An advance in information and communication technology (ICT) is one of the most important forces in reshaping the world economy. So far, research on the role of ICT development in the financial globalization process is very limited. This dissertation is composed of three essays, which aim to fill part of this gap. The first essay explores transmission mechanism between Internet development and foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing economies. The second further investigates why developing economies cannot fully benefit from Internet development and provides policy recommendations. The third studies the relationship among financial integration, ICT and macroeconomic volatility in ten Asian economies. / The first essay examines three potential channels: inventory costs, market entry costs and payment of bribes, through which the Internet attracts FDI. It develops a model to explain the role of the Internet in determining inward FDI, and then empirically tests the hypotheses. The empirical findings show that the Internet development in developing economies attracts multinationals, since it reduces their costs of holding inventories and market entry costs. The Internet is found to reduce corruption, but evidence for their combined effects on FDI is mixed. In addition, this study performs Granger causality test and finds a causal relationship from the Internet to inward FDI stocks, rather than vice versa. / The second essay examines how the Internet---a communication network---which is characterized by the presence of positive and negative externalities affects the locational choice of FDI. A two-stage model is developed: at the first stage, multinational corporations do not cooperate and determine the degree of investment in Internet technologies, whereas, at the second stage, these firms engage in a Cournot quantity competition for a homogenous product. This model predicts that positive Internet externalities stimulate FDI while negative Internet externalities discourage FDI. These hypotheses are tested by the panel data estimation and the system general method of moments (GMM) estimator. The empirical findings provide strong evidence that the presence of negative Internet spillovers in developing countries discourages inward FDI, and the presence of positive Internet externalities in developed economies attracts more FDI. / The third essay looks at ten Asian economies committed to ICT development and financial integration, and presents evidence on whether or not they have experienced greater output fluctuations from 1980 to 2003. A two-country dynamic general equilibrium model is used and ICT is assumed to increase the volume and speed of capital flows. This study's model predicts that economies with a high ICT development or/and a high degree of financial integration exhibit greater output fluctuations in the face of monetary policy shocks, but lower output fluctuations in the face of fiscal policy shocks. The empirical findings estimated by using the panel vector autoregression approach support these predictions.

In a technology driven world, technology acquisition decisions as to when and which new technologies to acquire are becoming increasingly critical for firms to survive and grow. The issue of technology acquisition is addressed with three different focuses in the current dissertation. / In the first essay, we extend the results of some existing literature. Existing literature suggests that, in an oligopoly, identical firms acquire the same technology at two different dates under Nash or pre-commitment equilibrium, which assumes infinite information lag between two firms. The set of equilibrium dates turn out to be different under subgame perfect or pre-emption equilibrium that assumes zero information lag. We show that allowance for asymmetry between firms leads to the same equilibrium dates under Nash and subgame perfect equilibrium. / In the second essay, a two-period technology game is considered to study the effect of expectations regarding technological progress on a firm's technology adoption decision in a duopoly. It is shown that expectations of better future technology retard adoption of the currently available technology. Uncertain future progress is shown to have either no effect or negative effect on the adoption of the currently available technology when a Nash or open-loop equilibrium holds. However, under subgame perfection, uncertainty may actually encourage adoption of the current technology, contrary to what literature suggests. / In the third essay, a stochastic mathematical programming framework is used to build a decision model to solve for technology decisions facing rapid and uncertain technological progress. In our scenario-based approach, we allow uncertainties in both technological developments as well as in output product market demands. Furthermore, the acquisition costs of the technologies are assumed to be concave to reflect economies of scale in acquisition. An efficient procedure to solve the problem is proposed and implemented. Our numerical results show that the expectation of future technologies impacts the acquisition of the current technology in a negative way, and highlights the importance of incorporating expectations in a technology acquisition model.

The Quebec Ministry of Education has implemented curriculum reforms that emphasize the integration of information technology into classroom teaching practices. Despite these efforts, however, many teachers appear to resist using computers in their classrooms. Some of these resistors are technologically literate! The purpose of this qualitative study is to better understand the reluctance of the technologically-literate teachers (with two to three years of experience) to integrate technology into their teaching practices. / The six teachers participating in this study completed questionnaires and were individually interviewed using an open-ended approach. The data were then analyzed using the Constant Comparative Method. The results showed that although the participants were using computers in their classrooms, they were not actually integrating technology as stipulated by the curriculum reforms. This was attributed to a number of factors, including personal limitations, job stability, lack of resources and funds, time, training, and curriculum issues.

