Magister Commercii - MCom / This minithesis aims to determine whether South Africa's microfinance institutions are operating efficiently and whether efficiency can be enhanced. Using the United Nations model and framework for efficiency, it examines the key principles of operational efficiency in the South African microfinance context. The paper begins with an overview of the literature relating to the principles of efficiency as underscored in the United Nations model.

Legal instruments of energy efficiency Abstract and key words The diploma thesis deals with energy efficiency as a unique source of energy. The subject of this thesis is to specify key legal instruments of energy efficiency, i.e. conceptual, administrative and economical instruments. The diploma thesis is divided into five chapters. In the introductory chapter, being called Energy Policy, there is a brief outline of the background of energy politics on both the international and EU level, including environmental protection. This introductory chapter also ranks the Czech Republic among countries with high energy performance. Energy efficiency is the opportunity to lower its energy performance. The second chapter, Legal Instruments of Energy Efficiency, defines legal instruments of energy efficiency as a part of environmental protection. This chapter is a general one; the instruments are concretized in the following chapters. In addition, this chapter focuses on the principle of sustainable development, as well as issues related to human factor, climate conditions and rebound effect. The third chapter, called Conceptual Instruments, provides further information relating to conceptual strategies of energy efficiency. For the EU conceptions, key directives are mentioned to regulate energy efficiency, namely the...

According to the standard life-cycle hypothesis, all expected future incomes should be incorporated into an individual’s life-time budget and therefore affect current economic behavior. As inheritances can be anticipated to some extent, I test if expectations on receiving an inheritance in the future affect individuals’ current decisions about their labor supply, savings and consumption. To empirically test this, I take advantage of the combined facts that individuals in Sweden are legal heirs to their childless sibling and that the probability of inheriting a childless sibling increases with time due to the negative relationship between age and fertility. If individuals internalize the expected inheritance, we should observe a readjustment in labor supply and consumption at the time of an unexpected birth of a nephew or niece and onwards. Exploiting the variation in the expected inheritance loss, I find that individuals internalize expected inheritances by readjusting their savings after this event. I do not find any overall effects in labor supply or consumption. However, there seems to exist some heterogeneity in responses between males and females, where males only adjust their savings while females adjust both their labor supply and savings.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) or Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) recently has been regarded as crucial by the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. The use of BIM/VDC represents the creation and use of a three-dimensional (3D) virtual model that amplifies the design, construction, and operation of a building. This technological improvement fundamentally changes the process of how the buildings are designed and constructed. However, the approach to the use of advanced technology in the AEC industry does not seem to be welcomed by the majority of the industry regarding high initial cost of implementation. This study presents data gathered from meetings, interviews and a case study which was a construction project run in Sweden to determine the savings implementing BIM/VDC and to reveal the return on investment (ROI) from a general contractor (GC) perspective. The potential savings to the GC to invest in BIM/VDC were estimated based on the PENG model, measurable cost benefits associated with reduced schedule overruns and reduced change order cost. This thesis confirmed that BIM/VDC results in vast savings and positive impacts on ROI based on the results from the case study which deployed it successfully.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Savings and credit cooperatives in Peru are of great importance for their participation in the economy, reaching in 2019, deposits and deposits and assets of more than 2,890,191,000. However, they do not invest in predictive technologies to identify customers with a higher probability of purchasing a financial product, making marketing campaigns unproductive. In this work, a model based on machine learning is proposed to identify the clients who are most likely to acquire a financial product for Peruvian savings and credit cooperatives. The model was implemented using IBM SPSS Modeler for predictive analysis and tests were performed on 40,000 records on 10,000 clients, obtaining 91.25% accuracy on data not used in training. / Revisión por pares

