This thesis consists of three chapters. All three are linked by our desire to better understand the determinants of labour migration; that is, the motivation for a person to change his or her location of residence for a period of at least a year. While immigration receives much public discourse, the economic evidence on how migrants self-select is still lacking. In particular, we have little evidence on the relative importance of determinants. We focus on three areas that have received substantially less attention in the migration literature: the importance of relative versus absolute income motives for migration; the effect of wealth and intertemporal choice on return migration; and the role of place attachment as an obstacle to labour mobility. Common to all three chapters is an emphasis on counterbalancing forces that tend to offset spatial income differentials in determining migration. The first chapter examines the extent to which relative income – that is, one’s position in the income distribution – matters in migration choice. Virtually all studies of migration focus on absolute income. This is at odds with the mounting evidence that suggests people care about their relative position in the income distribution. We argue that, in order to test between the absolute income and relative income theories of migration, one needs individual-level panel data on before and after migration outcomes. Indeed, since one has to estimate counterfactual migrant earnings of non-migrants, if migrants are selected on unobservables then cross-sectional estimates will systematically bias the predicted migrant earnings of non-migrants. We estimate the relative importance of the two main theories in explaining interstate migration in the U.S. using a panel of individuals. Relative income is calculated with respect to those persons in the same U.S. state. We find that, although migration leads to a substantial rise in absolute income, the trigger for migration is low relative income and not low absolute income. In the second chapter we show analytically that, under some conditions, return migration is optimal. We build a model where consumers choose either to never migrate, permanently migrate or, migrate and subsequently return. To generate an incentive for return migration, the model assumes a nominal income differential between the source and destination and a compensating differential – which exerts a counterbalancing force to the income differential. Examples of compensating differentials may include differences between the source and destination in climate, place attachment, price levels, unemployment and average consumption. We characterise the optimal migration decision space with respect to the three key variables: initial wealth, the income differential and the compensating differential between the source and destination. The marginal utility of consumption is assumed to be location-dependent due to a non-separable nonpecuniary preference for the source. Consequently, when the region with the best economic opportunities is not the source region, there is a trade-off between income maximisation on the one hand and the marginal utility of consumption on the other. We find that, all else equal, those with low wealth are more likely to migrate and, conditional on migration, those with higher wealth are more likely to return migrate. The third chapter seeks to estimate a key obstacle to migration: place attachment. Place attachment refers to the emotional bonds a person feels towards the place (or area) he or she resides. We estimate place attachment within a tructural model of spatial job search where migration is a by-product of accepting a job offer from another region. The chapter can broadly be split into two parts. The first takes a standard job search model and adapts it to allow search in many potential destinations. Acceptance of an offer from a destination necessarily involves migration to that destination and its associated costs. We consider two types of costs: a cost of migration that is related to distance-to-destination and a non-pecuniary cost of leaving the current region. The latter is deemed to be the negative of place attachment. In the second part, we estimate the structural model for a sample of individual durations in a U.S. state. Our estimates suggest that place attachment is steeply increasing in duration for our reduced-form model; however, the opposite is true for our structural model. We also find that for half the population, the dollar values of place attachment are prohibitively large.

The traditional view of the Canadian economy from the late nineteenth century onward has been one of failure relative to the United States. This thesis examines the Canadian experience from the late nineteenth century in relation to other ‘settler economies’. Similarities between these countries include their resource abundance, low population density and European institutions. In the first essay, creation of long-run, sectorally disaggregated, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjusted Canadian/ Australian data reveals that the Canadian economy was characterised by relatively strong and sustained growth in real output per capita and labour productivity. This paper takes a first step in estimating the importance of many potentially relevant factors. Results indicate that acceptance of foreign technology from abroad was a significant determinant of success. From 1870 to World War One, Canada performed particularly well against settler economies like Australia and New Zealand in terms of output and productivity in manufacturing. The second essay looks more deeply at the question of manufacturing success. A novel approach is taken by applying non-parametric frontier analysis to manufacturing census data in order to make cross-country efficiency comparisons. Measures of Total Factor Productivity indicate that nineteenth century Canadian manufacturing was surprisingly efficient relative to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The third essay takes a comparative approach in analysing market potential. Historically there has been a predisposition to view settler economies like Canada and Australia as part of a homogeneous ‘periphery’ relative to a British ‘metropole’. This concept serves to mask important differences in the ‘peripherality’ of each country. This study suggests the key geographical factor in explaining relative success amongst settler economies was access to markets. Peripherality is observed by estimating an aggregate measure of distance including adjustments for falling transport costs, tariff barriers and border effects. This aggregate distance estimate is used to form a measure of market potential that can be compared with observed trade behaviour. Focus is on the Australian colonies given their acute isolation. Counterfactuals are then generated to quantify the effects of distance on long-run growth during the period from 1870 to World War One.

