Urban microsimulators have been increasingly used to forecast land use, environmental and transportation conditions in cities and are a major tool for stakeholders to analyze the effects of urban policy. Although demographic and residential land use models have been well developed for the majority of these systems, labour market conditions and the forecasting of future jobs have at best been limited to high-level exogenous processes. This thesis aims to develop and implement a truly endogenous job supply and job matching model for use with the Integrated Land Use, Transportation, Environment (ILUTE) modelling system. Jobs within the system are tracked individually at both the occupational and industrial level, and matching occurs within an open market framework in an effort to simulate the true macroeconomic conditions of the real world.

Urban microsimulators have been increasingly used to forecast land use, environmental and transportation conditions in cities and are a major tool for stakeholders to analyze the effects of urban policy. Although demographic and residential land use models have been well developed for the majority of these systems, labour market conditions and the forecasting of future jobs have at best been limited to high-level exogenous processes. This thesis aims to develop and implement a truly endogenous job supply and job matching model for use with the Integrated Land Use, Transportation, Environment (ILUTE) modelling system. Jobs within the system are tracked individually at both the occupational and industrial level, and matching occurs within an open market framework in an effort to simulate the true macroeconomic conditions of the real world.

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In Ni, Pearson and Poteshmans' (2005) Journal of Financial Economics-article, they claim that the expiration-day price-distribution of optionable stocks is subject to inefficiencies caused by stock price manipulation and portfolio rebalancing by delta hedgers. In this thesis, two main shortcomings of Ni et al.'s (2005) study are identified. In particular, they appear to have been ignorant of fundamental microstructure factors, and they did not derive an expression to represent the theoretical price-distribution of the relevant assets. After accounting for essential microstructure variables, and calculating the theoretical distribution, results that contradict Ni et al. (2005) are found. In particular, optionable stocks are found to experience efficiency gains on expiration days, and the distribution of underlying asset prices is closer to its theoretical benchmark on expiration days relative to non-expiration days.

Electric power has become the most widely used secondary energy. As a result, the electricity industry's development will, in turn, directly influence other industries, people's daily lives, and the whole economy. China is one of the most rapidly developing economies, making it one of the biggest consumer of electricity in the world. Thus, the development of electric industry in China is not only important for the development of China itself, but also the energy pattern all over the world. In this study, we focus on analysing the market-oriented reform in China's electricity industry after the adoption of reforming and opening policies in 1978. By following the time path, the detailed content of the reform, as it was applied and modified over time, is first introduced. Then, an empirical investigation is conducted on the major policies in the process of China's electric power industry reform. Through quantitative measurement, the contribution of each major policy is clearly defined, so that conclusions concerning the reform in the past and suggestions for its future direction can be reached and made. It is found that both successes and deficiencies occurred in the reform process, and that China's electric industry has made significant efforts to overcome obstacles as they have been identified. However, even though great progress has been made in China's electric power industry from 1978 to 2009, more efforts are still required to finally achieve market operation in the industry. It is expected that this study can positively contribute to the development of China's electric power industry, as well as to electric power industries in other countries.

The thesis examines European legitimacy and regulatory governance. The research analyzes the link between regulatory governance and legitimacy in EU regulation and evaluates whether governance tools in the form of qualitative administrative criteria can contribute to European regulatory legitimacy. Governance here refers to the exercise of delegated regulatory powers by the European Commission. The question of whether the adoption of qualitative regulatory governance practices can enhance the supranational regulatory legitimacy of the European Commission has been underexamined in the literature typically without distinguishing the analysis from the so-called ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU. Using a case study from the telecommunications sector, the thesis conducts such an examination using a documentary method. To create the analytical context, the thesis distinguishes the theoretical concept of legitimacy for a transnational regulator from that of a national regulator of a sovereign state. The choice is made to use a form of normative regulatory legitimacy drawn from the scholarship on regulatory governance theory. An analytical model is constructed that reflects criteria and values that bear upon legitimacy so as to constitute a meaningful alternative to democratic forms of regulatory accountability. Regulation was defined in the research to cover policy instruments, in the form of measures of positive and negative integration, adopted for the EU single market under Article 106(3) and Article 114 TFEU. The analysis evaluates the regulatory governance used by the European Commission over a twenty-three year time period in which the telecommunications sector was entirely liberalized and harmonized. Analysis revealed that, while the Commission has improved the quality of its regulatory governance in principle, its use of normative regulatory governance in practice requires further attention, notably in respect of improving the evidence base for policy proposals and in creating a meaningful form of empirical feedback in evaluating regulatory outcomes, corresponding to an ex post accountability mechanism. On the other hand, the research validated the premise that a transnational regulator could purposively use regulatory governance as a tool with which to construct a defensible form of regulatory legitimacy.

