Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / Since the end of the cold war and the transition from a centrally-planned to market-oriented economic system, the Russian economy has undergone a staggering and incomplete economic transformation. International financial and technical assistance played a significant role in the evolution of the Russian economy. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) took a central role in the Russian transition process through the provision of technical and, more importantly, financial assistance, it was able to attach significant conditions to the use of its funds. These conditions ranged from the reform of markets, government revenues and expenditures, to the role of the public sector in the emerging market economy. An unanswered and increasingly important question is whether IMF conditionality has promoted or hindered economic reform and more importantly economic performance. This thesis argues that IMF conditionality combined with mistakes by the Russian government created the 1998 financial crisis. / Lieutenant, United States Navy

The social responsibility of corporations has become a topical issue. This is particularly so in relation to the ways and means of achieving harmony and congruency with social expectations. With the growing importance that corporations now place on meeting contemporary demands for extra-commercial engagement placed on them by society, regulating corporate activity in this area has come under intense public and legal scrutiny. In what can be described as a departure from the norm, the use of legislation to mandate and govern corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming increasingly perceived as an effective regulatory method in emerging economies. India, Mauritius, Indonesia and the Philippines have adopted legislation with regard to CSR. In Nigeria, however, several attempts at legislating on CSR have failed. This study shows that a multiplicity of factors is responsible for this development. This thesis posits that while the adoption of international CSR standards is encouraged through various international activities, only an autochthonous approach which recognises the peculiarities of the Nigerian state can promote the desired legislative objective on mandating CSR. This study explores the prospects of mandating CSR by legislation in Nigeria and suggests reforms deemed necessary for achieving the objective of mandatory CSR.

Three macroeconomic issues are examined in separate self-contained studies. The first study tests the business cycle theory with application of an enhanced Augmented Dickey-Fuller test on the U.S. time series of real gross national product. Unlike previous studies, the null hypothesis of a unit root is rejected. The second study tests for IS-LM conditions in the U.S. during the post-Bretton Woods era by combining the Johansen's approach to cointegration with bootstrap algorithms. The estimated model produces a dynamic version of the IS-LM that permits short-term evaluations of fiscal and monetary policies. The third study seeks to explain the observed persistence in the Bolivan dollarization process. It is found that dollarization is now an irreversible process, with the Bolivian economy in transition toward equalization with U.S. prices and interest rates.

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The purpose of this thesis is to analyze Swedish entrepreneurs and how they recognize opportunities in transition economies. In order to reach the intention of thesis, a case study of three Swedish firms have been conducted with interviews. Theoretical framework consists of the entrepreneurship theory, opportunity recognition process and innovations which all are relevant to the study and research questions. The empirical findings include the case firms view on entrepreneurial characteristics, opportunities and innovations. The conclusions of the thesis are that opportunities are recognized by individuals with specific characteristics. Suppliers, customers and agents can influence opportunity recognition process and direction.

Over the last two decades, the Born Global phenomenon has grown into a fascinating field of internationalization studies. Several perspectives have been studied to enrich this rather new area of business research, however little has been studied in context of the types of economies from where these firms emerge. More especially, insufficient amounts of literature cover the Born Global phenomenon from the emerging market context.   Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of this phenomenon from the emerging market context by investigating the factors that influence these born global firms to succeed in their international markets.   We conducted a case study of two companies one from Mexico and another from Ghana. We adopted a qualitative approach for the literature review, data collection and analysis during the course of the study. We also utilized theoretical concepts to build a conceptualized framework to guide our study. Both primary and secondary data sources were used in this research.   Our study revealed five main factors that influence born global firms from emerging economies to succeed in the international scene. These factors are both internal and external and are as follows; strategic management of the firm, networks, product differentiation, technology and markets. We found that the significance of each of the factors’ influence on the companies was specific to type of industry and product/service offering.

