The aim of the present thesis is to investigate the putative theoretical desirability, both from the economic and the ethical point of view, as well as the practical inevitability of the presence of a monopoly of force in any given system of political economy. The primary methodological tool used for this purpose, described in Chapter 1, is praxeological analysis in the spirit of the Austrian School of Economics, coupled with the analysis of institutional robustness of the relevant economic and social frameworks. Chapter 2 presents a general theoretical critique of the neoclassical theory of public goods. Chapters 3 and 4 make the critique in question more specific and practically grounded by analyzing the ways in which the two most paradigmatic public goods in the neoclassical theory – namely, law and defense – could be effectively produced in a contractual, entrepreneurial order of legal polycentrism. Chapter 5 tackles the claim that, while not necessary for the production of public goods, monopolies of force are nonetheless inevitable due to the combined influence of the iron law of oligarchy and the collective action problem. Finally, Chapter 6 tries to pin down various ethical conceptions of public goods and argue that none of them can sustain the notion that a fully voluntary and contractual social order generates a tradeoff between efficiency and equity, which can be countered only by corrective interventions of a monopoly of force. The final conclusion of the present thesis is that neither economic nor ethical considerations surrounding the notion of public goods establish the desirability or inevitability of the existence of territorial monopolies of force, thus lending support to the suggestion that the emergence of a world-wide contractual, competitive, entrepreneurial order of legal polycentrism would be a welcome alternative.

This thesis comprises three empirical chapters on the non-linear relationship between different macroeconomic variables and economic growth and employs new developed econometrics techniques. After a short introductory chapter, the second chapter investigates the relationship between inflation and economic growth for 35 countries in the Middle Eastern and Sub-Sahara African countries between 1986 and 2011. We have employed a Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) approach to estimate a precise threshold level of inflation. We consider, also, the impact of inflation threshold levels between the finance-growth nexus. Additionally we explore whether or not the relationship between inflation and economic growth varies according to the level of institutional quality. The results indicate that, indeed, the inflation-growth nexus relies on the level of inflation. Moreover we confirm the importance of institutional quality level in determining the relationship between inflation and economic growth. Further, we find that the finance-growth nexus varies according to the threshold level of inflation. The third chapter introduces a new estimation approach to the PSTR model; it is defined in the form of State Space system equations. We developed this approach to estimate two different threshold variables simultaneously and to consider the existence of a static and stochastic transition function. We employed this panel econometric investigation to identify the non-linear relationship between government size and economic growth for 5 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, during the period from 1970 to 2014. This chapter’s main finding asserts the existence of a threshold level of government size below which it hurts economic growth. The fourth chapter develops the employed model in the third chapter to provide a new insight into the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth. We developed this model in order to consider the time varying effects of the explanatory variables and to examine further the multiple regime threshold models. In this chapter we study the role of income in determining the non-linear relationship between foreign aid and economic growth for 25 developing countries during the period from 1984 to 2008. Additionally, we detect whether or not corruption levels matter for the effectiveness of aid in the aid recipient countries. Generally, based on their income levels, we recognize various threshold levels of foreign aid for each group of developing countries.

This research study presents a review of the vast literature on the term 'resource curse', focusing particularly on the question whether natural resource abundance is really bad for economic growth and development. The study observes that, while the existing literature provides considerable evidence that natural resource abundance is associated with negative development outcomes, the evidence is by no means conclusive nor robust, after controlling for the empirical errors associated with the estimation methodologies adopted in such analysis. The research investigates the consistency and robustness of the different estimation methodologies hitherto used to explain the slow and volatile growth performance of developing oil-rich countries. Firstly, the research empirically establishes whether oil, as a natural resource endowment, is a significant determinant of economic growth and by extension, whether the negative correlation between natural resource abundance and long-term economic growth is necessarily significant, after controlling for model endogeneity and country- specific heterogeneity errors. Secondly, the study investigates whether 'oil boom' accounts for the decline in manufacturing output and economic growth in developing oil rich countries as the 'Dutch Disease Hypothesis' suggests. Thirdly, the research establishes a strong correlation between the quality of institutions and the current growth performance of developing oil economies. In this research, rather than ask the usual question - why natural resource wealth promotes poor growth performance. We answer the question - what fundamental factors enable some resource abundant countries to utilize their natural resource advantages to promote steady growth and development, while others could not. The thesis suggests that institutions are important to unravelling the resource curse dilemma, and until fundamental institutional re-engineering of the economies of developing oil-rich countries is embarked upon, the gains from a resource boom cannot be transformed into a sub- optimal development outcome. This necessary institutional revival will require a radical departure from the historically inherited 'extractive' colonial institutions - which currently characterize developing oil exporting countries.