Objective: To examine the influence of farmers' market pricing and accessibility on willingness to shop at farmers' markets, among low-income women. Design: Qualitative interviews using scenarios with quantitative assessment of willingness to shop at farmers' markets given certain pricing and accessibility scenarios. Setting: Eastern North Carolina. Participants: A total of 37 low-income women of childbearing age (18-44 years) receiving family planning services at the health department. Phenomenon of Interest: Willingness to shop at a farmers' market. Analysis: Fisher's exact test was used to examine associations between willingness to shop at farmers' markets by urban/rural residence, race, and employment status. Direct quotations relevant to participants' use of farmers' markets were extracted based on a positive deviance framework. Results: Participants were increasingly willing to shop at the farmers' market when price savings increased and when the market was incrementally closer to their residence. Willingness was highest when there was at least a 20% price savings. Participants seemed to be influenced more by a visual representation of a greater quantity of produce received with the price savings rather than a quantitative representation of the money saved by the reduced price. Conclusions and Implications: Future farmers' market interventions should take into account these consumer level preferences.

Abstract The built environment is responsible for 40% of the global energy demand (1). To reduce building energy consumption, regulations are enhancing the appeal of sustainable constructions. Nevertheless, the rate of construction is low in most of developed countries. Efforts are to be made in existing buildings, namely in office buildings, which are statistically more energy-consuming than residential buildings (3). To conduct an adapted energy retrofitting, an energy audit can be realized as a pre-study. The first step is to realize an inventory of fixture of the building equipment. From that analysis, the building behavior and consumption are modeled with the help of dynamic simulation software. A comparison with the real life energy consumption guides the study to obtain a model close to reality. Energy retrofitting plans can then be created, based on this model and on the inventory of fixture phase. If technically adapted, each retrofitting solution is evaluated in terms of investment cost and energy savings. Building energy audits and recommendation phases are not unique and normalized procedures. More advanced and complex calculations and measurements can improve the result accuracy. Nevertheless, the introduced approach gives a first understanding of a building, by analyzing its strengths and its weaknesses. As a result, the proposed retrofitting solutions are suited to each specific building. This renovation plan can then be used as a first-decision making tool for the various stakeholders included in the retrofitting project. Abstract The built environment is responsible for 40% of the global energy demand (1). To reduce building energy consumption, regulations are enhancing the appeal of sustainable constructions. Nevertheless, the rate of construction is low in most of developed countries. Efforts are to be made in existing buildings, namely in office buildings, which are statistically more energy-consuming than residential buildings (3). To conduct an adapted energy retrofitting, an energy audit can be realized as a pre-study. The first step is to realize an inventory of fixture of the building equipment. From that analysis, the building behavior and consumption are modeled with the help of dynamic simulation software. A comparison with the real life energy consumption guides the study to obtain a model close to reality. Energy retrofitting plans can then be created, based on this model and on the inventory of fixture phase. If technically adapted, each retrofitting solution is evaluated in terms of investment cost and energy savings. Building energy audits and recommendation phases are not unique and normalized procedures. More advanced and complex calculations and measurements can improve the result accuracy. Nevertheless, the introduced approach gives a first understanding of a building, by analyzing its strengths and its weaknesses. As a result, the proposed retrofitting solutions are suited to each specific building. This renovation plan can then be used as a first-decision making tool for the various stakeholders included in the retrofitting project. Abstract The built environment is responsible for 40% of the global energy demand (1). To reduce building energy consumption, regulations are enhancing the appeal of sustainable constructions. Nevertheless, the rate of construction is low in most of developed countries. Efforts are to be made in existing buildings, namely in office buildings, which are statistically more energy-consuming than residential buildings (3). To conduct an adapted energy retrofitting, an energy audit can be realized as a pre-study. The first step is to realize an inventory of fixture of the building equipment. From that analysis, the building behavior and consumption are modeled with the help of dynamic simulation software. A comparison with the real life energy consumption guides the study to obtain a model close to reality. Energy retrofitting plans can then be created, based on this model and on the inventory of fixture phase. If technically adapted, each retrofitting solution is evaluated in terms of investment cost and energy savings. Building energy audits and recommendation phases are not unique and normalized procedures. More advanced and complex calculations and measurements can improve the result accuracy. Nevertheless, the introduced approach gives a first understanding of a building, by analyzing its strengths and its weaknesses. As a result, the proposed retrofitting solutions are suited to each specific building. This renovation plan can then be used as a first-decision making tool for the various stakeholders included in the retrofitting project.

