Established infrastructure systems, such as telecommunications, energy and transportation, play an important economic and social role in the societies they support. Recent infrastructure privatisations and restructurings provide opportunities for improving our understanding of how change occurs in well-established mature systems. Some outcomes, including accidents and failures, have taken system-builders and policy-makers alike by surprise. This research seeks to improve understanding of infrastructure system change by studying a momentum changing event: the privatisation and restructuring of Great Britain's railway system. The Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) and Large Technical Systems (LTS) theory are used together to examine system development before, during and after restructuring. A novel method is developed using LTS theory to structure data generation from contemporarily written archive sources. Two empirical studies are conducted. The first study analyses the gradual development of this mature system; it highlights the importance of the installed system in development and identifies several system-builders. The second study considers changes in system development that occurred across system privatisation and restructuring; it finds that changes emerged in actors and in activity within the socio-technical regime and it highlights some critical changes linked to later system failure. This work provides three contributions to existing research. (1)The method developed provides a systematic approach to studying established LTS across the broad scope and long periods necessary to capture change; it has the potential to be applied in other studies and could facilitate cross-sector and cross-study comparisons. (2)An extension of LTS theory is proposed that improves its application to the cases of established infrastructure systems and can enhance understanding of the way they change. (3)In considering potential system transformation of the system privatisation, the use of LTS and MLP framework is advocated. LTS theory is used to operationalise the socio-technical regime concept to address some of the limitations of the MLP framework.

This dissertation studies the early development of new ventures and small business and the entrepreneurship process from initial ideas to viable ventures. I unpack the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial actions and new ventures' investor communications through quality signals to finance their growth path. This dissertation includes two qualitative papers and one quantitative study. The qualitative papers employ an inductive multiple-case approach and include seven medical equipment manufacturers (new ventures) in a nascent market context (the mobile health industry) across six U.S. states and a secondary data analysis to understand the emergence of opportunities and the early development of new ventures. The quantitative research chapter includes 770 IPOs in the manufacturing industries in the U.S. and investigates the legitimation strategies of young ventures to gain resources from targeted resource-holders.

This thesis studies the interactions between wholesale electricity prices and various energy and fuel prices, including those of natural gas, coal, oil and EUA carbon permits, in both spot and forward EU markets, during the late years of the noughties boom and the start of the twenty-tens. Chapter 1 introduces the thesis, Chapter 2 provides the necessary background on EU electricity prices and markets, whereas Chapter 3 presents a review of the relevant literature. Chapter 4 uses a nonlinear AR-GARCH approach to analyse the impacts of euro and pound sterling exchange rates (against the USD) and crude oil prices on the levels and volatility of six electricity spot prices. The study finds that electricity price return volatility was asymmetrically affected by both exchange rate and oil price returns in all markets only after the 2008 subprime crisis, which provided a considerably more symmetric response of electricity prices to positive and negative system innovations. Chapter 5 investigates the year-forward interactions between electricity prices and carbon, coal and natural gas prices in four markets via a combination of VAR, Granger-causality and asymmetric AR-GARCH analyses. The study shows that average electricity generators in the Nord Pool and EEX markets pass their carbon costs through to consumers with a ca. 35% higher rate than justified by effective carbon intensity, implying non-competitive practices. Additionally, coal prices are found to be the most influential determinant of European electricity price levels and volatilities. Chapter 6 analyses the integration of a sample of thirteen electricity spot markets. The application of complex network theory enables the creation of an evolving Granger-causal network of electricity price interactions, informing us on the presence of any changes in the normal functioning of electricity markets at both the national and European-wide levels. Finally, Chapter 7 summarises the conclusions of this thesis.