The global economy is controlled by an 'international economic–legal regime' (hereinafter "IELR"), in which international economic institutions (hereinafter "IEIs") are the major nonstate actors. They provide the rules of the game for the interaction of the States in an international economic scenario. These IEIs, through their institutional capacity, enhance certainty and predictability within the IELR, thereby passively supporting stable and a balanced growth of global economy. This thesis argues that opportunities to achieve stable and balanced growth, in which both the financial and the real side of the economy grow, can be improved if the IEIs increase their focus on the relationship between the Economic Cycle and the IEIs' institutional role. This argument is developed by analysing the relationship between the IEIs' institutional role and the Economic Cycle, first describing the Economic Cycle, and then clarifying the functioning of the IEIs in their institutional role. To narrow the scope of this research, this thesis takes two IEIs as case studies; namely, the IMF and the WTO.

This thesis analyses the determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Vietnam from 1988-2009. It examines the nature, motivation and impact of FDI upon the Vietnam economy and its contribution to the subsequent leap forward in economic growth. The focus is on developing Dunning’s eclectic theory through case study analysis of Honda-Vietnam Motorbike Company and ANZ-Vietnam Bank. The prominent theories on FDI generally used in the thesis focus on Vernon’s Product Life Cycle (PLC) model, the Market Imperfection Theory (MIT), the Transaction Cost (TC) or internalisation approach and Dunning’s Eclectic Theory. Dunning is the clearest methodology for understanding the Vietnamese case as its method is to take account of a countries particular FDI characteristics and their impact on economic growth. The addition of an emphasis on the impact of culture upon the development of FDI in Vietnam provides this thesis with evidence of its originality and legitimacy to the claim of filling a gap in the literature on FDI in developing countries and the advancement of economic theory. The main focus in the case studies is demonstrating how foreign invested enterprises altered production, management, service and marketing processes to adapt their traditional, organisational and locational advantages to suit the local environment, and give them both foreign and domestic comparative advantages, ensuring the maximum possible capital return on their investments.

This thesis analyses the effects of marketisation and globalisation on individual working lives, using the case of employment in the maritime shipping industry in post-socialist Bulgaria (1989-2009). The emergence of new market mechanisms under the combined impacts of post-socialist political and economic change, EU-accession, and globalisation, is analysed using convention theory and the capability approach. A situated micro-sociological case study of maritime institutions and working lives was conducted in the course of nine months of fieldwork in the period 2008-2010. The concept of a 'new post-socialist spirit of capitalism' is developed, following Boltanski & Chiapello (2005[1999]), and substantiated by empirical evidence from 52 in-depth interviews, documents and media reports, and non-participant observation. This thesis contributes to several areas of enquiry: post-socialism; employment; maritime studies; and studies of the lifecourse and working lives. Using the example of maritime employment, it draws out connections between macroinstitutional transformations, labour market conventions, individual working lives, and subjective perceptions of change. The study reveals a number of problems: the increasingly precarious nature of the post-socialist maritime labour market; the insufficient accountability and legal control over the quality of maritime jobs offered by global shipowners; the segmentation of the maritime labour market into 'good' and 'bad' jobs, some lacking basic employment security, social or legal protection for maritime workers, and even workplace safety; the lack of alternative avenues for meaningful careers for former seafarers; the declining popularity of maritime professions; the deprofessionalisation and loss of dignity and meaning in maritime labour; increasingly fragmented career trajectories; and the dissolution of local maritime communities. These problems, not restricted to Bulgaria, indicate the need for concerted supra-national public (labour and social) policies targeting maritime workers at the level of the EU and other international organisations.

The thesis examines what Englishmen meant when they referred to a 'contract' in political discussions around the time of the 1688 Revolution. The study of the immense volume and considerable variety of writings referring to 'contract' reveals that our histories of late seventeenth century political thought, and of Contract Theory in particular, have misrepresented the meaning of the ideas. It appears that there was no single Contract Theory and that appeal to 'contract' was not the monopoly of one particular group, party or side in the political controversies of the period. If we concentrate on what the term 'contract' was used to denote in political writing, we are confronted by a near hopeless confusion. Ifs however, we look to the connotations of the term and the coherence of arguments invoking a 'contract', a very clear, distinctive and significant division of contractarian writing emerges. I have argued that there are in fact three different types of Contract Theory exhibited in the political literature of the periods 'Constitutional', 'Philosophical' and 'Integrated' Contract Theories. My study portrays the characteristics of each of these theories, considers their distinctiveness and interrolations, and attempts to present a more adequate understanding of what 'contract' meant to men In late seventeenth and early eighteenth century England than historians have no far given.

