This thesis explores the role of citizen participation in a post-disaster flood hazard mitigation planning program in Peterborough, Ontario. Recognizing that citizen participation is an integral element of hazards mitigation planning, a review of the relevant literature identifies six strategic planning choices that should be considered in the design of a citizen participation program. The study applies this framework to the Flood Reduction Master Plan (FRMP) study and planning process in Peterborough, undertaken following the July 2004 flood event, to analyze citizen participation in hazard mitigation planning practice. Existing documentation, including the FRMP, and fifteen key informant interviews provided the main sources of research data. Data were analyzed in terms of the framework and other hazards mitigation theory found in the literature to produce the findings of the study. There existed many strengths and several weaknesses of the citizen participation aspect of the planning program. Many of the decisions made regarding citizen participation in the FRMP process can be considered successful by the standards set in the literature.

Essay One examines the asymmetric information problem between primary insurers and reinsurers in the reinsurance industry and contributes uniquely to the separation of adverse selection from moral hazard, if both are present. A two-period principal-agent model is set up to identify the signals of adverse selection and moral hazard generated by the actions of the primary insurer and to provide a basis for corresponding hypotheses for empirical testing. Using data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and A.M. Best Company, the empirical tests show that the problem of adverse selection exists in the reinsurance market between the affiliated insurers and non-affiliated reinsurers, and even between closely related affiliated insurers and reinsurers. There is no evidence indicating the presence of moral hazard in the reinsurance market. To address the issue of soaring property insurance premiums and coverage availability in states that are subject to hurricane risks, state and federal governments have not only regulated the private insurance market but have also intervened directly into markets by establishing government-funded insurance programs. With coexisting public and private insurance mechanisms and price regulation, the risk of cross subsidization and a subsequent moral hazard problem may arise. By using data from the Florida Citizens Insurance Corporation, the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, the Flood Insurance and the private homeowner insurance market in Florida from 1998 to 2007, the second essay examines the moral hazard problems arising from government regulation and involvement in the private insurance sector. In sum, the provision of national flood insurance is found to be positively related to the population growth in the state of Florida, which shows that state immigrants can take advantage of the lower cost of flood insurance when relocating in higher-risk areas. Further, we find that national flood insurance and the catastrophe fund complement the development of the private insurance sector, while the residual market hinders the development of private property insurance market.

This thesis explores the role of citizen participation in a post-disaster flood hazard mitigation planning program in Peterborough, Ontario. Recognizing that citizen participation is an integral element of hazards mitigation planning, a review of the relevant literature identifies six strategic planning choices that should be considered in the design of a citizen participation program. The study applies this framework to the Flood Reduction Master Plan (FRMP) study and planning process in Peterborough, undertaken following the July 2004 flood event, to analyze citizen participation in hazard mitigation planning practice. Existing documentation, including the FRMP, and fifteen key informant interviews provided the main sources of research data. Data were analyzed in terms of the framework and other hazards mitigation theory found in the literature to produce the findings of the study. There existed many strengths and several weaknesses of the citizen participation aspect of the planning program. Many of the decisions made regarding citizen participation in the FRMP process can be considered successful by the standards set in the literature.

