In 2005, the South Korean government implemented a system of performance budgeting: Self-Assessment of Budgetary Programmes (SABP). Most studies on this system have focused on the relationship between SABP results and subsequent budget allocations. These studies are based on the premise that the SABP system itself is operating well, and consequently SABP results are reliable. However, this thesis questions that premise and analyses the process for arriving at SABP results, especially focusing on differences in views on the merit of programmes between the spending ministries and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF), which controls SABP. The thesis addresses four key research questions: Which factors affect differences in views in the SABP process? What are the dysfunctional consequences of SABP? What is the impact of these dysfunctional consequences? And, lastly, what feasible policy alternatives can be proposed? The study suggests that there is a tendency to optimism bias by spending ministries in their self-assessment programmes, often leading to a subsequent drastic downward review of such assessments by the MOSF. These results are established by both quantitative and qualitative analysis. This thesis also provides evidence of dysfunctional effects arising from the SABP process, some of which are “unintended” by both spending ministries and the MOSF, while others are “unintended” by the designers of the SABP system but are likely to be “intended” by the spending ministries, as “agents” in the principal-agent relationship. The thesis concludes that both the unintended and intended dysfunctional consequences of SABP are sufficiently important to suggest that the performance budgeting system needs to be carefully re-designed, and proposals are made for feasible refinements to the SABP process.

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 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 thesis examines the marketing and public relations industries in a sub-region of the West Midlands GOR, which stretches from Birmingham to the country towns and villages of Warwickshire and Worcestershire. The area is characterised as a hotspot for particular knowledge intensive businesses and entrepreneurial activity. By undertaking a whole sector analysis the formation and embeddedness of firms within the tight-knit marketing and PR community are elucidated. Examining acts of entrepreneurship and firm formation highlight the importance of different factors in the individual decision-making processes of new enterprise start-ups. This produces a plethora of small business organisations that service clients at distance using information and communication technologies (ICT), coupled with the concomitant industry expertise and contacts. There is a stretching of networks, enabled by ICT, whereby pre-existing relationships continue to be exploited. Consequently all firms, including home-based businesses and micro firms are easily established and represent a plethora of business models engaging in networks at a range of spatial scales. This thesis argues that BPS sectors are characterised by a plurality of business organisations which are crucial for the continual development of the sectors. Integral to this are ICT which facilitate a set of extensively and intensively flexible business organisations.

The thesis contains three empirical studies into economic effects of infrastructure, focusing on different aspects of the Vietnamese economy during the period 2000-2007, namely, economic growth, private sector employment, and private sector location choices. In addition, the empirical studies explicitly take into account the potential existence of cross-province transport infrastructure spillovers. By estimating empirical models specified in accordance with the relevant literature and the context of the Vietnamese economy, and subject to the availability of data, the thesis obtains the following main findings. Firstly, there is evidence of a positive impact of transport infrastructure on economic growth, on private sector employment, and on private sector location choices. Secondly, sectoral differences in the impact of transport infrastructure are identified in the location choice analysis. Thirdly, the cross-province transport infrastructure spillovers cannot be seen in the growth analysis; whereas, there is some evidence of a negative spillover effect on private sector employment. In the location choice analysis, the evidence of spillovers varies dramatically. Finally, higher-education infrastructure, which is assumed to be associated with the capacity of qualified labour supply, is positively related to both private sector employment and location choices.

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.

The theory of ambidextrous organisation in management and organisational studies latches onto the idea of simultaneous and equally high degrees of incremental innovation based on prior knowledge (exploitation) and discontinuous innovation based on experimentation and new knowledge (exploration). It claims that any organisation should be ambidextrous to succeed long term. This thesis research puts ambidexterity theory to test. Using the logic of falsification, I conduct an exploratory case study of the semiconductor IP designing company ARM to tests whether the central claims of ambidexterity apply in the empirical context of this successful technological company. The ARM is a leading-edge innovator and a successful company by any common sense criteria. I find that ARM used and banned the ambidexterity rationale because its underlying assumptions misrepresent the interactions between ARM and its Partners in the process of innovation across its vast Ecosystem. I find that ambidexterity assumptions break down in the context of the Ecosystem. Ambidexterity theory displays some serious limitations when applied to the company's innovation in System-on-a-Chip technology that powers ubiquitous computing and assembles an Ecosystem of Partners. The revealed limitations of ambidexterity thinking demand to reconsider the claim of ambidexterity's universal value and to reassess the fitness of ambidexterity assumptions for explaining innovation in the technology of the future.

