This study investigates the public sector external auditing (PSA) phenomenon in Tanzania, and seeks to understand the role of PSA, and the conditions in which it operates. In recent years, Tanzania has shown increased recognition of the contribution PSA makes to accountability, performance and the fight against corruption (CAGT, 2007). While empirical evidence to support this recognition is lacking in Tanzania, the literature review revealed mixed findings. Furthermore, the study responds to calls for more PSA studies in developing countries (Goddard, 2010) in general (Leung, White and Cooper, 2011) and those which adopt critical interpretive approaches (Baker and Bettner, 1997). The study adopts and implements a critical interpretive research strategy in fieldwork undertaken at the National Audit Office of Tanzania (NAOT). Specifically, it employs the grounded theory method (GTM) as an interpretive approach and strategically accommodates critical thinking in questioning and interpreting the case under study (Laughlin, 1995; Gibson, 2007). It also adopts elements of Habermas’ critical theory (HCT) as a lens through which interpretively field gained understanding is extended (Habermas, 1987). This study’s findings indicate that PSA in Tanzania encountered colonising tendencies because of weak working relationship between the NAOT and other accountability agencies, inconsistencies in governance and politics, the culture of corruption and secrecy, dependence on foreign financing and mimicking of foreign models. To coexist within this colonising environment, managing colonising tendencies appeared to be the core strategy for both the government and external auditors. While the government appeared to manage NAOT appearance and exploited the legitimising features of PSA, external auditors manoeuvred within colonising tendencies and attempted to maintain the ‘audit supremacy’ image. External auditors managed their relationship with auditees and the complexities of PSA roles. Managing colonising tendencies resulted into obscured subordination of PSA, contributing to cosmetic accountability and growing public interest in PSA. This research contributes to the understanding of the role and conditions shaping PSA in a developing country. It provides field-based evidence that maintaining an appearance of SAI’s ‘supremacy’ without resolving problems in the underlying power relations leads to superficial contributions from PSA. It also contributes to critical interpretive research in developing countries. Exploiting the pragmatic nature of grounded theory (GT), the research provides a practical demonstration of accommodating critical theory in a GTM. Finally, the colonisation thesis in HCT helped the researcher to develop a societal extension of the emergent theory, which also extended the thesis by highlighting external auditors’ responses to colonisation.

Of the many different ways in which economists have tried to analyse public expenditure, the most relevant to Indian economic development is that which links the level of public spending with the rate at which the state can accumulate capital. The abstract theory of this link, however, must be complemented by an historical account of the degree to which a state accumulation policy was understood by Indian policy makers, and of the other (often inconsistent) elements in the economic strategy of Indian nationalism. After attempting to provide accounts both of the abstract theory and of the institutional and policy context within which it was applied, the thesis analyses original empirical data on public expenditure in India between 1960 and 1970. The real growth rate of public expenditure, its functional and economic composition at the all-India level are presented, and the strong contrast in the patterns of the first and last five year periods is elucidated. The effect of the 1965-7 droughts and bad harvests in producing this contrast is assessed. At a more disaggregated level, studies are made of changes in the degree of centralization of public expenditure, public capital formation and public saving. Differences between individual states in their rates of growth of real public expenditure, public capital formation and public saving are also examined, and possible explanations considered. The public expenditure data is argued to be consistent with a specific view of the way state accumulation took place within the context of the Indian nationalist economic strategy. The thesis proposes that the attempt to create a "modern" structure of output, without using foreign trade to divorce domestic production from domestic demand, and without control over domestic demand either, was superimposed on the basic task of state accumulation and made its achievement progressively more difficult.

The effect of public investment on economic growth is a popular topic in economic literature. Although there are endogenous growth models that incorporate public expenditure as a factor that promotes growth, findings in empirical literature provide conflicting results. This thesis contributes to this debate by providing a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between public investment and development by using a new panel dataset for Turkish provinces. For analyses, public investment is disaggregated as energy infrastructure, city infrastructure and security, education, health, transportation and communication, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism and housing. The outcome variables are chosen as economic growth rate, the gross enrolment rate for primary and middle school, and the infant mortality rate. With regard to the econometric method, the fixed-effects technique is chosen. The dependent variables are calculated as the five-year forward moving averages of the outcome variables. Standard errors are corrected for serial correlation, cross-sectional dependence and heteroscedasticity. Findings in this thesis suggest that public investments in education, agriculture, tourism and energy infrastructure are associated with higher growth rates. There does not appear to be any statistical relationship between public city infrastructure and security investment and economic growth. However, public city infrastructure and security investment is related to the long-run gross enrolment rate positively, and the long-run infant mortality rate negatively. Additionally, public investment in energy infrastructure appears to have a negative relationship with the long-run infant mortality rate. Finally, results show that public investment in mining, transportation and communication are negatively related to the long run growth. The results provide partial support for the predictions of the model in Barro (1990) in the second chapter and the development literature in the third and the fourth chapters. Public policies in the sectors mentioned above arise as a factor that has an impact on the outcome of public investment. Post-estimation diagnostics and robustness analyses provide statistical evidence that support the findings.