This empirical study primarily aimed to make some assessments on the issues of the marketing orientation of Islamic banks and their implementation of the marketing concept. To achieve this, a comparative study based on a survey of Islamic and Western (traditional interest based) banks was made. The survey questioned these banks concerning their attitudes toward the marketing concept, the organisation and structure of their marketing efforts, the marketing functions of which they perform and the perceived outcome of adoption of the marketing concept. It was anticipated that in these hour areas, the Islamic banks would be no less marketing orientated. It was found however, that though both types of banks had favorable attitudes toward the marketing concept, there were significant differences in emphasis and orientation.

The study is undertaken with an intent to understand the development of structured employment systems within Japanese retail companies overseas. A majority of existing studies on Japanese international management focus on national origins as a major source of the core-periphery distinction within Japanese companies overseas. In addition, the structured employment systems model incorporates skills, profession, hierarchy, employment status and gender as well. The four Japanese companies employ various employee groups by different human resource management practices — recruitment and selection, pay and benefit, and training and development - involving varying costs. These differences are reinforced by the fact that different employee groups are managed by different organisational practices —job assignment, communication and decision-making. Thus, employees are employed in different labour market systems. The Japanese companies possess four structured employment features - polarisation between Japanese and local employees, polarisation between local professional staff and local employees with low skills, casualisation of local employees with low skills, and under-utilisation of female staff When compared with the employment systems of the British company and existing literature, Japanese MNCs tend to polarise between Japanese and local employees, and under-utilise female staff because of the characteristics of Japanese culture. The polarisation between local professional and staff with low skills, and casualisation are mainly attributable to the sectoral/technological characteristics of the retail industry, and the contextual factors of the company. The ethnocentric management approach persists in all Japanese case companies. Although market pressures have induced certain changes in some Japanese companies to make fuller use of local professional staff, they have not introduced fundamental changes in the employment systems in providing equal employment opportunity for all local employees. It is suggested that this ethnocentrism could adversely affect the development of Japanese retail companies in a business environment requiring adaptability to local market and preferences.

The issue of development in emerging markets has moved on from the polarized debates along ideological lines about the state vs. markets, to focusing mainly on economic indicators. Increasingly, as knowledge becomes the main focus of development, it is acknowledged that the state can play a positive role in promoting its growth. To try and analyse these developments, it is imperative that we appreciate the role of differing business systems that impose constraints on development, especially in influencing capital allocation in the system. The emergence of cybercities in impoverished developing countries like India need to be analysed to appreciate the factors that will influence the trends in development - the success of such cities can be attributed to the positive role played by the state and the clustering of software industries around centres of knowledge. We develop frameworks to analyse to compare the existing forms of corporate governance, and a third system for emerging economies such as Asia or Europe. We also develop frameworks to analyse market exchange and alternative frameworks from modern and pre-modern societies, in order to understand the nature of exchange in intangible and inalienable assets such as knowledge. We apply these frameworks to Indian software industry to give us an insight into how India has managed to emerge as a significant player in the software industry. We conclude that the political embeddedness of the various institutions and organisations are playing a critical role in shaping its business systems which is at the crossroads between a pluralist shareholder and corporatist stakeholder system. Also, these factors are forcing the Indian software industry to focus on the lower end of the value chain.

This dissertation tries to contribute to empirically assess hypotheses of the "New Economic Geography". Specifically, we tested the relevance of the combination of lower transportation cost with the role of economies of scale in explaining the regional distribution of total activity and of industrial activity. Economies of scale are assumed to be due to "backward and forward" linkages among firms. We also took into account congestion effects and asymmetry among regions. The model was tested for the regions of Brazil, in the period 1950-1995 and 1970-1995, and for the regions of India, in the period 1961-1991. Using panel results, we observed that transportation costs were generating concentration of total activity in the periods 1950-1995 arid 1950- 1970. For these samples, there is evidence that economies of scales were a cause of concentration of total activity. Other forces, not explained by the model, were generating dispersion and so were congestion effects. For the period 1970-1995, we found that congestion effects and lower transportation cost were helping to disperse economic activity, in the panel results. Economies of scale were not, contrary to the model's predictions, helping economic growth. In the case of Brazil, for the 18-state samples, industrial activity tended to concentrated due to the effects of lower transportation cost, although higher industrial growth rates were a characteristic of the states with less economies of scales. In the case of India, strong concentration effects were taking place, both due to lower transportation cost and due to other reasons. Economies of scale were not important in the explanation of the path of India activity.