published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

This study of the Canadian War Memorials Fund, established during the Great War, focuses initially on the origin and organization of the Fund, looking particularly at the roles of Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook), Harold Harmsworth (Lord Rothermere) and Paul Konody, and how it grew out of Aitken's enthusiasm as Canadian War ,Records Officer. After discussing the artists' recruitment and their participation in the scheme, it examines the symbolism and iconography of the works produced, then concludes with a look at the post-war neglect of the Fund's collection and its place as a precedent in Canada's war art programme during World War II.

The liability of banks in electronic fund transfer (EFT) transactions is discussed in this thesis under the British and the United States law. The thesis covers banks’ liability in electronic credit and debit transfers. It covers banks’ liability in Electronic Fund Transfer at the Point Of Sale (EFTPOS), Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) and home and office banking. Liability of banks in credit card transactions and cheque truncation falls outside the scope of this thesis. In the absence of British legislation in this area, an analogy is made with the traditional methods of payment. An attempt is also made to extract the applicable rules from the general principles of law and the banking practice. The discussion, under the United States law, relies on analysing the Electronic Fund Transfer Act of 1978 and Article 4A of the Uniform Commercial Code, which concern banks’ liability in consumer and commercially based EFT transactions. The thesis starts by analysing the legal nature of payment orders. In particular, whether a payment order is a negotiable instrument, a creation of trust funds, an assignation or merely a mandate from a customer to his bank. Chapter two discusses banks’ liability for failure to make an EFT transaction. This encompasses banks’ liability for complete failure to effect an EFT transaction and for improper implementation of such a transaction. Chapter three discusses the right to stop payment, completion of payment, irrevocability and banks’ liability for failure to stop payment. Chapter four discusses banks’ liability for erroneous EFT transactions. This includes allocation of losses resulting from errors in payment orders and errors committed by banks during the execution process of such orders. Chapter five discusses banks’ liability for unauthorised EFT transactions. Issues such as authentication of payment orders, security measures adopted by banks and allocation of losses resulting from unauthorised transactions are discussed in this chapter. Chapter six discusses the recoverability of damages for banks’ failure to implement customers’ instructions properly. It discusses what measures of damages are applicable in certain situations such as banks’ complete failure to make an EFT transaction, failure to transfer funds on time etc. The thesis is completed by summary and conclusion.

This study examined the relationship between CARICOM governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The study focused on three research questions: (1) What do the CARICOM leadership and other stakeholders believe are the major reasons why they continue to rely on the financial assistance and intervention of the IMF? (2) Under which paradigm of development do these leaders and stake holders perceive their relationships with the IMF? (3) How do younger and older CARICOM citizens perceive the future growth of their countries, under the leadership of the IMF? Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in this study to analyze the research questions; therefore, this study used a mixed-methods design. Research question one was analyzed using a qualitative design, while the second and third research questions used a quantitative analysis in the form of descriptive statistics. The analysis, which was limited to six interviews, contained 13 questions. Thematic analysis explored themes such as unique crafting of policies to meet challenges; rationale to undergo IMF programs; ability to meet domestic and international payment obligations; and most applicable economic paradigm to CARICOM. This study also examined the economic paradigms undergirding CARICOM leaders’ decision to use the International Monetary Fund in addressing the socioeconomic and political development issue of the region. The sample consisted of 49 participants. The study concluded that the IMF policies are uniquely crafted to suit the specific CARICOM countries’ needs. These countries tend to invite the IMF interventions out of a sheer necessity and often are reluctant to do so. Yet, doing so provides access to additional funding and other resources that would likely have been otherwise unavailable. While the intent of the IMF programs is to eliminate the inefficient use of resources in these states, sometimes government spending can be impacted by its political nature and yield unintended consequences.

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MA (Labour Policies and Globalisation), Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / South African pension fund assets are estimated at ZAR 1 924 billion. This is a large pool of funds that is collected from workers. However, the contention is that workers, whose savings make up the assets of pension funds have little influence on how these funds are used. As a result, most of the funds are invested in corporations, which do not reflect the aspirations of the labour movement. The argument is that if these funds were under the control and direction of the working class, enormous contributions would be made towards economic growth, socially useful investments, community development, employment creation and growth in retirement benefits. The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which trade unions have been able to promote the interest of members and direct pension fund investment in sectors that will have a positive impact on working families and their communities in South Africa. This study adopted a qualitative method, using purposive sampling and a semi-structured outline to conduct face-to-face interviews with union unions and fund managers. Collected data were analyzed using content analysis. Results were categorized into two distinct parts. The first part looked at pension fund investment regulation and management, asset allocation, investment practices and composition of the pension board. The second part described trade unions’ role in promoting the interest of pension fund members; the extent of their influence in pension fund investments; their contribution to strengthening pension fund governance and how to enhance their influence and control of pension fund investments. The study suggests that trade unions have a critical role to play in pension fund management through their representation on the pension boards. However, the success can only be achieved if trade unions have a clear policy that spells out labour’s agenda on pension issues. Additionally, union trustees should be supported to getting involved in understanding their plans and develop capacities in capital market strategies, investment and economic development.