The diploma thesis deals with the topic of savings through the eyes of primary school children and it looks at their role in the lives of upper primary school students. The theoretical part of the thesis presents an economic topic in close connection with one of consumption and investment. Furthermore, we propose ways of collecting funds and introduce the basic and the best well-known banking products. The banking products are compared with each other and, based on this comparison, we recommend procedures for which products to use related to different ways of maximizing savings and returns. The practical part of this thesis is divided into two sections. The first section presents the assumptions of qualitative research. We have formulated a research problem for this purpose, which is as follows: What are the approaches of primary school pupils in creating savings? The primary school pupils' opinions on the topic of savings are presented and interpreted based on implemented semi-structured in-depth interviews. Obtained data is finally analyzed and summarized. The research is then followed by a didactic concept of savings. The second section of the practical part is focused on financial literacy as a subject mediating a topic of financial life planing in a school teaching environment. We introduce...

This dissertation studies different Unemployment Insurance (UI) systems and how critical design and institutional features affect individual behavior. In the first chapter, I analyze the UI system in Chile, whose benefits are primarily financed by work- ers’ own savings in Individual Savings Accounts (ISA). In 2002 Chile implemented a mandatory savings system for the formal labor sector. Every worker accumulates funds to be withdrawn in future unemployment spells, accompanied by a Solidarity Fund (SF) that may provide benefit extensions in case of low savings balances. Using administrative records of the Chilean formal labor market, I exploit the SF extension’s eligibility conditions to identify its effect on nonemployment duration. I estimate a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) that uses the eligibility for SF extension as an instrument for its take-up. Results show that an additional potential monthly installment financed by the SF extension increases nonemployment durations by 11.4 days, similar to what the literature documents for other developing economies. The second chapter builds on the previous one by empirically examining the im- pact of an additional monthly installment of UI benefits financed by ISAs. I implement a dynamic panel data model with individual fixed effects controlling for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. Using this empirical strategy, I find that nonemployment durations, on average, increase by 5.1 days when the unemployed have an additional monthly payment financed by their savings. Finally, I combine these two reduced-form outcomes to perform a decomposition of the disincentive effect of a more generous UI system funded by general taxes. Job search effort is depressed via a substitution effect when UI benefits increase (moral hazard). Still, there is also an incentive to exert less effort because the household’s consumption is sensitive to cash-on-hand (liquidity effect). I extend the existing literature by proposing a ratio pertinent to a system based on ISA that measures the liquidity effect over the total disincentive effect. Results show that around one-third to one-half of the negative impact of a UI extension on job search effort can be attributed to moral hazard, which this design of UI system eliminates. In the 1990s, Germany saw a massive rise in unemployment of workers in their late 50s compared to younger workers. In the third chapter (joint with Matthew Gudgeon, Johannes Schmieder, Simon Trenkle, and Han Ye), we show that a large share of this increase can be explained by the interaction of UI and the retirement system, where UI benefits affect labor supply by inducing individuals to leave employment. We show considerable bunching in UI inflows at age thresholds that allow for using UI as a bridge to early retirement. The bunching mass moves as the age threshold moves due to reforms of the UI system. To quantify the impact of this channel on labor supply, we use our reduced-form evidence to estimate a dynamic lifecycle model of labor supply that endogenizes unemployment and retirement transitions. We show that the increase in potential benefit durations in the late 1980s increased unemployment rates for workers aged 55-59 by around three percentage points (or about a 30 percent increase), playing a significant role in the large increases in unemployment rates for older workers.

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