Regional specialisation and economic volatility of Czech regions ABSTRACT This thesis deals with the assessment of the impact of regional specialization and regional diversity on economic performance of Czech regions by indicators of economic development: the growth of the average wage, employment growth, rising unemployment, increase in the number of patents and the GDP per person. The second aim is to assess the effect of types of diversity on regional performance. Finally, this thesis aims to assess the impact of diversity on regional resilience by analyzing the development of employment and GDP per person. Key words: Czech regions, diversity of industry, specialization, regional performance, regional resilience, related and unrelated variety, Jacobs' effects, Marshall's effects

of the Thesis "Amendements unrelated to the subject-matter of a bill in the legislative practice of the Czech Republic" The aim of the thesis was to describe the matter of amendments unrelated to the subject- matter of a bill. The first chapter of the thesis gave an introduction into the legislative procedure in Czech Republic and presented possible ways how an unrelated amendment can become a part of a bill. The second chapter was focused on unrelated amendments themselves. Firstly, it explained their essence and gave examples. Afterwards, unrelated amendments were characterised from different points of view, e.g. who and why iniciates them, why are they problematic, and how they can be sorted. The third chapter paid attention to selected decisions of the Constitutional Court of Czech Republic. The fourth chapter presented possible ways of how to prevent legislators from adding unrelated provisions to the bills according to contemporary rules and also mentioned possible ways how legislative rules can change.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-08-25T13:11:13Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Luiz Felipe Jostmeier Vallandro_.pdf: 1279034 bytes, checksum: 2e83e11ab40a6df49542fe7525f4485f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-25T13:11:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luiz Felipe Jostmeier Vallandro_.pdf: 1279034 bytes, checksum: 2e83e11ab40a6df49542fe7525f4485f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-14 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Este estudo investigou os fatores determinantes da direção da estratégia de diversificação de grupos empresariais no Brasil. Utilizando a teoria dos custos de transação (WILLIAMSON, 1975; 1979; 1985) e a teoria da agência (JENSEN e MECKLING, 1976) como pilares teóricos, o estudo se propôs a analisar a influência de um conjunto de fatores sobre a escolha da direção da estratégia de diversificação de grupos empresariais brasileiros, que ocorre no sentido de negócios relacionados ou não relacionados (diversificação relacionada X diversificação não-relacionada) à atividade principal do grupo. A estratégia empírica considerou uma amostra de 51 grupos empresariais identificados entre os 200 maiores grupos do Brasil entre 2009 e 2014, de acordo com a publicação do anuário Valor Grandes Grupos. A direção da diversificação tomou a forma de uma variável binária, com valor igual a 1 para a diversificação não-relacionada e zero para a diversificação relacionada. As variáveis utilizadas como os determinantes da direção da diversificação foram: lucratividade, endividamento, capex, risco, ativos físicos, ativos intangíveis, estrutura de propriedade considerando apenas um acionista controlador com ao menos 50% +1 das ações com direito a voto (Definido1), estrutura de propriedade formada por um grupo de acionistas compartilhando o controle (Definido2) e controle familiar. Duas variáveis de controle foram adicionadas: tamanho e oportunidades de crescimento. Os testes empíricos foram executados utilizando regressões probit painel para dados empilhados. As evidências sugerem que existe um conjunto de fatores que influencia a direção da estratégia de diversificação perseguida por grupos empresariais brasileiros. A principal conclusão é que fatores como endividamento, risco, capex e controle acionário exercido por um grupo de acionistas compartilhando o controle do grupo empresarial influenciam positivamente a probabilidade da escolha da diversificação não-relacionada. Por outro lado, fatores como ativos intangíveis e estrutura de propriedade considerando apenas um acionista controlador com ao menos 50% +1 das ações com direito a voto do grupo influenciam negativamente a probabilidade da escolha da diversificação não-relacionada. / This study investigated the determinants of the direction of diversification strategy of business groups in Brazil. Using both transaction costs theory (WILLIAMSON, 1975; 1979; 1985) and agency theory (JENSEN & MECKLING, 1976) as theoretical pillars, this study aimed to analyze the influence of a set of factors on the choice of the direction of diversification strategy of Brazilian business groups, that occurs towards related or unrelated businesses (related vs. unrelated diversification, respectively) to the main activity of the group. The empirical strategy considered a sample of 51 business groups identified among the 200 largest business groups in Brazil between 2009 and 2014, according to the publication of the yearbook Valor Grandes Grupos. The direction of diversification took the form of a binary variable, with the value of one for unrelated diversification, and zero for related diversification. The variables used as the determinants of the direction of diversification were: profitability, debt, capex, risk, physical assets, intangible assets, ownership structure considering only one shareholder holding at least 50% +1 of the shares with voting rights (Definido1), ownership structure formed by a group of shareholders sharing the control (Definido2), and family control. Two control variables were set: size and growth opportunities. Pooled probit panel regressions were used to run the empirical tests. The evidence suggest that a set of factors influences the direction of diversification strategy pursued by Brazilian business groups. The main conclusion is that factors like debt, risk, capex, and ownership structure formed by a group of shareholders sharing the control of the business group influence positively the probability of the choice of unrelated diversification. On the other hand, factors like intangible assets and ownership structure considering only one shareholder holding at least 50% +1 of the shares with voting rights influence negatively the probability of the choice of unrelated diversification.

