When creating and administering regulations, regulators have to demonstrate that regulations accomplish intended societal outcomes at costs that do not outweigh their benefits. While regulators have this responsibility as custodians of the regulatory ecosystem, they are also required to create and administer regulations transparently and impartially, addressing the needs and concerns of all stakeholders involved. This is in addition to regulators having to deal with various administrative bottlenecks, competing internal priorities, as well as financial and human resource limitations. Nonetheless, governments, regulated parties, citizens and interest groups can each express different views on the relevance and performance of a piece of regulation. These views range from too many regulations burdening business operations to perceptions that crises in society are the results of insufficient regulations. As such, regulators have to be innovative, employing methods that show that regulations are effective, and justify the introduction, evolution or repeal of regulations. The regulatory process has been the topic of various studies with several such studies exploring the use of information systems at the software level to confirm compliance with regulations and evaluate issues related to non-compliance. The rationale is that if information systems can improve operational functions in organizations, they can also help measure compliance. However, the research focus has been on enabling regulated parties to comply with regulations rather than on enabling regulators to assess or enforce compliance or show that regulations are effective. Regulators need to address concerns of too much regulations or too little regulations with data-driven evidence especially in this age of big data and artificial intelligence enhanced tools. A method that facilitates evidencebased decision-making using data for enacting, implementing and reviewing regulations is now inevitable. In response to the above challenges, this thesis explores the use of a goaloriented modelling method and a data analytics software, to create a method that enables monitoring, assessing and reporting on the effectiveness of regulations and regulatory initiatives. This Goal-oriented Regulatory Intelligence Method (GoRIM) provides an intelligent approach to regulatory management, as well as a feedback loop in the use of data from and within the regulatory ecosystem to create and administer regulations. To demonstrate its applicability, GoRIM was applied to three case studies involving regulators in three different real regulatory scenarios, and its feasibility and utility were evaluated. The results indicate that regulators found GoRIM promising in enabling them to show, with evidence, whether their regulations are effective.

Accounting information for decision making needs to be reliable, unless the information is audited, it cannot be regarded as reliable. Therefore, although extensive research in the area of accounting in general, and auditing in particular, has been conducted in the developed countries, similar investigations within developing countries have so far been relatively limited. Moreover, global financial crises, the most recent in 2007/8, have increased the pressures for better regulations with the aim of harmonising the auditing profession globally. This study therefore aims to help fill the gap in research and to provide recommendations to the governing body of the Libyan auditing profession, in order to address the difficulties faced by the profession, and advance and improve the quality of professional auditing practice. This study is predominantly positivist in essence, but, based on the nature of the problem and research questions, a mixed methods approach to gathering data from stakeholders in the auditing profession is adopted. A questionnaire (196 respondents), and a set of semi-structured interviews (nine participants), represent the quantitative and qualitative instruments of the study respectively. The research sample for both empirical exercises is comprised of individuals from five different groups representing the Libyan auditing profession stakeholders. This wide spread of participants is selected in order to generate valid, reliable, generalizable, and meaningful data, and conclusions. The overall conclusion drawn from the analysis is that the Libyan audit profession regulations are considered inadequate by the profession itself, since they fall short of meeting international standards, as supported by the fact that many foreign companies invest in Libya, and they insist on their auditing using ISAs as a guarantee of transparent and high quality auditing. The Libyan audit profession is unwilling to implement these international standards, and this weakness needs to be addressed. Furthermore, issues relating to licensing, accounting and auditing education, examination for entry to the profession, and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) must all be reviewed. In addition, a new regulatory framework, that involves government supervision, and the use of internationally-recognised standards in the performance of auditing duties, must be introduced. In terms of the most appropriate regulatory approach, the results indicated that the independent regulator model is preferred; and with respect to auditing standards, the study finds that the preferred approach is to harmonise all auditing standards used in Libya, and to adopt the ISAs with certain modifications that suit the Libyan context. Furthermore, the study sample identified six factors that impact positively on the adoption of the ISAs, and a further six factors that had negative influences. This research contributes to the body of literature by filling the gap regarding the Libyan auditing profession in general, and identifying factors that have an impact on the adoption of ISAs in particular. Recommendations are provided to the authority responsible for supervising the Libyan auditing profession that essentially require the upgrading of all professionals, and perseverance to ensure national and international development of the profession in particular, and to other countries with similar characteristics in general.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:24:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2013-08-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:51:34Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 teodoro_dc_me_bauru.pdf: 604960 bytes, checksum: 0ea3430ddf442f8ebe1eb9ea46f3df84 (MD5) / A pesquisa em comunicação encontra na atualidade um contexto de discussões em torno de reformulação dos dispositivos regulatórios da radiofusão no Brasil, com a participação de diversas esferas que, com frequencia, apresentam perspectivas conflitantes. Nota-se a necessidade de referência para orientar o avanço do processo., Como objetivo, este estudo em nível de mestrado revisa a literatura científica especializada sobre as experiências internacionais bem-sucedidas na área, a fim de reunir conhecimentos relevantes para o esclarecimento de questões controversas em relação ao exercício do jornalismo. Como resultado, foram caracterizados fatores políticos e institucionais de regulação e autorregulação de mídia no Brasil neste período e políticas públicas de regulação e autorregulação do setor de radiodifusão vigentes na União Europeia e na América Latina. Em particular, foram organizados conhecimentos e informações sobre os seguintes princípios editoriais praticados em diversas configurações de radiodifusão no mundo: 1) precisão de apuração jornalística; 2) pluralidade e diversidade de opinião; 3) respeito às fontes; 4) cobertura jornalística de políticas públicas; e 5) prestação de contas e transparência na relação com o público / The communication research is nowadays a context of discussions on revising the regulatory devices broadcasting in Brazil with the participation of several spheres that often have conflicting perspectives. Note the need for referrals to guide the advancement of the process. Objective, this study at Master level reviews the scientific literature on the succesful international experiences in the field, in order to gather relevant knowledge to clarify controversial issues regarding the practice of journalism. As a result, were characterization political and institutional factors of regulation self-regulation of media in Brazil during this period and public policies of regulation and self-regulation of the broadcasting sector in force in the European Union and Latin America. In particular, were organized knowledge and information on the following editorial principles practiced in various setting in the broadcasting world: 1) determination of journalistic accuracy; 2) plurality and diversity of opinion; 3) toward sources; 4) coverage of public policies; and 5) accountability and transparency in the relationship with the public