This thesis is made of five different chapters. Chp 1: OPTIMAL FISCAL AND PUBLIC EXPENDITURE POLICY IN A TWO CLASS ECONOMY This paper deals with optimal taxation and provision of public goods in a two-class economy with non linear income and linear commodity taxes. As far as optimal taxation is concerned, we first show that with two private goods the good complementary with leisure should be taxed more heavily. Second the standard income tax rules are shown to be augmented by considerations for offsetting the distortions created on the commodity markets. As to the provision of public goods we extend recent results for a two class economy with public funds raised entirely by means of a non-linear income tax system. The standard Samuelson rule is modified by two additional terms related to the self selection constraint and to the revenue of indirect taxes. They are both shown to vanish when the agents' utility functions are weakly separable between public and private goods (taken together) and leisure. Chp 2: DIRECT AND INDIRECT TAX EVASION: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE The purpose of this selective survey of the literature on both income and commodity tax evasion is to show in which directions, the literature has evolved. Two main approaches are identified for both direct and indirect tax evasion literature. The so-called taxpayer's point of view approach which is basically an exercise of maximization under uncertainty and the so-called tax collector's point of view which is a refinement of the Mirrlees-Stiglitz approach to income taxation and of the Ramsey approach to commodity taxation. The current state of the art is such that both approaches share similar strengths and weaknesses. Chp 3: TAX STRUCTURE, TAX REFORM AND TAX EVASION In this paper we explore whether the shift from an ad valorem tax to a value added tax (which is a prerequisite to join the European Union) improves the "integrity" (number of people in the regular market) and the "efficiency" (total tax revenues) of the tax system. A model of two parallel (black and regular) markets is analyzed. The production in both the black and the regular market is divided in three stages: raw material, intermediate good and final good. Firstly, we prove that if an ad valorem tax is levied, at all stages of the regular market, any, even partial, tax reform towards VAT unequivocally increases integrity (the number of agents). Secondly, we prove that efficiency of the tax system is a direct function of its integrity. Therefore a tax reform from ad valorem to VAT seems justifiable under these two criteria. As a passing result, regular market consumers' welfare is shown to increase. Chp 4. A NOTE ON CORRUPTION, PRODUCTION AND SHORTAGE IN USSR AND RUSSIA Shleifer and Vishny, 1992 argue that privatization increases production and reduces shortage; Komai, 1979 argues that privatization reduces both production and shortage. The transition from USSR to Russia reduced both production and shortage. We argue that this is just the result of the shrinking of the loss-making sector (industrial sector) and the expansion of the profit-making sector (the service sector and namely trade and retailing). We also argue that the validity of Kornai's model is limited to those firms which are overproducing (i.e. more than the profit maximization quantity) and the validity of Shleifer and Vishny's model is limited to those firms which are underproducing. This reconciles two otherwise contradictory papers. Chp 5: LABOUR MARKET REALLOCATION AND RENT-SEEKING IN TRANSITION ECONOMY We present a simple two-sector model of the Russian labour market. Starting from a "full-employment" equilibrium with no search (the USSR), we analyze the path to the new equilibrium with unemployment and search (Russia). The links between the fraction of people searching, the wage differential and the hiring and firing probability of both sectors are investigated. A tentative way to compute these probabilities is proposed starting from recent (91-94) Russian data on unemployment and wages. It is shown that the wage differential across sectors rises with the strengthening of the entry barriers. It is argued that if no action is taken by the Authorities to fight unemployment and to reduce the wage differential across sectors (e.g. relaxing the entry barriers to the most productive sector), the market will react by developing, as an endogenous alternative to unemployment, a third sector which would act as a rent seeking one against the most productive sector. This will increase the outflow of workers from the least productive sector. Finally, it is shown that if the fraction of rent-seeking people attains a critical mass the above-mentioned policies may not be enough to rid the economy of the rent-seeking sector.

