The thesis consists of four papers, summarized as follows. "Do attitudes towards immigrants matter?" analyses the consequences of negative attitudes towards immigrants to Sweden. If attitudes changed from the average level to the most positive level, the wage earned by a well educated immigrant from a non developed country would increase by 12%. This change in attitudes would increase the welfare of immigrants from Africa and Asia, through their wage and local amenities, by an equivalent to one third of their wage and the welfare of immigrants from South America and Eastern Europe by one fourth of their wage if they are well educated, and one tenth otherwise. In "Who is hurt by discrimination?", the effects of discrimination of immigrants on the labour market are studied in a search and wage-bargaining setting, including a risk of losing skills during the experience of unemployment. The negative effects of discrimination in the form of higher unemployment and lower wages spread to all workers, immigrants and natives, in all sectors of the economy. An increase in the share of immigrants in the economy exacerbates the problem of discrimination. In "Complementary controls of corruption", a theoretical model shows that when the judiciary and the media are more dependent and the elections less competitive, corruption flourishes. The three institutions are shown to be complementary. The empirical analysis indicates that the dependence of the judiciary and the media has a positive effect on perceived corruption and that the media is complementary with both the judiciary and the electoral system. "Decision making in the ECB's Governing Council -- Should minutes and forecasts be published ?" analyses if the publication of forecasts and minutes of the meetings of the Governing Council could have a negative effect due to the influence of governments on their representatives' votes. The information provided is shown to reduce their influence and benefit the Executive Board.

This study proposes a polarization-independent liquid-crystal Fresnel lens using the twisted nematic liquid crystal (TN-LC). At the high voltage state, the TN-LC behaves as an optically anisotropic material which makes the proposed LC Fresnel lens possess a polarization-insensitive characteristic. Two kinds of LC Fresnel lens, photoresist type and patterned electrodes type, are prepared in our experiment. Experimental results reveal that the photoresist type has a high diffraction efficiency and a good polarization-independent characteristic. However, its diffraction efficiency cannot be switched off. Contrarily, the patterned electrode type has the characteristics of the switch-off and good polarization-independent with a moderate diffraction efficiency

Despite the recent calls made by scholars in the evaluation field regarding the importance of evaluation policy and its influence on evaluation practice, there remains a lack of empirical evidence pertaining to the relationship between evaluation policy and evaluation capacity building (ECB). This study sought to explore the role of evaluation policy in building, or in impeding, organizational capacity to do and use evaluation. Through three interconnected studies—a review of an extensive sample of evaluation policies; interviews with scholars and practitioners from Canada, the United States, and Europe; and focus groups held with evaluation community members in Jordan and Turkey—the research identified a set of 10 categories of evaluation policy and proceeded to develop and validate an ecological framework depicting the relationship between evaluation policy and organizational capacity to do and use evaluation. The findings suggest that the role of evaluation policy in building organizational capacity for evaluation is moderated by a number of variables operating at the contextual, organizational and individual levels and that an in-depth understanding of the dynamic, unfolding and ongoing connections between ECB, on the one hand, and the broader social, economic, political and cultural systems associated with an organization, on the other, is essential in focusing ECB efforts. While the findings reveal that the role of evaluation policy in leveraging organizational evaluation capacity has been limited, they also show some evidence that if an evaluation policy is carefully designed to privilege learning as a central and desirable function of evaluation it will be more likely to have a positive influence on the organizational capacity to do and use evaluation. The investigation helps to advance understanding of these connections and provides some insight into the components of evaluation policies and the role that they might play in shaping the future of evaluation practice. This thesis makes an important contribution to the body of knowledge on organizational evaluation capacity. Although much has been published in the evaluation literature on ECB, its relationship to evaluation policy has not been explored or described based on empirical data. The main practical implication of the research is the possibility for organizations seeking to develop evaluation policies that are ECB-oriented to use the ecological framework and the set of evaluation policy categories as guides. Similarly, organizations that are seeking to review and update their current policies to make them more ECB-friendly stand to benefit in this way. Future research may focus on expanding the scope of the framework and its applicability for different types of organizations in different contexts. Finally, it is argued that the development of policies designed to promote learning is a necessary step towards the advancement of evaluation practice.

Topical issues of the financial independence of the European Central Bank The thesis aims to introduce the role of the European central bank during the financial crisis, including the legal aspects and risks related to conduct of non-standard measures of monetary policy, and to analyse concerned case law of the European court of Justice. Accordingly, this thesis attempts to point to the shortcomings and uncertainty of the interpretation of the primary law and to summarize the historic development of this legal issue. For this purpose the author draws on the historic context of the conduct of monetary policy of the European central bank and in particular on European court of Justice decisions. The thesis attempts to link the legal aspect with the economic aspect, which the author perceives as an essential attribute for a correct understanding of the whole issue. Key words: monetary policy, ECB, financial independence

The monetary policy of the Fed and the ECB has greatly change as a result of the global crisis. The goal of the thesis is to analyse the evolution of unconventional monetary instruments in the USA and the EU after the outbreak of the global crisis and nowadays with the help of pivotal economic models; namely, the IS-LM-BP model and the quantity theory of money. In addition, the paper should assess the impacts of adopted instruments and programs and draw conclusions about their success. The theoretical part explains the IS-LM-BP framework and the quantity theory of money and describes the unconventional monetary tools that the central banks can use when the interest rates reach the zero lower bound. The practical part analyses EU and US economy with the explained models. Furthermore, the implemented instruments of the Fed and the ECB are described and compared. The thesis should be concluded with the claim that the transmission mechanism was restored with the help of the non-standard measures, however, the desirable price level stabilization has not been reached.

