The study examines the development of telecommunications and its impacts on Chinese economic growth since telecommunications has been undergoing dramatic reforms in the 1980s. On November 2001, China was officially the WTO member to open the market for foreign investors. It is obvious that the telecommunications infrastructure development can play a key role in economic growth in China. Furthermore, China has become the world’s single largest telecommunications market since 2002. In this research, I present evidence that it empirically not only investigates the telecommunications development and its impacts on economic growth, but also tests their relationship with initial economic condition, fixed investment, population growth, foreign direct investment as well as telecommunications infrastructure development using the panel data approach with a dynamic fixed effect model for the span of time from 2003 to 2008. I find that that mobile phone user density to be the new proxy for telecommunications infrastructure in China contributes in a major way to the economic growth. It means that mobile communication systems do have positive impact and effect on the regional economy of China. It is a crucial determinant as findings indicate a significant and positive correlation between telecommunications development and regional growth in China, after controlling for a number of other factors. Results also show that investment in telecommunications is subject to diminishing returns.

<p>The efficacy and accuracy of information is very important for making decision in stock markets. In this paper, we study on the effect of information diffusion in Chinese stock market before and after the owership release in February 19, 2001, by testing the stationary of A share premium and cointegration between A and B share prices. The panel unit root tests we propose on A share premium are Augmented Dickey-Fullar (ADF) tests for individual firm and Fisher tests for the panel, based on combining pvalues from each individual cross-section. The panel cointegration tests on A and B shares we use is Johansen’s likelihood ratio tests for individual firm and likelihoodbased panel cointegraion tests for panel, based on combining the test statistics. The results show that before the opening of B share markets to domestic investors, A share premiums have a unit root and there is no cointegration relationship between A and B share markets. On the contrary, after ownership release, A share premium is stationary and there is cointegration relationship between A and B share markets.</p>

The efficacy and accuracy of information is very important for making decision in stock markets. In this paper, we study on the effect of information diffusion in Chinese stock market before and after the owership release in February 19, 2001, by testing the stationary of A share premium and cointegration between A and B share prices. The panel unit root tests we propose on A share premium are Augmented Dickey-Fullar (ADF) tests for individual firm and Fisher tests for the panel, based on combining pvalues from each individual cross-section. The panel cointegration tests on A and B shares we use is Johansen’s likelihood ratio tests for individual firm and likelihoodbased panel cointegraion tests for panel, based on combining the test statistics. The results show that before the opening of B share markets to domestic investors, A share premiums have a unit root and there is no cointegration relationship between A and B share markets. On the contrary, after ownership release, A share premium is stationary and there is cointegration relationship between A and B share markets.

The study has twelve chapters. After a brief introduction in chapter 1 the development and scope of Swedish manpower training are summarized in chapter 2. Chapter 3 examines to what extent Swedish manpower training has contributed to the attainment of the overall goals of economic policy. Aspects of stabilization, allocation, growth and distribution are dealt with. The chapter ends with a brief review of attempts in the economics of education to explain why it may be advantageous for an individual to participate in manpower training. Chapter 4 opens with an account of results from Swedish and a number of American evaluations of manpower training. In order to assess the effects for the individual some kind of comparison must be made between participants and non-participants. Ways of doing this are discussed. The planning and implementation of the empirical study is described in chapter 5. One aim of the study is to determine the profitability of manpower training for the trainees. The trainees are compared to individuals in similar positions when the former started their training. In chapter 6 the main groups and the control groups are described with reference, to inter alia: sex, age, educational and occupational background. For the trainees, the occupations that the training leads to were also considered. One of the most important aims of manpower training is to improve the position of the trainees on the job market; that is, to shorten the duration of unemployment and to increase the time spent in gainful employment. Chapter 7 describes how the employment situation of the trainees has changed compared to that of the control groups. The effects of manpower training on employment are then analyzed in chapter 8 using regression analysis. Attention is paid to partial response and self selection. In addition to effects on employment, effects on income are also of interest. The measures of income used in the study are defined in chapter 9. These measures are then used in chapter 10 where the income of the trainees is compared to that of the control groups in order to determine to what extent income is influenced by manpower training. Chapter 11 analyzes how participation in manpower training has influenced income. The measures of income used are earned income, hourly wage and three measures of disposable income. Finally, the study concludes in chapter 12 with a summary and discussion. / digitalisering@umu

Since our current economic environment is getting more and more competitive, enterprises must continuously improve and strengthen their ability in order to maintain their competitiveness. Therefore, investment activities of firms are the key elements to drive business growth. This article tries to discuss whether three different investment dimensions can help to boost firm¡¦s future growth of profitability. This research uses investment spending of listed firms in domestic electronics industry (including capital expenditure, intangible assets and R&D expenditures) as variable to explore the effects of these three investment expenditures on corporate P/B ratio as well as ROA (Return on Asset). This study attempts to analyze whether firm¡¦s investment activities can impose significantly positive influence on its future profitability. We use panel data to run regression analysis and further divide Taiwan electronics industry into five sectors to analyze the effects of firm¡¦s investment expenditure on P/B and future profitability among different sectors. The empirical results show that investment spending imposes significantly positive effect on firm¡¦s profits, but this relationship exist time lags.

