Steam and screw propeller took a long time to displace sail in coastal bulk trades: 60 years compared with the 20 years needed for steam and the paddle to dominate coastal liner trades. As this thesis confirms, conquering the bulk trades was a much more difficult undertaking. To offset far greater capital and running costs, the developer of the steam bulk carrier could offer only that his steamer, largely independent of weather and tide, would carry significantly more cargo in a given period than a sailing vessel. This thesis demonstrates how, to fulfil this promise, many obstacles had to be overcome, including the high cost of iron hulls and steam engines, the inefficiency of early steam engines and boilers, the water ballast problem, slowness of discharge, archaic port practices, and physical constraints of ports and waterways. The findings suggest that, in the rise of the steam bulk carrier, the role of the railways should be diminished, and that of the gas industry accentuated. The impact of rail competition on the London collier trade was no more than a pinprick when the first screw collier was building, and the coal market's subsequent growth was so strong that the steady increase in rail-hauled coal barely dented the tonnage delivered by sea from the north east. On the other hand, without the gas industry's demand for large, regular and guaranteed deliveries, the coal interests would probably not have encouraged the development of the screw collier when they did.

The aim of this thesis is to apply computer technology, specifically data management systems, (commonly referred to as computer databases) to the study of the social history of the Royal Navy of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815). The muster, and to a lesser extent, pay and log books of three British Royal Navy frigates of the period HMS Trent, Amazon and Glenmore have been transcribed onto a series of Microsoft Access databases. The databases have then been interrogated in order to produce statistical information that has been applied to specific questions relating to the social history of the Royal Navy of the period. The emphasis of the thesis is the men of the lower deck although one chapter looks specifically at commissioned officer development. The major questions addressed revolve around the duties of the ships and men (Chapter 2)recruitment of men to the three ships (Chapter 3), the use of child labour (Chapter 4), the recruitment and development of volunteers new to the sea (Chapter 5)and the development and career prospects of midshipmen. The thesis provides a unique view of the men and boys who served on board Royal Navy vessels of the period that is not reliant on controversial memoirs but concentrates on exploiting primary sources recorded on a day-to-day basis. The findings demonstrate that the use of computer databases is a powerful weapon in the naval historian's armoury and have made a significant contribution towards answering some important social questions regarding the lower deck of Nelson's navy.

Thesis--Hamburg. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-335).

This thesis focuses on the genesis and development of direct taxation in early New Zealand. During the study period (1843-45), both taxpayers and tax were new to the colonial settlement and this study traces the early history of the two trying to accommodate each other. Between 1843 and 1845, subject to the politics of tax, the fiscal future of the colony was decided. The thesis begins by contextualising the study. It critically examines the revenue and expenditure record of the Crown Colony period and then details the antecedents of New Zealand fiscal policy in general and specifically tax policy (our shared English heritage). Thereafter, four interesting events in New Zealand tax law are discussed: (1) Schedule E of the British Land and Income Tax Act, 1842 (arrived in New Zealand 1843); (2) The Property Rate Ordinance, 1844; (3) the proposed Amendment to the Property Rate Ordinance, 1844; and, (4) the proposed Dealers’ Licensing Ordinance in 1845. After analysing the period’s individual direct tax laws, the thesis elaborates on the political process which determined the development of this body of tax laws. Thereafter, the thesis develops a conceptual model to explain the tax reform process of the study period. The thesis finds that tax policy during the study period was driven by four key influences: crisis (internal/external and economic); political considerations; the application of sound nineteenth-century economic policy; and importantly, the precedent of another nation’s experience with tax policy development. To have knowledge of such events in economic history (the past record of tax law), how and why they occurred, matters. Just as a nation’s financial accounts are built on the foundations of the previous fiscal year, future taxation policy will be based on current taxation policy; tax laws which were developed from past (historic) tax practices. Therefore, knowledge of how New Zealand formulated tax policy in the past and why it did so, is of interest to fiscal policy makers today. Future tax policy is simply a derivation of past tax laws; the development of New Zealand’s taxation policy began in New South Wales in 1839, and thereafter began, what this thesis suggests, was a predictable, evolutionary process.

The regulation of hedge funds has been at the centre of a global policy debate for much of the past decade. Several factors feature in this debate including the magnitude of current global investments in hedge funds and the potential of hedge funds to both generate wealth and destabilise financial markets. The first part of the thesis describes the nature of hedge funds and locates the work in relation to four elements in existing theory including regulatory competition theory, the concept of differential mobility as identified by Musgrave, Kane’s concept of the regulatory dialectic between regulators and regulatees, and the concept of unique sets of trust and confidence factors that individual jurisdictions convey to the market. It also identifies a series of questions that de-limit the scope of the present work. These include whether there is evidence that regulatory competition occurs in the context of the provision of domicile for hedge funds, what are the factors which account for the current global distribution of hedge fund domicile, what latitude for regulatory competition is available to jurisdictions competing to provide the domicile for hedge funds, how is such latitude shaped by factors intrinsic and extrinsic to the competing jurisdictions, and why do the more powerful onshore jurisdictions competing to provide the domicile for hedge funds not shut down their smaller and weaker competitors? The second part of the thesis examines the regulatory environment for hedge funds in three so-called offshore jurisdictions, specifically the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands, as well as two onshore jurisdictions, specifically the United Kingdom and the United States. The final section presents a series of conclusions and their implications for both regulatory competition theory and policy.