我們利用「台灣地區中老年身心社會生活狀況長期追蹤調查研究」這份資料，以似無關迴歸(Seemingly Unrelated Regression)模型，探討老人的資產持有行為，發現：一般老年人口並不偏好持有股票，持有行為相當少見，但高教育、高所得、都市化地區（尤其是直轄市）的老人，可能分別因為高教育程度、所得效果影響、都市地區資訊流通快速等因素，使得這類型老人明顯較願意持有股票。 另一方面，在台灣，不動產扮演的角色特殊，傳統認為其與家族宗系連結，在持有行為上並非只從風險報酬觀點去看待，通常還與其他考量有關，因此在持有行為上有其特殊模式。 同時，我們也發現，老人婚姻關係的消解(dissolution)，例如離婚/分居，將對資產持有產生負面的財富效果影響，使得這類型老人各項資產的持有都顯著低於已婚/同居的老人；而健康情形越差的老人持有的不動產與存款也越少，應與此類老人有較高的醫療與保健支出，造成負面的財富效果有關。 除此之外，台灣老人平均而言，持有的不動產會隨年紀降低，但持有的存款會隨年紀而上升，主要與台灣老人隨著年紀上升，所得逐漸不足以維生，產生了反儲蓄(dissave)不動產的現象，有所關聯。我們認為台灣確實存在老人「以房養老」的現象。 最後，我們認為很重要的一點是，台灣老人資產的持有行為，並不是使用傳統的風險報酬概念就能解釋，我們必須考量其他可能因素，才能有效分析台灣老人所表現出來的資產持有行為。 / The general elders don’t prefer to hold stocks, but the elders of high-level education, the elders of high-level income and the elders in metropolis are more willing to hold stocks. Besides, the real estate plays a special role. People regard that it is linked up with the family or kindred. We also find out that the dissolution of relationship in elder’s marriage causes negative wealth effect on holding assets. The similar effect exists in much unhealthy elders. The elders hold less real estate as they getting older, but hold more stocks. It might due to that elders dissave their real estate. Finally, besides perspective of risk-reward, it might appropriate that think the behavior of holding assets in other view-points.

