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1
Tikabo, Mahari Okbasillassie. "Land tenure in the highlands of Eritrea, economic theory and empirical evidence." [Ås, Norway] : Norges landbrukshøgskole, 2003. http://www.nlh.no/ios/Publikasjoner/avhandling/a2003-3.pdf.
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Thesis--Norges Landbrukshøgskole, Institutt for økonomi og samfunnsfag, 2003.Title from title screen (viewed June 1, 2004). Includes bibliographical references (p. 200-204). Also issued in print format.
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Kneller, Richard. "Fiscal policy in models of economic growth : theory and evidence." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1998. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11206/.
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Growth models contain strong predictions regarding the effect of fiscal policy on the steady state growth path. Fiscal policies have no effect on the steady state growth rate in the neoclassical model whereas fiscal policy does feature in the steady state of endogenous growth models. The number of alternative policies which have been found to effect growth in the endogenous growth models is large as one of the few restrictions placed upon policy in the models is which sector of the model is affected, demand or supply. Only policies that are included in the supply side of the model affect the growth rate. Despite the strength of the growth predictions regarding fiscal policy in growth models the empirical relationship between the two has proved more difficult establish. Even when comparisons are made between studies that purport to correct for many of the statistical biasesp resent in the data, non- robustnesss till abounds. We believe that this non-robustnessc an in part be explained by a failure to adequately account for the predictions from the theoretical models. We use four conclusions from our review of the theoretical literature (the method of financing changes in policy, differences between the transition and the steady state, the assumption of homogeneity of expenditures, and the direct versus indirect effects of policy) to provide the shape for new empirical tests. We find that once done, the strength of the empirical relationship is increased and matches the predictions from the basic public policy endogenous growth model of Barro (1990).
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Cable, John. "Employee participation and enterprise performance : an economic analysis." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1986. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/34798/.
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This study investigates the relationship between employee participation in decision-making within production enterprises and their economic performance. Alternative forms of employee involvement such as profit sharing and employee ownership are also considered. A theoretical framework is developed in which the firm's structural and performance characteristics are seen as the outcome of a strategic game in which employers and workers can either seek to impose unilateral control or cooperate to maximise joint welfare. Two new theoretical insights are gained. The first is that a latent 'prisoners dilemma' may be inhibiting more widespread adoption of participatory production. The second involves an important distinction between two conceptually separate ways in which the hypothesized participation-performance relationship might operate. Problems of measuring the key, participation variable in empirical work are raised and solved. A test procedure is devised and applied to arbitrarily-weighted participation indexes of the kind used in previous econometric work. In all cases tested the indices are found to rest on unacceptably restrictive assumptions. This calls into question previous results and appears to present a barrier to further work. However alternative, Guttman scales of participation are proposed anfound statistically valid for samples of firms in the West German and UK engineering industries. Incidentally these tests provide support for an existing hypothesis in the literature concerning the pattern of development of participation within the firm. When applied to subsamples of participatory and non-participatory firms in the West German database, significance tests of subsample means and discriminant analysis reveal no statistically significant differences in productivity. However significant differences in technology and labour-force characteristics are found, in particular indicating greater human capital development in participatory firms. OLS and 2SLS estimates of augumented production functions in general confirm these results. Implications for public policy measures to promote greater industrial democracy and profit-sharing are briefly considered.
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Tamvakis, Michael N. "An economic model of the iron ore trade." Thesis, City, University of London, 1999. http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/18322/.
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Iron ore is among the biggest, non-energy extractive industry in the world in terms of value, and the biggest in terms of the volumes of cargo it channels in international trade. Two key characteristics of the iron ore market are central to its study: firstly, there is only a small number of buyers and sellers; and secondly, there is a great degree of interdependence among buyers and sellers and both groups are aware of this interdependence. For buyers, security of supplies is crucial. For sellers, long-term commitment from importers is essential in order to maintain the long-run viability of mining projects. Since the 1960s, long-term contracts have been, and still are, the main vehicle used in international iron ore trade. Under the light of the above peculiarities of the iron market, a non-competitive analytical framework is adopted. This thesis proposes an alternative profit maximising behaviour different to the solutions offered by oligopoly and bilateral monopoly theorists. In this case, the importer enters negotiations with complete knowledge of his own minimum acceptable price, a possible idea of his partner's maximum acceptable price and also an idea (which can be held with varying degrees of certainty) of what alternative suppliers may be able to offer. This will restrict the range of prices over which negotiations take place and will mitigate the bargaining power of the seller. A buyer is likely to act in a similar manner, knowing that the seller has alternative export outlets, but he can also use other bargaining tools to achieve a better deal. A quite common tool is the promise of long term commitment through the signing of contracts, acquisition of equity stakes in mines or provision of financing facilities. The behaviour of the trading partners in such an oligopoly/oligopsony (or bilateral oligopoly) environment is also studied empirically with a relatively simple and tried econometric technique, borrowed from consumption and investment theory and applied for the first time for all top iron ore importers, who collectively have accounted for approximately 90% of world trade in the last 35 years. The model performs well in most cases and reveals: firstly, different results from previous research in the case of Japan; and secondly - and most importantly - substantial differences in the way Far East and West European importers behave.
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Taylor, Calvin Francis. "The role of the value-form in the labour theory of value." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1991. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3503/.
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It is repeatedly claimed that the labour theory of value is fatally flawed. Whether as a result of this claim, or as is more likely a change in the intellectual atmosphere, there has in recent years been little debate of the merits and weaknesses of the labour theory of value. The principal objective of this thesis is to re-examine a number of the flaws more widely debated in an earlier period and to show that the claim that the labour theory of value is flawed is false. The thesis claims that the work of Marx represents thus far the single most important contribution to the development of the labour theory of value. This contribution is contrasted with that of the Classical political economists, most notably Adam Smith and David Ricardo. An examination is made of the works of Smith and Ricardo which demonstrates that the flaws within their labour theory of value are attributable to the shortcomings of their wider theoretical endeavours. In particular, they fail to identify the nature of value-creating labour; examine the role of the value-form and explain cogently the quantitative determination of value. Marx's work is then examined with each of these points as a pivot of reference. The thesis concludes by drawing the three strands of analysis together to demonstrate that, against a history of criticism, Marx's theory presents a structured coherent whole, largely immune to the criticisms made of it, both from without and within the Marxist tradition of political economy.
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Otero, Jesús Gilberto. "Coffee, the money market, the real exchange rate, and economic fluctuations in Colombia." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1998. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/59428/.
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This thesis analyses the effects of coffee booms on the money market, the real exchange rate, and the business cycle in Colombia. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the coffee sector in the country, including a brief description of its macroeconomic role, and unique institutional structure. Chapter 3 investigates, from a simulation perspective, two empirical difficulties that arise in econometric modelling when using quarterly data, as is done in chapters 4 and 5. The first practical concern is whether to conduct the econometric analysis on data that have been subjected to seasonal adjustment or in terms of unadjusted data. The simulation results provide a justification for using seasonally unadjusted data, as the use of filters reduces the power of the Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Perron cointegration tests. The second difficulty concerns an empirical regularity encountered when analysing the Colombian quarterly series of money supply and GDP, both of which exhibit a structural break (or change) in the seasonal pattern. We find that these structural breaks bias both unit root and seasonal root tests, so that new critical values must be tabulated allowing for a change in either the level and/or the seasonal pattern of the underlying series. Chapter 4 examines the monetary consequences of coffee booms. The theoretical work on this subject shows that under a regime of fixed exchange rates, export booms affect both the demand and the supply for money. Within this theoretical framework, we assess whether the coffee booms of the second half of the seventies and mid eighties led to excess money supply in Colombia. We find a direct association between coffee export booms and excess money supply, implying that external disturbances jeopardise the ability of the economic authorities to carry out successful monetary policy. Chapter 5 uses the Johansen procedure to estimate a real exchange rate determination model for Colombia. We find one cointegrating vector, which can be thought of as a long-run real exchange rate equation. The deviations of the real exchange rate from its long-run equilibrium relationship, after correcting for the short-run dynamics, are interpreted as a measure of real exchange rate misalignment. The simulation performance of the model, during the period of estimation and three years into the future, is particularly good, with the simulated real exchange rate reproducing the general long-run behaviour of the actual series. Chapter 6 develops an intertemporal disequilibrium model in order to analyse the effects of temporary, anticipated, and permanent coffee price shocks on a small open economy under Keynesian unemployment. Our results indicate that a coffee price boom (whether temporary, anticipated or permanent) increases nontradable output in the short and long run (a similar result is obtained when we discuss other disequilibrium regimes). The basic model is then extended by including a government sector that administers a coffee price stabilisation fund, and by allowing capital market imperfections. Our results indicate that when the government is able to borrow on more favourable terms in international capital markets than households, the stabilisation fund neutralises part of the short-term effect of a temporary coffee price boom. On the other hand, when the government and the private sector borrow on the same terms, the stabilisation fund turns out to be redundant.
