Multinational corporations operating in emerging markets have to be able to operate within the institutional context of those markets. Emerging markets institutions are mostly in transition or remain undeveloped and create a variety of institutional voids. International Business scholars have also been grappling with understanding how multinational corporations deal with liability of foreignness in the host environments in which they operate. The research canvassed the views from multinationals operating in South Africa as an emerging market. This study relies on institutional theory to understand how the institutional voids in emerging markets create specific liabilities of foreignness for the multinational corporations. How multinational corporations respond to these liabilities of foreignness is investigated. / Mini Dissertation (MPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MPhil (International Business) / Unrestricted

This dissertation is structured as three essays on various aspects of equity option introduction. Topics addressed include the relative predictability of introduction, the relationship between predictability of introduction and the price effect associated with introduction, and a comparison of the price response of optioned versus nonoptioned stocks to changes in dividends. Essay 1 involves use of firm-specific variables in a LOGIT model to allow assignment of a probability of equity option introduction. Two samples were developed: one of firms that were optioned, the other of firms which met the objective standards but were not optioned. A LOGIT model is used to assign a probability of optioning to each firm. A holdout sample is used to test the out-of-sample predictive power of the model. Firms were correctly classified as optioned or nonoptioned in about 85 percent of cases. Various researchers have detected abnormal positive returns associated with stock option introduction. In an efficient market context, this would indicate that option introduction is "good" news to financial markets. If optioning is predictable, stocks with a higher probability of optioning would be expected to show less price response when options are introduced. In Essay 2, the relationship between the probability of optioning and abnormal returns is tested using a standard event methodology. Utilizing nonparametric statistics, no significant differences were detected among abnormal returns of portfolios formed on the basis of probability of option introduction. Essay 3 compares abnormal returns of optioned and nonoptioned stocks around announced dividend changes. Two samples were obtained. Firms in the first (second) sample had significant dividend changes while options were (were not) available on their stocks. Standard event methodology is used to compare price responses of the two samples. If the price response of optioned stocks is less pronounced than the price response of nonoptioned stocks, this may indicate that optioned stocks are more efficiently priced. Reasons for this increased efficiency are examined in the study. Abnormal returns for the optioned sample were not significantly different from zero. Those for the nonoptioned sample were significantly different from zero for all event windows tested.

This study responds to the effect that current food production has on the natural environment, by researching urban systems and ecosystems. In reaction to the findings, a new food production system and the urban buying and retail culture are investigated. A food market and hydroponic production building is designed to serve as an alternative to the supermarket and conventional food production. AFRIKAANS : Hierdie studie reageer op die uitwerking wat huidige voedsel produksie op die natuurlike omgewing het, deur stedelike stelsels en ekostelsels te bestudeer. In reaksie op die bevindings word ‘n nuwe voedsel produksie stelsel en die stedelike koop-enverkoop- kultuur ondersoek. ‘n Varsprodukte mark en hidroponiese produksie-gebou word ontwerp om ‘n alternatief te bied vir die supermark en konvensionele voedselproduksie. / Hierdie studie reageer op die uitwerking wat huidige voedsel produksie op die natuurlike omgewing het, deur stedelike stelsels en ekostelsels te bestudeer. In reaksie op die bevindings word ‘n nuwe voedsel produksie stelsel en die stedelike koop-en verkoop- kultuur ondersoek. ‘n Varsproduktemark en hidroponiese produksie-gebou word ontwerp om ‘n alternatief te bied vir die supermark en konvensionele voedselproduksie. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Architecture / unrestricted

