Thesis (M. Sc.(Urb. Plan.))--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references.

Tourism in Libya is considered to be the best long-term alternative as a source of national income to the oil industry upon which the country's economy has long been heavily dependent. Hotels are a key element of the tourism industry. This study focuses on obstacles to foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Libyan hotel sector, because FDI is a necessary element to support the development of Libya as an internationally competitive tourism destination. Specifically, the objectives of this study are developed on page five. This study was carried out in four main stages. The first stage involved an extensive literature review to generate a background and develop a theoretical framework for the research. This study adopted a case study approach (Yin, 2003), incorporating semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire, with a sample population consisting initially of foreign hotel managers, and government officials as a second stage. The third stage involved conducting a further questionnaire and a series of semi-structured interviews with hotel managers, Corinthia hotel staff and government officials to identify key FDI issues within the Libyan hotel sector. The fourth stage provides recommendations intended to help solve the existing foreign investor problems facing the hotel sector and Libya's tourism implementation strategy. The study concludes that there are some major FDI issues facing the Libyan hotel sector, including: economic, administrative, and legal and institutional barriers in areas such as recruitment and selection; skills gaps; inadequate practical training; minimum opportunities given to foreign companies; restriction on the role of the public and private sector in the development of the Libyan Tourism Master Plan (LTMP); shortage of qualified academic staff; outdated curricula; inadequacy of the LTMP; lack of funding of Libyan tourism education; and the lack of co-operation between the hotel sector, tourism education and the government's LTMP. The main contributions of this study include: an understanding of the obstacles that confront FDI in the Libyan hotel sector; the application of factor analyses to build consensus on the essential elements of FDI obstacles within the Libyan hotel sector and the development of a best practice LTMP model. Note: It is important to note that the field work for this thesis, as well as the data analysis and conclusion, was carried out prior to the popular uprising in Libya which began on February 17th 2011.

The study analyses the key motives and determinants of FDI in various sectors of the Libyan economy. It compares the results for the different sectors to determine how the policy of the Libyan government could be improved in order to increase the benefits for the government and the country. A new framework was developed for this research. A qualitative methodology using multiple case studies was employed. The case study companies comprised eight companies from four sectors. The four sectors were compared and contrasted using Porter's five forces model. The analysis of the eight companies had two stages: "within" and "cross-cases" analyses. Data were gathered through in depth, semi-structured interviews with foreign and local company managers, and government policy makers. The study also uses data collected from secondary sources such as company websites, documents and government reports. The empirical findings reveal the existence of a core of motives and determinants of FDI in Libya that are common for all parties across all sectors. This finding is surprising in relation to the similarity across sectors. This might be explained by the uniform government policy over a relatively stagnant forty-year period. These factors are: market size and growth, high return on investment and investment incentives, political stability, infrastructure and low transportation costs, business and industrial linkages, progress of privatisation, institutions, culture and attractive geographic location. The sector-specific and actor-specific determinants are however less important than the common ones. In terms of obstacles to FDI, bureaucratic red tape, infrastructure in terms of Internet, telephone, and the banking system inhibit FDI inflows in all contexts. The findings of this study showed also the critical role of the Libyan government in facilitating the process of FDI. This is probably the first study to incorporate both host government and foreign investors' views about motives and determinants of FDI.

published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Master / Master of Science in Real Estate and Construction Development

This thesis presents an in depth study of the expansion of settlement in Christchurch between 1850-62, the pre-Municipal Council years. It is confined spatially to the 'central city' area within the four Avenues. Four research problems are studied: (1) The laying out of Christchurch by the New Zealand Company surveyors for the Canterbury Association, in particular, the reasons for the use of a grid street pattern. It was found that many factors were involved in its use. These included the personal preferences of the surveyors and the Association committee members, the topographic nature of the site chosen and contemporary planning convention. (2) The initial selection of town sections by the colonists and the reasons behind their choices. The 'orders of choice' of the sections have been tabulated and mapped to show section preference and how the settlers perceived the economic value of particular areas of the town grid for their commercial prospects. Town section auctions, leases, sales and subdivisions as well as church land are investigated. (3) The sale of the Town Reserves surrounding the town section area is also studied; the reason for their early sale, the nature and characteristics of the sales including prices and purchasers and their occupations. It was found that the prices paid were significantly related to the spatial positions of the lots within the Reserve blocks and to the time of their sale, in response to contemporary land values. There was no significant relationship between prices and the occupations of the buyers. (4) Public works undertaken by the Association and the Provincial Government are studied and their relationship with immigration and population figures. The scale of public works carried out at particular times was found to relate both to available finance and to immigration, the source of labour. Various aspects of public works, for example, street and footpath formation and bridging and drainage work were found to be indicative of differential growth between periods of depression and prosperity.

