Despite the huge market size of mobile applications and the large number of involved stakeholders fewresearch about app users’ intentions to download apps and factors affecting their decision had been carriedout. Current study examine app download decision from a transaction costs perspective and the effect of itselements on app download taking into consideration free and paid revenue model type for app. An onlinesurvey is developed to collect field data. One hundred and one valid response are obtained and used to testthe proposed research model. The findings indicated that transaction costs for app and market weresignificant driving factors that negatively impacted download for free model. Temporal asset specificityshowed to be an essential driving factor for app download. The research model gave positive indicationsabout transaction costs theory being a good framework to analyze app download decision.

The objective of this study is to investigate the role of transaction costs in determining market participation of smallholder farmers. It is expected that the identification of these transaction cost factors could assist in the formulation of policy interventions and/or institutional innovations to alleviate constraints on market participation and improve the ability of these small-scale farmers to become part of the commercial agricultural economy. Transaction costs differ between households due to asymmetries in access to assets, market information, extension services and remunerative markets. The study particularly investigated the factors contributing to different levels of transaction costs amongst households. The main hypothesis of the study is that small-scale farmers facing lower transaction costs will participate more in agricultural markets. Transaction costs reflect the character of the market, but are mainly embedded in the characteristics of individual households and their economic environment. In order to test the hypothesis, selectivity models identifying and testing significant factors related to market participation are applied to a survey of 157 farming households in the Northern Province. These households take part in the markets for horticulture, livestock, maize and other field crops. The selectivity models used involve two-step estimation similar to the Heckman's two-stage procedure. The study reveals that access to assets and market information in combination with particular household characteristics are important determinants of market participation. Among the assets of a household, a reasonably sized area of arable land tends to encourage participation in all markets, apart from the market for other field crops market. Ownership of livestock tends to stimulate livestock selling and also the level of maize sales. Ownership of arable land and livestock contribute to the economies of scale of production, which leads to lower transaction costs per unit output sold. Non-farm earnings only alleviate variable transaction costs in horticultural markets, but not in other field crops markets. Pensions discourage participation in high value commodities markets since they are viewed as alternative cash income. Indicators enhancing the role of information access include proximity to markets and contacts with the extension service. Proximity to markets reduces variable transaction costs in horticultural markets and fixed transaction costs in livestock markets. The study shows that every kilometre closer in proximity to markets, the horticultural sales increase by R152. Proximity and contact with extension services discourage participation in other field crops markets. Good road conditions reduce transaction costs for livestock and other field crops. The study also shows that in spite of bad road conditions some horticulture farmers still manage to market most of their products. A larger sized household tends to increase the transaction costs in marketing all commodities except for the other field crops. Female farmers tend to participate more in livestock markets as they own small livestock and poultry that are easy to sell, and keep livestock for livelihood purposes rather than for social status. On the other hand, female farmers appear to be constrained in their participation in horticultural markets, ostensibly due to problems of access to irrigation resources and cultural and legal perceptions. Older farmers with enough social capital are willing to sell, but in horticulture and maize they tend to sell lower quantities. The study raises issues which, when attended to, might reduce the transaction costs, particularly by enhancing access to information and providing endowments to farming households. Some constraints require direct policy measures, such as policies dealing with land reform, extension services, education and legal reforms, and then there are those that require indirect intervention and private sector involvement such as road networks and market availability. / Dissertation (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2002. / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / Unrestricted

This master thesis is devoted to the transaction costs during insolvency of big companies. The aim of the thesis is to analyse, define and compare transaction costs incurred during insolvency of two Czech companies. The secondary aim is to find the relevant costs, compare their value and find the root cause of their appearance. There is hypothesis, which needs to be acknowledged or confuted. The hypothesis is if company has to be rich enough to be saved. The followed analysis has been performed on CBPS s.r.o. and Technistone a.s. The answer to this question, which was proofed by mentioned analysis, is yes, company really needs to be rich enough and own enough capital to be able to go through successful reorganization.

