Risk measures are the core indicator of risk management and a proper risk assessment model is essential for successful financial institutions. Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall are the two most popular and acceptable risk measurement methods presently employed to assess risks in the financial market. In the past few years, researchers have attempted to demonstrate that Expected Shortfall performs better against the traditional Value at Risk method. However, the lack of elicitability and difficult backtesting of this method suggest that the popularisation of ES might be gradual. This thesis will present a comparison of these two methods not only from a traditional perspective, such as the measurement of tail risk, but also form the perspective of risk capital requirement. Through Historical Simulation and Filtered Historical Simulation, it concludes that switching from Value at Risk to Expected Shortfall method would reduce risk capital requirement and enhance financial leverage of organisations. Additionally, this research also combines macroeconomic elements, the financial market and central banks, and analyses the influence of a positive leverage shock on the macro-economy through a Global Vector Autoregression model.

This thesis investigates the effects of pressures brought by increasing capital mobility and interjurisdictional fiscal competition to fiscal policy, focusing particularly on the European Union and the analysis of policy reforms that can be adopted in such contexts. Firstly, the relationship between tax competition and economic growth is re-assessed. In a race to attract mobile capital, jurisdictions compete to offer the highest after-tax rates of return. Governments are driven into the provision of higher levels of productive public goods, and shift their tax structures, towards the taxation of the least mobile factors or least distortive tax bases. In an environment of fixed labour supply, this implies a race to the bottom in capital taxes and a race to the top in the taxes falling on labour. Taking into account the potential effects of fiscal competition on fiscal policy, the consequences of different tax harmonization scenarios are also analyzed. The harmonization of capital taxes leads to a race to the top in taxes on immobile factors. Once tax rates on mobile factors are fixed, tax competition shifts towards immobile factors. This implies that the tax burden falls again disproportionately on labour. Only the harmonization of labour income taxes can avoid this outcome, while leaving room for positive capital income taxes. Secondly, extending this argument within a more detailed model of labour supply calibrated to the EU economy, more detailed policy proposals for a European-wide fiscal harmonization agreement are studied. Labour income and consumption tax harmonization yield potentially better results than capital tax harmonization, as the main fiscal competition-driven government investment distortion, resulting in the over-investment on productive public goods at the expense of merit goods, is minimized. In particular, policy simulation results suggest that indirect taxes, such as value-added taxes, should become a priority instrument for European-wide fiscal reforms. Expenditure side reforms are also necessary, in order to address the race to bottom in the provision of merit goods. Even limited reforms that do not require large increases in the EU budget, such as the introduction of a common European unemployment insurance system, can yield interesting results in a context of interjurisdictional fiscal competition. Thirdly, the cyclical behaviour of fiscal policies across OECD countries is investigated. In i so doing, a more complete picture of fiscal policy can be obtained, by identifying both the short term behaviour of discretionary fiscal policies and long term structural fiscal policy trends. Fiscal policy has become pro-cyclical over recent decades, particularly within the European Monetary Union. The average level of structural fiscal balances and the responsiveness of fiscal policy to the level of debt are found persistently weaker beyond the 70 percent debt-to-GDP threshold, pointing to the relevance of fiscal fatigue episodes. Average fiscal balances and a stronger responsiveness to debt conditions are also found higher at higher levels of the potential level of debt service. This is accompanied by a more pro-cyclical response of the fiscal stance. Finally, the role of fiscal decentralization is also assessed. Two issues remain clear. On the one hand, fiscal decentralization does not appear to directly affect fiscal performance. On the other hand, large intergovernmental transfer systems show a persistent negative relationship with the fiscal stance. Considering the level of sub-national fiscal autonomy also uncovers that this negative effect becomes stronger when sub-national governments have a wide policy scope. These results are found particularly worrying as many OECD countries maintain highly decentralized systems of government, under which large intergovernmental grant systems are kept in parallel with a significant policy scope at the regional and local level.

Originally presented as the author's dissertation-- Universität Regensburg, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-114).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1980.

No description available.

