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This thesis is a collection of essays on the problem of overfishing in multifirm fisheries with a common property fish stock. We focus on the case of marine industrial fisheries, where the costs of preventing free riding tend to preclude cooperative harvesting. We study the overfishing problem by analysing harvesting incentives that stem from variations in (i) technological (cost, production and biological growth) functions, (ii) institutional factors (access schemes, regulatory agencies' instruments and their monitoring and enforcement powers, harvesting competition), and (iii) objective functions (private firms' planning horizons, welfare functions). Chapter 2 discusses conditions under which a fishing collapse can occur and examines the commonly held argument that fishing collapse is a public bad. Chapter 3 studies Chilean fishing regulations over the last five decades. The regulator's persistent inability to enforce annual quotas is analysed. Distributive disputes and triggered lobbying powers are examined. The late 1980s controversies over a new Chilean fishing law are analysed in-depth from this perspective. Chapter 4 explains the main motivations and key assumptions leading us to the oligopoly harvesting models of chapters 5 (static setting) and 6 (dynamic setting). These models focus on a deterministic single fish species and a single sector harvesting fishery composed of profit maximizing and price taking private firms that compete with each other by following non-cooperative harvesting strategies. These models examine the overfishing rankings that result from comparing Cournot-Nash and Stackelberg equilibria. First best and second best welfare benchmarks are considered. The Cournot-Nash setting is intended to illustrate a large number oligopolistic fishery, while the Stackelberg equilibrium is meant to be a first approximation to analyse the implications of harvesting fisheries subject to industrial concentration. Empirical evidence suggesting the presence of industrial concentration in a series of important marine industrial fisheries is described in chapters 3 and 4.

While improving the seasoned equity offerings, companies often manipulate the earnings or window the financial statements to get approval and increase IPO prices, and thus acquiring the funds easier. The main focus for this study is to exam whether the firms listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange manipulate earnings through discretionary accruals before the seasoned equity offerings, and the relationship between pre-issue discretionary accruals and the post-issue earnings, operating performance and long-term stock returns. The sample observed consists of 226 firms listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange conducting seasoned equity offering from 1991 to 1998 and the Modified Jones Model was used to estimate the discretionary accruals basing on the financial statements of the year. The discretionary accruals are the main research variables. The empirical results show that: 1. Firms listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange intend to manipulate the discretionary current accruals before conducting the seasoned equity offerings in order to improve earnings, and the larger pre-issue discretionary accruals, the larger the decline of post-issue earnings. 2. The post-issue total asset returns are clearly negatively correlated to the discretionary current accruals in the year before the seasoned equity offerings, indicating that the adjustment of discretionary accruals will influence the post-issue operating performance. 3. Excluding the possible influences from the industry, the discretionary current accruals present significantly negative effect on the post-issue operating performance. The level of earnings management becomes larger, the post-issue long-term stock return will decline greater.

As many variable pricing projects are still in the implementation stage, long-run driver responses to the variable tolls are largely unknown. This research examined the long-run changes in driver behavior in an existing variable pricing project in Lee County, Florida. Using empirical evidence, it was found that over time the price elasticities of demand on the Lee County toll bridges have decreased from -0.42 to - 0.11 (Midpoint Memorial Bridge) and from -0.31 to -0.06 (Cape Coral Bridge) during the early morning discount period. The elasticities have decreased, but to a lesser extent, during the late morning and early afternoon discount periods. A discount period volume spreading ratio was also developed to analyze these changes. The results from this analysis confirmed the elasticity results. In addition to the empirical analysis of travel patterns discussed above, a telephone survey of drivers was conducted. The survey results indicated that certain driver characteristics such as higher frequency of trips, commute trip purpose, full-time employment status, more people in the household, higher education, and age between 25-34 years, were all indicators that the participant may increase his or her variable pricing usage over time. Other characteristics, including being retired and having a household income less than $16,000, were indicators that the driver may not increase variable pricing participation. Binary logit and semiparametric models were also developed to examine socio-economic and commute characteristics that may influence a driver increasing his or her participation in a variable pricing program. The results from these two variable toll bridges in Lee County indicated a decrease in variable toll price elasticity over time. However, these results may not be typical for variable pricing projects. Factors such as alternative routes, different traveler demographics, traffic congestion levels, and size of the toll discount may influence the results obtained from other variable pricing projects. However, the methodology developed in this research can be applied to other projects in order to determine those toll price elasticities of demand.

