the literature leads one to the conclusion that this is a key or central factor in developing the relationship between firms and in shaping the characteristics of that relationship over time.Given that the dimensions of atmosphere are only observable by the individual from a subjective standpoint, and that therefore emotion and subjective perception will inevitably intercede, this omission is startling to say the least.The aim of this study is to respond to this research gap and explore the nature and importance of perceptions of relationship atmosphere in business markets.In order for this exploration to be effective, a research methodology was designed to gather data, and three research questions were identified as having implications for the study of relationship atmosphere. The findings as reported in this thesis present a new view of relationship atmosphere and its role in inter-firm relationships. In view of the findings, a submariner analogy is presented to represent accordant and discordant perceptions of atmosphere in individual relationships. Additionally a revised interaction model is proposed to represent the new view of relationship atmosphere as a product of the perception of the individual parties to the relationship / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)