Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

The grocery retailing industry is a key sector of the UK economy, accounting for 16% of consumer expenditure. As such developments in this sector will have an important effect on UK economic and social welfare. Arguably, competition in the sector has intensified in the last two decades. Yet significant consolidation in the sector has put it under the spotlight of the UK competition authorities. Previous research analysing factors affecting the performance and positioning of UK grocery retailers has tended to be restricted to a limited time period and a small sample size. This study extends this research by investigating industry evolution and factors affecting performance and industry structure with longitudinal panel data, covering a two-decade time period. The sample used covers a wide variety of grocery retailers with a range of different attributes over a significant period in the development of the industry, running from 1985 through to 2003. Strategic group theory is employed to study industry evolution and examine the effects of strategic positioning on performance. Specifically, fixed-effect panel econometric models are estimated at different levels of aggregation to analyse firm, industry and strategic group effects on the performance of retailers. Also, stochastic frontier models, in the form of Cobb-Douglas and Transcendental Logarithmic functions, are estimated at different levels of aggregation to analyse the efficiency of retailers in the sector. The results from cluster analysis on strategic groups suggest that industry structure is likely to become more concentrated, and the size of retailers will be a significant mobility barrier in the industry. The profitability analysis finds industry level factors and strategic group composition to be crucial in explaining performance differences. The efficiency analysis finds large retailers exhibiting economies of scale through operating large store formats to be significantly better positioned from smaller-format retailers with fewer outlets. Consistent and significant time dummies demonstrate the favourable macro environment enjoyed by the retailers for much of the 1990s. The analysis reveals potentially useful insights for retail managers, especially concerning the importance of positioning in the industry and the choice of strategic orientation. More generally, the study opens up further possibilities for future studies of performance and efficiency measurement over an even longer time as the sector continues to develop and shape the way consumers shop in the UK.

Over the last few decades, numerous studies have adopted efficiency and productivity techniques to examine and evaluate the overall performance of banking industries to inform policy effect as well as identify the best practice. The majority of banking efficiency and productivity studies focus on the developed US and European countries. There are only limited studies in the Asian banking industries but no cross-country comparison in major Asian economies. To fill this literature gap, this thesis attempts to measure and compare the cost efficiency and total factor productivity change in ten Asian banking sectors using an unbalanced panel data set consisting of 280 commercial banks over the period of 1998 to 2005. It is widely agreed that cross-country differences play an important part in examining banks performance in international comparison. They can influence the frontier technology as additional explanatory variables or they can enter inefficiency directly as a measure of determinants or heteroscedasticity. Both cases are considered in the empirical sections of this thesis. In the former case, the empirical results from systematic comparisons of panel data stochastic frontier models with and without incorporating these cross-country heterogeneities suggests that cross-country differences are important sources to explain banks performances therefore they should not be neglected. The overall cost efficiency in these Asian banking industries is 0.5897 with a decreasing trend, despite positive technical progress and slight economies of scale. The total factor productivity change is measured by using a new cost-based total factor productivity index, an index number counterpart of Bauer's (1990) total differential approach. A five-way decomposition is also provided with the attempt to identify the main contributors to the productivity change. Overall, Asian banking industries have experienced positive but not substantial productivity change from 1998-05. In the latter case, a general model that considers exogenous influences in both inefficiency and random noise error term is constructed and compared against other alternative specifications. The empirical results favour this general model and the overall and country-specific cost efficiency and total factor productivity are then estimated and calculated.

In this thesis we study models, which search for an optimal portfolio from a set of stocks. On the contrary to the classical approach focusing only on expected return and variance, we examine models where an additional crite- rion of skewness is included. Furthermore we formulate a model for measuring performance of a portfolio defined as the distance from the Pareto efficient frontier. In numerical experiments we apply the models on historical prices and stock data from the electronic stock market NASDAQ. We analyze the stock data from companies listed in the index NASDAQ-100. We conclude by comparing of optimal portfolios created using different models among each other, with trivial single-stock portfolios and the with NASDAQ-100 index itself.

