[pt] À medida em que uma economia se desenvolve e cresce, seu setor informal encolhe. A literatura enfatiza um conjunto de causas ligadas ao lado da oferta (maior custo de operar informalmente para firmas maiores e intensivas em capital, maior capacidade fiscalizadora do estado, e maiores níveis educacionais) para explicar esse fenômeno. Esta tese contribui para o debate propondo uma nova explicação, olhando para o lado da demanda. Argumenta-se que o aumento nos níveis de formalização pode ser explicado em parte pelo aumento da demanda por bens formais por parte das famílias cuja renda está crescendo. Usando dados de três aplicações da Pesquisa de Orçamento Familiares (POF), documentamos que no cross-section famílias de maior renda consomem uma maior proporção de bens formais (7 pontos percentuais a mais quando a renda dobra). Também mostramos que, ao longo do tempo, o consumo de bens formais aumenta com a renda. Buscamos também prover uma estimativa causal por meio da análise de aumentos exógenos do salário mínimo. Por fim, propomos uma discussão téorica acerca do tipo de preferências consistentes com o comportamento observado. / [en] As economies develop and grow, their informal sector shrinks. The literature emphasizes a number of supply-side causes (higher costs of informality for larger and capital-intensive firms, improved state enforcement capacity, higher levels of education) to explain this phenomenon. This thesis contributes to the debate by proposing a new, demand-side explanation. We argue that the rise in formality can be explained, in part, by a rise in demand for formal goods and services from households whose income is growing. Using Brazilian household expenditure survey data, we document that in the cross-section, higher-earning households consume a larger fraction of formal goods (7 percentage points as income doubles). We also show that, over time, formal consumption increases together with income. We attempt to provide a causal estimate by analysing exogenous increases in the minimum wage. Last, we propose a theoretical discussion on the type of preferences consistent with this observed behavior.

I detta examensarbete utreddes huruvida elektriska tester av styrenheter för tunga fordon kan automatiseras på befintliga testmiljöer. Arbetet utfördes på uppdrag av Scania CV AB för arbetsgruppen Electronic Hardware som utför tester vid utveckling och verifiering av krav på styrenheter. Genom en automatiserad testprocess kan testarbetet effektiviseras och kvaliteten höjas. Testarbetet sker på testriggar som innehåller fullskalig hårdvara från lastbilar för att kunna emulera styrenhetens autentiska arbetsmiljö. För att komma fram till ett testsystem som kunde leva upp till de krav och behov som formulerats inom kravprocessen i arbetet användes utvecklingsmodeller. Utvärderingsmatriser användes för att välja den mjuk- och hårdvara som skulle vara mest lämplig för det automatiserade testsystemet utifrån kraven. Resultatet visade att testsystemet skulle bestå av en testprogramvara som körs på en vanlig persondator och ett inbyggt system med elektroniska komponenter för att kunna utföra de elektriska testerna. För att demonstrera testsystemets möjligheter i ett helhetstest konstruerades en prototyp som har funktionalitet att utföra ett testfall som kan dra stor nytta av att automatiseras, nämligen att testa omslagsnivåer för en digital ingång. Prototypen baserades på ett mikrokontrollerkort från Arduino och ett kretskort konstruerades till detta för att kunna utföra elektriska tester med högre spänningsnivåer som krävs för styrenheter på Scaniafordon. För att utforma testfall och hantera testprocessen valdes LabVIEW, en programvara där tester designas med ett grafiskt programmeringsspråk. Testresultaten för prototyptestsystemet visade att verifieringen av kraven för omslagsnivåer förenklas radikalt vid ett automatiserat förfarande, eftersom testtiden kunde minskas drastiskt, i synnerhet vid ett repetitivt förfarande. / This thesis work intends to study the possibilities to automate electrical testing of electronic control units in an existing test environment. The work was executed on behalf of Scania CV AB for the department Electronic Hardware, who run tests in development and verification of requirements for electronic control units. By using an automated testing system, the testing process could be made more effective and raise the quality. The testing work is done on test rigs which are equipped with full-scale hardware from real trucks to emulate the working environment the electronic control unit operates into. Development models were used to be able to create a testing system which could meet the requirements that were defined during the requirement engineering process. Evaluation matrices were used to choose the soft- and hardware that could be considered the most appropriate for the automated testing system according to the requirements. The result shown that the testing system should consist of a testing software that runs on an ordinary computer and an embedded system equipped with electronic components to enable the testing system for electrical tests. To demonstrate the possibilities of the whole testing system a prototype was manufactured which was designed to execute a test case that could greatly benefit from the advantages that comes with automation. It was a test case set out to measure voltage levels when switching in a digital input. The prototype was based on a microcontroller card from Arduino and was joined by a printed circuit board to be able to run electrical tests with the higher voltage levels that were demanded by electronic control units. To design test cases and manage the test process, LabVIEW was chosen, a software in which tests are designed in a graphical programming language. Test results for the prototype test system showed that verification of the requirements for voltage levels when switching was radically simplified by an automated procedure, as the test time could be drastically reduced, particularly in a repetitive procedure.

