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Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits Business School, 2017 / The study examined the relationship between oil price shocks, volatilities and stock indices in the African emerging markets. The ARDL and Bivariate BEKK GARCH models are used in this study. The countries examined are Botswana, Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Tunisia, and the MSCI’s World Index. The study shows a bidirectional relationship between oil price shocks for Nigeria and the MSCI, but unidirectional flow from oil price shocks to Botswana, Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, and Tunisia. In addition, there is evidence of unidirectional volatility spill over from oil returns to Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Mauritius and Kenyan, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya and Ghana. Finally, the study found bidirectional volatility between oil and index returns in MSCI, South Africa, and Tunisia. / MT2017

Thesis. 1979. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Bibliography: leaves 141-142. / by Henry Furlow Owsley, III. / M.S.

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21, [58] leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.

In the last decade or so political scientists have found the pluralist and marxist theoretical perspectives wanting for their inadequate attention to the causal role of states. In response, a burgeoning international literature has emerged which sets out to develop a state-centred theoretical perspective. This study is deeply informed by the emerging statist theoretical perspective. This thesis explores the relative capacity of the federal state to increase its autonomy in relation to the powerful oil MNCs in the period 1973-84 through an expanded federal presence in the energy sector. Whereas many scholars have assumed that a positive relationship existed between state capacity and the effectiveness of state intervention, Evans and Ikenberry for instance argue that an almost inverse relationship exists between the magnitude of intervention and its effectiveness. In Canada the literature on federalism has long been cognizant of the important role of states. This thesis therefore attempts to fuse the two bodies of literature, namely statism and federalism, in order to shed added light on the development of federal oil policy during 1973-84. The fact that the Canadian state is federal accounts for the recurring tendency for the energy issue to be redefined from its "obvious" focus on state-oil industry relations to intrastate issues (federal-provincial relations). A major contribution of this thesis is to explore the circumstances in which jurisdictional concerns deflect attention from policy substance - and also to those in which the reverse occurs. The thesis finds that when one level of government sought to become more independent of dominant societal actors, such as the oil industry, the intervention, whether so intended or not, was redefined to follow intergovernmental lines of conflict, rather than state-society lines of conflict. The nature of the issues also changed as distributional problems became subsumed under and were driven by the jurisdictional concerns of governments. This increased the policy interdependence between the two levels of government, squeezed out industry interests from intergovernmental deliberations, and generated intervention aimed directly at curtailing the power of the other level of government. This intervention which at first rendered the aggregate state less dependent on the oil industry by for example the creation of Petro-Canada, and later by the NEP, ultimately backfired on the state, at both levels. Important world oil market changes, intergovernmental conflicts and stalemates, deteriorating economic performance, industry reactions, and other mounting economic and political problems undermined the federal government's intervention and led to concessions for the industry. Such concessions were therefore the product of an increasingly irrelevant regulatory framework rather than purely a reflection of the power of the oil industry as such. This thesis confirms in general terms Ikenberry's finding that an inverse relationship exists between the degree and magnitude of intervention and its effectiveness. Evans and Ikenberry see this most clearly in relation to NOCs, that is in their propensity to evade state control schemes and to undermine centralized state control. In Canada the opposite change.exacerbated conflicts, namely the efforts by governments to shore up their capabilities as corporate actors and the emergence of "political federalism" which saw decision-making becoming centralized within each government, in the hands of decision-makers with jurisdiction-wide concerns. The ensuing process of intrajurisdictional policy coordination not only exacerbated conflicts but also oriented the emerging policy instruments along intergovernmental lines. Another contributing factor was the learning process that decision-makers underwent in the intergovernmental arena. In addition, 'policy mobilization' in the NEP served to link Petro-Canada closer to the political objectives of federal elites. Therefore, while the effects are the same in Canada, the process is almost the reverse of the one described by Evans and Ikenberry. Evans and Ikenberry see ineffective state intervention largely as the product of state actors mobilizing societal actors and state and societal actors becoming more closely linked. This study supplements the statist literature by noting that the attempts of a number of interventionist governmental actors to introduce comprehensive and more independent interventionist strategies heightened conflicts, generated inefficiencies and essentially caused the intervention to fail. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The objectives of this dissertation are to explain the production behavior of OPEC's member countries from 1971 to 1987 and to determine whether there was any structural shift in OPEC's production behavior after the organization attempted to assign a quota to each member. This study focused on political and social as well as economic variables, in order to overcome the misspecification of previous models. In order to achieve the above objectives, the study used the following four models, with modifications: the cartel, competitive, target revenue, and property rights models. The double log multiple linear regression technique was used to operationalize the cartel, competitive, and target revenue models; simple linear regression was used to estimate the property rights model. The cartel model was based not only on economic variables but also on social and political variables. The internal political instability of each OPEC country was measured by the number of armed attacks within the country. The structural shift in OPEC's production behavior between the 1971-1982 period and the 1983-1987 period was evaluated using the Chow-test. The Chow-test showed no significant difference between these two periods for OPEC overall or for individual members. Thus, the two periods were combined so that the study was performed for the entire 1971-1987 period. Because this period of analysis was relatively short, alternative models were applied to pool the data and thereby increase the reliability of the model estimates. A cross-sectional correlated and time-wise auto-regressive model (CCTA) was selected to pool the data and to estimate OPEC's production coefficients. Then each individual OPEC member's production model was estimated and compared to the pooled model. The results indicate that OPEC behaved as a cartel, and that a partial market-sharing hypothesis was significant for all 11 OPEC members. These findings indicate that OPEC was a loose cartel, with only partially effective cooperation on production decisions. Political instability was found to be significant (at the 10-percent level) overall, and it negatively affected production. It was also significant at the 5-percent level for the price-pusher group (Iran, Venezuela, and Algeria). This group was also the only one pooled using least squares with dummy variables (LSDV), because of its common slope and different intercepts. Overall results suggest that OPEC members were basing their production decisions on crude oil prices, excess production capacity, and each member's share of total OPEC output.

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The purpose of this research is to study and improve decision accuracy in the real world. Spot price prediction of petroleum products, in a budgeting context, is the task chosen to study prediction accuracy. Prediction accuracy of executives in a multinational oil company is examined. The Brunswik Lens Model framework is used to evaluate prediction accuracy. Predictions of the individuals, the composite group (mathematical average of the individuals), the interacting group, and the environmental model were compared. Predictions of the individuals were obtained through a laboratory experiment in which experts were used as subjects. The subjects were required to make spot price predictions for two petroleum products. Eight predictor variables that were actually used by the subjects in real-world predictions were elicited through an interview process. Data for a 15 month period were used to construct 31 cases for each of the two products. Prediction accuracy was evaluated by comparing predictions with the actual spot prices. Predictions of the composite group were obtained by averaging the predictions of the individuals. Interacting group predictions were obtained ex post from the company's records. The study found the interacting group to be the least accurate. The implication of this finding is that even though an interacting group may be desirable for information synthesis, evaluation, or working toward group consensus, it is undesirable if prediction accuracy is critical. The accuracy of the environmental model was found to be the highest. This suggests that apart from random error, misweighting of cues by individuals and groups affects prediction accuracy. Another implication of this study is that the environmental model can also be used as an additional input in the prediction process to improve accuracy.