This thesis principally studies the determination of UK export performance between the wars. Several improvements to the measurement of sterling's nominal and real effective exchange rate in the period are implemented, and the path of the exchange rate is related to UK and foreign exchange rate policies. The nature of competitiveness and the demand and supply mechanisms by which it may influence exports are discussed. In the light of this, and the commodity and geographical breakdown of UK exports, we suggest alternative measures of competitiveness which may appropriately be tested in econometric work. Aggregate UK export volume and price equations for the inter- war period are then estimated. Competitiveness, which is in turn influenced by the exchange rate, and the economic position of primary producing countries, are found to have had significant effects on UK export performance. Similarly specified equations are estimated for UK exports in eight industrial sectors. Distinctive characteristics of sectors may lead to substantial divergences between sectoral and aggregate behaviour. This is confirmed in further work on UK coal exports. Nevertheless, measures of the price of UK exports relative to the price of exports of other industrial countries generally give explanations of UK export performance which are superior to other competitiveness measures. A substantial statistical appendix containing data on, inter alia, UK and foreign exchange rates, trade volumes and values (with geographcial and commodity breakdown), labour costs and prices, together with the sources and methods used in their construction, is provided both for historical interest and to facilitate replication of results and further research.

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.

During the 1860s, Chinese merchants reestablished their commercial organizations which are recorded as Guilds (hanghui) in the sources compiled under the guidance of the Qing local government officials. From the decade until the end of the 1880s, English sources emphasized the solidarity of the commercial organizations of Chinese merchants and their superiority to the British mercantile community in the commercial conflicts in which they were engaged. However, from the 1890s, English sources ceased to complain the strength of the commercial organizations of Chinese merchants, and, at the same time, Chinese sources emphasized the existence of a crisis in which Chinese merchants were losing their solidarity. Moreover, the Qing local government officials endeavoured to maintain their control over the commercial organizations of Chinese merchants, an attempt which led to the birth of Chinese chambers of commerce in the early twentieth century. Former studies, which dealt with the superiority of the Chinese merchants' organizations to the British mercantile firms in the 1860s and the 1870s, or the birth of the Chinese bourgeoisie and the activities of their commercial organizations in the early twentieth century, have not been able to reveal what happened in the commercial organizations of the Chinese merchants during the late nineteenth century. The solidarity of the Chinese merchant organizations was maintained by the rule that no one could claim the privilege of doing business without paying the Lijin tax imposed upon it, and the collapse of their solidarity began with when some Chinese compradors and merchants found it possible to do their business without keeping this rule by means of cooperating British mercantile firms, who enjoyed key privi- leges under the Treaties as regards non-payment of the Lijin tax and investment on the basis of limited liability. By intensively analyzing three commercial conflicts between prominent Chinese merchant organizations and British mercantile firms that took place in Shanghai between the end of the 1870s and the end of the 1880s, this study reveals how, and under what conditions some Chinese compradors and merchants could do their business without observing the afore-mentioned rule governing the Chinese merchants' organizations, what happened when British mercantile people became aware what their compradors or cooperative Chinese merchants had doing behind their back, and how these developments contributed to the end of the old-style merchant class, and the beginning of a bourgeoisie. By bringing these facts to the surface for analysis, this study shows a little known aspect of the Chinese society and tries on the basis to re-evaluate an aspect of concept of "China's response to the Western impact."

The role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has sparked increased interest in recent years as they have grown in prominence and international activity. The thesis looks at British and Canadian NGOs concerned with overseas development assistance, and asks what influence they have wielded in the formulation of their own governments' development policies. Based on recent policy community writing, a "conceptual map" is devised which suggests that six elements are important for any analysis of influence: context, content, motivations, resources, tactics, and channels. Chapters two to five use these elements to look at the broad "policy communities" in which official development policy is formulated, and to examine the increasing roles and activities of NGOs as lobbyists. Chapters six and seven take a closer look at two specific "policy networks" within those communities: the relationships created around the World Food Conference in 1974 are compared with those existing at the time of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit). The thesis concludes that NGOs have had an increasing but limited influence on government policy, given (1) an increase in the activity and influence of NGOs, (2) the greater relevance of certain "elements of influence" over others, and (3) the comparatively stronger influence of Canadian NGOs in relation to their British counterparts. The thesis' contribution to knowledge is based on its use of extensive and original primary sources and interviews in both countries, its application of a policy community approach to a new field in international relations, and its systematic attempt to answer evolving questions about this growing, international, and non-governmental force.