This thesis examines whether it is prudent and constructive for a manager to use their brand's market share (specifically using the law-like Advertising Intensiveness relationship of Jones) to guide their adverstising expenditure decision. Decisions regarding advertising expenditure and advertising effectiveness are really two sides of the same coin - how can one specify an amount to spend without the knowledge of what that spending will acheive? Therefore, this thesis examines the question by investigating the effectiveness of different levels of advertising expenditure.

This study represent an application of the techniques of economic analysis to the Australian newspaper industry. The questions may be summarised as follows: How does a newspaper viewed as a rational economic entity? maximise its profits? What is the present degree of monopoly in the Australian press? how has this degree of monopoly developed and what are its causes? Finally what are the economic prospects of the industry?

This thesis analyses the material and ideological dimensions of the knowledge economy with particular reference to New Zealand. The emergence of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of transnational capitalism precipitates the co modification of information, communication and knowledge. This process is obscured by the ideological construction of techno-futurism. Techno-futurism is a combination of technological determinism and futurism that appropriates notions of progress. In the pages which follow, historical analyses of this ideology inform the subsequent critique of knowledge economy discourse. In New Zealand knowledge economy discourse contained techno-futurist elements and deflected attention from the global absorption of national capitalism. In this context the Catching the Knowledge Wave Conference (KWC), held in Auckland in the first days of August 2001, is examined. I argue that the instigators and organisers of the conference were enmeshed within the business culture of finance capital and ICTs. Textual analysis of keynote addresses reveals the ideological dimensions to knowledge wave and knowledge economy talk. These dimensions are; entrepreneurialism, knowledge as (economic) progress, and globalism.

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In this thesis, I analyse the impact of economic shocks on violence, and the mechanisms underlying them. I also investigate the long-term effects of violence on economic outcomes. In my first chapter, I introduce this thesis, and broadly outline its aims and contributions. In my second chapter, I examine lynchings of African Americans in the US South from 1882 to 1930, and show that cotton price shocks predict lynchings. Lynchings also predict more black out-migration from 1920 to 1930, and higher state-level wages. Using a simple model, I show that this is consistent with lynchings having labour market effects that benefitted whites: lynchings cause blacks to migrate away, lowering labour supply and increasing wages for white labourers. I then turn to the long-term effects of lynchings. I show that Mississippi counties with more violence during a 1964 Civil Rights campaign also had more lynchings during the earlier period. Finally, lynchings persist in labour market outcomes: present-day results show that lynchings predict higher black-white worker, family, and household income gaps. In my third chapter, I turn to FrenchWest Africa, a co-authored work with James Fenske. We show that rainfall, temperature, and commodity price shocks predict unrest in colonial French West Africa between 1906 and 1956. We use a simple model of taxation and anti-tax resistance to explain these results. In the colonial period, the response of unrest to economic shocks was strongest in more remote areas and those lacking a history of pre-colonial states. In modern data spanning 1997 to 2011, the effect of economic shocks on unrest is weaker. Past patterns of heterogeneity are no longer present. The response of unrest to economic shocks, then, differs across institutional contexts within a single location. In my fourth and last chapter, I find that favourable temperatures and favourable economic conditions predict more witchcraft trials in Early Modern Scotland (1563-1727), a largely agricultural economy. During this time, witchcraft was a secular crime, and it was incumbent on local elites to commit resources to trying witches. Consistent with this, I find that positive price shocks to export-heavy, taxable goods like herring and wool predict more witch trials, while price shocks to Scotland's main subsistence commodity, oats, do not.

The thesis contains two essays on the economic impacts of high-speed railway (HSR) in China. Utilizing a unique data set of towns in Dongguan, a city in South China, it provides empirical evidence on whether HSR affects economic growth and efficiency or not. The first essay uses the generalized method of moments (GMM) to estimate a dynamic panel data model of the town economies. The empirical results suggest that both HSR and expressway have a positive impact on the general economic development of the towns. However, HSR does not have a significant effect on the development of the manufacturing sector, while expressway does in this regard. These findings lend indirect support to the common argument that HSR can benefit the tertiary sector, but not necessarily other sectors. The second essay investigates the relationship between the advent of HSR and productive efficiency of the manufacturing sector. Using a stochastic frontier approach, it provides empirical evidence that proximity to expressway, rather than to HSR, enhances the efficiency of industrial enterprises.

