This study, an examination of the Vancouver money market, addresses itself to the four objectives of providing a description of the overall setting in which the Vancouver money market exists, describing the Vancouver money market, indicating the major peculiarities and imperfections which exist in that market, and providing, where possible, explanations for those peculiarities and imperfections. Achievement of the first of the above mentioned objectives involves the development of models explaining the behaviour of the three money market participants, the investor, the borrower, and the investment dealer. The basic premise underlying these models is that each participant attempts to maximize his wealth subject to certain constraints. Also involved in outlining the overall setting is a discussion of the market's role of equating the supply of and demand for short-term capital, a brief sketch of its history, and example of the mechanisms involved in its actual workings. The securities which comprise the market's stock in trade are discussed in abstract terms with particular emphasis being placed on their liquidity characteristics and in more concrete terms where the fourteen main instruments of the market are briefly described. The three remaining objectives are achieved by drawing heavily upon information about the local market obtained during interviews with fifteen participants in the Vancouver money market and interpreting this information with reference to the behavioural models which were developed. While the market has recently experienced rapid growth, it continues to be dwarfed by the Toronto-Montreal market. It is concluded that there are four main peculiarities or imperfections in the local market. The low level of dealer inventories of money market instruments, which benefits local borrowers but hinders the achievement of the investors' goals, results from the investment strategy of dealers and such exogenous factors as the centralized cash management by chartered banks and the limited number of local sources of non-bank financing for inventories. Lack of local dealer autonomy results from centralized decision making by investment dealers and the low level of local inventories. This lack of local autonomy and the time zone differential between the Vancouver market and the Eastern market reduce the liquidity of instruments in the Vancouver market while the attractiveness of the locally-issued security is enhanced by its ready availability. Finally, the lack of participant sophistication, which is an attribute of the local market, is regarded as being caused by lack of information and the responsibility for the persistance of this trait and for its future eradication is seen as resting upon the investment dealer. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The positive association between income and subjective well-being (SWB) is undisputed; there remains scope, however, to expand our understanding of the explanatory mechanisms at work. The theoretical framing is formed from economics and psychology which have been the traditional homes of happiness research. However, the stance taken here is sociological in its attention to social networks and social status. I also emphasise psychological benefits as an explanatory mechanism for the money-happiness relationship. Following Layard (1981) and Easterlin (2001), it is posited that above the level at which basic needs are met, higher SWB results from the higher rank in society that money brings. I argue that rank and status inform how individuals feel about themselves (self-esteem, self-worth) and their environment (perceived control) and that it is these factors that bring about SWB. Furthermore, social connectedness is an alternative source of these benefits and it is thus hypothesised that connectedness will intervene in the money-happiness relationship. Secondary or “weak” ties are expected to have an additional and separable effect to close ties alone. I use the term resilience as a framing concept as it allows the stressor (financial situation) and outcome (SWB) to be discussed in a single term. The thesis has three empirical aims. The first is to determine whether connectedness influences the money happiness relationship, where ‘money’ refers to household income, perceived financial situation and being worse off than the previous year. Secondly, I aim to separate the effect of connectedness from the effect of personal characteristics by observing outcomes before and after a change in connectedness. Third, I aim to unravel the potentially paradoxical role of networks for those on low incomes as both a resilience resource and therefore greater happiness, and as a source of wider social comparison and therefore greater unhappiness. I use data from seven waves of the British Household Panel Survey. A latent class analysis establishes a measurement schema of connectedness based on strong and weak ties. Growth curve models are used to measure the effect of money on SWB and differential effects by connectedness are demonstrated with interaction terms. Resilience before and after network changes are explored using multiple group linear regression at two time points, and neighbourhood social comparison is examined in multilevel models. The findings are that income has no bearing on the SWB of the socially-integrated (those with both strong and weak ties) while the isolated have a lot to gain. The SWB of the integrated does suffer in difficult financial circumstances as subjectively reported but less so than the isolated or those with only strong ties. Further, when individuals expand their network it is accompanied by a decrease in the importance of income for SWB. These patterns can in part be explained by the fact that the SWB of the well-connected is less influenced by their position relative to those living around them, at least where the income gap is not too large. Therefore, the assumption of happiness as a zero-sum game is mistaken; social comparison is not inevitable and SWB can be maintained through social integration providing the level of inequality is not too high.

