O impacto das práticas ITIL na flexibilidade organizacional - evidências empíricas em uma empresa multinacional de TI

The present work has as main objective the identification and impact analysis for the practice ITIL in the organizational flexibility of a multinational IT company, being this study of quali-quantitative and exploratory nature. To achieve this objective, some theoretical studies on bureaucracy, organization flexibility, control, IT governance and ITIL were done, as a form to better understand the research problem. For analysis effect a set of eleven ITIL process was considered in this research ¿ service desk, incident management, problem management, change management, configuration management, release management, service level management, availability management, capacity management, continuity management and finally IT financial services management ¿ grouped in its two core areas ¿ service support and service delivery. Then a scale was constructed and validated, on the basis of theoretical models developed by Volberda (1997), Tenório (2002) and Golden and Powell (1999), to measure the flexibility related to each process comprising the ITIL core. The dimensions adopted to measure flexibility were: organization design task, managerial task, IT impact on work force, HR management, efficiency impact, sensitivity, versatility and robustness. The instrument used in research was a semi-structured interview, which was divided in two parts. The data collection was performed with ten interviewed people from an IT multinational company, based on convenience, some were managers and there were users, some were ITIL certified and others not. The statistic tests of t student and Wilcoxon non-parametric were adopted. The result of the research indicated that the ITIL service support area, for possessing greater operational focus, presents flexibility trend. The opposite was found for the service delivery area, which has greater tactical focus. The results also suggest that the change management discipline was the one that contributed for the most flexibility inside the company, followed by incident management discipline and the service desk function.

Comparativo de metodologias de mensuração de VAR para o mercado financeiro brasileiro

Várias metodologias de mensuração de risco de mercado foram desenvolvidas e aprimoradas ao longo das últimas décadas. Enquanto algumas metodologias usam abordagens não-paramétricas, outras usam paramétricas. Algumas metodologias são mais teóricas, enquanto outras são mais práticas, usando recursos computacionais através de simulações. Enquanto algumas metodologias preservam sua originalidade, outras metodologias têm abordagens híbridas, juntando características de 2 ou mais metodologias. Neste trabalho, fizemos uma comparação de metodologias de mensuração de risco de mercado para o mercado financeiro brasileiro. Avaliamos os resultados das metodologias não-paramétricas e paramétricas de mensuração de VaR aplicados em uma carteira de renda fixa, renda variável e renda mista durante o período de 2000 a 2006. As metodologias não-paramétricas avaliadas foram: Simulação Histórica pesos fixos, Simulação Histórica Antitética pesos fixos, Simulação Histórica exponencial e Análise de Cenário. E as metodologias paramétricas avaliadas foram: VaR Delta-Normal pesos fixos, VaR Delta-Normal exponencial (EWMA), Simulação de Monte Carlo pesos fixos e Simulação de Monte Carlo exponencial. A comparação destas metodologias foi feita com base em medidas estatísticas de conservadorismo, precisão e eficiência.

Identification and estimation of interventions using changes in inequality measures

This paper presents semiparametric estimators of changes in inequality measures of a dependent variable distribution taking into account the possible changes on the distributions of covariates. When we do not impose parametric assumptions on the conditional distribution of the dependent variable given covariates, this problem becomes equivalent to estimation of distributional impacts of interventions (treatment) when selection to the program is based on observable characteristics. The distributional impacts of a treatment will be calculated as differences in inequality measures of the potential outcomes of receiving and not receiving the treatment. These differences are called here Inequality Treatment Effects (ITE). The estimation procedure involves a first non-parametric step in which the probability of receiving treatment given covariates, the propensity-score, is estimated. Using the inverse probability weighting method to estimate parameters of the marginal distribution of potential outcomes, in the second step weighted sample versions of inequality measures are computed. Root-N consistency, asymptotic normality and semiparametric efficiency are shown for the semiparametric estimators proposed. A Monte Carlo exercise is performed to investigate the behavior in finite samples of the estimator derived in the paper. We also apply our method to the evaluation of a job training program.