This paper investigates the performance of private equity partnerships using a data set of individual fund returns collected by Venture Economics. Over the sample period, average fund returns net of fees approximately equal the S&P 500 although there is a large degree of heterogeneity among fund returns. Returns persist strongly across funds raised by individual private equity partnerships. The returns also improve with partnership experience. Better performing funds are more likely to raise follow-on funds and raise larger funds than funds that perform poorly. This relationship is concave so that top performing funds do not grow proportionally as much as the average fund in the market. At the industry level, we show that market entry in the private equity industry is cyclical. Funds (and partnerships) started in boom times are less likely to raise follow-on funds, suggesting that these funds subsequently perform worse. Aggregate industry returns are lower following a boom, but most of this effect is driven by the poor performance of new entrants, while the returns of established funds are much less affected by these industry cycles. Several of these results differ markedly from those for mutual funds.

Abstract Recently, domestic mutual fund development was rapidly. As widely open door for foreign investment and mutual fund joining stock market, its structure starts slowly changing. Via different kinds of expansion and merger let The properties of companies tend to complex. Investors sometimes hardly make correction decision. Here just focus on mutual funds which are belong to common stock type to observe the existence of herding trade. And then check the relation between performance roll drift and herding trade in mutual funds. Usually known how to select funds is performance roll. And general one likes to choose No. 1 which may be myth. Actually No. 1 fund sometimes put heavy weight on particular stock. So it might temporary catch head. But it does not gain steady return. Then selecting steady head group is more important. Is it true? Investment companies may issue several funds. During inside discuss between funds managers could influence stock holding. Even though information spread speed could have different between crowd and investment com- panies, they are all affected by outside. So call hedging is mean that follows market behavior to cow buy or bear sell. If the choice of funds holding stocks follows other funds, perform- ance roll will random shift. Then using it to judge funds selection would not be reliable. The major are common stock type mutual funds belong to Taiwan mutual fund perform- ance. Draw funds front 20 and rear 20 and define them as winner and loser. Check their stock ownerships correlation, herding coefficient and drift phenomenon in certain period. During time set, find winner and loser have preference to keep some group stocks. In co- mparsion with entire common stocks funds, herding values in winner and loser are not so obviously different with zero. Loser group drift to winner side when values are more different with zero. In certain period, there is high drift ration which change performance roll list. Keyword: hedging¡Bfund performance¡Bwinner¡Bloser

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For the passed few years, bond funds have been becoming the most popular investment instrument for all investors. Because the values of those bonds invested by bond funds were not marked to market, the net asset values of bond funds may be greatly distorted. As the interest rates rise, most structured inverse-floating rate bonds invested by bond funds suffer enormous capital losses and greatly impact the bond fund yields. In order to protect the general public, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) of R.O.C. requested all the bond funds to sell out all inverse-floating rate bonds at the fund company shareholders¡¦ expense to correct the distortion by the end of 2005. To understand the effect of these inverse-floating rate bonds on bond fund performance, this paper analyzes the relationship between the fund allocation and fund performance, using grouping analysis and rolling window method, to find out the most important factors affecting fund performance. Bond funds are found to generally allocate their asset in three categories - corporate bonds, government bond repurchases and short term deposits. It was found that how the fund allocates its asset has different effects to bond fund performance in different times. Before September 2005, funds with more corporate bonds performed better, but after September 2005, funds with more government bond repurchases performed better. There is no single asset allocation category always leads to superior fund performance. After further studying various bond funds portfolio rebalancing data, it is found that funds with better performance have smaller and slower portfolio adjustments after the FSC request. This may reflect a fact that the better funds are holding less structured products, such like inverse-floating rate bonds, so that they can maintain a better performance when reducing corporate fund holdings. Bond funds favored by the general public, indicated by having a greater increment in fund asset sizes during the period of April 2005 through August 2006, also show similar properties.