This thesis examines the effects of intragroup social network relations on group performance. Building on prior studies, it views social network topology along structural, relational and cognitive dimensions. Where previous research used a self-reporting questionnaire to gauge these dimensions, this research uses Social Network Analysis (SNA) software to measure e-mail communication logs between group members. The study was conducted in a national travel agency and focused on the social networks of 187 offices, each a subsidiary of the national travel agency. Each office group was tasked similarly and represented a unit of analysis. An analysis of more than 7 million emails was undertaken to generate social network measures for the firm wide network. Subgraphs representing the intraoffice social networks were then generated for each of the 187 travel offices in the greater firm-wide network. NodeXL® software was used to generate group measures representing the dimensions of each office’s social network topology. As in prior studies, Centrality, Structural Holes, and Tie Strength (all social network concepts) were used to measure and compare the dimensions of the intragroup social networks. This study contributes by helping to differentiate the concepts of social capital and social network. This research finds the use of email logs to generate SNA more efficient but as effective as prior survey techniques. The study also extends prior work by dynamically examining the tie formation amongst recently hired employees. The study confirms existing views of a curvilinear relationship between social network relations and firm performance. This study finds social network topology a valuable predictor of group performance.

The ongoing process of economic integration in Europe and beyond has already led to profound changes that are likely to manifest themselves further. Within Europe, formerly centrally planned economies have joined the European Union (EU) with the intention to ultimately introduce the common currency. On a more global scale, marginalised farmers in developing countries seek to become integrated in the world trading system to lift themselves out of poverty. However, issues surrounding economic inequalities are no longer exclusively confined to emerging economies. Indeed, awareness of income inequalities and their impact on the domestic economy is increasing among industrialised nations. This dissertation seeks to contribute to these topical debates in the form of three self-contained essays. The first essay is concerned with monetary integration in Europe. More specifically, we consider the EU member countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that seek to adopt the euro in the foreseeable future. Our analysis is based on a global VAR (GVAR) model to investigate to what extent central banks in CEE follow the European Central Bank’s lead. We look in another core chapter at the economic implications of the Fair Trade (FT) movement. This is a fairly novel topic to the economics profession and we thus aim to provide intuitive insights. One of the key elements of our trade model is that FT generates and hinges upon economic inequalities. We combine these two aspects in the third core chapter. In particular, we analyse how monetary policy operates in an environment which is characterised by wage inequalities using a New Keynesian model that features heterogeneous labour. The third essay is motivated by the case of the United States, where, similar to many European countries, there is strong empirical evidence for rising internal economic divergence. Overall, the thesis not only combines and investigates topical issues, it moreover does so employing various techniques with the intention to also make contributions on the methodological level. We conclude the monograph by highlighting policy implications and by providing directions for future research.