Amorteringskravet infördes den första juni 2016 som en åtgärd för att dämpa den oavbrutet ökande skuldsättningen i Sveriges hushåll. Hushållens höga skuldsättning har varit mycket omtalad de senaste åren och lett till diskussioner om huruvida den innebär risk för den makroekonomiska och finansiella stabiliteten. Banker, myndigheter och högskolor verksamma inom bostadsmarknaden har varit både positiva och skeptiska till amorteringskravet som åtgärd för att minska hushållens skuldsättning och menar att konsekvenserna på bostadsmarknaden kan vara både positiva och negativa. Med denna bakgrund är syftet med uppsatsen att studera om och hur amorteringskravet hittills har påverkat bostadspriserna och skuldsättningen för bolån, samt om regleringen har varit den ultimata åtgärden för att uppnå en sundare ekonomi. För att uppnå uppsatsens syfte, har en kvalitativ metod, som innefattat intervjuer och litteraturstudie, samt en kvantitativ studie, som baserats på statistik, valts. Genom intervjuer med aktörer verksamma inom bostadsmarknaden samt statistiska tester, har en slutsats dragits om att amorteringskravet har haft effekt på bostadsmarknaden. Bostadspriserna har fortsatt att öka men i en lägre takt i jämförelse med tidigare år, även skuldsättningens ökningstakt har sjunkit. Amorteringskravet anses endast vara en pedagogisk åtgärd för att införa amorteringsbeteendet hos hushållen snarare än en skuldnedsättande åtgärd. / The first of June 2016, an amortization requirement was introduced as a measure to halt the constantly growing household debt in Sweden. The high household debt has been widely discussed over the past few years which has led to the further discussion regarding whether the growing debt means a risk for the macroeconomic and financial stability. Banks and other actors active in the housing market have been both positive and skeptical of the amortization requirement as a measure to reduce the household dept. The actors argue that the consequences can be both positive and negative. The purpose of this essay is to study if and how the amortization requirement so far has affected the house prices and the debt for mortgage loans, and if it has been the ultimate measure to achieve a more stable economy. To achieve the purpose of the essay two research methods were used: qualitative method, interviews and literature studies, and quantitative method, based on statistics. Results suggest that the amortization requirement has had an impact on the housing market. Housing prices have continued to increase but at a slower pace in comparison with previous years, whilst the debt rate has fallen. The amortization requirement is considered more as an educational measure than a measure that reduces household depts. The conclusion drawn from the results is that the amortization requirement has fulfilled its purpose but whether this measure is the most optimal is hard to say.

No description available.