Essays on regulation and risk

In this thesis, we investigate some aspects of the interplay between economic regulation and the risk of the regulated firm. In the first chapter, the main goal is to understand the implications a mainstream regulatory model (Laffont and Tirole, 1993) have on the systematic risk of the firm. We generalize the model in order to incorporate aggregate risk, and find that the optimal regulatory contract must be severely constrained in order to reproduce real-world systematic risk levels. We also consider the optimal profit-sharing mechanism, with an endogenous sharing rate, to explore the relationship between contract power and beta. We find results compatible with the available evidence that high-powered regimes impose more risk to the firm. In the second chapter, a joint work with Daniel Lima from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), we start from the observation that regulated firms are subject to some regulatory practices that potentially affect the symmetry of the distribution of their future profits. If these practices are anticipated by investors in the stock market, the pattern of asymmetry in the empirical distribution of stock returns may differ among regulated and non-regulated companies. We review some recently proposed asymmetry measures that are robust to the empirical regularities of return data and use them to investigate whether there are meaningful differences in the distribution of asymmetry between these two groups of companies. In the third and last chapter, three different approaches to the capital asset pricing model of Kraus and Litzenberger (1976) are tested with recent Brazilian data and estimated using the generalized method of moments (GMM) as a unifying procedure. We find that ex-post stock returns generally exhibit statistically significant coskewness with the market portfolio, and hence are sensitive to squared market returns. However, while the theoretical ground for the preference for skewness is well established and fairly intuitive, we did not find supporting evidence that investors require a premium for supporting this risk factor in Brazil.

Emissões de eurobonds tem impacto no cupom cambial?

Este estudo tem por objetivo estimar o impacto do fluxo de emissões corporativas brasileiras em dólar sobre o cupom cambial. Podemos entender o cupom cambial, sob a ótica da Paridade Coberta da Taxa de Juros, como resultado de dois componentes: Taxa de juros externa (Libor) e Risco País. Desvios adicionais sobre a Paridade podem ser explicados por diversos fatores como custos de transação, liquidez, fluxos em transações de arbitragem de empresas financeiras ou não-financeiras, etc. Neste contexto, os fluxos de arbitragem ocorrem quando é possível para uma empresa brasileira captar recursos no mercado externo e internar estes recursos no Brasil encontrando uma taxa final de captação em reais inferior à de sua captação local (via debêntures, notas financeiras, empréstimos, CDB’s, etc) incluindo todos os custos. Quando há condições necessárias a este tipo de operação, o efeito pode ser visto no mercado de FRA de cupom cambial da BM&F, através de um fluxo anormal de doadores de juros. Testes não-paramétricos (Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis e Van der Waerden) e a metodologia de estudo de eventos detectaram comportamento anormal no mercado de FRA de cupom cambial frente aos eventos aqui considerados como emissões de eurobonds de empresas brasileiras, excluindo o efeito do risco soberano, medido pelo CDS Brasil e considerando nulo o risco de conversibilidade no período, após análise do diferencial entre NDF onshore e offshore. Para estimação do impacto das emissões sobre o FRA de cupom cambial foram utilizados dois modelos, AR-GARCH e OLS com correção de Newey-West, e os resultados mostraram que as emissões causam fechamento de 2 a 5 bps no FRA de cupom cambial, dependendo do vencimento da emissão e do modelo avaliado. Sob a mesma metodologia, concluímos de cada USD 100 milhões de emissões são responsáveis por, em média, 1 bps de fechamento no FRA de cupom cambial, tudo mais constante.