The Libyan economy relies heavily on increasing oil revenues, which may deteriorate with a future oil price decline. The Libyan economy performed as well as resource poor countries over the past few decades. The oil booms of 1973 and 1979 brought unprecedented income to Libya but, despite the substantial oil revenues, much of the potential benefit of the windfall has been dissipated. Libya relies heavily on oil receipts, the price of which tends to fluctuate widely in the international market. Also, the Libyan economy is dominated by hydrocarbons and the public sector. Sizeable oil wealth has supported a decent living standard for Libya's population, and socio-economic development compares favourably with standards in other Middle Eastern and North African countries. Libya has the potential to raise oil production and revenues significantly in coming years, given its large reserve. The reliance of public finance on a single sector means that shocks threaten the economy's fiscal balance and stability. Libya has over-consumed in response to windfalls from surges in world prices. Libyan government spending has outstripped the gain in revenues. These sharp increases in government spending are difficult to reverse when the boom ends and often lead to large fiscal deficits rather than surplus. However, the main challenge for Libya is to promote growth of the non-oil sector and spur diversification of its economy. Non-hydrocarbon GDP growth has been weak and oil revenue volatility has been transmitted to non-hydrocarbon GDP. Weak non-oil GDP growth reflects both insufficient private investment and low productivity of capital importing efficiency. Productivity growth is a precondition for faster growth and greater investment effort. Strong productivity growth is also a prerequisite for competitive diversification out of hydrocarbon. Projected high oil revenue will provide the finance for growth but will not necessarily spur sustained growth in the non-oil sector. Overoptimistic predictions of future oil revenues are shown to have seriously adverse consequences, particularly if the non-oil economy adjusts to falling demand through underdevelopment and capital flight is provoked. Policy options for protecting the economy from volatility in oil revenues, without eliminating the benefits from rising prices include the formation of a stabilization fund and hedging strategies in the international markets. The stabilization fund would smooth consumption and reduce the costs associated with volatile spending. Libya needs sound economic management and to address the problems associated with oil windfalls. Market processes are required to help allocate public resources, and governments and others responsible must take account of risk and uncertainty when selecting projects, and formulating plans for development. Consequently, there is a macroeconomic need to diversify the economy to avoid the pitfalls which so often plague developing countries with vast natural resources. The decisions concerning public investment in a social economic infrastructure would be better if unconnected to the presence of hydrocarbon windfalls. To speed up non-oil growth and job creation, the oil windfalls should be used strategically, with the aim of facilitating the transition to a competitive, market-led economy. Over the long-term, the intermediation of hydrocarbon windfalls through the household and business sectors might produce superior long-term growth, but it should go in tandem with considerable strengthening of the investment climate. Enhancing the quality of Libya's human resources will also be essential to improve productivity and diversify out of oil - especially into services - and compete in the global economy. Improving the quality of governance deserves particular attention, because it underlies the development reform agenda. Libya would probably have seen a larger benefit from its windfalls had it saved a higher proportion abroad and limited domestic investment through applying market criteria more rigorously. Quite clearly, good fiscal control of periodic boom episodes enables the boom to temporarily accelerate the rate of economic development. In addition, such questions as the magnitude of the windfalls, how Libya has used them and their impact on non-oil a sector have been addressed in this research. The adoption of sound economic policies and the good management of oil windfall gains will allow Libya to continuously manage growth and become one of the greatest success stories of all developing countries.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, economies and governments across the world have progressively recognised the importance of 'technology' and 'entrepreneurship' as the driving forces for creation of economic value and wealth. In the context of microenterprises, firm level characteristics like the ability to absorb ‘technology’ (i.e. Absorptive Capacity) and to act ‘entrepreneurially’ (namely, Entrepreneurial Orientation) have become important measurements. This research presents a methodology that integrates the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and Absorptive Capacity (ACAP) constructs to explain the performance of microenterprises and identify high performers. The performance of microenterprises has been measured in terms of their potential to create value or wealth. This research validates that a ‘forward looking’ measure of performance that measures the ‘potential value or wealth’ is more suitable than the conventional measure, which uses historical data. It also establishes that the EO and ACAP constructs can be successfully integrated to explain a large part of this value or wealth creating potential. This study covers 165 UK based microenterprises spread across different sectors and industries. Seventy (70) of these microenterprises have been labelled as ‘Entrepreneurial Oriented (EO)’ type enterprises as distinct and separate from the 95 Small Business Owners (SBO) types. The demarcation between the EO and SBO type has been justified and subsequently validated in this research. The results show that it is possible to demarcate between the EO and SBO type enterprises before their respective internal attributes (EO or SBO) are measured. This is particularly important since the two types of enterprises have different antecedents that drive their performance. As in previous studies, this research found Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) to be a uni-dimensional concept. On the other hand, Absorptive Capacity (ACAP), applying the original definition of Cohen & Levinthal (1991) was found to comprise of three components. The predictive model used in this study based on Principal Component analysis (PCA) and Ordinal Regression was able to successfully identify a majority (81.81%) of the high performers. More importantly, none of the low and only one of the medium performers was wrongly identified as high performers. The development of a methodology to predict potentially high value-creating microenterprises has important ramifications for policymaking and economic development both in developed economies like the United Kingdom as well as peripheral and developing economies.

This is exploratory research that has examined the efficacy of agricultural marketing cooperatives in the UK as a mechanism to redress power imbalances when faced with highly consolidated downstream markets. This issue would appear to be of particular significance in the light of the continued UK government emphasis on the cooperative action as a means of supporting farm gate prices following the deregulation of European Markets. This research draws upon, and examines the possible linkages between two key bodies of literature, Power Dependency Theory and literature based on the issue of common property and the free-rider problem and presents, through the exploratory framework, the idea that cooperative success is contingent upon an iterative relationship between leverage and cohesion (Emerson, 1962: Olson, 1965). This understanding is used to examine the three diverse marketing cooperatives, and findings from which suggest that cooperatives in current market structures are unable to improve their leverage position over the longer term. The research also suggests that there is not necessarily an iterative relationship between cohesiveness and improved leverage. What is apparent is that Cooperatives endure because they offer other types of benefits to farmers and currently play an important role is sustaining a failing farming sector.

This thesis reports work to develop and score (value) a measure to capture the impact of end of life care (EoLC) on those people close to the dying. This work is conducted in response to the need to capture wider impacts of EoLC for economic evaluation where there is lack of appropriate measures. To develop the measure, twenty seven in-depth interviews were conducted with those who were recently bereaved or close to somebody receiving EoLC. Constant-comparative analysis was used to develop dimensions for the measure. Pictorial tools were used to explore who is close to those at the end-of-life and therefore could legitimately be included within the evaluation of EoLC interventions. The measure was valued using an exploratory deliberative methodology conducted with six focus groups comprising members of the public. The measure contains six dimensions: \(communication\) \(with\) \(those\) \(providing\) \(care\) \(services\), \(practical\) \(support\), \(privacy\) \(and\) \(space\), \(emotional\) \(support\), \(preparing\) \(and\) \(coping\) and \(emotional\) \(distress\). The communication and practical support attributes received the greatest weighting in the valuation process. On average, there were eight individuals close to those at EoL. This work significantly enhances the potential for including close-persons in economic evaluation of interventions at the end of life.

