Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Economics, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Entrepreneurship is the process of transforming an idea into a tangible product or service that can be traded. High-growth entrepreneurial firms contribute a disproportionate share of all new jobs created by new firms. Past research has shown that a significant percentage of the population in a society is employed in entrepreneurial firms and small businesses. Entrepreneurship drives economic growth by stimulating innovation, by commercializing new technologies, by intensifying competition and by generating employment. Typically seven out of ten new employer firms last at least two years, and about half survive five years. One critical area of study is investigating the factors that contribute to the success of a new venture. Social capital and social networks are two such important determinants of entrepreneurial success. Social Capital is the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit (Nahapiet and Ghoshal,1998).This study investigates the relationship between the social capital of the firm , its key founders and new venture performance. The independent variables are Social Capital of the firm with its associates, Social Capital of the firm with its customers, Social Capital of the founder in entrepreneurial networks, Social Capital of the founder with his/her alumni networks and Social Capital of the founder with his/her ex-colleagues. These relationships are studied under the framework of ties, trust, obligation and expectations, identification, shared language and shared values. New Venture Performance has been measured using both perceptual measures and financial measures. The perceptual measures used are Employee and Customer Retention & Founders Satisfaction with the venture’s performance. The financial measure used is Revenue normalized by the age of the firm. Data was collected through a questionnaire survey and administered to key founders of 28 software startups in Bangalore. The age of these startups ranged from 1 to 6 years. The results of correlation analysis, T-tests and Mann Whitney tests revealed that only Social Capital of the firm with its business associates and Social Capital of the founder with his/her ex-colleagues are significantly correlated with the new venture performance measured as Employee and Customer Retention. Any network is as good as the people belonging to it. Social networks will be significantly beneficial for entrepreneurial success to the extent of the ability and the willingness of the members in the network to help each other.

The goal of this master thesis is to evaluate an investment project to a biogas power plant. The first part of the master thesis defined the essential theory needed for the capital investment decisions. There is overview of the most important investment criteria like net present value and methods and sources of project financing. In the analytical part I calculate the necessary values like revenues, operational costs and depreciation in order to find out projects cash flow. The investment is then evaluated by investment criteria. In order to make the analysis more accurate the sensitivity analysis is made. In the last part of the thesis there is an overview of results and a investment recommendation.

The political connections of businesses bear implications for the economy. This dissertation studies the political connection of railways in the United Kingdom during the 19th century using several novel data sets. The first chapter of the dissertation begins by quantitatively investigating the implications of the political connections of railways for capital investment. Politically connected railways did significantly more capital investment than their non-connected counterparts. In addition, within-firm increases in political connections were associated with increased subsequent capital investment. The latter part of chapter one introduces the private bill process in the legislature as a likely channel relating political connections and capital investment. Politically connected firms proposed and passed considerably more legislation enabling capital investment than non-politically connected firms. Chapter two of the dissertation focuses on consumer and employee safety, relating safety to political connections and showing that politically connected railways were considerably deadlier than non-politically connected railways. A century of fatal railway accidents data is presented along with supplementary data sources to demonstrate this point. Chapter three of the dissertation looks at political connections as the outcome rather than as the explanatory variable. Political connections are related to voting rights in U.K. constituencies across five general elections spanning major franchise reforms. Within-constituency results show that for a given constituency increases in the franchise are associated with decreased likelihood that railway directors will run or win seats in the House of Commons.

No description available.

<p dir="ltr">This research proposes a methodology by which to identify signalized intersections that cannot be improved by retiming and must instead be addressed with capacity improvement via capital investments. For these intersections, a ranking metric is developed to rank based on capital investment necessity.</p>

The main aim of this diploma thesis is to focus on the protection consumers in insurance sector. The thesis gives us an approximation on development and attitude to protection of consumers in accordance with the development of conditions for the function of insurance in market economy after year 1989. Subsequently, the thesis focuses on the research of legislative conditions, the charge of market control and the special level of financial agents. Eventually, at last but not at least the thesis focuses on financial literacy of consumer himself. The theme of the proper research is an evaluation of the proposal transparency's field. Particularly, this research contains products of investment capital insurance, here is shown proficiency of financial consultants, given information and stumbling blocks that are connected with complex solution. Conclusion deals with the interpretation of entire evaluation based on acquired information.

