This thesis composes of four empirical studies with an attempt to assess the role of institutions as key determinant of cross-country development. We have unbundled the different facets of institutions, including the security of property rights, democracy, regulation and stability of monetary policy. In Chapter 2, we investigate the direct impact of institutions on economic growth using dynamic panel data estimations. Employing this estimator aims at alleviating the technical problems embedded in the existing literature. Our results suggest that the security of property rights and stability of monetary policy have direct impact on economic growth, whereas democracy and regulation are not directly growth-enhancing. In Chapter 3, we further explore the role of democracy and regulation in the development process. We empirically test whether economic reform is more likely to take place in democratic economies. The answer seems affirmative. More specifically, our empirical results show that democracy causes reforms in redistributive policies, trade liberalisation and credit market deregulation. In the next Chapter, we consider the institutional barriers as compared to natural barrier and at-the-board barriers as determinants of bilateral FDI. The augmented gravity model provides empirical evidences to support that geography, regional integration and domestic regulatory environment of the destination economies all have significant impacts on FDI inflows. In particular, credit market regulation is amongst the most important, which echoes the view that financial development is essential to economic development. In the final empirical work, we hypothesise that institutions matter to cross-country economic performances as economies with better institutions are technically more efficient. We estimate a global stochastic production frontier, where countries lie below the frontier are less efficient. Our empirical results suggest that countries with better security of property rights and fewer regulations allocate their production inputs more efficiently. The effects of democratic regime and stability of monetary policy are also positive to improve inefficiency, if a threshold level of human capital is reached. Other possible factors like openness and human capital, in turn, seem not to play direct role. Our research provides empirical basis to understand how particular aspects of institutions could affect development outcomes.

The aim of this thesis is to help the RM industry avoid misguidedly investing in technologies that are unlikely to be cost-effective and reimbursed by healthcare providers. Health economics provides the tools to demonstrate value for money. These tools are typically used by healthcare providers to drive demand side decisions. However, they can be used by manufacturers to inform the supply side. I propose a simple approach, termed the headroom method. This ‘back of the envelope’ calculation is based on estimates of effectiveness of the proposed treatment towards the upper end of the plausible range. The method can be used either to inform an intuitive decision to continue or abandon development, or as a screening test to decide if more elaborate models are justified. One problem I encountered was the development of technologies without clearly defining the clinical problem. In particular, the marginal gain in benefit over alternative treatments is frequently overlooked. A large part of this thesis is therefore concerned with the clinical epidemiology of the conditions at which treatment is targeted. In this way, it was found, for example, the headroom for health gain from new treatment for inguinal hernia was much smaller than that for incisional hernias.

This thesis evaluates the design of monetary and macroprudential policies. Different models of expectation are examined to get a comprehensive understanding about the work of monetary and macroprudential policies. It is begun by assuming agents are boundedly rational under Recursive Least Square (RLS) and Stochastic Gradient (SG) learning, followed by fully rational agents under rational expectation (RE). When agents follow RLS learning, both determinacy and E-stability criteria are required to find preferred policies. We focus on the effect of habit in consumption in the design of preferred policies. We found the presence of habit in consumption enlarges both determinacy and E-stability region. The same methodology is then used in another model that features housing market and financial constraint. The result showed that a response to the growth of housing prices via the LTV rule may increase determinacy and E-stability. We also conduct a refinement in the design of preferred economic policies by incorporating SG-stability criteria, in addition to determinacy and E-stability. The result showed that central bank’s task gets more difficult since the Taylor Principle is insufficient to ensure a robust learnability of REE. In other works, we deviate from the assumption of boundedly rational agents and consider fully rational agents (RE). We examine the issue of monetary policy, banks’ lending decisions and business cycles in Indonesia. This thesis completes its analysis by evaluating the role of news in the formation of agents’ expectations.

This thesis includes three empirical studies detecting the determinants of crime in England and Wales. We firstly apply time series analyses to look for cointegrating relationships between property crimes and unemployment as well as law enforcement instruments. We extend our study by employing panel data and corresponding techniques to control for area-specific fixed effects as well as the endogeneity of law enforcement variables. In our third study, we allow crime rate to have spatial spillover effect, in other words, the crime rate in one area is affected by, in addition to its local crime-influential factors, the crime rates and crime-related factors in its neighbouring areas. We demonstrate this result by constructing a theoretical model and testing it by applying spatial analysis regressions. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: First, property crimes are better explained by economic models of crime than violent crimes. Second, law enforcement instruments always have negative effects on both property and violent crimes, indicating their deterrence and incapacitation effects as predicted. Third, social-economic factors, such as unemployment and income level, have two effects on property crimes: opportunity and motivation. Their net effects on property crime rates depend on the type of crime as well as the time period being examined. And finally, there is indeed spillover effect existing in crime rate. For burglary, theft and handling, and robbery, the crime rate in one area is positively and significantly correlated with the crime rates from its neighbouring areas. Furthermore, the crime rate of sexual offences of one area is negatively related to such crime rates in neighbouring areas.