The gold mining fIrm in South Africa is viewed as a normal fIrm producing gold bearing ore but faced with a quality constraint (grade). Grade, however, is never uniformly distributed in a metalliferous deposit and because high grades are mined fIrst, the quality constraint becomes increasingly severe with cumulated production. The fIrm will continue to mine gold bearing ore until it reaches its mining limit where the marginal cost of recovering the gold is equal to the marginal revenue received from that gold and at that point the economic deposit becomes exhausted. Because the mining limit is determined by cost/technology and price, it is not fIxed and thus the point of economic exhaustion may change. When high grades are mined fIrst the relationship between the tonnage of gold ore and the grade describes the rate at which the grade is expected to fall with cumulated production. In this thesis, the grade for South African Witwatersrand gold producers is modelled to fall exponentially. The mining limit, determined by costs/technology and price, can be expressed in terms of grade. By predicting the decay in grade relative to the tonnage of gold ore and applying a mining limit, a life-time size of the economic deposit can be estimated. The remaining life of a producing gold mine can then be determined and the flow of gold predicted. An empirical treatment using the disk model of a gold deposit is undertaken for a gold mine, a goldfIeld and the total Witwatersrand gold deposit. A dynamic econometric analysis of expected mining costs and gold prices is not attempted; however certain examples are used to illustrate the applicability of the model and the influence of the South African gold mining tax formula on the life of the mine.

M.Com. / The study was conducted with the primary purpose of developing, within the framework of business management, with specific reference to strategic management, a management approach for combl-taxi facilities. Currently no formal approach for the efficient management and operation of combi-taxi facilities exists. The management and operation of combi-taxi facilities occurs on an ad hoc basis, is fragmented and restricted to only a few functions that are executed. Existing combi-taxi facilities are, however, a management and financial burden for the owner (traditionally a local authority) and gave reason to the physical deterioration' of the infrastructure and poor or insufficient management and operation thereof. The quality of combi-taxi services are dependent on the standard of combi-taxi facilities and related activities. In this study a systems approach was followed for the development of a holistic approach for the management and operation of combi-taxi facilities. The objectives of this management approach from a business perspective are the creation of self supporting combi-taxi facilities that are efficiently managed and operated, as well as an effective management structure with a healthy income base. Management, as the nucleus of the successful functioning of combi-taxi facilities in the context of this study, is regarded as the planning of and the organizing, leading and control of persons in the business which are responsible for the operation of the combi-taxifacility through the execution of activities and tasks within the relevant business functions, to ensure the optimal utilisation of scarce resources and the achievement of goals.

The prevalence of health risk behaviours is growing among South African employees. The deteriorating health of the public and the costs there off, which arise from making unhealthy choices about one’s lifestyle, are a major cause of many preventable Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD’s). The effect of these NCD’s on an organisation can result in employees’ ill health and negative stress, which in turn can lead to absenteeism, presenteeism and thus decreased productivity. Several studies propose that the absenteeism together with presenteeism can cost an organisation up to three times as much as medical costs with stress also being flagged as a severe work-related hazard. Literature shows that ill health affects employee ability to function optimally, thus indirectly affects productivity. Studies on on-site wellness programs, although they report savings in health care costs and increase in productivity, their true effectiveness is not sufficiently measured. To add to this, there is a paucity of work that exists regarding the benefits of on-site wellness programs in South Africa. It is suggested that data about the effect of successful wellness programs does not always make its way to academic literature, thus the observed shortage in investment on such programs from South African companies. This study we aim to find out the effect of on-site wellness programs on absenteeism, presenteeism, stress and health care costs. The results oppose what literature findings report. Reasons for these findings are therefore speculated.