This diploma thesis deals with questions, to what degree Englis' theories influenced Czechoslovak economic policy. Describes his disputations with others notable economists. Moreover, it investigates influence of his decisions on Czechoslovak economy.

In my dissertation I characterize the role of the state in France in the late 20th century and I use specific examples to show the success of the economic policies of the state . For this reason, in the theoretical part I describe economic and political development of France, I compare it with selected countries and I point out French specifics. In the analytical part, I analyze the current state of the French economy, watching the macroeconomic indicators (inflation, unemployment, GDP , balance of payments). I discuss the importance of French clusters, public enterprises, the share of French companies in multinational companies and the important role of the state in various sectors of the economy. I conclude that, despite the dominant role of the state in the French economy, France achieves some of the best economic results in the world.

This thesis examines the diplomatic strategy adopted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in response to the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent shift in the regional distribution of power with regard to the security of the ASEAN nations. I argue that ASEAN has demonstrated considerable success in preventing a collapse of regional order in Southeast Asia. It is important to understand that ASEAN is a product and tool of its members' foreign policy and should therefore be assessed in the foreign policy, rather than in the regional integrationist, context. This will be examined from the point of view of a group of relatively weak, insignificant states within the international arena, historically plagued by conflict and intervention by external powers, exacerbated by a history of intra-regional enmity rather than cooperation, military weakness, and no collective tradition of diplomatic expertise. Yet, despite these shortcomings and ASEAN's previous inability to come together on issues of economic integration, ASEAN's response to the Third Indochina conflict has allowed its member nations to maintain their independence, preserve their freedom of action, rally international support, and confront the great powers involved in this issue through the use of a regional organization. This thesis will also counter the prevailing view that existing intra-ASEAN differences regarding the primary external threat in the issue (namely Vietnam, China or the Soviet Union) have seriously divided its members to the point of potentially threatening the organization's existence. Instead, I will argue that the combination of ASEAN's curious mode of "conflict resolution" through "conflict avoidance", as well as its diplomatic "division of labour," have effectively incorporated existing intra-ASEAN differences as bargaining assets for the organization's political viability. These internal cleavages have been far from resolved or reconciled, but rather skirted over by a web of unwritten laws, implicit rules and mutual understandings regarding one another's accepted role within the organization. This implicit "regime" has served several purposes: it has allowed ASEAN to sustain its image of unity, boosted its political visability in the international forum, and prevented the "loss of face" of fellow members on points of contention. Research for this thesis was conducted in part at the ASEAN Secretariat and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study is to show there is no special economic or general development theory tailor-made for West Africa. Maybe, when all general theories are valid, some are more valid than others. The recent emergence of "development theories" from academics in the "Third and Fourth World" countries is both an expression of serious doubts with orthodox development theories, as well as a serious search for self-assertion. These attempts to devise an appropriate theoretical concept geared towards the interpretation and analysis of the development process in these regions are, at bottom, also a response to the dynamics of economic and social change. The growing awareness of these views reflects the extent to which these processes of change are at work. As we shall soon observe, the attempts by the various orthodox authors of development theories to diagnose the underlying causes of development, the link with the world systems and the proposed future strategies, have very little in common. Take, for example, the economic system of the sixteenth century that generated modern industrial capitalism. This system was made up of three interdependent parts: a developed core in Western Europe, a partially developed semiperiphery in southern and eastern Europe, and an underdeveloped periphery of the rest of the world. From this, one can see, with some persuasion, that the dynamic of capitalism (or of a fully developed market economy) is based on the structural imbalance created by integrating the West Africa economies at different levels of development in what Prof. Wallerstein called a "world-system." There are probably few who would quarrel with this part of the formulation - although its neglect as a serious theory of economic development by economists, is, to this author, certainly one of the more interesting occurrences in modern history. The question that is open to debate is the degree to which this imbalance (in West Africa) tends toward permanence - the degree to which "underdevelopment" develops along with development to become a relatively stable economic adjustment. None of the development theories reviewed in the thesis has sufficient time depth to assess the question of permanence with empirical data, nor do they attempt to do so. Instead, the problem is tackled as follows. The nonindustrial nations of the world have not developed because they have failed the preconditions for it - a market mentality, local economic differentiation, "modern" socio-cultural institutions receptive to economic development (entrepreneurship). But none of these holds in the indigeneous societies of West Africa where there is no lack of entrepreneurship and little in the way of social and cultural impediments to growth. The most common alternative explanation is that the "surplus" necessary to endogenous growth is being drained in export-import trade with the developed systems. This thesis explores the dimensions of development in the economies like those of West Africa which are in a period of drastic change and dissatisfaction with the conventional paradigms. Structurally, this study has been divided into five chapters. The introductory chapter defines the uniqueness of the West African case. This uniqueness arises from uncensured acceptance of Western norms and models and reliance on growth - through capital-intensive imported technology. Coupled with this is also the idea of measuring the successes (if any) and the failures with the yardsticks accepted and applicable in the West, Chapter two will review the general literature in development (Dualism, Strategical, Foreign Trade, Sociological and Psychological, and Marxist theories) and then prescribe an indigenous model, Self-Reliance, as an alternative to the reviewed theories. Chapter three examines the physical environment and economy of the region. Chapter four deals with the acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis that is, when all general theories are valid, some are more valid than others and Chapter five deals with the policy implications and conclusions. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Unknown

