published_or_final_version / abstract / Real Estate and Construction / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Environmental Management / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This thesis is an attempt to understand the suspicion of money implied in Jesus' statement that it is impossible to serve both God and Mammon. I argue on the basis of Scripture, reason and tradition that problems associated with money do not arise simply from the way it is used, but from the nature of money itself. This is argued in three sections. First I consider the history of money and in particular of the commodity theory of money. Second I consider the issues of debt and interest, of central concern in the Christian Scriptures. Finally I consider money through four different lenses: justice, value, desire and power. The argument as a whole leads up to the last of these. As was already suggested by Jacques Ellul fifty years ago, I argue that money must be understood as a cosmic power to which we are all subject and which is in need of redemption. In the second and third sections I make suggestions as to what the redemption of money might look like. I summarise the argument in a final section, 'De-coding Mammon'.

North American railways were crucial to the integration of national territories from the mid-1850s through the 1920s. In the US, Canada, and Mexico, their development supported population settlement, resource extraction, industrialization, and the expansion of markets to regional and national spatial scales. From the 1920s, rail's dominance in transportation declined as highways and trucking developed. Strict railway regulation and direct government ownership, motivated by earlier rail firm abuses, limited railways' strategic adjustment to trucking competition and aggravated the problems of falling revenue and decreasing profitability. From the 1970s, however, a dramatic shift began as three prongs of economic liberalization were implemented: deregulation of the industry, privatization of state-owned firms, and the liberalization of controls on foreign direct investment. This dissertation characterizes the liberalized governance regimes that have emerged, evaluates changes in the industrial and geographic organization of the freight rail industry, and examines significant episodes of regional rail restructuring involving the dominant Class I firms. Shifts in governance are examined by outlining pre-reform regulatory regimes in the US, Canada, and Mexico, then discussing the step-wise sequence of changes enacted in each country that significantly reduced restrictions on freight rail firms' business options (Chapter III). Liberalized governance enabled changes in the industry's organization, including its firm-size distribution, privatization of state-owned firms, and consolidation, as firms employed hitherto restricted strategies to restructure their assets and activities (Chapters III and IV). Case studies of regional restructuring, designed to highlight the interplay of regulatory governance, intra-industry competition, and firm strategies, include: the consolidation of firms in the Eastern US and the privatization of Conrail (Chapter V); the consolidation of firms in the Western US and the impact of increased rail container traffic on infrastructure and operations (Chapter VI); the expansion of freight rail ownership, investment, and traffic patterns integrating the NAFTA countries (Chapter VII); and comparison of the strategies adopted by CPR and CN, the dominant Canadian firms (Chapter VIII). Research materials included official and trade organization statistics, corporate reports, the trade press, and mapping datasets of rail lines. Numerous maps illustrate the changing geography of the North American freight rail industry.

The government of Laos has carried out regressive organizational changes in its electric power sector including deregulation, decentralization, and devolution. As governmental agencies attempt to improve their organization, little is understood about the impact these changes have on the electric sector. Using Burke's organization change theory as the foundation, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explain the impact of organizational change on rural electrification in the Champassak Province, Laos. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 20 participants representing governmental agencies, private entities, and nongovernmental organizations. Data were also collected through observation of a public consultative meeting and reviewing of publicly available documents, both of which were related to electrification. Data were inductively coded and analyzed using a thematic procedure. According to the study findings, organizational change helped expand electrification at the early stage. However, shortcomings such as setting onerous tax rates and promulgating convoluted laws by the public sector have caused static growth in both the trend of project finance and electrification recently. The positive social change implications stemming from this study include recommendations to local policy makers and legislators to tailor the fiscal policy and statutes, which may support wider electrification efforts in the Champassak Province.

This thesis focuses on the impacts of privatisation on the relevant industrial structure of the economy. Standard tools of industrial organisation theory are applied to examine these impacts and, thereby, shed light on relevant welfare issues. The focus of this thesis is to examine the ramifications of privatisation in imperfectly competitive markets. Simple Cournot-Nash types of games have been developed, where the market is a duopoly containing a privatised firm with the other firm being a new entrant. These games examine the efficacy and impacts of privatisation, and the role of government in this duopoly. The thesis endrogenously derives multiple equilibria in the duopolistic market; examines decontrolling/deregulating a vertical market; looks at the potential competition in vertical markets and examines potential collusion among existing firms to forestall entry; and addresses issues of privatisation in successive duopolies with cooperative investments. Results show that whether privatisation is beneficial to the community will rely on the astute role of government intervention. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of deregulation on financial market efficiency in Sri Lanka. The concept of efficiency used here is due to Fama (1970) who defines an efficient market as one in which prices fully reflect all available information. Given the significant expansion of Sri Lanka???s financial markets in the post deregulation period, efficiency is investigated in the context of these markets. To this end, the study employs a number of standard tests for market efficiency including; the expectations hypothesis of the term structure, the Fisher hypothesis, uncovered interest parity, speculative efficiency, real interest rate equalization and tests of capital mobility. Although the overall results presented in this study suggest that Sri Lanka???s financial markets are not fully efficient, the evidence provides significant insight to the performance of these markets. The main policy lesson to be learnt from this analysis is that financial deregulation will not automatically promote market efficiency unless accompanied by positive policy action to reinforce the impact of these reforms. In conclusion therefore, the study makes a number of recommendations which could help to reinforce the impact of financial deregulation on market efficiency.

