<p><strong><p><strong>Purpose: </strong></p><p><em>Our main purpose is to explore, describe and analyze the organizational conduct when implementing automated trading systems (ATS) in companies, investigate the organizational challenges arising from this, and the effects these have on a successful diffusion</em>. As the extent of implementing ATS in the Swedish financial industry has not been explored to any greater extent, it is therefore also imperative to explore this; which will be seen as a secondary purpose to this article.<strong></strong></p><p><strong>Background: </strong></p><p>The study is based on innovation and diffusion theories, as well as those of power structures and organization. Further, an explanation of ATS and its dynamics is provided and discussed to facilitate a definition of the term.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong></p><p>The research has been carried out as an exploratory, descriptive and analytical qualitative study.<strong> </strong>We have conducted case studies of 7 companies that are implementing, or evaluating the implementation, of ATS. The data was collected through interviews.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong></p><p>The majority of the case companies are in the clarifying and routinizing stages of the innovation process. What is found unique with ATS is that it can be implemented partly. The dimensions found central to a smooth diffusion in the companies are the <em>required level of competence-sharing</em> and <em>complexity of implementation.</em></p></strong></p>

<p>The research paper seeks to investigate the possible ways in which African countries can maximise their benefit from the existing special and differential treatment clauses for trade in agriculture, and, then, make recommendations as to what should be the potential bargaining position of African countries with regard to future trade negotiations on agricultural trade.</p>

The aim of this work is to identify and analyze the legal problems arising from applying the articles of the EC Treaty on the prohibition of quantitative restrictions and measures having equivalent effect. The author, referring to evolution of the case law of European Court of Justice, reveals problem aspects of the prohibition of quantitative restrictions on import and measures having equivalent effect, ensuring the free movement of goods in EC. The author analyzes the link between the list of mandatory requirements, introduced in Cassis, and the article 30 of the Treaty, looking for bonds between them and providing possible solutions of the problem. The author also presents the probable reasons of the large-scale criticism towards European Court of Justice due to its ambivalent decision in Keck, examines the arguments rehabilitating Keck and estimates the influence of Keck towards free movement of goods in EC. The author aims to reveal the tendencies of European Court of Justice in the context of market access and discrimination, comparing both tests and considering whether it is possible to apply one of them alternatively or use a synergy of both tests. The basics of this work are focused on legal doctrine given in monographs, articles and publications of various foreign legal authors.

Livestock production is the primary financial resource for most farmers in Mpumalanga province. Although commercial farmers require necessary equipment and technology to maximise their production and profit, but emerging small-scale farmers in the province face many challenges which have hindered their efforts to improve their livelihood, besides intervening in the procedure of commercialisation. Therefore, this study investigates the socioeconomic characteristics of the livestock farmers in the province, the determinants of market access and those influencing marketing inefficiency, with a view to developing policy recommendations. Structured questionnaire was administered to 300 farmers in order to capture information on market access and factors that could influence marketing inefficiency. Descriptive statistics was utilised regarding basic characteristics of the households. A logit regression model was used to analyse market access (sale of livestock through formal markets) using STATA. Marketing inefficiency was computed as the reciprocal of marketing efficiency which was calculated using Shepherd formula, while the two stage Least Square regression was applied for factors influencing marketing inefficiency after identifying market access endogenous variable. The study’s extrapolations indicated that 7 variables were consequential at 1% and 5% significance level with market access, namely transport ownership, transport cost, market price information, advertisement, farmers’ perception, marketing channel used and municipality. In addition, the results of the two stage least square model indicated that only 3 variables had remarkable significance with regard to marketing inefficiency. These are market access, livestock composition and infrastructure. The findings of the study evidenced that to reduce marketing inefficiency, then it is paramount to enable the easy dissemination of information and improving infrastructure so as to give small-scale farmers easy access to the markets. Consequently, addressing marketing constraints will provide an insight that will allow development of strategies to deal with those problems correctly and more efficiently. The study recommended that focus should be centred on addressing the constraints existing in livestock marketing system to enhance access to markets by encouraging youth participation in agricultural activities and providing training programmes and easy access for marketing related information. Also, infrastructure deserves to be given more attention by renovating the marketing facilities especially road networks in rural areas. In addition, extension officers and veterinary services are to provide help and support in preventing infections and diseases in order to minimise the losses. / Agriculture, Animal Health and Human Ecology / M. Sc. (Agriculture)