Sustainable development, a concept that emerged as we began to understand the negative impacts of environmental challenges, such as pollution and climate change, on human prosperity and social equality, was seen as offering a way of preserving the natural systems that sustain human life on Earth whilst continuing to support economic and social development. As a concept, however, it presents many challenges, both in its interpretation and in its application and one of the challenges is the requirement for behaviour change from all sectors of society, including the voluntary sector. There is an assumption by the UK government that voluntary organisations, as trusted agents of change, are well placed to help the poorest cope with the disproportionate impacts of economic and environmental unsustainability and that the voluntary sector should be working with local stakeholders to promote behaviour change at a local level. This research identified that limited understanding of the concept of sustainable development and inappropriate communication and interaction with the UK government, both nationally and locally, acted to inhibit voluntary sector engagement in change. Part of the problem could be that traditional linear approaches to behaviour change, based on clear cause and effect relationships and pre-determined outcomes, are not appropriate when addressing complex problems like sustainable development, which involve multiple stakeholders, both human and non human. The encouragement of behaviour change for sustainable development may require a new and different approach. This thesis concludes that Communities of Practice, a change approach that is sympathetic to the principles of complexity thinking, offers an alternative approach to behaviour change that could accommodate the complexity of sustainable development and additionally, has many features that would overcome the barriers to voluntary sector engagement. This type of non-hierarchical approach has the potential to encourage not only the voluntary sector but all stakeholders in a local community to work together to develop sustainability initiatives that are appropriate to the local circumstances.

No description available.

Carbon emissions and natural resource depletion are associated with urgent, linear timelines and irreversible damage. In contrast, the commercialization of radical innovations is associated with timelines of 20-40 years. These two timelines are at tension with each other and a shortening of the organizational radical innovation timeline is needed to address urgent sustainable development challenges through new product and service offers. This transdisciplinary PhD research investigates the practice of radical innovation in large firms. It generates insights on how firms pursue explorative innovation activities with the goal of creating social and environmental value whilst capturing economic value. The organizational capability of ‘experimentation’ has been highlighted as the key to improve radical innovation performance in established firms. However, the details of what the experimentation capability might be, and entail in the context of sustainable development challenges is unknown. Furthermore, how experimentation may address the contrasting timelines of organizational innovation and sustainable development challenges has not been explored. To address this gap in the knowledge, this research gathered qualitative data from leading practitioners through semi-structured interviews, followed by an in-depth case study. The insights generated through the data analysis contribute to knowledge in the strategic management and sustainability literature. This research offers a descriptive framework on how firms might build on the innovation process used in lean startup thinking to shorten the radical innovation timeline with the view to develop products and services that create environmental and social value whilst capturing economic value.

Calls have been voiced to change economic and industrial systems such that they align with sustainable development. One concept, circular economy, has emerged recently as a way to rethink waste and resource management. Within this research circular economy is defined as an umbrella concept that centres on the phenomenon of assessing a collection of resource life-extending strategies. This research explored how practitioners interpret the circular economy concept and how this influenced the enactment of waste and resource management, by use of a tool termed the Circularity Compass that was constructed for this purpose. A qualitative case study approach was followed, where 15 participants were interviewed, covering 23 innovation projects for 19 focal companies. The following seven insights stand out. Participants considered 1) materials and products and in particular parts or modules as playing important roles in establishing what resource life-extending strategies are possible; 2) other flows besides those directly related to the manufacturing of a product, such as material flows co-used with the product as well as energy and information flows, and frequently directed their attention at the infrastructure that facilitates these flows; 3) those strategies that allow for the flexible use of product capacity as valid interpretations of what constitutes a resource life-extending strategy; 4) resource life-extending strategies in sets of two or more, where they were frequently thought of as intimately related to each other; 5) addressing one or more barriers seen as inhibiting appropriate waste and resource management directly, whilst other barriers were subject to assumptions not further explored, or not acted upon in a number of cases; 6) various resource life-extending strategies as possibilities of a proposed intervention, without the need to completely resolve targeted routes; and, lastly, 7) participants experienced difficulties progressing the proposed solutions due to an inability to generate financial and political support.

