The issue of development in emerging markets has moved on from the polarized debates along ideological lines about the state vs. markets, to focusing mainly on economic indicators. Increasingly, as knowledge becomes the main focus of development, it is acknowledged that the state can play a positive role in promoting its growth. To try and analyse these developments, it is imperative that we appreciate the role of differing business systems that impose constraints on development, especially in influencing capital allocation in the system. The emergence of cybercities in impoverished developing countries like India need to be analysed to appreciate the factors that will influence the trends in development - the success of such cities can be attributed to the positive role played by the state and the clustering of software industries around centres of knowledge. We develop frameworks to analyse to compare the existing forms of corporate governance, and a third system for emerging economies such as Asia or Europe. We also develop frameworks to analyse market exchange and alternative frameworks from modern and pre-modern societies, in order to understand the nature of exchange in intangible and inalienable assets such as knowledge. We apply these frameworks to Indian software industry to give us an insight into how India has managed to emerge as a significant player in the software industry. We conclude that the political embeddedness of the various institutions and organisations are playing a critical role in shaping its business systems which is at the crossroads between a pluralist shareholder and corporatist stakeholder system. Also, these factors are forcing the Indian software industry to focus on the lower end of the value chain.

This dissertation tries to contribute to empirically assess hypotheses of the "New Economic Geography". Specifically, we tested the relevance of the combination of lower transportation cost with the role of economies of scale in explaining the regional distribution of total activity and of industrial activity. Economies of scale are assumed to be due to "backward and forward" linkages among firms. We also took into account congestion effects and asymmetry among regions. The model was tested for the regions of Brazil, in the period 1950-1995 and 1970-1995, and for the regions of India, in the period 1961-1991. Using panel results, we observed that transportation costs were generating concentration of total activity in the periods 1950-1995 arid 1950- 1970. For these samples, there is evidence that economies of scales were a cause of concentration of total activity. Other forces, not explained by the model, were generating dispersion and so were congestion effects. For the period 1970-1995, we found that congestion effects and lower transportation cost were helping to disperse economic activity, in the panel results. Economies of scale were not, contrary to the model's predictions, helping economic growth. In the case of Brazil, for the 18-state samples, industrial activity tended to concentrated due to the effects of lower transportation cost, although higher industrial growth rates were a characteristic of the states with less economies of scales. In the case of India, strong concentration effects were taking place, both due to lower transportation cost and due to other reasons. Economies of scale were not important in the explanation of the path of India activity.

The purpose of this project was to establish whether or not the development of black owned businesses has been impeded by policies and practices in environmental planning. This question was explored in a series of operational hypotheses using data collected in Leicester for the period 1971-81. The main sources of data were a large sample of planning applications records and an extensive survey of businesses who had applied for planning permission since 1984. It was found that Asian businesses had grown in number during the period and had shown increasing spatial dispersal and sectoral diversification. Some of this growth was the result of the displacement of white businesses. There was also evidence that the formation of new Asian firms contributed to increased activity in the local economy. The increase in economic activity generated demands for additional commercial space. This demand was often frustrated by the refusal of planning permission which occurred twice as often for Asian businesses as for white businesses. The high levels of refusal of planning permission were consistent with the restrictive nature of planning policies in respect of commercial land uses. There was no evidence that black businesses were discriminated against directly. The hypothesis that there was indirect racial discrimination arising out of differing policy impacts on different racial groups was found to be untestable. The apparent disadvantage of black businesses in planning terms was related to their inner city location and their relative lack of influence on local politics. The latter attribute was characterised as a perception-gap that exists between planners and entrepreneurs. These problems could be addressed by placing increased emphasis on personal contacts between planners and applicants and in the creative use of existing inner city policy instruments.

Recent estimates of Vietnamese GDP during the colonial era show a large gap between Tonkin and Cochinchina: per capita GDP in Tonkin was less than half the per capita GDP in Cochinchina from 1900 to 1940. The aim of this thesis is to understand this gap: its origins, nature and impact. Although most scholars of Vietnamese economic history acknowledged this gap, it has never been studied and only a few suggestions for its origin exist. In this thesis, we revisit these suggestions. Firstly, we establish that demographic differences certainly had an impact on the economic performance of the country, not only through an impact on potential yields but also through an impact on land and labour utilisation. Secondly, we show that the colonial policy did not explain the origin of the economic gap, but that it may have perpetuated circumstances that led to it. Next, we evaluate the nature of this gap: how did the productive sectors (agrarian, industrial and commercial) of the economies of Tonkin and Cochinchina differ? We find that production patterns differed markedly between Tonkin and Cochinchina. In Tonkin, diversification and production for the home market defined its production possibilities and its economic performance. In Cochinchina, specialisation and engagement with the international economy defined its production possibilities and economic performance. The regions' different production patterns were responsible for their different engagement with the international economy. Finally, we investigate the way in which the economic gap between the two regions affected the living standards of their populations. We find that despite a large GDP per capita gap, the living standards of the rural populations of Tonkin and Cochinchina differed only marginally. Even in the urban sectors where there was a significant gap between the two regions, it was only a fraction of the one suggested by GDP estimates.

