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無 / The focus of this dissertation maintains three parts. The first contribution is mainly to improve and modify the approach to measuring the financial liberalization index based on the financial services commitments which have submitted to the WTO. These improvements include further scoring for partial commitments, covering four modes of supply on trade in services and all activities listed in the Annex on Financial Services, and assigning weights to four modes of supply. The second purpose of this dissertation attempts to investigate the effect of financial liberalization on economic growth by employing our newly constructed financial liberalization index under the WTO. The third aim is concerned with the examination of what determines a country’s level of commitments in financial services under the WTO. Our newly calculated financial liberalization index displays that the degree of financial liberalization is positively correlated with income level under modes 1, mode 2, and mode 3, but not mode 4. We also detect that East Asian and Pacific, and Latin American and Caribbean countries are inclined to accept more liberal commitments on mode 3 compared to other modes, whereas European and Central Asian, and North American countries tend to approve a smaller degree of liberalization on mode 3 as compared with mode 1 and mode 2. In addition, the liberalization in relation to market access and national treatment is highly correlated. Furthermore, a member country with a high degree of liberalization in one of the two financial subsectors, insurance and banking, tends to also have a high degree of liberalization in the other subsector. There are two main empirical results. First, we find that there is a positive relationship between banking sector competition and our new measure of liberalization index of banking services, and between economic growth and banking industry competition. The commitment of a country to a more liberal banking sector does serve to increase its growth rate. This positive effect of banking liberalization on growth is reinforced when a government has more supervisory power and is more effective. This positive effect, however, is alleviated when there are more stringent requirements regarding capital regulations and higher level of institutional environment quality. In addition, the positive effects are assuaged when the liberalization is implemented in East Asian and Pacific, and Latin American and Caribbean countries. Furthermore, we detect that the relationship between economic growth and overall liberalization of financial services trade is better described as the form of a U-shaped curve. Our second empirical result is that European and Central Asian countries, high-income countries, higher per capita GDP, higher financial trade size, greater control of corruption, lower degree of corruption, more power of the legal system, higher quality of bureaucracy, lower level of perceived corruption, and more liberal trade and financial policy altogether contribute to the explanation of greater degree of liberalization in banking services commitments, whereas Latin American and Caribbean countries, countries with membership in either Cairns Group or so-called MFA group, higher volatility of inflation rate, and more restriction on bank’s activities in securities, insurance, real estate, and nonfinancial firms entirely play a role in the determination of lower level of banking services commitments.

The Hedge fund industry has grown significantly over the past 20 years, and is considered by many to be a part of the optimal portfolio. Using a Market Model, l created the optimal Markowitz portfolio over different business cycles to determine which hedge fund strategies are a part of the optimal portfolio. I determined that Distressed Credit Fixed Income hedge funds are optimal during bull markets, with no strategy being optimal during bear markets.

This dissertation investigates the effects of frictions that emerge from financial markets on business-cycle fluctuations. The purpose of Chapter 1 is to situate my work in the literature and to stress its contributions. In Chapter 2, I reassess the role of financial frictions in amplifying the impacts of productivity shocks using a framework in which a fraction of firms are borrowing-constrained and land is a collateral asset. A first finding is that amplification effects are much lower when land is supplied elastically. However, financial shocks that affect the maximum allowable ratio of loans to collateral have greater effects on output. Another result pertains to the role of the elasticity of substitution between land and capital in responses to financial shocks: lower values generate greater output responses. While Chapter 2's environment is set up to be in a closed-economy, the last two chapters involve two-country settings. Chapter 3 still intersects with Chapter 2 on some dimensions, in particular, land dynamics and financial frictions that feature borrowing-constrained firms. The borrowing mechanism brings about a distortion in labour markets that interacts with a class of preferences that are non-separable between consumption and leisure. Technology shocks contribute to explain international co-movements, whereas financial shocks allow the model to replicate the lack of international risk sharing that is characterized by the quantity anomaly and the Backus-Smith puzzle. In Chapter 4, I apply Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan’s (2007) business cycle accounting method to a two-country, two-good real business cycle model. Using their approach, I measure the same closed-economy time-varying wedges and I introduce an international wedge that accounts for discrepancies between the growth in real exchange rates and in the stochastic discount factors ratio. In fact, the effects of financial frictions embedded in Chapter 3's framework can be retrieved from a combination of labour and investment wedges. The volatility of the international wedge corresponds to a metric of bilateral risk sharing. An important finding is that, from a non-separable preferences specification of the baseline model, the investment wedge partly accounts for the Backus-Smith puzzle. This suggests that distortions in national capital markets are important to consider for international risk sharing. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2013-04-29 22:56:23.03

There is an increasing interest in research on internal marketing in the marketing services literature. This has arisen largely from the suggestion that internal marketing contributes to services companies' success through its role in developing customer orientation among employees, leading to a consistently high level of customer service quality. Most research on internal marketing has however been conducted in large firms and consequently research in this field in small firms is scarce. Specifically, research on internal marketing in small insurance brokers has been limited despite the significance of the insurance sector to the UK economy as a source of both employment and income. The literature review concludes that small insurance brokers are being squeezed out of the market due to the challenging nature of the insurance market. This thesis investigates the understanding and use of internal marketing in small insurance brokers in the UK and its role in developing customer orientation among employees. A qualitative research approach was used to collect data from managers and employees within small insurance brokers in the UK. More specifically, a series of semi-structured interviews was conducted to find out how the terms internal marketing and customer orientation were understood and to explore internal marketing activities and the extent to which it has been used to develop customer orientation among employees. This research contributes to knowledge on internal marketing by identifying: the impact of broker size on the formality of its application; the differences between employees and managers with respect to their understanding of the term; the differences between commercial and personal-insurance with regard to their awareness of the role of internal marketing in developing customer orientation among employees; and the impact of an external factor (the FSA) on the manner of its adoption. The research findings indicated: that there is a lack of understanding of the concept of internal marketing within small insurance brokers; that it is used informally, except for employee training which has been introduced to satisfy the FSA regulations; that there are some linkages between the elements of internal marketing; and that small insurance brokers lack awareness of its role in developing customer orientation among employees.