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Administration and Law, in fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics at the University of Zululand, 2019. / The extent of the damage caused by the 2007/08 global financial crisis (GFC) has forced policymakers all over the world to respond promptly in order to mitigate its effect, a process in which they are still engaged in, particularly in advanced economies. The main objective of this study is to measure systemic risk in African emerging economies and develop a macroprudential regulatory framework to mitigate or limit the effect of such risk. More specifically, the study intends to1) Developing financial stress index (FSI) for the Emerging African economy; 2) Investigate the possibility of Early Warning Signal (EWS) helping in predicting and preventing or minimising the effects of the crisis on financial institutions; 3) Assess the resilience of individual banking companies to adverse macroeconomic and financial market conditions using stress testing technique; 4) Identify the source of fluctuation within the system; 5) Identify and measure systemic risk emanating from the capital flow (surge) as well as its effects on financial stability. This study contributed to the body of knowledge by measuring systemic risk in emerging African economies. To the best of my knowledge, there have not been any studies that have been conducted for the measure of systemic risk with the context of emerging African economies. The target economies include South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya. The first objective of the study is to construct a financial stress index (FSI) for emerging African economies. The FSI which is aimed at revealing the functionality of the financial system a single aggregate indicator that is constructed to reflect the systemic nature of financial instability and as well to measure the vulnerability of the financial system to both internal and external shocks. The result shows that both the domestic and international shocks created uncertainty in the economies under consideration. On the international scene, we have the financial crisis while on the domestic scene; we have slow growth, banking crisis, energy crisis, labour crisis, coupled with political uncertainty. The FSI is also useful and appropriate as the dependent variable in an early signal warning model, and as well be used to gauge the effectiveness of government measures to mitigate financial stress. The models forecasting performance was tested using the ordinary least square methods and it affirmed that the model is reliable and that the FSI can be used for prediction of a future crisis. v The aim of the second objective is to develop an early warning signal (EWS) model to predict the possibility of the occurrence of a financial crisis in emerging African countries. The multinomial logit model built by Bussiere and Fratzscher (2006) was adopted to afford policy makers ample time to prevent or mitigate potential financial crisis. In summary, the result suggests that emerging African economies are more likely to face financial crisis as debts continue to rise without a corresponding capacity to withstand capital flow reversal as well as excessive FX risk due to currency exposure. The result further indicates that rising debt exposure increases the probability or likelihood of the economies remaining in a state of crisis. This result confirms the significance of a financial stability framework that fits Africa’s emerging economies characteristics such as rising debt profile liquidity and currency risk exposure. The third objective is to test the resilience of the financial sector using stress testing technique. Macro stress testing is a multi-step simulation process aimed at estimating the impact of credit risk shock on macroeconomic as well as financial sectors. In this study, a two-step approach was employed in this chapter. The first step involves analyzing the determinants of credit risk in 4 Emerging African economies during the period 2006m1 to 2012m12 using the panel Auto Regressive Distribution Lag (ARDL) model. Second, the vector autoregressive (VAR) models were employed to assess the resilience of the financial system as well as the economy to adverse credit risk shocks. The result shows that all the variables under both the macro and financial model jointly determine credit risk, although when examined on an individual basis only, UMP, IBR, and INF have a significant impact on NPL in the long run. For the macro stress testing, the VAR methodology was employed to stress test the emerging African economy financial sector and the result indicated that there a significant relationship between changes in output gap (GAP) and the nonperforming loans. A significant relationship was also established between inflation and nonperforming loans. In all, South Africa and Nigeria’s financial system seems more resilient to credit losses associated with this scenario without threatening financial stability compared to Kenya and Egypt. The fourth objective examined the sources of capital flows surge and their impact on macroeconomic variables. This study employed a ��−�������� to investigate the source capital flow surge within the system. The main findings of the result indicate that capital flow, which is vi proxied by FDI, is influenced by a wide variety of macroeconomic variables such as inflation, export growth and unemployment. There is therefore need for the implementation of capital controls framework tame massive capital inflows. Nevertheless, such a mechanism should not undermine the impact of capital inflows on employment, growth and financial stability. The fifth objective of the study is aimed at identifying and measuring the sources of systematic risk and its impact on the stability of the financial system using the Conditional Value-at-Risk methodology. The main finding of the study indicates that at the normal and extreme event the banking sector contributes positively and significantly to the real economy for all the countries except for Nigeria at the extreme event or 1 percent quantile. This study, therefore, concludes that the banking sector, stock market volatility contributes greatly to systemic risk in emerging African economies. The individual bank also contributes significantly to systemic risk for all the economies although the magnitudes are relatively different across economies. This finding is of great interest to policymakers since it shows that the banking sectors as well as stock market volatility have a negative impact on the real economy. This result is plausible as the banking and financial sector for most emerging economies constitute a greater proportion of the real economy. There is, therefore, need for a regulatory framework to reduce risk emanating from the banking sector as well as the financial markets. In summary, due to huge capital flows and rising debt level in emerging African economies, there is, therefore, a need for a macroprudential policy that will fit African economies as well as the implementation of capital controls framework tame massive capital inflows. Efforts should be made to reduce the rising debts profile of most countries and that will require a greater level of commitment from their respective government and central banks. However, these should be in the interest of the growth and stability of the financial system and the real economy at large. In the case of the banking sector, since it has a great impact on triggering systemic risk, more effort should be utilized to continue to monitor its performance so that potential risk can be detected early and nip in the bud.

In recent years, diversification has become a common strategy used by companies in emerging markets. It is believed that diversification operations could help firms get better performance and gain higher profits from a larger internal market. However, contradictory results reveal that diversification empirically hurts firm value and other studies show the relationship between diversification and firm performance is complicated that should be studied in separate industries. The opinion is inconclusive on this topic. This study developed a performance index to see how diversification impact on various perspectives of firm performance. Conclusions as follow. International diversification has a positive correlation with firm performance in several aspects whereas industrial diversification helps firms’ developing ability. However, due to the unavailability of long-term data, we can not rule out the possibility that well-performed firms go for international diversification. Besides, The relationship between diversification and firm performance affected by different industries. The agricultural and natural resource firms tend to exceed manufacturing firms in the efficiency aspects whereas manufacturing companies tend to have advantages in the sustainability aspect compared to service firms. There is also evidence showing that the largest shareholders’ holdings rates have a positive impact on firm performance and state-owned rate has a negative relation with firm performance.