This thesis analyses the role of financial institutions in determining asset prices both theoretically and empirically, and consists of three papers. Chapter 1 provides the motivation and a detailed summary of the three papers. Chapter 2 focuses on the hedge fund industry that has come to play a prominent role in today's financial markets due to its explosive growth. Fierce competition for funds generates relative performance objectives for managers. This paper studies how a hedge-fund manager's investment decision is affected by her tournament concern, incentive contract and liquidation threat. Chapter 3 examines the impact of both managerial capital and delegated capital on asset-market equilibrium by generalising the marginal investor to be a portfolio manager who is paid a relative performance fee. This chapter studies whether it is possible to stabilise financial markets by adopting a less centralized approach based on the idea of altering institutional incentives before a crisis rather than remedial actions after a crisis. Given that the model in Chapter 3 is an example of equity risk-capital models that fit the facts surrounding bank-based intermediaries, Chapter 4 investigates the characteristics of banks' balance sheets and also suggest that banks' balance sheets convey information on predicting subsequent asset-market variations. Chapter 5 concludes.

This thesis is a quantitative study of the effect of ownership - by state, private and foreign shareholdings - on innovation by China's solar photovoltaic (PV) firms. Using the country's solar PV industry, I seek to explain the impact of proportions of these different types of shareholding (and within the state category shareholding by central, provincial, and municipal governments) on innovative capacity. This capacity is measured by firms' rates and qualities of patenting. As Chinese economic growth falters, amid the 're-shoring' of certain manufacturing capabilities, the role of the state, and whether it is helping or hindering its economy's - and Chinese firms' - technological upgrading, is a vital question. This is particularly true in high-tech sectors, including solar PV, which the Chinese government deems essential for the country's continuing economic growth. Through the solar PV industry, we investigate the role of the state, and how it is helping or hindering Chinese companies' innovation. We employ a dataset covering 150 solar photovoltaic firms. This combines current and historical shareholding data for each firm, R&D expenditure data, and the firms' patent output (all Chinese-registered patents and their related foreign registrations). The thesis employs a principal-agent theoretical template for the unique Chinese politico-economic context, developing this theoretical approach for the particular 'multi-principal' scenario in Chinese high-tech firms (here we refer not only to the combinations of private and state principals, but also to the impact of local against central government). We demonstrate that higher state shareholding leads to higher R&D spending relative to the size of solar PV firms; among state shareholding, local state ownership is shown to be better than central state ownership at generating innovation (which we measure as patent performance). Firms that combine private and state shareholding, especially minority state-owned firms, are superior innovators than purely private or purely state-owned firms. For particularly innovative patenting, foreign shareholding was found to be beneficial, and finally, central state ownership was more likely to lead to the generation of the less challenging types of solar PV technologies, whereas local state ownership was more likely to lead to 'core' PV technologies being patented.

This thesis attempts to contribute to the growing literature on knowledge (or intangible) capital, considering innovation in the context of its contribution to growth and using an extension to the national accounting framework first outlined in Nakamura (1999) and Corrado, Hulten and Sichel (2005). Chapter 1 presents the underlying framework, set out in the context of previous literature and used to confront measurement issues encountered when knowledge capital is incorporated into a national accounts setting. The second chapter confronts measurement of knowledge investment, in the context of UK ‘artistic originals’. The chapter evaluates official estimates and presents new estimates using a variety of methods and new data. The third chapter confronts estimation of the price of knowledge acquisition, with an application to own-account software. In 2009 the UK market sector invested £13.5bn in own-account software, more than ICT hardware (£12.3bn), making estimation of its price a first order issue for productivity analysts. The chapter describes official methodologies and presents new estimates that explicitly consider technical progress in production. The fourth chapter brings together more elements of the broader work programme, presenting data on investment in, and contributions to growth from, the full range of intangibles discussed in Chapter 1. These data are used to estimate the contribution of innovation to UK growth at both the industry and aggregate level. The fifth chapter considers the potential for knowledge capital to generate social returns in excess of the private returns measured in Chapter 4. It uses the dataset developed in that chapter and searches for evidence of spillovers from R&D and other intangibles. The final chapter uses new estimates of telecommunications equipment prices to re-estimate the contribution of telecommunications capital both directly, via growth accounting, and indirectly, using econometrics to search for evidence of network effects. Appendices include papers on related work.

For many years, academics have argued that firms with high book-to-market ratios yield higher returns than firms with low book-to-market ratios (i.e. the value premium). While there is agreement that a book- to-market based value strategy produces superior returns, academics have neglected to research whether the value premium is a function of other rm characteristics. In this dissertation it is shown that the book-to- market ratio is a function of earnings persistence. Evidence is provided that the value premium in low earnings persistence portfolios is higher because investors misjudge earnings persistence and not because this value strategy is fundamentally riskier.