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Liu, Xin. "Working longer, working healthier : how can China age more actively?" Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8744/.
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This research aims at exploring physical activity and employment practice in urban China, in the context of population ageing. The overall aim of the research is to inform policy and practice focused on promoting healthy employment, longer working lives and active ageing. These aims are interrelated, for instance, a more active workforce will potentially mean a more healthy workforce which should help extend working lives in China. To achieve the study aims, the research explores the factors that influence participation in physical activity, both enablers and barriers. A questionnaire and interviews were used in fieldwork in Wuhan and Shanghai. Data from 335 self-completion questionnaires and 41 interviews were collected from respondents working in 13 organisations in these two cities. The sample included people working in both public and private organisations, health related and non-health related organisations, enabling some comparison through stratification across these categories, as well as by location. The research findings highlighted how trade-offs are made between time spent in physical activity at work and time in physical activity after work (in the home and in leisure time). For example, people who were active at work or in the home were often less active in their leisure time. This means that discounting activity in the former categories and concentrating solely on leisure time activities could potentially mistakenly categorise people as inactive or not very active.
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De, Stefano Timothy. "Information communication technology, broadband infrastructure and firm performance." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2016. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37298/.
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Barros, de Oliveira Nuno R. "A theory of coordination voids in dynamic inter-organisational relationships : a study of social housing projects in England." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/695/.
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Inter-organisational relationships are at the heart of economic activity and the benefits of inter-organisational collaboration are widely reported. However, theoretical understanding of how inter-organisational relationships are coordinated and why they encounter coordination problems remains limited. I address these questions through a study of seven social housing projects in England, completed between 2008 and 2011. Drawing on the richness of data from over 3,900 pages of minutes from meetings and project reports, I integrate social network analysis techniques (SNA) used to map dynamic inter-organisational relationships with content analysis, through which I explore coordination-related aspects. Surprisingly, coordination proved not to be (directly) related to administrative mechanisms. Instead, I show that coordination stems from the interplay between administrative mechanisms and the structure of the inter-organisational relationships, as shown by two theoretical mechanisms: organising and relating. The former captures the finding that the use of contracting fosters hierarchy, while the latter shows that monitoring organisations foster density of inter-organisational relationships. I discover that inter-organisational relationships are coordinated through the juggling of these mechanisms over time. Furthermore, my analysis demonstrates that coordination problems stem from: contractual bottlenecks and organisational expertise-driven homophily. Interestingly, this exposes a tension between mechanisms intended to aid coordination and the manifestation of coordination problems. Theorising on this tension, I am led to a framework of coordination voids – discontinuities in the fabric of inter-organisational relationships resulting from mechanisms intended to aid coordination, but in fact hampering coordination under certain conditions. I discuss a set of theoretical contributions to the strategic management and organisational and management theory, alongside a methodological contribution. I conclude my discussion of the contributions of this thesis by drawing practical implications for managers and policy-makers. I hope that my study will stimulate a research agenda on the coordination of inter-organisational relationships, preferably one that also engages with societal challenges.
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Ryan, John Edwin Holston. "Critical enabling conditions and challenges in the start-up phase of an international new venture : a social entrepreneur's perspective." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2406/.
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This thesis explores the enabling conditions and challenges two entrepreneurs interpret critical in their relationships in the start-up phase of 5i, a social entrepreneurial international new venture (INV). The thesis delivers both interpretive ethnographic and auto-ethnographic accounts, weaving the voices of the two co-founders of 5i into a textual dialogue. The reader explores the relationship between the two entrepreneurs, and their relationships with their network partners, as they develop 5i into a small, innovative social entrepreneurial consulting practice that delivers innovative business incubation and financial engineering services from the firm's home base in New Delhi, India into rural markets in Brazil and China, as well as into the company's home market in India. The two entrepreneurs put to use their team and network relationships to mobilize knowledge, know-how, and capital; marshalling resources for their firm far beyond those they control. However, the entrepreneurs' relationships deliver more than functional, resource-based benefits. It is the, shared mission-related values, and the trust and the open communications they engender, in the entrepreneurs' relationships that emerge as key enabling conditions in the development of 5i. When mission-related values are not shared, significant challenges are confronted. The research presented in this thesis emphasizes interpretation and understanding grounded in the formation processes in a new enterprise, there where it is happening, not in rational explanation and prediction. Messy, thick, interpretive ethnographic and auto ethnographic texts provide rich detail which is then provoked through engagement with interpretive grounded theory methods to offer three pragmatic theoretical threads that contribute to our understanding of the roles of TMT and network relationships in the creation of social enterprises that move across international borders from birth. This combination of interpretive methods will not meet the positivist cry for testable hypothesis and universal theories, but it is hoped these methods deliver a compelling, local story. This thesis works to bring the voice of the entrepreneur back into research on entrepreneurship.
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Elatroush, Ibrahim Mosaad. "Measuring efficiency for Egyptian textile and apparel industry using stochastic frontier analysis and data envelopment analysis." Thesis, City University London, 2011. http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/1114/.
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This thesis gives an overall view of measuring efficiencies in the Egyptian textile and apparel industry via stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). Differences between the SFA and the DEA can lead to different estimates for some, or all of the units in an analysis. Measuring efficiency through production process, (inputs and outputs), lacking factors affecting supply chain operations and other key factors, such as value-adding capabilities, exchange rates, time, inventory turnover, quality, logistics, etc. can lead to inaccurate measures. Thus, to ensure accurate efficiency measures, these factors have to be considered. Techniques used are; SFA time-varying and metafrontier. Constructing a single production frontier based on all data points would cause an unfitting benchmark due to differences in production technologies, location, ownership type, etc. Hence, metafrontier allows grouping firms with similar characteristics into a separate group frontier for each region with single metafrontier applied to all groups. Empirical results show clear variability in efficiencies between private and public firms and shows that efficiency scores vary, when assessed against the metafrontier. The evidence also shows the major role of the supply chain factors in improving efficiencies for public firms.
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Ortego, Marti Victor. "Unemployment history and frictional wage dispersion in search models of the labor market." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2012. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/419/.
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This thesis studies the inability of search models to match both observed labor market flows and the empirical wage distribution. I show that a known feature of the labor market, that unemployment hurts workers' wages, has an important effect on workers' search behavior, and explains why we observe that similar workers are paid different wages. The first chapter reviews the relevant literature. I begin by describing the findings in Hornstein, Krusell and Violante (2011) that baseline search models struggle to generate significant wage dispersion, the so-called frictional wage dispersion puzzle. Further, search models face a trade-off between matching the cross-sectional wage distribution and matching the cyclical volatility of unemployment and vacancies. The chapter reviews the unemployment volatility puzzle and explains this trade-off. Given that the thesis introduces the loss of human capital during unemployment, the chapter ends with a review of the related empirical literature. Chapter 2 studies wage dispersion among identical workers in a random matching search model in which workers lose human capital during unemployment. Wage dispersion increases, as workers accept lower wages to avoid long unemployment spells. I show that the model is an important improvement over baseline search models. The model with unemployment history explains between a third and half of the observed residual wage dispersion. In Chapter 3 I add on-the-job search to the model with unemployment history. Workers accept lower wages because they keep the option of searching for better paying jobs. Wage dispersion increases significantly. The model accounts for all of the residual wage dispersion. The model also generates substantial wage dispersion even for high values of non-market time. The chapter thus addresses the trade-off between explaining frictional wage dispersion and the cyclical behavior of unemployment.
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Nicollier, Luciana A. "Essays on industrial organisation : the role of consumers' generated information." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2012. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/56794/.
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A variety of economic agents rely on information generated by the consumers when making their decisions. Not only consumers' rely on other consumers' ex- periences when making their buying decisions, but also some governmental agen- cies rely on customers' complaints to make inferences about the functioning of some markets. Little is known, however, about how this information interacts with the rms' investing and pricing decisions. A common denominator of the various types of information generated by the consumers is that its content de- pends on consumers' incentives to transmit information, which are not always obvious and may vary across markets and time. This thesis studies the role of the information generated by the consumers in two di erent contexts. The rst chapter studies whether customers' complaints about the quality provided by a regulated monopolist are informative about the rm's investment decisions. The second chapter considers the pricing decision of a monopoly rm when the con- sumers' buying decision is based on the reviews completed by previous consumers. The main contributions are twofold. First, by endogenising consumers deci- sion to lodge a complaint or complete a review, I am able to derive conclusions about the informational content of consumers behaviour and about its strategic interaction with the rms decisions. Second, the thesis makes a methodologi- cal contribution because it proposes a novel way of dealing with the free riding problem that lies at the very root of the generation of information by consumers.
