Due to the limitations of the extant literature on the impact of microfinance funding on performance, with particular regard to a cross-country analysis and case study of Vietnam, this thesis has been written in an effort to fill this major gap by conducting an empirical investigation into the link between funding and the performance of microfinance institutions. It also employs the most common indicators for microfinance performance and introduces new evidence and possible explanations from an explicit perspective that might be relevant in the context of scale of operation, profit status, regulated status and legal status. First, the link between funding and microfinance performance varies with the heterogeneity of microfinance institution’ characteristics. Second, profitable and regulated microfinance institutions which take on considerably more commercial funds are therefore shown to have higher sustainability, efficiency and outreach. Third, a large scale of operation helps microfinance institutions achieve higher efficiency, profitability, sustainability and outreach (breadth and depth). Fourth, there is no trade-off between the breadth of outreach and efficiency. Fifth, larger loan sizes are associated with higher loan costs. Sixth, the global financial crisis has had a minor impact on the performance of microfinance institutions since they have a low level of self-sufficiency, associated with a low degree of financial integration.

This is my thesis that I explored the dynamic process and peculiarities of Korean welfare politics during the Kim Dae-Jung government of 1998-2003, which was the first administration to come to power through a peaceful turnover of political power. To this end, the research focused on the policymaking processes of National Health Insurance and National Pension reforms during that period. The thesis analysed these welfare reforms from a more rigorous theoretical framework in order to uncover the key characteristics of welfare politics in Korea. In particular, the key role played by stake challengers including civil organisations in such policymaking process was addressed in detail because these Non-Governmental organisations emerged as an influential player against the established stakeholders representing vested economic and political interests. In contrast to the situation in many western democracies, the influence of political parties in the reform process was minimal and those parties did not play any significant part in the debates and conflicts surrounding the welfare reforms during the Kim Dae-Jung era. It was noteworthy fact that stake-challengers coalition led by civil organisations was able to overcome stakeholder coalition’s interests and objections to win the battle for health insurance integration and public pension reforms.

The thesis focuses on empirical modelling and estimation of the role of exchange rate in international trade adjustment, trade prices and domestic inflation in the context of developing countries. Although the study‘s prime focus is to estimate empirically, using Bangladesh as the main case study, the theoretical assumptions about the effectiveness of exchange rates polices towards trade prices, domestic inflation and trade performance, we also examine the asymmetric behaviour of ‗large exchange rate shocks‘ in trade flows of other South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Estimated results demonstrate that the exchange rate has a significant positive impact on trade balance in the short- and long-run. However, the J-curve phenomenon can be explained as an appropriate response of trade balance to exchange rate shocks. Along with relative prices and domestic real income, the export demand is also found to be the significant determinant of import demand function. We find ‗complete‘ exchange rate pass-through to import price in both the short- and long-run. However, the ‗second stage pass-through‘ to consumer prices is found to be only ‗partial‘ in both the short- and long-run. Trade liberalization is a significant phenomenon for Bangladesh‘s trade and inflation. Hysteresis in international trade is found to be a ‗commodity and country specific‘ phenomenon. Sunk costs are not found to be significant for hysteresis.

Motivated by the global financial market turbulence in 2007-2011 and the gaps from the literature, this thesis presents an econometric assessment of different transmission mechanisms that propagated and amplified shocks from advanced economies to East Asia. The asset price channel is investigated with MS-VAR model and multivariate unconditional correlation tests. The recursive bivariate probit models are applied to test the liquidity shock transmission via the sudden stop in international lending. The second round effects are examined with partial adjustment models and system GMM estimation. The econometric procedure and testing approach bring about novel results from superior estimation techniques and handle several statistical problems such as heteroskedasticity, non-linearity, endogeneity, omitted variables, simultaneous equations and sample selection bias. The main finding of the thesis is that despite relatively sound fundamentals and limited exposure to structured credit products, East Asia could not totally decouple from the global financial crisis. Specifically, the asset price channels propagated volatility spillovers from the US and Europe to East Asian equity, foreign exchange and CDS markets. While international volatility spillovers were mainly caused by fundamental links, international behaviour during the shocks intensified the regional linkages and generated contagion effect. There was also contagion evidence associated with the sudden stop in international lending which facilitated the transmission of liquidity tensions in the interbank markets. Finally, contagion was magnified by the second round effects, defined as the feedback loops from the sudden changes in macro-financial conditions which caused adverse adjustment in bank performance. These findings have useful implications for international investors and policy authorities regarding to portfolio diversification and systematic risk containment.