Carrierless amplitude and phase (CAP) modulation is generally regarded as a bandwidth efficient two-dimensional (2-D) passband line code. It is closely related to the pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) schemes. CAP has been proposed for various digital subscriber loop (DSL) systems over unshielded twisted pairs of copper wires. In this thesis, our main focus is on the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) performance of the ideal (i.e., infinite length) linear and non-linear (decision feedback) CAP receivers/equalisers in the presence of additive, coloured Gaussian noise, and/or data-like cross-talks. An in-depth analysis is given on the performance of both receiver structures. In the case of the linear receiver, one possible view of the overall CAP transceiver system which includes both data and cross-talk transmission paths is that it is a linear multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. Accordingly, the existing MMSE results for a general MIMO system are applicable also to CAP systems. However, up to date, this approach was shown to be unsuccessful in the sense that the derived MMSE expressions are too complex and offer little insights. In our analysis, in order to find a more incisive MMSE expression, we reconsider the problem of minimisation of the MSEs at slicers. By exploiting the Hilbert transform pair relationship between the impulse responses of the inphase and quadrature transmit shaping filters, we are able to obtain an elegant and more meaningful MMSE expression, as well as the corresponding transfer functions of the optimum linear receive filters. In the case of the nonlinear, or decision feedback equaliser (DFE), receiver, we start our analysis with the receiver structure of a generic multidimensional (>/= 3) CAP-type system. / This receiver consists of a bank of analog receive filters, the number of which equals the dimension of the CAP line code, and a matrix of cross-connected, infinite-length, baud-spaced feedback filters. It is shown that the optimum filters and the corresponding MMSE of the DFE receiver require the factorisation of a discrete-time channel spectral matrix. This mathematically intractable step can be avoided, however, when the DFE results are specialised to a standard 2-D CAP system where we are able to again exploit the Hilbert transform pair relationship to derive a further and more useful MMSE expression. Three sets of numerical studies are given on the MMSE performance of the CAP receivers. In the first set of studies. we model the sum of all crosstalks as an additive, Gaussian noise source and select three test transmission channels over which we compare the MMSE performance of the linear and DFE receiver structures. In the second set of studies, we compare the performance of the two receiver structures, but in a data-like cross-talk environment. The results demonstrate the importance of NEXT equalisation in the design of CAP receivers operating in a NEXT dominant environment. In the final set of studies which follows from the second set of studies, we investigate the relationship between the MMSE performance of the DFE receiver and system parameters which include excess bandwidth, data rate, CAP scheme. and relative phase between the received signal and the NEXT signal. The results show that data-like cross-talks can be effectively suppressed by using a large excess bandwidth (alpha > 1 in the case of a RC transmit shaping filter) alone. / The relative phase also affect; the receiver performance. but to a lesser degree. In addition to the MMSE performance analysis. implementation issues of an adaptive linear CAP receiver are also considered. We propose a novel linear receiver by appending two fixed analog filters to the front-end of the existing adaptive linear receiver using fractionally-spaced equalisers (FSE). We show that if the analog filters are matched to the transmit shaping filters, then inphase and quadrature finite-length FSEs in the proposed receiver have the same NINISE solution. We further propose a modified least-mean-square (LMS) algorithm which takes advantage of this feature. The convergence analysis of the proposed LMS algorithm is also given. We show that the modified LMS algorithm converges approximately twice as fast as the standard LMS algorithm, given the same misadjustment, or alternatively, it halves the misadjustment, given the same initial convergence rate.

Recent trends in mobile broadband indicates that the available radio frequency (RF) spectrum will not be enough to support the data requirements of the immediate future. Visible light communication, which uses visible spectrum to transmit wirelessly could be a potential solution to the RF ’Spectrum Crunch’. Thus there is growing interest all over the world in this domain with support from both academia and industry. Visible light communication( VLC) systems make use of light emitting diodes (LEDs), which are semiconductor light sources to transmit information. A number of demonstrators at different data capacity and link distances has been reported in this area. One of the key problems holding this technology from taking off is the unavailability of power efficient, miniature LED drive schemes. Reported demonstrators, mostly using either off the shelf components or arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs) to drive the LEDs have only started to address this problem by adopting integrated drivers designed for driving lighting installations for communications. The voltage regulator based drive schemes provide high power efficiency (> 90 %) but it is difficult to realise the fast switching required to achieve the Mbps or Gbps data rates needed for modern wireless communication devices. In this work, we are exploiting CMOS technology to realise an integrated LED driver for VLC. Instead of using conventional drive schemes (digital to analogue converter (DAC) + power amplifier or voltage regulators), we realised a current steering DAC based LED driver operating at high currents and sampling rates whilst maintaining power efficiency. Compared to a commercial AWG or discrete LED driver, circuit realised utilisng complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology has resulted in area reduction (29mm2). We realised for the first time a multi-channel CMOS LED driver capable of operating up to a 500 MHz sample rate at an output current of 255 mA per channel and > 70% power efficiency. We were able to demonstrate the flexibility of the driver by employing it to realise VLC links using micro LEDs and commercial LEDs. Data rates up to 1 Gbps were achieved using this system employing a multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) scheme. We also demonstrated the wavelength division multiplexing ability of the driver using a red/green/blue commercial LED. The first integrated digital to light converter (DLC), where depending on the input code, a proportional number of LEDs are turned ON, realising a data converter in the optical domain, is also an output from this research. In addition, we propose a differential optical drive scheme where two output branches of a current DAC are used to drive two LEDs achieving higher link performance and power efficiency compared to single LED drive.