This thesis deals with the take-up of social security benefits in Britain. It is well documented that not everyone who is entitled to benefits actually claims them. Nontake- up of benefits has been found to be a problem especially for benefits which are means-tested. So, throughout this thesis, we concentrate on Income Support, the main means-tested benefit in Britain. The latest official estimates on the extent of non-takeup (for 1993/94) suggest that up to 1.4 million persons are not receiving close to £1.7 billion of IS in spite of being entitled to it. The main question this thesis addresses IS what are the factors which determine whether an individual will or will not take-up their benefit entitlement? We consider the problem from an economic perspective by constructing suitable models set in both static and dynamic environments. These models provide some interesting insights about the nature of non-take-up. In tum, they also form the basis to a series of econometric models. Previous empirical evidence has shown that the entitlement level itself is one of the key determinants of whether or not an individual will take-up. In addition, it has long been recognized that - due to the complex nature of the benefit system - determining individual entitlements is, in many cases, error-prone with resulting benefit entitlements that are subject to measurement error. Hence, unlike any other studies thus far, we account for the presence of measurement error in the benefit entitlement when modelling the likelihood of take-up. Finally, we shed new light on the dynamics of take-up by using the information contained in our panel data set. In particular, we consider the effect claiming in the past has on the current decision to take-up and how future changes, expected or known with certainty, influence the decision to take-up or not

Este trabalho estuda o efeito da Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (LRF) sobre os municípios brasileiros. De modo particular, avalia qual era a situação fiscal dos municípios, se essa situação necessitava ser controlada através da imposição de uma regra e se o limite imposto sobre as despesas com pessoal afeta esses municípios e contribui para redução do gasto público. Em relação à situação fiscal, os problemas de déficit corrente e gasto excessivo com pessoal não aparecem de modo generalizado. Ambos se restringem a uma pequena parcela dos municípios, o que indica que o limite imposto pela Lei não afeta na média os municípios. De fato, a resposta à questão levantada sobre qual o é impacto da Lei sobre os gastos com pessoal no conjunto dos Municípios brasileiros mostra que a LRF afeta de modo positivo o gasto com pessoal. Isto não deve levar à conclusão de que ela não está sendo cumprida, pois dado que a despesa com pessoal apresentada pelo conjunto dos Municípios brasileiros nos últimos anos ficou abaixo do limite estabelecido pela Lei, conclui-se que há espaço para uma elevação desse gasto sem que isso implique numa infração a mesma. Contudo, o estudo também analisa o impacto da LRF sobre os municípios que enfrentavam um elevado gasto com esse item de despesa. Neste caso, o resultado alcançado permite concluir que a LRF é relevante para controlar o gasto com pessoal. / This work studies the effect of the recent budget rule adopted in Brazil, called Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (LRF), on its municipalities. It investigates if the problems of fiscal deficits and expenditures on salaries and wages of public employees, including retirement expenditures, were so high as to justify the imposition of a fiscal rule as were in the case of Brazilian states. It also evaluates if the limit established by the law on government’s payroll had any effect on the mayors behavior towards this item of the public budget and contributed to reduce the public spending. In regard of the fiscal situation of the Brazilian municipalities, neither the fiscal deficit nor the government’s high payroll appeared as generalized problem. These are problems restricted to a small number of cities, which indicates that the LRF should not have a significant effect on government’s payroll. In fact, the result of the dynamic effect panel model estimated to evaluate the LRF’s impact on government’s payroll shows that the law’s effect is positive. However, this should not lead to the conclusion that the law is being broken. As the data shows, the limit imposed by the LRF is not biding, which leaves space for a growth in the government’s payroll. On the other hand, when the analysis of the LRF’s effect on the government’s payroll is restricted to the cities that had a high spending on salaries and wages, the result is that the limit imposed by the law has the expected effect of controlling the high expenditures.

