This thesis comprises two Parts. The first develops a theoretical framework for analysing development policy and practice. A central argument is that a reason for widespread discontent with the so-called ‘Washington consensus’ is the exclusion of the majority of people from the governance of their development. An implication is that ‘development’ will continue to fail people until decision-making structures are altered to reflect the views of those that are seeking to ‘develop’. This perspective suggests the possibility of a ‘dual approach’ to policy that seeks to alter decision-making structures while working in the shadow of the consensus; a learning process of democratic engagement in development, both within and across localities. When extended to consider the contested theme of ‘globalisation’, our framework provides an analytical meeting ground for seemingly polar views, making a conceptual distinction between elite and democratic globalisation. The second Part of the thesis then advances and applies this framework through the exploration of specific issues and cases: the importance of communication for the governance of development; a specific case study of multinational engagement in local development processes; the role of ‘clusters’ in employment generation processes; and an analysis of the recent Argentinian economic crisis.

This thesis aimed at investigating the impact of changes in the exchange rate on the demand for money and the trade balance in Jordan. Using Johansen (1991 and 1995) approach for cointegration analysis and the equilibrium-correction model (ECM), we examined the existence of stable long-run relationships for the demand for money and the demand for exports and imports. Using the VAR analysis, we analyzed the potential channels of monetary policy transmission mechanism as a vehicle to evaluate the efficiency of monetary policy. A stable long-run relationship has been found for the narrowly defined money which is found positively related to domestic income and the exchange rate and negatively related to domestic real interest rate and foreign interest rate. A stable long-run relationship was also found for the demand of exports and imports. The volume of exports is positively related to income in the trade partner countries and negatively related to exports relative price. Similarly the volume of imports is positively related to domestic income and negatively related to imports relative price. The analysis of monetary policy transmission mechanisms revealed that actions of monetary policy in Jordan has little impact on either the channels of monetary transmission or on the ultimate targets of monetary policy.

Recent health care reforms within Saudi Arabia have advocated use of economic evaluation in health care decision making. Little research has, however, considered the use of economic evaluation to set priorities in rentier state settings. This thesis explores the nature of the rentier state and the basis of health care priority setting, and conducts a systematic review of the use of economic evaluation in priority setting. The thesis uses in-depth qualitative research to explore health care priority setting and use of economic evaluation in Saudi Arabia. Qualitative data comprised 22 in-depth interviews with decision makers at the national and district levels, 3 focus groups, and one meeting observation. Data collection and analysis were conducted iteratively using constant comparison. Findings show that contextual factors have a great influence on the decision making process and that the use of economic evaluation is still very limited. There appeared to be two types of barriers to the use of economic evaluation: decision context-related barriers and barriers relating to the production of economic evaluation data. Incorporating economic evaluation into the health care decision making process in Saudi Arabia is proving to be complex and contextual factors have more influence on priority decisions than economic evaluation.

This thesis provides the empirical analyses for international trade flows and the determinants of bilateral trade. The main modelling framework used in this thesis is gravity model, so firstly, a detailed literature review for the gravity trade model is given. The three empirical studies analyze the role of main determinants of international trade flows in details, including cultural similarities, geographical factors and trade costs. Our findings are summarized as follows. First, the gravity model works well with aggregate data as well as disaggregated data. The core gravity factors and the cultural similarities are the major determinants of China’s bilateral trade. Moreover, China has great export potential with its neighbour countries in Asia, and considerable import potential with most of its trade partners. On the other hand, China’s export potential is still in the labour and resource intensive, low- and middle-level skill-intensive product groups. Second, we combine log-linear and non-linear estimation techniques, including Tobit estimation to analyze the role of geographical distance on trade. The findings indicate that the absolute value of the distance coefficient decreases over time, which give a reasonable explanation for “missing globalization puzzle”. Finally, by estimating a modified gravity equation of panel data for China, Japan and Korea over 16 years, we find that transport costs have a significant influence on regional trade flows in Northeast Asia.

This research aims at exploring physical activity and employment practice in urban China, in the context of population ageing. The overall aim of the research is to inform policy and practice focused on promoting healthy employment, longer working lives and active ageing. These aims are interrelated, for instance, a more active workforce will potentially mean a more healthy workforce which should help extend working lives in China. To achieve the study aims, the research explores the factors that influence participation in physical activity, both enablers and barriers. A questionnaire and interviews were used in fieldwork in Wuhan and Shanghai. Data from 335 self-completion questionnaires and 41 interviews were collected from respondents working in 13 organisations in these two cities. The sample included people working in both public and private organisations, health related and non-health related organisations, enabling some comparison through stratification across these categories, as well as by location. The research findings highlighted how trade-offs are made between time spent in physical activity at work and time in physical activity after work (in the home and in leisure time). For example, people who were active at work or in the home were often less active in their leisure time. This means that discounting activity in the former categories and concentrating solely on leisure time activities could potentially mistakenly categorise people as inactive or not very active.

