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This thesis examines the size-growth relationship for banking and manufacturing firms. In particular it tests the Law of Proportionate Effect (LPE) which suggests that there is no relationship between firm size and growth. Tests of the LPE are carried out for eight European banking markets (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom) and for three bank types (commercial, co-operative and savings) over the period 1990 to 1994. Employing three measures of size (total assets, equity and off balance sheet business) models are estimated that test for size effects on growth, and the influences of previous growth, bank type and country membership. In the majority of cases, bank growth is independent of bank size, so the LPE holds. However, small banks grew faster than their larger counterparts (in terms of assets and equity) in France, Italy and Spain. The LPE is also investigated for a sample of European manufacturing firms drawn from five countries and eleven industry groups. In contrast to the banking industry there is less evidence that the LPE holds. In most cases small firms grew proportionately faster than their larger counterparts. Using stochastic simulation techniques, the effects of firm growth, entry, exit and merger activity on the evolution of bank sizes and market concentration is examined. Using a simulated industry in which the LPE holds as the benchmark, the implications of various alternative assumptions regarding bank growth were examined. Superimposition of entry leads to a lower mean bank size and lower levels of concentration. Exit leads to higher mean bank size and increased concentration. Mergers lead to increases in mean bank size and concentration in all simulated industries. Using the simulations methodology, hypothetical projections as to the future structure of the banking markets in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK are carried out. Overall, the simulations suggest that bank numbers are likely to decrease in all countries. The market shares of the largest banks are also projected to decline in all countries with the exception of the UK.

This thesis focuses on the impacts of privatisation on the relevant industrial structure of the economy. Standard tools of industrial organisation theory are applied to examine these impacts and, thereby, shed light on relevant welfare issues. The focus of this thesis is to examine the ramifications of privatisation in imperfectly competitive markets. Simple Cournot-Nash types of games have been developed, where the market is a duopoly containing a privatised firm with the other firm being a new entrant. These games examine the efficacy and impacts of privatisation, and the role of government in this duopoly. The thesis endrogenously derives multiple equilibria in the duopolistic market; examines decontrolling/deregulating a vertical market; looks at the potential competition in vertical markets and examines potential collusion among existing firms to forestall entry; and addresses issues of privatisation in successive duopolies with cooperative investments. Results show that whether privatisation is beneficial to the community will rely on the astute role of government intervention. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The papers of this thesis all look at different aspects of organisational governance and strategy. In particular these papers look at organisations that seem to be behaving in counterintuitive ways. For instance all around the world governments often spend disproportionately large amounts of money in the few months at the end of the fiscal year and in the private sector firms often advertise against their rivals even though by doing so they may face greater competition from these rival firms. In these papers I look into whether these behaviours are as a result of a strategy or perhaps reflect some form of a problem in organisational governance. I try to analyse the effects on market efficiency and what steps a government or regulator might take to improve the outcome of the market. The approach is generally theoretical but in the case of the first paper on government spending I calibrate a theoretical model to Northern Ireland spending data. In the rest of this document see non-technical abstracts for my three papers. Note that in order to avoid maths I had to simplify papers considerably so these nontechnical abstracts should not be cited.

