R&D can be considered the driving force of the modern economy. The economy is organized to utilize scarce resources. R&D through technological change results in a transformation of scarcities, in the creation of new resources, new products and new prices. "The central stupendous truth about developed economies today is that they can have the kind and scale of resources...they decide to have. It is no longer resources that limit decisions, it is the decision that makes the resources" (Toffler, 1971, p. 15). In technological society resources are created. Yet recent publications indicate a universal decline in R&D investment. This dissertation focuses upon some important aspects of R&D decision making in Canada. The first chapter analyzes available information about determinants and practices of R&D investment decisions, describes the inventory of normative models developed to improve decision making, and identifies empirical studies investigating their implementation. A review of the state of the art leads to the identification of the following four areas of information which are deficient: 1. information about the nature of selective perception processes of R&D decision making, 2. the objective functions (explicit and latent) which guide choices among alternative R&D investment opportunities, 3. the impact of R&D upon the positions of prime bargaining units organizations, and 4. the impacts of organizational structure and processes upon implementation of investment decisions. The first two categories of information relate to the question of what different decision units consider relevant in defining their problems and what they value. The last two categories relate to the organizational impact of R&D and the processes by which decisions are reached and implemented. These areas provide a focus for required additional research aimed at improvements in R&D decision making. This dissertation attempts to contribute to the first three areas of research outlined above. The focus in Chapter 2 is upon the impact of R&D in shifting resource shares of labour, capital and energy in the total output. Chapter 3 focuses upon processes of information selection in R&D decision making, identifying what environmental conditions are important to whom in making R&D investment decisions. Chapter 4 investigates multi-attribute preferences in R&D project selection. Each chapter draws some normative implications for R&D public policy, and the postscript identifies, promising areas for future research. Some of the major findings of this sequence of studies are: 1. Accepting a neoclassical framework of analysis, in most sectors, R&D has had no impact on input shares, indicating that scale and price effects dominate the structure of technology. Where R&D has had impact on the structure, it has sometimes had a labour using and sometimes a capital using bias. 2. Significant differences in patterns of attention to environmental conditions were identified. These differences are related to executive attributes and firm characteristics. 3. High concensus exists with respect to tradeoffs among project attributes across all firm-executive groupings. 4. Compensatory actuarial models provide a good fit with observations of R&D investment judgments. Some normative implications of the study for public policy include the following: 1. As R&D impact upon the economic objectives of the major bargaining units in firms is neutral in most cases, perhaps an effort should be made to eliminate technological development as part of the traditional arena of labour-management bargaining. 2. In creating favourable R&D investment climates, government ought to develop a sensitive strategy which recognizes explicitly the selective impact of single dimension interventions on alternative target populations. 3. The role of government as an independent insurance agent for R&D ventures is recommended to replace direct participation in project funding. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

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This thesis interrogates how China influences one of its neighboring regions, Southeast Asia, in the aspect of media. Issues of how China's growing influence extends to media coverage and framing of news involving China and China's engagement in Southeast Asia have been brought up but has not been examined with empirical evidence. The research questions of this thesis concern how China is presented in local reporting in Southeast Asian media and why it is framed as it is portrayed in news media in the region. This research considers whether China's political and financial interests through media ownership, funding, soft power, and other factors are exerting influence on media coverage in Southeast Asia. Drawing on theoretical contributions from the theory of the political economy of media, comparative media systems theory and the theory of public diplomacy, the thesis assesses the situations based on a case study of the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia by collecting and analyzing empirical data from these three Southeast Asian countries. The mix-method approach has been adopted in this study, which includes a quantitative content analysis on the news content of the selected Southeast Asian newspapers, and a qualitative analysis depending on semi-structured interviews with local media practitioners who share their understanding of journalistic routines and personal experiences in reporting China-related news in the field study. Some noteworthy findings have been drawn from the analysis. China has observable impacts on the media content in the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia, limited to certain aspects in relation to China's growing regional power. Philippine newspapers adopt considerably more negative frames than newspapers of Thailand and Cambodia. There are unwritten guidelines in their news outlets and certain principles that media practitioners in Southeast Asia need to follow when covering China-related issues.