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Sauder, Markus Ulrich. "Essays on the economics of child labour and child education." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3622/.
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This thesis focuses on the economics of child labour and child education within developing and developed countries. The first part of the thesis examines child labour and child education in developing countries. It investigates the motivations of parents to send their children to work and analyses the so-called commitment problem of child labour in a dynamic, overlapping generations game theoretical model. As a novelty, this model relaxes the requirement of an observable history of play and models the decision problem as an overlapping generations cyclic game. We show that first-best contracts may me implemented, implying optimal child education and low child labour, if a bequest sanction can be imposed by grandparents. We also discuss the special role that grandparents have within this model. The second part of the thesis analyses the economics of child education within a developed country context: the transmission of education across generations and the impact of a schooling reform on educational choice and later outcomes. In a first chapter of this second part, we examine specifically the influence of grandparents, as postulated by the model in part one, on the education of grandchildren. A unique dataset on three generations, the National Child Development Survey of the UK, is used. As a special feature, we apply recent econometric techniques to deal with censoring in a semi-parametric setting. The results indicate that it is not education but rather unobservable factors on the parent and grandparent level that affect the educational choice of grandchildren. These unobservable factors may be interpreted as innate ability or parenting skills. In a second chapter within this part, a schooling reform, the introduction of comprehensive schools in the UK and its impact on educational and labour market outcomes is evaluated. We find, using data from the National Child Development Survey and applying a new, quasi-differenced matching estimator, that bias corrected estimates of the reform suggest no effect on the means, but a sizeable effect on the variance of outcomes. We interpret this finding as indicative of a higher risk inherent to the selective education system. In summary the thesis sheds some new light on the economics of education and child labour, both in a theoretical and an empirical context, and provides a valuable reference and starting point for future research in this area.
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Gómez, Natalia González. "Three essays on bargaining : On refutability of the Nash bargaining solution; On inter- and intra-party politics; A bargaining model with strategic generosity." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2012. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/56815/.
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This dissertation is a collection of three essays that share one common feature: all three of them relate to the literature on Bargaining. The first and second essay are joint work with my supervisor, Professor Andrés Carvajal. In our first essay we investigate the testable implications of the Nash bargaining solution. We develop polynomial tests of the NBS under different hypothesis about the default levels. For instance, with, and without observation from the outside econometrician of the levels of utility that the individuals would have obtained outside the negotiation. We use the Tarski-Seindenberg algorithm to characterize rationalizable data as those that satisfy a finite system of polynomial inequalities. In our second essay we introduce a new equilibrium concept for games of political competition. We model electoral competition within each party, assuming inner-party members have somewhat conflicting preferences. By using the bargaining protocol à la Baron and Ferejohn (1989) we explicitly model party members’ strategic interactions, their incentives and their decision of whom to elect. Our equilibrium concept attempts to model each member’s decision as if each player were uncertain about, (i) the faction that will eventually dominate the decision made by the other party and (ii) the faction that will dominate in the party’s nomination. In the last essay I focus on one of the classical problems in bargaining: the divide the dollar problem. In our framework we assume players’ utility functions mirror selfish and Rawlsian preferences. We derive the set of subgame perfect equilibria for different arrangements of player types and study why strategic generosity emerges under the bargaining protocol we assume.
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Koutmeridis, Theodore. "The market for 'rough diamonds' : information, finance and wage inequality in macroeconomics." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2013. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/58068/.
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During the past four decades both between and within group wage inequality increased significantly in the US. Three of the most well-documented facts concern the increase in the education premium, the rise in the experience premium and the narrowing gender wage gap. Existing studies explain some of them separately but there is no unified explanation of all three at the same time. I provide a microfounded justification for the first two, by introducing private employer learning in a signaling model with credit constraints. I show that when financial constraints relax, talented individuals can acquire education and leave the uneducated pool. This implies that the eventual group of uneducated young workers becomes of lower average quality, as most of the rough diamonds have now been plucked out of this group. My explanation is consistent with US data from 1970's to 2000's, indicating that the rise in the education and the experience premium coincides with a fall in unskilled inexperienced wages, while at the same time skilled or experienced wages do not change much. The model accounts also for the fact that the education premium increases more for low-experienced workers, while the experience premium increases only for the low-educated ones. The introduction of gender-specific credit constraints, explains also the narrowing gender wage gap, by allowing the cost of borrowing to decline and become more similar for the two genders recently, while in the past it was much costlier for women. More equal borrowing opportunities for men and women, decrease inequality between genders, however they also increase inequality within gender by boosting the wage gap between different education and experience groups for both sexes. This theory explains the puzzling coexistence of increasing meritocracy and growing wage inequality in the American society, by highlighting the conflict between equal opportunities and substantial economic equality.
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Bernardino, Luis Alberto Araújo. "The role of resources in the internationalisation of high technology SMEs in Portugal." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2006. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2393/.
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Drawing on the Resource-Based View of the Firm (RBV) the study suggests a set of mainly knowledge-based resources, specific to high technology SMEs, at firm and individual levels, explaining why in the same industry, some firms consistently outperform others in international markets. A conceptual framework drawing on the RBV and on Transaction Costs Economics (TCE) was developed and operationalised. Empirical research proceeded in two phases. Phase one involved 12 exploratory interviews, respectively with 8 chief executives of high technology SMEs and with 4 experts and academics in the area of enquiry. The role of these exploratory interviews was to qualitatively identify and examine valuable resources to high technology SMEs emphasised or not in the extant literature and that have been included in phase two, which was concerned with a mail survey where 106 firms filled and returned the questionnaire. The data collected provided the basis upon by using multivariate statistical techniques three sets of hypotheses, were developed, tested and discussed: (i) to examine the impact that resources have on firm international performance; (ii) to examine the influence that resources have on the entry mode in the main foreign market: independent vs. contractual arrangement; (iii) to examine the relationship between the use of a contractual arrangement in the main foreign market entry mode and performance in that same market, while considering resources as moderator influences in that relationship. The study main findings suggest the great importance for high technology SME superior international performance of the human capital of the entrepreneur/chief executive as well as the need of building a stronger technology-base through a greater emphasis on R&D activities, by hiring high skilled personnel and capitalising on continuous innovations based on technologies that are new to the market.
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Henry, Valda Frederica. "An investigation into the structure and governance of the social security organisations in the member states of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2001. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2961/.
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Social security systems have come under attack with claims that they negatively impact savings, capital formation and the labour supply. This, together with the near-bankruptcies of some social security systems have led to a series of reforms, including the privatisation of the system with the assignment of individual accounts to contributors. There have, however, been little efforts in isolating the cause of the failure of the social security systems and in the identification of the factors which may enhance performance. It is this gap, which this study attempts to fill by investigating the relationship between governance, performance and administration of the social security systems by addressing the key question "How do governance factors impact on the performance and administration of social security systems in the Member States of the Organisation Of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS)?" The main findings of the study are that autonomy and independence of the social security organisations, accountability, transparency, diversification of the investment portfolio, professional expertise, partnership-building among the stakeholders and involvement or the plan participants at the board level are important in enhancing the performance and administration of the social security organisations. The results of the analysis also suggest that it is important to ensure that the persons chosen to represent the plan participants at the board level are persons of integrity with the requisite qualifications and qualities. This study, it is hoped will inform and lead to a re-examination of the reform debate to include the role of governance in the reform and sustainability of social security organisations worldwide.
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Gardner, Jonathan. "An analysis of the determinants of pay and well-being using employer-employee data." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2001. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/56229/.