Supervisão escolar: expectativas e percepções do supervisor escolar, do coordenador de área e do professor, quanto ao desempenho das funções do supervisor escolar: estudo de caso

Este estudo pretendeu mostrar que o desempenho do Supervisor Escolar está aquem do desejado por profissiE. nais que atuam na area. e que. em torno de tal desempenh~ há expectativas e percepções significantemente diferencia das entre aqueles profissionais. Para tal efeito estabeleceu-se um referencial teó rico. fundamentado em pesquisa d6~umental. que apreciou o problema da Supervisão Escolar em sua evolução histórica. destacando elementos para caracterizar as funções do Supe~ visar Escolar. Promoveu-se um estudo de caso apoiado ba sicamente em dados primários. para verificar como se dese~ volve a atuação do Supervisor Escolar em um município br~ sileiro (no caso. o Município de Curitiba) e de que modo tal atuação é percebida por ele próprio e por outros pr~ f i s s i o n a i s (C o o r d e n a d o r e s d e A r e a e p r o f e s s o r e s) . Ve ri fi cp ~ -se. ainda. o que esses profissionais esperam da atuação do Supervisor Escolar (frente às atividades arroladas no instrumento de coleta de dados). Utilizaram-se como instrumentos de coleta de da dos escalas do tipo Likert. acrescentando-se questionário sobre dados pessoais. Submeteram-se os dados a dois tes tes não paramétricas (da Mediana e dos Sinais) e a um tes te paramétrica (t'). por razoes que se especificam no de correr deste trabalho. Representaram-se também. grafic~ mente. os resultados obtidos. Com base na fundamentação teórica e na pesquisa de campo. que estudam expectativas e percepções em torno do desempenho das funções do Supervisor Escolar. concluiu -se Rela necessidade da definição de uma política para o tratamento da matéria e formularam-se algumas recomendações.

Prevendo a volatilidade realizada de ações brasileiras : evidências empíricas

Este estudo compara previsões de volatilidade de sete ações negociadas na Bovespa usando 02 diferentes modelos de volatilidade realizada e 03 de volatilidade condicional. A intenção é encontrar evidências empíricas quanto à diferença de resultados que são alcançados quando se usa modelos de volatilidade realizada e de volatilidade condicional para prever a volatilidade de ações no Brasil. O período analisado vai de 01 de Novembro de 2007 a 30 de Março de 2011. A amostra inclui dados intradiários de 5 minutos. Os estimadores de volatilidade realizada que serão considerados neste estudo são o Bi-Power Variation (BPVar), desenvolvido por Barndorff-Nielsen e Shephard (2004b), e o Realized Outlyingness Weighted Variation (ROWVar), proposto por Boudt, Croux e Laurent (2008a). Ambos são estimadores não paramétricos, e são robustos a jumps. As previsões de volatilidade realizada foram feitas através de modelos autoregressivos estimados para cada ação sobre as séries de volatilidade estimadas. Os modelos de variância condicional considerados aqui serão o GARCH(1,1), o GJR (1,1), que tem assimetrias em sua construção, e o FIGARCH-CHUNG (1,d,1), que tem memória longa. A amostra foi divida em duas; uma para o período de estimação de 01 de Novembro de 2007 a 30 de Dezembro de 2010 (779 dias de negociação) e uma para o período de validação de 03 de Janeiro de 2011 a 31 de Março de 2011 (61 dias de negociação). As previsões fora da amostra foram feitas para 1 dia a frente, e os modelos foram reestimados a cada passo, incluindo uma variável a mais na amostra depois de cada previsão. As previsões serão comparadas através do teste Diebold-Mariano e através de regressões da variância ex-post contra uma constante e a previsão. Além disto, o estudo também apresentará algumas estatísticas descritivas sobre as séries de volatilidade estimadas e sobre os erros de previsão.

