This thesis is intended as a contribution to the study of capital formation in the context of the Iranian economy. It begins by examining with reference to Iran the problems that arise in trying to use the internationally recommended concepts, definitions and methods of estimating capital formation. (Part 1, Chapters 2 and 3). It goes on to analyse previous estimates of capital formation and to suggest ways of improving them. (Part 1, Chapter 4). Then follows my own estimate of Gross Domestic Fixed Capital Formation, which for the first time gives a consistent series from 1900, and an attempt to assess the reliability of this estimate, (Part 2, Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10). Finally, the thesis explores the possibilities of using this estimate to provide figures of capital formation for individual sectors of the economy. (Part 3, Chapter 11). In the process of producing a new estimate of capital formation it proved necessary to construct other new statistical series, especially on population, which I hope will also prove useful.

This study has investigated the changes in the Management Control System (MCS) practices and firm performance of three privatised SOEs in a developing country. It was based on the following central research question: 'How do external and internal factors influence the relationships between privatisation, MCS change and firm performance in less developed countries?' The research was conducted using the Egyptian construction industry as a basis for investigations. The main aim of the study was to gain an insight into the process of change instigated by the privatisation of Egyptian businesses. In order to answer the main research question, a set of four research sub-questions were settled. The first research sub-question was; 'Why and how did the Egyptian government implement the privatisation policy?' A descriptive historical analysis was applied in order to explore this research sub-question in greater depth. The analysis focused mainly on the socio-economic, political and institutional transformations seen in Egypt pursuant to the application of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) on May 17, 1991. The descriptive historical analysis gives an overview as to why and how Egypt implemented its privatisation policy. It focused on a review of the most important historical, political and economic events in Egypt prior to privatisation, discussed the implementation of the SAP polices and privatisation process, analysed some of the economic indicators in relation to the programme and analysed the process of social subsidy reduction following the implementation of the SAP. A mixed method case study approach was undertaken in order to answer the remaining research sub-questions. These research sub-questions were as follows: Which MCS practices were used before privatisation and how did these change after privatisation? What is the impact of privatisation on firm performance in terms of profitability, operating efficiency, output, risk and employees social responsibility, when compared to performance during the public ownership period? What are the external and internal contextual factors which affect changes in post privatisation MCS practices and firm performance? The aim of case study approach was to investigate the changes in MCS practices and firm performance resulting from privatisation, and to discover how the identified firms carried out their activities, and how their performance levels differed. In addition, examined how the transition process has been influenced by various external and internal factors, while taking other socio-economic factors into account.

The rates of growth of output per head vary across countries. Despite the fact that these differences are of a small order of magnitude, they would translate into large differences in the average living standards of the countries if they were to persist over the years. It is therefore very important to understand the process of long run growth and as a consequence many recent studies concentrate on the issue of cross country convergence. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the process of growth across countries and the possibility of inter-relationships of these processes across countries. To this avail, an empirical analysis of per capita output across countries out first using the exact continuous time version of two neoclassical growth models, the Solow growth model and The Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model. Results show that when these models are estimated consistently countries do not seem to be converging in the sense typically used in the literature. The rest of the thesis aims to investigate in more detail the processes by which growth in different countries might be related. Based on extensions of another neoclassical model, the Overlapping Generations model, and using a nonlinear switching regime model for estimation, two empirical analyses are carried out. The first one examines the role of balance of payments constraints in cross country growth determination. The second studies the extent of technology spillovers across countries and their effect on the process of growth. On one hand, results reveal little evidence of current account deficits constraining growth in the long run in the G7 countries although there is ample evidence of an influence in the short run dynamics of growth. On the other hand, spillovers of technology across the G7 countries are found to be of importance in the process of growth.