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This thesis studies the determinants of pay and well-being. The first three chapters use new British employer-employee data to study the determinants of pay. Chapters three and four are also interested in the determinants of job satisfaction, whilst chapters five and six analyse factors that shape reported well-being. Chapter two tests whether firms share product market rents with their employees. After controlling for worker and firm fixed effects, we observe evidence in support of rent-sharing upon weekly earnings, but no robust positive effect upon hourly pay. The third chapter analyses the observed positive relationship between employer size and wages. It designs a test as to whether this relationship reflects a compensating differential. This is not found to offer a good explanation as to why wages are greater in large establishments. Instead, correlates of worker skill and person fixed effects are most successful in explaining the plant size-wage differential. There has been very little research on racial differences in job satisfaction levels. Chapter 4 examines the relationship between race, pay and well-being. Workplaces that employ more ethnic minority employees are associated with lower levels of job satisfaction, for both white and non-white workers. Non-white employees are paid less than otherwise similar white employees, and are less satisfied with their pay even when pay is held constant. One of the most fundamental ideas in economics is that money makes people happy. Chapter 5 constructs a test. In the spirit of a natural experiment, it shows individuals who receive windfalls have higher mental well-being in the following year. It calculates the size of the effect. The final chapter studies the well-being of British public sector workers in the 1990s. Relative to private sector employees, stress levels and job satisfaction within the public sector are shown to have significantly worsened over the decade.
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Smith, Christopher S. "Divisional strategy : value creation and relatedness within the multidivisional firm." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1999. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4287/.
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From an economic perspective the value of a group of related businesses under one management is derived from the potential for synergy, based on the exploitation of underlying economies of scope. To realise this inherent economic value, organisational theorists have argued that a purposively cooperative pattern of structures, systems and processes must be put in place. Divisions of modem multidivisional companies are internal, quasi-corporations of related businesses and, as such, theoretical economic/organisational rationales would posit divisions as cooperative enterprises. Using a sample of divisions purposively chosen to comprise businesses that were highly related, this thesis set out to explore the extent to which divisional managing directors expressed views and initiated organisational dynamics consistent with a cooperative perspective. Semi-structured interviews with senior divisional personnel in 12 divisions and with business and functional level staff in 2 of these provided the prime source of data which served as a basis from which a case study was written for each division. The cases were analysed in terms of the membership benefits (value) the divisional managing director was attempting to optimise for the component businesses and the extent to which he expressed a cooperative orientation and was overseeing cooperative structures, processes and systems. Two categories of division are identified. The 'cooperative' grouping is consistent with the theoretical view of economies of scope and cooperative structures but a larger number of divisions are categorised as 'non-cooperative' with perspectives, systems etc. consistent with a traditional M-form orientation of autonomous, non-interacting businesses. Reasons for this mismatch of theory and practice are discussed with the existence of non-cooperative divisions being explained as the consequence of a variety of organisational contingencies. Implications for divisional management and practice in multidivisional firms are suggested.
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Bratti, Massimiliano. "Determinants and consequences of educational choices in the UK." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2004. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2338/.
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In this Thesis we study some aspects related to the determinants and the consequences of acquiring education in the UK. Chapter one outlines the structure of the Thesis. In chapter two we analyse the probability of staying-on at school at age 16 in England and Wales using data from the 1970 British Cohort Study. A primary focus is on the effect of household incorne. The issue of income endogeneity is addressed using instrumental variable techniques. We find a statistically significant, but small, positive effect of income and stronger effects of long-term family characteristics, such as parental education, on the staying-on decision. In chapter three we investigate social class influences on the probability of enrolling in different degree subjects in the UK during the period 1981-1991 using Universities' Statistical Record data. We consider three broad subject groups and estimate a trinomial probit model. Our results show the absence of social class differences in the period under study. Moreover, the analysis turns out to be robust to the use of a finer disaggregation of subjects and of a different econometric model (i. e. a flexible-thresholds ordered probit model). In chapter four we estimate the log-wage premium to a first degree using data from the British Cohort Study 1970. We replicate the analysis in Blundell et at (2000), who used data on the 1958 British birth cohort, and find evidence of declining returns to a first degree for women. We also investigate differences in premia by degree class and degree subject. We find evidence supporting the presence of such differences, although in many cases degree class and subject premia are not very precisely estimated, probably due to small sample size. We also consider the robustness of our results when taking account of the endogeneity of educational outcomes and of the possibility of heterogeneous treatment effect. Chapter five briefly surnmarises the main findings of the Thesis.
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Benito, Andrew. "Wage premia in the British labour market." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1997. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/59442/.
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The doctoral dissertation considers the existence of non-competitive wage premia in Great Britain. The research aims to confront the predictions of certain approaches to wage determination with microeconomic data for Great Britain. In so doing, the analysis is mindful of the importance of economic theory in order to provide a basis for empirical work undertaken, which in turn should ideally be focused upon policy-oriented issues. In addressing the issue of Wage Premia in the British Labour Market, the Thesis also acknowledges the importance of employing large microeconomic datasets in order to understand an issue which is essentially concerned with microeconomic behaviour. To this end, the Thesis employs data at the level of the individual, the establishment and the firm in the British labour market, carrying out both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Noncompetitive wages have significant implications for performance alongside wages themselves. Partly as a result, a concern of the author was to go beyond estimation of wage equations with additional explanatory variables, in order to consider these aspects of performance directly. The empirical work reflects this. In a sense, the body of research traces the three stages of development of the empirical literature on non-competitive wages. This begins with a study of the wages received by individual workers according to their industry affiliation. Competitive theory predicts that contingent upon levels of human capital and non-pecuniary benefits, individuals working in different industries should earn equal amounts: a law of one-price prevails. The analysis therefore attempts to detect the presence of non-competitive rents. Further, the notion that such differentials are non-competitive suggests a relation between their magnitude and industry profitability. The study represents the first attempt to relate industry differentials to measures of industry ability-to pay for Great Britain. Second, a cross-sectional study of turnover and wages is concerned with the issue of whether an employer may voluntarily pay wages above a market-clearing level in order to prevent employees from quitting the place of work. The paper provides the first microeconomic evidence of wage as well as union effects upon turnover at British establishments. Third, the issue of whether the forces of wage determination may differ between levels of the firm is considered, focusing upon the employee-executive distinction. Two chapters, employing a large panel of UK companies consider this issue by examining the determination of company-level wages (Chapter 5) and company financial performance (Chapter 6). At the time of writing, one of the most contentious issues in the area of wage determination in the British labour market refers to the pay of public sector employees and how this compares to that of the private sector. In Chapter 7, among the first individual-level estimates of the differential associated with employment in the public sector for Great Britain are provided. Finally, the Thesis draws out the policy implications of efficiency wages. Efficiency Wage theory represents one of the main schools of thought regarding the existence of noncompetitive wage premia. The issues which arise strike at the core of labour market and industrial policy-making and include unemployment and minimum wage legislation.
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Ashraf, Anik. "Three essays on firm productivity." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2018. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/105900/.
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This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 aims to understand how performance-based ranking affect productivity of workers. While providing such ranking may induce workers to increase effort because of status concerns, such information may also demotivate them or make them wary of outperforming peers. This chapter disentangles the effects of demotivation, social conformity, and status associated with ranking. I implement a randomized experiment at a Bangladeshi sweater factory that pays employees on piece rates. Treated workers receive monthly information on their relative performance either in private or in public. A simple theoretical framework shows that intrinsic status concerns induce Private Treatment workers to increase or decrease effort depending on the feedback they receive from the intervention. Workers in Public Treatment respond similarly but face two additional incentives - social status (positive effect) and social conformity (negative effect). Empirical evidence shows that Private Treatment workers increased (decreased) effort upon receiving positive (negative) feedback. Public ranking led to lower net effort relative to Private Treatment because of a strong preference not to outperform friends. The negative effects from demotivation and social conformity may explain why the existing literature finds mixed evidence of impact of ranking workers. In Chapter 2, we look at how firing of workers in an organization affect the productivity of the surviving co-workers. We take advantage of detailed individual-level production records from, and extensive fieldwork conducted at, a large Bangladeshi sweater factory before, during, and after several episodes of labour unrest that eventually led the management to fire approximately 25 percent of the labour force on the relevant production floor. Exploiting across-worker variation in exposure to colleagues' terminations, we document a negative impact of the firings on productivity of surviving workers. Fired co-workers' spatial proximity drives the results. Additional evidence rules out a number of competing mechanisms such as subsequent targeted punishments from management, loss of productive peers, or attention diverted to help recently hired and inexperienced co-workers. We argue that the effects are likely driven by workers' feelings of loss or anger towards the management. Chapter 3 studies the relationship between external shocks, such as political strikes and labour unrest, and productivity in the ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh. Using data from 33 ready-made garment factories in Bangladesh and adopting an event-study approach, we document very little change in productivity or worker absenteeism during political strikes lasting two days or less. Productivity falls when strikes last five days or more. The main channel for such fall appears to be supply-chain disruptions rather than worker absenteeism. However, absenteeism and quality defect rates increase immediately during labour unrest, resulting in a decrease in output. As a benchmark comparison, we show that the drop in productivity from sustained strikes or labour unrest is equivalent to a fall in productivity due to an increase of about 7 degrees centigrade in temperature.
