It has long been argued in the mainstream literature that workers in large firms earn higher wages than those in smaller firms. This phenomenon is recognised as an important puzzle that explains wage disparities in labour markets. This thesis analyses the link between firm size and wages in the Zimbabwean manufacturing sector and it is structured around three main research questions: (1) What is the link between firm size and wages in the formal and informal manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe? (2) Is there a firm-size wage premium in the formal and informal manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe? (3) If yes, what are the sources of the firm-size wage premium? The analysis of the study draws on the Matched Employer-Employee manufacturing firm-level survey dataset for formal and informal sector firms and workers that was collected in 2015. Using this dataset, we are able to distinguish between theories that attribute wage disparities to worker heterogeneity and those that hypothesise the importance of firm heterogeneity, which advances the existing literature by including the informal sector and a developing country case. We then apply the Mincerian wage regression approach to determine the magnitude, significance, and sources, of the firm size-wage premium. We control for a variety of human capital, individual, job, and firm characteristics to determine the source of the firm size wage relationship. The empirical results indicate a positive and significant association between firm size and wages in both the formal and informal sectors, as theoretically expected. The firm-size premium is more nuanced in the informal sector. Human capital endowments are found to contribute to the firm size-wage relations, at least for the formal sector. Job characteristics did not explain major variation in firm-size wage relationships. Thus, apart from human capital characteristics, most theories cannot explain the wage premium received by large firms. The results further indicate that capital intensity and firm productivity are important in shaping the firm size wage premium, although they did not alter the size effect much.

The Springfield Armory is widely recognized as having played a key role in the development of interchangeable parts and precision manufacturing. The Armory, in implementing Ordnance Department policies, acted as an inadvertent industrial policy by developing and diffusing “best practice” production techniques. The Armory acted as the central coordination agency within an early network of arms manufacturers and materials suppliers and provided valuable services and information that facilitated rapid industrialization along the “Precision Corridor” of the Connecticut River Valley.

This dissertation presents a Marxian class analytic theory of economic reproduction and growth. The approach developed herein uses social accounting matrices and a simple two-sector growth model to extend the conventional boundary of class theory from the individual site to a group of heterogeneous sites exchanging commodities and money. The growth model is based on Marx's theory of reproduction, which serves as a baseline, but also introduces unproductive labor, distribution among multiple competing groups, technological change, and changes in the rate of exploitation. Several simulations examine the potential effects of these issues on different groups within an aggregate class structure. This aggregate class structure approach is contrasted with other Marxian theories of social development and change, mode of production and social formation theory in particular. The origin and development of the mode of production and social formation approach to social theory is extensively surveyed and critiqued. Particular attention is paid to the social ontology underpinning this approach and to the relationship between this approach and Hegel's philosophy of history. A significant finding of this dissertation is that while the mode of production and social formation approach to social theory attributes a deterministic role to the economy, class analytic Marxian economic theory finds no support for this thesis and instead indicates that economic and non-economic factors reciprocally condition, and indeed constitute, one another.

The rise of the market economy in colonial Massachusetts has always been of concern to economic historians. The ascendance of modern day American capitalism owes much to this latter day transition. Many economic historians attribute the growth of the market and the rise of capitalism in Massachusetts to the intrusion of external forces and/or to certain unchangeable human tendencies to "truck, barter and seek profits." But these prevailing explanations are riddled with ironies and unanswered questions. For example, the Puritan ideology, which dominated religious and secular life in Massachusetts (1650-1750) included a strong anti-market, anti-profit component. How was it possible for "external" forces to overcome this all pervasive ideology? Indeed, why did capitalist relations develop first in that region of North America that was philosophically most opposed to its growth? Secondly, the rise of the market system and of capitalism was a process which took place overtime. Therefore, how can we theoretically characterize the pre-capitalist economy in colonial Massachusetts, given the widely held consensus that feudalism did not exist in the North American colonies or at least in Massachusetts? This dissertation employes a theoretically rigorous class analysis to address these and other related questions in an overall attempt to explain the basis for the origins of capitalism in Massachusetts by 1800. The study covers the period 1620-1800, a span of time which encompasses the early settlements by 'Pilgrims' and 'Puritans' through the birth of the North American nation. The first chapter defines and explains the key concepts and methodological approach of the dissertation. The second chapter, perhaps the key theoretical chapter, defines the variety of non-capitalist class relations present in early 17th Century Massachusetts. These included ancient relations, feudal relations, slavery, as well as their subsumed classes--merchants, clergy, government officials, etc. The third and fourth chapters deal with the interactions between these classes 1640-1800. Specifically, we examine how each class in society struggled to maintain the economic, political and cultural conditions necessary to insure its own existence. In the very process of this endeavor, however, the structure of classes and the economy itself changed, as conflicts and contradictions were intensified and resolved. Thus, the development of new classes, new economic structures can be seen as a complex process of structural growth and change rather than a series of external intrusions or the blossoming of inherent human propensities.