Venture Capital can play a key role for our future by placing their capital in sustainable investments. They have the capacity to fuel new ventures, sprung from ideas on how to solve the sustainability challenges we face today. In this paper we research the drivers and barriers for sustainable venture capital investment decisions. Our findings show that increased knowledge on sustainability issues is affecting the general public opinion, policies and governance and the way we choose to live, consume and do business. This in turn increases the market potential for sustainable businesses. Therefore, sustainable investments are more and more considered as a good investment, not only in regard to social and ecological aspects but also financial returns. A model with our findings showing the drivers and barriers for sustainable venture capital investment decisions will be presented aiming encourage and push toward a more sustainable future.

This thesis aims to explore and investigate the state of current investment appraisal practices within Libyan firms. In particular, the thesis attempts to answer four research questions: (1) How do Libyan firms appraise capital investments? (2) Do Libyan firms incorporate risk into their capital investment appraisal processes? (3) Do Libyan firms face capital rationing and, if so, is it externally or internally imposed? and (4) Does the availability of Islamic Finance affect Libyan firms' view of the capital investment appraisal process? This study is based on a qualitative empirical approach, with a subjectivist orientation but a main concern with the sociology of regulation; the interpretive paradigm is employed in this thesis. Rather than simply providing a simple description of the phenomena under investigation, the aim of this thesis is to interpret and understand the issues surrounding the problem being considered. Thus, this study seeks to establish a better understanding about the nature of the capital investment appraisal process in Libyan corporations, and how it differs across Libyan economic sectors. In order to provide evidence and contribute to our knowledge about this topic, two research methods, both compatible with the interpretive paradigm and consistent with the methodology and the researcher’s beliefs about the topic under investigation, are employed. The research methods used are: (i) a semi-structured interviews; then (ii) a questionnaire survey based upon the literature review and on the key results from (i). For the former, 20 interviews were conducted, involving two groups: firm-based interviewees (‘insiders’ working in firms) in five economic sectors with different size and ownership structures and ‘outsider’ interviewees (bankers, academics and chartered accountants). In the second phase, 45 questionnaires were collected from firms which operate in five economic sectors, again with various size and ownership patterns. The main findings indicate that non-financial criteria (e.g. political priorities, State development plan and personal experience) play a more important role than financial factors. While Libyan companies use multiple techniques to appraise capital investments, usage of discounted cash flow techniques (DCF), although increasing is not yet as high as in developed nations, with payback remaining the most popular. The evidence shows that the source of the funding (followed by project size and nature of the project, respectively) also plays a role in choosing the appraisal techniques. Typically, the process of capital investment appraisal in Libya appears to have five stages (determination of budget, research and development, evaluation, authorisation, and monitoring and controlling). Libyan firms consider the first of these as the most important stage. The majority of the respondents employ a post-audit phase of two years or less; about half the sampled firms conduct the post-audit by comparing the actual performance with the feasibility study on which the project was based. The companies consider real options when looking at flexibility, but they have no effect on the choice of the appraisal techniques or the process generally. Similarly, there are no changes in the techniques or the process when advanced manufacturing technology investments are considered. Regarding risk evaluation, this is mostly subjective although scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis are employed to some extent. Around 50% of the firms calculate the cost of capital, but most of these firms do so subjectively (e.g. via interest rate observations), while the rest use CAPM to calculate the cost of capital. Fewer than one in ten of the firms that calculate the cost of capital employ project-specific rates. The majority of the companies noted their experience of capital rationing, mostly of the external variety (primarily reflecting State actions). The majority of the firms claimed to be considering the Libyan Stock Market as source of funding, but not in the near future, essentially because of a lack of knowledge among Libyan companies about its functioning. The findings suggest that use of Islamic finance is not yet common among Libyan firms. However, two thirds of the firms suggested that they would use Islamic financial products to finance their future projects for several reasons; mainly religion, to avoid paying interest or demurrage, plus risk sharing though the use of Islamic financial products such as Musharakah. Those firms, which did not view Islamic finance positively, mentioned the incompatibility of the current products with Islamic Shariah law, suggesting that in reality they are just traditional financial products with Islamic names. Some notable differences between theory and practice emerged in this research. For instance, certain non-financial criteria (e.g. political priorities) were more important than financial factors. Relatedly, there was evidence of external interested parties such as academics seeing practice and ideals differently. This type of finding suggests a key contribution of this study as highlighting the need for contextual specificities to be carefully considered when investigating an issue as (theoretically) straightforward as investment decision-making in practice.