The PhD thesis aims to promote a better understanding of the SMEs internationalisation process. The thesis consists of a systematic literature review and two empirical studies. I argue that resource elements, growth strategy, and other mechanisms constitute important determinants of the SME internationalisation process and subsequent firm performance. This thesis therefore, advances the literature on SME internationalisation, firm resource dependence as antecedents, and the performance outcomes in context of the globalisation process. Designed empirical models, such as controlled matching process and difference-in-differences estimation, have been employed to provide robust empirical evidence in this thesis. The systematic review of the literature on SME internationalisation and performance relationship provides a comprehensive examination of the research in this stream and, more importantly, identifies the inadequate theoretical arguments and empirical evidences that need to be addressed to advance the understanding of the field. This review develops a roadmap of future research areas for the exploration of the mechanisms that influence the SME internationalisation process and subsequent firm performance. The first empirical paper draws on the resource-based view, resource dependence theory, and international entrepreneurship literatures to investigate the relationship between SME resource position and internationalisation process. Empirical results suggest a linear positive relationship between high-discretionary slack and SME internationalisation, a U-shaped curvilinear relationship between low-discretionary slack and likelihood of FDI, as well as an inverse U-shaped relationship between knowledge intensity and internationalisation of SMEs. The second empirical paper looks at the effects of internationalisation on the firm's subsequent performance. I argue that SMEs internationalisation is an entrepreneurial strategy that shapes these companies' future business development. Regression results suggest that in the short term, FDI activities have a negative impact on firm profitability. In the long run, however, local resource exploitation leads to a superior performance of international SMEs compared with their domestic counterparts.

I study questions related to risk premia in real bond markets. First, I document novel evidence that factors explaining excess returns for nominal Treasuries are also common to the real term structure. This suggests that sources of bond predictability should be interpreted in the context of the real consumption risks as opposed to the dynamics of inflation. Next, I investigate the role of monetary policy as a source of time-varying priced risk. I use both high-frequency and low-frequency approaches to show that monetary policy is non-neutral in the sense of affecting bond risk premia. I conclude by studying a general equilibrium term structure model with multiple agents who disagree about the unobservable model for the economy. These agents are induced to engage in speculative trading because of their beliefs, which in turn generates endogenously time-varying risk premia. My results show that speculation can help explain low short term interest rates, time-varying expected returns, and path-dependence in the cross-section of yields.

The aim of this research project was to identify and measure the ZCAS brand in the higher education (HE) sector in Zambia and, through the study, identify areas for strengthening the brand‟s competitive position. ZCAS is earmarked for conversion into a university following the completion of a major infrastructure expansion project that has doubled its service delivery capacity. This transition requires rebranding and repositioning the institution as a university; and this research could play a significant role in this undertaking by providing insights into brand building in the Zambian HE sector. The research was carried out in two phases. The first research phase was a qualitative multiple case study designed to identify the principal branding elements in the Zambian HE market. Data were collected through three focus group discussions with first year students at ZCAS and twenty semi-structured interviews with marketing executives at ZCAS and twelve universities. Thematic and content analysis of the discussions and interviews revealed that the top five most considered HE branding factors in Zambia are teaching quality, fees, course availability, facilities and employability; while course availability, teaching quality and facilities emerged as the top three sources of competitive advantage. The study also revealed that the most consulted information sources about universities are print media, friends, education expos and electronic media, while the most prolific influencers of student choice are friends, parents and self. In the second research phase a conjoint questionnaire was administered to 390 first year students in eight HE institutions to establish ZCAS‟ competitive brand position in Zambia. Five principal branding attributes (i.e. teaching quality, fees, course availability, learning environment and employability) identified in the first research phase were employed in the conjoint analysis. The study revealed that ZCAS has a strong brand position because the most important elements in its brand model, i.e. course availability, teaching quality and facilities, are also the premier brand dimensions in the market. This study therefore adds to the increasing body of knowledge on HE branding, particularly in developing countries, by developing and then testing a brand orientation model for the Zambian HE market.