Este trabalho busca analisar a influência do endividamento e da restrição financeira das companhias nos seus custos de emissão em ofertas iniciais de ações (IPOs) e ofertas subsequentes de ações (SEOs). A metodologia utilizada baseou-se na análise de regressão múltipla e na análise de regressão com variáveis instrumentais em uma amostra de 106 observações para IPOs e 66 observações para SEOs. Os resultados indicam que, para IPOs, os custos de emissão de ações têm relação negativa com endividamento possivelmente em função do benefício econômico do endividamento. Já as empresas consideradas restritas financeiramente pagam mais caro para fazer seu IPO. Em SEOs, as comissões dos bancos de investimento só têm relação negativa com o endividamento até certo nível de alavancagem financeira. A partir de um determinado ponto os custos ficam maiores, indicando que empresas sobrealavancadas pagam maiores comissões para realização das ofertas. Empresas endividadas e restritas também pagam mais caro para realizar a SEO, indicando que empresas com estas características de fato podem demorar a ajustar sua estrutura de capital, conforme apontado por Leary e Roberts (2005) e por Longstaff e Strebulaev (2014). Os resultados são robustos quanto ao tratamento de endogenia das variáveis endividamento e custos de emissão de ações. / This study aims to analyze the influence of financial leverage and financial constraints on the issue costs of IPOs and SEOs. The analysis was made based on ordinary least square and instrumental variable regression of a sample of 106 observations for IPOs and 66 observations for SEOs. The results showed that for IPOs the cost of issuing equity had a negative relationship with leverage possibly due to tax shields. Constrained companies pay more to issue equity in IPOs. Financial leverage had a negative coefficient to explain investment banks commission in SEOs, but it happens only until certain level of leverage. Overleveraged companies pay higher commissions to issue equity in SEOs. Additionally, leveraged companies that are also considered financially constrained pay higher commissions. Thus, leveraged and constrained companies may spend more time to adjust their capital structure, as showed by Leary and Roberts (2005) and Longstaff and Strebulaev (2014). All results are robust for the endogeneity between leverage and equity issue costs.

O investimento é resultado de uma ação simultânea entre dois agentes: a empresa e o mercado. Enquanto a empresa segue um comportamento que implica em alterações nos recursos investidos, para o mercado existe um comportamento de valoração, caracterizado por atribuição de valor aos recursos investidos que não envolve alteração desses, e sim do respectivo preço. Nesta dissertação são comparados os Mercados de Capitais de oito países, seguindo a um modelo dinâmico que busca estimar a capacidade de resposta de cada agente; constatou-se diferenças entre essa capacidade nos diferentes países, assim como nas situações esperadas de equilíbrio, seja em sub-investimento ou sobre-investimento. Ao mesmo tempo, verificou-se a predominância da resposta das empresas, indicando uma possível evidência para a eficiência do mercado e uma necessidade em buscar entender como a empresa pode participar do processo. / Investment results from a simultaneous action by two agents: the firm and the market. While the firms behavior implies on invested resources, the market forwards on valuation of this resources, allocating prices. This paper compare Capital Market of eight countries, according a dynamic model that estimates the reaction capacity of each agent. The main findings consists on confirmation of differences between countries parameters, as well on equilibrium (under-investment and over-investment). Also the results shows the predominance of firms reaction (or need to), revealing one possible evidence on market efficiency and a need for better understanding of firms rule on the process.