Thesis brings broader picture about the relationship between unconventional measures implemented by ECB and valuation of banking sector in the Eurozone. It also examines implementation of unconventional measures with regard to the three crises, which struggled European economy in the years thereafter the beginning of the last financial crises. Attention is also directed towards factors which have direct impact on the valuation of banks and are influenced by steps adopted by monetary authority. For this purpose two stage dividend discount model, model of economic value added, and price to book ratio model are used. Main tools necessary for the analysis are databases of the platform Bloomberg and statistics gathered by ECB. Hypothesis suggesting the positive relationship between unconventional measures implemented by ECB and valuation of banking sector in the Eurozone is proved for mid-term horizon. In case of immediate reaction of shares the results are divided based on the structure of specific measure and also on the expectations of financial market. Thesis as a whole confirms the positive effects of unconventional measures on the valuation of shares, therefore entice to additional research. In fact sometimes monetary policy might cause distortion in the prices on the financial markets and endanger main goals of central bank.

The main target of this thesis is to investigate and compare influence of changing nominal interest rates of ECB on GDP and its main components: investments and consumption and find out how the mometary policy influences real convergence of Slovakia and Estonia comparing to eurozone countries.

Both the ECB and the Fed implemented various unconventional measures in response to the last crisis. While the ECB's policies were based on direct lending to banks, the FED adopted large-scale asset purchases. According to the empirical evidence these policies had economically beneficial effects in the US and the Eurozone but these measures have also certain spillovers which scope and exact impacts are quite difficult to estimate. There have been already many papers focusing on cross-border impacts of the FED's policies, but far less studied the spillovers of the ECB's policies. This work provides a theoretical background concerning the unconventional monetary policies implemented by the ECB and the FED after 2008 and analyse the impacts of ECB's policies on six particular countries outside euro area. The Impulse Responses of output, inflation, domestic interest rate and exchange rate are analyzed via block-restricted VAR model. My results confirm that euro area monetary policy does have an impact on non-euro area countries, although the response of macroeconomic variables in analysed countries are heterogeneous and also differ in the period before and after September 2008. Countries seem to be indeed affected more by conventional monetary policies until September 2008, but the euro-area monetary policy spills over via unconventional policies after September 2008. Overall, the ECB's policies affect economic activity outside euro area, but does not have significant impact on inflation. Furthermore, the exchange rate just initially drops in response to monetary tightening, but this reaction usually does not last for more than four months.

敝人在景氣波動劇烈的半導體產業工作逾十二年，除了對產業本身有一定的了解外，卻往往忽略了半導體產業的籌資工具對員工分紅暨投資理財的影響。畢竟，舉凡員工認購權證、股票股利政策、可轉換公司債、海外可轉債等看似公司的財務籌措手段之一，然而在此計算的背後，盡是與原始股東有著密不可分的關係。 因此敝人想藉由此一主題的研究，搭起金融工具與電子產業特性的橋樑，不僅在個人的投資理財技術上能有所增進，也希望為大多數的”非核心”股東，一窺公司治理在財務操作上所引發的意涵。 故本研究目的包括：（1）資本市場融資與企業財務特性：為求穩健經營，企業籌資管道除了考慮本身的負債比率與股權結構外，也必須在面對不同生命周期時對資金需求迥異而選擇特定的籌資工具（2）DRAM產業背景介紹：之所以選擇DRAM作為研究的標的，除了與敝人多年的工作經驗有關外，更重要的是藉由此一波動幅度極大的產業來凸顯近來衍生出的金融工具—ECB的本質與市場波動的關聯性 ( 3 ) 個案討論：以南亞科技發行ECB為例，探討發行前後與股價之表現與關係，同時市場對景氣的預測以及定價模型的適切性給予投資人什麼樣的景氣符號 ( 4 ) 在文末的結論與建議，希望提出兩個構面的建議：一是對發行者而言，是否有其他更適切的籌資管道；二是對投資者而言，如何去解讀公司治理團隊所欲釋放的市場訊息。 本研究採個案研究法，僅以台灣DRAM產業中的代表性公司—南亞科技為例，以剖析ECB籌資工具與波動性大的DRAM製造商，是否如理論般地符合ECB特性的發行公司；尤有甚者，發行後公司表現是否也符合市場期待。

This thesis analyzes the causes and impacts of recent financial crisis, which originated in the U. S. in 2007. It deals with the theoretical view and the specification of the financial crisis. A significant part is devoted to analyzing the root causes of the emergence of the recent financial crises. Here we find important implications in the functioning and structure of the financial system, in which we see many long-term unhealthy factors which largely contributed to the crisis. The paper also deals with analysis of the financial crisis on the real economy. It analyzes the impact of the crisis on the main macroeconomic indicators in the U. S. and Europe. Here we find an analysis of the measures taken in the U. S. and the EU in order to stabilize the financial sector. Find negative effects of state aid to public debt and government budget deficits.