China has experienced incredible growth in the number of nongovernmental organizations (NGO) that occupy civil society. These organizations came forth at a time of rapid economic and political change. Instead of being given a supportive legal path for their work, NGOs have had to navigate the supply and demand factors in their specific situation in order to flourish. The demand side factors chiefly consist of matters pertaining to the need an NGO is meeting; and supply side factors pertain to an NGO's ability to create infrastructure to support their organization, including both the space in society to function and the processes necessary to fund their operation. By understanding the supply and demand side factors of the third sector, NGOs are able to achieve effectiveness in a variety of different capacities. In the current regulatory framework, many of these capacities are not entirely legal, but NGOs continue to find ways to make these arrangements work. Intermediary NGOs are a special type of NGO that positions itself to benefit both the donor and the beneficiary and help both overcome some of the challenges presented by the difficult regulatory environment. In doing this, intermediary NGOs fulfill a special role in meeting supply and demand in the third sector and can propose many useful solutions for philanthropy in China today.

This thesis addresses the issues faced by the urban poor in their efforts to gain housing in developing countries. It argues that participation in housing is a matter of governance, in which the Public, Private and Popular sectors interact, and Intermediary Agents (IA) are necessary to act as catalysts in this interaction. In Indonesia there are two major problems related to housing the urban poor. The first problem concerns the quantity of housing. The second problem concerns the quality of housing, infrastructure and the environment. The government usually addresses these problems through a project-based, sectoral approach that lacks community engagement and accountability. Intermediary Agents have assisted many of these housing projects. However, little research has been undertaken on their role in these housing projects, as well as in the informal housing process. This thesis examines the role of IAs in the housing process of four different communities: one community in a government-sponsored project and three communities in informal settlements. The findings showed that the IAs, in engaging with the four different communities, played different roles and have different values. The involvement of IAs in the housing process elucidates a fundamental issue. On one hand, the IAs offer a mechanism to assist communities in providing and improving access to housing, infrastructure and services. However, there are limitations to their role: they have not the capacity to improve security of land tenure for the residents, which is essential for sustainable housing development. Where there has been some recognition of residents' rights to occupy the land, there have been substantial gains in community engagement in investing and improving their living environment. The thesis demonstrates the importance of community participation and acknowledges stakeholder engagement and community empowerment are crucial, roles that are often dependent on the involvement of IAs. It also extended the research on movement and development IAs demonstrating that both functions are complementary and important in housing delivery and that there are five roles that these IAs could play depending on the housing situation. The thesis offers new approaches to housing delivery and policy in Indonesia by involving urban poor communities, as the beneficiaries of housing for the poor programs. The qualitative method of the research has not been able to provide a generalised conclusion, but the lessons learned are important not only for providing housing for the urban poor in Indonesia but also possibly to addressing housing problems in other Asian countries. This thesis addresses four areas of intervention in transposing skills for a more democratic approach in housing the poor. Within these areas the research proposes new models of engagement for relevant stakeholders in public, popular and private sectors involving Intermediary Agents. These models are underpinned by a set of basic principles to guide IA engagement. Lastly the thesis proposes three models for IAs involvements in the housing process.

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> <p align="left">The Social Capital approach to development is based on the premise that both cognitive and structural aspects of a given society determine the level of development performance. It is argued that norms of trust and reciprocity, networks, and mutual aid govern interaction among people, hold them together, facilitate opportunities to manage common property and pursue common goals, and ultimately contribute to development by facilitating their cooperation and collective action. In this thesis I explore the relationship between social capital and development by analysing the performance of household wellbeing in a given community. Two dominant views on social capital and the outcomes of development performance are currently in prominence in the development discourse. This debate centres on whether social capital is a sufficient cause on its own or whether it needs intermediary actors. The social capital theory argues that the development performance of a particular community can be explained directly by the prevailing level of social capital, and that the underlying levels of trust, social norms and networks are sufficient to explain development. On the other hand, the school of thought that supports the need for intermediary actors argues that social capital is unable to influence development performance at higher levels. If a larger impact and a more precise outcome are expected, intermediary actors who facilitate interest formation, aggregation and representation are necessary. Without them, social capital remains largely inactive and dormant. In exploring the possible link between the two variables, this thesis supports the second premises, introducing the notion of intermediary actors that might activate the stock of social capital and its performance on household wellbeing. The need to explore the relationship between the two variables demanded empirical research. The research was conducted in the rural villages of Oromia regional State of Ethiopia. Based on the empirical evidence, the relationship between the stock of social capital and performance in household wellbeing is generally positive. A large stock of social capital is generally accompanied by a higher level of performance in household wellbeing. However, I argue that social capital is only truly social when activated by an intermediary development actor. Failing this, though it contributes significantly to village solidarity and unity, social capital remains inactive and dormant. Therefore, the general conclusion of this thesis is that social capital matters, but its utilisation by intermediary agencies matters more.</p> </font></font></p>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> <p align="left">The Social Capital approach to development is based on the premise that both cognitive and structural aspects of a given society determine the level of development performance. It is argued that norms of trust and reciprocity, networks, and mutual aid govern interaction among people, hold them together, facilitate opportunities to manage common property and pursue common goals, and ultimately contribute to development by facilitating their cooperation and collective action. In this thesis I explore the relationship between social capital and development by analysing the performance of household wellbeing in a given community. Two dominant views on social capital and the outcomes of development performance are currently in prominence in the development discourse. This debate centres on whether social capital is a sufficient cause on its own or whether it needs intermediary actors.</p> </font></font></p>

