The breakdown of the Bretton Woods system and the adoption of generalized floating exchange rates ushered in a new era of exchange rate volatility and uncertainty. This increased volatility led economists to search for economic models able to describe observed exchange rate behaviour. In chapter 2 we propose more general STAR transition functions which encompass both threshold non-linearity and asymmetric effects. Our framework allows for a gradual adjustment from one regime to another, and considers threshold effects by encompassing other existing models, such as TAR models. We apply our methodology to three different exchange rate data-sets, one for developing countries, and official nominal exchange rates, the second emerging market economies using black market exchange rates and the third for OECD economies. The large appreciation and depreciation of the dollar in the 1980s stimulate an exciting academic debate on using unit root tests for structural break. We propose a model which is the natural extension of the behavioural equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) model. We then propose more general smooth transition (STR) functions, which are able to capture structural changes along the equilibrium path, and are consistent with our economic model. Our framework allows for a gradual adjustment between regimes and considers under- and/or over-valued exchange rate adjustment. We apply our methodology to the monthly and quarterly nominal exchange rates for seventeen and twenty OECD economies and construct bilateral CPI-based real exchange rates against the U.S. dollar and the German mark. The investigation of chapter 4 focuses on non-linear forecasts to testing exchange rate models by examining microstructure - order flow. The basic hypothesis is that if order flow includes heterogeneous beliefs and the information contained in them, heterogenous customer order flow can have forecasting power for exchange rates. Using statistical and economic evaluation, we quantify the role that, when the information is lagged or simultaneously released to all market participants, the key micro level price determinants - order flows is impounded into price. The results indicate: 1) order flow with non-linear consideration lead to considerable and statistically significant improvements compared to the random walk model; and 2) order flow is a powerful predictor of the exchange rate movement in an out-of-sample exercise, on the basis of economic value criteria such as Sharpe ratio and performance fees implied by utility calculations.

The aim of this thesis is the development of a political economy of large accounting and auditing firms. The importance of this lies in the rapid growth of these firms and the lack of appropriate theories. Economists have applied the theory of the firm to accounting and have approached auditing from agency and litigation costs perspectives, while sociologists have studied the culture of accounting firms and approached auditing using concepts such as ‘legitimation’ and ‘jurisdiction’. These approaches do not recognise that to do justice to the subject matter, we must study accounting firms in the broader context of accounting and its many conceptual and practical problems. These include the conceptual framework, auditor independence, the audit expectations gap, creative accounting, and fraud. To study the accounting firm within the context of accounting the thesis develops a political economy approach that emphasises conflict between investors, managers, workers, and the state. This approach proves helpful because it encompasses all accounting and auditing problems within a framework that recognises agency and links together the profits of accounting firms with their legitimation. The method adopted is the development of a theory of the profits of accounting firms and a model of factors driving auditor independence. Following Bryer, the thesis develops the theory from Marx’s Capital by combining his analyses of ‘bookkeeping’ and ‘commercial capital’. The theory highlights that as capitalist enterprises accounting firms compete with all other capitalist firms for a share of surplus value, as well as competing with other accounting firms. However, the political economy approach also highlights the essential contradiction in accounting: that measuring and disclosing profits can exacerbate the ‘labour danger’. The provocative character of accounting means that disguise of profits is part of its nature, but that this must co-exist with the contradictory need for accurate, objective measurement of profits. The model therefore suggests that the role accounting firms play in disguise is the key to understanding their behaviour. It predicts that as the level of profits and labour militancy rises, so do investors’ demand for disguise. However, because investors need disguise, auditors cannot have full independence, and the thesis concludes that this explains why auditing is within the private sector. Its general conclusion is that rather than being a principle, auditor independence is a variable driven by investors’ needs and the capitalist tactics of accounting firms. The thesis derives and tests two behavioural predictions. First, that accounting firms will exhibit the same types of behaviour as other capitalist firms. Second, the auditor does not act independently. The thesis tests these predictions with evidence of accounting firms’ mergers and profit margins (1986 to 1995), the changes introduced in the US to increase auditor independence (2001 to 2003), and the change to limited liability partnership status (2004 to 2007) in the UK. The high levels of profits disclosed by the LLP accounting firms and the close relationship between mergers and profit margins support the hypothesis that accounting firms adopt capitalist tactics. The wide-ranging debates (1995 to 2005) and changes to auditor independence rules introduced by SEC and Sarbanes-Oxley support the hypothesis that claims of auditor independence are untrue, and that the level of audit independence is a variable. The thesis proposes further development of the theory through historical research and formalising the model.