Le changement climatique appartient à une nouvelle classe de problèmes environnementaux, pour laquelle nous ne savons pas concevoir de solutions. En effet, dans le cas de pollutions dites classiques, c'est-à-dire des pollutions ciblées et localisées, des solutions techniques sont supposées atteignables à un effort de recherche près. A l'inverse, lutter contre le changement climatique nécessite de repenser en profondeur l'organisation de nos sociétés modernes. Le pilotage de cette transition sociétale dite bas carbone nécessite de concevoir de nouveaux dispositifs institutionnels. Traditionnellement, les théories néo-institutionnelles, qui se sont penchées sur la question de l'innovation institutionnelle, se sont centrées sur la question de la diffusion de l'innovation et ne nous proposent pas d'outils satisfaisants pour instruire la conception de dispositifs institutionnels. Face aux limites de nos modèles de développement dont le changement climatique n'est qu'un des nombreux symptômes (crises financières répétées, chocs pétroliers, etc.) cette lacune théorique devient une question à traiter en urgence. Ce travail de thèse étudie les mécanismes de la “conception institutionnelle” à travers le cas très actuel des marchés du carbone. Nous avons construit deux notions pour analyser ces mécanismes : la notion de plateforme expérimentale et la notion de travail institutionnel de conception. Enfin, nous avons travaillé la notion de bricolage, et les conditions d'efficacité de cette activité de conception dans un contexte d'innovation institutionnelle. / Climate change belongs to a new category of environmental issues, for which we don't know how to design solutions. Indeed, it is possible to treat traditional pollutions using technical solutions that are already known. To the contrary, mitigating climate change involves a profound revision of the organizational models that support our modern societies. The institutional device to guide this low carbon transition still needs to be designed. Traditionally, the question of institutional innovation is addressed in a field of organization theories named “neo-institutional theory”. Nevertheless, research in this field has focused on the diffusion of institutional innovation, but not on the design of institutional innovation itself. In a global context of crisis of our societal models, there is an emergency for this gap to be explored. In the context of institutional theory, this work analyzes the mechanisms of “institutional design” through the case of carbon markets. We build two notions that help to better understand the mechanisms at play: the notion of experimental platforms and the notion of institutional design work. Eventually, we build on previous work in management sciences on the concept of bricolage to identify the efficiency conditions of this design activity.

This article analyzes political strategies of MNC subsidiaries in emerging markets. We find that institutional pressures from public and private non-market actors in the emerging market lead to increased political activism. Furthermore, we find that these relationships become stronger, when the external pressures are joined by strong firm-internal pressures. Our findings contribute to the scarce literature on firms' political strategies in emerging markets. They also support recent criticism of institutional theory's strong focus on isomorphism as the most important legitimacy-conveying mechanism. We argue that the isomorphism-based either-or logic gives way to stronger agency of the subsidiary and to a logic of active negotiation and social construction of the subsidiary's legitimacy in the emerging market. Our findings show support for this idea as political activism is one such way how the subsidiary's legitimacy can be built and nurtured.

Abstract This thesis investigates whether stock returns can help forecast macroeconomic activity. Future earnings and dividends and current stock prices should contain information about the future state of firms and the consumption possibilities of consumers. These activities are linked to aggregate economic development and, hence, the stock markets should improve economic forecasting. We review the theoretical points that justify the importance of stock markets in economic forecasting. Recent literature on the stochastic discount factor in asset pricing and the real business cycle models has approached this connection. We try to show that the direction between financial markets and macroeconomy could be from stock markets to real economy. We empirically test the forecasting ability of stock markets with respect to macroeconomy. The unexpected part of stock return can be revealed with economic tracking portfolios (ETP), which are constructed so that the unexpected portion of the portfolio return has the maximum correlation with revisions to expectations of the target variable. ETP's track how investors revise their expectations about relevant macroeconomic variables. The results show that specific stock portfolios track future changes in macroeconomic variables well. In the previous literature, stock returns have been connected to the business cycle. This connection is analysed by explaining stock returns with total factor productivity (TFP) as a factor. TFP is measured by corporate innovation variable, i.e. the change in a firm's gross profit margin unexplained by changes in firm's capital and labour. The TFP variable performs quite nicely in explaining stock returns and it can be related to stock market momentum. Next, the aim is to investigate the forecasting power of stock returns together with the TFP factor. Even though in our results the TFP contains no information relevant for economic forecasting, the stock returns continue to perform well.

