This thesis comprises three essays on industrial organization and multi-market contact. The first chapter models leading firms in innovation markets deciding first whether to share knowledge, and then playing a market entry game. When firms are sufficiently patient, we show that the feasibility of intellectual property disclosure via licensing to outsiders or fringe firms provides a useful additional threat to entry by the punishing firm in the entry game. The opposite is true when firms are impatient; the availability of intellectual property disclosure makes coordination harder. In addition, we show that if the probability that the leading firms will be able to innovate without knowledge sharing is sufficiently high and firms are sufficiently patient, then it is also possible for the firms to enforce a knowledge sharing agreement before innovation has taken place. The second chapter examines the incentives for predatory pricing within multimarkets. It considers an incumbent who is an uncontested monopolist in one market, but faces the threat of entry in a market for a complementary product. The paper shows that the incumbent may be able to defend its monopoly position in the complementary market even when it has a cost disadvantage and produces an inferior quality. The paper also provides conditions under which the incumbent accommodates entry. Accommodation takes place when either the quality of the entrant’s product is sufficiently high, or the entrant has a sufficiently low marginal cost. A surprising result of the analysis is that forbidding firms to price below marginal cost may reduce welfare. The last chapter studies the incentive of a platform owner and an application developer to engage in an exclusive contract in a two-sided market setting with network externalities. The model considers two platform owners competing for advertising revenue with an application developer. We show that it can be optimal for a platform owner to allow a developer to multi-home when doing so has a strong positive effect on advertising in the two-sided market. On the other hand, if the effectiveness of the advertisement response to the number of potential viewers is at an intermediate level, then the developer is willing to accept an exclusive contract offered by a platform owner.

The thesis contains three independent essays on policy modelling. In all three, a numerical dynamic general equilibrium framework is used to discuss methodological advances in regional economic modelling and to analyse specific policies for the economies of Sardinia, Scotland and the United Kingdom respectively. In the first essay, I present a stylized regional intertemporal forward-looking model able to take into account regional economic features. Furthermore, I discuss some of the objections to myopic models, such as the presumed lack of capital adjustment and the differences in the long-run steady-state results between myopic and forward- looking models. I show that properly specified myopic and forward looking models produce identical results in the long run, in contrast to claims in some of the literature in this area. In the second essay I investigate the impact of a balanced budget fiscal policy expansion. I take Scotland as an example where, recently, there has been extensive debate on greater fiscal autonomy. In response to a balanced budget fiscal expansion the model suggests the following results. First, an increase in current government purchases of goods and services has negative multiplier effects only if the elasticity of substitution between private and public consumption is high enough to reduce the marginal utility of private consumers. Second, public capital expenditure crowds in consumption and investment even with a high level of congestion. Third, crowding out effects might arise in the short-run if agents are myopic. CGE modelling techniques have been widely used in the literature to examine the rebound effect in an economy wide context. However, most of the studies focus on economy-wide rebound from an energy efficiency improvement on the production side of the economy. In the third essay, I present simulation results for an improvement in energy efficiency in the household sector which is a clear example of a demand side shock where households take all prices as given and with limited supply side effects.

Need a theory's assumptions be true? In a since notorious essay, the economist Friedman argued they need not be and in abstract theories often won't be. The first part of the thesis discusses his case, which has been widely misunderstood,. It concludes that, whilst false assumptions may fulfil the role of epitomising and implying truth, those in Friedman's key economic example do not. The rest of the thesis then relates Friedman's case to that in defence of general equilibrium theory (the heart of orthodox economic theory) and argues that this defence fails. Two complementary arguments against the defenders' position are presented, the first working from the fact that the theory's assumptions are not true and the second considering what would happen if they were - the conclusion being that the theory relates neither to actual cases nor to possible polar ones. Comparisons drawn with rival economic theories end this case-study in the philosophy of economics.

Choosing between alternative economic theories has been a difficult task throughout the history of economic thought. An attempt is made in this thesis to offer an explanation of persistent conflict within Positive economics. In the first part, the validational procedure in Positive economics is examined, and the place of the F-Twist controversy within it is described. In an effort to define terms used in this controversy, an ambiguity is found that permeates the structure of terms such as, assumptions, fundamental postulates, etc. In examining the criterion of objectivity in Positive economics, namely empirical testing, more ambiguities are found stemming from the irresolution of the Problem of Induction. These ambiguities are related to the positivist distinction between theory and fact and to the elusive justification of inductive inference. Finally, the reliability and objectivity of empirical evidence is put in question. In the second part, the Monetary controversy is outlined. Initially the scene is set by accounting for the development of the controversy within the context of the policy developments during the post-war period. Then, the theoretical framework of the controversy is delineated and it is found that Monetarists and Fiscalists belong to the same theoretical framework differing only in the emphases they put within it. Finally, the empirical evidence by either side is examined and the conclusion is reached that it has proved indecisive for choosing between Monetarism and Fiscalism. In the last part, critiques of Positive economics are reviewed, and various explanations of conflict in economics are discussed. It is found that in most of these explanations, causal relations are looked for, which attribute conflict to isolated factors stemming from the defects of economics. An alternative account of conflict in economics is propounded in which the logical 'matrix' behind persistent controversy is put forward. In this account a diagram is drawn structurally tracing and logically connecting opposing tendencies in Positive economics. Along with the logical structure a historical framework is also given within which the connecting relations are realized. The argument is put forth that, as far as the F-Twist and Monetary controversies are concerned, conflict in Positive economics cannot be resolved by empirical testing, due to structured ambiguities and contradictions in it.