Thesis (MTech (Entrepreneurship))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2020 / Often effectively excluded by formal financial systems, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries have found in Mobile Money services an efficient and cost effective means of availing themselves of financial services without holding bank accounts. In order to provide meaningful recommendations to the stakeholders of the banking sector of Cameroon, small and medium-sized enterprises, Mobile Money service providers, and relevant state organs, this study was conducted to investigate the influence of Mobile Money services on the financial performance of SMEs in two markets in Douala in Cameroon. A mixed methods research design was employed to conduct the study. The quantitative data was collected through the administration of a survey questionnaire and the qualitative data from one-on-one in-depth interviews. By means of snowball sampling, a sample of 285 SMEs was obtained to respond to the survey questionnaire, while the researcher used purposive sampling to select the owners or managing directors of twelve of the respondents to participate in the interviews. Version 25 of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software was used to analyse the quantitative data, while the qualitative data was subjected to thematic analysis. Correlation and regression analyses yielded that independent variables pertaining to the adoption of Mobile Money services by the respondents to the questionnaire predicted of the order of 73 percent of variance with respect to increased sales turnover. Most of the twelve interviewees perceived that their business operations had improved significantly after they had begun making and receiving payments in the form of Mobile Money transactions. The participants in the study used Mobile Money mainly to receive money, send money, and buy airtime and a significant majority perceived that Mobile Money services were more cost effective than those of banks. Convenience, safety, and accessibility were the attributes of Mobile Money which the participants cited as having provided their principal motivations for electing to register as users of Mobile Money services. It could be concluded that Mobile Money services exerted a significant positive influence on the financial performance of the SMEs of the participants in the study. On the basis of the conclusions which were drawn from the findings, recommendations were made to the owners of SMEs in Douala, the Ministry of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Social Economy, and Handicrafts and Mobile Money service providers. The findings of the study underscore the role of Mobile Money services as an effective means of increasing financial inclusion and financial performance and could be useful to academics, owners and managers of SMEs, financial institutions in Cameroon and elsewhere, and also relevant policy makers.

Through the study of OK KO! Let’s Be Heroes! and The Amazing World of Gumball, I argue that children’s cartoons represent and recreate anxieties toward money’s plasticity in the plasticity of the cartoon bodies and worlds. I closely examine the ambivalence towards abstraction’s plasticity in contemporary children’s cartoons to trace the neoliberal ambivalence towards money’s plasticity. While much scholarship has grappled with what can be understood as animatic plasticity, very little of it takes on the questions raised about neoliberal culture by televised children’s cartoons. Cartoons are important to study in this respect because their form allows for unbridled plasticity. Cartoons provide the artists with the freedom to create characters and worlds that are as bound or unbound to our world’s norms and natural laws, unlike in other live action moving media. It combines this with the dynamic, temporal component of moving image media. Unlike a surreal painting, cartoons are capable of dynamic movement and transformation, even in their non-moving image form as comics. However, this plastic dynamism is most fully realized in the animated form, as the characters are capable of movement and change regardless of the viewers’ presence. Contemporary cartoons like OK KO and Gumball asymmetrically mobilize this plasticity by rendering the characters’ bodies as highly plastic while presenting their worlds as comparatively static. This aesthetic practice suggests that the world cannot be reshaped for a variety of reasons, so the only thing that individuals can do is try to change themselves as necessary to accommodate it. Thus, what at first blush looks like a celebration of plasticity is in reality a celebration of mere flexibility, which enables and perpetuates neoliberal power structures. Yet these same shows simultaneously challenge the neoliberal aesthetic project in their hyper-mobilization of non-diegetic plasticity. When the shows mobilize their plasticity in a way that is not narratively impactful, such as through cutaways, inserts, or other asides, the plasticity is instead framed as comedic and thus enjoyable. This suggests that while presenting character and world plasticity as equally valid would be natural next step for animated aesthetics, the major limitation contemporary animation faces is in reality the uneven treatment of diegetic and non-diegetic plasticity.