Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / "This thesis seeks to make a contribution to the understanding of the relationship between housing and labour markets by examining the impact of decreasing job security, that is the increase in casual and contract employment, on the purchase behaviour of first home buyers in Australia." -- Abstract / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1284060 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2007

Temperature is arguably the most important abiotic factor influencing the embryonic development in ectothermic species. Incubation temperature has demonstrated effects on offspring phenotypes in ectotherms, including traits such as sex, size, shape, colouration and post-hatch growth and survival. However, in endotherms the influence temperature has on development is relatively unexplored due to the narrow range of temperatures that embryonic endotherms are exposed to during develop. Megapode birds utilize environmental heat sources to incubate their eggs and therefore provide a potential model to test how temperature influences embryonic development and offspring phenotypes in endotherms. I used the Australian Brush-turkey (Alectura lathami), a megapode bird that incubates its eggs in mounds of soil and leaf litter to investigate the effects of temperature on embryonic development and chick morphology. Previous reports of Australian Brush-turkey incubation mound temperatures relied on spot measurements and theoretical modeling and thus have not provided a comprehensive examination of the range of temperatures Brush-turkey embryos are exposed to and how these might vary during the course of incubation. Therefore to examine the range of temperatures experienced by developing embryos I continuously recorded the temperature of eggs and mound material at naturally occurring positions within incubation mounds over the full developmental period. As in previous studies I found the average incubation temperature to be about 34°C, however egg temperatures typically fluctuated more than previously reported or predicted from modeling. The thermal tolerance of Brush-turkeys is remarkable compared to non-megapode birds, with embryos developing successfully despite prolonged exposure to sub-optimal temperatures over the range 25-40°C. I also demonstrated that the incubation period was negatively correlated with mean incubation temperature. To simplify the examination of temperature effects on embryonic development, constant temperature artificial incubation of Brush-turkey eggs was used to determine influence of incubation temperature on the energetics of embryonic development and the sex ratio, morphology and chemical composition of chicks. Because initial investigation of mound temperatures determined the mean incubation temperature in Brush-turkeys to be 34°C this was used as the preferred temperature for constant temperature incubation with 32°C and 36°C representing low and high temperatures respectively. Previously, the sex ratio of Brush-turkey chicks at hatching was shown to be temperature dependent. A thermally sensitive period early in development resulted in more females hatching from high temperature and more males hatching from low temperatures with an equal ratio at the preferred temperature. Using molecular sexing techniques to determine the sex of both failed embryos and chicks that hatched, I established that at laying the sex ratio of eggs was 50:50, and that temperature-dependent sex-biased embryo mortality was the mechanism behind the skewed sex ratio of chicks hatching from non-preferred temperatures. Low incubation temperature increased female embryonic mortality and high incubation temperature increased male embryonic mortality. This represents a novel mechanism operating to alter sex ratios in a bird species and offers an unparalleled system to explore sex allocation theory. It is well established that temperature influences the rate of development and the morphology of offspring in reptilian species. Also, in a previous study using artificially incubated Brush-turkey eggs, temperature was found to affect the mass of chicks but not their size (linear dimensions). This finding suggests that at different incubation temperatures the amount of yolk converted into tissue during embryonic development is influenced by incubation temperature. I tested this hypothesis by incubating eggs at different constant temperatures and found high incubation temperatures produce chicks with lighter yolk-free bodies and heavier residual yolks but similar linear dimensions compared to chicks hatching from lower temperatures. Because eggs incubated at low temperatures have longer incubation periods, I hypothesized the proportion of lipid in the yolk-free body would be higher in chicks emerging from eggs incubated at low temperature because more time is available for the conversion of yolk to fat bodies during embryonic development. This hypothesis was not supported as the composition of yolk-free chicks (total water, lipid, protein and ash) was not temperature dependent. A previous study in Malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata), another megapode bird, found that the total energetic cost of production was influenced by incubation temperature. Such that embryos developing at low temperatures required 72% more energy than embryos developing at high temperatures. However these findings were contrary to expectation from studies of reptilian incubation where the energetic cost of development is independent of temperature. Therefore I tested the hypothesis that the total energetic cost of development is temperature dependent in the Australian Brush-turkey. I used bomb calorimetry to measure the energy content of freshly laid eggs and of chicks (both the yolk-free body and residual yolk) that had hatched from eggs incubated 32oC, 34oC and 36oC. I found that the total energy content of chicks at hatching was greater in chicks emerging from eggs incubated at 34oC and 36oC compared to eggs incubated at 32oC. My thesis work demonstrated that incubation temperature is more variable for Brush-turkey embryos than for non-megapode birds and that even a small difference in temperature can have important effects on chick sex ratios, morphology and energy reserves. I have shown that incubation under artificial constant temperature conditions can significantly alter the developmental trajectories and phenotypic outcomes for chicks. In addition to laboratory based work, future studies should continue to examine how embryonic development and chick attributes are influenced by temperatures experienced under natural incubation conditions. Furthermore, investigation is required to determine how incubation temperature induced differences in hatchling phenotypes influence the post-hatch grow and fitness of chicks.

Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / "This thesis seeks to make a contribution to the understanding of the relationship between housing and labour markets by examining the impact of decreasing job security, that is the increase in casual and contract employment, on the purchase behaviour of first home buyers in Australia." -- Abstract / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1284060 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2007

Since the late 1970s, the world has experienced a wave of microeconomic reform that has resulted in the privatisation of many previously State-owned assets, as well as other reforms directed at improving the efficiency of government business enterprises. This dissertation focuses on one important instrument of reform: outsourcing of public-sector service provision. Despite the prevalence of outsourcing, there has been relatively little empirical work analysing the effects of outsourcing at the contract level. This dissertation addresses three important empirical issues related to outsourcing. First, analysis of the magnitude and sources of cost savings associated with outsourcing was undertaken using a present value costing framework. Unlike other studies, this study includes transaction costs and considers how costs change over the life of the contract. The results indicate that savings of 37 per cent were achieved in the first year of contract operation ?savings that were achieved through a combination of reductions in pay and conditions, labour-saving technological change and reductions in inefficiency. Secondly, the dissertation considered why the level of savings achieved fell to 24 per cent following contract variations at the end of year 1. Some evidence indicated that this may have been due to opportunistic behaviour or hold-up: that the contract service provider may have taken advantage of contractual incompleteness and increased its price during the course of contract renegotiations. Although hold-up is an important theme in the literature on contracts, little empirical work has been undertaken in verifying its existence. Thirdly, the impact of contract design on the efficiency of outsourcing arrangements was analysed. It is well known that contract theory predicts a trade-off between incentives and risk. Using the standard principal-agent framework, a simple model is developed to analyse the effects of demand uncertainty on the risk-incentive trade-off. This model is then tested using data from maintenance services contracts at two corporatised water retailers in Melbourne: an environment that is characterised by high levels of both cost and demand uncertainty. Using a general linear regression model, the results obtained indicate that the moral hazard effect dominated the risk premium effect.

Since the late 1970s, the world has experienced a wave of microeconomic reform that has resulted in the privatisation of many previously State-owned assets, as well as other reforms directed at improving the efficiency of government business enterprises. This dissertation focuses on one important instrument of reform: outsourcing of public-sector service provision. Despite the prevalence of outsourcing, there has been relatively little empirical work analysing the effects of outsourcing at the contract level. This dissertation addresses three important empirical issues related to outsourcing. First, analysis of the magnitude and sources of cost savings associated with outsourcing was undertaken using a present value costing framework. Unlike other studies, this study includes transaction costs and considers how costs change over the life of the contract. The results indicate that savings of 37 per cent were achieved in the first year of contract operation ?savings that were achieved through a combination of reductions in pay and conditions, labour-saving technological change and reductions in inefficiency. Secondly, the dissertation considered why the level of savings achieved fell to 24 per cent following contract variations at the end of year 1. Some evidence indicated that this may have been due to opportunistic behaviour or hold-up: that the contract service provider may have taken advantage of contractual incompleteness and increased its price during the course of contract renegotiations. Although hold-up is an important theme in the literature on contracts, little empirical work has been undertaken in verifying its existence. Thirdly, the impact of contract design on the efficiency of outsourcing arrangements was analysed. It is well known that contract theory predicts a trade-off between incentives and risk. Using the standard principal-agent framework, a simple model is developed to analyse the effects of demand uncertainty on the risk-incentive trade-off. This model is then tested using data from maintenance services contracts at two corporatised water retailers in Melbourne: an environment that is characterised by high levels of both cost and demand uncertainty. Using a general linear regression model, the results obtained indicate that the moral hazard effect dominated the risk premium effect.

Doctor of Philosophy / The motivation for the research presented in this thesis stems from the recent availability of high frequency limit order book data, relative scarcity of studies employing such data, economic significance of transaction costs management, and a perceived potential of data mining for uncovering patterns and relationships not identified by the traditional top-down modelling approach. We analyse and build computational models for order submissions on the Australian Stock Exchange, an order-driven market with a public electronic limit order book. The focus of the thesis is on the trade implementation problem faced by a trader who wants to transact a buy or sell order of a certain size. We use two approaches to build our models, top-down and bottom-up. The traditional, top-down approach is applied to develop an optimal order submission plan for an order which is too large to be traded immediately without a prohibitive price impact. We present an optimisation framework and some solutions for non-stationary and non-linear price impact and price impact risk. We find that our proposed transaction costs model produces fairly good forecasts of the variance of the execution shortfall. The second, bottom-up, or data mining, approach is employed for trade sign inference, where trade sign is defined as the side which initiates both a trade and the market order that triggered the trade. We are interested in an endogenous component of the order flow, as evidenced by the predictable relationship between trade sign and the variables used to infer it. We want to discover the rules which govern the trade sign, and establish a connection between them and two empirically observed regularities in market order submissions, competition for order execution and transaction cost minimisation. To achieve the above aims we first use exploratory analysis of trade and limit order book data. In particular, we conduct unsupervised clustering with the self-organising map technique. The visualisation of the transformed data reveals that buyer-initiated and seller-initiated trades form two distinct clusters. We then propose a local non-parametric trade sign inference model based on the k-nearest-neighbour classifier. The best k-nearest-neighbour classifier constructed by us requires only three predictor variables and achieves an average out-of-sample accuracy of 71.40% (SD=4.01%)1, across all of the tested stocks. The best set of predictor variables found for the non-parametric model is subsequently used to develop a piecewise linear trade sign model. That model proves superior to the k-nearest-neighbour classifier, and achieves an average out-of-sample classification accuracy of 74.38% (SD=4.25%). The result is statistically significant, after adjusting for multiple comparisons. The overall classification performance of the piecewise linear model indicates a strong dependence between trade sign and the three predictor variables, and provides evidence for the endogenous component in the order flow. Moreover, the rules for trade sign classification derived from the structure of the piecewise linear model reflect the two regularities observed in market order submissions, competition for order execution and transaction cost minimisation, and offer new insights into the relationship between them. The obtained results confirm the applicability and relevance of data mining for the analysis and modelling of stock market order submissions.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Göteborg : Univ. , 2008. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Diss. Linköping : Univ., 2001.

Lic.-avh. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2003. / Härtill 2 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karol. inst., 2003. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.