Input-output, as a method of analysis, has largely boon tailored to aspects of national rather than regional growth performance. This thesis attempts to illustrate how regional Matrix models, and regional adaptions of the national counterparts, can be used as effective tools of economic growth analysis. To effect this purpose, the thesis outlines the theoretical precepts necessary for the development of an input- output model. Subsequent chapters discuss the actual formulation of a commodity-by-industry absorption model, and the development of a derived regional transaction flow matrix. Since a regional economy is almost inevitably linked with other regional economies, the interregional aspect of regional economic growth is discussed in light of existing theories of production-trading floors. The development of production-trading moddel, with Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom as the component parts, completes the preparation of statistical inputs necessary to facilitate the testing of analytical models in the ensuing chapters.

No description available.

The thesis delineates the growth, and the various social, economic, institutional and technological factors supporting the growth, of the United Kingdom's cycle and related industries over the period circa. 1870-1914. The emphasis-is upon tracing the short- and long-run movements in the industries' outputs up to 1900 (but without the ideal facility of quantitative data directly " relating to the aggregate volumes and values of final gross outputs); and upon assessing the links of the industry with the pre-existing industrial structures of the U. K. economy - in terms of the diversification of firms, the origins of the "founding fathers", and of the types and sources of initial capital requirements. The thesis also examines the various elements that pervaded the technological developments, with regard to both final products and the processes of their production, within the cycle industries in the broad. It is additionally concerned with the rise of foreign competition, and the typical or untypical reactions of the British entrepreneurial leaders of the cycle industry to this phenomenon. The thesis ends with a study of the relationships of the firms in the cycle and related industries with the facilities for formal, public, joint-stock company flotations in the United Kingdom, in order to cast some light upon the proposition that the available facilities tended to militate against the expansion of a "new" industry, such as the cycle industry, during the thirty-odd years prior to 1914.

We provide some evidence of Empirical Likelihood's (EL) practical value in econometrics. We present EL as an alternative to GMM estimation and assess the finite-sample properties of their overidentification tests (size and power) through Monte Carlo simulations. We address the issue of the importance of the results to applied workers and use as laboratories to our experiments two settings with potential empirical applications: the Mean-Variance and Three-Moment CAPM and a dynamic panel model with individual effects. In cases in which we found important size distortions we introduced efficient bootstrap critical values. Prior research applied this bootstrapping technique to the GMM (GMM-bootstrap) and we present results for the EL (EL-bootstrap). We also include an empirical example on a United States panel cash-flow model. Even if our findings do not uniformly support the conclusion that one estimator dominates the other, we found evidence that EL and EL-bootstrap are good alternatives to GMM and GMM-bootstrap in some econometric applications.

This study aimed to address a series of issues regarding both the CUSUM-type tests that have been developed to detect a potentially existing break in the conditional variance of an economic process, and their corresponding breakdate estimators that are used to identify the time of occurrence of that break. The approach taken has been based on an extensive Monte-Carlo simulation to evaluate the size, power and accuracy of the corresponding breakdate estimator of a set of 27 test variants for approximately 450 data generating processes, some homoskedastic but most conditionally heteroskedastic. The first set of issues is concerned with the finite sample properties of the tests, while the second one focuses on the choice of the appropriate test which depends on the assumptions made regarding the conditional variance of the underlying process. A third set of issues concerns the ability of the tests to detect breaks in the conditional mean of the process as well as the conditional variance. In addition to investigating the theoretical properties of the tests, four applications are included amongst which are a note on the work of Andreou and Ghyssels (2002), who perform a Monte-Carlo analysis with features common to those of this study, albeit with some discrepancies in the results, and three empirical studies that signify the importance of testing for structural changes in processes prior to any further analysis and provide suggestions about robustifying results obtained by the use of the CUSUM-type tests.

We applied cointegration, Granger-causality and Error Correction Mechanism [ECM] model to test for the Wagner's Law and Keynesian relation in an effort to explain the government expenditure growth in Malaysia for the period 1961-1990. We defined Wagner's Law following Musgrave [1969], Gupta [1967], Goffman [1968] and Mann's [1980] definitions. We modified Musgrave definition by excluding transfer payments from the total government expenditure to test the significance of transfer payments. We tested the Keynesian relation by reversing the Gupta's definition to see the effect of government expenditure on GNP. Following Diamond's [1977] interpretation of Peacock and Wiseman Hypothesis as a theory of structural break, we employed Perron's test for structural break to test for Peacock-Wiseman Hypothesis by considering the May 13, 1969 racial conflict as a form of social upheaval.;Following Nelson and Plosser [1982] and as a pre-requisite to cointegration, Granger-causality and ECM, we tested the data generating process to determine whether the time-series used in this study are generated by trend stationary [TS] or differenced stationary [DS] process. On discovering that the time-series are DS, we proceed by testing the unit root hypothesis using Dickey and Pantula [1985] procedure.;On Wagner's Law, we discovered that a) the variables from Musgrave, modified-Musgrave and Mann's definition are NOT cointegrated, b) using differenced variables, we find no Granger-causality to support Wagner's Law which is a sharp contrast when we tested the relationship using the level of the variables and c) ECM test confirmed our finding in (b). We obtained the same result as (b) when we tested the Keynesian relation. Using Perron's procedure, we cannot trace a structural break in total government expenditure, GNP and ratio of government expenditure in GNP to verify the Peacock-Wiseman Hypothesis.