Today’s business requires managers who can make an impact by competing successfully in the context of globalisation. Organisational learning contributes to a firm’s ability to compete. However, particularly in small and medium enterprises, research into managers’ approaches to transferring and encouraging learning in the organisation remains inadequate. This study examines the relationship between managers’ learning and leadership styles and sustaining learning in the organisation, and consequently increasing organisational effectiveness. Small retail tyre firms in north east Thailand are taken as a case study. Mixed research methods were applied. Pilot studies were tested to ensure reliability and validity. In a quantitative approach, questionnaires were used to collect data, and different statistical methods were used to analyse the data. Questionnaires were distributed to the managers of small tyre firms covering demographics, learning styles, leadership styles and organisational effectiveness. A qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews was used to gather further, more detailed, data. The results suggest that the Reflector and Pragmatist learning styles and the Transformational and Transactional leadership styles are the most effective. Results from the interviews suggest more specific ways of encouraging learning in the organisation, in terms of organisational management, leadership roles and learning and experience.

The spectacular ubiquity of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries suggests high levels of entrepreneurship, while the artistic variety of their products implies high creativity and innovation. In spite of such entrepreneurial verve, MSEs in developing countries return low productivity and stunted growth. Towards understanding this paradoxical phenomenon, this thesis proffers the following: Firstly, given the prodigious nature of the entrepreneurship concept, the small firm is conceptualised as an instance of entrepreneurship. In turn, a more exacting specification of particular elements of small firms, for example, precise productivity and growth determinants, is advocated. Secondly, to elucidate the link between innovation and growth, this thesis avers that innovation inputs, such as investments in research and development, should be conceptually distinguished from observed ‘novation’. The later is termed enovation. As such, product enovation, such as that characterising artisanal firms, may be observed independent of R&D inputs. Espousing these conceptualisations, this thesis conducts an empirical study of the effect of product enovation on firm productivity and employment growth amongst garment-making micro and small firms in Nairobi, Kenya. The findings suggest that while innovation efforts (R&D) is a significant driver of productivity, product enovation in itself has no impact on firm performance.

Under the trend of ageing population, older people have a greater potential to be part of the future labour force. Their employment patterns therefore deserve governments' attention. This thesis compares the employment patterns of older people to those of younger people in selected economies. In the first study we decompose the age-employment gaps using non-linear Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions in the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong. Explained factors explain nearly the entire age-employment gaps in the U.S. and Hong Kong but not in the U.K. In the second study, we investigate job preferences in addition to employment outcomes. Our binomiallogit models on working part-time involuntarily show that part-time employment is more likely to be a voluntary choice regardless of gender and age in the U.K. In the third study we estimate competing risks Cox proportional hazards models on unemployment and various types of employment spells in the U.K. We find that the older an individual is when he or she starts an unemployment spell, the longer he or she remains unemployed before getting a full-time or part-time job. However, the trend of decreasing hazards from leaving unemployment spells to part-time employment reverses after the spell starting age of 54.

The documentary credit has for a long time served as a very reliable form of financial instrument in the trading of international goods. The certainty of payment guaranteed under the documentary system is attributed to the autonomous nature of the credit contract, which is that it is independent of and unaffected by the contract of sale which it supports. So long as the documents which are presented strictly comply with the terms of the credit, the paying bank will be under an obligation to pay. However, documents which are non-compliant are also frequently presented in practice. The autonomous characteristic of the instrument also gives rise to problems because there are circumstances where, even though compliant documents are tendered, payment made under the credit would be unfair. This thesis attempts to investigate the various grounds which could provide a basis for withholding payment under a documentary credit. From the perspective of all the main parties involved in a documentary credit transaction, issues relating to payment are of utmost importance. Discrepant documents and fraud, which are well established as valid grounds, will be examined. The thesis will also explore other possible grounds to withhold payment such as illegality, nullity, unconscionability and breach of negative stipulations which exist in the underlying contract connected to the credit. The parameters of these grounds will be identified and where appropriate, recommendations will be made.

In this thesis I investigate the intellectual foundations of International Political Economy (IPE) in order to develop a more complex account of agency than that currently provided to the subject field by neoclassical economics. In particular, I focus on the thought of Adam Smith, whose ideas are gaining interest in IPE owing to an increasing recognition of his seminal contribution to the subject field. I investigate the secondary debate on Smith, his influences, his distance from his peers in the Scottish Enlightenment and his ongoing influence across the social sciences. I also analyse the thought of William James, and argue that his similarly influential concept of agency offers a complex view of the self that is complimentary to Smith’s account. I suggest that the framework of the self that these thinkers provide can present critical IPE theorists with an alternative concept of agency than the reductive account currently employed in the subject field. I argue that these theorists are unable to countenance such an alternative owing to their implicit acceptance of the analytical separation of economics and politics that became institutionalised after the Methodenstreit. I suggest that this is obscured by their commitment to normative interventionism, which I argue threatens to reiterate the universalist claims that they seek to challenge.

This thesis explores the factors associated with eastern European entrepreneurship in the UK. Stanworth and Curran (1976) presented the concept of social marginality which describes perceived incongruity between individual personality attributes and the role they hold in society or organisations. Their hypothesis suggests that individuals may respond to social marginality by a determination to succeed. Our hypothesis is that the eastern European entrepreneurs engage in entrepreneurial activity as a result of failure to gain employment that meet their expected earnings. In this research a questionnaire is utilised to collect research data from a sample size of one hundred and five east European entrepreneurship in England. Evidence from this research sufficiently address three fundamental questions about the research population, which are: what are the drivers of engaging in entrepreneurial activity; what are the personal characteristics that define these entrepreneurs; and what sources of business finance does entrepreneurs have access to. It is essential to note that this research was carried out prior to the in/out referendum held on the 23rd June 2016 which resulted in a vote for UK to leave the EU in what has become commonly known as ‘Brexit’.