Precificação de derivativos de taxa de juros utilizando o modelo HJM multifatorial com estrutura de volatilidade não paramétrica

Com o objetivo de precificar derivativos de taxas de juros no mercado brasileiro, este trabalho foca na implementação do modelo de Heath, Jarrow e Morton (1992) em sua forma discreta e multifatorial através de uma abordagem numérica, e, que possibilita uma grande flexibilidade na estimativa da taxa forward sob uma estrutura de volatilidade baseada em fatores ortogonais, facilitando assim a simulação de sua evolução por Monte Carlo, como conseqüência da independência destes fatores. A estrutura de volatilidade foi construída de maneira a ser totalmente não paramétrica baseada em vértices sintéticos que foram obtidos por interpolação dos dados históricos de cotações do DI Futuro negociado na BM&FBOVESPA, sendo o período analisado entre 02/01/2003 a 28/12/2012. Para possibilitar esta abordagem foi introduzida uma modificação no modelo HJM desenvolvida por Brace e Musiela (1994).

Inequality treatment effects

This paper presents semiparametric estimators for treatment effects parameters when selection to treatment is based on observable characteristics. The parameters of interest in this paper are those that capture summarized distributional effects of the treatment. In particular, the focus is on the impact of the treatment calculated by differences in inequality measures of the potential outcomes of receiving and not receiving the treatment. These differences are called here inequality treatment effects. The estimation procedure involves a first non-parametric step in which the probability of receiving treatment given covariates, the propensity-score, is estimated. Using the reweighting method to estimate parameters of the marginal distribution of potential outcomes, in the second step weighted sample versions of inequality measures are.computed. Calculations of semiparametric effciency bounds for inequality treatment effects parameters are presented. Root-N consistency, asymptotic normality, and the achievement of the semiparametric efficiency bound are shown for the semiparametric estimators proposed. A Monte Carlo exercise is performed to investigate the behavior in finite samples of the estimator derived in the paper.

Regional subsidies and industrial prospects of lagging regions

Large and sustained differences in economic performance across regions of developing countries have long provided motivation for fiscal incentives designed to encourage firm entry in lagging areas. Empirical evidence in support of these policies has, however, been weak at best. This paper undertakes a direct evaluation of the most prominent fiscal incentive policy in Brazil, the Fundos Constitucionais de Financiamento (Constitutional Funds). In doing so, we exploit valuable features of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor's RAIS data set to address two important elements of firm location decisions that have the potential to bias an assessment of the Funds: (i) firm “family structure” (in particular, proximity to headquarters for vertically integrated firms), and (ii) unobserved spatial heterogeneity (with the potential to confound the effects of the Funds). We find that the pull of firm headquarters is very strong relative to the Constitutional Funds for vertically integrated firms, but that, with non-parametric controls for time invariant spatial heterogeneity, the Funds provide statistically and economically significant incentives for firms in many of the targeted industries.

Nonparametric tail risk, macroeconomics and stock returns: predictability and risk premia

This paper proposes a new novel to calculate tail risks incorporating risk-neutral information without dependence on options data. Proceeding via a non parametric approach we derive a stochastic discount factor that correctly price a chosen panel of stocks returns. With the assumption that states probabilities are homogeneous we back out the risk neutral distribution and calculate five primitive tail risk measures, all extracted from this risk neutral probability. The final measure is than set as the first principal component of the preliminary measures. Using six Fama-French size and book to market portfolios to calculate our tail risk, we find that it has significant predictive power when forecasting market returns one month ahead, aggregate U.S. consumption and GDP one quarter ahead and also macroeconomic activity indexes. Conditional Fama-Macbeth two-pass cross-sectional regressions reveal that our factor present a positive risk premium when controlling for traditional factors.

Life Cycle Models, Heterogeneity of Initial Assets,and Wealth Inequality

Life cycle general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents have a very hard time reproducing the American wealth distribution. A common assumption made in this literature is that all young adults enter the economy with no initial assets. In this article, we relax this assumption – not supported by the data - and evaluate the ability of an otherwise standard life cycle model to account for the U.S. wealth inequality. The new feature of the model is that agents enter the economy with assets drawn from an initial distribution of assets, which is estimated using a non-parametric method applied to data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. We found that heterogeneity with respect to initial wealth is key for this class of models to replicate the data. According to our results, American inequality can be explained almost entirely by the fact that some individuals are lucky enough to be born into wealth, while others are born with few or no assets.

