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This thesis is concerned with pragmatic factors of deontic reasoning, namely scale of violation, aggravating and mitigating circumstances and power of source. Nine experiments are reported investigating deontic reasoning and judgement revision. Experiment 1 established scale of violation as a modifying factor of a working rule with an inferential reasoning task, however, the effects were not transferred to a deductive reasoning task in Experiment 2. Scale of violation and circumstances were found to influence the reasoning of motoring violations with a major offence and aggravating circumstances being rated as more serious and receiving greater fines than a minor offence or mitigating circumstances (Experiments 3 & 4). These effects were also observed with a judgement revision task (Experiment 5). Power of source was included as an additional pragmatic factor and was found to influence the reasoning of conditional statements (Experiment 6), inducements (Experiment 7) and ratings of credibility and probability of outcomes (Experiment 8). The final study (Experiment 9) found significant effects for scale of violation / compliance and power of source within a judgement revision task. However, no difference was observed in the reasoning of superordinate and non-superordinate statements. The findings are explained in terms of the conditional probability hypothesis.

The International Monetary Fund was created to promote financial stability, global monetary cooperation, high employment, international trade and sustainable economic growth. Together with the World Bank, IMF has a "monopoly" on offering loan programs for countries in deep crises or for development projects. In this thesis, we examine the effect of IMF, i.e. loan size and quotas, on the economic growth and inflation rate, by applying a dynamic panel regression on our dataset. In addition, we look at how the IMF Quotas influence the size of the loans. Our empirical results display significant evidence that IMF loans influence the GDP growth in a positive manner, in the medium term. Both Control of Corruption and Voice & Accountability have a negative influence on the economic growth. In other words, less corruption and stronger civil rights will halt the growth level of the economy. We also determined that IMF Quotas is not a robust indicator of the loan size. It is only driven by the past loan levels. Regarding Inflation determinants, IMF loans are not affecting the Inflation in a significant manner, while FDI and Control of Corruption - do. FDI exercises a positive influence on the CPI, while perception of less corruption has a negative effect on Inflation rate. JEL Classification D73, E31, F12,...

This study seeks to understand the scope and types of public relations practices in Japan, how public relations practices of Japanese and foreign companies differ, how media respond differently to the public relations activities of Japanese and foreign companies, and how "foreignness" affects public relations activities of multinational enterprises in Japan. The sole academic journal in the field of public relations in Japan and the single commercially published public relations industry magazine were submitted to an empirical content analysis. Additionally, three cases of contest for corporate control, two of which were between an American activist fund and a Japanese company, and one between a Japanese investment fund and a Japanese company, were analyzed using a case study approach. Press releases and newspaper articles about these cases were also content analyzed. The results show that among public relations activities, crisis category appeared the most frequently in the public relations industry journal and corporate communication category appeared the most frequently in the public relations academic journal. The analysis of the cases shows that the American fund at first faced problems communicating with its stakeholders but improved its communication activities in subsequent years with better results. The content analysis of the press releases shows that American fund uses more quotes and persuasive messages in the press releases and Japanese newspapers do not treat domestic and foreign entities differently. The overall results confirm the importance of culture in public relations practices.

This dissertation consists of three papers revolving around economics of R&amp / D. The first paper analyzes the determinants of R&amp / D expenditures with specific focus on foreign ownership and spillovers / the second paper studies the impact of R&amp / D on productivity and the third paper analyzes whether conducting R&amp / D enables Turkish manufacturing firms to catch up with sector leaders as far as their productivity levels are concerned. The first contribution of the thesis is the use of newly available data from Turkish Institute of Statistics (Turkstat). Two different surveys are matched at the firm level for the years 2003-2007. The second contribution is the employment of a new methodology: Heckman two-stage procedure with instrumental variables for panel data. The third contribution is collection of qualitative data via interviews with R&amp / D performing firms. Foreign ownership has no statistically significant effect on R&amp / D intensity. Foreign knowledge spillovers exert a negative effect on R&amp / D, but in time their effect becomes positive. R&amp / D subsidies and skill affect R&amp / D intensity positively while size influences it negatively. The effect of R&amp / D and skill on productivity is positive and significant. The effect of R&amp / D on technical efficiency is negative but knowledge spillovers exert a positive effect on technical efficiency.

The aim of this thesis is to identify and to study the micro and macro determinants of export performance. The results of micro determinants suggest that there is no significant relationship between export performance and R&amp / D intensity, which could be a result of underreport of R&amp / D expenditures in income statements of firms and the realization of its effects in the long-term. The results for marketing intensity, ratio of foreign exchange profits in total sales, fixed investment intensity and capital intensity are in the same way. On the other hand, bank loans and previous year&amp / #8217 / s export performance is strongly related with export performance. Moreover, it is found that there is no significant difference between low technology industries&amp / #8217 / and medium and high technology industries&amp / #8217 / export behavior. On the other hand, from the macro-economic determinants perspective, the implementation of flexible exchange rate policy has favorable effects on the volume of exports. While export intensity is positively affected by the major devaluations experienced in 1994 and 2001.