Microfinance has gained prominence as a policy option for addressing poverty. Although microfinance has a long history, its growing appeal is usually associated with the attention given to the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which pioneered group-based lending to poor women. Following the ‘successes of Grameen and the promotion of ‘cloned’ institutions, advocacy for microfinance has focussed primarily on microcredit. Consequently, microfinance as savings, insurance, and other forms of financial intermediation received far less attention. It was believed that microcredit was a more reliable and faster means to achieve poverty reduction, especially through supporting the entrepreneurialism of the poor. Microcredit then became a mantra of the microfinance sector, increasingly identified as its ‘raison d’être’ and the justification for the investment of billions for dollars. This thesis focuses on the relationship between microfinance and poverty. It puts savings at the centre of the research through an analysis of a savings-led financial services co-operative known as the ‘Village Banks’ in South Africa. The research considers the asserted link between microfinance and poverty from both a theoretical and empirical interrogation. It questions the limited engagement that the microfinance literature has had with the various theories on poverty and attempts to formulate a more nuanced understanding of relations between the two. The empirical contribution is a mixed method of qualitative analysis, in the form of focus groups held in four different Village Bank communities, and quantitative analysis from an original panel of households in one community. The thesis argues that a savings-led model of microfinance has the ability to contribute to the challenges of poverty reduction more than is currently acknowledged. It will also argue that, when provided with the necessary support, member-owned financial institutions, such as the Village Banks, offer a potential solution to addressing the inherent challenges of providing low-cost banking services in rural areas.

This thesis consists of three independent chapters on Chinese economy. The first chapter examines the impact of import tariff reduction and its interaction with market-oriented policies on regional manufacturing employment in China between 1998 and 2006. I address the concerns of tariff endogeneity by exploiting the fact that tariffs of WTO members are bound by common exogenous WTO regulations. The IV estimates suggest that a reduction in tariffs on final goods increases employment while decline in input tariffs reduces employment in economic zones. Yet, opposite effects are found in non-economic zones. The differential impact is mainly driven by reallocation of labour to economic zones and, in particular, to foreign-invested enterprises and exporting firms. The second chapter models firm hiring across local labour markets and estimates the role of distinct regional labour markets in firm input use, productivity and location using firm and population census data. Considering modern China as a country with substantial regional variation, the results suggest that labour costs vary by 30-80%, leading to 3-17% differences in total factor productivity once non-labour inputs are considered. Favourably endowed regions attract more value added per capita, providing new insights into within-country comparative advantage and specialization. The last chapter investigates the effects of schooling on occupational status and children’s educational attainment using trend deviations in graduation rates during the Chinese Cultural Revolution as instruments of schooling. The results show that education increases the likelihood of obtaining an off-farm and white-collar job. Also, there is evidence of causal relationship between parent’s and children’s education.

Developing countries have received foreign aid and other forms of capital flows for a long time, although they have been subject to some fluctuations. The key question is whether these flows have helped them in achieving their objectives? Aid has been evaluated at two levels: micro and macro. While micro evaluations have found that in most cases aid 'works' (for example Cassen et al., 1986), those at the macro-level are ambiguous. This thesis is predominantly concerned with the macroeconomic impact of foreign aid. There have been considerable efforts to improve both the theoretical and empirical literature on aid effectiveness, both suffer from serious weaknesses and shortcomings. At the theoretical level, there are not many models which capture the full potential of foreign aid within a consistent, fully specified, growth framework, while existing empirical studies are flawed by model mispecification, questionable sample composition and size, and inappropriate econometric techniques. This has led to inconclusive and often misleading results in assessing the effectiveness of foreign aid. This thesis attempts to address some of these deficiencies. The impact of aid is mainly assessed on growth and savings in developing countries. Before testing its impact, aid is introduced into some growth models. Cases are analysed where an economy, after initial aid flows, can become independent of aid and experience sustained growth through its ability to raise labour efficiency. On the empirical front, two techniques are used: a preliminary statistical analysis is performed, followed by an econometric analysis. The former allows a better understanding of the geographical distribution of aid, the link and any correlation between the macro variables: aid, growth, savings and investment. Since aid flows have been influenced by major international shocks (e. g. oil price shocks, debt crises, etc.), a simple taxonomy is used to indicate how these events have influenced the effectiveness of aid. Using a macroeconometric model from Fischer-Easterly to control for the recipients' macroeconomic environment (previously overlooked in the literature), a positive and significant impact of foreign aid on growth is found. This result is confirmed using both cross-section and panel data for the period of 1970-1993. We make use of Hall's (1978) life cycle/permanent income hypothesis, but do not find evidence that current aid flows leak into consumption, hence rejecting the fungibility hypothesis. Although much further work concerning the developmental effectiveness of aid remains to be carried out, it is hoped that this study will stimulate improved techniques and methods used in testing the effectiveness of aid in future work.