Competition amongst companies in the global market has resulted in increased production of goods and services. Enterprises are now faced with the challenges of shipments of raw materials, spare parts from vendors, and the finished goods to consumers. Logistics companies are springing up to tackle transportation and other logistics problems. There are various logistics companies such as logistics intermediaries, carriers and third party logistics service providers in the market which are in one way or the other competing and at the same time cooperating within the supply chain in order to fulfill their assignments to their customers. Third party logistics service providers are experiencing rapid growth because of the advanced demand of services such as the desire to reduce lead time, inventory management, outsourcing, and a host of other functions. Not much has been written on the logistics firms. Besides, most studies on logistics firms and the third-party logistics providers focus more on such aspects like their skills, services, and their relationships with their customers. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the logistics service providers’ roles within the logistics firms’ supply chain by identifying how the expected roles are performed. In the frame of reference, the author searched several books and articles that are relevant within the scope of the thesis topic. Both qualitative and explorative data collection methods are used in the thesis and these involve conducting interviews, and reading the accounts of other people concerning the thesis topic. The conclusion shows that logistics service providers are able to perform their roles through vertical and horizontal cooperation with other firms and with other logistics firms respectively. Besides, logistics firms do live up to their roles. Carriers and the logistics intermediary now perform more roles than what people think they do, because networks connection and the urge to remain competitive make them to take up value-added services. Third-party logistics service providers add values for their customers through their value-added services in various ways such as time and place utility including tracking and tracing the goods to ensure that they are delivered.

<p>My dissertation, consisting of three related essays, aims to understand the role of macroeconomic risks in the stock and bond markets. In the first chapter, I build a financial intermediary sector with a leverage constraint a la Gertler and Kiyotaki (2010) into an endowment economy with an independently and identically distributed consumption growth process and recursive preferences. I use a global method to solve the model, and show that accounting for occasionally binding constraint is important for quantifying the asset pricing implications. Quantitatively, the model generates a procyclical and persistent variation of price-dividend ratio, and a high and countercyclical equity premium. As a distinct prediction from the model, in the credit crunch, high TED spread, due to a liquidity premium, coincides with low stock price and high stock market volatility, a pattern I confirm in the data.</p><p>In the second chapter, which is coauthored with Hengjie Ai and Mariano Croce, we model investment options as intangible capital in a production economy in which younger vintages of assets in place have lower exposure to aggregate productivity risk. In equilibrium, physical capital requires a substantially higher expected return than intangible capital. Quantitatively, our model rationalizes a significant share of the observed difference in the average return of book-to-market-sorted portfolios (value premium). Our economy also produces (1) a high premium of the aggregate stock market over the risk-free interest rate, (2) a low and smooth risk-free interest rate, and (3) key features of the consumption and investment dynamics in the U.S. data.</p><p>In the third chapter, I study the joint determinants of stock and bond returns in Bansal and Yaron (2004) long-run risks model framework with regime shifts in consumption and inflation dynamics -- in particular, the means, volatilities, and the correlation structure between consumption growth and inflation are regime-dependent. This general equilibrium framework can (1) generate time-varying and switching signs of stock and bond correlations, as well as switching signs of bond risk premium; (2) quantitatively reproduce various other salient empirical features in stock and bond markets, including time-varying equity and bond return premia, regime shifts in real and nominal yield curve, the violation of expectations hypothesis of bond returns. The model shows that term structure of interest rates and stock-bond correlation are intimately related to business cycles, while long-run risks play a more important role to account for high equity premium than business cycle risks.</p> / Dissertation