This thesis comprises three essays on social capital including social distance, social trust and social interaction and explore how they affect the economic activity. Chapter 1 investigates the relationship between social distance and the process of capital accumulation. We show that social distance and the current capital stock are jointly determined and both are critical for economic growth. Economies at a similar stage of economic development, but different in terms of perceived social distance may experience strikingly different long-term prospects. Equally important, however, the likelihood that countries which are similar in terms of perceived social distance may yet experience drastically opposite socio-economic paths if they differ in terms of their economic conditions. In the second chapter, I provide a systematic attempt at the construction of such an alternative measure of trust. Methodologically, I use the Factor Analysis technique in order to assign weightings to all the various characteristics that are generally considered as determinants of generalised trust. These variables are also consistent with a variety of existing empirical evidences and theoretical studies. Consequently, the ranking of countries in trust index is more consistent with people’s perception of trust ranking than the ones in the trust survey. Next, I add to the literature by illustrating with a panel study the effect of trust on FDI inflows as well as income inequality. In the third chapter, I explore the correlation between social interactions and labour market outcomes. I use active group membership, which describes the sum number of groups that individuals currently are active in, as the proxy of social interaction. Various specifications show that a higher level of social interaction is associated with increased probability of labour market participation. Furthermore, I extend to measure the effect of social interaction on wages.

No description available.

The thesis considers the macroeconomic and social impacts of privatisation with special reference to Portugal. Portugal has undergone one of the largest privatisation programmes in Europe over the period 1987 to 1998 with cumulative privatisation proceeds accounting for around 20 per cent of 1998 gross domestic product, the second highest share of all OECD economies, after Hungary over the same period. The privatisation programme will continue after the year- 2000, although the major share of scheduled privatisation had been completed by July 1998. Part I of the thesis considers the theoretical background to analysing privatisation at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. The macroeconomic impacts of privatisation include the impacts of privatisation on investment, consumption, national productivity and competitiveness and employment. The thesis also considers the degree to which theoretical and applied analysis of privatisation has considered the social impacts of privatisation, including the impacts on employment, welfare, incomes, income distribution and access to services. It is recognised that the macroeconomic and social environments will also condition the impacts of privatisation, including macroeconomic and social stability as well as the existence of an appropriate institutional and regulatory environment. Part I also reviews the impacts of privatisation at the microeconomic or enterprise level and their linkages with the macroeconomic environment. Conclusions are developed from the theoretical and applied analysis of privatisation as to what are the likely impacts of privatisation given the experience of different types of economy, from planned to liberal and from high to low income. It is recognised that each economy has its own specific economic, social and cultural traditions which will affect the way in which privatisation is implemented and the likely success of implementation. The thesis adopts a case study approach by relating the conclusions of the theoretical and applied analysis presented in Part I to the case of Portugal. Part II of the thesis considers the historical economic development of Portugal, the macroeconomic trends and sectoral development and the development of the public sector and the subsequent privatisation programme. The impacts of privatisation in Portugal are considered from two angles. First the impacts are assessed at the macroeconomic and social levels. This analysis is based on macroeconomic data from a number of sources including the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Portugal and the National Statistics Institute, as well as banks and research companies. A number of interviews were also held with key ministries, the central bank, privatisation advisors, the Lisbon Stock Exchange and regulatory agencies. Secondly, based on a survey and analysis of seventeen privatised companies, the evidence of the impacts of privatisation on financial and operating performance and employment is assessed.