The main purpose of this dissertation attempts to clarify the relations between imposed institutional change and social development in terms of Taiwan¡¦s development experiences. There are chiefly three studies in the dissertation. First of all, we reexamine Taiwan¡¦s democratic transition in institutional analysis. With regard to a political entrepreneur model, we shed light on the reasons why the transaction costs of Taiwan¡¦s democratic transition are not expensive and why the process of institutional change is relatively smooth. Secondly, we also explored the development of Taiwan¡¦s IC industry by virtue of imposed institutional analysis. We find it is the desirable government policies and appropriate institutional innovations that Taiwan¡¦s IC industry has made progress at a rapid rate in recent years. Finally, we analyze the interaction between technological choice and economic growth in terms of introducing adjustment costs of technology within a dynamic framework. We make a first attempt at exploring the technological adjustment costs on the rate of steady-state growth and the transitional behavior of the economy in an endogenous growth model.

The causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth has been a controversial subject of the empirical literature. However, there is no common consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth using a consistent data set. Recently developed Granger causality tests in panel data models are used to uncover the existence and direction of causality between energy consumption economic growth in 21 low-income, 35 middle-income, and 26 high-income countries over the period 1990&ndash / 2004. The empirical results explicitly support that the Granger causality from energy consumption to economic growth is more common in high-income countries than low-income and middle-income countries. Furthermore, the Granger causality from economic growth to energy consumption is more common in low-income and middle-income countries than high-income countries.

Existing petroleum and natural gas reserves, which are the major supplies of primary energy demand of the world, are cumulated in a few countries. This causes a serious supply security problem for many countries. On the other side, greenhouse gas emissions caused by mainly fossil fuels are gradually increasing to a point which jeopardizes the future of the earth. By now, countries have to consider both their supply security and this global environmental problem while planning their energy future. For Turkey, a developing country, economic growth is to be added as a third parameter of the solution of this energy equation. In this study, firstly, Turkey&#039 / s existing fossil and alternative energy resources potential is examined. In the second part, international acts against climate change problem and Turkey&#039 / s position in this issue is analyzed. In the third part, the relation between economic growth, energy and environment is discussed. Finally, in consideration with supply security, climate change and economic growth, a brief analyze for Turkey is performed. Study shows that these three parameters are strongly interconnected, especially for fossil resources this leads to some conflictual situations. Comparing with OECD countries, energy is an important factor for economic growth in Turkey. Depending on this fact, Turkey can better give priority to supply security and take an environmental responsibility appropriate to its special condition. It is concluded that Turkey should start with the emission mitigation methods which do not threaten the supply security much, such as forestation, energy conservation and efficiency. Since coal is predicted to continue its popularity in the future, clean coal technologies and carbon capture-storage options gain more importance. For long term, state-sanctioned utilization of renewable resources and carefully planned nuclear development are found to be the most promising solutions for replacing coal and imported natural gas in power generation.

Economic events of this era reflect the fact that the value of information and technology has surpassed the value of physical production. This motivates countries to focus on increasing the education levels of citizens. However, policy making about education system and its returns requires dynamical analyses in order to be sustainable. The study aims to investigate the dynamic characteristics of a country-wide education system, in particular, that of Turkey. System Dynamics modeling, which is one of the most commonly referred tools for understanding the complex social structures, is used. Our model introduces dynamic relationships among different classes of labor forces with varying education levels, university admissions, research quality, and the investments made in education, research and other sectors. Model experimentation provides new insights into the investment and capacity-related aspects of the education system environment.

This study analyzes the effect of capital outflows on economic growth though the channels described in sudden stop literature. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach / it is found that there is a cointegration between capital inflows, real exchange rate and real GDP. The results show that there is a significant positive long-run relation between capital inflows and growth. It is also found that capital inflows affect real output in the short run. The results show that real exchange rate is not a significant determinant of real output both in the short run and long run. Moreover, in order to capture the dynamic responses, a vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology has been employed. The results show that a negative innovation in capital inflows causes real exchange rate depreciation and output contraction.