This study examines the role of economic structure in explaining the different trajectories of social order development across the post-socialist region. Social orders are shown to differ according to the extent to which competitive tendencies contained within them – economic, political, social and cultural – are resolved according to open, rule-based processes. Social orders are also assumed to exhibit a ‘double balance’ between political and economic systems in which political systems will tend to reflect the prevailing economic system within a society. The focus of this dissertation is placed on tracing which economic conditions facilitate increased levels of political competition. Principally, it will test the hypothesis that the nature of a country’s ties with the international economy, and the level of competition within a country’s economic system, will shape the nature of political competition within that society. After several decades of relative ‘bloc autarky’, the ongoing process of reintegration across the post-socialist region has resulted in varying patterns of interaction with the international economy. This study will focus primarily on the links with the international economy that are formed through export sectors.

This thesis mainly consists of three empirical chapters related to understanding the characteristics, economic impact and the demand for gambling in Thailand. Beginning with a review of the theoretical and empirical literature, this confirms that socio-economic and demographic data are important determinants of the level of gambling participation and gambling expenditure. A Logit model is then used to estimate the participation of gambling. The results suggest that the number games, such as the government lottery, the underground lottery, are popular among old gamblers whereas football betting is popular for adolescents. In the past, most casino customers were old gamblers, but at present the number of young gamblers who participate in casino has considerably increased. A Tobit model is employed to estimate the level of gambling frequency and gambling expenditure. The estimations reveal that there is a “supplementation effect” of casino on other gambling types and the effect also appears among the number games. The gambling expenditures on the number games are high in the group of gamblers who have undergraduate degree or lower while the expenditures on casino and football betting are high in the group of gamblers who have undergraduate degree. However, a higher education level leads to a lower level of gambling expenditures. The focus is then centred on the 2-3 digit lottery. The rational addiction model is tested for the case of the 2-3 digit lottery. In the addiction framework, the 2-3 digit lottery is found to be an addictive goods and the addiction is “myopic addiction”. This finding is confirmed by Instrumental Variable estimation.

The international relations literature on internationalism in foreign policy has not taken account of the internationalist methods and motives of countries of the developing world. This thesis aims to correct this absence through an analysis of Southern internationalism, as evidenced by the foreign policy approaches of South Africa and Brazil in the first decade of the 21st century. By utilising a neoclassical realist approach to the study of the emergence of new powers, the use of internationalism as a foreign policy tool is interrogated as a response both to domestic imperatives, such as perception and identity, and systemic constraints and opportunities. Central to the analysis is an examination of the role of governing parties in foreign policymaking, both as key actors in determining policy, and as the sources of ideational constructs, in this case ‘internationalism’, that have a bearing on foreign policy. Foreign policymakers are limited in their perceptions and responses to external threats and opportunities by the domestic institutional structure, as well as by external threats and opportunities. In South Africa, responses are often limited to rhetoric, owing to limited resource extraction capacity, in spite of the highly centralised foreign policymaking structure under Mbeki. In Brazil, constitutional checks and balances also limited the state’s responses to external stimuli under Lula; yet, these responses, when they are implemented, can be more forceful owing to greater resource capacity. The ‘new Southern internationalism’, propounded by both South Africa and Brazil, is a function of domestic politics and external pressures, as evidenced by the Haiti case. These findings make a contribution to advancing the analysis of emerging powers, their trajectory and intentions in international relations, as well as the extent to which governing parties can influence foreign policy outcomes, and under which conditions