The aim of this thesis is to analyze macroeconomic development in Slovenia in the last 20 years. Special attention is paid to the development of banking sector and Tthe development of its ownership structure. The theoretical part deals with the basic concept of national economy, characteristics of the main macroeconomic aggregates and the banking system. These theoretical solutions provide an information base for the practical part, which processes a macroeconomic analysis of Slovenia from 1995 to the present. Banking sector is analyzed from the perspective of the legal framework and institutional provision. It is followed by the analysis of the Slovenian banking sector itself, which shows that the Slovenian crisis was rooted precisely in the banking sector, which is largely state-owned. The main solution of this situation is the privatization of large state-owned banks and restrictive measures of public finances.

No description available.

This thesis aims at studying the issues of economic structure and resource allocation in development. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to economic development and gives an overview of this thesis. Chapter 2 reviews some theories and models about economic structure and structural change and points out that resource allocation is a critical factor in changing the economic structure. Five characteristics of economic structure and structural change are summarized. Essay 1 in Chapter 3 investigates the relationship between competitiveness and economic growth. Adopting the Global Competitiveness Index to represent competitiveness, we empirically show that there is a two-way causal relationship between competitiveness and economic growth. We further identify that the relationship between competitiveness and economic growth change in different development stages. Specifically, better competitiveness can enhance economic growth but not vice versa in developing countries. We therefore relate such a difference to the ability to transform resources into competitiveness. This is fundamentally a question about resource allocation. Finally, we link structural change with economic growth and show that enhancing competitiveness is equivalent to improving the capacity to change the economic structure. Essay 2 in Chapter 4 studies the impacts of sub-optimal resource allocation on economic growth by applying a new model to the case of the effectiveness of official development assistance (ODA). This new model analyzes economic growth through structural change by the difference between the observed and optimal levels of competitiveness. Regarding the positive and negative impacts of foreign aid on the receiving country in the literature, we show that the net impact of ODA depends on the value of bias caused by inefficient allocation of resources and the adoption of a biased value system. As a result, both positive and negative views of ODA in the literature are somewhat correct. In principle, ODA does work in the sense of helping needy countries providing they can allocate such additional resources efficiently. The cruel truth is that most receivers of ODA are unable to transform these resources to productive uses and even lower their economic growth. The development aid country donors or global institutions may therefore have to review their existing policy for granting aid.Essay 3 in Chapter 5 introduces a new framework to study two important structural issues in China: regional fragmentation and ownership distortion. We extend the output-oriented structural efficiency measure to include subgroups to evaluate potential gains of improving resource allocation within and among subgroups. The new framework is then applied to China's industrial sector. Applying our new method for policymaking, the empirical results advocate prioritizing ownership reform over regional reform in China. Specifically, by improving resource allocation among different ownerships, outputs of the whole industrial sector can be increased by 21% of the observed level. In contrast, the potential gains of reallocating resources between western and non-western regions are less than 1%. Such a conclusion cannot be drawn from other existing models of efficiency analysis. Finally, Chapter 6 concludes the whole thesis.

No description available.

This dissertation presents three essays in financial economics. The essays study the impact of trade globalization through the lens of the financial market. The first chapter investigates the effect of trade liberalization policy on firm value. I identify this effect by exploiting cross-sectional differences in firms' exposure to potential tariff hikes imposed on U.S. imports from China. I find that the Chinese equity market responded negatively to a major U.S.-China trade liberalization event in 2000, and the responses were driven by inefficient state-owned institutions. The analysis also implies that policy uncertainty elimination may generate distributional gains from market share reallocation. The second chapter focuses on the role of implicit protection from trade globalization and its impact on the U.S. equity market. The third chapter explores the consequences of the U.S.-China trade war.

This paper focuses on policies and regulations on open economies to achieve financial stability and social welfare. In the first chapter, I develop a dynamic model to study optimal liquidity regulations for multiple assets with differing levels of liquidity. I show that optimal macroprudential policies are affected by both asset liquidity and the multi-asset structure. Lower asset liquidity amplifies drops in asset prices and tightens the collateral constraint during financial crises, thus raising macroprudential taxes to discourage holding. With multiple assets, the marginal benefit of investing in one asset is affected by the future cross-price elasticities of all assets. Quantitatively, optimal macroprudential policies increases welfare by introducing a portfolio with more liquid assets and less borrowing. However, the Basel III reform deteriorates welfare, as agents overaccumulate liquid assets. In the next chapter, I focuses on the welfare analysis of currency depreciation through endogenous R&D where the economy faces a trade-off between the gain from export and disinvestment of technology. I show that real depreciation decreases welfare when productivity is endogenous, as the long-term bust due to sluggish productivity dominates the short-term boom in consumption and output. In the final chapter, I study the optimal monetary policy in this framework. The optimal policy is a targeting rule of inflation, output gap, and the terms of trade, considering the trade-off between the international purchasing power and the cost of importing R&D. The variation of the optimal monetary policy is larger than the standard Taylor rule and the optimal monetary policy under exogenous productivity.