Privatization is defined as the sale of state-owned assets by governmental agencies to private investors (e.g., Megginson, Nash, Netter, and Poulsen, 2004; Villalonga, 2000). Research on privatization has focused on privatization techniques (e.g., share issue privatization or voucher privatization), social welfare, governmental commitments to economic development, and varieties of outcomes of privatizations. Most prior studies from the financial economics perspective take privatization as a natural research context to examine the function of capital markets, the impact of national institutional settings, and the differences between partial privatization and initial public offerings. Very little research, however, has examined the determinants of privatization from an organizational perspective. This dissertation proposes that privatization decisions of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are influenced by different interests in governmental agencies. Using the resource dependence theory, I studied the power relationships of SOEs and their governmental owners. Four panel databases of 206 pharmaceutical firms across eight years in China were combined to answer the research question of this dissertation: What is the role of power imbalance between different governmental owners in the privatization of an SOE? The results suggest that organizational effectiveness and efficiency of an SOE increase the likelihood of its privatization. Results also show that provincial governmental owners are more likely to privatize SOEs if they can successfully attract foreign direct investment projects. Furthermore, the likelihood of privatization increases with the power asymmetry between the provincial government and the central government but decreases with the degree of the defense mechanism used by SOEs.

The usual theoretical assumption that the retailer's promotional activities serve the purpose of attracting customers into stores lacks empirical verification. The relationship between promotional activity and customer count is examined empirically in just a few studies, and no significantly positive association is found. This dissertation is a comprehensive empirical study of a unique time series cross section dataset, which contains scanner data representing 28 product categories in a large supermarket chain over two and a half year long period. The main result of this dissertation is that retailer's promotional activities are positively related to customer count. Two constructed measures of the promotional activity have a positive significant effect on store traffic that is comparable with the customer count effect of an average holiday. Some 55 percent of the positive long-run promotional activity effect is felt immediately, and the remaining 45 percent is spread over a five week long period. The promotions have prolonged effects that last until the next promotional peak -€“ the next holiday. It is also found that promotional discounts have positive and significant effect on store profit.

Due to drunk-driving fatality is the most focal issue in the U.S. traffic accident, this paper applies panel data model to analyze the influence of beer tax and other drunk-driving related laws on the U.S. drunk-driving fatality rate from 1982-2006. Different from former references, this paper investigate if the drunk-driving fatality rate declines by the time and by region. The result shows that drunk-driving fatality rate has declined by the time, especially, in 1987; the drunk-driving fatality rate statistically significant drops. The posibility is that U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Elizabeth, ordered the automobile manufactures to set seat belt or air bag with the cars from 1987. However, the drunk-driving fatality rate doesn¡¦t show different significantly by region. This may suggest that regions have similar laws and cultural norms, which leads to similar drunk-driving fatality rate. Finally, the survey indicates the higher beer tax, BAC 0.08 Law, and Zero Tolerance Law are effective policies to reduce drunk-driving.

This paper aims to realize that the capital structure decisions will be affected by the credit rating of a firm. According to the argument made by Kisgen(2006), a firm will incur discrete costs and benefits as a result of the level changes of its credit rating situation, and then causes jumps on firm¡¥s value. In order to maximize firm value, firms near a credit rating downgrade or upgrade will issue less debt relative to equity (as a portion of assets) than firms not near the change in credit raring, attempting to gain the advantage of an upgrade and avoid the disadvantage of a downgrade. The firms near a rating change are defined in different ways, and four hypotheses are tested empirically, using pooled OLS, fixed effect model and random effect model, to know how the concerns of firms¡¥ credit rating changes directly affect its financing decisions on debt and equity structure. Plus or Minus test(POM test), High or Low test(HOL test), Investment Grade or Speculation Grade test(IG/SG test) and Watch list test(Wlist test) are used to examine the influences of credit rating on firms¡¥ financing decisions. The firm which has a credit rating at the beginning of the year in all industries in Taiwan is included in our sample, and the sample period is from 2000 to 2007. As a result, although control variables such as leverage, profitability and firm size have significant impacts on financing decision, we observe that the impacts of credit ratings on net debt issuance are negative but not statistically significant in all models except in HOL test, in which credit rating variables are negative and significant at 5% confidence level. For this reason, the effect of credit ratings on firms¡¥ financing decision can not be concluded and should be examined further.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2004.