Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Programa Multi-Institucional e Inter-Regional de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Contábeis, 2014. / Submitted by Ana Cristina Barbosa da Silva (annabds@hotmail.com) on 2014-10-30T19:16:44Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2014_MariaCamilaBaigorri.pdf: 499445 bytes, checksum: 31af2db6f8ca02648945307dce190031 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Tania Milca Carvalho Malheiros(tania@bce.unb.br) on 2014-11-05T11:44:25Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2014_MariaCamilaBaigorri.pdf: 499445 bytes, checksum: 31af2db6f8ca02648945307dce190031 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-11-05T11:44:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2014_MariaCamilaBaigorri.pdf: 499445 bytes, checksum: 31af2db6f8ca02648945307dce190031 (MD5) / O objetivo dessa pesquisa é verificar se as operações de securitização aumentam o risk takingdas instituições financeiras. A inovação financeira e o desenvolvimento do mercado detransferência de risco permitiu que as instituições financeiras alterassem seu modelo denegócio. Com a possibilidade de transferir o risco de suas operações para o mercado,questiona-se se as instituições perdem o incentivo para monitorar o risco, ex ante e ex post.Assim, utilizando o z-score como métrica para o risk taking, foi analisado efeito dasoperações de securitização no risco das instituições originadoras usando para isso umaamostra formada pelas instituições financeiras listadas na Bovespa durante o período que vaide 2004 a 2012. Utilizando o modelo de dados em painel com efeitos aleatórios, encontraramseevidências empíricas que as operações de securitização estão associadas a um maior risktaking. ______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT / This research aims to verify if Securitization increases Bank’s risk taking. Financial innovation and the development of market risk transfer changes banks’ business models. Withthe possibility to transfer the risk to the market, banks may lose their incentive to screen creditrisk, ex ante and ex post. Using the z-score for measuring the risk taking, we analize the effectof securitization in the originator bank’s risk, using a sample of banks listed on Bovesparanging 2004 to 2012. Using panel data with random effects, we find evidence that securitization increases the risk taking in brasilian market.

D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology) / The Licensing Branch of the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa is responsible for setting safety standards as regards the nuclear energy industry. The present study forms part of an investigation, initiated by members of the Licensing Branch, into the impact and possible social risk of nuclear technology on society. The ultimate aim of the investigation, towards which this study intends to make a sound contribution, is the development of appropriate social risk criteria. Financial assistance by the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa is hereby acknowledged. Any views or conclusions are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the AEC. The financial assistance of the Human Sciences Research Council towards the costs of this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed or conclusions reached are those of the author and are not to be regarded as a reflection of the opinions and conclusions of the Human Sciences Research Council.

Do adolescents of colour really engage in risk-taking behaviours as often generalised by the public? Are they in fact the alcohol, drugs, sex, and violence generation? This study attempts to investigate the conditions influencing the choices adolescents make prior to their engaging in risk-taking behaviours. In the social sciences, concerns over adolescents’ recklessly irresponsible behaviours have deep roots. In 1904 G. Stanley Hall depicted adolescence as misbehaving because of the storms and stresses of the transition from childhood to adulthood. Subsequently, social scientists produced substantial evidence that the storminess of adolescence is largely an over generalisation, which has not been empirically substantiated. In corroboration of this interpretation, this study also indicates that not all adolescents engage in risk-taking behaviour, and those risky individuals do not necessarily engage in all spheres of risk-taking. The majority of the target group only experimented with certain risk behaviours by engaging in them on one occasion only. The specific high school was selected because the researcher knew the learners, as she was an educator there at the time. She was thus reasonably aware of the frequency, the nature and the severity of the risk-taking behaviours of the target group. In general, the most important findings of the study signified a moderate level of participation in risk-taking activities. However, in certain spheres such as cigarette smoking, alcohol usage and sexual intercourse, an extreme participation level was reported. Certain factors such as gender, age, socio-economic conditions, parental (one or both) absence, and the respondents’ attitude towards the specific behaviour, were discovered to have played an influential role in the target group taking risks. Based on the reasons advanced for engaging in risk-taking behaviour, the researcher concluded that the following theories were applicable in explaining the behaviour of the respondents. These theories are the social learning theory, symbolic interactionist theory, social identity, the theory of reasoned action, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The researcher trusts that this study will assist the reader to understand the complex contributing circumstances that the target group has to contend with in making decisions.