Cette thèse comprend trois études sur l’impact de l’intégration commerciale et de la libéralisation des investissements de l’ASEAN suivant les recherches empiriques de la Nouvelle Économie Géographique (NEG). Les stratégies empiriques consistent à mesurer des coûts de commerce, l’accès au marché ainsi qu’à estimer les modèles de gravité théorique. La première étude examine le progrès de l’intégration commerciale et leur impact sur la performance exportatrice. La deuxième étude voit comment la libéralisation commerciale croissante affecte les inégalités régionales. La troisième étude examine l’impact des accords d’investissement sur l’attractivité des IDE des pays de l’ASEAN. Ces résultats mettent en lumière les avantages et défis de la Communauté Économique de l’ASEAN qui aura lieu à la fin de 2015. / This thesis concerns three studies on the impact of ASEAN trade integration and investment liberalization following empirical research agenda of the new economic geography (NEG). Empirical strategies deal with measuring trade costs, market access and the estimation of modern gravity models. The first study evaluates trade integration progress in ASEAN and its impact on export performance with help of trade costs and market access indicators. The second study examines how improved market access, though deepening trade liberalization, can impact regional inequality. The third study investigates the impact of investment agreement on FDI attractiveness of the ASEAN countries. The results help shed light on potential benefits and challenges ahead of the upcoming ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015.

Magister Legum - LLM / The research paper seeks to investigate the possible ways in which African countries can maximise their benefit from the existing special and differential treatment clauses for trade in agriculture, and, then, make recommendations as to what should be the potential bargaining position of African countries with regard to future trade negotiations on agricultural trade. / South Africa

Social entrepreneurship is an innovative solution to increasing social problems related to unemployment and its inseparable social impact, such as social exclusion of persons that are disadvantaged in terms of labour market access. In spite of the fact that the law of the Czech Republic lacks a legal framework of social entrepreneurship (the term of social enterprise as such is not legally based nor defined), there are many local activists who make effort to change this state of inequality, using social enterprises as a means of generating new workplaces for people handicapped in terms of entering an open labour market. The main practical goal of the thesis I hereby present is to help those social entrepreneurs with creating more sustainable organisation structure of their businesses. The first part of my thesis is dedicated to explaining basic concepts and charting a theoretical framework of the research. In the second part I focus on the results of empirical research regarding social enterprise operation. The results may serve as practical advice on organisation structure optimisation in the field of gastronomy. Keywords Social enterprise, subjects of national economy, social economy, persons disadvantaged in terms of labour market access, organisation structure.