This dissertation investigates whether or not there is a clear break between neoclassical economics (up to the 1970s) and the contemporary mainstream economic approaches. The term “contemporary mainstream economic approaches” refers to a seemingly heterogeneous set of approaches that include, among others, new institutional economics, new information economics, social choice theory, behavioral economics, evolutionary game theory, and experimental economics. In this dissertation, in contrast to those who declare the “death of neoclassical economics” and find a clear break (i.e., rupture, paradigm shift) between neoclassical economics and the number of contemporary mainstream approaches listed above, I conclude that these seemingly disparate approaches constitute a unified discursive formation articulated around the theoretical problematic of theoretical humanism that they share not only with one another but also with neoclassical economics. For this reason, in order to underscore the philosophico-theoretical as well as the historico-genealogical continuity between neoclassical economics (up to the 1970s) and the contemporary mainstream economic approaches, I shall refer to the latter as late neoclassical economics. In the late neoclassical context, neither the essentialist notions of human subject that involve self-transparency, autonomy, rationality, and intentional agency nor the ontologies of concordance, harmony, order and equilibrium are thoroughly scrutinized. On the contrary, the late neoclassical context is characterized by a concerted and multipronged effort to extend the scope of application of these notions and ontologies either by way of broadening and enriching their meanings or by way of introducing newer concepts that formulate the problem in slightly different ways (e.g., static versus dynamic, general versus partial, price-adjustment versus market-adjustment, cooperative versus non-cooperative) that would not necessarily address, but essentially sidestep, the problems that trouble the earlier formulations. In fact, in this sense, the contemporary mainstream economics is nothing but the shape that neoclassical economics has taken as a mature and developed theoretical tradition.

The purpose of this thesis is to answer the following question : Ii the E.E.C. in fact a legal model for greater economic integration in Southern Africa? Part One of the thesis provides a description of the organization of the E.E.C After a brief historical introduction, Section One analyses the Community's main institutions : their composition, their function, and their decision-making mechanisms. The different legal instruments of Community law, the relationship between this law and traditional international law on the one hand and the national law of the member states on the other, the interaction between the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament as well as the financing of the organization are also considered in some detail. Section Two examines some of its most important spheres of activity, namely, free movement of goods, free movement of persons, freedom to provide services, free movement of capital, the rules on competition, regional policy, fiscal harmonization and V.A.T., legal equalization processes and transport. A definition of the internal market and an account of other innovations introduced by the Single European Act in the field of the organization's activities concludes this section on the E.E.C Part Two deals with the principal organizations of economic cooperation in Africa, of which South Africa is not a member, and examines to what extent the African continent has been influenced by this European experience. After a short historical account leading to the existence of these African organizations, each kind of institution in these different organizations is dealt with separately in Section One, particular attention being given to their composition, their functions, and their different legal instruments. This is followed by a study of the law of these organizations and to what extent it differs from the traditional international law, as well as the interaction between the different institutions and the financing of these organizations. Section Two examines the main fields of activity of the organizations studied in this Part, namely, the suppression of customs duties, the common customs tariff, the removal of technical barriers to trade, free movement of persons, freedom to provide services, free movement of capital, transport and communication, natural resources, social and cultural matters, regional policies, industrial development, and other fields of activity. Part Three is divided into three chapters. The first one is the study of the principal instruments of multilateral economic cooperation to which South Africa belongs, that is, the Southern African Customs Union, and Monetary Area and the Economic Community of Southern Africa. The second Chapter presents general comparisons between the institutional structure of the organizations, their fields of activity, as well as the supranationalism which they could eventually enjoy. Finally, the third Chapter consists of conclusions which .are of a more personal note, that is to say, a presentation of an original system based on the study made in this thesis, particularly of the E.E.C., a system which, in my opinion, could be applied to the internal law in South Africa and at the same time could offer a model of economic and political integration in Southern Africa.

This dissertation consists of two essays in Game Theory with Incomplete Information. The common theme of the essays pertains to the interpretation and origin of incomplete information in strategic situations. In the first essay, I study bargaining between a buyer and a seller when the buyer can invest in generating outside options at a cost, and the seller cannot observe his investment choice. I model the negotiation phase as an incentive compatible and ex-post individually rational direct mechanism, which maximizes a weighted average of the buyer's and seller's expected payoff. When the weight on the buyer is larger, trade happens with certainty, the price equals the seller’s cost, and the buyer does not invest in generating outside options. When the weight on the seller is larger, the optimal mechanism is a posted price mechanism at the worst outside option that the buyer could have, provided that the cost function of the buyer is decreasing in first order stochastic dominance. The probability of trade is strictly below 1, even if it would be socially efficient to trade. In the second essay, I propose a notion of Rationalizability, called Incomplete Preference Rationalizability, for games with incomplete preferences. Under an appropriate topological condition, the incomplete preference rationalizable set is non-empty and compact. I argue that incomplete orderings can be used to model incomplete information in strategic settings. Drawing on this connection, I show that in games with private values the sets of incomplete preference rationalizable actions, of belief-free rationalizable actions (Battigalli et al., 2011, Bergemann and Morris, 2017), and of interim correlated rationalizable actions (Dekel et al., 2007) of the universal type space coincide.

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