Background: Chlamydia screening is an international strategy used to reduce rates of infection in a target population. This thesis set out to explore the behaviour of young people against the principles of this government strategy for infection control and self-empowerment. The work was set in County Durham and Darlington where I led a service for improved awareness and screening for Chlamydia for young people aged 15 – 24 years. Aims: This research was based on interviews with Chlamydia screening service users in order to understand the factors that influenced their risk taking behaviours and to generate theory for public health practice. An analysis of outcomes from a large sample of over 20,000 subjects and observations of young people in settings where Chlamydia testing and advice was available gave context and background to this study. Findings Chlamydia screening was used as a strategy to offset risk taking that enabled young people to continue behaviours that they valued. This finding is a new and unexpected contribution to Chlamydia screening literature, and also supports the developing theory of edgework. Knowledge and awareness of Chlamydia did not change as a result of screening activities, and this did not have a major influence on preventative behaviour. The national messages that one in 10 young people are infected, and that infection is easily detected and managed, was interpreted by some that nine in 10 young people were not infected, and that this was not a significant health threat. Incentives were found to significantly increase screening uptake although this did not lead to a change in risk taking. There was an increased likelihood to have sex with the perception of knowing a partner, although this was not necessarily based upon factual information. Most participants demonstrated lethal patterns of alcohol consumption that commonly led to sexual encounters and all those who stated that they were aware of safe drinking limits demonstrated lethal patterns of alcohol consumption. All participants with a positive test result had a negative result within the previous year suggesting no change in risk taking following screening, and although all participants said that they would modify their behaviour in the future, when they were probed all stated that this would not happen giving reasons such failure to moderate alcohol use. Conclusion: These findings led me to conclude that risk taking in relation to health and potential disease is a normal process in the development of young people. Young people value risk taking activities for promoting self-identity and supporting emotional and social well-being. Public health interventions need to consider the developmental needs of young people using an asset based approach in order to provide interventions that address the causes of risk taking behaviours.

Master of Science / Department of Psychology / Donald A. Saucier / Researchers have yet to examine how trait sensation seeking and state positive affect combine to influence participation in risky behaviors. This study examined how participant levels of sensation seeking and positive affect interacted to influence participant interest in performing a risky behavior. It was hypothesized that an interaction between sensation seeking and positive affect would be found, such that high sensation seekers low in positive affect would show more interest in participating in a risky activity than high sensation seekers that were high in positive affect or all participants low in sensation seeking, regardless of positive affect. Trait sensation seeking was measured in an initial group of participants (N = 693), using a subscale of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (Zuckerman Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993). Using these scores, high and low sensation seekers (N = 99) were invited to a second study, where videos were used to manipulate levels of state positive affect (Hemenover, 2003). Participants were then given a questionnaire to measure interest in participating in a risky drug study. No interaction was found, but a main effect for sensation seeking (Zuckerman, 1971) was discovered, such that high sensation seekers reported more interest in participating in a risky behavior than low sensation seekers. Therefore, it appears that participant interest in risky behaviors was a function of levels of trait sensation seeking. It is possible that problems with data collection or the risk-taking scenario contributed to the inability to support the hypothesis.

This thesis provides an interpretation about how wildland firefighters can experience risk by relations of trust. The author shows that the risk taking and wildland firefighting literatures inadequately account for how trust underpins self-construction processes among people who participate in risky activities. To supplement the literatures within these terms, the author uses interview data and personal stories about managing wildland fire to propose a general trajectory of being and becoming a wildland firefighter that details the significance of trust in self-construction processes. The author argues that in the process of being and becoming a wildland firefighter, risk is sometimes increased, decreased, concealed, revealed, and anticipatorily transformed through trust. The author provides a framework for viewing risk that can be used to understand danger to the self. / Graduate

This study investigated risk-taking behaviours among 244 first year students (Male=52 and Female=192). The risk-taking behaviours of the students were grouped into Risky and Violent Behaviour, Tobacco Use, Alcohol and Drug Use, Risky Sexual Behaviour and Unhealthy Dietary Behaviour subscales. Statistically significant correlations were found among all the risk-taking behaviour subscales other than Unhealthy Dietary Behaviours, which did not correlate with the other risky behaviours. Statistical significant sex differences were found regarding risk-taking behaviour that implicated males as higher risk-takers than females.

