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This thesis aims to improve sales forecasting in the context of passenger airlines. We study two important issues that could potentially improve forecasting accuracy: day-to-day price change rather than price itself, and linking flights that are likely to be considered as pairs for a round trip by passengers; we refer to the latter as the Round-Trip Model (RTM). We find that price change is a significant variable regardless of days remaining to flight in the last three weeks to flight departure, which opens the possibility of planning for revenue maximizing price change patterns. We also find that the RTM can improve the precision of the forecasting models, and provide an improved pricing strategy for planners. In the study of the effect of price change on sales, analysis of variance is applied; finite regression mixture models were tested to identify linked traffic in the two directions and the linked flights on a route in reverse directions; adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is applied to develop comparative models for studying sales effect between price and price change, and one-way versus round-trip models. The price change model demonstrated more robust results with comparable estimation errors, and the concept model for the round-trip with only one linked flight reduced estimation error by 5%. This empirical study is performed on a database with 22,900 flights which was obtained from a major North American passenger airline.

This thesis aims to improve sales forecasting in the context of passenger airlines. We study two important issues that could potentially improve forecasting accuracy: day-to-day price change rather than price itself, and linking flights that are likely to be considered as pairs for a round trip by passengers; we refer to the latter as the Round-Trip Model (RTM). We find that price change is a significant variable regardless of days remaining to flight in the last three weeks to flight departure, which opens the possibility of planning for revenue maximizing price change patterns. We also find that the RTM can improve the precision of the forecasting models, and provide an improved pricing strategy for planners. In the study of the effect of price change on sales, analysis of variance is applied; finite regression mixture models were tested to identify linked traffic in the two directions and the linked flights on a route in reverse directions; adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is applied to develop comparative models for studying sales effect between price and price change, and one-way versus round-trip models. The price change model demonstrated more robust results with comparable estimation errors, and the concept model for the round-trip with only one linked flight reduced estimation error by 5%. This empirical study is performed on a database with 22,900 flights which was obtained from a major North American passenger airline.

In the last two decades, duration analysis has been largely applied to fixed - income securities . However, since rising and falling interest rates have been determined to be a major cause of stock price movements, equity duration has received a great deal of attention. The duration of an equity is a measure of its interest rate risk. Duration is the sensitivity of the price of an equity with respect to the interest rate. Convexity is the sensitivity of duration with respect to the interest rate. The analysis revealed that the fractional price change and market risk of equities can be explained by duration and convexity.

The thesis aims to assess the impacts of alternative technologies considered an object from the perspective of an investor or contractor. They are sought and assessed the savings in a variety of alternative solutions building structures. Found savings serves investor as an important basis for deciding between different materials or when making a tender for the realization of the construction. The practical part is devoted to assessing the price of material changes and an assessment of the savings when you change the original price of gravel for the price-house.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:59:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 4 Rodrigo de Santi.pdf.jpg: 2532 bytes, checksum: 0213df0b6dbfe7971ab55d1ee306a56f (MD5) Rodrigo de Santi.pdf.txt: 135255 bytes, checksum: a91dd070d8bf8695037dd3d11064c280 (MD5) license.txt: 4712 bytes, checksum: 4dea6f7333914d9740702a2deb2db217 (MD5) Rodrigo de Santi.pdf: 1004709 bytes, checksum: a129a3ee39343107d951514e154050a4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-10-22T00:00:00Z / Mobile phones have turned into an essential part of our lives during the last years, not only due to the easiness of communication they provide us, but also because they are part of our own way to express ourselves and how we want to be perceived. However, there are few academic studies dealing with the reasons behind the consumer decision making process among different handsets and mobile calling plans, and how valuable (money-wise) mobile phones features are. This paper casts light on how much consumers accept to pay for mobile phones and calling plan attributes providing hedonic price analyses of Brazilian handset market during 2008. A dataset was compelled on 48 different handsets, from six manufacturer brands and three mobile operators, in nine different mobile plans weekly over the period from January to December, summing up 27 different aspects and 292.410 observations. In addition, Brazilian market is interpreted by Economics of Telecommunications theory, and true price indices are estimated using hedonic techniques and taking into consideration mobile phones features and quality change. / Apesar dos aparelhos celulares terem se tornado parte fundamental da comunicação pessoal durante os últimos dez anos, há escassez de pesquisas de ordem acadêmica dedicadas à valoração das diferentes características dos planos e aparelhos celulares. Vários fatores precisam ser levados em conta para se conhecer a percepção de valor dos atributos dos planos e aparelhos celulares, desde as condições microeconômicas que afetam a evolução do mercado de aparelhos celulares em geral, até as decisões e motivações pessoais do processo de decisão de compra de um consumidor. Este estudo procura responder quais atributos são mais valorizados pelo consumidor brasileiro em um aparelho celular pós-pago, bem como o preço destes atributos no mercado. Para isto aplicou-se o método de preços hedônicos a uma base de dados de 48 modelos de celulares diferentes, de seis marcas presentes no mercado brasileiro, de três operadoras, em nove diferentes planos de assinatura, com observações de preços semanais ao longo do ano de 2008, totalizando 27 atributos diferentes e 292.410 observações. Por fim, também é apresentada nesta dissertação uma interpretação do mercado brasileiro pela ótica da Economia das Telecomunicações, e é realizado o cálculo da deflação ocorrida no mercado brasileiro de aparelhos celulares pós-pagos no ano de 2008 levando-se em consideração as mudanças de qualidade, funcionalidades e características destes aparelhos ocorridas ao longo do ano mencionado.