This thesis examines the impact of shock therapy on the Polish economy, and within it, on the motor vehicle industry. It is argued that shock therapy has not proved satisfactory as a theory of economic transformation. The following reasons are provided:- ● Shock therapy fails to provide an adequate explanation of the collapse of the command economy. Its emphasis on problems being largely monetary, rather than structural, is misguided, as this leads to the erroneous conclusion that with a strong monetary and fiscal shock, increases in utility will ensue, despite a fall in real income. ● The above may partially explain why shock therapy has failed to satisfactorily predict the outcome of the reform programmes. The assumption of post-reform growth rates following the path of a "J-Curve" has not been borne in reality. The forecasts of various improvements after the first year of the Balcerowicz Programme in Poland were, with the exception of exports, highly inaccurate. By the end of 1993 (after four years of reforms), only one indicator (inflation) registered an improvement over the respective pre-reform level. There was, therefore, no "delayed positive response". It is argued that the major reason for the failure of shock therapy reforms is that the theory largely neglects the significance of market failures. In particular, sufficient consideration has not been given to the problems of information gaps, absence of capital markets, structural rigidities, investment coordination and high levels of risk and uncertainty, all of which constrain the ability of agents to effectively respond to a liberalised economic regime. The role of careful government intervention - to attempt to remedy market failures - has been undervalued. Failure to take appropriate measures with respect to market failures most important in transforming economies has led to unnecessary costs. The case study on the motor vehicle industry provided evidence that shock therapy's policy for microeconomic restructuring - trade liberalisation in conjunction with privatisation and FBI - has not proved successful, with the notable, but unusual exception of FSM. The severe recession, in combination with strong important competition, led to a slump in sales, output, and underutilisation of capacity; leading productivity to decline from already very low levels. With respect to enterprise restructuring, it was found that this was either slow, or largely neglected in all the main determinants of plant productivity considered, i.e., work organisation, high tech capabilities, supplier network, and the Just-in-time system. In regard to management-labour relations, it was found that both parties viewed these as having improved. However, severe "macro" problems frequently override the purportedly better relations at the micro level, so that considerable friction remains - which occasionally spill over into major disputes that act against the restructuring process. The industry has experienced a severe contraction in capacity utilisation and employment - a fact that is very much at odds with the government's wish to preserve the bulk of the industry. It is concluded that an industrial policy for the motor sector would have been more appropriate than the policy that has hitherto been used.

This thesis has explored a number of concepts of Soviet business management, and trends of development from the theory of Marxism-Leninism to the practices of Stalin, Khrushchev and Kosygin.This thesis has examined numerous characteristics of Soviet business management in contrast to capitalistic business practices of the United States. In reference to the U.S.S.R., particular emphasis was given to reforms initiated after 1965.

This thesis employs a dynamic form of the gravity model and data from 1988-2005 to estimate the effects of RTAs in SSA on intra-African trade. The thesis proposes a better approach to examining member-nonmember trade relations of RTAs. This thesis is unique because it uses System GMM estimator to overcome econometric issues associated with estimating dynamic models. The results suggest that COMESA and SADC has led to a significant increase in intra and extra-RTA trade. ECOWAS has increased intra-ECOWAS trade but decreased extra-ECOWAS trade. ECCAS has had a negative impact on both intra-ECCAS and extra-ECCAS trade flows. The proposed approach of examining member-nonmember relationships provides better estimates. A comparative analysis is made to shed light on how high or low the trade creation effect of RTAs in SSA are. The results of this thesis support the view that the impact of RTAs in SSA is higher than perceived. / x, 61 leaves ; 29 cm

An assessment of the costs and benefits of antiterrorism policies has a number of challenges. Canada’s situation is particularly complex because of its asymmetric and integrative economic and geographic relationship with the United States. Few theoretical models of international antiterrorism policy exist and none fit well this asymmetric relationship. This thesis attempts to fill this void by understanding the motives behind Canadian antiterrorism policies and the related spending, and how these are affected by the relationship with the United States. We explore a two country theoretical model with strategic interactions, focusing on relative spending. What is found is that the economics and geography of the two countries play a large role in motivating spending and can drastically alter antiterrorism spending beyond that needed solely for public safety in Canada. / Graduate / 0511 / 0501 / 0616 / kyleburak@gmail.com