This thesis contributes to the literature on making agricultural markets work for the poor, with specific reference to Ethiopia. It contains three substantive chapters, which may be read independently. The chapters use primary surveys with traders conducted in 2002 (chapters 2 and 3) and 2007 (all the chapters).Chapter 1 investigates Ethiopian traders’ decision on whether and how much to use brokers. Results shine light on how the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), which recently formalized the brokerage functions, could be most beneficial for the functioning of agricultural markets. We show that the ECX could consider introducing new food crops in the trading system, offering warehouse receipt financing to its clients, and spreading the network of its warehouses throughout the country. Chapter 2 inquires whether the focus on technological and institutional upgrading is sufficient to make Ethiopian agricultural markets more efficient and if the existence of many small intermediaries causes market inefficiency. Findings suggest that, when transporters are used, transport costs could be reduced by avoiding trans-shipment, and reducing the number of times the transporter has to stop to allow for cargo loading and off-loading. No evidence is found for increasing returns to transaction size. Chapter 3 conceptualizes the notion of market integration as ‘tradability’ and analyses what determines the likelihood of market diversification among Ethiopian traders. The variables that are found to significantly impact on this probability are location (which is correlated with access to asphalt roads), availability of market information, traders’ educational level, access to commercial finance and storage capacity. Results indicate that market fundamentals affected the likelihood of market diversification more in 2007, when prices were rapidly surging, than in 2001 when prices were decreasing. The findings of this thesis support the ‘getting markets right’ school, in that incentives, infrastructure and institutions are essential for market development, and long-distance coordination of market exchange can be achieved through public-private cooperation.

This study develops a model of collaboration choice among city governments. The theoretical model suggests that collaboration is a function of transaction costs that vary with different institutional arrangements utilized in cities, as well as the degree of competition between cities. This study argues that cities facing high transaction costs and high competition are less likely to participate in collaboration and to participate less deeply. Underlying these environmental factors are resource factors that create incentives for cities to collaborate for efficiency gains, which affect both the decision to collaboration and the depth of collaboration. Eleven hypotheses are presented to explain why cities choose to participate in collaboration in the first stage of the analysis and how deeply they collaborate in the second stage. Utilizing a Heckman model of this two-stage process, I find broad support for a number of variables that measure each of these theoretical constructs.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-04-12T14:09:52Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação MPA_Pedro Azevedo Versão Final Biblioteca.pdf: 1685753 bytes, checksum: 3b7498a04026c99abceaaf714f62b10c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-12T14:09:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação MPA_Pedro Azevedo Versão Final Biblioteca.pdf: 1685753 bytes, checksum: 3b7498a04026c99abceaaf714f62b10c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-11-20 / Com o aprofundamento do fenômeno da globalização, o dilema estratégico fazer internamente ou buscar o mercado cresceu em importância no ambiente empresarial. Desde então, as empresas têm utilizado a estratégia de terceirização de vários processos de sua cadeia de valor, como parte da crença de que é impossível garantir padrões adequados de competitividade ignorando a necessidade de se centrar esforços nas atividades consideradas fins das suas operações. É nesse contexto que a Petrobras optou por terceirizar a atividade de manutenção de equipamentos estáticos em suas refinarias, o que consiste em realizar processos licitatórios para selecionar empresas para estabelecer parcerias de negócios, por meio da celebração de contratos de médio e longo prazos. Foi nesse cenário, à luz dos conceitos da Economia dos Custos de Transação, que o presente estudo tomou forma. Tendo por objetivo identificar as associações existentes entre os custos de transação e o desempenho contratual, o estudo aqui descrito selecionou quatro contratos de duas das refinarias da Petrobras para análise. Os resultados obtidos indicam que a decisão de terceirizar a atividade de manutenção parece correta, assim como a utilização de contratos como estruturas de governança para regular a transação estudada. Há evidências no estudo de que o desempenho contratual superior está associado aos fatores Esforço Negocial 1, Esforço Negocial 2, Prazo do Processo de Contratação, Detalhamento da Especificação dos Serviços, Salvaguardas Contratuais e Experiência Anterior. Empresas que possuem um histórico maior de relacionamento com a Petrobras tendem a minimizar custos de transação e obter melhor desempenho contratual. Além disso, se evidenciou que os contratos que obtiveram os melhores desempenhos foram aqueles que demandaram menores esforços durante a fase exante da contratação. / Since the globalization deepening phenomenon the strategic dilemma between firm and market organization has grown in importance in business environment. Since then, companies have used outsourcing strategy as part of the belief that it is impossible to ensure adequate standards of competitiveness ignoring the need to focus their efforts on core business. In this context, Petrobras decided to outsource the maintenance activity of static equipment in their refining units what, specifically, implies in conducting bidding processes to select companies to establish business partnerships, through medium and long terms contracts. It was in this scenario, in light of the Transaction Cost Economics approach, that this study took shape. With the goal to identify associations between transaction costs and the contractual performance, the study described here selected four contracts of two Petrobras refineries to be analyzed. The results indicate that the decision to outsource the maintenance activity seems correct, and the use of contracts as governance structures either. Another conclusion is that companies with a greater history of previous relationship with Petrobras tend to minimize transaction costs and have better contract performance. In addition, it became clear that the contracts that had the best performances were those that required less effort during the ex-ante stage.