This thesis attempts to identify important factors that may affect the pricing and the probability of default of high yield bonds offered by shipping companies; and factors that may influence the pricing and the probability of underpricing of shipping US initial public offerings (IPOs). The analysis is carried out through five chapters and each chapter covers a topic on its own so that it can be read independently of previous and subsequent chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the shipping US public equity market for the period 1987-2010. It also considers the reasons for a shipping company to go public; the advantages and disadvantages of such a decision; and the role of underwriters in the IPO process. Finally, it provides a literature review on shipping equity capital markets. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the shipping US high yield bond market for the period 1992-2010; it discusses the seniority of shipping high yield bonds, and, the advantages and disadvantages for shipping companies that decide to issue high yield bonds. Next, the credit ratings, the yield premia and the probability of default for shipping high yield bonds are examined. Finally, it provides a synopsis of the restructuring options that shipping companies have in case of default. Chapter 3 investigates the factors that may explain the dynamics of yield premia on seasoned shipping high yield bonds. The analysis utilises 40 seasoned high yield bonds offered by 32 shipping companies for the period April 1998 - December 2002; and it employs a set of microeconomic, macroeconomic and, industry related factors. The methodology used is the fixed effects panel data regression model and the results of the study suggest that the dynamics of yield premia of seasoned shipping high yield bonds can be explained by: the credit rating; the term-to-maturity; the changes in earnings in the shipping market, as well as the changes in the yields on the 10-year US Treasury bonds and the Merrill Lynch single-B index. This chapter contributes to the existing ship finance literature in the following ways: first, it attempts to model the changes of yield premia on shipping high yield bonds in the secondary market, which is of interest to investors and traders since information on changes in yield premia can be used for investment and asset allocation purposes. Second, it distinguishes between high yield bond issues offered by listed and unlisted companies, as well as, defaulted and non-defaulted bond issues in order to examine whether there is any difference in the impact of the explanatory variables on the determination of yield premia. Third, the analysis employs a set of macroeconomic and industry related factors that have not been previously used in the ship finance literature. Finally, the results may have implications for shipping companies in the following ways: yield premia are indications of the possible cost level in order to enter the shipping high yield bond market and may affect the company's image; hence, shipping companies may be interested in the yield premia as they can affect their financing decision for future/further issuance of high yield bonds or their possible stepping to the equity capital market. Chapter 4 uses a binary logit model to predict the probability of default for high yield bonds issued by shipping companies for the period 1992-2004. The results suggest that two liquidity ratios, the gearing ratio, the amount raised over total assets ratio, and an industry specific variable are the best estimates for predicting default at the time of issuance. In - and out - of sample bootstrap tests further indicate the predictive ability and robustness of the model. This chapter contributes to the existing ship finance literature as for the first time the probability of default of shipping high yield bonds is predicted by employing a binary logit model. Investors may benefit from this research since, by employing easily accessible and quantifiable factors they can identify at the time of issuance a) which factors to look at when making investment decisions; b) issues that may have a high likelihood to default. At the same time, shipowners who offer high yield bonds can also identify and focus on the factors that are important in predicting the probability of default for their bond issues. Chapter 5 examines the extent that public information, available prior to the US initial public offering of shipping companies, is only partially incorporated in the final offer price set by the underwriters. The sample includes 51 shipping US initial public offerings for the period 1987-2008, and a set of prospecti and market specific characteristics is employed. The Ordinary-Least-Squared Regression results show that 20-53 percent of the variation in first day returns is explained by employing public available information known prior to the offer date; therefore, it can be argued that final offer prices of shipping US IPOs are only partially adjusted to broadly accessible information. Additionally, the probability of underpricing is examined and the logit model correctly predicts 90 percent of the entire sample, with in and out-of-sample bootstrap tests further supporting the robustness of the model. This chapter contributes to the existing ship finance literature by testing the hypotheses of partial adjustment (Benveniste and Spindt, 1989) and winner's curse (Rock, 1986) theories as an explanation for shipping US IPOs' initial day returns. Moreover, it uses variables that have not been previously employed in shipping IPOs studies and the probability of underpricing a shipping IPO is examined for the first time. Finally, the results of the study show that by employing readily available information known prior to the shipping IPO date, investors can identify the factors that affect the initial day returns and also predict the probability of underpricing a shipping IPO. Chapters I and 2 are parts of chapters 20 and 21 in the book "The Blackwell Companion to Maritime Economics" (Grammenos and Papapostolou, forthcoming (a), forthcoming (b)). Chapter 3 has been published in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review (Grammenos, Alizadeh, and Papapostolou, 2007) and an earlier version was presented at the International Association of Maritime Economists (lAME) conference in Izmir, Turkey in 2004. Chapter 4 has been published in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review (Grammenos, Nomikos, and Papapostolou, 2008) and an earlier version was presented at the International Association of Maritime Economists (lAME) conference in Limassol, Cyprus in 2005. Finally, chapter 5 has been submitted to Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review and it is under review.