My research focuses on the reasons for banking crises and the corresponding policy rules that could help prevent such crises. This abstract briefly reviews the two essays in my dissertation. The first essay focuses on the optimal mechanism design of the deposit insurance system while the second essay studies the impact of international illiquidity on domestic banking crises. The Recent Deposit Insurance Reform in the U.S. raised the coverage limit for certain types of deposits. In chapter II, I study the optimal coverage limit in a model of deposit insurance in the banking system. Because of the coverage limit, depositors have incentives to monitor the bank’s risk-taking behavior, threatening banks with the withdrawal of deposits if necessary. The model includes risk-taking banks, heterogeneous depositors, and a benevolent insurance company providing deposit insurance. I find that partial coverage combined with risk-sensitive premia in the presence of capital requirements can improve social welfare and manage banks’ risktaking behavior. Moreover, when a partial coverage limit is in place, banks are better off by finding a balance between the higher premia and the depositors’ monitoring and withdrawals. Unlike chapter II, chapter III focuses on the role played by international illiquidity. I build a dynamic general equilibrium model (DGEM) of a small, open economy. The features I include in the model are nontrivial demands for fiat currencies, unanticipated sunspots, and financial/banking crises originated by sudden stops of foreign capital inflows are. This chapter gives us a better understanding of the performance of alternative exchange rate regimes and associated monetary policies under a simple setup. I show the existence of multiple equilibria that may be ranked based on the presence of binding information constraints and on welfare. Moreover, I show that a strong connection of the scope for existence and for indeterminacy of equilibria with the underlying policy regime. I also find that the presence of binding multiple reserve requirements help in reducing the scope for financial fragility and panic equilibria.

Planning researchers believe that property losses from natural hazards, such as floods can be reduced if governments address this issue and adopt appropriate policies in their plans. However, little empirical research has examined the relationship between plan quality and actual property loss from floods. My research addresses this critical gap in the planning and hazard research literature by evaluating the effectiveness of current plans and policies in mitigating property damage from floods. Specifically, this study: 1) assesses the extent to which local comprehensive plans integrate flood mitigation policies in Florida; and 2) it examines the impact of the quality of flood mitigation policies on actual insured flood damages. Study results show that fifty-three local plans in the sample received a mean score for total flood mitigation policy quality of 38.55, which represents 35.69% of the total possible points. These findings indicate that there is still considerable room for improvement by local governments on flooding issues. The scores of local plans varied widely, with coastal communities receiving significantly higher scores than non-coastal communities. While most communities adopted land use management tools, such as permitted land use and wetland permits as primary flood mitigation tools, incentive based tools/taxing tools and acquisition tools were rarely adopted. This study also finds that plan quality associated with flood mitigation policy had little discernible effect on reducing insured flood damage while controlling for biophysical, built environment and socio-economic variables. This result counters the assumption inherent in previous plan quality research that better plans mitigate the adverse effects associated with floods and other natural hazards. There are some possible explanations for this result in terms of plan implementation, land use management paradox and characteristics of insurance policies. The statistical analysis also suggests that insured flood loss is considerably affected by wetland alteration and a community's location on the coast. Another finding indicates that very strong leadership and dam construction are factors in mitigating flood loss.

The focus of this paper is to examine the determinants explaining the timing of E-commerce adoption in Taiwan manufacturing industries through the use of a duration model. This paper also investigates whether there have any difference in determining the utilization of E-commerce among different industries. And construct the measurement of E-commerce spillover effect, vertical integration and diversification to see how the E-commerce affects the plant¡¦s boundaries and transaction efficiency by changing the transaction costs among plants.

Three independent models are built based on information asymmetric to analysis discipline effects brought by banks` issuance of subordinated debts. The research results offer the theory of subordinated debts discipline effects. First, an adverse selection model is built to examine banks¡¦ policies when issuing subordinated debts based on the banks¡¦ credit risks. The result shows that banks with lower credit risks are more likely to issue subordinated debts, since after the issuance, the yields of these debts are lower. When depositors observe the lower yields of the subordinated debts, they would presume that these banks have lower credit risks. As a result, banks with lower credit risks can decrease their operational costs by issuing subordinated debts. This model has demonstrated that the market can discipline banks indirectly through the issuance of subordinated debts. Second, a moral hazard model to show that issuing of subordinated debts by banks can bring direct market discipline and indirect market discipline to make their loans less risky. The direct market discipline means that the risk level of bank will be evaluated by professional investors. The investors will require that the yields accord to the banks risk. For lowering the cost of issuing subordinated debts, banks will make their loans less risky. The indirect market discipline means that the depositors would take the yields of these debts as a significant signal indicating banks risk levels. The depositors will decide to withdraw their savings when the bank signals a higher risk, and keep their saving when the bank signals a lower risk. I prove that issuing of subordinated debts by banks can bring about these two kinds of market discipline. The model has also demonstrated that if the bank supervisor can utilize the information of issuing subordinated debts effectively, they will achieve higher supervisory goal. Third, a reputation model is built to show that for reputation concerns, a bank would change its monitoring decisions if it issues subordinated debts. Reputation effect in banks is different in different scenarios. When the good banks probability of success is very high, reputation effect would induce the bad bank to start monitor it`s borrowers, and the efforts of bad banks monitoring would be increased by time. When the bad banks probability of success is very low, reputation effect would induce the good bank start monitoring its borrowers. and the efforts of bad banks monitoring would be decreases by time.