This thesis examines the role of banks in influencing innovation and analyses their links to payment systems modernisation. The main argument is that banks are a type of technological institution having the potential to promote innovation, although such roles may be implicit or secondary. This role is investigated in eight chapters. The first three chapters review the major innovation models and progress in payment system. An analytical framework, based on evolutionary and resource-based views, is developed to examine how resources and routines which reflect an organisation's stock of skills, influence innovation, and assist them in sustaining competitive advantage. The following three chapters present the empirical results. In a survey of innovation in the banking industry, research results suggested that although there were relatively high levels of information technology awareness and application, particularly in payment system automation, there remained a moderate level of innovative capabilities among the banks studied. Further analysis through four mini case studies of the largest commercial banks also suggested similar increases in technological investments, but replication rates were also relatively high. Thus, it is argued that such investments may gain, but not sustain, competitive advantage, whereby the latter requires banks to innovate by acquiring, accumulating, and advancing their stock of skills. In this respect, the role of the central bank in creating a conducive environment for innovation is also important which may be seen through its involvement in payment systems modernisation. The final two chapters discuss the policy and research implications. It is argued that central bank policies oriented towards payment system reform, along with new payment product and services development by commercial banks, have come to play an important part in promoting technological innovation in banking. Such roles in reforming rudimentary payment systems have helped strengthen national information infrastructures, especially in emerging market economies, and moreover, have influenced the set-up of a national innovation system in banking which underpins economic development.

Japan is a country strongly associated with strong, long-term relationships, whether they be located within kin- groups, local communities or large industrial enterprises. Yet Japan also has a long tradition of people who have been excluded from these relationships, whether voluntarily (hermits, mendicant monks, etc.) or compulsorily (outcasts etc.). This thesis deals with a contemporary category of people who operate largely outside the certainties of long-term relationships: day labourers. Whereas Japanese industry has become famous for 'life-time employment', my subjects often work under contracts for just one day. Most of them are also excluded from family and mainstream community life, living singly in doya-gai -- small urban districts with cheap hotels which resemble the American skid-row. These districts center on a casual labour market (yoseba), divided between a formal sector (public casual labour exchanges) and an informal sector (jobs negotiated on the street with recruiters often affiliated with yakuza gangs). Fieldwork (1993-5) was conducted mainly in Kotobuki, the Yokohama doya-gai, with brief field-trips to similar districts in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kitakyushu and Fukuoka. Most of my informants were Japanese nationals, though Koreans and Filipinos are also briefly discussed. The thesis describes the lives and attitudes of day labourers, and the social organization of the very distinctive districts which they inhabit. Based on participant observation, backed up by historical analysis and cross-cultural comparison, the thesis considers the role of these 'men of uncertainty' in a society which craves certainty. In economic terms, that role is to enable the construction and longshoring industries to adjust to fluctuating demand and changing weather conditions while maintaining a stable core workforce. But day labourers, like other stigmatized minorities, have a parallel cultural role, as an "internal other" in the formation of mainstream Japanese people's identity.

Working hours has become, besides unemployment, the most important labour market issue in the European Union (EU) and other European countries during the 1990s. The aim of the thesis is to discuss, analyse and evaluate how the issue of working hours legislation is resolved in Finland, a Finland that differs significantly from previous decades. The main concepts in the thesis are corporatism and corporate pluralism, both underlining consensual policy making. The thesis focuses mainly on a third level of consensus, labelled policy consensus. The overall research question is what an in-depth sectoral analysis of working hours legislation can tell us about labour market policy making in Finland in the 1990s. The empirical material is based on both official and unofficial material from the decision making processes, complemented by interviews with the major participants. Although the main focus is on Finland, comparisons with Sweden and the United Kingdom are made. The result of the analysis is that the development of working hours legislation, and Finnish labour market policy making overall in the 1990s, is characterised by one-dimensionality. The one-dimensional politics brings with it some side effects, the most important being an intolerance of dissensus and opposition in the name of consensus. The consensus politics in Finland are therefore no more than a rule by the more powerful. The normative justification of the inclusion of main economic interest groups in terms of their knowledge of the issues is questionable, since knowledge has become overshadowed by power. The use of the corporatist concept if also inappropriate when it comes to Finnish labour market policy making, since it is debatable whether labour market policy making in Finland has adhered to any distinct forms of the concept.