The changes in the behaviour of the innovating firm that would not have been the case in the absence of the public support, behavioural additionality, is investigated in this thesis. The theoretical foundations of the concept along with the existing evaluation attempts worldwide are analysed. The need for evaluation in Turkey is established. The design of the T&Uuml / BiTAK-TEYDEB programme in question along with the related policy context is described to form a basis for the evaluation of the behavioural additionality. It is revealed that the need for an evaluation of behavioural additionality for the legitimacy of the programme from the data analysis. Finally, given such inputs, the thesis develops a methodological proposal for a framework to evaluate the behavioural additionality of the public support to private R&amp / D in Turkey.

This thesis presents detailed description of the development of two computer codes written in FORTRAN language for the analysis of detonation of energetic mixtures. The first code, named GasPX, can compute the detonation parameters of premixed gaseous mixtures and the second one, named BARUT-X, can compute the detonation parameters of C-H-N-O based solid explosives. Both computer codes perform the computations on the basis of Chapman-Jouguet Steady State Detonation Theory and in chemical equilibrium condition. The computed detonation point by the computer codes is one of the possible solutions of the Rankine&ndash / Hugoniot curve and it also satisfies the Rayleigh line. By examining the compressibility of the gaseous products formed after detonation of premixed gaseous mixtures, it is inferred that the ideal-gas equation of state can be used to describe the detonation products. GasPX then calculates the detonation parameters complying with ideal-gas equation of state. However, the assumption of the ideal gas behavior is not valid for gaseous detonation products of solid explosives. Considering the historical improvement of the numerical studies in the literature, the BKW (Becker-Kistiakowsky-Wilson) Equation of State for gaseous products and the Cowan &amp / Fickett Equation of State for solid carbon (graphite) in the products are applied to the numerical model of BARUT-X. Several calculations of detonation parameters are performed by both GasPX and BARUT-X. The results are compared with those computed by the other computer codes as well as the experimental data in the literature. Comparisons show that the results are in satisfactory agreement with experiments and also in good agreement with the calculations performed by the other codes.

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is defined as: given a finite number of cities along with the cost of travel between each pair of them, find the cheapest way of visiting all the cities only once and returning to your starting city. Some variants of TSP are proposed to visit cities depending on the profit gained when the visit occurs. In literature, these kind of problems are named TSP with profit. In TSP with profit, there are two conflicting objectives, one to collect profit and the other to decrease traveling cost. In literature, TSP with profit are addressed as single objective, either two objectives are combined linearly or one objective is constrained with a specified bound. In this study, a multiobjective approach is developed by combining &amp / #949 / -constrained method and heuristics from the literature in order to find the efficient frontier for the TSP with profit. The performance of approach is tested on the problems studied in the literature. Also an interactive software is developed based on the multiobjective approach.

THE SOCIALIST WORKERS&amp / #8217 / SELF-GOVERNMENT IT&amp / #8217 / S EFFECT ON WORKERS&amp / #8217 / INFLUENCE AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE ALIENATION OF LABOR IN YUGOSLAVIA Ali Milliogullari Ph.D. Department of Political Science and Public Administration Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sinasi Aksoy September 2007, 224 pages The objective of this dissertation study is to explore the socialist workers&amp / #8217 / self-government and to what extend the socialist workers self-government&amp / #8217 / s theoretical aim and potential for the transcendence of the alienation of labor has been realized in the experience of the Socialist Yugoslavia, by a theoretically and socio-historical contextually grounded comparative empirical inquiry in Yugoslavia. The main theoretical thesis of this study is that compared to the etatist-bureaucratic socialist system and the capitalist societal system, the self-governing socialism can have a qualitatively more significant positive effect on the workers influence over decision-making and the transcendence of alienation of labor in work organizations. The study is composed of three main parts: (1) the examination and evaluation of the theoretical perspectives on the socialist workers&amp / #8217 / self-government and the alienation of labor, (2) the examination of the development of the socialist workers&amp / #8217 / self-government in Yugoslavia in practice, and (3) a comparative empirical study concerning the effect of the socialist workers&amp / #8217 / self-government in Yugoslavia and the capitalist non-participative management in Turkey on the workers influence over decision-making and the transcendence of the alienation of labor in work organizations. The analyses of the research data for the within - the socialist workers self-management system in Yugoslavia revealed that, contrary to the expectations of the related theory, ideology and de jure structure, the socialist workers self-management did not have a qualitatively significant positive effect on the workers influence and transcendence of the alienation of labor in work organizations. However, as to the between societal systems comparison, the analyses of the research data indicated that, in consistent with the theoretical expectations, compared with the capitalist management system in Turkey, the socialist workers self-management in Yugoslavia has a statistically more significant positive effect on the workers influence and the reduction of the powerlessness in work dimension of the alienation of labor.