This thesis is composed of four original working chapters in terms of four researching purposes to show the macroeconomic development with finance, as well as to consider the comparative proxies of investment and trading sectors in emerging economies. These four original working chapters can be briefly presented as: Theoretical Models, Structural Breaks for NICs of Asia, Causations in Steady State and Dynamic Process in NICs of Asia, and Studies with Countries’ Sizes in BICS1. For different groups of countries in the developing world, it is necessary to mention a fact for empirical studies: that the methodology for estimations should be different, due to many realistic situations and some important ideas from development economists. In the theoretical section, some mathematical models are developed to look at the relationship and effects of finance and development, each of which highlights one special aspect of the interconnections in terms of taxonomy idea. The first empirical part of this thesis investigates the different types of emerging economies of New Industrialized Countries (NICs) in Asia, typically Singapore, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand, and various stages they pass tough in terms of their economic development and financial growth 1960s to 2007. Another different empirical study concentrates on the size effects on the impacts of financial systems to economic development, which involves specific estimations of four specific large emerging economies of Brazil, China, India and South Africa (BICS) with quarterly data from 1995 to 2007. Specially, the study of BICS means the comparison of interrelationship of real sectors and financial sectors on development in terms of specifications of size effects on financial systems. The roles of financial system to economic development are suggested to be investigated in terms of specifications of different emerging economies based on either theoretical or empirical studies of this thesis.

The newly established Chinese stock market presents us with an interesting case-study of a market which has distinct features and special microstructures. This thesis focuses on the investigation of transaction cost, stock holding period and return volatility with a market microstructure approach. The chapters are mainly motivated by the following issues. 1. What causes the transaction costs disparity of Chinese domestic and foreign-shares? Chapter 3 explores the characteristics of Chinese domestic and foreign shares and examines the transaction cost (measured by bid-ask spread) of the individual shares. We find that the average transaction cost of foreign shares is significantly higher than that of domestic shares. We estimate informed-trading cost component of transaction cost for each share and find it is higher for foreign shares than for domestic shares. After controlling for the informed-trading cost, the transaction cost disparity disappears. Our finding suggests that the higher transaction cost of foreign shares can be attributed to the higher informed-trading costs faced by foreign share investors. 2. How do transaction cost and stock return affect investor’s holding period for a stock? Do investors in Chinese stock market tend to sell the winning stocks too soon and hold the losers too long? Chapter 4 investigates the relationship between stock transaction cost and holding period. We compute the holding period for each individual domestic and foreign shares following the method of Atkins and Dyl (1990), the transaction cost and holding period relationship is estimated by the two-stage least square using panel data. Our results provide strong evidence that assets with higher transaction costs will be held by investors with longer holding periods. We also observe that foreign share investors are more sensitive to transaction costs. The disposition effect investigation suggests a negative relationship between stock return and holding period, which indicates both domestic and foreign share investors have the tendency of selling winning stocks too soon and holding losing stocks too long. The disposition effect is stronger in the domestic share market. 3. If transaction cost and trading volume can be regarded as a proxy of information arrival, do they help on explaining stock return volatility persistence? Chapter 5 applies the popular GARCH model to investigate the dynamic relationship of return volatility, trading volume and transaction cost. Based on the mixture of distributions hypothesis (MDH), we include trading volume and transaction cost as mixing variables of information arrival in GARCH model for individual stocks. Our results confirm the relevancy and validity of the MDH for individual stocks. We also find that the trading volume and transaction cost help to explain the GARCH effects on stock return and the persistence of the conditional variance reduces for most stocks. However, as information variables, their power on explaining volatility is limited. The return volatility is better explained by previous volatility. The final chapter summarises the main results of this thesis as well as the future research plan.