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In this thesis two dierent problems regarding real options are studied. The rst paper discusses the valuation of a timing option in an irreversible investment when the underlying model is incomplete. It is well known that in a complete model there is no nite optimal time at which to invest if the underlying asset, in our case the value of the developed project, does not pay out any strictly positive cash ows. In an incomplete model, the situation is dierent. Depending on the market price of risk in the model, there could be an optimal nite investment time even though the underlying asset does not pay out any strictly positive cash ows. Several examples of incomplete models are analyzed, and the value of the investment opportunity is calculated in each of them. The second paper concerns the valuation of random start American perpetual options. This type of perpetuate American option has the feature that it can not be exercised until a random time has occured. The reason for studying this type of option is that it provides a way of modelling the initiating of a project, e.g. the optimal time to build on a piece of land, which can not occur until a permit, or some other form of clearance, is given. The random time in the project application represents the time at which the permit is given. Two concrete examples of how to calculate the value of random start options is given. / <p>QC 20160607</p>

The research problem of this project is to investigate if, and how, Birkinshaw and Bouquet‟s model of subsidiary attention seeking by means of weight and voice needs to be modified for MNC subsidiaries operating in emerging markets. The qualitative research technique used for this research was the multiple-case study method. Key findings are that weight is moderated by institutional environments and voice by national culture in emerging markets. Recommendations are made to assist managers of subsidiaries in increasing weight and voice in emerging markets in order to gain more attention from Corporate Headquarters. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Thesis advisor: M. Utku Ünver / Thesis advisor: M. Bumin Yenmez / This thesis is a collection of three essays in market design concerning designs of matching markets, affirmative action schemes, and COVID-19 testing policies. In Chapter 1, we explore the possibility of designing matching mechanisms that can accommodate non-standard choice behavior. In the standard model of matching markets, preferences over potential assignments encode participants' choice behavior. Our contribution to this literature is introducing behavioral participants to matching theory's setup. We pin down the necessary and sufficient conditions on participants' choice behavior for the existence of stable and incentive compatible matching mechanisms. Our results imply that well-functioning matching markets can be designed to adequately accommodate a plethora of non-standard (and standard) choice behaviors. We illustrate the applicability of our results by demonstrating that a simple modification in a commonly used matching mechanism enables it to accommodate non-standard choice behavior. In Chapter 2, we show that commonly used methods in reserving positions for beneficiaries of affirmative action are often inadequate in settings where affirmative action policies apply at two levels simultaneously, for instance, at university and itsdepartments. We present a comprehensive evaluation of existing procedures and formally and empirically document their shortcomings. We propose a new solution with appealing theoretical properties and quantify the benefits of adopting it using recruitment advertisement data from India. Our theoretical analysis hints at new possibilities for future work in the literature on the theory of apportionment (of parliamentary seats). Chapter 3 delves into the designs of the commonly used and advocated COVID-19 testing policies to resolve a conflict between their allocative efficiency and the ability to identify the infection rates. We present a novel comparison of various COVID-19 testing policies that allows us to pin down ordinally efficient testing policies that generate reliable estimates of infection rates while prioritizing testing of persons suspected of having the disease. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This thesis studies the effects of local environments on perceptions. The last chapter examines older workers' responses to unemployment benefits cuts. In the first essay, I study the effects of neighborhoods on perceived inequality and preferences for redistribution in the context of Barcelona. I first construct a novel measure of inequality based on the geospatial distribution of housing. I then elicit inequality perceptions and preferences for redistribution from an original large-scale survey. I link these measures to respondents' specific local environments using exact addresses. I identify the causal effects of neighborhoods using two different approaches. The first is an outside-the-survey quasi-experiment that exploits within-neighborhood variation in respondents' recent exposure to new apartment buildings. The second is a within-survey experiment inducing variation in respondents' information set about inequality across neighborhoods. Local environments significantly influence inequality perceptions but only mildly affect demand for redistribution. In the second essay, I study the effects of neighborhoods on perceived immigration and preferences for redistribution. I construct flexible definitions of local neighborhoods by aggregating census tracts and measure immigration at this fine geographic level. I elicit immigration perceptions and preferences for redistribution from my original survey. Most respondents significantly overestimate the number of immigrants in the country, but those residing in neighborhoods with more immigrants are more likely to do so. Misperceptions negatively correlate with demand for redistribution and are partly explained by the local immigrant composition. They are exacerbated when more African or Asian immigrants reside in the local area. In the third essay, I causally estimate the effects of pro-cyclical unemployment-assistance (UA) reductions on job search behavior and re-employment outcomes using reform-induced changes in UA durations for older workers in Spain. Benefit reductions are effective in bringing workers back to work and reduce non-employment duration, but also induce displacements out of the labor force and strong substitution patterns towards less generous UA programs, highlighting the social insurance role of long-term benefits during economic downturns. Despite the sharp drop in non-employment duration, I also document a significant decrease in re-employment wages, consistent with a reduction in workers' reservation wages and limited duration dependence.