This research was based on the premise that psychological research on risk-taking behaviour has emphasized a one-dimensional model of instrumentality and cognitive functioning derived from male experience. The central research question "How do women experience risk-taking?" was investigated by analyzing definitions and examples of personal risk described by 44 women, and by comparing relationships between subgroups assigned by occupation and by sex-role orientation. The findings indicated that women experienced risk-taking that spanned both dimensions of affiliation (connection to others) and instrumentality (attainment of personal goals). A new definition of risk-taking was proposed that incorporated elements of uncertainty, emotional involvement, loss, and a process of change. Women in traditional occupations described a similar number of affiliative and instrumental risks, while women in non-traditional occupations emphasized instrumental risks. It was observed that the opportunity and demand for risk-taking appeared related to social context and work activity. Significant differences were also found between women in traditional and non-traditional occupations with respect to sex-role orientation (from the Bern Sex-Role Inventory), employment status, income level, and number of children. No differences were found between sub-groups designated by occupation and by sex-role orientation with respect to estimates of risk-taking tendency from a self-estimate scale and the Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire. The results supported a critique of the Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire, citing an emphasis on instrumental and hypothetical risk-taking. Participants also reported that the CDQ was not relevant to their lives. The feminist approach encouraged active participation and evaluation by the women in the study. As a result, participants reported an increased understanding of themselves and of the process of risk-taking. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

There has been a vast amount of research done in the fields of Entrepreneurship and Risk Taking. There is, however, very little literature regarding the relationship between Risk Taking and Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE). This study attempts to understand that relationship whilst exploring the impact of Risk Propensity on Corporate Entrepreneurship with the intention of questioning current CE frameworks. The objective was to establish criteria to increase CE in the business environment. A bespoke questionnaire was sent out to determine both the individual Risk Propensity of the respondents and their perception of CE within their organisation. The elements of the questionnaire were based on well-known instruments available in literature. The variables used to explore the data further were based on the demographic information supplied by the respondents. The main objective of the study was to determine the relationship between Risk Propensity and CE with the secondary objectives looking to explore the variation in both Risk Propensity and CE across the established variables. The findings indicate little or no relationship between Risk Propensity and CE whilst the results from the variable analysis highlight the importance of Organisational Boundaries as a factor of CE. A framework is then proposed synthesising the results of the analysis before concluding with recommendations for future research. / Dissertation (MBA)-University of Pretoria, 2014. / lmgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

When a choice model fails, the standard economics exercise is to weaken one assumption at a time to study what has changed. This is often accompanied by the understanding that future work will relax multiple assumptions simultaneously in order to explain actual behavior. This dissertation does exactly that, and by studying seemingly independent behavioral anomalies as related to one another we obtain new insights about why behavior departs from standard models. Chapter 1 studies how violations of structural assumptions like expected utility and exponential discounting can be connected to reference dependent preferences with set-dependent reference points, even if behavior conforms with these assumptions when the reference is fixed. This is done with the introduction of a unified framework under which both general rationality (WARP) and domain-specific structural postulates (e.g., Independence for risk preference, Stationarity for time preference) are jointly relaxed using a systematic reference dependence approach. The framework allows us to study risk, time, and social preferences collectively, where behavioral departures from WARP and structural postulates are explained by a common source—changing preferences due to reference dependence. In our setting, reference points are given by a linear order that captures the relevance of each alternative in becoming the reference point and affecting preferences. In turn, they determine the domain-specific preference parameters for the underlying choice problem (e.g., utility functions for risk, discount factors for time). Chapter 2, a joint work with Silvio Ravaioli, conducts an empirical test for one of the models in Chapter 1. It studies how the introduction of a very safe or very risky option affects risk attitude. In a laboratory experiment, we find that adding safer options increases displayed risk aversion, and it does so even when the added options are not chosen. This finding is robust across participants and treatments (e.g., degenerate and non-degenerate safe options). By contrast, we find that the addition of risky options does not result in a detectable change in risk attitude. Our results are in line with Chapter 1’s Avoidable Risk Expected Utility model. Chapter 3 studies choices over time, which allows us to study anomalies “at a given time” and “across time” as related to one another. This is achieved by studying how past choices affect future choices in the framework of attention. Limited attention has been proposed as an explanation for the failure of “rationality”, where better options are not chosen because the decision maker has failed to consider them. We investigate this idea in a setting where (1) the observable are sequences of choices and (2) the decision makers are aware of the alternatives they chose in the past when they face future choice sets. This provides a link between two kinds of rationality violations: those that occur in a cross section of one-shot decisions and those that occur within a sequence of realized choices. Unlike the former, the frequency of the latter is naturally bounded, and their occurrence helps pin down preferences whenever a standard model of limited attention cannot.