Despite the advantages and dominance of globalization in today&rsquo / s world economics / clusters, as a regional based development tool, still attract many researchers and policy makers from all over the world in order to obtain sustainable competitiveness. As a result of fast rising number of cluster development policies and initiatives, the importance of measuring the performance of clusters arises. The purpose of this thesis is to design a performance measurement model, which will be applied to industrial clusters in Turkey. A model framework is developed, based on expected outcomes of clusters which are classified as productivity, innovativeness, new business formations and social capital. Indicators are selected based on extensive literature survey under these four determinants, and a scorecard is developed. After the design phase, the performance of two cluster cases from Turkey is studied. In order to improve clustering approach, it is important to monitor, measure identify the progress of clusters. It is believed that this work will be utile for policy makers to identify whether the interventions, incentives and promotions are beneficial for the desired purposes and whether they are used effectively.

This thesis investigates the effects of ICT on economic growth in Turkey and other OECD member countries. After discussing the theoretical relationships between ICT usage and economic growth, we test the positive impact of ICT revolution on economic growth econometrically. In the empirical part of the study, we perform panel data analyses by employing data sets that belong to 30 OECD member countries for 1999-2008 period as well as carrying out time series analyses for only Turkey by using data between 1980 and 2009. We find out that ICT usage and production have a positive significant effect on economic growth in OECD case. However, due to some methodological difficulties and insufficiency of critical mass regarding ICT area and complementary physical and social infrastructures in Turkey, we cannot find any significant relationship between ICT and economic growth for Turkish case.

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<p>The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in China during the period 1994-2003. The theoretical framework shows that FDI has a positive impact on economic growth because it serves as a channel through which new technology is transferred from one country to another and thereby it increases output and GDP in the recipient country. Previous researchers’ work on the subject has also been reviewed to be able to interpret the results.</p><p>The research is based on secondary data for 30 different regions in China. The empirical results show a positive but insignificant effect of FDI as a fraction of GDP on the level of GDP when the regression model includes all 30 regions. When the four poorest regions that have almost no inflow FDI are excluded, the regression model continues to show a positive effect of FDI on the level of GDP and in addition, the result is statistically signifi-cant at the 6 % level.</p> / <p>Denna uppsats studerar utländska direkt investeringars påverkan på den ekonomiska till-växten i China under perioden 1994-2003. En teoretisk modell har utvecklats, som visar att utländska direktinvesteringar har en positiv inverkan på ekonomisk tillväxt, då de fungerar som en kanal via vilken ny teknologi överförs till från ett land till ett annat och därmed ökar produktion och BNP i det mottagande landet. Tidigare studier kring ämnet presente-ras också.</p><p>Undersökningen är baserad på sekundär data för 30 olika regioner i Kina. De empiriska re-sultaten tyder på en positiv men icke-signifikant effekt av utländska direktinvesteringar som en del av BNP på BNP-nivån, när regressionsmodellen inkluderar alla 30 regioner. När de fyra fattigaste regionerna med ett näst intill obefintligt tillflöde av utlandsinvesteringar är utelämnade, visar regressionsmodellen ett signifikant resultat på 6 procents signifikantsnivå.</p>

<p>South Korea experienced a financial crisis in 1997 after more than 30 years of fast eco-nomic growth. During the crisis its gross domestic product (GDP) decreased sharply and many enterprises went bankrupt. The stated-owned banks in South Korea suffered huge losses and investors lost confidence in investing in the South Korean financial market. One result of the crisis reveals the weakness of the South Korean economy- government intervention in the banking sector.</p><p>This paper provides the reason for the financial crisis in 1997 in the introduction sec-tion. The following section is a theoretical framework, in which we have presented two macroeconomic models: the Solow model-growth accounting formula and the Ricardo-Viner model. With empirical findings, we show how the South Korean government re-sponded after the crisis with three approaches to banking reform. We include the two macroeconomic models in the analysis of how the three approaches affected the eco-nomic growth in South Korea during the reform process in the analysis section. Finally, we conclude that the South Korean banking sector reform has provided a success and briefly discuss how China should implement the South Korean useful experiences into its ongoing process of banking sector reform.</p>