This dissertation consists of three essays investigating the historical roots of economic development and inequality in the US South. The first essay examines the impact of slavery on long-run development. Using county-level data from the US South, I show that slavery has impeded long-run development through the human capital channel. The mechanism involves labor market institutions and their impact on demand for human capital. I find that the history of slavery hindered integration of black workers into the labor market. Moreover, border-county analyses show that selective application of laws and regulations was a primary tool for impeding labor market integration. Through estimating the relative return to education for each county, I further argue that blacks in a region with a greater legacy of slavery had fewer incentives to invest in human capital. The second essay studies the long run effects of cotton agriculture focusing on a novel aspect of structural change. I show that cotton specialization in the late 19th century had long-run negative impact on local development, and the negative relationship became only evident in the second half of the 20th century. I argue that the change was caused by the mechanization of cotton production. After cotton mechanization, cotton labor with low human capital was relocated to local manufacturing. In response to the inflow of cotton labor, there was a decline in labor productivity in manufacturing which persisted through directed technical change. Using census data, I show that initial cotton specialization reduces demand for skills in manufacturing even to this day. The third essay addresses the legacy of cotton agriculture on economic inequality. Using the Gini index of household income, I show that initial cotton specialization increased long-run economic inequality at the county level. Moreover, evidence from the census data indicates that cotton specialization increased wage inequality exclusively in the local service sector, without any effects on the other non-agricultural sectors. As an explanation, I argue that wage inequality in the service sector increased due to expansion of employment in low-wage occupations followed by a decrease in their wage level.

This study investigated the long-run investment performance of 411 South African IPOs during the period 1992 to 2007. Consistent with historical studies, no evidence of abnormal performance was found on a calendar-time approach using the Fama- French (1993) three-factor model. While the long-run performance did not differ materially, factors such as financial and industrial industry classifications were found to impact after-market performance of IPO portfolios. It was found that large new company issuances within the Financials and Industrials categories produced abnormal returns, but on a collective basis there was no evidence of abnormal performance. In particular, a positive relationship was found to exist between book-tomarket ratios and IPO performance in the financial and industrial sectors, but there was scant evidence on a collective basis. Market conditions were found to have an impact on IPO performance. In periods of market buoyancy, IPOs performed well and in periods of market distress, IPOs‟ performance suffered. The implications of this study are that investors, in making decisions on whether or not to invest in new issues, should not expect to make superior returns to the market over a five-year period by investing in IPOs. IPO performance after the five-year period was not part of the scope for this study and may form the basis for future studies. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Essay one investigates registered insider sales as stated in the final prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to test managerial market timing ability during the Seasoned Equity Offering (SEO) process. Using a comprehensive sample of 1,051 SEOs between 1997 and 2005, the findings suggest that the initial market reaction and the long-run post-issue performance of issuers are negatively related to C-level executive insider sales, but unrelated to sales by non-executive insiders. Overall, the findings are consistent with the notion that executive insiders are aware of the mispricing in their firm’s securities and successfully time their sales by participating in the secondary components of SEOs. The implication is that SEOs with C-level executive sales are overvalued relative to both SEOs without insider sales and SEOs with only non-executive insider sales. In the second essay, we compare shareholder wealth effects of dual-class and single-class Seasoned Equity Offerings (SEOs) between 1997 and 2005. While there is no difference in pre-issue stock performance or the initial market reaction to the SEO announcements, dual-class issuers significantly underperform single-class issuers in the post-issue years. The mean three-year underperformance of dual-class firms relative to single-class is a significant 28.93% (30.45%) in buy-and-hold raw (abnormal) stock returns, and robust to alternative model specifications. We document that this relative long-run stock underperformance is related to differences in the impacts of post-issue capital expenditures and acquisitions for dual and single-class issuers. Similarly, post-issue corporate cash holdings also contribute less to the shareholder wealth for dual-class firms.