This thesis empirically evaluates three key financial and macroeconomic issues: Essay 1 examines the effectiveness of China fuel oil futures in hedging a domestic spot fuel oil position as well as hedging a spot position in the Singapore fuel oil market. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of this kind. Dynamic Bi-variate GARCH and constant volatility models are estimated to derive the optimal hedging ratios and hedging effectiveness of China fuel oil futures. That effectiveness is assessed by several criteria, for both in- and out-of-sample periods. Essay 2 aims to investigate the relationship between the oil, gold and US stock markets. By employing a Tri-variate GARCH(1,1) model, this is the first study to explore how volatility is transmitted among those three markets. Additionally, this is the first study to compare Tri-variate GARCH and Bi-variate GARCH modelling strategies as vehicles for determining the volatility interrelations between these markets. Essay 3 explores the power of conventional macroeconomic factors to explain the currency fluctuations over recent years, including the 1997 crises, in six Asian countries. Two regimes Markov Switching TGARCH and constant volatility models are used to determine the causes of market pressures on exchange rates, and the probability of the timing of a currency attack. The Markov Switching models do not require an ex-ante definition of a threshold value to distinguish stable and volatile state like Logit models do, and they can capture the appreciating currency attacks as well as the depreciating ones. The Markov Switching models are also compared with Multinomial Logit models in their ability to detect crises.

This thesis conducts three different empirical studies and finds that some of the pre-2007 risk assessment model could underestimate the systemic risk of the banking sector and justifies an overhaul. First, it simulates the contagion impact of the UK interbank market. Subject to a number of assumptions (netting agreement, seniority, etc), it finds that the contagion is much severer if the simulation uses consolidated data than using unconsolidated data. Second, the thesis tests whether the riskiness of banks can be mitigated by peer interbank monitoring. Applying to UK market, the thesis finds little evidence of market discipline. The results are attributed to the lenders’ assumption of “too-big-to-fail” and the shortness of loan maturity. Last, the thesis investigates whether banking sector difficulties are preceded by macroeconomic distress. In contrast to most existing studies, the thesis finds that economy still thrives in the “pre-crisis” in terms of increasing GDP growth and the recession is generally associated with the “post-crisis” period. The inconsistency of results is very likely due to imprecise crisis identification of earlier studies which identify crises too late on the basis of “event studies”.

This thesis analyses how trade liberalisation and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) have impacted on Mexico’s economy. Time series econometric estimations techniques and estimations of a dynamic simultaneous equations system were conducted using quarterly data (from 1980 to 2002). In a VAR framework, calculations showed that only exports do Granger cause GDP. Under NAFTA, it emerged that exports and GDP do Granger cause FDI. Variance decomposition and impulse response functions confirmed the relative importance of each variable in the system. 3SLS estimations including instruments of fiscal and monetary policies and inflation, demonstrated that the main determinants of GDP are capital accumulation, labour productivity and FDI. Other findings confirm that exports, differences in relative wages and currency depreciation are explicative of FDI. Exports are highly dependent on the world economy and exchange rate fluctuations. Labour productivity and FDI improve human capital. Similarly, GDP and human capital induce productivity gains and capital accumulation improves due to technology transfer, infrastructure, personal income and peso appreciation. Dynamic effects of government policies and exogenous variables were analysed via multiplier analysis. The real exchange rate and world economy exert the strongest acceleration on exports and FDI growth. Multiplier effects of the monetary base showed than an expansionary monetary policy has the capacity to decelerate the interest rate and thereby to enhance FDI and its spillovers.

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.

This thesis employed a case study approach to explore the rules and routines that have evolved within the Investor Relations (IR) functions of a large Canadian public company (ABC) from the inception of their IR website in 1997 to 2010. Utilizing weblog analysis, institutional theory (specifically, the Burns and Scapens (2000) institutional framework), and a detailed case study analysis of the interviews undertaken, the findings of this study illustrate that rules and routines of operation within an IR web team are likely to be dynamic and will evolve at a quick pace if the business is actively seeking to employ best practice in its IR website strategy. The results also show how both internal and various external influences are likely to play key roles in altering the rules and routines of IR websites operation. Within the case study presented, five distinct stages of institutionalization were recognized. The analysis framework used provided an effective tool to analyze the internal aspects of these stages. However, it was also enlarged to incorporate specific external influences to show how they play a parallel part in affecting activity in this domain specifically. The findings further show that there is minimal normative isomorphism occurring in this domain. It is proposed that the lack of formalized education in the IR website management and operation area may be playing a key role in constraining the further development of this. Further, the thesis concludes by highlighting the critical need for senior management ‘buy-in’, identification and development of a suitable lead for this activity within the company, and the right context in which they can be allowed freedom to innovate and explore best practices applicable to the online IR function, where-ever they may be found. These features must then be balanced with the overall strategic placement of the IR website as a best practice driver, or follower, to ensure a successful, strategically aligned operation in this domain. While these issues individually have been found to be important in other rapidly innovating business domains, this thesis illustrates and explores their need for the first time, in the IR field in the context of a recognized leader in its field.