Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-125). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (doctoral)--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-340).

Thesis (M. Inst. Agrar.(Agricultural Economics))--University of Pretoria, 2002. / Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--California State University, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-43).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Bremen, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-125).

Thesis (M.Inst.Agrar.)(Agricultural Economics)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes summary. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

This article describes the need of ensure an adequate regulation system in the interconnection matter, looking for having an optimal competency on the different fields of service sectors. Thus, parting from the case of the electricity and telecommunications sectors, it will be verified that, for developing this industries it is necessary to have an adequate regulatory framework in interconnection matter. / El presente artículo describe la importancia de contar con un sistema regulatorio adecuado en el tema de la interconexión, a fin de tener una mayor competencia en los diferentes sectores de servicios. Así, a partir del caso en los sectores de electricidad y de telecomunicaciones, se verificará que, para el desarrollo de las respectivas industrias es necesario tener un marco normativo adecuado en el ámbito de la interconexión.

Financial liberalisation is the process of financial development that reduces the extent of government control over the financial industry. It is argued that a liberalised financial system is a fundamental prerequisite for more efficient allocation of savings and investment, which in turn leads to greater economic growth. Financial liberalisation includes the freeing up of interest rate controls, exchange and capital controls, entry of foreign banks, and the deregulation of banking sector. The latter process, which comprises the deregulation of bank structure and conduct rules and the concomitant reregulation of bank prudential supervision, is generally targetted to improve the efficiency and productivity of banks. On the other hand, financial liberalisation and basic deregulation have also (been) precursors to many banking and financial crises. This study examines the effects of deregulation on the Thai banking sector during 1990- 97 using a two-stage approach. In the first-stage analysis, the relative efficiencies and productivity of each bank in each year are measured using DEA techniques. In the second-stage, regression techniques are used to evaluate the impact of financial deregulation on efficiency and productivity, controlling for bank-specific attributes. The main findings regarding bank efficiency are that on average banks operating in Thailand hardly improved their technical, allocative and cost efficiencies, except in 1996 and 1997. Most banks were better at optimising their input mix than minimising their usage and costs of inputs. There was a clear association between size and cost efficiency for the domestic Thai banks, and on average their cost efficiencies were greater than those of the foreign bank branches, all other things being equal. However, the majority of the banks on the best-practice efficient frontier were foreign, and the smallest Thai banks were the least efficient of all the banks studied. The average productivity of foreign banks increased over the period studied, and this was mainly due to outward shifts of the production frontier each year (technological progress) rather than improvements in relative efficiency. The average productivity of domestic banks did not change over time, as technological progress was offset by moves away from the best-practice frontier. Overall, the evidence for the postulated beneficial effects of deregulation is somewhat mixed. Improvements in total factor productivity were driven by the huge expansion in lending made possible by the liberalisation, but these increases in productivity were mainly achieved by the foreign bank branches whose operations were supported by substantial amounts of financial capital from their parents. Productive efficiency of the domestic banks did improve over the period of study, but these improvements were greatest for the large and medium size banks, thus widening the gap between the most inefficient group of small Thai banks and the rest of the banking sector.

The objective of this research is to investigate the way strategies are formed in a public sector organization and to assess the role of the Board-members in shaping and developing strategies. The project consisted of the following distinct steps: (1) The collection and processing of background information concerning the enterprise under study. (2) The collection and analysis of the Board's past decisions over a period of nine years. (3) The interview accounts of the members of the Board (4) The analysis of the interviews at the individual level and the construction of cognitive maps. (5) The testing of the validity of the cognitive maps of the previous stage by employing a quantitative technique in which the interviewees scored on matrices and identified the influence between elements of the strategy, the external, and the organizational environment. (6) The identification of patterns in the cognitive structure of each individual, resulting from both the qualitative (interviewing) and quantitative (matrix scoring) approaches. (7) The attempt to build theory by integrating the different sources of data and generating propositions grounded on data by relating the findings of this study to the existing literature. The major findings concerned the notion of strategy according to the Board-members' accounts. Thus, the majority of Board-members perceived strategy as something that occured outside them, something over which they had little control. The Board-members' role, as revealed in the strategy-areas studied, was a legalistic role concerning mostly ratification of proposals without active contribution to initiating and developing new strategies. It is also argued that this Board's composition, structure and processes exhibited deficiencies. The real strategist of the organization was the new General Manager who succeeded not only in creating an integrated strategy but also in getting it institutionalized (that is in establishing commitment among the people of the organization).

The study begins with a conceptual framework, which defines services, examines theories on the role of services within economies and looks at the concept of services sector productivity. It then discusses measurement issues as they relate to services in general and more specifically to tourism activities. The study then presents an empirical analysis of Caribbean services sectors, in order to indicate their growing importance in the economies of the English-speaking Caribbean countries. It examines the relative contributions of the components of the services sector, investigates the income elasticity thesis and suggests criteria for identifying service economies. As a background for the production function analyses, the dissertation presents synopses of the three tourism sub-sectors being studied (accommodation, restaurant and transport and allied activities). These descriptions are based on data compiled from a survey undertaken in three countries. The dissertation's main area of focus is on the use of the production function approach to the study of productivity in tourism activities. Using a model based on the Cobb-Douglas and modified production functions, it estimates the partial elasticities of output with respect to individual inputs. The findings indicate that the labour variable exerts a relatively strong influence on output, while the capital variable exhibits little or no impact on the latter. Based on these findings and an examination of the productivity ratio, the study concludes with a discussion of factors influencing productivity.