Political ideologies translate into both rhetoric and actual economic policy, and both are important factors for explaining economic development such as foreign direct investment and the distribution of growth. In Nicaragua, the government calls itself “socialist”, but neither local big business nor rating firms or foreign investors seem to be anxious. In this thesis, an attempt is made to define and measure characteristics of economic ideologies, and to analyse them in a country context.Factors are identified that would be characteristic for a “leftist” or to a “rightist” ideology, and then translated into measurable indicators, used to analyse the rhetoric, planning and legislation in Nicaragua. Actual outcomes are compared with previous liberal and socialist regimes. The result indicates that the actual economic policy of the current “marxist” government can be described as liberal or mildly social democratic. A similar analysis, made of IMF and Moody’s show that their assessments are based on liberal theory.One cause for this discrepancy between rhetoric and economic policy may be that no option is available in the globalised context with its unequal distribution of resources and power.

An assessment of the costs and benefits of antiterrorism policies has a number of challenges. Canada’s situation is particularly complex because of its asymmetric and integrative economic and geographic relationship with the United States. Few theoretical models of international antiterrorism policy exist and none fit well this asymmetric relationship. This thesis attempts to fill this void by understanding the motives behind Canadian antiterrorism policies and the related spending, and how these are affected by the relationship with the United States. We explore a two country theoretical model with strategic interactions, focusing on relative spending. What is found is that the economics and geography of the two countries play a large role in motivating spending and can drastically alter antiterrorism spending beyond that needed solely for public safety in Canada. / Graduate / 0511 / 0501 / 0616 / kyleburak@gmail.com

This thesis explores the reason why the region of Northern Ostrobothnia and in particular the city of Oulu became known as the High Tech capital of the Nordic countries during the 1980s and 1990s. After World War II, the region’s economy was dependent upon its traditional industries of forestry, wood processing, pulp and paper manufacturing and to a lesser degree on iron and steel manufacture. In common with other parts of Northern Finland, Northern Ostrobothnia suffered from high unemployment, low educational standards, outwards migration and below average standards of living and life expectancy. Aware of these problems, the national government in Helsinki embarked on a series of measures to improve this situation. First and foremost, a university was established in Oulu and its first three faculties were teacher training, medicine and engineering. The university was charged with the specific tasks of educating and conducting research to benefit the economy of Northern Finland. It was realised that economic changes were essential and attempts were made to build an electronics industry in the region to make it less dependent on natural resources. To facilitate economic developments, infrastructural improvements were made and branches of VTT and Tekes were established in Oulu. A key factor here was the government realisation that decision-making for improvements in the region should and would be devolved to the local authorities. That was the opportunity for the city of Oulu to seize initiative, and in concert with the University and a group of local entrepreneurs, to set up a Technology Park, Technopolis, in 1982 at Linnanmaa beside both the university and VTT. These small beginnings provided the foundations for sectors such as electronics, computer software, telecommunications and biotechnology sectors to emerge gradually, so that by the year 2000 there were nearly 12,000 high tech jobs in the area. A crucial addition to this development in the long term was the arrival of Nokia to Oulu. At first Nokia concentrated on cable technology and base stations, but once it diversified into telecommunications and built up partnerships with local firms a clearly-defined high tech cluster became visible. Within the cluster, there is significant cooperation between the relevant New Technology Based Firms (NTBFs), Nokia and the local educational and research establishments. The outcome, at the time of writing, is that Oulu has gained a world reputation as an innovative centre of high technology, and it is the circumstances behind this reputation that the remainder of this thesis seeks to investigate.