The U.S. Navy has been confronted with budget cuts and constraints during recent years. This reduction in budget compels the U.S. Navy to limit the number of manpower and personnel to control costs. Reducing the total ownership cost (TOC) has become a major topic of interest for the Navy as plans are made for current and future fleets. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO, 2003), manpower is the most influential component of determining the life cycle cost of a ship. The vast majority of the TOC is comprised of operating and support (O&S) costs which account for approximately 65 percent of the TOC. Manpower and personnel costs account for approximately 50 percent of O&S costs. This research focused on tradeoff analysis and cost estimation between manpower and new technology implementation. Utilizing concepts from System Dynamics Modeling (SDM), System Dynamics Causal Loop diagrams (CLD) were built to identify major factors when implementing new technology, and then stocks and flows diagrams were developed to estimate manpower cost associated with new technology implementation. The SDM base model reflected an 18 months period for technology implementation, and then compared different technology implementation for different scenarios. This model had been tested by the public data from Department of the Navy (DoN) Budget estimates. The objective of this research was to develop a SDM to estimate manpower cost and technology tradeoff analysis associated with different technology implementations. This research will assist Navy decision makers and program managers when objectively considering the impacts of iii technology selection on manpower and associated TOC, and will provide managers with a better understanding of hidden costs associated with new technology adoption. Recommendations were made for future study in manpower cost estimation of ship systems. In future studies, one particular type of data should be located to test the model for a specific manpower configuration.

In the UK there has been growing concern about the relationship between levels of alcohol consumption and offending behaviour. The Alcohol Treatment Requirement (ATR) was introduced to the UK in 2007 and was piloted in a District in the north of England in July 2007. The ATR is a coercive form of treatment delivered jointly by the probation service and the National Health Service (NHS) and was funded by the NHS. The ATR centres on supporting offenders to cease their offending behaviour and reduce or end their alcohol misuse. Two female alcohol treatment workers have been appointed to specifically deliver the ATR. Therefore this study aimed to investigate the delivery of the ATR, and more specifically, aimed to explore what impact the ATR might have in relation to positive behaviour change and rehabilitation for offenders with alcohol problems. In order to meet the expectations of producing ¿outcome¿ data for the NHS funders, and indepth theoretical data worthy of an academic PhD, this research took a pragmatic methodological approach which enabled different social realities of the ATR to be explored. To this end, a mixed methods design was employed involving quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. The data for this research was generated in three phases with Phase One aiming to explore quantitatively the characteristics, impacts and outcomes of those sentenced to the ATR. This phase revealed that the ATR is being delivered to predominantly young, male, alcohol dependent, violent, persistent offenders. This analysis further revealed that the ATR was effective in bringing about positive treatment outcomes and in reducing reoffending. In order to explore further how this positive change was occurring, Phase Two consisted of qualitative participant observations of the treatment interaction involving the female alcohol treatment workers and the male offenders. By drawing on positioning theory, the analysis considered the complexity of the gendered interactions that occurred during these encounters. It was found that the two female alcohol treatment workers resisted positions of ¿feminine carer¿ offered up by these young men in order to occupy positions of control. Indeed this analysis provided great insight into the constant flow of negotiations and manoeuvring of positions that occurred between the alcohol treatment worker and the offender, argued to be vitally important in working towards positive behaviour change. During Phase Three ten offenders were interviewed in order to explore through a dialogical lens (Bakhtin, 1982) how they constructed and experienced treatment on the ATR. In exploring the offenders¿ stories dialogically, the analysis highlighted how the ATR was enabling, in that it offered a ¿space¿ for these offenders to engage and internalise a dialogue that draws on the authoritative voice of therapy. Therefore it was revealed that through dialogue with the ¿other¿, offenders were able to re-author a more ¿moral¿ and ¿worthy¿ self. Moreover, the ATR has been found to be successful in enabling the offenders¿ hegemonic masculine identities to be both challenged and protected as a result of the multilayered interactions that occurred during these treatment encounters. This research therefore concludes that coercive treatment, rather than being a concern, should be embraced as a way of enabling change for offenders with alcohol problems. Furthermore, this research has highlighted the value of the relational aspect of treatment in bringing about positive behaviour changes. Finally this research has shown that community sentences offer a more constructive way of engaging with offenders than those who receive a custodial sentence.