We performed a retrospective study in 185 patients with myelogenous leukemias who had received hematopoietic cells from unrelated donors. The aim of this study was to answer the question wether the benefit of KIR ligand incompatibility seen in haploidentical tranplantations can also be seen using unrelated donors. We could not detect a significant difference in survival between patients with a KIR ligand incompatibility and those with either fully matched or partially mismatched unrelated donors in this patient cohort. / In der Therapie von Leukämien ist die Knochenmark- bzw. Stammzelltransplantation eine tragende Säule. Für den Transplantationserfolg ist eine Übereinstimmung der Haupthistokompatibilitätsantige (HLA-Antigene der Klassen I und II) zwischen Spender und Empfänger von zentraler Bedeutung. Diese Notwendigkeit ergibt sich aus der sogenannten MHC-Restriktion in der T-Zellrezeptorerkennung. Ob auch NK-Zellrezeptoren und deren Liganden in der Spenderauswahl berücksichtigt werden sollten, ist bisher unzureichend untersucht. Insbesondere trifft das für die KIR-Rezeptoren zu, die wie die T-Zellrezeptoren ebenfalls HLA-Antigene als Liganden besitzen. Velardi et al. haben 2002 erstmalig gezeigt, daß in der Therapie myeloischer Leukämien die Transplantation von Blutstammzellen verwandter Spender mit KIR-Liganden-Inkompatibilität von klinischem Vorteil ist. Ob KIR-Liganden-Inkompatibilität auch bei Knochenmark-/ Stammzelltransplantationen Unverwandter Bedeutung erlangen könnte, war zu Studienbeginn offen und blieb auch infolge diskrepanter Untersuchungsergebnisse von verschiedenen Arbeitsgruppen im Verlauf der Studie widersprüchlich. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurde diese Fragestellung, die auch Teil einer internationalen Studie war, an 185 Spender-Empfänger-Paaren retrospektiv untersucht. Dabei wurde bei den Paaren einerseits die KIR-Liganden-Kompatibilität auf der Grundlage der HLA-C-Supertypen erschlossen (nach Velardi et al.). Andererseits konnte sie im internationalen Studienprogramm direkt aus dem KIR-Genotyp des Spenders und dem HLA-C-Supertyp des Empfängers ermittelt werden. Die Untersuchungen ergaben folgende Resultate: bei Vorliegen von KIR-Liganden-Inkompatibilität hat die Verwendung von ATG als Bestandteil der GvHD-Prophylaxe keinen Einfluß auf das klinische Ergebnis. Die Vermutungen von Giebel et al. wurden damit nicht gestützt. Die Bestimmung des KIR-Liganden-Status mit Hilfe der Rückschlußmethode allein aus dem HLA-Typ ist unzuverlässig. Für eine exakte Differenzierung ist die gleichzeitige KIR-Genotypisierung erforderlich. KIR-Liganden-Inkompatibilität ist bei unverwandten Knochenmark-/ Stammzelltransplantationen nicht von klinischem Vorteil. Auch ein gezieltes Aussuchen HLA-C-inkompatibler Spender auf der Grundlage einer KIR-Genotypisierung stellt derzeit keine therapeutische Option dar.

This dissertation consists of three essays wherein tools of financial econometrics are used to study the three aspects of farmland valuation puzzle: short-term boom-bust cycles, overpricing of farmland, and inconclusive effects of direct government payments. Essay I addresses the causes of unexplained short-term boom-bust cycles in farmland values in a dynamic land pricing model (DLPM). The analysis finds that gross return rate of farmland asset decreases as the farmland asset level increases, and that the diminishing return function of farmland asset contributes to the boom-bust cycles in farmland values. Furthermore, it is mathematically proved that land values are potentially unstable under diminishing return functions. We also find that intertemporal elasticity of substitution, risk aversion, and transaction costs are important determinants of farmland asset values. Essay II examines the apparent overpricing of farmland by decomposing the forecast error variance of farmland prices into forward looking and backward looking components. The analysis finds that in the short run, the forward looking Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) portion of the forecast errors are significantly higher in a boom or bust stage than in a stable stage. This shows that the farmland market absorbs economic information in a discriminative manner according to the stability of the market, and the market (and actors therein) responds to new information gradually as suggested by the theory. This helps to explain the overpricing of farmland, but this explanation works primarily in the short run. Finally, essay III investigates the duel effects of direct government payments and climate change on farmland values. This study uses a smooth coefficient semi-parametric panel data model. The analysis finds that land valuation is affected by climate change and government payments, both through discounted revenues and through effects on the risk aversion of land owners. This essay shows that including heterogeneous risk aversion is an efficient way to mitigate the impacts of misspecifications in a DLPM, and that precipitation is a good explanatory variable. In particular, precipitation affects land values in a bimodal manner, indicating that farmland prices could have multiple peaks in precipitation due to adaption through crop selection and technology alternation.