This thesis explores the imaginary dimensions of economic crisis through a study of the interface between practices of historical representation and processes of social construction. Its core argument is that a sense of history cannot be disentangled from the phenomena that it strives to apprehend. As a result, there can be no fixed and objective relation between the evolution of global capitalism and its long history of crises. Instead, the very intelligibility of both ‘crisis’ and ‘history’ is produced through an iterated telescoping of time, whereby more or less distant events and episodes are grasped together in ways that lend meaning to those of the present. This argument is taken forward via an in-depth and quasi-historical analysis of the 2008 crisis. Focusing on how past crises figure within the pronouncements of international policymaking organisations and the commentary of the global financial press between 2007 and 2009, it develops a typology of different practices of historical representation and the various interpretive functions they are capable of performing. In so doing, it makes a theoretical contribution to the constructivist and cultural political economy literatures on the discursive negotiation of crisis.

The thesis consists of three chapters with Chapters 2 and 3 providing experimental evidence on the role of cheap-talk and a third party recommendation in reducing or aggravating conflict. Chapter 1 surveys the theoretical, empirical and experimental literature on the determinants of conflict. Chapter 2 considers an experiment based on Baliga and Sjostrom (BS, 2004) to investigate whether communication reduces the probability of an arms race. We find that communication does indeed reduce the possibility of using strategies that lead to an arms race, even when the unique Bayesian Nash equilibrium without communication has both players playing a strategy that leads to an arms race. Chapter 3 considers a set of experiments based on Baliga and Sjostrom (BS, 2012) to understand if third parties can provoke conflict. We adapt their model to experimentally test if a third party recommendation can trigger conflict. While in some treatments with recommendation, more players do choose an aggressive strategy compared to the treatment without, none of them are statistically significant. We propose a number of explanations for why provocation may not necessarily increase conflict in this environment.

Many Sub-Saharan African economies experienced high growth rates over the last decade, a welcome change from the depression and stagnation which characterized them during the 1980s and 1990s. However, improved economic performances were mostly driven by an increase of both price and demand for the natural resources of which the continent is rich, so that these growth rates were not associated with a significant increase in industrial diversification. The poor quality of the power infrastructure of many African economies represents one of the major obstacles to their structural transformation. In this thesis we investigate the effects of an unstable power supply on the profitability of Sub-Saharan African firms. To avoid estimation issues related to the possible endogeneity of the relationship between power supply and productivity we develop an instrument based on the water available for hydropower production. Our results show that frequent power outages are indeed a very significant drag on firms’ performance, much more so for firms without access to back-up capacity than for the overall sample. The final part of the thesis also investigates the general relationship between hydropower production and economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa through the use of night-light data.

This thesis is divided into two studies which investigate two separate topics relating to waste management. The objective of the first study is to test the presence of convergence in recycling rates across local authorities in England over the last decade, 1998-2008. Understanding the distribution of recycling performance across municipalities and its dynamic nature is important for current policy evaluation and future policy decisions. Using various concepts of convergence, a comprehensive analysis of the distribution of recycling rates is provided. Spatial effects are taken into account in the process of convergence since the mechanisms for convergence, such as spillovers of technology or policy ideas, have a geographical dimension. The results indicate the presence of convergence over the whole period in a sense that poor-performing local authorities have the potential to increase recycling activities at a faster rate than initially better-performing authorities. However, with the more aggressive economic instruments in use after 2005, there seem to be two separate convergence clubs which implies convergence within groups but divergence between groups. The objective of the second study is to investigate public concern over landfill externalities by examining how real and perceived damage from landfill disposal affects the residential property market. Using data on the property sales and landfill sites in the City of Birmingham in 1997, the analysis highlights the presence of long-term impacts of landfill which endure even after site closure by examining external effects from inactive landfill sites as well as active sites. Furthermore, this study deals with a case where properties are simultaneously located near to multiple landfill sites. This issue should not be neglected in the study of a densely populated area like Birmingham. The results of hedonic price regressions reveal strong evidence of landfill impacts reducing property prices. The approach taken here also provides comprehensive estimates of disamenity effects of living near to landfill sites whilst exploring issues like wind direction, nonlinearity of landfill impacts over distance and differential impacts across landfills accepting different types of waste or possessing different age profiles. The results suggest distinctively different features of disamenity from active and historical landfill sites, particularly in their geographical limits.