This study investigates whether Gaussian Process Regression can be applied to evaluate buffer queue times in large scale data processing systems. It is additionally considered whether high-frequency data stream rates can be generalized into a small subset of the sample space. With the aim of providing basis for dynamic software optimization, a promising foundation for continued research is introduced. The study is intended to contribute to Direct Market Access financial trading systems which processes immense amounts of market data daily. Due to certain limitations, we shoulder a naïve approach and model latencies as a function of only data throughput in eight small historical intervals. The training and test sets are represented from raw market data, and we resort to pruning operations to shrink the datasets by a factor of approximately 0.0005 in order to achieve computational feasibility. We further consider four different implementations of Gaussian Process Regression. The resulting algorithms perform well on pruned datasets, with an average R2 statistic of 0.8399 over six test sets of approximately equal size as the training set. Testing on non-pruned datasets indicate shortcomings from the generalization procedure, where input vectors corresponding to low-latency target values are associated with less accuracy. We conclude that depending on application, the shortcomings may be make the model intractable. However for the purposes of this study it is found that buffer queue times can indeed be modelled by regression algorithms. We discuss several methods for improvements, both in regards to pruning procedures and Gaussian Processes, and open up for promising continued research. / Denna studie undersöker huruvida Gaussian Process Regression kan appliceras för att utvärdera buffer-kötider i storskaliga dataprocesseringssystem. Dessutom utforskas ifall dataströmsfrekvenser kan generaliseras till en liten delmängd av utfallsrymden. Medmålet att erhålla en grund för dynamisk mjukvaruoptimering introduceras en lovandestartpunkt för fortsatt forskning. Studien riktas mot Direct Market Access system för handel på finansiella marknader, somprocesserar enorma mängder marknadsdata dagligen. På grund av vissa begränsningar axlas ett naivt tillvägagångssätt och väntetider modelleras som en funktion av enbartdatagenomströmning i åtta små historiska tidsinterval. Tränings- och testdataset representeras från ren marknadsdata och pruning-tekniker används för att krympa dataseten med en ungefärlig faktor om 0.0005, för att uppnå beräkningsmässig genomförbarhet. Vidare tas fyra olika implementationer av Gaussian Process Regression i beaktning. De resulterande algorithmerna presterar bra på krympta dataset, med en medel R2 statisticpå 0.8399 över sex testdataset, alla av ungefär samma storlek som träningsdatasetet. Tester på icke krympta dataset indikerar vissa brister från pruning, där input vektorermotsvararande låga latenstider är associerade med mindre exakthet. Slutsatsen dras att beroende på applikation kan dessa brister göra modellen obrukbar. För studiens syftefinnes emellertid att latenstider kan sannerligen modelleras av regressionsalgoritmer. Slutligen diskuteras metoder för förbättrning med hänsyn till både pruning och GaussianProcess Regression, och det öppnas upp för lovande vidare forskning.

Thesis (M.Sc. Agriculture (Agricultural Economics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is an important cash crop, which remains one of the largest sources of income and a way of sustaining livelihoods for rural households in South Africa. Smallholder farming in most rural areas of the Limpopo Province contributes to food security. However, the majority of smallholder farmers experience low agricultural productivity, low quantities and poor quality produce which reduce their chances of accessing markets. Hence, this study focused on identifying and analysing factors that determine productivity and market access by smallholder spinach farmers in the Polokwane Local Municipality, Limpopo Province. This area of research is important towards the development of smallholder farming where resources are limited, but high population growth is very common. The overall objective of the study was to examine farm and farmer characteristics that determine the productivity and market access of the smallholder vegetable farmers. In order to achieve the aim and objectives of this study, a multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 80 smallholder spinach farmers to collect primary data from them using structured questionnaires. Cobb-Douglas production function was used to examine factors that determine productivity level and the Two limit Tobit Model was also used to analyse factors that influence market access. The results from the Cobb-Douglas production function indicated that smallholder farmers in the study area are experiencing a decreasing return to scale, which suggests that they are over-utilising factors of production. Two-limit Tobit Model results on the socioeconomic factors that influence market access indicated that household size was statistically significant at 10%, distance to the market, extension contact and farming experience were statistically significant at 5% and educational level, quantity produced and market information was statistically significant at 1%. Based on the findings, several policy suggestions were made. These include strengthening of farmers‟ organisation, provision of market information, regular extension visits and provision of training to the farmers.

This thesis examines US protectionism in the 1980s from Canadian and American perspectives, and its role in Canada’s pursuit of the historic 1988 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. It analyzes the perceived “threat” of protectionism and evaluates the agreement’s provisions against Canada’s goal of securing access to the US market. It contends that US protectionism was crucial in the Mulroney government’s decision to negotiate a bilateral agreement and was a contentious issue for the agreement’s critics. US sources, unexamined in existing historiography, confirm the increased threat of American protectionism, but emphasize a distinction between the threat and implementation of protectionist trade law. Although the agreement did not shield Canada from US trade remedies, Canada gained important presence in the trade dispute process. These conclusions are drawn from Canadian and American media and government documents, 1980s academic and think-tank commentary, legal documents, the memoirs and diaries of major players, and select archival sources.