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Abstract The natural progression of generators and retailers, following electricity deregulation, to vertically integrate is a contentious subject involving, at one extreme, expectations that a laissez- faire market approach will deliver economic benefits to all participants, and at the other extreme, suspicions that the unusual features of the electricity sector, in providing generators with market power, may not provide electricity consumers with an improved outcome. The objectives of this thesis were to: understand fully the drivers of generators and retailers to vertically integrate and to apply this knowledge to the Queensland electricity market to determine the financial impact on generators, retailers and consumers from vertical integration (VI). A literature review was undertaken of VI in a generic sense, noting the distinction between market contracting and ‘internalisation’, with particular reference to the writings of Oliver Williamson. The Federal Court case involving Australia’s largest electricity retailer, Australian Gas and Light Ltd, seeking approval to purchase a minority shareholding in the Victorian generator Loy Yang Power, was closely examined from the perspectives of theoretical and practical electricity sector VI integration issues. A quantitative analysis was undertaken of an assumed 60% VI of the Queensland electricity market to assess the costs and benefits to generators that vertically integrated and to consumers. The quantified generator benefits included margin elimination, savings in overheads, more rapid decision-making, and demand side management (DSM) savings in deferred capital expenditure on peaking generation and network expenditure through reduced peak demand. To support the quantitative analysis, two scenario models were developed. The first model replicates the process by which generators build up revenue certainty over time from hedge contract sales and bidding of output into the electricity grid. How generator bidding behaviour is affected by the level of hedge cover and hedge contract prices is examined, particularly in regard to how this behavior is affected by the competitive relationship between retailers and generators. The second scenario model replicates the attitude of vertically integrated generators (VIGs) towards offering DSM services by observing how the attitude of individual VIGs is affected by level of peaking generation and by the generation-to-retailing output proportion. It was determined that a combination of these features and particular market scenarios could result in some VIGs being financially worse off by providing DSM services, an important conclusion in the context of the increased community focus on energy conservation. The extent to which VIGs pass on VI and DSM benefits to consumers was calculated under scenarios of weak and strong retail competition. Of most relevance was the difference in market behaviour between retailers that had became vertically integrated, and those that had not, with the latter expected to become less competitive in both the wholesale and retail markets. This outcome was observed to provide generators with additional market power potential, a subject closely examined. The quantitative analysis of the Queensland market concluded that the maximum possible benefit that consumers could expect from VI was $138 million per annum with current DSM technology and strong retail competition, increasing to $156 million per annum if DSM technology improved, for example in regard to more cost-efficient meters. Total possible benefits to VIGs and consumers was estimated at $321 million per annum, so that consumers could expect to receive no more than 50% of total expected benefits from VI. This conclusion is not surprising because generators will only seek to be vertically integrated if they perceive clearly identified benefits from VI. The reasons why consumers are unlikely to receive benefits greater than this are: • $30 million per annum of internal savings being retained by VIGs; • VIGs achieving a minimum $60 million per annum additional revenue benefits through wholesale and retail price increases, arising from their stronger generation and retail positions; and • $75 million per annum of potential DSM benefits not being offered to consumers, because of the reluctance of VIGs to provide DSM services where the outcome could be reduced export revenue, reduced sales revenue and lower pool prices. In summary, using the Queensland market as a case study, in a strongly competitive retail market consumers could expect to receive, at the most, 50% of VI and DSM benefits. However in a weakly competitive retail market, where VIGs retain most of the benefits and are able to achieve higher wholesale prices, the outcome could instead be an overall cost to consumers. The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of policy implications and approaches to addressing key issues arising from increasing VI in deregulated electricity markets.

Railways have played an important role for the Swedish economy throughout the 20th into the 21st century since it provides good connections between urban and rural regions and also within them. However, it has been very costly for the state to run this activity and a significant effort to reduce costs and to increase the efficiency for this sector was to introduce procurement auctions where also private firms are invited to lay bids. Four auctions have taken place in Jönköpings Län since its introduction in 1990. It has been a turbulent time economically for the winning bidders and the phenomena winner’s curse is evident where the bidder with highest over-estimate wins and therefore faces high costs or low returns. This study points at flaws in the auction design as the reason for the economical difficulties for the winning firms. If second-price sealed bid auctions or first-price sealed bid auctions were used instead of a combination of first-price sealed auction and English auction, the winner’s curse phenomena could be reduced or even eliminated.