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This work presents an application of the Real Option Theory on product development decision-makingResumo: Este trabalho apresenta uma aplicação da Teoria de Opções Reais às análises de investimentos em desenvolvimento de produtos e tomada de decisão numa indústria de autopeças por meio do método da pesquisa-ação. Considerando que o desenvolvimento de produtos envolve investimentos em múltiplos estágios, ele pode ser tratado como uma opção sequencial composta, possibilitando uma gestão do desenvolvimento mais realista, uma vez que se avalia a tomada de decisão por períodos, valora-se a flexibilidade gerencial e proporciona-se uma visão detalhada do investimento. Ao longo do trabalho, o método binomial proposto é aplicado à análise do desenvolvimento de um conjunto de anéis de pistão em que se incorporam decisões de investimento em cada etapa, trazendo uma nova perspectiva do valor do projeto de desenvolvimento para a empresa e de decisões do composto de marketing associado ao produto. Conclui-se que a incorporação da teoria de opções ao desenvolvimento de um conjunto de produtos da empresa objeto de estudo levantou o real valor do investimento como havia sido proposto pela pesquisa, apresentando uma nova dinâmica para a tomada de decisão e a negociação com clientes. Palavras-chave:Opções reais. Análise de investimentos. Desenvolvimento de produtos.

Transmission and distribution (T&D) pricing has been one of the keystones of the ongoing deregulation and privatization process in the power industry. The electricity market has been established based on the assumption of open access and nondiscriminatory use of the T&D assets. As T&D business remains as a monopoly, it is necessary to provide economic regulation. Many papers have dealt with transmission pricing and certain maturity has been reached in this area, but this is not true in the case of distribution services. This paper will focus on the distribution pricing methods and will suggest one that is currently under development in Brazil. This method is based on incremental costs derived from the aggregated expansion plan of a particular utility, named model utility. This utility was obtained by comparisons among the real distribution companies. The method follows the fundamentals of the yardstick regulation.

The authors would like to thank the discussers for the interesting questions that will certainly clarify the main concepts of the paper [1].Incremental and Marginal Costs: It is important to note that the incremental costs are used in this paper to sign the relative charge, (i.e., the tariff structure). The tariff level, which is obtained by the analysis of the rate base, the X-factor, capital composition, and so on, is only considered to determine the allowed total revenue of the distribution company.Distribution Expansion Planning: The clustering approach, proposed in the paper for the 34.5-and 13.8-kV distribution systems, fits well in this case because these systems usually operate in a radial scheme. The technical and physical restrictions are evaluated only for the cluster representative. Then, it is assumed that the others elements of the cluster will have the same behavior and the solutions proposed for the representative will fit well on those elements.Tariff Design: The data of each company are used to compute the and coefficients, which are similar with the coincidence factors. The advantage of not considering, in the final calculation, the actual factor for each customer is that a more generalized tariff with less variation among consumers can be obtained.Lower average costs and, also, higher average costs are expected to occur from particular distribution companies. But now, they will have references and, therefore, the opportunity to compare their expansion plans with the other companies.Information Asymmetries: In the first moment when the tariff regulation was performed company by company, the data manipulation was clearly a fact. The yardstick regulation, which will be applied for the majority of the distribution companies in the next round of revision period, will certainly minimize the information asymmetries. We are currently studying the effect of information manipulation in the proposed method. As the clustering process is performed in each tariff revision period, the chances of one company manipulating the results based on its data seem very low. The main problem will be when all companies simulate the steps followed by the regulator and, then, manipulate the data together.Open-Access Distribution Pricing: One of the steps of Brazilian regulation process is the obligation of specifying in the electricity bill the prices and tariffs of each segment even for the regulated consumers, from 2003 on. Therefore, the T&D tariffs will be the same for the regulated and nonregulated customers that are called, in Brazil, native, and free customers, respectively. The difference is that for the native customers, the generation and commercialization will continue to have economic regulation whereas, for the free consumers, these segments compose the free market.Wire and Commercialization Business: Given that the T&D tariffs will be explicitly separated in the bill for both the regulated and nonregulated customers, and that the pricing mechanism proposed in this Manuscript received September 26, 2000. J. W...

Resumo: O interesse por Problem Based Learning (PBL) e Educação Empreendedora (EE) cresceu consideravelmente nos últimos anos e isso desperta a vontade da comunidade acadêmica de implementar tais metodologias. Ambas foram aplicadas ao projeto Bota Pra Fazer UNIFEI. O objetivo do presente estudo é fazer uso de EE por intermédio de um projeto de ação social na busca da formação do engenheiro, analisando assim um Programa de Desenvolvimento de Empreendedorismo. Com resultado tem-se que, fica clara a necessidade de uma maior inserção da PBL e de habilidades empreendedoras, através de Educação Empreendedora, entre as instituições de ensino do país.