過去累積許多關於自閉症類兒童模仿的研究；其中，Lyons等人（2011）提出自動化因果編錄（ACE）是相當重要的理論。ACE認為自閉症類兒童之所以重演缺乏目標的動作，是因為部件相連作業呈現的外觀連續性，令自閉症類兒童較易將缺乏目標的動作視為導致目標動作前的必要動作。於是本研究的目的在於驗證自閉症類兒童的動作重演表現是否符合自動化因果編錄理論的預測：當部件分離時，自閉症類兒童無法推論缺乏目標的動作是否有出現的必要，於是動作重演將減少。本研究邀請24名自閉症類兒童，以及配對心理年齡30個月大的21名發展遲緩兒童與24名一般發展兒童，將部件相連與部件分離作業當作組內的操弄變項，並另外施測無意義物體動作作業，將帶有目標的有關動作、缺乏目標的無關動作與無意義物體動作三者當作依變項，比較三組兒童的動作重演表現。結果發現：一、自閉症類兒童在有關動作前重演的無關動作並沒有在部件分離作業中較少，此結果不支持ACE理論。二、自閉症類兒童能夠重演無關動作，不易重演無意義物體動作，或許是因為自閉症類兒童可以重演物體本身提供的動作屬性，然而抑制已形成的習慣有困難。三、自閉症類兒童重演有關動作與無意義物體動作的表現較另二組差，兩者正相關，而無關動作的重演表現與另二組無異，也許是因為無意義物體動作與有關動作的相似度較高，皆可被視為示範動作中的主要目標動作，而無關動作較屬於次要的動作；換句話說，或許自閉症類兒童的困難在於重演主要目標的動作，但是重演次要動作的困難則不明顯。整體而言，本研究對於早期自閉症類兒童的社會學習障礙提出可能的觀點。 / Research showed distinctive imitative pattern in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), and one of the possible explanations is automatic causal encoding (ACE; Lyons et al, 2011). In ACE’s view, connective parts of task facilitate ASDs to copy actions without goals, which are seen as necessary to occur before copying actions with goals. Present research is to examine ACE theory in ASDs: when parts of the task separate, ASDs cannot infer the necessity of actions with goals to copy, and behaviors copying reduce. 69 children at mental age 30 months (24 ASDs, 21 developmental delay, and 24 normal development) enrolled our experiment, which was composed of connective parts of task, separate parts of task, and meaningless object movement task, with related actions (related to goal), unrelated actions(unrelated to goal), and meaningless object movements served as dependent variables. Several findings arose. First, copying behaviors of unrelated actions prior to related actions did not decline in separate parts of task, which disapprove ACE theory. Second, irrelevant actions copying was unimpaired in ASDs, while meaningless object movements copying seemed difficult for ASDs, which may due to ASDs’ ability to copy object properties of actions, but inability to inhibit habituated routines. Third, ASDs copied related actions and meaningless object movements less than the other groups, and the two actions were positively correlated, while unrelated actions copying showed no difficulty. This demonstrates that related actions and meaningless object movements are both actions with primary goals, while unrelated actions are subordinate actions; namely, one possible difficulty for ASDs to copy is actions with primary goal, while copying subordinate actions seems unimpaired. In sum, present research provides perspectives on ASDs’ impairments with social learning.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The evolution of computer hardware as well as new applications of mathematical programming techniques, efficiently implemented in many commercial solvers, has given rise to new algorithms called hybrid metaheuristic, which have been applied to solve combinatorial problems. This work presents several approaches which try to deal with the hybridization of local search based metaheuristics with exact algorithms to solve two problems of combinatorial optimization. More specifically, the first problem, capacitated p-median problem, the proposed approach considers heuristic elimination of variable of the original mathematical model, that produce solutions of very good quality in a short amount of time, and a combination with an iterative procedure in which only a certain subset of points is considered. As regards the second problem, unrelated parallel machine scheduling with sequence and machine dependent setup time problem of minimizing makespan, is proposed a mathematical model to search the neighborhood of a solution and identify movement sequences to minimize the objective function. In both cases, mathematical models are solved using a commercial solver. Extensive computational experiments are carried out to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed approaches. / A recente evolução dos computadores como também dos métodos exatos oriundos da programação matemática, muitos destes eficientemente implementados em otimizadores comerciais, propiciou o surgimento de novos algoritmos, denominados metaheurísticas híbridas, que têm sido aplicados para resolução de problemas combinatoriais. Este trabalho apresenta abordagens que hibridizam metaheurísticas baseadas em busca local com algoritmos exatos de programação matemática para resolver dois problemas de otimização combinatória. Mais especificamente, para o primeiro problema, o problema das p-medianas capacitado, a proposta considera a eliminação heurística de variáveis do modelo matemático, que permite a obtenção de soluções de boa qualidade em um curto tempo computacional, e a combinação com um procedimento iterativo no qual apenas um determinado subconjunto de pontos é considerado. No que se refere ao segundo problema, programação de tarefas em máquinas paralelas não relacionadas com tempo de preparação dependente da sequência e da máquina com objetivo de minimizar o tempo de processamento total da máquina com maior carga entre todas (makespan), propõe-se um modelo matemático para varrer a vizinhança de uma solução e identificar sequências de movimentos de tarefas que podem ser aplicadas na respectiva solução de modo a minimizar a função objetivo. Nos dois casos os modelos matemáticos são resolvidos utilizando um otimizador comercial. Extensivos testes computacionais são realizados para demonstrar o bom desempenho das abordagens propostas.