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Orientador: Danilo Rothberg / Banca: Murilo Cesar Soares / Banca: Fernando Oliveira Paulino / Resumo: A pesquisa em comunicação encontra na atualidade um contexto de discussões em torno de reformulação dos dispositivos regulatórios da radiofusão no Brasil, com a participação de diversas esferas que, com frequencia, apresentam perspectivas conflitantes. Nota-se a necessidade de referência para orientar o avanço do processo., Como objetivo, este estudo em nível de mestrado revisa a literatura científica especializada sobre as experiências internacionais bem-sucedidas na área, a fim de reunir conhecimentos relevantes para o esclarecimento de questões controversas em relação ao exercício do jornalismo. Como resultado, foram caracterizados fatores políticos e institucionais de regulação e autorregulação de mídia no Brasil neste período e políticas públicas de regulação e autorregulação do setor de radiodifusão vigentes na União Europeia e na América Latina. Em particular, foram organizados conhecimentos e informações sobre os seguintes princípios editoriais praticados em diversas configurações de radiodifusão no mundo: 1) precisão de apuração jornalística; 2) pluralidade e diversidade de opinião; 3) respeito às fontes; 4) cobertura jornalística de políticas públicas; e 5) prestação de contas e transparência na relação com o público / Abstract: The communication research is nowadays a context of discussions on revising the regulatory devices broadcasting in Brazil with the participation of several spheres that often have conflicting perspectives. Note the need for referrals to guide the advancement of the process. Objective, this study at Master level reviews the scientific literature on the succesful international experiences in the field, in order to gather relevant knowledge to clarify controversial issues regarding the practice of journalism. As a result, were characterization political and institutional factors of regulation self-regulation of media in Brazil during this period and public policies of regulation and self-regulation of the broadcasting sector in force in the European Union and Latin America. In particular, were organized knowledge and information on the following editorial principles practiced in various setting in the broadcasting world: 1) determination of journalistic accuracy; 2) plurality and diversity of opinion; 3) toward sources; 4) coverage of public policies; and 5) accountability and transparency in the relationship with the public / Mestre

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Digitization has been pervasively reshaping the landscape of home-based telecommunication industries. The massive disruptive challenges call for telecom companies to react with efficient strategic managerial policies. Meanwhile, how consumer decision makings and welfare are impacted by such policies often remains complicated and non-transparent to policy makers. My thesis aims at leveraging large-scale empirical data to investigate the impacts of several prevalent firm initiated strategies on both sides of the market, i.e. consumers and firms. The thesis is comprised of three studies focusing on consumer switch, search and purchase behaviors. The first study, centering at consumer switching behaviors, investigates the impact of lock in shortening policies on both firm profits and consumer welfare in home-based telecommunication service market. Using household level data from a large telecommunications service provider, we show that a market level policy that shortens the lock-in period from the status quo can decrease the profits on the firms side more than it increases consumer surplus. This is majorly caused by the substantial acquisition costs associated with user switching and service initiation. As a result if regulators shorten lock-in periods but then firms respond by collaboratively increasing prices to recover their rate of return, the consumers, as the analyses indicate, may be worse off compared to the world in which lock-in periods do not change. Therefore lock-in reduction policy need to be paired with a policy precluding operators from increasing prices too much. The later two studies jointly examine consumer’s search and purchase behaviors in social environment. With a wide scope of services, telecommunication service providers can often leverage their knowledge on consumer’s social environment to reshape consumer choices. We aim to understand how consumers combine different sources of social information, one from friends versus one from the crowd, as a function of how close they are to the point of conversion. We developed a dynamic structural econometric model that jointly describes consumer information search and product purchase while taking into account sequential arrival of information and non-negligible search costs. The model is then instantiated on two connected yet distinct empirical contexts, where consumers shop for movies to watch on home screens. The first empirical context (discussed in the second study in this thesis) lies in an observational setting, where we studied individual level clickstream and transactional data from a Video-on- Demand service platform operated by a large telecommunication service provider. Later in the third study, we created an artificial movie market and leveraged a randomized web experiment to further study the research questions with more solid identification support. We find that, in both contexts, consumers seem to start by browsing products they heard about from friends. The popularity signals become more relevant when consumers getting closer to the point of purchase. The results have important managerial implications to online vendors by suggesting a reasonable strategy of providing the most valuable social information at the right time to enhance consumer shopping experiences.