This thesis comprises of six independent chapters, besides the introduction and conclusions, with the common theme of optimal public policies in dynamic general equilibrium models with different kinds of distortions. Broadly speaking, the issues considered are: tax evasion, bureaucratic corruption, costs of tax collection and endogenous probability of survival. With financial repression being modeled via obligatory reserve requirements that banks in the economy need to hold, the second chapter analyzes whether financial repression can be explained by endogenous tax evasion. In this regard the chapter develops two dynamic monetary general equilibrium endogenous growth models. When calibrated to four southern European countries, we indicate that higher degrees of tax evasion emanating from higher corruption and lower penalty rates would result in financial repression as a welfare-maximizing outcome. The third chapter develops an overlapping generations monetary endogenous growth model characterized by tax evasion, and analyzes the effect of the nature of tax evasion on the growth maximizing policies. It is concluded that a growth-maximizing government has to take the behavioral nature of tax evasion into account, since failure to do so will lead to misalignment in not only fiscal but also monetary policies. In fact, the government is found to repress the financial sector more than the optimal level if it treats tax evasion as exogenous. The fourth chapter develops a dynamic general equilibrium overlapping generations monetary endogenous growth model of a financially repressed small open economy characterized by bureaucratic corruption, and uses it to analyze optimal policy decisions of the government following an increase in the degree of corruption. We find that increases in the degree of corruption should ideally result in a fall in seigniorage, as an optimal response of the benevolent government. In addition, higher degrees of corruption should also be accompanied with lower levels of financial repression. Chapter five develops a production-economy overlapping generations model characterized by financial repression, purposeful government expenditures and costly tax collection, to analyze whether ¯nancial repression can be explained by the cost of raising taxes. It is shown that costs of tax collection cannot produce a monotonic increase in the reserve requirements, what are critical, in this regard, are the weights the consumer assigns to the public good in the utility function and the size of the government. Chapter six analyzes the same issues as in the previous chapter, but in a monetary endogenous growth model. We show that higher costs of tax collection produce a monotonic increase in reserve requirements. Moreover, the government tends to rely more on indirect taxation, compared to direct taxation as costs of tax collection increase. The seventh chapter develops a simple monetary pure-exchange two-period overlapping generations model characterized by financial repression and endogenous mortality. The probability of survival of the young agents is assumed to depend upon the share of government expenditure on health, education and infrastructure. In this setting, we analyze the welfare-maximizing policy mix between explicit and implicit taxation for a benevolent government. We show that increases in the survival probability lead to an increase in the reliance on seigniorage as a welfare maximizing outcome. However, for our results to hold, the seigniorage tax base must be large enough for the benevolent planner to use the inflation tax. Each of the chapters aims to provide the theoretical underpinnings behind the design of optimal fiscal and monetary policies under tax evasion, bureaucratic corruption, costs of tax collection and endogenous probability of survival. With each of the models based on proper micro foundations and calibrated to match features of developing economies, the six independent papers attempt to broaden our understanding on public policies in the presence of commonly observed distortions that characterize the developing world. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Economics / unrestricted

The environment of Jordanian private hospitals has never been so complex and challenging as at present. There are huge influences on these hospitals in the current climate. Managers in these hospitals are finding themselves, more than ever before, confronted by increasing pressures and demands which they must seek to understand and respond to in their service marketing mix strategy in order to achieve effective strategic marketing in terms of their choice of service marketing mix strategy components (namely health service, pricing, distribution, promotion, physical evidence, process, and personal strategies). This research, therefore, investigates the influence competitive environment factors have on the service marketing mix strategy components made by Jordanian private hospital managers, and on the reality of the Jordanian private hospital marketing. The literature review reveals that there is an extensive body of research that addresses service marketing mix strategy in general but there is less emphasis on the health sector. Moreover, evidence of the impact of a competitive environment on service marketing mix strategy and hospital performance measurements' criteria in the hospital industry is limited. In order to explore this issue, a triangulation method was used to collect primary data through a questionnaire, which was administered in the private sector hospitals in the six Jordanian governorates and, via in-depth semi structured interviews with hospital managers and experts in the health services in Jordan. All Jordanian general private sector hospitals were targeted in this research rather than a representative sample of these hospitals. A purposive sampling strategy was used to choose the participants in this research. In total, - 143 senior managers (general manager, administrative manager, medical manager, public relation manager, marketing manager, and out patients clinic manager) participated in this study. The results confirm significant differences in the influence of competitive environment factors on service marketing mix strategy components. They also reveal that the components of the marketing mix strategy have varied significant and insignificant influence on the hospital performance, which demonstrates that the hospital performance phenomenon is complicated and multi-dimensional in nature. Furthermore, the results exhibit that hospital managers might benefit more by placing more emphasis on an integrated service marketing mix strategy and recognising the competitive environment influences on their hospitals. The results also highlight several implications for future research in health services marketing and fills in several gaps in the existing literature on health services marketing. This research contributes to the academic and practical knowledge as being one of the first attempts to investigate empirically the impact of the competitive environment on service marketing mix strategy. As such, the influences of service marketing mix strategy on hospitals' performance criteria, identifying the main concerns and problems which face the management and marketing in Jordanian private sector hospitals, are explored in addition to recognising the vital roles of marketing in improving the hospital performance. This research integrates, refines and extends the empirical work conducted in the field of health services marketing in developing countries. It raises many implications for managers in these hospitals, such as considering the importance of influences by competitive environment on marketing mix strategy and the vital role this strategy plays in the performance of Jordanian private sector hospitals. This research provides useful guidelines for further and future research possibilities such as exploring the influence of the competitive environment factors influence on hospital performance criteria.