Background: The Scaled Agile Framework®(SAFe) has been adopted by many automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for scaling their agile practices. It is one of the ways to improve and accelerate their in-house software development life cycle. Most OEMs have tailored the agile framework to fit their own needs. However, with the increasing complexity of vehicles, especially in terms of embedded software and hardware development, agile release trains (ARTs) face challenges in managing requirements throughout the vehicle development life cycle. Multiple teams working on requirements, consistency of requirements, collaboration, prioritization of requirements between teams, and changing requirements are some of the challenges faced by the SAFe practicing organizations. Objectives: This thesis examines how the requirements engineering within SAFe has been practiced inone of the automotive OEMs, and the challenges its agile release trains face. It addresses the real problems of practical interest and real-life context by interacting with the teams who have been closely working with the requirements daily. It also accumulates the impacts due to the identified challenges. Methods: This study utilizes a case study methodology, which is flexible in design, exploratory, andqualitative. This choice of research method is influenced by the scope of the study, research questions, and the degree of interaction required between us and the participants to collect the data. By conducting semi-structured interviews, a large quality of data isproduced by having a higher level of interaction with participants. The collected data is then probed for newer and unexpected responses using a thematic approach, which helps to identify patterns and themes using large and complex data. Results: This thesis summarizes the requirement engineering practices and challenges faced by theagile release trains in SAFe practicing automotive industry. We approached the agile teams directly and collected the organizational and stakeholder behavior while working with therequirements and the challenges faced. Using intrinsic data analysis, the gathered interview data is understood, and the implications are listed. This study reemphasizes that agile release trains were facing many challenges, especially in the requirements engineeringarea even though the Scaled Agile Framework is practiced. Knowledge gaps, incompleteand misunderstood customer requirements, ineffective communication, fragmented tooling, inadequate management support, and inconsistent requirement engineering practiceare some of the challenges highlighted by the agile release trains.

As the number of Internet of Things devices is increasing rapidly, it is of utmost significance that the implementations of protocols for constrained devices are bug-free. In general implementations of network protocols are error-prone due to their complex nature and ambiguities in the protocol specification. Implementations of network protocols often contain critical errors which could be exploited. To avoid bugs and vulnerabilities, the implementation of network protocols has to adhere to their specifications. The objective of this thesis is to use symbolic execution to test one implementation of the Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman Over COSE (EDHOC) protocol and one implementation of the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) against their specifications. The goal is to identify bugs such as crashes, non-conformances, memory errors, and security vulnerabilities that may occur if the implementations are not adhering to their specifications. The methodology to do this consists of three steps: 1) extracting requirements from the protocols Request For Comments and expressing them as formulas, 2) preparing the system under test for symbolic execution and applying the formulas during symbolic execution to detect any paths that violate a requirement, 3) for every path which violates a requirement, the concrete value that the symbolic execution engine provided is used in the unmodified implementation to validate the bug. In total seven non-conformances were found which have been reported to developers. One non-conformance was found in the EDHOC implementation and six were found in the CoAP implementation. / Eftersom antalet Internet of Things enheter ökar snabbt är det av yttersta vikt att imple-menteringarna av nätverksprotokoll för Internet of Things enheter är korrekta. Generellt sett är implementeringar av nätverksprotokoll felbenägna på grund av deras komplexa natur och oklarheter i protokollspecifikationen. Implementeringar av nätverksprotokoll innehåller ofta kritiska buggar som kan utnyttjas. För att undvika buggar och sårbarheter måste implementeringar av nätverksprotokoll följa sina specifikationer. Målet med detta examensarbete är att använda symbolisk exekvering för att testa en implementation av protokollet Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman Over COSE ( EDHOC ) och en implementation av protokollet Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) mot deras specifikationer. Syftet är att identifiera buggar såsom krascher, icke-konformiteter, minnesfel och säker-hetssårbarheter som kan uppstå om implementeringarna inte följer sina specifikationer. Metodiken för att uppnå detta består av tre steg: 1) extrahera krav från protokollensspecifikationer och uttrycka dem som formler, 2) förbereda systemet som ska testas försymbolisk exekvering och tillämpa formlerna under symbolisk exekvering för att upp-täcka eventuella vägar som bryter mot ett krav, 3) för varje väg som bryter mot ett krav används det konkreta värde som den symboliska exekveringsmotorn tillhandahåller i den oförändrade implementationen för att validera buggen. Totalt sett hittades sju icke-konformiteter. En icke-konformitet hittades i EDHOC implementeringen och sex hittades i CoAP implementeringen.