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The National Planning Policy Framework was adopted in March 2012, promoting sustainable development as a 'golden thread' running through the whole document. Since then, the concept of sustainable development has been a key or sole consideration in the determination of applications for planning permission. This research is a detailed consideration of that concept within and without the Framework. The research begins by identifying the traditional understandings of the term from its use in international and national policy documents since 1972. It continues with an examination of sustainable development in the Framework to see if a meaning can be derived from analysing its language or from a detailed review of decisions taken where it is applied as a criterion. The research includes a comparative analysis of relevant planning appeal decisions and court judgments in the twenty months from formal adoption of the Framework. Neither the appeal decisions nor the court rulings enable any reliable conclusions to be drawn on what sustainable development means within the Framework. They do show that the Secretary of State has an almost unfettered discretion to decide the meaning of sustainable development on a case by case basis without regard to its interpretation and definitions outside the Framework. Sustainable development has no formally agreed or legally enforceable definition. Unless and until such a definition is secured, the Secretary of State and the courts will assign mutating meanings to the term on a case by case basis.

Countries rich in natural resources may be deemed to have an economic advantage with regards to their economic growth. However, this has been questioned as such countries have been found to underperform those that are significantly disadvantaged in terms of such resources, leading to what has been termed as the resource curse. The current thesis aims to investigate the existence of resource curse for the oil abundant GCC countries as well as the remaining OPEC members that share similar characteristics; most notably the dependence on oil exports. Oil has a prominent status among all commodities as it acts as a barometer to a country's, and perhaps the world's, economic outlook. High oil prices may fuel inflation pressure, thereby increasing the cost of production of many goods. As such we also investigate the impact of oil on the GCC stock markets. Specifically, we investigate whether the oil dynamics have acted as a contagion transmission channel, which would have imported the uncertainty pertaining to the Global Financial Crisis from the western economies to the, admittedly secluded, GCC stock markets. The first chapter of the thesis lays out key background information related to the economic and financial environment of the GCC economies, necessary to fully comprehend the complexities that over-reliance on a particular resource can generate. The second chapter focuses on the economic impact of oil by offering an investigation as to whether the resource curse is observed for the GCC and other OPEC members. A system-GMM method is adopted to account for any omitted variable bias and endogeneity issues. Furthermore, classification trees are used to divide the countries based on their oil level and re-consider the association between oil and per capita GDP by accounting for the country differences in terms of the per capita oil reserve and oil rent, the two oil proxies used. The third chapter examines the role of oil in the financial sector of the GCC and OPEC markets. In particular, we rely on the well-established and relevant given the Global Financial Crisis, framework of financial contagion to investigate: i) how affected were the GCC stock markets; ii) what has been the role of oil in the transmission of the financial shocks. We use an asymmetric multivariate GARCH framework which allows for dynamic properties of correlations across the financial markets. Our results suggest that GCC markets were affected by financial contagion, while the oil has been an important transmission channel of varying intensity during the phases of the crisis. The UAE, which have the largest and most progressive financial sector in the region, have been the most affected, while Kuwait has been the least. A fourth chapter provides critical reflections and discussion around the results. In particular, it highlights the steps that, particularly the GCC governments have taken to ensure that their resource abundance is not a curse over the past couple of years. Most importantly, the GCC governments have been diversifying their income streams into tourism, manufacturing, real estate and financial services. The impact of oil on the GCC financial sector is of particular importance as financial services are one of the main business lines that the local governments have been investing and promoting in their attempt to diversify their income generating process away from oil and gas. A fifth chapter concludes.