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> <p align="left">The Social Capital approach to development is based on the premise that both cognitive and structural aspects of a given society determine the level of development performance. It is argued that norms of trust and reciprocity, networks, and mutual aid govern interaction among people, hold them together, facilitate opportunities to manage common property and pursue common goals, and ultimately contribute to development by facilitating their cooperation and collective action. In this thesis I explore the relationship between social capital and development by analysing the performance of household wellbeing in a given community. Two dominant views on social capital and the outcomes of development performance are currently in prominence in the development discourse. This debate centres on whether social capital is a sufficient cause on its own or whether it needs intermediary actors.</p> </font></font></p>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> <p align="left">The Social Capital approach to development is based on the premise that both cognitive and structural aspects of a given society determine the level of development performance. It is argued that norms of trust and reciprocity, networks, and mutual aid govern interaction among people, hold them together, facilitate opportunities to manage common property and pursue common goals, and ultimately contribute to development by facilitating their cooperation and collective action. In this thesis I explore the relationship between social capital and development by analysing the performance of household wellbeing in a given community. Two dominant views on social capital and the outcomes of development performance are currently in prominence in the development discourse. This debate centres on whether social capital is a sufficient cause on its own or whether it needs intermediary actors. The social capital theory argues that the development performance of a particular community can be explained directly by the prevailing level of social capital, and that the underlying levels of trust, social norms and networks are sufficient to explain development. On the other hand, the school of thought that supports the need for intermediary actors argues that social capital is unable to influence development performance at higher levels. If a larger impact and a more precise outcome are expected, intermediary actors who facilitate interest formation, aggregation and representation are necessary. Without them, social capital remains largely inactive and dormant. In exploring the possible link between the two variables, this thesis supports the second premises, introducing the notion of intermediary actors that might activate the stock of social capital and its performance on household wellbeing. The need to explore the relationship between the two variables demanded empirical research. The research was conducted in the rural villages of Oromia regional State of Ethiopia. Based on the empirical evidence, the relationship between the stock of social capital and performance in household wellbeing is generally positive. A large stock of social capital is generally accompanied by a higher level of performance in household wellbeing. However, I argue that social capital is only truly social when activated by an intermediary development actor. Failing this, though it contributes significantly to village solidarity and unity, social capital remains inactive and dormant. Therefore, the general conclusion of this thesis is that social capital matters, but its utilisation by intermediary agencies matters more.</p> </font></font></p>

在網路架構下的 first-price 買賣，加入了中介，這裡建構買家二階段的決策，並且探討買家的 連結數、 valuation 、連結成本、 bid 之間的關係。在本文中，中介對想要向中介連結的買家收取費用，接著找出最適的費用以及與其他變數之間的關係，接著在一些額外的假設下找出其配對方法。最後在不同買家 valuation 分配下發現變數間的關係是一致的。 / In buyer-seller network, on empirical premise, each buyer and seller must have a relationship, that is "link," to exchange a good. Each buyer should choose whether to link or not and choose how many links he or she should have. In this paper, we introduce an intermediary in the buyer-seller network. Buyers can construct links by themselves, or they can exchange through an intermediary. On the other hand, the intermediary also charges an entrance fee for its service. We then discuss the intermediaries' behavior and define the allocation rule. We find the intermediary allocation rule achieves maximal profit for the intermediary but this rule cannot reach the maximal total surplus. We also characterize the relationship between link cost, buyers' valuation, the optimal number of links, and the payoff of the buyer and intermediary.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explain and to create an understanding how incorporating an external actor to administer payment services has an effect on the value propositions offered to the consumer. Design/methodology/approach - The study adopts a qualitative approach, since the purpose is to explain and gain understanding about how incorporating an external actor to administer payment services has an effect on the value propositions offered to the consumer. The data has been collected through 13 interviews conducted with respondents from the consumer-, service provider- and payment intermediary segments. Findings - The results from the study illustrates that payment intermediaries do have an effect on the value propositions offered to consumers. However, since value is subjectively interpreted, the findings of this study indicate that incorporating a payment intermediary does not always result in a contribution of value. Furthermore, it is clear that it could influence consumer purchasing decision drastically in specific contexts. Research limitations - The study is conducted on Swedish e-commerce, which means generalizations between the countries cannot be made. Future research for other countries are needed for the findings to be applicable. Practical implications - Findings of this study indicate that incorporating a payment intermediary could influence consumer purchasing decision drastically, in a positive as well as in a negative manner, dependent on the context. Consumers prefer and expect to have a number of payment alternatives with the option to include or exclude an external actor if desired. Keywords - E-commerce, value proposition, value, payment intermediary, customer relationship management