A growing number of studies have been conducted in the sphere of portfolio analysis concerning different approaches for analyzing stocks and outperforming the market. Pioneers in the sphere of portfolio theory like William Sharpe and Harry Markowitz have developed strategies and ratios for portfolio analysis that could generate positive risk-adjusted returns. Thus, this paper will solicit a number of these strategies to endeavor and generate a return that is higher than the market index while considering the expenses that come with buying and selling stocks (transaction costs). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess how active investing measures up to passive investing in the sphere of the Swedish stock market. The roadmap to achieve the desired goals set by the authors is to create numerous portfolios on a weekly basis with securities present in the Swedish OMX30 index using the Maximum Sharpe, Maximum M2, Minimum Variance, and Equally Weighted optimizations. Then the significance of the transaction costs will be tested and a comparison with the market index will be made. The results suggest that in the realm of the Swedish stock market, investing in dynamically optimized portfolios based on the maximization of Sharpe Ratio and M2 will generate higher returns in comparison to passively investing in the market index, and the significance of transaction costs varies upon the amount of capital invested in the portfolios.

The Ghanaian real estate market, though thriving, grapples with insufficient market data. The lack of data renders the market nontransparent and increases transaction costs. Considering the market performance over the past few years, great potential lies for even more growth if this problem is addressed. This research aims to provide an understanding of the data needs of the market and the effects of data paucity on the market. It also explores the potential that state institutions provide to ameliorate the problem. The data for this study is collected from interviews with real estate valuers and data aggregation firms that operate in the Ghanaian market. Data is also collected from acts of parliament. The research outlines the perspectives of valuers regarding the problem and the provisions that legal documents make for improving access to market data. This is conducted through qualitative methods. The research finds that the problems with data inaccessibility do not only affect market transactions but also the training of valuers and research about the market. The results indicate that government legislation makes provisions that should enable the collection of data by different agencies to be made publicly available; however, it appears the lack of incentives and a lack of enforcement of these institutions has resulted in the status quo: stakeholders in the market seem to be sitting on a goldmine.  Therefore, relevant stakeholders in the market need to drive change in data provision for a more transparent and efficient market.

This dissertation argues that the core of building smart cities is through the procurement and implementation of smart city technologies (SCTs) by either individual (i.e., smart city) or collaborative endeavors (i.e., smart governance). Given that urbanization problems (e.g., air pollution) usually spill over city boundaries, building smart cities as silos may not solve these problems. Therefore, utilizing smart governance in SCT procurement and implementation should be a better approach. Considering the potential benefits of smart governance, this dissertation addresses three overarching questions: (1) What is a smart city? (2) What is smart governance? and (3) Why do some cities choose to participate in smart governance while others do not? By developing a typology of smart governance, this dissertation categorizes three levels of smart governance based on cities' participation in cooperative procurement and implementation of SCTs. Data collected from the 2019 Smart Governance Survey confirm that the level of smart governance does vary among Texas cities. Applying transaction costs and institutional collective action (ICA) frameworks, the dissertation finds that public managers' perceptions on transaction costs and joint gains as well as cities' extant ICA mechanisms affect cities' participation in smart governance.

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