As from early 1960s, the question of whether aid works has been a central theme in development economics. The continued effort to analyse the effects of aid only now appears to be nearing consensus. A close examination of the literature suggests that there are certain aspects that are critical to this strand of studies that have not been fully addressed. In this thesis, we make a contribution by throwing light on three such issues that relate to the macroeconomic effectiveness of aid. Aid does not have a direct effect on growth; it operates via transmission mechanisms. Their role has not been given due consideration in the empirical literature. Our first objective is to revisit the question of aid effectiveness while taking into account the important effects through these mechanisms. Using generated regressors, we purge aid effect on these various mediators and obtain a coefficient on aid that gives a measure of the total effect aid has on growth. Our results consistently show that aid has had a positive effect on growth, largely through aid-financed investment and that Africa's poor growth record should not be attributed to aid ineffectiveness. Our second objective relates to the non-linear aspects that would seem to characterise the aid-growth link. This has consistently been represented by an 'aid squared' term and recently been referred to as the aid Laffer effect as proposed by Lensink and White (2001). Using a threshold model, we directly test the assumptions underlying this hypothesis. Contrary to an aid Laffer curve, we find that aid becomes effective beyond a certain critical level and human capital enhances its effects at higher aid levels. Hence, we find no evidence of diminishing returns in aid. Although, marginal impact of aid on growth does become weaker as human capital exceeds some high level. Overall, it seems that an 'aid squared' term is not an appropriate representation of the non-linearity in aid-growth link. Finally, we contribute to the limited literature on aid and welfare of the poor. Our findings consistently show that aid is associated with increases in welfare indicators. We highlight the role of pro-poor public spending as the channel through which aid improves welfare. These indirect effects are captured using residual generated regressors. Quantile regression estimates suggest that aid effects on human development vary across the welfare distribution; effects are more significant in economies located at the lower end of this distribution. Finally, we find that improving welfare may just be another way to promote growth in developing countries.

Current debates concerning the future of social security provision in advanced capitalist states have raised a citizens‟ basic income (CBI) as a possible reform package. The proposal is based on the principles of individuality, universality and unconditionality and ensures a minimum income guarantee for all members of society. Implementing a CBI, thus, entails radical reform of existing patterns of welfare delivery and would bring into question the institutionalized relationship between work and welfare, upon which modern welfare states are premised. It follows that the practice of arguing for a CBI has tended to concentrate on issues regarding the role of the state in providing income security for all citizens and, in particular, to issues pertaining to the world of paid work. However such a concentration indicates bias in the approach to study and serves to confine the welfare reform agenda. The purpose of this thesis is to make a positive contribution to the CBI literature by examining the proposal from a feminist economics perspective. It is argued that a CBI has the potential to promote equal rights of freedom for men and women and provides the basis for the development and sustainability of new and liberating patterns of working and living. However, this particular aspect of the proposal will never be fully considered as long as the analytical framework employed is dominated by an adherence to neo-classical economic theory. Embracing a feminist economics perspective allows for the identification of the androcentric bias inherent within the neo-classical construct and further provides an alternative methodological approach that serves to open up the debate to incorporate a more realistic vision of the nature of modern socio-economic relationships.

This thesis concerns the construction and testing of an annual forecasting econometric model for the Greek economy between 1954 and 1977. The economic structure has been broken down into several subsectors and statistical analysis has been employed to determine the main factors explaining the relationships in each subsector. The work is divided into ten chapters. After a brief introduction giving the background of the Greek economy in outline, the second chapter describes the statistical procedures employed and some of the problems encountered in econometric work, with their suggested solutions. A detailed description of the factor analysis technique is given, as this technique has been extensively employed in the Two Stage Least Squares (TSLS) and reduced form estimations. The Chapters 3-9 deal with the particular subsectors of the economy, i.e. consumption expenditure (Chapter 3), the effect of wealth on consumption (Chapter 4), the determination of investment (Chapter 5), employment, taxes (Chapter 6), international transactions (Chapter 7), wages and prices (Chapter 8) and the financial sector (Chapter 9). Each subsector has been examined in the context of economic theory and specific models have been tested to determine functions which explain the relationships in the various subsectors satisfactorily. In the last chapter all subsectors are brought together to estimate the reduced form of the structure, both as a simultaneous system and blockwise. The technique of factor analysis was employed. Orthogonal and oblique rotation of the factors were used in order to determine their differences, if any, and which one tracks the data better, in simulations within the sample period. The selected reduced form was used to generate forecasts and also to test the properties of some multipliers. A summary of the results of the whole work is finally given.