Where water resources are scarce and water quality is diminishing, market–based instruments have better potential than government regulation alone to increase the efficiency of resource use, to reallocate water to other uses and to improve water quality in an efficient and equitable manner. The SSRB is a region in Southern Alberta known for water scarcity, growing competition for water and, an increasing threat of pollution by point and non-point sources. This research has addressed the perceptions of stakeholders about proposed system of water quality trading to supplement the existing system of government regulation and water trading. A survey was structured to examine stakeholders’ perceptions about (1) resource status; (2) their rights and responsibilities under current system of administration, and (3) their rights and responsibilities under the proposed system. Survey results revealed stakeholders concerns about the ability of both existing and proposed systems to secure their access to water if annual water supply continues to decrease. Despite concerns about increasing scarcity respondents did not perceive transferability of water licences as important due to lack of trading experience and existence of regulatory barriers that impede markets and discourage participation. Reluctance to explore markets could have been as well related to the high risk of losing the unused water. Under the proposed system stakeholders’ perceptions of their abilities to secure rights pertaining to water quality improved. However, obtained data were insufficient to judge with certainty the applicability of the proposed system in the region. Results were inconclusive to determine the extent and origin of non-point source pollution by agriculture. Also, research is needed to determine how elimination of potential institutional barriers, i.e. a risk to lose water and inability to maintain private licences to instream flow, would influence stakeholders’ perceptions about their rights and responsibilities under proposed system.

What is the impact of financial development on economic growth and how institutional quality affects the role of financial development on economic growth? This thesis attempts to answer to these questions using a fixed effects estimation and two-step GMM estimator on a panel dataset of 93 countries from 2000-2007. The preposition is that financial sector development increases the availability of extra finance thereby increasing firms investment, which is essential for economic growth. The findings suggest that bank credit has anegative impact on economic growth. However when interacted with protection of property rights, bank credit has a positive impact economic growth. Additionally results further indicate that stock market capitalization is important for economic growth. For Countries that exhibit low levels of protection of property rights, stock market capitalization has a negative impact but countries that exhibit high protection of property rights the impact of stock market capitalization on growth is positive.

“Heavy” file sharers’ and “heavy” activists’ values and attitudes toward file sharing and intellectual property rights are analyzed in this thesis, with a focus on the conflict between property owners and non-owners. The purpose of this MA thesis is to investigate the perception of file sharing and intellectual property rights on the Internet. The main research questions is: How do “heavy” file sharers and “heavy” activists perceive file sharing and intellectual property rights on the Internet?. For answering it, critical political economy and both qualitative and quantitative methods are used. Therefore, the paper consists of two major parts. In the first part, the theoretical framework is introduced. In the second part, empirical research is presented and the theoretical framework is applied to the analysis of the gathered data. Data were collected with the help of a survey. The main results of the study suggest that “heavy” file sharers and “heavy” activists tend to have left-wing values and a left-wing political agenda behind file sharing, and perceive culture, and information and knowledge as “public goods”. Furthermore, “heavy” file sharers and “heavy” activists tend to contribute to the Net gift economy and share their created content in a way that constitutes an alternative to intellectual property rights, which they see as out-of-date.

Abstract In an ideal world, the agents would write a contingent contract specifying exactly which outcome is to be implemented in each state. However, the bounded rationality, the contracting agents may be unable to define ex ante the contingencies, and the transaction costs, the costs result from the difficulty of foreseeing contingencies, writing and enforcing contract, will lead to R&D cooperative contracts incomplete essentially. When R&D cooperative contracts are incomplete, the contracting agents face the hazard of ex post opportunistic behavior: each agent may engage in inefficient R&D investment in an attempt to ¡§hold up¡¨ other agents and to obtain a large share of the available quasi-rents. The purposes of this dissertation are to show that the mechanism design to the hold-up problem may implement in incomplete R&D cooperative contracts. In chapter II, we assume that the agents commit not to renegotiate ex post and set up a sequential mechanism. Under this sequential mechanism, the seller (university) sends massages (seller¡¦s true type) to the buyer (firm) who receives the massages and decides whether he will challenge them. The monetary transfer from the buyer to the seller and the quality of trade are the function of agents¡¦ true type. The great merit of this mechanism is that the seller and the buyer play the subgame perfect equilibrium in which both of them announce truthfully. We release the assumption that the contracting agents commit not to renegotiate ex post in chapter III. Under the current legal system, there is nothing to stop buyers or sellers to prevent renegotiation of their original contract. More importantly, the agents will rationally anticipate any renegotiation and this will change the equilibrium strategies of the mechanism itself. According to proposition 3-2, we demonstrate that the direct-revelation mechanism with Rubinsteinian bargaining game induced buyer and seller both announcing honestly but the R&D investment offered by agents were lower than the first best. To avoid the effect generated by renegotiation, some economists argued that the contract in which either buyer or seller has all the ex post bargaining power can induce efficient investment, and thus can implement the first best. This argument contrasts to Aghion and Tirole(1986), for they argued that whether the buyer or the seller should own the innovation hinged on the marginal efficiency of the buyer¡¦s investment compared with that of the seller¡¦s effort. Hence, we accept the property rights concepts proposed by Barzel(1989) and show that the agents can actually raise their payoff by using a mechanism in which performs the function analogous to the real option.