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Mwaura, Samuel M. "Entrepreneurship, innovation and firm performance : an empirical study of micro and small enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4237/.
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The spectacular ubiquity of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries suggests high levels of entrepreneurship, while the artistic variety of their products implies high creativity and innovation. In spite of such entrepreneurial verve, MSEs in developing countries return low productivity and stunted growth. Towards understanding this paradoxical phenomenon, this thesis proffers the following: Firstly, given the prodigious nature of the entrepreneurship concept, the small firm is conceptualised as an instance of entrepreneurship. In turn, a more exacting specification of particular elements of small firms, for example, precise productivity and growth determinants, is advocated. Secondly, to elucidate the link between innovation and growth, this thesis avers that innovation inputs, such as investments in research and development, should be conceptually distinguished from observed ‘novation’. The later is termed enovation. As such, product enovation, such as that characterising artisanal firms, may be observed independent of R&D inputs. Espousing these conceptualisations, this thesis conducts an empirical study of the effect of product enovation on firm productivity and employment growth amongst garment-making micro and small firms in Nairobi, Kenya. The findings suggest that while innovation efforts (R&D) is a significant driver of productivity, product enovation in itself has no impact on firm performance.
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Huang, Kai Wai. "Comparing the working patterns of older people to those of younger people : static and dynamic empirical analyses in selected economies." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5546/.
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Under the trend of ageing population, older people have a greater potential to be part of the future labour force. Their employment patterns therefore deserve governments' attention. This thesis compares the employment patterns of older people to those of younger people in selected economies. In the first study we decompose the age-employment gaps using non-linear Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions in the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong. Explained factors explain nearly the entire age-employment gaps in the U.S. and Hong Kong but not in the U.K. In the second study, we investigate job preferences in addition to employment outcomes. Our binomiallogit models on working part-time involuntarily show that part-time employment is more likely to be a voluntary choice regardless of gender and age in the U.K. In the third study we estimate competing risks Cox proportional hazards models on unemployment and various types of employment spells in the U.K. We find that the older an individual is when he or she starts an unemployment spell, the longer he or she remains unemployed before getting a full-time or part-time job. However, the trend of decreasing hazards from leaving unemployment spells to part-time employment reverses after the spell starting age of 54.
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Gomez, Marcos. "Essays on labour economics : the case of youth unemployment." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2015. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/383980/.
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Deaton, Richard Lee. "The political economy of pensions : power, politics and social change : a comparative study of Canada, Britain and the United States." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1986. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4038/.
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This thesis suggests that the pension systems in the advanced capitalist countries of Canada, Britain and the United States are on the verge of a crisis and that the problems associated with the marginalization and immiseration of the elderly, the universal and specific limitations of employer-based occupational pension plans and the underdevelopment of the state pension system are inherently and organically linked to the structure of private pension fund power. The impending pension crisis in these countries is explained by four converging structural considerations: first, the inadequate level of retirement income of the elderly; second, the increasing proportion of elderly in the population and the costs associated with an aging population; third, the general and particular limitations of the private pension system; fourth, under conditions of advanced capitalism, the corporate sector and state appropriating the occupational and state pension systems as a source of investment and social capital respectively to meet their finance requirements. The pension system now occupies a strategic position in advanced capitalist economies. The increasing economic power of pension funds is based on their role as financial intermediaries and institutional investors, with significant control over the economic surplus and reserve capital. The structure of pension fund power exhibits itself through formal and informal linkages to financial capital. The private pension system's investment and capital accumulation function has been transformed from a latent to a manifest function to supply the investment requirements of the economy and private sector. The private pension industry, characterized by a high degree of concentration and centralization of capital, increasingly facilitates the systemic fusion of the finance and industrial sectors of advanced capitalist economies. The symbiotic relationship between the corporate sector and private pension industry is identified as the primary economic and political obstacle to reforming and expanding the state pension system in the countries studied. It is concluded that the dynamic of the conflicting structural interests underlying the pension crisis may generate a heightened awareness of power and politics in capitalist countries by transcending the traditional limitations of economism and welfarism. The pension issue, both in the short and long-term, may generate increased social tension manifesting itself through intergenerational, sectoral, political and industrial relations conflict. This may result in increased politicization and progressive alternative economic strategies based on the pension system's investment and capital accumulation function. Public policy towards aging and pensions identifies personal problems and structural issues which may have significance in terms of power, politics, and social change in the future.
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Syed, Amina. "An investigation into the relationship between wages, mismatch, on-the-job search and education." Thesis, University of Essex, 2015. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/16437/.
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This thesis contributes to the existing literature by studying the link between educational choices, skill mismatch and wages in a labour market with search frictions with on-the-job search. In the first paper, I used empirical techniques to look at the link between skill mismatch and wages. I found that over-education and mismatch is part of a career mobility or job-to-job transition in the labour market. Workers accept jobs for which they are overqualified and search on-the-job to move to jobs that are more matched to their educational level. In the process they accept a wage cut which is temporary until they are able to find a job better suited to their level of education. In the second paper, I used search and matching framework to study the link between on-the-job search and wages in an economy where high and low ability workers compete for jobs. On-the-job search is a way in which workers reduce the extent of mismatch and firms react to this. However, this interaction implies that when more workers try to relocate the friction in the market reduces the efficiency of resource allocation (by increasing mismatch) and it also creates more wage inequality between the different types of workers. Finally in the third paper, I looked at the link between educational choices, and skill mismatch in a labour market with search frictions. I found that fewer search frictions lead to higher inequality in wages. If the cost of education is low enough, more individuals choose to acquire education and get trained. As a consequence mismatch increases.
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Nanton, Ashley. "Empirical topics in search and matching models of the labour market." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2014. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/59780/.
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Search and matching models such as those of Mortensen and Pissarides (1994) and Pissarides (2000) have come under criticism in recent years. Analysis of the model by Shimer (2005) and others has focussed in particular on the models’ inability to generate sufficient volatility in variables such as the unemployment and vacancies rates, and the vacancyunemployment ratio. Newer models have sought to ameliorate these empirical issues by changing the model – for example by adding wage rigidity or by amending the specification of the costs of search. In Chapters 3 and 4 of this thesis, we re-address some of these issues using the method of indirect inference. The method allows us to formally test the hypothesis that data was generated by a particular model under a given set of parameter values. It therefore offers a statistically founded replacement for the somewhat arbitrary moment-by-moment comparisons found in much of the existing literature. We apply the method to Shimer’s analysis of the Mortensen Pissarides model, and concur with his analysis that, under his chosen parameters, the model fails to fit the data. We also apply the method to the model used in Yashiv’s (2006) paper, which argues using moment comparisons that the standard model can be improved by adding convex search costs. In contrast, we find that the augmented model is rejected under formal indirect-inference tests. The aggregate search and matching literature has also generated an empirical debate about the relative importance of labour market flows, expressed in terms of the hazard rates of labour market transition faced by workers. Many studies decompose changes in steady-state unemployment in terms of the contributions of various hazard rates. This thesis also extends this literature so as to model the contributions of hazards for two distinct and contiguous geographical areas – those of Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom, using Labour-Force-Survey panel data. We find some evidence that in this regard, the UK hazards are weighted towards the hazards “out of” unemployment, whereas for Wales the hazards “into” and “out of” unemployment are of approximately equal importance. We also find however that the results are sensitive to whether or not the data are smoothed, and whether a steady-state is imposed.
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Rovida, Flavio. "The effect of unions on investment and innovation decisions theory and empirical evidence." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1995. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3667/.
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The aim of this thesis is to analyse the effect of unions on investment and innovation decisions, both at the theoretical and the empirical level. The theoretical analysis deals with the choice of adoption of a new technology in the presence of an oligopolistic product market. A duopoly is considered for the ease of exposition. Unions are assumed to affect innovation decisions only via wage bargaining. The results show that environments where unions have a relatively strong (and not very spread) bargaining power tend to harm, ceteris paribus, innovation. If, instead, there is enough spread between unions in terms of their bargaining power, so that only one firm innovates, this firm is, ceteris paribus, the one facing the less powerful union. A firm may be the only one to innovate when facing the more powerful union, if this union is relatively more concerned with employment than the "rival". In general, environments where unions prize the defense of employment above pay rises tend to be more conducive to innovation. These results show the effectiveness of the "rent-seeking" mechanism outlined by Grout. Finally, there are cases where no firm would innovate should the labour market be competitive (non-unionised), while one firm would adopt the new technology, ceteris paribus, when firms face unions. The main results of the analysis are robust to the consideration of collusion in the product market. The generalisation to a model in which firms choose the quantity of capital also confirms the main results. The empirical analysis is based on data from a sample of British nonagricultural quoted companies over the period 1982-89. Data on investment have been constructed from the budget data and matched with information on unionisation and indutrial relations at the company level. Panel data estimation techniques (mostly Random Effects) have been employed. The results show that union recognition has, ceteris paribus, a significantly negative effect on the companies' propensity to invest. This negative impact is robust to the consideration of product market conditions, but seems to be concentrated in the first part of the period under study (1982-85). No separate effect on investment is detected for the presence of closed shop arrangements. There is evidence that the higher the union density at the company level, the lower the investment performance, but the results show also some evidence of non-linear effects. Finally, there is some evidence that companies that have partially derecognised during the eighties have benefited in terms of investment over the short-run.