In many countries, the agricultural subsidy is the existence, whether in order to protect the livelihood of farmers, or to ensure a stable supply of domestic agricultural products, the agricultural subsidy is the subject which may not neglect easily. This article uses new viewpoint which is brought by the economic geography, discusses the influence which the agricultural subsidy brings. We find that: (1) Agricultural subsidy would cause worker's nominal wage to change, causing further changes in production costs, thus affecting the equilibrium output of firms. (2) When subsidies some agricultural region, not necessarily improve the level of subsidy region. (3) If the degree of freedom of trade is low level , subsidies will make up the region's income level.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of interstate migration in the United States (US) from the perspective of institutions and agglomeration economies. Dependent variables used in this study relate to the net interstate migration of four distinct demographic groups; migrants as whole (MIGRATE), migrants aged between 22 and 39 years of age (MIGR2239), migrants aged between 22 and 39 years of age educated to the undergraduate level (BAMIGR), and migrants aged between 22 and 39 years of age educated to the postgraduate level (MAMIGR). Independent variables proxying for institutions are sourced from both the Mercatus Center and the Fraser Institute. The Mercatus Center¡¦s economic freedom index (the MEFI) and overall freedom index (MOFI) represent the relative economic and overall freedoms enjoyed by residents of the 50 states. The Fraser Institute¡¦s economic freedom index (FIEFI) also measures economic freedom. Agglomeration economy proxies relate to both creativity levels in state, measured by Richard Florida¡¦s creativity index (SCI06), and education levels, measured by the percentage of a state¡¦s population educated to the undergraduate level (EDUBPLUS). It is well established that crime and climate are factors that influence migration and these variables are controlled for in this study by using murder rates in the largest in-state city (MURDER) and the average annual number of heating degree days (HDD) in a state. This study uses multivariate linear regression to analyze the variables and the findings emphasize the importance of both institutions and agglomeration economies in explaining the migration decisions of US citizens. Institutions, proxied for by greater economic and overall freedoms, are shown to be more important than agglomeration economies for migrants across a broad range of demographic. Institutions are less important, however, for younger, better educated migrants who reveal preferences for good agglomeration economies and particularly creativity.

Abstract The development of fiber optics industry in Taiwan , comparing with advanced countries is a model of the development of the catching-up economies. The developed countries have already accumulated enough resources and capabilities from the past centuries to build the ability of R&D innovation , processing innovation, and assembly innovation in sequence. The catching-up countries are unable to obtain the same power and financial status as that of the developed countries are primarily due to the less technological advancement. The catching-up economies must initially proceed with the method of reverse engineering. The step initiates with creating the assembly innovation and ends with research pertinent to the utilization of intensive brain-power. The research studies attempts to integrate several related theories and models and form an analytical structure for fiber optics industry in Taiwan. The research studies also discusses the feasibility of fiber optics in Taiwan from both market and technological view , generates several conclusions from the studies , and makes a lot of strategic suggestions for fiber optics industry in Taiwan.

This thesis is concerned with hypothesis testing in models where data exhibits time dependence. The focus is on two cases where the dependence of observations across time leads to non-standard hypothesis testing techniques. This thesis first considers models estimated by Generalized Method of Moments (GMM, Hansen (1982)) and the approach to inference. The main problem with standard tests are size distortions in the test statistics. An innovative resampling method, which we label Empirical Likelihood Block Bootstrapping, is proposed. The first-order asymptotic validity of the proposed procedure is proven, and a series of Monte Carlo experiments show it may improve test sizes over conventional block bootstrapping. Also staying in the context of GMM this thesis shows that the testcorrection given in Hall (2000) which improves power, can distort size with time dependent data. In this case it is of even greater importance to use a bootstrap that can have good size in finite samples. The empirical likelihood is applied to a multifactor model of U.S. bank risk estimated by GMM. The approach to inference is found to be important to the overall conclusion about bank risk. The results suggest U.S. bank stock returns are sensitive to movements in market and liquidity risk. In the context of panel data, this thesis is the first to my knowledge to consider the estimation of cost-functions as well as conduct inference taking into account the strong dependence of data across time. This thesis shows that standard approaches to estimating cost-functions for a set of Canadian banks lead to a downward bias in the estimated coefficients and therefore an upward bias in the measure of economies of scale. When non-stationary panel techniques are applied results suggest economies of scale of around 6 per cent in Canadian banking as well as cost-efficiency differences across banks that are correlated with size. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-24 17:25:22.212