This dissertation is a record of research into two distinct areas that are brought together to test the primary hypothesis. These two areas are; the general business cycle and its effects of the performance of construction companies and the methods by which general contractors in the building industry, are able to market and sell their services or products. In part one, it is shown that there is a relationship between the business cycle and the demand for construction. The latter expands and contracts in sympathy with the cycle. The effects of the changes in the level of demand for buildings are analyzed and fully described, resulting in a model· which can be used to determine the sequence of effects for each phase of the business cycles. In part two, the methods by which contractors are selected and sell their service or product are analyzed and compared. The usage of each system is measured and it is found that change has occurred, the reasons for such change are investigated in order to gain an insight into potential future developments. This has been done in a way that is intended to strip the subject of it's mystique and confusion of terminology by the application of basic economic and marketing principles. New and improved terminology is suggested. The findings show that construction contractors can choose from a variety of 'selling systems'. These systems will provide competitive advantage to those who are able to predict the likely turning points of the business cycle and use those 'selling systems' that are appropriate to specific stages of the business cycle. The research was conducted by finding, analyzing and interpreting various time series data, by surveying architects quantity surveyors and contractors for facts and figures that were not available elsewhere, and by conducting a through survey of published books, articles and research papers.

In chapter 1, I study long term contracts in retail electricity markets. Deregulation of retail electricity markets gives consumer choices over contracts of different lengths. Long term contracts allow consumers to hedge against future price increase, but they can be more expensive than spot contracts. There is little empirical evidence on how consumers value long term contracts. Using a dataset from an incumbent retailer containing 10-year panel of consumer contract choice data, this paper analyzes consumers' valuations of long term contracts. I first document that a significant percentage of consumers actively choose long term contracts when they are more expensive than shorter contracts. To quantify the value of long term contracts and welfare implication of product innovation after retail deregulation, I build and estimate a dynamic model that incorporates risk preference, price expectations and consumer inertia. Counterfactual calculation shows that on average consumers gain about 6% per month from long term contracts. In chapter 2, I quantify the effect of introducing large-scale renewable energy on the wholesale electricity market. Renewable energy capacity has increased in many markets as renewable is crucial to reduce emission in the energy sector. More than 8GWh of wind capacity has been added in Texas between 2014 and 2017. Using hourly data from Texas, I find increasing daily wind energy production results in statistically significant reduction of wholesale electricity price for all hours of the day except 10pm, and the effect is larger during peak hours. Increasing wind production reduces output from both coal and natural gas power plants. Using hours when no transmission limit is binding and load is above 50th percentile in the load distribution, I find increasing hourly wind production reduces offer prices submitted by owners of fossil fuel power plants. In chapter 3, I study the effect of transmission limit on market outcomes. Wholesale electricity markets are often subject to transmission constraints that prevent efficient dispatch of power. Increasing renewable capacity demands transmission infrastructure investment. In 2011 to 2013, Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) constructed several high voltage transmission lines from the wind-rich west Texas to demand centers. Using data on electricity production, demand, price and information on grid congestion, this paper shows that an increase of 100MW in the transmission limit from the West to the North reduces the hourly output of fossil fuel generators in the North by 71.1MWh and decreases the price in the North by 0.17$/MWh when the transmission constraint from the West to the North is binding. Meanwhile, the increase of the transmission limit reduces dispatch of coal and combined cycle gas power plants in the North, but increases production of simple cycle and steam gas power plants in the North.