This research examines direct and indirect mode of export in sub-Saharan Africa through a combination of theoretical and empirical analysis. We use firm-level data from 38 sub-Saharan Africa countries to test the theoretical findings. The first chapter analyzes a manufacturing firm that chose to export but faced with the discrete decision of choosing a mode of export. The firm weighs between exporting directly and indirectly. We investigate the factors that affect a firm's decision and compare the payoff in each scenarios viz., direct and indirect exports. We formulate a theoretical model for a single firm that can successfully choose from either export channels under various circumstances. Further, we compare the profits under either modes of export. We find that the profit of using direct export mode improves as a firm becomes more efficient, in which case the difference between the profits from using direct and indirect mode gets larger. Our empirical findings show similar relationships. The results also indicate that factors such as size of the firm, being a subsidiary of a multi-plant firm and access to information technology affect the choice to become direct exporter positively. On the other hand, a firm's increased perceptions of obstacles to current operation in the forms of lack of access to finance and corruption are associated with decreased probability of becoming direct-exporter. The second chapter's primary goal is to investigate the oligopolistic interdependence between direct and indirect exporters in the presence of government subsidy. It makes one main assumption that is government subsidy provision targets only direct exporters. In our analysis, we present the effects of pre-determined subsidy and subsidy as a function of levels of inefficiency of both mode exporters and competition between direct exporters. We find that the socially optimal subsidy is negative implying that the chosen policy instrument is a tax on the direct exporters. For both pre-determined and endogenous subsidy, we find that the level of efficiency of the firm affects export decision positively in either direct or indirect-mode exporters' cases. While, the efficiency level of one type mode exporter negatively affects the output of the other mode exporter. We also find that the indirect exporter's level of inefficiency positively affects optimal subsidy provision to the direct exporters, if the indirect exporter has a large market share. We find empirical evidence that support our theoretical findings. In the last chapter, we investigate the interdependence between the direct and indirect export modes of exporters by including domestic sales. Both our theoretical and empirical results indicate that level of exports and domestic sales are directly related to level of efficiency (or inversely related to inefficiency of the firm). However, level of cross-efficiency affects export and domestic sales negatively for both direct and indirect exporters. The empirical test also reveals that domestic sales and either forms of export sales are substitutes; change in domestic sales has a negative effect on both direct export and indirect export sales.

The purpose of this report is to single out and apply the most critical factors for dynamic performance meausrement systems. The report concludes that the existence in practice of theoretically important aspects are diverse and that the most appropriate way of governing the aspects are through the creation of a performance management process. The theoretical chapter is established for dual purposes. The first is to give the reader a comprehensive understanding of what has been done in the field of performance measurement and management so far and the second is to answer the first research question imposed. The empirical chapter investigates to what degree the existence of factors singled out in theory are present in practice. Further, the chapter also answers research question two. Finally the result and analysis chapters focuses on cross-analysing the case studies made and generate a recommendation. Research question three is answered under these headings. / PREPARE

The role of the manufacturing units has a big impact on a company’s business. If competitive priorities and the production weapons can be merged together and describe a factory profile, it can be a factor that provides the competitive advantages for the company. This thesis has two objectives in this area, the industrial and the academic. The industrial objective will investigate how we can visualize and describe a manufacturing structure and make the desired positioning. The manufacturing footprint structure will be set up according to the performance objectives Innovation, Flexibility, Lead-time and Efficiency representing the product life cycle that also support decisions for the make or buy process. The result is a model that describes the manufacturing structure and a conflict area, or a “Black Hole”, is indentified and is leading to the academic research questions; why most of the manufacturing units are positioned in the conflict area and how to leave the “Black Hole”? The intersection in the views of positioning, knowledge and the network paradox are analysed and a scaled model connected to Dreyfus knowledge model, brings some understanding to the positioning problem. A process model is proposed for the characteristic profiles of the concept factories and how to move to the desired positions. This concept can be applied on a group of manufacturing units and handle the trade off dilemmas for the separate units by letting a group of units achieve top performance for all the performance objectives. The visualization and relation to the products life cycle can contribute to communication and developing the manufacturing footprint strategy. The model has been tested, in a positioning context for strategic purchasing with experience of supplier quality audits for positioning suppliers, with positive result. Further research of top performance factories would be interesting to do in order to find out their 8M profiles and identify more trade off dilemmas, connecting them to the different performance objectives in order to support the development in moving to different desired directions. / PREPARE

This PhD thesis takes a ’micro’ perspective on the production of higher education and research. More precisely, I use tools of industrial organization to study two individual institutions involved in their production process. The second chapter studies universities, the main producers of higher education and research, and the third and fourth chapters analyze scientific journals, which are central in the production and the dissemination of science. Besides being crucial nodes in the production and transmission of knowledge, these institutions, interestingly, share other common characteristics: they both emerged before the Industrial Revolution, their importance increased over the centuries and they seem unavoidable today, and many actors are private not-for-profit.