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Fernholz, Olga. "Innovating for today while innovating for tomorrow : a test of innovation ambidexterity theory in a leading technology company." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/54947/.
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The theory of ambidextrous organisation in management and organisational studies latches onto the idea of simultaneous and equally high degrees of incremental innovation based on prior knowledge (exploitation) and discontinuous innovation based on experimentation and new knowledge (exploration). It claims that any organisation should be ambidextrous to succeed long term. This thesis research puts ambidexterity theory to test. Using the logic of falsification, I conduct an exploratory case study of the semiconductor IP designing company ARM to tests whether the central claims of ambidexterity apply in the empirical context of this successful technological company. The ARM is a leading-edge innovator and a successful company by any common sense criteria. I find that ARM used and banned the ambidexterity rationale because its underlying assumptions misrepresent the interactions between ARM and its Partners in the process of innovation across its vast Ecosystem. I find that ambidexterity assumptions break down in the context of the Ecosystem. Ambidexterity theory displays some serious limitations when applied to the company's innovation in System-on-a-Chip technology that powers ubiquitous computing and assembles an Ecosystem of Partners. The revealed limitations of ambidexterity thinking demand to reconsider the claim of ambidexterity's universal value and to reassess the fitness of ambidexterity assumptions for explaining innovation in the technology of the future.
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Blanchenay, Patrick. "Essays in applied microeconomics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/816/.
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This thesis addresses three questions using the same tool of microeconomic modelling. In the first chapter (joint with Emily Farchy), I examine the role of individual’s decision to acquire broad versus specialist knowledge. I show that a worker can afford to become more specialized on a narrower set of skills by relying on other workers for missing skills. This yields a new explanation of the urban wage premium, and in particular of why workers tend to be more productive in bigger cities, where the existence of better networks of workers provides more incentives to acquire specialized skills. This conclusion matches well established empirical findings on workers’ productivity in the literature. In the second chapter, I look at the dynamics of human capital acquisition over time and show the possibility of what I term a social poverty trap. Namely, parents who do not instil in their offspring the culture of social cooperation (modeled as a higher discount rate) deny them the possibility of future good outcomes; in turn, this new generation will be unable to invest resources in the socialization of their offspring, and so on. This creates a poverty trap where some dynasties are stuck in a bad equilibrium. In the last chapter, I model political parties campaigning on different issues to voters with limited attention. I assume that the relative salience of the different issues depend on how much time parties devote to each issue. In this setting, I show that campaigning might result in excessive focus on divisive issues (for political differentiation) to the detriment of Pareto-improving ones.
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Maertens, Miet. "Economic modeling of agricultural land-use patterns in forest frontier areas : theory, empirical assessment and policy implications for Central Sulawesi, Indonesia /." Berlin : dissertation.de, 2003. http://www.gbv.de/dms/zbw/380100983.pdf.
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Pattison, Benjamin. "Understanding the drivers for, and policy responses to, the rapid growth of private renting in England : has 'generation rent' been 'priced out'?" Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6506/.
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This thesis investigates the factors which account for the rapid growth of private renting in England and how these factors have interacted to produce the growth. It challenges the most common explanation which is that potential owner occupiers were ‘priced out’ and have instead become private renters. A mixed methods approach addressed three key limitations of popular and academic explanations of this trend using an analytical framework developed from critical realism. Multivariate analysis of socio-economic changes between 2001 and 2011 assessed the interaction between drivers and their relative influence. Geo-demographic analysis identified different niches within the private rented sector in Birmingham and highlighted the diversity of the tenure. Wider political drivers were investigated using Political Discourse Analysis. These political drivers shaped supply and demand for private renting at a national and local level. Research findings demonstrate that the growth of the tenure is due to the interaction of a wide range of drivers acting from the global to the individual. Drivers acting at a variety of levels results in differential growth across niches and geographic areas. My results confirm the importance of the growth of private renting, particularly in relation to the polarisation of wealth and accommodation for low-income households.
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Huang, Jie. "A study of using REITs as an alternative way of financing affordable housing in Chinese major cities, based on the context of Nanjing." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2019. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/41096/.
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This thesis examines the possibility of establishing an affordable housing Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) in major Chinese cities in order to address the financial problem faced by the country's affordable housing sector. This thesis builds, for the first time, a robust link between the affordable housing sector and REITs in China based on real world scenarios. The link is supported by real data from the affordable housing sector of Nanjing, as well as well-established international practices from Hong Kong and the United States. In order to establish the link between the affordable housing sector and REITs in China, this thesis uses qualitative methods to address three guiding questions: 1) how affordable housing is financed in Nanjing, what the current problems are in this financing system, and why REITs might be useful; 2) if REITs are useful and necessary in China, what insights can be learned from overseas affordable housing REITs and 3) how an affordable housing REIT can be established in Nanjing based on the Hong Kong and US models and experiences, and what barriers currently exist that prevent Chinese REITs from being created in the affordable housing sector. This thesis finds that current affordable housing finance in China heavily relies on government borrowings, and public rental housing serves as a source of governmental financial burden as this form of housing cannot be sold to repay the debt. Thus, the Chinese government has considered the vehicle of REITs as the best option to liquidate the existing stock and free resources to fund further investment and repay the debt. In addition, overseas insights suggest that the Hong Kong model could provide the strategic framework, while the US model can provide specific tactics to be adopted in the proposed Chinese REIT in order to avoid some of the difficulties experienced in Hong Kong. This thesis ultimately suggests that a purely affordable housing REIT (containing housing only) would be impossible to establish in Nanjing, or in similar major cities, under current conditions. However, an REIT holding commercial real estate within affordable housing estates would be a workable solution to the affordable housing sector, although it would face barriers of law, taxation and a lack of skilled workers.
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Cruddas, Jonathan. "An analysis of value theory, the sphere of production and contemporary approaches to the reorganisation of workplace relations." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1991. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4247/.
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This project considers contemporary theoretical and practical approaches to the restructuring of work relations by engaging with dominant traditions within micro-economic analysis. It is proposed that a full understanding of the contemporary debates can only be achieved by locating the various contributions within the history of social thought, specifically in terms of the different conceptions of value within economics which underscore different approaches to the world of capitalist work relations. The first section, Chapters Two and Three, considers the theoretical premises of orthodox economics and modern sociology. On the basis of this analysis we offer a critique of the popular 'Transaction Costs' approach to capitalist work organisation. The second section, Chapters Four, Five and Six, considers the dimensions of Marxist social theory. Chapter Four studies the Marxist approach to economic relations and the sphere of production. in Chapter Five we unify certain developments within Marxist economics and sociology in terms of an abstract understanding of capitalist production through a specific analysis of value theory and the method by which it informs an analysis of how the social relations of production endogenously determine the forces of production. in Chapter Six we use this method to offer a critique of 'Labour Process' theory in terms of its theoretical. understanding of the sphere of production, in the concluding Chapters Seven and Eight we return to the notion of restructuring and contemporary industrial relations analysis and offer a critique of contemporary debate determined by our understanding of the status of value within economics and social theory in general.
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Vanino, Enrico. "Essays on firms' innovation, internationalization and trade policy." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6884/.
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The development of information technologies and the reduction of trade barriers have fostered the international fragmentation of production and the expansion of knowledge networks. Globalization has stimulated an unprecedented economic growth across the globe, shifting the balance in the world economy, with a decline of developed countries and the rise of emerging economies. The response of rms in mature economies to global competition is an increased engagement in internationalization and innovation strategies. In this thesis we investigate rst how trade protectionism might not be an e cient instrument to prevent the negative e ects of international competition, nding mixed e ect of EU anti-dumping measures on Chinese products, with temporary bene t for domestic producers, but a negative impact on importers and long-run perverse e ect on productivity. Second, we analyse the role of innovation in fostering the international performance of rms. Our results show that R&D investment, innovation and outsourced R&D improve the export performance of European rms, exporting more products and accessing new and more di cult foreign markets. Only by investing in innovation European rms will be able to positively internalise the externalities linked to globalization, increasing human capital and the stock of knowledge, boosting productivity and creating new value-added jobs.