This research provides evidence from three Czech Faculties of Economics and one English Business School on students‟ expectations regarding their investment in higher education. It examines the expected earnings from which rates of return are calculated using the short-cut method, and ex ante risk is estimated using the coefficient of variation. Micro-level data have been collected specifically for the purpose of this study using a repeated cross-sectional survey. In addition to personal and socio-economic characteristics, first year students were asked to estimate their earnings with and without a university degree at two points in time – at the point of labour market entry and ten years later, and at three levels of probability – minimum, most likely and maximum. This study aims to investigate the factors that influence the expectations and to determine whether students act rationally as investors and according to the theory of human capital. Earnings expectations have been found to increase with education and experience. Students expect their earnings to grow faster and further thanks to a university degree and expect their earnings at the point of graduation to be similar to the earnings they expected with ten years of post-secondary labour market experience. Students from high income families expect higher earnings than those from low income families. Women have been found to expect lower earnings than men and the gender-pay gap increases with education and experience. Students from England expect higher earnings than their Czech peers. The findings reveal that a very large majority of students act according to the theory of human capital by expecting at least zero rates of return, and that there is a positive relationship between returns and risk and thus that students act rationally as investors. The average rate of return expected by English students is around 23% while those expected by Czech students range from 14% to 18%. Gender differences in rates of return were identified in England with women expecting higher rates of return. Nevertheless, it is concluded that gender differences in rates of return should be reported on in the context of risk-free rates of return otherwise the results may be misleading. Average ex ante risk associated with university education is the coefficient of variation of 0.35, which is similar to a randomly selected financial portfolio of 30 stocks. The expected risk-return trade-off is large; for a 1.1pp increase in risk men expect to be compensated by a 1pp increase in the rate of return while women expect for every 2pp increase in risk a 1pp increase in the rate of return.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of Mexico’s political system on economic inequality between the 32 states of the federation. Longstanding economic divergence between states is occurring despite public finance programmes aimed at reducing poverty. These programmes have not helped poor states develop their economies significantly, and many states have stagnated. At the same time, Mexico’s “diamond regions” or wealthy states have experienced healthy growth. The aim of this study is to show that it is the formal and informal political institutions that keep these programmes from aiding economic development in poor states. A key issue is the ability of poor states to raise finance, which could induce economic development and growth. This is examined in the context of the transition to democracy, with specific focus on political competition. This thesis aims to show the intersections between politics and economics in a growth context, bringing together the Mexican political transition literature and the existing work on subnational economic development. The empirical testing is done with Generalised Method of Moments (GMM), and the statistical analysis is supplemented by correlation and graphical analysis. The influence of political competition on public finance is tested using ordinary least squares (OLS) and GMM. A GMM calculation is also administered to test the relationship between public finance and state wealth. The findings indicate that political influence remains in Mexican public finance. The results suggest that the presence of more than one party in state politics coincides with significantly higher public finance levels than those found in a single-party state. These results also show that poverty and federal finance are significant determinants of each other, meaning that there is a vicious circle between federal funding and state wealth. The impact of federal finance on state wealth is especially salient where there are no specified rules for the spending of the federal money. Finally, some policy suggestions are made. The issues found to require adjustments include the re-election ban, the poor availability of statistical information to decision-makers, and particular details of the federal funding distribution formulae.