Product development is affected by uncertainties due to changing customer requirements, changing regulations, technological developments, long lead times, high product complexities, and geopolitical issues. Automation, increased flexibility of production, and reduced lead times are drivers that allow product development to be competitive in this scenario. Design engineers should be aware of production capabilities to facilitate early producibility assessments and to avoid late changes. Production preparation is identified as an important activity in the product development process, whereby the producibility of a product is assessed. In this thesis, the current state of production preparation during product development is investigated and a method is introduced supporting production preparation using production requirements. The work was carried out using the design research methodology framework and comprised four studies based on the four steps of the framework. The research clarification and descriptive study 1 phases aimed at developing understanding and were done by means of data collection at the companies through interviews and document studies. The next two steps were prescriptive study and descriptive study 2, which aimed at developing and evaluating the support. This was done through observation, workshops, and solution development. The production preparation process is supported by Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, failure mode and effects analysis, lesson-learnt documents, and computer-aided design, and the efficiency of the process is dependent on individual skills and knowledge. Tools to support common understanding, remove ambiguity in requirements, and enable collaboration between design and production engineers are needed. The developed method allows for the identification, definition, structuring, and sharing of production requirements, aligning with varying maturities of product and production systems during product development. This helps improve the collaboration between design and production engineers for production preparation.

<p>An interest has been established in the identification, documentation and classifi- cation of the environmental assumptions that are missing from the original PACE- MAKER System Specification. This thesis addresses the presented challenge and documents the procedure used to identify, classify, and document these missing en- vironmental assumptions.</p> <p>In summary, this thesis answers the following questions: <ol> <li></p> <p>What can be done in order to improve the original PACEMAKER System</p> <p>Specification with respect to environmental assumptions? </li> <li></p> <p>Why is it beneficial, in terms of enhancing software quality, to include the doc- umentation of environmental assumptions – which sometimes are (wrongfully) perceived as being collateral and optional – as part of the software requirements document? </li> <li></p> <p>How should such environmental assumptions be documented? </li> </ol></p> <p>More specifically, this thesis • Presents an abstract model for the PACEMAKER system. • Identifies system boundaries and interfaces in the PACEMAKER model. • Identifies environmental assumptions for the PACEMAKER system.</p> <p>• Presents a classification system for the environmental assumptions identified for the PACEMAKER system based on the proposed model.</p> <p>• Proposes a process for identifying environmental assumptions.</p> <p>Furthermore, the research findings presented in this thesis are not limited to the PACEMAKER system. The documentation convention proposed in this thesis is meant to be generalized and can be extended to address similar documentation needs posed by all kinds of software systems. Additionally, the process of environmental assumptions elicitation described in this thesis provides a useful reference for con- ducting similar assumption identification projects. Lastly, the classification system presented in this thesis for the environmental assumptions exhibits one facet of a grander conceptual system – one that incorporates multiple ‘views’ of the same set of assumptions, with each view being distinguished by a unique set of classification criteria.</p> / Master of Applied Science (MASc)