This thesis analyzes impact of social trust on environmental regulations stringency. Negative effect is suggested. Thesis documents that, in a cross section of countries, there is no evidence of such an effect. On the other hand, there is evidence of positive impact of GDP per capita and level of education.

The thesis investigates the impact of a very specific state-led legislative institution of colonial lineage – the Agricultural Produce Markets Commission (APMC) Act & Rules – on uneven agricultural growth productivity and poverty outcomes across select fourteen Indian states over the post-independence period. It also studies political economy determinants of the APMC Act. This research offers the first most comprehensive empirical characterisation of agricultural marketing laws for the agriculture produce sector of the Indian economy. The thesis presents three substantive research outcomes. The first empirical chapter provides the construction of a composite multidimensional de jure time-varying index of the APMC Act & Rules for each state. The quantitative measure reveals the extent of variation in the form & trends of statutory clauses in the selected 14 Indian states from 1970-2008. Based on empirical analysis of nearly forty years of the regulatory framework of agricultural markets, the second empirical chapter demonstrates that variation in institutional market arrangements explain the marked differences in the use of modern farm inputs and growth patterns in agricultural productivity as well as rural poverty outcomes in the states of India. The results from 14 states show that states with improved regulatory arrangements in the agricultural markets have higher agricultural investment, productivity and fall in poverty. A difference of each one unit improvement in market regulations in a state is found to be associated with about 0.24 units average increase in the mean of agricultural yield productivity and an about 6.2 units average direct reduction in the mean of poverty incidence. Finally, the third chapter demonstrates presence of political economy activity in shaping of the differing APMC Act & Rules in Indian states. It suggests that ignoring potential influence of political economy factors in determining APMC Act can undermine the prospects of achieving desired policy objectives and may lead to miscalculated policy judgments. What the evidence in this thesis illustrates is that regulations matter in channelizing markets for efficiency effect on agricultural productivity and poverty reduction. It reveals that the APMC measure needs to be understood as a part of a wider political economy regulatory system and it cannot be viewed as a neutral tool which can be applied to produce predictable and consistent economic results. Agriculture growth and poverty reduction efforts would get a serious setback in states where effective institutional regulatory support was not provided as this assures vibrant market and remunerative price to farmers. The thesis’s fundamental finding is that efficient regulations encourage agricultural development which implies that any solution that looks to optimise the mechanisms around agricultural markets demands efficient and progressive evolution of the existing regulatory framework of the APMC Act. This challenges recent calls for complete dismantling of regulated markets, expressed by critics who view the current APMC Act as one of the main bottlenecks to managing food inflation and the national food security challenges in India. Given the heterogeneity of agrarian contexts, food systems and marketing dynamics being faced by the Indian farming community, well-regulated agricultural markets cannot be undermined for effective functioning of the domestic agricultural trade and development of farming community.

D.Phil. (Engineering Management) / The construction industry has been recognised internationally as one of the most dangerous industries in which to work, with the statistics often explained in terms of the industry’s inherently hazardous nature. In Botswana a total of 281 fatalities were reported to government agencies, mainly recorded in the high-risk sectors over the period of 2000-2004. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role played by key stakeholders in the health and safety (H&S) performance of the Botswana construction industry and to evaluate their level of H&S commitment and implementation. The aim was to determine how clients, designers and contractors can successfully contribute to H&S performance. Five objectives were identified in this research study. The first was to examine the role of key stakeholders in minimising H&S accidents and incidents in the overall H&S performance of the construction industry of Botswana. The second was to establish whether relevant health and safety planning measures contribute to health and safety performance of the construction industry in Botswana. Thirdly, it was to investigate the extent to which the existing legislative framework is relevant to health and safety performance in the construction industry. The fourth was to determine health and safety commitment levels of clients, designers and contractors’ top management in the construction industry of Botswana. The final objective was to design a multi-stakeholder consultative framework that would address H&S from inception to implementation of the construction project. These objectives were achieved through a research design which included a literature review, methods used and procedures developed to administer the questionnaires, data-collection and analysis through various statistical methods. These included descriptive statistics and nonparametric inferential statistics. The results are then presented in statistical format, tables and graphs. While the literature review revealed that construction industry H&S in developed nations is driven by legislation and regulations, the analysis indicated that there is neither statutory obligation nor the desire on the part of designers and the clients to consider H&S...