This paper examines consumer preferences regarding men’s underwear and aimed to assist the owner of the Skidmark brand with recommendations how to improve existing product and to extend product portfolio. Primary and secondary data was used in this study to overview the industry and to identify market trends and consumers preferences. Two data collection activities are discussed, ten one-on-one interviews and one focus group which revealed consumer’s reactions and feedback regarding Skidmark exciting and proposed products. Recommendations for production, price and promotion are given; limitations of the study discussed. / text

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This dissertation addresses the question of whether a monopolistic banking system can lead to a higher steady state level of capital stock. Specifically, this research analyzes the comparative advantage of a monopoly banking system. By doing that, it examines factors that contribute to the promotion of economic growth that come from a concentrated banking system. There is substantial evidence of a positive relationship between financial markets development and long term output growth. Little is known, however, about the role played by the market structure of the banking sector on growth. Moreover, little work, if any, has attempted to analyze how the degree of information externality affects the relative performance of a monopoly and competitive banks. I find that a monopoly banking system might perform better in accumulating capital under both low information externality and high information externality under certain conditions. In addition, this paper shows that developing countries as well as industrial countries may benefit from a concentrated banking system. This result is not found in the existing literature, which has only shown that developing countries may benefit from a monopoly banking system. This result can be interpreted as follows: (i) for the developing countries, as the proportion of high quality firms is relatively low, the loss in output associated with lending capital to lower quality firms is relatively high. In this case, the screening technology has enough value-added to compensate for the loss in output associated with the typical rent extraction activity of the monopolist. (ii) for the industrial countries, a monopoly banking system can overcome inefficiency from free riding problem associated with the information externality. This analysis provides an alternative explanation of the recent deregulation and resulting trends in mergers and acquisitions. This supports governments' policy changes from restricting merger and acquisition activity to allowing or even promoting merger and acquisition activity.

This thesis takes the form of three essays about the labour market implications of job quality. In the first essay, I demonstrate, by analysing a two-type, two-period example, that high introductory wage offers can signal the quality of experience jobs. In this game, one type of firm - the “good” type - offers higher expected quality jobs. If this type is less likely to exit from the industry than the “bad’ type, it can increase expenditure on introductory wages without being mimicked, distinguishing it from its inferior. The game has many equilibria with these separating wages. In each, the introductory compensating differentials have the opposite sign to the usual case: higher expected quality jobs pay more, rather than less. In the second essay, I present Canadian evidence that tests and supports the theory of compensating differentials for a variety of job characteristics. The data used are from the National Survey of Class Structure and Labour Process in Canada (NSCS). These self-report data are preferable to the more conventional occupational-trait data; they provide information on individual jobs rather than averages across broad occupational categories and industries. In the third essay, I focus on the mismatch between the educational requirements of jobs and the educational attainments of workers. Using NSCS data, I find that the returns to over- and undereducation for males are sensitive to the level of required education. There is evidence of positive returns to overeducation for jobs that require a university bachelor’s degree; but, in general, the returns are insignificant. Undereducated workers are penalised in jobs with low educational requirements. For females, I find that the returns to over- and undereducation are insignificant for all levels of required education.

In the master's work the necessity for the company's financial and non-financial evaluation is described basing on Lithuanian and foreign authors' works. The work presents the completive markets, competitive environment analysis and financial indexes of evaluation of the company's activity and describes the ways and methods of their analysis and models for establishment of developmental and forecast possibilities. Basing on the model worked out Join Stock Company "Liumenas" competitive environment was evaluated and the sales, costs, employees composition and structure analysis was carried out, financial indexes of the company's activity, bankruptcy risk, forecasted tendencies of the changes in sales were evaluated and the developmental possibilities were given. The author's hypothesis that Join Stock Company "Liumenas" is able to hold out in the competitive market and to develop its activity was confirmed.

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The aim of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between labour market rigidities and unemployment. The thesis does not attempt to undertake surveys, providing instead an overview of the literature and of South African works. The unemployment - labour market rigidity debate is analysed with particular reference to the experiences of European countries belonging the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It appears that while adverse shocks acted in the direction of raising unemployment, they could not account for the considerable heterogeneity or the persistence in unemployment levels across countries. The possibility that labour market institutions or rigidities had a role to play in propagating the effects of adverse shocks on unemployment was then raised, leading to the emergence of a broad consensus that European unemployment has its sources in the interactions of adverse shocks and adverse labour market institutions. Rigidities in the labour market have their source in trade union intransigence and in the legislation governing the labour market. Trade unions in South Africa are strong and in the past have been particularly militant in achieving their objectives of raising members' wages and improving conditions of employment. The regulatory environment in which the South African labour market operates was examined . South Africa's adoption of labour legislation that is very trade union friendly, and that introduces greater inflexibility into the market and affects business's abilities to adapt to change, which is particularly necessary within the context of globalisation, is against the trend observed internationally. The implementation of such legislation seems irresponsible in a country where conservatively 26,4 percent of the economically active population is unemployed. / Thesis (M.Comm.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002.

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This thesis examines the relationship between young children's emerging political attitudes towards climate change and the possible effect that the political project of neoliberalism could have on these attitudes. The research asks, in what ways and to what extent do neoliberal attitudes and beliefs influence young New Zealand children's views on climate change mitigation? Drawing from five focus group interviews with Christchurch children aged between 9 and 11, I compare and contrast the results in order to gauge their opinions, thoughts and beliefs about climate change. In doing this I ask how neoliberalism formed in New Zealand and if the neoliberal project has become so dominant in the macro and micro level policy contexts as to influence the attitudes of our youngest citizens. What the thesis argues is that neoliberal discourse appears to have influenced how the participants view climate change, most specifically in their willingness to select individualized mitigation techniques to respond to climate change as opposed to collective actions. These findings are tentative, they require a robust larger sample, beyond the scope of a masters, and may be influenced by other factors such as the developmental stage of the children, however, the emphasis all children placed on voluntary action by individuals was striking. My findings also suggest that those who selected these individual mitigation techniques were more likely to have higher efficacy than those who were critical of such practices. The thesis argues that individualized techniques to combat climate change are by themselves not effective to bring about significant change in order to alleviate further damage being caused to the climate system. In order to reach Helen Clark's goal of being "the world's first truly sustainable nation," collective, as well as individual mitigation must occur.

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