It is estimated in the last five years Chinese investors have poured over $93 billion into the United States residential real estate market targeting high-end housing sectors. I analyze the implications of the investment and how it has affected the Bay Area housing prices. In order to find out why large outflows are targeting the United States I compare China’s economy with Japan’s economy in the late 1980’s when Japanese investors invested over $300 billion into high profile real estate properties. I find many similarities, suggesting China has a bubble economy such as Japan before the lost decade. To combat their bubble, China has implemented new restrictions on capital outflows in order to stabilize their volatile markets. In terms of the Bay Area real estate market I gathered evidence a recession is imminent due to the demand falling for high-end housing. The housing market mirrors economic health and indicates whether an economy is in a boom or bust.

This thesis analyses the resolution made by the Shariah Advisory Council of the Malaysian Securities Commission (SAC) which resolves that the crude palm oil futures contract is permissible. This resolution is controversial as it collides with the resolutions of other mainstream or internationally represented organisations of Shari'ah scholars. These mainstream resolutions rule that the commodity futures contract transgresses Sharf'ah principles. However, the SAC contends that it is permissible on the principle of public interest (ma#a~ah) and on the notion that trading regulations have overcome Sharf'ah prohibitions; namely, that of gharar (uncertainty) and maysir (gambling). The focus of this thesis is thus to analyse the adequacy of the SAC resolution in terms of its coherence with the real trading of the crude palm oil futures contract as well as the adequacy of the crude palm oil futures legal framework in overcoming Sharf' ah prohibitions. This is an area which has not been given adequate attention in the current literature. Apart from the liteniture on the legality of the commodity futures contract, this thesis examines the legal framework of the Malaysian commodity futures market as well as the American and European markets. To compliment this research, non-structured interviews and discussions have been undertaken. In the final analysis, the data gathered from the interviews and discussions, as well as the relevant literature, evidences that the SAC resolution is not coherent with real trading and that the elements of gharar and maysir have not been eliminated by the trading regulations. Additionally, the analysis finds that, contrary to the argument of its proponents, the commodity futures market has failed to represent its purpose as a risk management tool as well as a price discovery tool. In summation, an inadequate resolution would inevitably undermine the SAC's, position as Malaysia's sole Islamic capital market's Sharf'ah advisor, and Malaysia's reputation as the international Islamic capital market hub.

Na Teoria dos Sentimentos Morais, Adam Smith estabelece um esquema pluralista para explicar a aprovação moral, com quatro tipos de juízos morais: 1) em relação ao motivo da ação, o juízo que determina a conveniência ou inconveniência (propriety ou impropriety); 2) em relação aos efeitos imediatos da ação, o juízo determina seu mérito ou demérito; 3) ao analisar o acordo entre o ato e determinada regra geral de conduta, o juízo determina se o indivíduo agiu de acordo com seu dever; e 4) em relação aos efeitos não imediatos do ato, isto é, à maneira como esse ato se insere no funcionamento global da sociedade (juízo que Smith analisa sob o nome de aparência de utilidade). Esses quatro tipos de juízos se fundam na imaginação e formam a totalidade do princípio de aprovação que estrutura a parte especulativa de sua teoria moral. / In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith establishes a pluralist scheme to explain moral approbation, with four kinds of moral judgments: 1) regarding the motives of the agent, the judgment determines its propriety or impropriety; 2) regarding the immediate effects of the action, the judgement determines its merit or demerit; 3) analyzing if this act is a particular case of a general rule, the judgement determines if the agent has acted according to his duty; and 4) regarding the remote effects of the action, that is, the way this action is a part of the global operations of society (a judgement that Smith calls the appearance of utility). These four kinds of moral judgments are grounded in imagination and form the totality of the principle of approbation that structure the speculative part of his moral philosophy.

