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LD2668 .T4 1949 R5 / Master of Science

M.Com. (Economics) / The gold sector has historically made an extremely important contribution to the total external revenue earnings of South Africa. Gold is traded on the international markets at a price which is determined daily through supply and demand and quoted in American dollar terms. South Africa is one of the largest producers of gold in the world and despite this it has no control over the international gold price. Local producers get paid in rands for their production. Because the international gold price is determined in American dollar terms and local producers get paid in rands the exchange rate is extremely important to local gold producers. If the dollar/gold price is compared to rand/dollar gold price in the long term there is a definite pattern. From 1980 to 1990 it can clearly be seen that if the gold price rises or declines the exchange rate has depreciated or appreciated. Since 1990 the dollar/gold price declined steadily until 1993 when it recovered somewhat. The rand exchange rate has not in the past depreciated in relation to the decline in the gold price. A sharp depreciation of the rand since 1990 has been experienced. The question that arises is that has the deviation in the long term relation between the rand/dollar exchange rate and the gold price since 1990 just been temporary in nature or was there a fundamental change? Since 1990 the dollar/gold price has declined from American $383.55 to $324.86 in October 1997. Over the same period the rand has depreciated from 258.17 cent to 470.90 cents for a dollar. Over the whole period the rand has hardly shown signs of appreciation whilst there were sporadic increases in the gold price. Government policy changed in 1990 and the focus moved to inflation control. A sharp increase of nett capital from South Africa was noted since 1990.

Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2013. / This thesis aims to investigate the influence of earnings news on stock liquidity and the relationship between information asymmetry cost component and Post Earnings Announcement Drift in different equity markets. The scope of this research includes 426 firms from three countries in capital trading, the United States of America, South Africa and France. The first part of empirical work, shows that price reaction and liquidity effect are profound during short term event window length and reduce over time when the news ceases, The second part, a multivariate regression analysis which uses Generalised Method of Movement to capture both the problems of a likely presence of endogeneity between the explanatory variables and cross-stock heterogeneity, shows that the impact of earnings announcement on stock liquidity can split in two directions. The immediate effect is the shock after the news, causing stock liquidity to decrease immediately by lifting the illiquidity function upward. After the event, from the new increased position of illiquidity function, stock liquidity improves over time due to the trading volume increases and shifts the slope of illiquidity function downward. The overall effects at a point of time will be the total impact of the two side effects. And as shown in the results, the overall impact on the US and SA markets are that stock liquidity decreases while that of Euronext Paris, the stock liquidity increases. There are two types of Accounting law systems of which the common law system is used in the US and SA equity markets and the code law system used in France, the difference between the two law systems is that the information asymmetry component dominates the bid-ask spread in common law countries as in the US and SA markets while the cost of trading dominates the bid-ask spreads in code law countries such as France equity market. Finally, it is shown that there are several determinants of the PEAD, of which stock liquidity is one. Earnings news changes the stock liquidity, and therefore stock liquidity plays a role in the market response. When earnings news is released, it initially creates a gap between the informed traders and the uninformed traders, increasing the bid ask spread. Over time, this information gap decreases, however in the meantime more information on the market increases trading volume and reduces trading cost, leading to another part of the bid ask spread decreasing or stock liquidity improving. After decomposing bid ask spread into information asymmetry cost and cost of trading components, the final part of empirical iv analysis shows that information asymmetry cost component provides a partial explanation for PEAD in the Johannesburg stock exchange and Euronext Paris.