<strong>Chapter 1: From "Poorest of the Rich" to "Europe's Shining Light: Accounting for Growth in Ireland, 1980-2001</strong>. This chapter applies modern best-practice growth accounting techniques to understand Ireland's remarkable recent economic transformation. This is the first systematic and comprehensive application of growth accounting techniques devoted to examining Irish growth. Different explanations for rapid growth are assessed within this framework, and a variety of hypotheses regarding the sources and nature of the growth are tested. The results, which are compared to the findings of other studies, indicate that Ireland grew because of a substantial increase in labour input and an unprecedented increase in productivity. <strong>Chapter 2: A Dynamic heterogeneous Panel Approach to the Equipment- Investment Growth Nexus</strong> This chapter studies the relationship between per capita income growth and equipment investment for a broad sample of countries for the years 1960 to 1990. The original contribution of this chapter is to model the relationship between equipment and growth using recently developed econometric techniques that allow for slope and intercept heterogeneity, and to examine whether allowing for heterogeneity in this fashion alters the conclusions of prior research in this area. The results, generated by an equilibrium correction mechanism framework which allows for these forms of heterogeneity, do indicate that the conclusions of some of the earlier work regarding the relationship between equipment and growth may have been misplaced. <strong>Chapter 3: Did Labour Institutions Contribute to the Golden Age of Economic Growth?</strong> This chapter studies the "Golden Age" of economic growth, a period of rapid growth which took place in many industrialized economies after the second World War. Specifically, this chapter tests new theories concerning the influence of labour institutions in sustaining a macroeconomic environment characterized by high output growth, high investment, and rapid productivity growth. The chapter utilises a recently created of dataset labour institution variables, and models the relationship between economic growth and these variables in a dynamic panel which is estimated using the 3SLS systems estimator approach, which allows institutions to have a direct effect on growth as well as an indirect effect through their influence on investment. The results indicate that institutions did play a role in shaping the growth of this period.

This thesis focuses on the political economy of industrial policy as defined by Laffont (2000). In particular we study the effects of political economy constraints on industry design. Our motivation relies on the results of more than 20 years of regulatory reforms, where industries have been reorganised after their initial privatisation and/or restructure. So far, the literature has extensively studied the relationship between political economy and regulation (Levy &; Spiller (1997); Henisz & Benet (2003)). However, the study of the relationship between political economy and industry structure has received less attention. This has happened despite the fact that, as noted by Dana (1993), industry structure and regulation are jointly determined. Our work contributes to the study of the effects of political economy constraints on industry design. At a theoretical level we build on Auriol & Laffont (1992)'s model of regulation by duopoly and on Dana (1993)'s model of regulating multiproduct natural monopolies. We introduce delegation to their problem and we allow for regulatory capture. In the first case we found that under some circumstances capture biases Congress' decision towards a more competitive structure (duopoly) as the optimal response. In the second case, we find that if preventing capture is too costly, industry design favours horizontal separation of the natural monopolies as the optimal response. At an empirical level, we analyse the political economy constraints that led the Mexican government to reform its natural gas industry while keeping natural gas production as a legal monopoly and organising the industry with a dominant integrated incumbent (transmission and retail). This chapter contributes to our research by opening the "black box" of the determinants of industry design a little more. It also contributes to the literature that has studied Mexican natural gas reform. This literature has concentrated its attention on the study of regulatory incentives, taking industry structure as given.

This Ph.D. by Published Works examines the dynamic interaction between a re-thinking and a re-scaling of science. The ten Published Works are located at the intersection between debates on the changing governance of science and science policy governance in the context of a multi-scalar knowledge-based economy. Three critical themes are examined relating to the relationship between excellence and relevance, the roles of universities in knowledge-based coalitions and the relative significance of regional and local knowledge-based developments for science policy governance. The empirical emphasis is on two case studies of regional and local science policies in North West England between 2002 and 2008, in international comparative context. The Published Works collectively construct a powerful story-line of change and continuity within contemporary developments, undermining claims that a paradigm shift has occurred in either the re-thinking or re-scaling of science. Disembedded understandings of excellence predominate, despite the articulation of alternative discourses on the roles of different knowledges for sub-national socioeconomic development. Universities occupy ambiguous roles, with some better able than others to mobilise institutional power to provide relative shelter from external pressures. Sub-national interventions emphasise the re-development of physical spaces and are acquisition-oriented, rather than predicated upon shifts in modes of knowledge production. A critical contribution of the Published Works is the forging of an interdisciplinary agenda around re-thinking and re-scaling science that is both academically excellent and policy relevant. The Ph.D. illustrates the need for more integrated theoretical and practical understandings of the relationship between the governance of science and of science policy governance and both defines and seeks to populate critical gaps in this agenda.

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