This is a study in two parts. In part-1, I identify several methods of estimating long-run abnormal returns prevalent in the finance literature and present an alternative using propensity score matching. I first demonstrate the concept with a simple simulation using generated data. I then employ historical returns from CRSP and randomly select events from the dataset using various alternating criteria. I test the efficacy of different methods in terms of type-I and type-II errors in detecting abnormal returns over 12- 36- and 60- month periods. I use various forms of propensity score matching: 1--5 Nearest Neighbors in Caliper using distance defined alternatively by Propensity Scores and the Mahalanobis Metric, and Caliper Matching. I show that overall, Propensity Score Matching with two nearest neighbors provides much better performance than traditional methods, especially when the occurence of events is dictated by the presence of certain firm characteristics. In part-2, I demonstrate an application of Propensity Score Matching in the context of open-market share repurchase announcements. I show that traditional methods are ill-suited for the calculation of long-run abnormal returns following such events. Consequently, I am able to improve upon such methods on two fronts. First, I improve upon traditional matching methods by providing better matches on multiple dimensions and by being able to retain a larger sample of firms from the dataset. Second, I am able to eliminate much of the bias inherent in the Fama-French type methods for this particular application. I show this using simulations on samples based on firms that resemble a typical repurchasing firm. As a result, I obtain a statistically significant 1-, 3-, and 5- year abnormal return of about 2%, 5%, and 10% respectively, which is much lower than what prior literature has shown using traditional methods. Further investigation revealed that much of these returns are unique to small and unprofitable firms.

Esta tese tem como foco a política fiscal no longo prazo e é composta por quatro ensaios. O objetivo do primeiro ensaio é compreender o papel da política fiscal em trajetória histórica, de 1970 aos anos recentes, conhecer os fatores que a influenciam e dar base para a análise empírica do segundo ensaio. Assim, os ensaios I e II estão diretamente conectados e compõem a primeira parte da pesquisa. O objetivo do ensaio II é investigar, utilizando a metodologia de componentes não observáveis e a análise de cointegração de Johansen (1988), o padrão da política fiscal discricionária brasileira em relação aos termos de troca e ao nível de atividade, entre 1991 e 2014. O objetivo do ensaio III é analisar, através de um modelo que utiliza Lewis (1954) e que considera um ambiente de economia dual, o impacto da política fiscal no desenvolvimento econômico. O objetivo do quarto ensaio é investigar para grupos de países, através de técnicas de GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) duas possíveis não linearidades: entre política fiscal e crescimento econômico e entre padrão de política fiscal e termos de troca. Os principais resultados são: há uma relação de longo prazo entre as variáveis saldo fiscal estrutural, produção industrial (proxy para o PIB) e os termos de troca; a política fiscal brasileira é pró-cíclica em relação ao nível de atividade econômica, mas contracíclica em relação aos termos de troca; há uma armadilha de desenvolvimento-fiscal; o impacto da política fiscal no crescimento econômico é não linear; há uma relação na forma de U invertido entre gastos públicos em investimento e crescimento econômico, para os países de renda baixa (LIC) e entre o padrão da política fiscal e os termos de troca, para os países de renda alta (HIC). Finalmente, os resultados para o padrão da política fiscal convergem para o consenso de que os países em desenvolvimento adotam políticas pró-cíclicas e os desenvolvidos contracíclicas. / This thesis focuses on fiscal policy in the long run and is specifically divided into four essays. In order to give foundation for the second essay the aim of the first essay is to understand the role of fiscal policy in historical trajectory, from 1970 to recent years, and to know the factors that influence it. Thus, the essays I and II are directly linked and constitute the first part of this study. Using the methodology of unobservable components and the Johansen\'s (1988) cointegration analysis, the aim of the II essay is to investigate the pattern of the Brazilian discretionary fiscal policy in relation to terms of trade and the level of economic activity, between 1991 and 2014. Setting forth a theoretical model based on Lewis (1954) and by assuming a dual economy, the third essay analyzes the impact of fiscal policy on economic development. Applying GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) techniques the fourth essay investigates to groups of countries two possible nonlinearities: between fiscal policy and economic growth and between the pattern of fiscal policy and terms of trade. The main results are: there is a long-run relationship between the variables structural fiscal balance, GDP and the terms of trade; Brazil\'s fiscal policy is procyclical on the level of economic activity but countercyclical in relation to the terms of trade; there is a fiscal-development trap; the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth is nonlinear; there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between public investment and growth for low-income countries (LIC), and between the standard of fiscal policy and the terms of trade for high-income countries (HIC). Finally, the results on the pattern of fiscal policy converge to the consensus that developing countries adopt procyclical policies and developed adopt countercyclical fiscal policy.

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