Why 'speculation as a mode of production'? The formulation conjoins the two senses of speculation pertinent to this thesis – the speculative praxis of art, and the speculative logic of capital. It also attempts to give a specific critical valence to the phenomenon of the 'creative industries' which was based on the ideological elision of these two registers of the speculative with the goal of founding a new regime of accumulation on their union. Since that time, we have seen the global economic and social crisis displace this idea from the centre of policy-makers' agendas as the always-latent coercive side of 'creativity' is revealed: creativity as a survival strategy for disinvested populations as 'wealthcreators' go on accumulating. At the same time, there are attempts to re-start accumulation on ever more marginal and self-exploiting grounds, at best as homespun alternatives rather than organized challenges to the dominance of abstract value. In this situation, it is more than ever necessary to find the points of convergence between the desires for capital maximization and social emancipation, and ways to disentangle them which the impacts of the crisis may bring to light. I take artistic production as my field of analysis because this is where these ideologies intersect most dramatically. While speculative thought refers mainly to art and aesthetics, particularly in their connection to reimagining social relations, the 'speculative logic of capital' can be broadly defined as the selfexpanding, or self-valorising, dynamic of capital as such – speculation as social form - rather than a subset of it which can be named as 'the financial industry', although finance has specificities which are discussed in their own right. 'Speculation as a mode of production' thus refers to the open-ended processes of art and politics, as well as the overdetermined process of value expansion in capital. It seeks to encompass both a subjective and an objective mode for the social expression of capital in the ongoing era of neoliberalism. This period has witnessed the subjective qualities of creativity, flexibility and innovation become the objective factors of workplace productivity, while objective productivity itself shifts to the indeterminacy and risk associated with 'creative financial instruments' as the primary mode of capital accumulation. This thesis will draw a parallel between contemporary capital and contemporary art as they come to constitute the poles of a society structured around speculation.

About the intraday volatility modeling, the limitations and potential problems of using Andersen & Bollerslev's approach are addressed and distinct modifications are proposed to tackle the corresponding issues. The first suggestion is about the utilization of the interaction between the intraday periodicity and the heteroskedasticity while the second is about the modified normalization for the estimation of the intraday periodicity. / Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the inclusion of overnight variance can improve the prediction accuracy of the Chicago Board of options Exchange (CBOE) volatility indexes (VIX and VXD) under specific weight combinations. The findings contradict the common perception that overnight return does not contain useful information for daily volatility modeling. / On the other hand, the third suggestion is about the inclusion of overnight information for the estimation of daily volatility. This study explores the possibility of incorporating the overnight variance indirectly through the use of linearly combined daily volatility estimators. The empirical results demonstrate that the inclusion of overnight variance can produce substantial influence when the minimum-variance constraints are relaxed. Besides, the influence is revealed to be not monotonic as an increase of the overnight proportion does not necessarily produce a larger influence. / The proposed modifications are tested with different ARCH structures, including GARCH(1,1), FIGARCH(1,d,1) and HYGARCH(1,d,1), by using simulated data and market data. Apart from studying the 1-step-ahead out-of-sample performance, several multiple-step-ahead forecasting results are also addressed. Under the same level of model flexibility (parameterized portions), our proposed modifications always outperform the original method in both in-sample fitness and out-of-sample performance on various forecasting horizons. / This research study investigates three new considerations for improving the performance of volatility modeling of financial returns. Two of them are related to the intraday volatility modeling and the other one is about the use of overnight information for daily volatility modeling. / Chu, Chun Fai Carlin. / Adviser: Kai Pui Lam. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-04, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 180-186). / 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, [201-] 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. / Abstract also in Chinese.