Social enterprises may be instrumental to overcome the well-known difficulties of State provision of social welfare services. Considering the impressive movement of social entrepreneurship and innovation witnessed in most European societies, coincident with the decline of economic growth and the rise of unemployment, the idea of a transition from a welfare state to a welfare mix gains interest. For social enterprises to meet the challenge, they need to scale up operations. Moreover, for that purpose they should be able to diversify the finance resources used, instead of relying mainly on subsidies and donations. However, so far not much progress has been made in that direction what led (Daggers & Nicholls, 2016) to identify as a critical research topic: how do social investment markets develop? That research question was investigated in the Portuguese context. Besides a conceptual framework, literature review allowed to identify the factors that currently are believed to determine demand in social investment markets: i) impact; ii) return; iii) double cost issue; iv) financial dead zone; v) investment readiness; vi) ecosystem. Theory development was greatly enhanced from the contacts made with the Project Manager of an ongoing applied research project launched by European Investment Bank Group on a similar topic: “Social Enterprises Access to Finance – An exploration into the constraints around social businesses access to finance in Portugal”. The importance of the research question becomes clear from the fact that, in spite of all the knowledge and attempts, for some reason not yet identified, social investment market does not grow. The investigation revealed that the key to the problem had to be looked in the demand side of the market and that there is reason to believe that social and cultural characteristics of demand agents are being overlooked. This supported the main theoretical proposition: Portuguese social investment market development will be unlikely to occur as expected from current understanding about how the market operates, unless prevailing characteristics of the social and cultural structure of demand agents are also taken into account. The investigation was conducted through case study research. A rival theory was elaborated and study propositions were defined for both main and rival theory. Multiple sources of evidence were collected and from the respective analysis the study propositions of the main theoretical propositions were corroborated. None of the study propositions of the rival theory were corroborated. The conclusion was that initiatives for growth of Portuguese social investment market will have to integrate a factor that so far has been neglected. Indeed, social and cultural characteristics are a determinant a demand that needs to be considered.

[pt] O CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) padrão, proposto por Sharpe, Lintner e Mossin, é um dos principais paradigmas da teoria de finanças. Especifica que o retorno médio esperado de um ativo é função linear apenas do seu risco não diversificável ou risco sistemático. O prêmio de risco esperado do mercado é a inclinação desta função, e o retorno esperado do ativo livre de risco é o intercepto. Possui como uma de suas premissas básicas a de que os investidores podem emprestar e tomar emprestado à taxa livre de risco. O modelo CAPM ZERO-BETA, proposto por Black, Jensen e Scholes (1972), considera que o investidor não pode emprestar nem tomar emprestado à taxa livre de risco. Nesse modelo o retorno esperado do ativo livre de risco é substituído pelo retorno esperado de uma carteira (carteira zero-beta) que possui mínima variância e covariância zero com o retorno esperado da carteira de mercado. É também conhecido como CAPM de dois parâmetros, pois tanto o beta do ativo como o retorno da carteira zero-beta necessitam ser estimados, já que não podem ser diretamente observados. Este trabalho testa o CAPM zero- beta no mercado de capitais brasileiro. Utiliza a metodologia de regressão multivariada (MVRM), proposta por Gibbons (1982). Esta metodologia executa uma SUR (Seemingly Unrelated Regression) e estima conjuntamente o beta dos ativos e o retorno da carteira zero-beta. Além de dispensar a escolha do ativo livre de risco, a MVRM evita o erro de variáveis que ocorre na metodologia de regressão cross- section. Utilizando os ativos negociados na Bolsa de Valores do Estado de São Paulo (BOVESPA) no período de 1986 a 2001, o teste não rejeita o CAPM zero-beta para os períodos de 1991 a 1996 e 1996 a 2001. Os resultados indicam um aumento recente na eficiência do mercado de capitais brasileiro. / [en] The standard CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model), proposed by Sharpe, Lintner and Mossin, is one of the most important paradigms of finance theory. It states that the expected mean return on an asset is a linear function of its non- diversifiable risk or systematic risk. The expected market risk premium is the slope of this function, and the risk- free return is the intercept. One of its main assumptions is that investors can lend and borrow at the risk-free rate.The Zero-Beta CAPM, proposed by Black, Jensen and Scholes (1972), states that investors cannot lend nor borrow at the risk-free rate. In this model, the expected return of the risk-free asset is substituted by the expected mean return on a portfolio with minimum variance and no covariance with the market portfolio. This model is also known as the two-parameter CAPM, as both the beta and the zero-beta expected mean return need to be estimated. This work tests the Zero-Beta CAPM in the Brazilian stock market. It uses a >multivariate regression methodology (MVRM), proposed by Gibbons (1982). This methodology runs a SUR (Seemingly Unrelated Regression), proposed by Zellner (1962) and both the beta and the zero-beta mean return are estimated jointly. This methodology doesn`t need a risk- free asset, and eliminates the errors-in-variables problem present in the cross-section regression model. By using the stocks negociated at the São Paulo Stock Exchange (BOVESPA), in the period from 1986 to 2001, it doesn`t reject the zero-beta CAPM in the period from 1996 to 2001.