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2017-07-13T20:20:39Z No. of bitstreams: 1 josewilsonaquinodebrito.pdf: 2695206 bytes, checksum: 3bde584d1a5844a4f2c9ae314c649731 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-08-08T15:52:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 josewilsonaquinodebrito.pdf: 2695206 bytes, checksum: 3bde584d1a5844a4f2c9ae314c649731 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-08T15:52:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 josewilsonaquinodebrito.pdf: 2695206 bytes, checksum: 3bde584d1a5844a4f2c9ae314c649731 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-06-09 / O principal objetivo desse trabalho foi estimar os impactos das externalidades do mercado de trabalho analisadas por meios de graus de especialização, variedade relacionada e não relacionada da mobilidade no crescimento regional no Brasil de 1996 até 2008. Tanto a taxa de crescimento de emprego como taxa de crescimento da produtividade do trabalho foram utilizadas como medidas de crescimento. Para realizar as estimações foi utilizado o modelo de Métodos de Momentos Generalizados (MMG) devido uma possível endogeneidade entre mobilidade e crescimento regional. Os resultados indicaram que o grau de variedade de conhecimento inter-regional é um dos principais impulsionadores do nível de emprego. O grau de especialização intrarregional impacta positivamente no emprego regional. Apenas os graus de variedade de conhecimento apresentaram resultados positivos no crescimento da produtividade do trabalho. Os resultados encontrados nesse trabalho sugerem que a variedade de conhecimento proveniente da mobilidade mão de obra qualificada é um dos principais impulsionadores do crescimento regional. / The main objective of this study was to estimate the impacts of externalities in the labor market analyzed by degrees of specialization, related and unrelated variety of mobility in regional growth in Brazil from 1996 to 2008. Both the employment growth rate and the Labor productivity growth were used as growth’s measures. To estimate the equations was used Generalized Moment Methods (GMM) due to soften a possible endogeneity between mobility and regional growth. The results indicated that the degree of variety of inter-regional knowledge is one of the main drivers of the level of employment. The degree of intraregional specialization has a positive impact on regional employment. Only the degrees of variety of knowledge presented positive results in the growth of labor productivity. The results found in this study suggest that the variety of knowledge derived from skilled labor mobility is one of the main drivers of regional growth.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This dissertation consists of two essays on nonprofit finance. Nonprofit finance concerns obtaining and managing financial resources to support the social purposes of nonprofit organizations. A unique feature of nonprofit finance is that nonprofits derive revenue from a variety of sources. Nonprofit finance thus involves answering two fundamental questions: What is the optimal combination of revenue sources that supports a nonprofit to achieve its mission? Where and how to obtain the revenue sources? The two dissertation essays address these two questions respectively. The first essay, titled “Modern Portfolio Theory and the Optimization of Nonprofit Revenue Mix,” is among the first to properly apply modern portfolio theory (MPT) from corporate finance to nonprofit finance. By analyzing nonprofit tax return data, I estimate the expected return and risk characteristics for five nonprofit revenue sources as well as the correlations among these returns. I use the estimates to identify the efficient frontiers for nonprofits in different industries, based on which nonprofit managers can select an optimal portfolio that can minimize the risk given a preferred level of service provision or maximize the return given a level of risk. The findings also pose a challenge to the predominant approach used in previous nonprofit finance studies (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) and suggest that MPT is theoretically and practically more helpful in guiding nonprofit revenue management. The second essay, titled “Charitable Giving in Nonprofit Service Associations: Identities, Incentives, and Gender Differences,” concerns nonprofit resource attainment, specifically, how do decisionmaking contexts and framing affect donations. Membership in a service club is characterized by two essential elements: members’ shared interest in the club’s charitable mission; and private benefits that often come as a result of social interactions with other members, such as networking, fellowship, and fun. A laboratory experiment was designed to examine 1) whether membership in a service club makes a person more generous and 2) the effect of service club membership—stressing either the service or socializing aspects—on individual support for collective goods. The study finds that female individuals are the least generous when they are reminded of the socializing aspect of service-club membership.