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Rahal, Charles. "Computational econometrics with applications to housing markets." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6576/.
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This thesis develops a variety of econometric approaches in order to examine model specification and weighting choices in an era when computational power and efficiency is becoming less of a binding constraint and 'big data' becomes widely available. We apply our methodological contributions to housing markets, given their recently verified importance with regard to international financial stability. In particular, we develop two original forecasting routines based on high dimensional datasets, take simulated and empirical approaches to specifying large sets of spatial weighting matrices and we contrast structural (panel and single country based) vector autoregressions which are identified and analyzed in a number of ways. The appendices are reserved for introducing published econometric software and replication codes developed as a by-product of the main body of work.
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Chavez, Calva Jose Luis. "Essays on macroeconomics and capital intermediation networks." Thesis, University of Essex, 2017. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/19440/.
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The topic of aggregate fluctuations in the economic activity is a long-standing question in the study of business cycles, not only the identification of sources of volatility is necessary to forecast the future pace of the economy, but also to understand how the variance of aggregate activity could be reduced. Regarding economic policy, the analysis of economics stability has taken more relevance in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis. The crisis highlighted the need to think of the economy as a complex network where an idiosyncratic shock may precede aggregate consequences, such as the recent problem in arising from the financial sector and its effect on the economy. Chapter 1 introduces a two-period multi-sector economy with Input-Output linkages and a banking sector. This model is useful to assess the relevance of the economic structure on aggregate volatility. The main finding is that single financial shocks to banks do not average out and could lead to aggregate fluctuations. In particular, aggregate volatility does not go in a single direction when we increase the number of links bank-to-sector (concentration), enhance the number of links shared by two or more banks (integration) or redistribute the links (diversification). In Chapter 2, I use a detailed benchmark data of the U.K. input-output accounts spanning from 1997 to 2010, I apply the model of intersectoral linkages by Acemoglu et al. (2012) to identify if the U.K. network structure is prone to the propagation of shocks. In Chapter 3, I present a model of a multi-sector input-output economy based on Long and Plosser (1983) and Acemoglu et al. (2012) to analyse the effects of capital risk sharing between firms, productivity shocks correlations between firms of the same ownership organisations, and collateral restrictions between firms of separate groups, on aggregate fluctuations.
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Ozbafli, Aygul. "Estimating the willingness to pay for a reliable electricity supply in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3265/.
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This dissertation estimates households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for an improved electricity service in North Cyprus. Stated WTP is estimated using choice experiments (CE), contingent valuation methods (CVM), and approximated using the averting expenditure (AE) method. These estimates rely on data collected from 350 in-person interviews conducted during the period August 5-22, 2008. Using the Tobit model, an average household’s averting expenditures are estimated to be 3.13 YTL/month. In the CVM section, the spike model with varying spike, varying mean, and constant standard error specification results in a median WTP of 23.03 YTL per month and a mean WTP of 29.14 YTL per month. Using CE, compensating variation estimates for eliminating summer and winter outages are calculated using parameter estimates from the mixed logit (ML) model with interactions. The compensating variation is 6.65 YTL per month and 25.83 YTL per month respectively. Among the three valuation methodologies, WTP per hour unserved ranges from 0.13 YTL (0.11 USD) to 1.22 YTL (1.03 USD). In order to avoid the cost of outages, households are willing to incur a 1.5%-13.5% increase in their monthly electricity bill.
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Graetz, Georg. "Essays in labor economics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/948/.
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This thesis titled “Essays in Labour Economics” is comprised of three essays investigating various determinants of earnings inequality. Chapter 1 provides a novel explanation for labor market polarization—the rise in employment shares of high and low skill jobs at the expense of middle skill jobs, and the fall in middle-skill wages. We argue that recent and historical episodes of polarization resulted from increased automation. In our theoretical model, firms deciding whether to employ machines or workers in a given task weigh the cost of using machines, which is increasing in the complexity (in an engineering sense) of the task, against the cost of employing workers, which is increasing in training time required by the task. Some tasks do not require training regardless of complexity, while in other tasks training is required and increases in complexity. In equilibrium, firms are more likely to automate a task that requires training, holding complexity constant. We assume that more-skilled workers learn faster, and thus it is middle skill workers who have a comparative advantage in tasks that are most likely to be automated when machine design costs fall. In addition to explaining job polarization, our model makes sense of observed patterns of automation and accounts for a set of novel stylized facts about occupational training requirements. Chapter 2 establishes a novel source of wage differences among observationally similar high skill workers. We show that degree class — a coarse measure of performance in university degrees — causally affects graduates’ earnings. We employ a regression discontinuity design comparing graduates who differ only by a few marks in an individual exam, and whose degree class is thus assigned randomly. A First Class is worth roughly three percent in starting wages which translates into £1,000 per annum. An Upper Second is worth more on the margin—seven percent in starting wages (£2,040). In addition to identifying a novel source of luck in the determination of earnings, our findings also show the importance of simple heuristics for hiring decisions. Chapter 3 asks whether public policy affects the degree of intergenerational transmission of education. The chapter investigates this question in the context of secondary school transitions in Germany. During the last three decades, several German states changed the rules for admission to secondary school tracks. Combining a new data set on transition rules with micro data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP), I find that allowing free track choice raises the probability of attending the most advanced track by five percentage points. However, the effect is twice as large for children of less educated parents. The results suggest that the correlation between parents’ and children’s educational attainment may be reduced by more than one third when no formal restrictions to choosing a secondary school track exist.
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Harvie, Charles. "Structural adjustment in the UK economy : the role of North Sea oil and tight money, and the implications for economic policy." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1985. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/59507/.
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In recent years major structural changes have been taking place within the UK economy. One of the major factors responsible for this is the oil developments in the North Sea, which have seen since 1980 the achievement of self sufficiency in oil for the UK. At the same time as this Development has been taking place, there has been a major change in economic policy towards the control of inflation through monetary and fiscal restraint as outlined in the Medium Term Financial Strategy. Economic policy was now to be framed within a medium term context, rather than in the context of short term stabilisation. Demand management policies were to be downgraded, and more emphasis was to be placed upon improving the supply side of the economy. This thesis is directed towards analysing the above developments but in particular the effects of an oil discovery, oil price increases and tight money upon the structure of the economy as well as the dynamic processes of adjustment involved. The evolution and final outcome of the adjustment process obviously also depends crucially upon the policies adopted by the Government, in terms of its attitude towards such developments. Hence our analysis would be incomplete without a discussion of present Governmental attitudes as well as its appropriateness. This ultimately involves deciding whether market forces should determine the reallocation of resources, or whether greater involvement by the Government is required.
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Zaouras, Michalis. "Essays on market structure and competition." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2012. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/57065/.
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My thesis consists of two relatively independent topics. In the first topic I empirically inves- tigate the factors that determine the presence of the independent coffee shops in the market of Central London. In the second topic I present a theory of cartel detection. The common feature of these topics is that I investigate the demand side effects on market structure and its impact on competition. To be more specific, in the first topic I build a simple theoretical model of product differentiation in adjacent markets, based on Mazzeo (2002). For the empirical estimation I have constructed a unique dataset of coffee shops in Central London. I further manage to identify differences on demand characteristics across markets by utilizing data on people’s mo- bility from the tube stations and provide evidence for the existence of product differentiation. It is found that residential areas with high employment, areas with small business density and leisure areas increase the profitability of the independent coffee shops. A counterfactual analysis is also presented. In the second topic I investigate the cartel’s strategies and likelihood of collusion when the buyers of the cartel are able to report its existence to the anti-trust authority. I char- acterize the cartel’s optimal behavior when the buyers are actively monitoring the cartel’s members and are able to report a cartel to an anti-trust authority1. I present a simple static model and I show that the likelihood of collusion increases as the willingness of the buyers to report increases (cost of reporting decreases). Furthermore, it is shown that it is optimal for an anti-trust authority to decrease the cost of reporting (a trade-off between price reductions in existing cartels and increased likelihood of cartel formation is identified). Finally, alterna- tive cartel strategies are also explored in this topic. As for the last point, I show that the threat of exclusion (foreclosure) and price discrimination are robust strategies that prevent buyers from reporting.
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Ham, Yun-Ju. "Two essays on convergence of recycling rates in England and the valuation of landfill disamenities in Birmingham." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3445/.