Thanks to the rapid development of variable production patterns of industries, many kinds of chemicals are used. But the chemicals usually come with dangers of causing fires, explosions, and harming people. In the past decade in Taiwan, these chemicals caused many serious industrial disasters. They happened not only in conventional industries but also in semiconductor and chemical industries. And most of them happened due to the leaking of flammable or toxic gases. In the situation of the outbreak of fires, explosions may occur, and they will generally bring about heat radiation, explosive pressure, and energy releasing. And all of these often harm the workers and the environment, and also bring great loss for the factories. In order to prevent the disasters, except for improving the protection and safety equipment, it¡¦s more important to realize how to use effective ways to reduce them. If the gas pipes pass through a densely populated area, when some toxic gas leaks, it will cause fatal dangers which result from the mixing of gas diffusion and air, the flow process of the mixture, concentration of CH4, and temperature distribution, or explosions. After that, some toxic gas with poisonous substances will be released, and it will turn out to be horrible consequences that are beyond our imagination. So it¡¦s really important to do research on gas leaking and gas diffusion. If gas-leaking simulation is applied on the analysis of the leaking of flammable gas and gas diffusion, it¡¦s much more possible to protect the workers from being hurt, keep public safety, and reduce the loss on the wealth of the society. The thesis focuses on building various hazard patterns of gas leaking, gas explosions, and chemicals, etc. From all of these, the initial conditions and the degrees of dangers will be revealed. In the thesis, numerical simulation is used to analyze the density, pressure, speed of the leaking gas and all the distributions in the flow field. The major analysis is about the effects of parameter and the display of concentration distribution, and hazard range.

Abstract Information asymmetry in the financial market, especially in the financial organization, usually generates more serious consequences than those in the commodity market. How to reduce or remove the asymmetric information in a bank¡¦s credit rationing has been a challenge for a commercial bank. On the basis of the models developed by Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) and Barro (1986), this study attempts to analyze the issues, faced by a typical commercial bank, of adverse selection, moral hazard, and agent¡¦s reputation, and to simulate the results of such issues in a game-theoretic approach. The study has reached the following conclusions: 1. With regard to the adverse selection issue, this study concludes that if a bank wants to solve the problem of adverse selection on debit and credit, the decision must be made upon the objective evaluation that considers not only the reality and rational assumption but also the external signaling and screening information to assess the enterprise and its investment plan. 2. Regarding the moral hazard issue, this study concludes that if a bank has an effective incentive, the enterprise will automatically select the most beneficial items to the bank on debit. This mechanism reduces the bank¡¦s risk. On the other hand, if a penalty is set forth, then it will be more likely to prevent the moral hazard problem to occur. 3. By the moral hazard model, this study concludes that if an enterprise needs to enter the market to collect funds, it would imply that the game will continue infinitely. Owing to the benefits from reputation is increasing as the number of stage of the game increases, an enterprise will have a strong incentive to build his non-cheating reputation based on a long term consideration. Keywords: Asymmetric Information, Adverse Selection, Moral Hazard, Reputation, Game Theory.

Wirtschaftswiss. Fakultät der Humboldt-Univ., Diss.--Berlin, 2006. / Zsfassung in dt. Sprache.