New federal legislation proposes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with biofuel production. To comply, existing corn ethanol plants will have to invest in new more carbon efficient production technology such as dry fractionation. However, this will be challenging for the industry given the present financial environment of surplus production, recent profit declines, numerous bankruptcies, and lender imposed covenants. This study examines a dry-mill ethanol firm's ability to invest in dry fractionation technology in the face of declining profitability and stringent lender cash flow repayment constraints. Firm level risk aversion also is considered when determining a firm's willingness to invest in dry fractionation technology. A Monte Carlo simulation model is constructed to estimate firm profits, cash flows, and changes in equity following new investment in fractionation to determine an optimal investment strategy. The addition of a lender-imposed sweep, whereby a percentage of free cash flow is used to pay off extra debt in high profit years, reduces the firm's ability to build equity and increases bankruptcy risk under investment. However, the sweep increases long-run equity because total financing costs are reduced with accelerated debt repayment. This thesis shows that while ethanol firm profits are uncertain, the lender's imposition of a sweep combined with increased profit from dry fractionation technology help the firm increase long-run financial resiliency.

This study uses linear programming and econometric tools to determine the impact of agricultural productivity (technology) on agricultural exports. The study determines total factor productivity (TFP) using the Malmquist index method for a panel of 64 countries. Productivity impact on exports is determined by a two-stage estimation procedure. The results show agricultural productivity affects agricultural exports. This has important implications for developing countries. A 1 unit change in cumulative TFP increases agricultural output by .79% and a 1% increase in estimated agricultural output increases exports by .37%. Therefore, the total effect of technology on exports of primary and processed commodities is .29%. Developed countries generally have higher TFP rates, leading to higher export earnings; meanwhile, developing countries are not getting the benefits from agricultural exports because they have a relatively lower level of agricultural productivity. Investing in research and development for agriculture can improve technology, which, in turn, can Increase agricultural exports.

During the last decade the responsibility for the education of exceptional children has very rapidly become a function of the public schools. With the inflationary spiral that the economy of the nation has faced during this same period it has become increasingly more difficult for school districts to assume the financial burden that these classes place upon them.

Understanding firm behavior is key to understand the process of economic development. Firm choices affect labor market outcomes and the economy’s ability to increase productivity and living standards. In this dissertation, I study two important aspects of firm behavior: technological upgrading and exporting. In the first chapter, I analyze the role of adoption costs and technological complementarities in the process of managerial upgrading, and propose a feasible way to promote the adoption of better management practices by firms. Using a regression discontinuity strategy, I show that a subsidy to certify process standards, such as ISO 9001, increases certification probability and, additionally, induces the adoption of modern management practices that are beyond the standards’ scope. The managerial improvement is concentrated in monitoring and target-setting practices, while no change is detected in practices related to incentives for employees. These findings are consistent with a model in which process documentation, which is required by the standards, and modern management practices are complementary and suggest that subsidizing the certification of process standards is a feasible way to improve management. While the first chapter focuses on the adoption of an already known technology, the second chapter is concerned with the capacity of R&D subsidies to induce the adoption of new technologies in companies. Despite their popularity, there is little evidence of the effect R&D subsidies on the adoption of new technologies by companies. Using a regression discontinuity strategy, I show that an R&D subsidy program in Peru was not able to induce the adoption of new products and processes by beneficiary firms. Qualitative evidence suggests that the main obstacles were not the technical challenges of developing the new technologies, but their implementation. Together with the results presented in the first chapter, these findings suggest that firms’ lack of capacity to handle complex projects might be an important barrier for the success of policy interventions to promote technological upgrading. In the third chapter, co-authored with Judith A. Frías, David S. Kaplan, and Eric Verhoogen, we explore the impact of exports on wage premia. There is evidence showing that exporting firms pay higher average wages. However, it is still unclear whether these results are due to to changes in the wage premia or changes in workforce composition. In our study, we use employer-employee and longitudinal plant data from Mexico to address this question. We do so by decomposing plant-level average wages into a component reflecting wage premia and a component reflecting workers’ skill composition. Using the late-1994 peso devaluation interacted with initial plant size as a source of exogenous variation in exports, we find that exports have a significant positive effect on wage premia, and that the effect on wage premia accounts for essentially all of the medium-term effect of exporting on plant-average wages.