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This thesis is divided into two studies which investigate two separate topics relating to waste management. The objective of the first study is to test the presence of convergence in recycling rates across local authorities in England over the last decade, 1998-2008. Understanding the distribution of recycling performance across municipalities and its dynamic nature is important for current policy evaluation and future policy decisions. Using various concepts of convergence, a comprehensive analysis of the distribution of recycling rates is provided. Spatial effects are taken into account in the process of convergence since the mechanisms for convergence, such as spillovers of technology or policy ideas, have a geographical dimension. The results indicate the presence of convergence over the whole period in a sense that poor-performing local authorities have the potential to increase recycling activities at a faster rate than initially better-performing authorities. However, with the more aggressive economic instruments in use after 2005, there seem to be two separate convergence clubs which implies convergence within groups but divergence between groups. The objective of the second study is to investigate public concern over landfill externalities by examining how real and perceived damage from landfill disposal affects the residential property market. Using data on the property sales and landfill sites in the City of Birmingham in 1997, the analysis highlights the presence of long-term impacts of landfill which endure even after site closure by examining external effects from inactive landfill sites as well as active sites. Furthermore, this study deals with a case where properties are simultaneously located near to multiple landfill sites. This issue should not be neglected in the study of a densely populated area like Birmingham. The results of hedonic price regressions reveal strong evidence of landfill impacts reducing property prices. The approach taken here also provides comprehensive estimates of disamenity effects of living near to landfill sites whilst exploring issues like wind direction, nonlinearity of landfill impacts over distance and differential impacts across landfills accepting different types of waste or possessing different age profiles. The results suggest distinctively different features of disamenity from active and historical landfill sites, particularly in their geographical limits.
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Nica, Melania. "Essays in organisational economics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/955/.
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This thesis consists of three chapters. The first two chapters explore the effect of career concerns on communication by multiple experts. The third chapter addresses corporate governance as a double layered moral hazard. The first two chapters relate to a model where a decision maker acts over two periods on the advice of two imperfectly informed experts. Both experts are possibly biased, but in opposite directions. The decision maker can only rely on the experts' reports to determine a course of action, as he never observes the true state of the economy. I show that the experts may report in the opposite direction of their possible bias not only for reputational reasons, but also as a strategic response to the possibility of misreporting by their counterpart. This model also provides a new justification for conformity: an expert might send the same message as the other, not in order to look similar, but to distinguish herself. This is done by inviting comparison to the reliability of the other expert. I also show that a decision maker could discipline both experts to disclose their information by making one value the future more. Also, an expert might be made to tell the truth by being paired with another with high initial reputation. However, negative outcomes still persist, such as the possibility that unbiased experts end up misreporting their signals in order to disavow their perceived predisposition. In the third chapter I study self-dealing in organizations where investors are aware of the existence of different participants in a project. The model involves two-layers of moral hazard, where a manager acts simultaneously as an agent to an investor and as a principal to the employees of the firm. The manager's role is to determine the allocation of the uncontractible resources at his discretion. The optimal executive compensation offered by the investor takes into account the ease with which the employees exert effort and the trade-offs that arise in the process of committing resources.
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Sobarzo, Fimbres Horacio Enrique. "Price effects from public sector intervention : the case of Mexico." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1989. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/107522/.
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Nathan, Max. "The economics of cultural diversity : lessons from British cities." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2011. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/187/.
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This thesis examines the economic effects of cultural diversity; it focuses on recent experience in British cities, and on links between migrant and minority communities, diversity and innovation. Like many western societies Britain is becoming more culturally diverse, a largely urban process driven by net immigration and growing minority communities. Despite significant public interest we know little about the economic impacts. This PhD aims to fill these major gaps. First, I explore connections between diversity, immigration and urban outcomes. I ask: does diversity help or hinder urban economic performance? Initial cross-sectional analysis finds positive associations between ‘super-diversity’ and urban wages. Using panel data and instruments to establish causality, I find that net immigration helps raise native productivity, especially for high-skilled workers, but may help exclude lower-skill natives from employment opportunities. De-industrialisation and casualization of entrylevel occupations partly explain the employment results. Next I investigate links between co-ethnic groups, cultural diversity and innovation. I explore effects of co-ethnic and diverse inventor groups on individual members’ patenting rates, using patents microdata and a novel name classification system. Controlling for individuals’ human capital, I find small positive effects of South Asian and Southern European co-ethnic membership. Overall group diversity also helps raise individual inventors’ productivity. I find mixed evidence of effects on majority patenting. I then explore the case of London in detail, using a unique survey of the capital’s firms. I ask: does organisational diversity or migrant/ethnic ownership influence firms’ product and process innovation? Results show small positive effects of diverse managements on ideas generation. Diverse firms are more likely than homogenous firms to sell into London’s large, cosmopolitan home markets as well as into international markets. Migrant entrepreneurship helps explain the main result. Together, these papers make important contributions to a small but growing literature on diversity, innovation and economic development
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Liu, Yi. "Trade liberalization and wage differentials of heterogeneous firms : three empirical studies of Chinese firms." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6832/.
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This thesis includes three independent empirical studies that examine the relationship between trade and wages for Chinese manufacturing industries for the period 2002-2006. Chapter 2 uses highly detailed firm-level industrial production data merged with product-level trade transaction data to make a direct test of Amiti and Davis (2011) model. The potential endogeneity issue of tariffs is addressed in several ways although our results support the premise that post-WTO period tariff reductions were exogenous. In Chapters 3 and 4 we pay close attention to processing trade. Chapter 3 reexamines the relationship between tariff reductions and firm wages taking into account the special tariff treatment given to processing firms. We find that processing firms pay higher wages following a fall in firm output tariffs. However, non-processing firms pay higher wages after a fall in firm input tariffs. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the impact of tariff reductions on the decision of firms to switch between different modes of exporting and explores how export switching affects firm wages through trade liberalization. The results highlight that input tariff reductions at the firm level determine a firm’s decision and direction of export switching. The future research ideas are also concluded.
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Eastham, Jane Francesca. "An analysis of the success of UK agricultural marketing cooperatives : can they effectively redress power imbalances in current market conditions?" Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4917/.
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This is exploratory research that has examined the efficacy of agricultural marketing cooperatives in the UK as a mechanism to redress power imbalances when faced with highly consolidated downstream markets. This issue would appear to be of particular significance in the light of the continued UK government emphasis on the cooperative action as a means of supporting farm gate prices following the deregulation of European Markets. This research draws upon, and examines the possible linkages between two key bodies of literature, Power Dependency Theory and literature based on the issue of common property and the free-rider problem and presents, through the exploratory framework, the idea that cooperative success is contingent upon an iterative relationship between leverage and cohesion (Emerson, 1962: Olson, 1965). This understanding is used to examine the three diverse marketing cooperatives, and findings from which suggest that cooperatives in current market structures are unable to improve their leverage position over the longer term. The research also suggests that there is not necessarily an iterative relationship between cohesiveness and improved leverage. What is apparent is that Cooperatives endure because they offer other types of benefits to farmers and currently play an important role is sustaining a failing farming sector.
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Moody, Kimberly S. "Tramps, trade union travellers, and wandering workers : how geographic mobility undermined organized labour in Gilded Age America." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2016. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31007/.
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This thesis will argue that high levels of internal migration in Gilded Age America undermined the stability and growth of trade unions and labour-based parties. Most of the traditional ‘American Exceptionalist’ arguments which asserted a lack of class consciousness will be challenged. Significant weight will be given to the racial, ethnic, and gender divisions within the American working class as a source of relative organizational weakness. As archival sources reveal, however, despite their divisions, workers of all ethnic and racial groups drawn into wage-labour in the Gilded Age often displayed high levels of class consciousness and political radicalism through their actions, organizations, and hundreds of weekly labour papers. They also showed an awareness of the problems of frequent migration or ‘tramping’ in building stable organizations. Driven by the tumultuous conditions of uneven industrialization, millions of people migrated from state-to-state, country-to-city, and city-to-city at rates far higher than in Europe. A detailed analysis of the statistics on migration, work-related travelling, and union membership trends shows that this created a high level of membership turnover in the major organizations of the day—the American Federation of Labour and the Knights of Labour. Confronted in the 1880s with the highest level of migration in the period, the Knights of Labour saw rapid growth turn into continuous decline. The more stable craft unions also saw significant membership loss to migration through an ineffective travelling card system. The organizational weakness that resulted undermined efforts by American workers to build independent labour-based parties in the 1880s and 1890s. ‘Pure-and-simple’ unionism would triumph by the end of the century despite the existence of a significant socialist minority in organized labour.