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An important dimension of contemporary capitalism is the global spread of intellectual property rights law, drawing new attention by governments and media to the unauthorized copying of fashion brands. In this dissertation, I draw on sixteen months of ethnographic research with small-scale, indigenous Maya garment manufacturers to examine the cultural and moral context of brand piracy in Guatemala. I analyze what practices of copying and imitation, some of which qualify as piracy under national and international law, among Maya manufacturers reveal about two aspects of the social field: first, changing economic and cultural conditions following waves of neoliberal economic and legal reform, and, second, the nonlinear reproduction of forms of moral and legal reckoning at the margins of the global economy and amidst mounting insecurities that include rising violent crime rates and legal impunity for violent crime. I examine how practices of copying and imitation among manufacturers and competitive behavior more generally are evaluated locally in light of kin relations that promote the sharing of knowledge and resources within a somewhat loose property regime and given ideologies of race and nation that encourage class-based solidarity among Maya people. I find that the normative models and business practices evident among these manufacturers parochialize official portraits of progress, business ethics, and development promoted in neoliberal policy agendas and international law. In addition, I analyze significant gaps between what fashion and branding mean in Guatemalan Maya communities and how they are understood in international projects of legal harmonization that are also about re-branding and re-imagining the Guatemalan nation. Neoliberal statecraft following a long internal armed conflict in Guatemala involves policy approaches that amplify the presence of global brands while compounding conditions of social and economic inequality that limit Maya men and women’s access to authorized goods. Meanwhile, Maya people are invited to participate in a modernist vision of citizenship and social progress that encourages a privatized model of indigenous identity mediated by branded commodities and formal market transactions. The brand emerges as a powerful medium through which claims to legitimacy and authority and senses of belonging are negotiated at national and local levels. / Anthropology

Most models of property rights assume they are supplied by the state on demand from society. Property rights are strong when state institutions enforce the law. The strength of state institutions in the provinces determines how well property rights will be enforced on the ground. The penetration of state institutions from the capital city to the provinces is a part of long state building processes. These processes pit centralizing elites against local notables who want to protect their authority and privileges. In the West, state building processes took centuries; in post-colonial states like Algeria and Tunisia, these processes have occurred over the last fifty years, and have occurred unevenly This dissertation asks why property rights are relatively strong in Tunisia, and why they are so weak in Algeria. To answer this question, it focuses on the development of local political and state institutions in the years immediately following independence. At independence, rulers in both states used their anti-colonial nationalist parties to buttress the state-in-formation. Their ability to do so, however, was conditioned on the development of those parties during the colonial period, and affected their rural state building strategies. The choices they made in the first decades of independence defined the parameters of local-national relations and the degree to which they can implement property rights on the ground. Using the Neo-Destour Party, which had developed into a mass-mobilizing movement by independence, the Tunisian state was able to project authority into the periphery. In return for vertical mobility opportunities, party cadres enforced national legislation during the early state building period. Property rights are strong. In Algeria, authority collapsed when close to a million European settlers fled in 1962. The French excluded Muslims from the political and economic sphere fearing they would subvert the foundation of the colonial system: strong settler property rights. At independence, the new regime had few cadres to staff the new state institutions, and an amorphous nationalist movement. The regime chose a two-tiered state building strategy. From the top-down, it placed its few cadres for the central and provincial administration. Its bottom-up strategy was to form a new set of party-administrators that could act as proxy agents on the ground through the municipalities. The top-down, bottom-up powersharing agreement turned on its side, however, as local notables infiltrated the local party organizations and municipalities. The party-administrators entered alliances with notables, creating localized political arenas independent of Algiers. Subsequent efforts to run land and property reform through the municipalities were undermined by these alliances, and have been since. In Algeria, property rights are nationally legislated, but they are enforced according to local dictates. Property rights are weak. / text

<p>Many critics have questioned whether the protection of the IPRs would benefit developing countries. It was argued in this paper that developing countires have the interest in protecting IPRs as well. However, it was showed that the benefit of this protection can be realized only if there is a fair rule of the game to all players in the multilateral trading system. The general objective of this research was to examine the current status of IPRs protection and the levels of TRIPS compliance by Rwanda in the area of copyright.</p>

ABSTRACT Purpose - This thesis analyses, firstly, how the environment affects the use of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in firms. Secondly, the connections between IPRs and firm's openness with regards to partner, phase, and content variety; and lastly, how firm's environment modifies IPRS-firm's openness relationship. Methodology - Based on a survey for R&amp;D managers or similar job positions in 415 Swedish, Finish and Italian manufacturing firms, after obtaining the raw data, the results will be evaluated and discussed in reference to the theoretical framework. Results - The paper displays the correlation between formal IP mechanisms and firm's environment. In this way, the study exposes the common use of this kind of protection, on one hand, to deal with rising development technology costs and shortening product life cycles, and, on the other hand, in a technological environment. In addition, the work exhibits the value of IPRs in early phases and commercialization in the innovation process, regarding the need to acquire knowledge in creation, and safeguard R&amp;D to take profit from it. Finally, the paper establishes a linear correlation that shows as higher environmental dynamism that leads to lower use of IPRs under OI regime. Limitations - This thesis is focused on formal IP protection mechanisms, firm's environment, and firm's openness, without pay attention to informal IP protection ways, which for sure are linked. This analysis is, however a subject for further research. Keywords: Intellectual property Rights, Firm's openness, Firm's environment, Survey.

<p>The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) ia a multilateral international treaty introduced by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that came into effect on 1 June 1995. At a basic level it attempted to establish minimum standards for the regulation of intellectual property rights within those countries that are members of the WTO and signatories to it. This thesis served a dual purpose. The first leg was to embark on an investigation into TRIPS, criticallt analyzing the provisions of the Agreement. The important aim here was to analyze and discover whether TRIPS is sensitive to weaker countries. The second leg was to probe within the the legislative framework of South Africa and determine whether South Africa as a &quot / developing copuntry&quot / , has complied with the demands as expressed by TRIPS. This investigation was done with specific reference to South African patent law.</p>