In 1995, the Taiwanese government introduced the Case Payment Scheme (CPS) to initiate a prospective payment method for diagnosis-related groups under the National Health Insurance (NHI) programme. The aim of the CPS was to rectify the supplier induced demand caused by the fee-for-service plan and to improve the efficiency of health services. However, this scheme created a dual reimbursement system for the NHI, under which, some services were reimbursed on the basis of claims for fees, while others were bundled together and paid a fixed rate per discharge. This study examines changes in hospital behaviour in this context based on the assumption that hospitals have incentives to maximise the profits from both payment plans. The aim is to quantify the effects of reimbursement changes on different dimensions of the delivery of health care. This research also evaluates the global budget programme which has changed the budget allocation mechanism within the hospital sector since 2002. Empirical investigations were carried out for all the hospitals contracted into the NHI over the period 1998-2004. To model hospital behaviour, this study employs different econometric methods, including instrumental variables, panel data model, semiparametric estimation, seemingly unrelated regressions and limited dependent variable models. The results suggest that hospitals react to the shift toward the dual payment system by selecting patients, altering treatment patterns, changing the case mix and adjusting treatment intensity. Policymakers do not appear to have anticipated these phenomena. These findings indicate that there could be fundamental problems in the parallel use of retrospective and prospective payments, due to the improper reimbursement incentives embodied within the system. As mixed payment systems have been adopted around the world, this research has implications for existing and future reimbursement reforms.

The aim of this thesis is to generate an understanding of antitrust and its evolution in the context of the globalising economy of the 20th and early 21st centuries. I do this by focusing on the role of economic ideas and more specifically, conceptual approaches to competition policy, in the international context. Existing legal and economic studies have mainly framed antitrust as the disciplinary tool regulating market competition according to criteria of efficiency and/or economic welfare. So far, few researchers have addressed the enforcement of policies - and specifically, of market competition regulations, without resorting to pure rational-choice or reflectivist arguments. This thesis aims to fill this gap by examining the ways in which abstract economic concepts and theories on the one hand and material interests on the other, by influencing political actors’ understanding of reality, have shaped the decision-making process behind specific antitrust policies and laws. My analysis develops on the basis of what I call a pan-institutional methodology, a synthesis of an institutional understanding of antitrust and sociological theories of isomorphism. Pan-institutionalism is employed here to examine the development of antitrust policies in the US, Europe and Japan during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the oil crises of the 1970s and the current recession. My study reveals that the corpus of ideas and institutions of antitrust of the 20th and early 21st century can be identified as Harvard, Chicago and Post-Chicago paradigms of competition policy. To a degree, these US-originated approaches have been internalised by Europe and Japan through formal and informal institutions, and adapted in light of major economic crises. At the same time however, the reliance of Europe and Japan on their traditional understanding of market practices has prevented a total harmonisation of their antitrust policies with the dominant American ones.

Since the creation of the Department for International Development (DFID) in 1997, much scholarly effort has been concentrated on describing New Labour's international development policy outputs. Within these accounts however, there has been little, if any, treatment of how its development policies actually came to be formed, or even more specifically, analysis of the linkages between this branch of foreign policy and New Labour's domestic political economy. My thesis seeks to fill this gap in the literature. My major contribution is to show that the character and orientation of a set of policies designed initially by New Labour officials for the domestic economy were subsequently 'recycled' and transmitted abroad into the field of international development. I test such a claim empirically through three case studies exploring in depth the core policy areas of debt relief, HIV and AIDS, and overseas aid, through which I am able to trace the way that ideas first developed at home were subsequently transposed into its international development policy. This provides the framework which allows me to examine how the Blair and Brown Governments managed the frequently conflicting expectations of the two sets of 'market' and 'social' constituencies in the construction of their international development policy. While 'social' constituencies were successful in influencing processes of policy change which iteratively moved policy closer to their expectations, on the whole its character still favoured the demands of the 'market' constituencies, as had been the case previously in its domestic political economy. Although New Labour's international development policies appeared to become more 'social' over time, this did not mean that they became dominated by 'social concerns'. My overall characterisation of New Labour’s often complex phasing of its international development policy, then, is that it remained market-driven albeit not exclusively market-oriented.