This thesis examines whether the influence of reference price discrepancy on consumer post-purchase satisfaction depends on the type of price discrepancy. Based on Bolton, Warlop, and Alba's (2003) transaction space framework, this thesis proposes that the influence of reference price discrepancy on satisfaction can be classified into three types: across-time price discrepancy, across-consumer price discrepancy, and across-firm price discrepancy. The thesis proposes and tests a satisfaction model that incorporates types of reference price discrepancy, based on perceived fairness, retrospective regret, and disappointment in six experiments. Experiment 1 identifies a negative relationship between perceived fairness of a situation and retrospective regret, independent of the outcomes of comparable others. The findings in experiment 1 are replicated in another context in experiment 2. The findings are generalized beyond price as an attribute into performance in experiment 3. The findings suggest that self-blame mediates the negative relationship between fairness and regret, supporting a just-world explanation. Experiment 4 demonstrates that the influences of reference price discrepancies on perceived fairness, retrospective regret, and disappointment are type-dependent. Experiment 5 provides explanations to as why the influences of reference price discrepancy on fairness, regret, and disappointment are type-dependent. The finding suggests that satisfaction models examining only one antecedent of satisfaction and models without considering retrospective regret have reduced goodness of fit indices and have inflated estimators than the proposed and other alternative models. Finally, experiment 6 demonstrates how mixed reference price information can be separated into its components. This method allows future research to incorporate multidimensional reference price information in research following a generalized utility model. The findings of this thesis have implications for satisfaction modeling, reference price typology, and differential pricing practice. This thesis sends a simple and direct message to marketing practitioners that fairness is the most important antecedent of satisfaction. / Tang, Tzu Lung Felix. / Adviser: Jian-min Jamie Jia. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 2148. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-154). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

by Tse Tin-leung, Raymond. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-85). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS --- p.v / CHAPTERS / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Scope of This Project --- p.1 / Chapter II. --- METHODOLOGY --- p.4 / Chapter III. --- THE SYSTEM OF LAND & PROPERTY SUPPLY IN HONG KONG --- p.5 / Supply by Hong Kong Government --- p.5 / Supply by Private Sectors --- p.5 / Chapter VI. --- BUYING & SELLING ： THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS --- p.7 / Buying Properties --- p.7 / Selling Properties --- p.9 / Chapter V. --- FACTORS AFFECTING THE PRICE MOVEMENT --- p.11 / The Price Movement --- p.11 / Factors Affecting Price Movement --- p.11 / Chapter VI. --- THE FINDINGS --- p.18 / Chapter VII. --- APPLYING PRICE EQUATION TO WHAMPOA GARDEN --- p.21 / Choice of District --- p.21 / The Data Collection for Whampoa Garden --- p.22 / The Findings --- p.23 / Chapter VIII. --- CONCLUSION --- p.25 / Chapter IX. --- LIMITATION --- p.27 / APPENDIX --- p.28 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.84

This dissertation consists of three essays on prices and frictions. The first chapter documents cyclical properties of distributions of labor factor prices, wages, in the United States from 1979 to 2016. The second chapter investigates which theory of nominal wage frictions in the existing literature has consistent implications with empirical regularities documented in the first chapter. The third chapter estimates the impact of e-commerce, a recent technology innovation reducing information frictions and trade costs, on prices and welfare in Japan. In Chapter 1, I construct distributions of individual workers’ year-over-year changes in nominal hourly wages across time and across US states from two nationally representative household surveys, the Current Population Survey (1979-2017) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (1984-2013). The novel result is that the share of workers with no wage changes, which accounts for the large spike at zero in nominal wage change distribution, is more countercyclical than the share of workers with wage cuts. A strand of related literature interpreted the empirical finding that US states with larger decreases in employment are also the states with lower average wage increases as a sign of wage flexibility. This paper overturns this interpretation by showing that the states with larger employment declines are also the states with greater increases in the share of workers with a zero wage change, suggesting wage rigidity instead. In Chapter 2, I ask which type of nominal wage rigidity model in the existing literature can match empirical regularities documented in Chapter 1. This chapter builds heterogeneous agent models with five alternative wage-setting schemes—perfectly flexible, Calvo, long-term contracts, menu costs, and downward nominal wage rigidity. The models feature not only idiosyncratic uncertainty but also aggregate uncertainty. Using a numerical method, I show among alternative wage setting schemes, the model with downward nominal wage rigidity has the most consistent implications with the empirical findings, regarding the shape and cyclicality of wage change distributions. In Chapter 3, joint work with Misaki Matsumura and David Weinstein, we estimate the impact of e-commerce on Japanese prices and welfare. We find that goods sold intensively online have always had lower relative rates of price increase than goods sold mainly in physical stores, but the gap in inflation rates rose after the advent of e-commerce. This happened in part because goods sold offline began experiencing faster rates of price increase. Second, we compute the welfare gains generated by e-commerce by reducing intercity price differentials and by increasing available varieties. While we show the national gains were substantial, we also find that welfare rose much more for residents of high-income cities with highly educated populations and may have fallen for residents of other cities.