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This thesis presents three papers in the field of banking. The first paper considers ‘asset encumbrance’ which refers to the existence of bank balance sheet assets being subject to arrangements that restrict the bank’s ability to freely transfer or realise them. Asset encumbrance has recently become a much discussed subject and policymakers have been actively addressing what some consider to be excessive levels of asset encumbrance. Despite its importance, the phenomenon of asset encumbrance remains poorly understood. I build a novel dataset of asset encumbrance metrics based on information provided in the banks’ public disclosures for the very first time throughout 2015. The study then provides descriptive evidence of asset encumbrance levels by country, credit quality, and business model using different encumbrance metrics. The empirical results point to the existence of an association between CDS premia and asset encumbrance that is negative, not positive. That is, on average encumbrance is perceived to be beneficial. Still, certain bank-level variables play a mediating role in this relationship. For banks that have high exposures to the central bank, high leverage ratio, and/or are located in southern Europe, asset encumbrance is less beneficial and could even be detrimental in absolute terms. The second paper investigates the size distribution of the whole population of Spanish commercial, savings and cooperative banks from a dynamic perspective over the 1970-2006 period. To investigate the evolution of the size distribution, the study determines whether the data is in line with the Law of Proportionate Effect (LPE) using panel unit root tests. A key finding is that the size-growth relationship is not stable over time but changes depending on the competitive environment of banks (liberalization, deregulation and integration). When Spanish banking was highly regulated we find that smaller banks grew faster than their larger counterparts. In recent years, however, we find that larger banks grow at the same rate or faster than smaller banks, a result that lend towards LPE acceptance. Thus, the study corroborates the conditioned nature of the size-growth relationship and the size distribution of banks, as emphasized by studies of the US banking system. Finally, the third paper investigates, from a theoretical perspective, the roles of banks and markets when both are active, there is limited participation in markets, and there exists liquidity and technology risk in the economy. In a model where banks and markets co-exist and banks are subject to runs, we show that the levels of aggregate risk and limited participation jointly determine the superiority of the mixed (market and bank deposits) economy over pure equity contracts. The study finds that if aggregate risk exceeds a certain threshold then markets may perform better than banks even for low or null levels of market participation, and it is shown that markets may perform better than banks the lower the market participation under some circumstances. The results imply that the level of bank risk taking cannot be considered in isolation, but in conjunction with the availability and access of banking and non-banking options.

Production of staples occupies an important part in Sub-Saharan Africa‘s crop production, and maize is its single most important food staple. This thesis mainly examines the role of maize in farmers‘ livelihoods and wellbeing in Tanzania, in the context of a long period of reforms that have affected both the maize market, agriculture more widely. It does so by exploring the role of maize in household‘s on and off-farm diversification, the determinants of crop productivity, and the relationship between diversification, commercialisation and‘ well-being. A number of specific issues are explored including the importance of factors such as farm size and education, access to key inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and agricultural extension services. The thesis uses data collected from three districts of Rukwa, one of Tanzania‘s major maize producing regions, and some secondary agricultural data from official sources. The research found that households with more land were generally more diversified (both on-farm and off-farm) than those with less land, and they experienced higher levels of well-being as measured by a range of concepts of well-being, but that maize continues to play an important role households‘ livelihoods and well-being. The research also revealed low levels of use of important agricultural inputs such as modern fertilizers and extension services, which may explain the low yields observed in the region. Education emerged as an important factor in raising yields, increasing commercialisation and also well-being, suggesting that nonagriculture policies may also be important for improving productivity and welfare of farmers. Despite the importance of crop production to their‘ well-being, households face several constraints; these include access to fertilizers, improved seeds and other chemical inputs necessary for higher production, and extension services. These findings have important policy implications as many rural households continue to rely on agriculture, especially production of staples. Therefore, these results could help the central and local governments to formulate strategies geared towards improving rural well-being.