Property rights as a public policy tool: an empirical analysis of the social and economic effects

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. However, the evaluation of the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task. The Brazilian government through a program called "Papel Passado" has issued titles, since 2004, to over 85,000 families and has the goal to reach 750,000. Furthermore, another topic in Public Policy that is crucial to developing economies is income generation and child labor force participation. Particularly, in Brazil, about 5.4 million children and teenagers between 5 and 17 years old are still working. This thesis examines the direct impact of securing a property title on income and child labor force participation. In order to isolate the causal role of ownership security, this study uses a comparison between two close and very similar communities in the City of Osasco case (a town with 650,000 people in the São Paulo metropolitan area). One of them, Jardim Canaã, was fortunated to receive the titles in 2007, the other, Jardim DR, given fiscal constraints, only will be part of the program schedule in 2012, and for that reason became the control group. Also, this thesis also aims to test if there is any relationship between land title and happiness. The estimates suggest that titling results in a substantial decrease of child labor force participation, increase of income and happiness for the families that received the title compared to the others.

Event marketing: an innovative promotional tool and its impact on consumer memory and brand awareness

Event Marketing represents a common promotional strategy that involves direct contact between brands and consumers at special events, namely concerts, festivals, sporting events and fairs. Brands have been investing in sponsorship as a means of associating themselves with particular events, essentially with the goal to enhance brand image and brand awareness. Interestingly, the response of consumers to event marketing has not yet been fully understood. This dissertation fills this gap. More specifically, it intends to determine the extent to which sponsoring brands at events favors brand awareness (recall and recognition) and how it relates to brand attitude. Based on three Portuguese music festivals, two studies were conducted to ascertain event sponsorship’s impact on consumer memory, notably Brand Recall and Brand Recognition, and correlation with attitudes towards the brands such as familiarity and liking. The key findings of these studies show that recognition is much higher for those respondents who attended the festivals, presenting a score of 73,9%, in comparison with recall, presenting a much lower score of 37,5%. Further, and surprisingly, it suggests that the ability to recall and recognize sponsoring brands is not associated to consumer attitudes towards the brands. Instead, it relates to the time consumers dedicated to these particular events, that is, the number of music festivals attended.