Análise de performance de fundos de investimento multimercado no Brasil

O objetivo deste trabalho é verificar se os fundos de investimento Multimercado no Brasil geram alphas significativamente positivos, ou seja, se os gestores possuem habilidade e contribuem positivamente para o retorno de seus fundos. Para calcular o alpha dos fundos, foi utilizado um modelo com sete fatores, baseado, principalmente, em Edwards e Caglayan (2001), com a inclusão do fator de iliquidez de uma ação. O período analisado vai de 2003 a 2013. Encontramos que, em média, os fundos multimercado geram alpha negativo. Porém, apesar de o percentual dos que geram interceptos positivos ser baixo, a magnitude dos mesmos é expressiva. Os resultados diferem bastante por classificação Anbima e por base de dados utilizada. Verifica-se também se a performance desses fundos é persistente através de um modelo não-paramétrico baseado em tabelas de contingência. Não encontramos evidências de persistência, nem quando separamos os fundos por classificação.

Os efeitos das reclamações online na lealdade dos consumidores: um estudo experimental

In an environment of constant change, technological developments, market competition and more informed consumers, the search for a lasting relationship through the conquest of loyalty has become the objective of companies. However, several authors suggest that this loyalty can be affected by negative comments available on the internet. Therefore, this dissertation has as objective to examine if the complaints are available on the internet impact the loyalty to a brand of mobile phone. The research used as the basis the Expanded NCSB model suggest by Johnson et al. (2001), studying five prominent drives of loyalty: image/brand reputation, affective commitment, calculative commitment, perceived value and trust, beyond the satisfaction construct as moderator variable. The research method adopted was the experimental design which included 285 undergraduate students, with the trial which included 285 undergraduate students, with the field study of the mobile industry, specifically, the brands of cell phones. The research approach was quantitative and methods were descriptive statistics, factor analysis, cluster analysis, linear regression and non-parametric test of Wilcoxon for data analysis. Of the 16 hypothesis stemmed from the research model proposed, 12 were confirmed. The results showed that the complaint available on the internet, here represented by the available on the site Reclame Aqui, may impact consumer perceptions about brand loyalty, as well as its antecedents, being that these complaints can affect all the consumers, regardless of historical satisfaction with the brand. It also noted the positive relationship between the independent variables trust, image/brand reputation, perceived value, affective commitment and calculative commitment and the dependent variable - loyalty, even when considering the data obtained after exposure to the complaint. However, no unanimous conclusion that the relationship between these variables was strongest in the group with satisfactory experience. At the first moment of the research, the trust was the most important variable for the formation of loyalty. However, after exposure to treatment, the image/brand reputation, was more relevant. Contributions of the study, limitations and recommendations for future researches are approached in the present investigation

Influence of door handles design in effort perception: accessibility and usability

The application of ergonomics in product design is essential to its accessibility and usability. The development of manual devices should be based on ergonomic principles. Effort perception analysis is an essential approach to understand the physical and subjective aspects of the interface. The objective of the present study was to analyze the effort perception during a simulated task with different door handles by Portuguese subjects of both genders and different ages. This transversal study agreed with ethical aspects. 180 subjects of both genders pertaining to three age groups have participated. Five door handles with different shapes were evaluated. A subjective numeric rating scale of 5 levels was used to evaluate the effort. For statistical analysis it was applied the Friedman non-parametric test. The results have showed no significant differences of effort perception in door handles "A" and "B"; "A" and "D"; and "D" and "C". Door handle "E" presented the lowest values of all. In general, there's an inverse relationship between the results of biomechanical studies and the effort perception of the same task activity. This shows that door handles design influence directly these two variables and can interfere in the accessibility and usability of these kinds of products.