This thesis studies the causes and consequences of the credibility problem in trade liberalization, with a special reference to African economies. The two necessary conditions for credibility are found to be macroeconomic compatibility and time-consistency, while the sufficient conditions are more difficult to identify. A lack of credibility is typically probabilistic as private agents may be uncertain about the government's intentions, or the future terms of trade. The first part of the thesis develops a theory of economic behaviour in the absence of credibility. Due to private responses, incredibility creates a welfare cost which may arise from (i) non optimal intertemporal substitution in consumption, (ii) accumulation of stocks of imports, (iii) insufficient relocation of factors, and (iv) deferral of investment. A simple consumption model and two production models are used to assess the magnitude of the welfare cost and to derive a cost curve as a function of the probability of default. A non-monotonic curve with kinks emerges. Many standard results concerning the speed of liberalization change drastically when the assumption of full credibility is relaxed. Containing consumption costs would typically call for a gradual reform to reduce the incentive to accumulate inventories, while, from the production point of view, a big bang or initial overshooting are preferable. Gradualism is preferable when (i) reserves may otherwise be depleted by speculative imports, forcing the government to abandon the reform, (ii) only incremental devaluation is possible, or (iii) the level of the implicit tariff is unknown. The second part examines how liberalization episodes can be identified empirically using a quantitative measure of trade policy. The average implicit tariff index, which is the ratio of the domestic deflator to the world price index, is derived for Kenya. As the domestic deflator appears to be biased, a hypothetical implicit tariff index is derived from a Linear Expenditure System. Further, the other empirical study quantifies the social cost of incredibility during four Kenyan reforms. Three hypotheses are tested: (i) speculative accumulation of imports, (ii) deferral of investment, and (iii) increased liquidity in response to perceived uncertainty about future trade policy. The highest welfare cost was incurred during the 1980 reform which was not coordinated with exchange rate management and was therefore incompatible.

This thesis is a case study of the effects of association with the EU on domestic industrial policy making in Poland during 1990-1995 from a liberal intergovernmentalist perspective, showing how association affected the industrial policy-making autonomy of the Government in relation to other domestic actors in two ways. First, because domestic interests were weak and divided in transition-era Poland, the EU provided political leaders with a sharper focus and allowed them to consolidate domestic support for government industrial policy initiatives. Second, where domestic opposition arose, association helped political leaders to overcome it by giving industrial policy initiatives greater legitimacy and allowing them to be portrayed as "mandatory" for EU membership. The manner in which the Government handled domestic pressure for intervention from state enterprises seeking to avoid painful adjustments and restructuring during the transition offers a prime test of the effects of EU association on industrial policy-making autonomy. In most areas, the pro-market, pro-competition policies mandated by EU association were incompatible with the nature and level of governmental involvement in industry under socialism, requiring an end to state subsidies and other forms of discretionary support enjoyed by state enterprises for nearly four decades. Incorporating case studies of the steel and textiles sectors, this thesis illustrates how in the context of transition, the Government's commitment to EU association was stronger than for other recent EU members and ensured that the Government would deviate from the course charted in the Association Agreement only in cases of intense domestic pressure, and even then only temporarily. Accordingly, in a new twist to liberal intergovernmentalism, Poland's transitional domestic situation coupled with the country's enduring commitment to eventual EU membership ensured that the effects of association on policy-making autonomy were more pronounced in Poland than in existing member states.

This thesis explores the necessary conditions for voluntary wage restraint in advanced industrialized democracies. In particular, it addresses the question of how governments can get union movements to trade their labour market power for non-wage objectives, and how union peak organizations can secure near universal compliance with a voluntary wages policy, notwithstanding the pressures upon individual unions to free ride. Rational choice theory furnishes the initial analytical framework. Within these terms it will be argued that the problem of securing voluntary restraint has the strategic structure of a prisoner's dilemma. In other words, the situation entails an inherent conflict between individual and collective interests. Moreover, this conflict is not merely between the short-term interests of individual unions and those of the whole labour movement, but also between labour (wages) and capital (profit). Given this situation, the thesis will investigate the conditions under which rational, self-interested unions, seeking to maximize some combination of real wage, relative wage and employment objectives, and operating in the context of uncertainty, decentralized bargaining and a significant degree of monopoly power in the labour market, will voluntarily be prepared to restrain their wage demands. Following this exploration, the behavioural assumptions of rational choice theory will be modified to allow for the fact that economic agents are also motivated by various normative commitments, and that these can be sufficient in certain circumstances to overcome the free-rider problem. This new theoretical approach will then be employed in a detailed examination of the Social Contract between the British Labour Government (1974-79) and the Trades Union Congress. It will be concluded that certain moral, political and ideological commitments played a crucial role in the negotiation, implementation and eventual collapse of the Social Contract. It should be noted that this inquiry is based upon published sources and interview data.