The study of consumer behaviour is a dynamic and longstanding challenge to continuously understand the factors which influence consumers’ buying behaviour. Though internal (for example attitude, motivation and learning) and external factors (marketing stimuli) are equally important, the focus of this study is on external influences and market trends. Consumer markets around the world have recently seen the increase of ethical products. Those products that are differentiated by their moral or sustainable values and attributes, for example environmentally friendly products or body lotions not tested on animals. The provision of these products is a result of organisations’ realisation that in order to increase their customer base, their values must be centred on doing good for the community as well as the environment and should be visible to consumers. For a number of organisations this means marketing the ethical values and attributes of the products they provide so that consumers will ultimately choose their products. However, in order to understand consumers’ willingness to pay for these products, marketers need to understand the price perceptions consumers have towards these products. The purpose of this study relates to this and aims to determine the influence that the marketing of ethically framed personal care products, as an external influence, has on consumers’ willingness to pay for these products. More specifically, this study aims to determine whether South African females are willing to pay more for ethically framed personal care products than for ordinary personal care products. This will be done by specifically assessing their reference, fair and reservation price perceptions. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Marketing Management / unrestricted

This dissertation uses a mixed method approach to examine the determinants of internal remittances that are connected to the social networks of urban migrant street vendors. Urban street markets are a point of entry for many migrants moving from rural areas to cities in the Global South. The qualitative portion of the dissertation uses an ethnographic approach including participant observation, interviews and focus groups to examine the social networks of street vendors in a market in the municipality of Madina, Ghana. The quantitative analysis codes data from the ethnography in order to conduct a social network analysis using quadratic assignment procedure and logistic regression quadratic assignment procedure to analyze the relationship between attributes of street vendors and remittance behavior. Findings lead to several policy recommendations for the international community, as well as locally based non-governmental organizations, microfinance organizations, national and local governments providing funding or designing interventions affecting street markets or working with individual street vendors.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / During the year 2000 Zimbabwe faced a multiplex of challenges linked to political and economic dynamics generated from its Fast Track Land Reform Programme (Raftopoulos, 2009). The country plunged into land grabs (dubbed Third Chimurenga) led by the war veterans, motivated by economic freedom and emancipation for the black majority. Thus began the economic decline and the exodus of citizens leaving the country in search for employment opportunities and better living conditions abroad. As expressed by Raftopoulos (2009), the problem of economic hardship and perpetual uncertainty worsened in 2008 due to the violent elections that were held in the country which resulted in rampant killings and a hyperinflation that saw the Zimbabwe dollar plunge into trillions. Many families were displaced as people were forced to flee to neighbouring countries including South Africa in search for a better life as well as opportunities. Zimbabweans entered the South African job market which had already begun struggling due to the economic recession experienced in 2008 (Matshaka, 2009). This left many Zimbabweans unemployed and with many survival challenges. In order to survive, many of these refugees started learning creative arts and crafts with the hope of using their skills and capabilities for self-employment. It is within this context that this research investigates the coping mechanisms used by Zimbabwean refugees in combating the challenges of unemployment and poverty by trading through craft markets in Hout Bay as a means of survival and livelihood. The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) was used as a theoretical lens through which to examine the livelihood strategies of Zimbabwean refugees as a means of survival. With regard to the selection of research design the mixed methods approach was used to broaden the width and depth of assessment. This included both qualitative and quantitative methods in order to collect data relevant to the research question.