The multinational corporation (MNC) to a large extent, determines its sustainable economic success through the effective management of knowledge flows within and across its boundaries. Based on the business network theory, the thesis applies a micro-perspective by drawing on an exploratory case study, which examines how a German-headquartered technology provider manages knowledge flows, which are reversed from its subsidiaries, and how these subsidiaries create their own knowledge depending on the specific external environments that they develop. The research interest was approached and operationalised by collecting and analysing qualitative data at two levels of analysis (these being at headquarters and subsidiary level). Key results that emerged from the case study indicate that firstly, the MNC manages reverse knowledge flows in close relation with the ´technology differentiation` approach that the MNC developed as a response to increasing competitive pressures that it had faced in the 1990s. Secondly, the results suggest that the dynamics of economies, the case study especially focused on China in this respect, have an impact on product development. Thirdly, the results indicate that in addition to the external environment that subsidiaries develop, the senior local management of the subsidiaries plays an important role in motivating the employees to create new knowledge and learning capabilities and in discussing drivers of this motivation with the headquarters’ management. Key words: Reverse Knowledge Flows, Business Network Theory, Knowledge Management, Multinational Corporations, Subsidiary

In this thesis we study the effect of scientific research on economic growth of the EU27 countries for 1981-2010, finding that scientific research determines national growth through patents with a ten-year lag. We also study the effect of funding on scientific research output of researchers and find that national competitive funding and other funding are positively and significantly related to research quality. National competitive funding seems to affect positively research quantity. Internal and EU funding matter only in specific scientific fields. We investigate whether past research productivity determines success in securing competitive funding at the individual level finding a significant and positive association of past cumulative citation-related indicators with the funding decision. We also examine the effect of research output and resources on FP7 applications and success at the country level for the EU28 countries in 2007-2013. We find that for research followers both scientific publications and international collaboration matter for FP7 applications and success and for research leaders, publications matter for FP7 applications and citations matter for FP7 success rates. Finally, we use the principal-agent theory framework to discuss the choices and trade-offs that research policy-makers and researchers face and find that balance in bureaucracy and research orientation within funding schemes can produce optimal results.

Conducting economic evaluations alongside multinational studies presents a range of diverse challenges which have contributed to a lack of consensus on how they should be approached particularly because of the difficulties of resolving between country differences. This thesis examines the implications of conducting economic evaluation alongside multinational studies and (i) explores different approaches to obtaining unit costs; (ii) investigates the impact of using different tariffs to value EQ-5D health state descriptions; and (iii) provides a systematic comparison of the pooled and split approaches to economic evaluation alongside multinational trials. This study documents challenges that have been reported in published studies and makes recommendations to help researchers undertake economic evaluations alongside multinational studies. Results indicate that the main challenge related to dealing with the differences between countries. Collecting unit cost data in all participating countries proved a difficult task, but was most effectively done by collaborating/direct contact with project partners and researchers/health economists from participating countries. Applying different EQ-5D value sets within the context of multinational trials did not make a difference to the conclusions in most cases. However, it is recommended that results from various tariffs are compared within sensitivity analysis. This study also showed that the choice of whether to pool or split the data can lead to different conclusions and recommendations about the cost-effectiveness of interventions. The culmination of this work is a 10 point checklist to guide good practice in the design, conduct and analysis of multinational economic evaluation studies and also highlights many areas where further research is needed. The work provides researchers, policy makers and stakeholders with additional insight into the economic analysis of multinational studies.

Many studies have focused on ethnic entrepreneurship and Polish migration to the UK, but very little is known about Polish immigrant enterprises and established businesses in Western Europe in the post EU enlargement era. This thesis addresses this gap and contributes to the debate about Polish entrepreneurs by examining the trajectories of Polish immigrant entrepreneurs starting their own business in the West Midlands region of the UK. This research is based on the results of forty-eight in depth interviews with Polish entrepreneurs in the West Midlands, who migrated around the time of EU enlargement in May 2004. The analysis concludes that Polish entrepreneurs in the West Midlands made carefully constructed decisions regarding the timing of their migration in order to establish successful businesses. This is achieved through the use of translocal relationships, which become increasingly localised by adopting business adaptation strategies. There are some notable differences in the experiences of pre-accession and post-accession entrepreneurs. Since the research highlights the local element of Polish entrepreneurs in the UK, it provides the foundation for research into the local lives of these entrepreneurs in Poland, before they migrated to the UK.

Using newly derived panel data from NUTS 2 regions in Europe, the role of creative workers is systematically evaluated in this Ph.D. thesis. First of all, a Growth Accounting model is used together with two empirical models for testing the economic impact of creative workers and ICT. It appears that the development level of the creative economy is unbalanced across the main European regions. However, there is a complementary relationship between ICT and creative skills in explaining output and productivity growth. This thesis then develops an empirical model to investigate how creative workers are distributed across different European regions. The findings suggest that Florida’s (2013) theoretical framework has explanatory power in larger regions. In contrast, how well a local government performs has a substantial impact on the influx of creative workers among small-sized regions, and the overall quality of political institutions appears to enhance this process. Finally, this thesis briefly discusses the possible factors that could determine the outcome of creative jobs. The results imply that education background is generally consistent with creative job outcomes, but it is difficult to identify a clear boundary regarding creative jobs among occupations that require and use higher education.