This dissertation consists of two empirical papers that explore recent phenomena in Banking and Microfinance Performance. Chapter 1, “Market Power and Bank Performance in MENA Countries,” examines the determinants of market power in 12 Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), specifically within six Gulf Cooperation Countries and six non-Gulf countries. We examine the dynamics of bank competition in MENA countries, provide an up-to-date assessment of market power, investigate the factors impacting bank competition, and explore the evolution of market power during the financial crisis. Our results show an overall increase in market power following the GFC for both regions. We find that bank size, capitalization, and diversification affect market power differently in the pre-crisis and post-crisis years. Larger banks enjoy cost advantages and the diversification impact on market power has decreased in the post-crisis years and the impact of capitalization on market power increased during the GFC. Overall, banks with higher capitalization can better weather the crisis. Chapter 2, “The impact of firm-level characteristic and county-specific attributes on the performance and efficiency of the Microfinance institutions,” estimates the impact of country-specific macro-variables and firm-specific attributes on the financial performance and the efficiency of microfinance institutions (MFIs). We use a large international up-to-date database consisting of over 10,000 firm-years for MFIs over 89 countries during the period 2008-2015. Several interesting findings emerge: a) regulation and outreach are negatively correlated. b) There is a negative and highly statistically significant correlation between the percentage of female borrowers and loan size, which is evidence of “mission drift”. c) An increase in the percentage of female board member has positive and statistically significant effect on MFIs profitability and ROA; which emphasizes the importance of female participation in leading position in MFIs.

L’objet de cette thèse est d’analyser d’un point de vue financier la cotation et le comportement des obligations privées à la Bourse de Paris à partir de 1838 jusqu’à l’éclatement de la Première Guerre mondiale. Cette étude est divisée en deux parties : La première relate la création et l’évolution des émissions obligataires (marché primaire) durant le 19ème siècle. On s’intéresse aux grands émetteurs qui ont su se servir le mieux des obligations et les raisons de leur succès. Dans cette partie seront également traitées les caractéristiques techniques et les innovations financières des émissions. La deuxième partie tente d’analyser le comportement boursier des obligations(marché secondaire).Pour cela un indice général des cours d’obligations durant le 19ème siècle a été calculé. En se basant sur cet indice nous mettons en lumière pour la première fois, les caractéristiques de ce marché (rentabilité, volatilité, …). Cela permet de comparer nos résultats avec ceux des études antérieures sur les marchés d’actions et de la rente au 19ème siècle. Cet indice permet également de tester les diverses hypothèses financières relevant de la théorie financière moderne (efficience informationnelle, cointégration avec des autres compartiments du marché,…). / This thesis studies the French corporate bonds market during the 19th century. Despite its importance the performance of the corporate bonds quoted on the Paris Bourse has never been studied. In order to analyse this market, a price index of the corporate bond market has been created by using modern techniques. The creation of the index was made possible thanks to an original database created by new data, which has never been used before and collected directly from the publications of the market authorities during the nineteenth century. Thanks to the index, the risk and the return of the market have been measured. Then we compared the performance of the French corporate bonds with those of the stocks and government bonds; the results of thecomparisons are interesting. This study demonstrates that the corporate bonds are the least risky securities and their rate of return is higher than the government bonds during the nineteenth century. Some econometric tests have also been used to compare the efficiency of bond market with the other segments of the Paris Bourse.

The thesis deals with performance audit theory and practise. Performance audit consists in evaluating of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. It checks inputs, how they are used and if the intended target is achieved. The main goal of the thesis is to use the theoretical knowledge and do the performance audit of chosen entity. The partial goal is to find out how the performance audit works in reality especially in the Czech Republic.

This dissertation is focused on copywriting or writing advertising content for online stores. Its main objective is to create instructions for writing successful text for online stores based on synthesis. Simultaneously, another aim of my dissertation is to use these findings in copywriting for selected e-shops. Both theoretical and practical parts are based on professional resources and my own experiences with copywriting beginning in 2006. This document is structured in three main parts. In the first part, I focus on theoretical recommendations for writing advertising content. In addition to creating product descriptions, this chapter deals with the preparation of texts for categories, home pages, shipping and payment sections, about us pages, articles and microcopy. In the next chapter, I describe measuring and evaluating the performance of advertising texts for online stores. The third part is devoted to the application of theoretical knowledge and to writing texts for selected eshops, including an evaluation of their success. Thanks to the selected structure, this dissertation covers almost all issues of copywriting for eshops. Chapters are structured in the same way as my usual copywriting process. I believe that my dissertation will become a useful knowledge resource for beginners and advanced copywriters, Internet marketing experts and online store owners. Selected parts of my dissertation are enhanced by my own experience, knowledge and demonstration examples. Most of them can be found on real company websites and online stores. Also, I continually refer to related resources that may be useful for every reader with deeper interest in this issue.