Discourse ethics relates to an argumentative discussion about our moral norms and their foundations. The purpose of my research is to describe and evaluate the functioning of several institutions of discourse ethics as sources of normativity for the regulation of new medical technologies and to propose some possible interactions between law and these institutions. / The institutions of discourse ethics I will look at are: national commissions of experts, national ethics committees, technology assessment committees and consensus conferences. Used in these institutions, argumentative discussion has the capacity to influence the meaning we give to our moral norms as well as the context and the conditions for their application. These discussions generate a special kind of normativity, which ought to be recognised by our legal system. Law itself would benefit from an interaction with such normativity.

This study explores how to integrate faculty-initiated Internet-facilitated international academic partnerships into their local university environments. Recently some faculty have begun initiating international partnership activities which carryout their university's research, teaching, and service missions. These partnerships (including courses, projects, or entire programs) are considered by their initiators to benefit both faculty and student development. Faculty see the Internet as enabling them to construct interactive and collaborative virtual forums where disperse student and faculty bodies can co-engage in exciting international research, teaching, and learning opportunities. This study aims to encourage the development of Internet-facilitated international academic partnerships so that more faculty in all disciplines are supported by their local institutions to better integrate their partnerships. Presently, partnerships are not well integrated. Impart this is because the Internet as a communication tool is relatively new phenomenon. However, it is also due to the tendency for faculty level partnerships to be overlooked by higher levels of university administration. As a result, the value of Internet partnerships has not yet been explored in relation to their local institutional missions. This study therefore consults faculty with experience partnering online in order to garner faculty insights pertaining to partnership integration. The results help to determine (1) core characteristics of these faculty-level partnerships (2) faculty motivations for initiating them (3) university environments implicated by integration and (4) identify faculty support and development opportunities appropriate to support integration.

This essay explores the benefits and limits of teaching and learning music in a changing technological environment, where both students and instructors are faced with the perpetual problem of keeping up with new methods of practicing music for the purpose of maintaining competence. The essay critically reflects on the argument that present societies overvalue technical instruments, at times giving consumers a false hope of achieving quick results in a brief period of time, and with the unintended consequence that playing techniques can be compromised. The idealizing of mechanical devices has become strongly associated today with sophisticated taste and class. Following Mumford and Postman, the essay argues that these technological tools should be seen as posing a challenge to instructional values and to human agency. This essay concludes that while we cannot help the fact that tradition is constantly being renewed, in part through technological change, the role of teaching that learning music needs to be focused on are historic values which incorporate experience and reciprocity.

Cette thèse analyse les conséquences des transformations de la sphère financière sur les canaux de transmission des décisions de politique monétaire, au cours de ces dernières années dans les pays industrialisés. Elle observe que du fait de ces transformations, les établissements bancaires sont passés d'un modèle d'" octroi et détention du crédit " (originate to hold) à un modèle d'" octroi puis cession du crédit " (originate to distribute), ce qui leur permet de recourir davantage aux produits dérivés et à des instruments de transfert du risque de crédit. Elle démontre que ces techniques de gestion actif/passif ont complètement bouleversé les fondements théoriques des canaux traditionnels, en particulier, du canal du crédit. Pour expliquer ces bouleversements, l'analyse a été structurée en deux parties. La première met en évidence, à travers le principe d'accélérateur financier, la manière dont la déconnexion partielle entre la croissance de l'offre de crédits et celle des dépôts bancaires a tendance à renforcer le canal du crédit alors qu'on devait s'attendre à son affaiblissement du fait que toutes les hypothèses-clés mises en avant par Bernanke et Blinder (1988) ont été fragilisées par les innovations financières. La deuxième partie montre, en s'appuyant sur les études empiriques, comment le canal des taux d'intérêt s'est renforcé grâce à la financiarisation croissance des économies industrialisées et à la flexibilité du cadre opérationnel de la politique monétaire.

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This thesis studies the impact of North American copyright on technological development. The first section proposes a broad vision of copyright including both Canadian and American legal concepts. It analyses different modern definitions of copyright, the origin of the concept and its underlying justifications. The second section presents the historical relations between copyright and technologies. It studies the history of the printing press, the photography, the player-piano, the motion picture, the radio, the cable TV, the photocopier, the videotape, the Digital Audio Tape and the MP3, and the legal challenge they represented. Those elements give us the opportunity to evaluate the influence of copyright on technological development.

The following is a qualitative study designed to collect and study elderly (>65) perceptions of in home lifestyle monitoring technology. Data were collected through three focus groups, organized and analyzed for results. The focus groups were run in a semi-structured manner with the co-moderators presenting questions from an original valid instrument. The study suggests that nearly all of the participants are comfortable with current technologies and around 50% of the sample group would be interested in using the new proposed technologies. The study also suggests that the participants have a high level of current wellness and are generally comfortable in their current residence. / Fisher Institute for Wellness and Gerontology