The major aim of this thesis is to analyze the impact of structural change of exports and technology level on the international competitiveness. In order to analyze international competitiveness, export market shares are used. The empirical analysis suggested in this thesis includes two steps. In the first step, constant market share analysis is conducted to understand the causes of changes in export market shares from one period to another and in the second step a difference generalized method of moments model is proposed for 44 manufacturing sectors, which are classified with respect to their technology intensities, over 2003- 2008 period. The results are highly sensitive to the technology intensity of sectors.

Syfte: Uppsatsens syfte är att beskriva dagligvaruhandelns lokalisering och strukturomvandling i Gävleregionen (A-region 56). Att studera dagligvaruhandeln ger en bild av samhällsförändringen över tiden och en föraning av framtida tendenser. Metod: Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av data tillhandahållet av Handelns utredningsinstitut (HUI). Dagligvarubutikernas lokalisering visas i geografiska kartor och de olika butikstypernas marknadsandelar studeras för att belysa strukturomvandlingen. Resultat & slutsats: Det presenterade resultatet visar ett allt glesare butiksnät med färre och större enheter. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Uppsatsen begränsas till att endast undersöka dagligvaruhandelns lokalisering och strukturomvandlingen i Gävleregionen (A-region 56). En liknande studie över ett större geografiskt område skulle ge en än bättre bild över dagligvaruhandelns utveckling. Uppsatsens bidrag: Uppsatsen kan med fördel studeras av intressenter inom samhällsplanering, fastighetsekonomi och handel. / Aim: This paper aims at describing the location and structural change of the daily retail market in the Gävle region (A- region 56). To study the daily retail market gives a picture of the social change over the time and a presentiment of future tendencies. Method: The investigation is founded on data supplied by Handelns utredningsinstitut (HUI). The retail location is portrayed in geographic maps and the evolution of the respective market shares of different store size categories are studied in order to elucidate the structural transformation. Result & Conclusions: The presented result shows a sparser shop network with fewer and larger units. Suggestions for future research: The investigation is limited to the daily retail market location and structural change in the Gävle region (A-region 56). A similar study over a larger geography area would give a better picture over the daily retail markets development. Contribution of the thesis: The results are relevant within community planning, real estate economics and trade.

Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. This thesis offers a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The thesis focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found in the dissertation. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market. At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries. This thesis offers empirical and theoretical advances. Empirically, it applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring.

This dissertation is concerned with (i) how to model an agricultural market, (ii) how to analyze the impacts of a certain event (i.e. animal disease outbreak) on the market, and (iii) what are the relationships between different markets. The research on the first two issues will focus on the US beef market, and the impact of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak (Dec. 2003) on the US beef market will be analyzed. For the third issue, a multinational meat market will be considered, which includes three countries (Korea, US, and UK) and three meat products (beef, pork, and poultry). Their market movements will be compared, considering the impacts of the major animal disease outbreaks: BSE, foot and mouth disease (FMD), and avian influenza (AI). Based on the properties of an agricultural product (longer cycle of production and perishability) and the extensive empirical results, it is concluded that a recursive model is appropriate for modeling an agricultural market. A variety of structural change tests are applied to reveal that the change due to the BSE event still lies in an allowable range of the prediction error. For the comparisons between market movements, some multivariate statistical methods such as canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) are used, and the main finding is that the knowledge about the threat of BSE to human health played an important role in changing people's attitude towards an animal disease event.

Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. This thesis offers a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The thesis focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found in the dissertation. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market. At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries. This thesis offers empirical and theoretical advances. Empirically, it applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring.

This dissertation considers quantile regression models with nonstationary or nearly nonstationary time series. The first chapter outlines the thesis and discusses its theoretical and empirical contributions. The second chapter studies inference in quantile regressions with cointegrated variables allowing for multiple structural changes. The unknown break dates and regression coefficients are estimated jointly and consistently. The conditional quantile estimator has a nonstandard limit distribution. A fully modified estimator is proposed to remove the second-order bias and nuisance parameters and the resulting limit distribution is mixed normal. A simulation study shows that the fully modified quantile estimator has good finite sample properties. The model is applied to stock index data from the emerging markets of China and several mature markets. Financial market integration is found in some quantiles of the Chinese stock indices. The third chapter considers predictive quantile regression with a nearly integrated regressor. We derive nonstandard distributions for the quantile regression estimator and t-statistic in terms of functionals of diffusion processes. The critical values are found to depend on both the quantile of interest and the local-to-unity parameter, which is not consistently estimable. Based on these critical values, we propose a valid Bonferroni bounds test for quantile predictability with persistent regressors. We employ this new methodology to test the ability of many commonly employed and highly persistent regressors, such as the dividend yield, earnings price ratio, and T-bill rate, to predict the median, shoulders, and tails of the stock return distribution. Chapter Four proposes a cumulated sum (CUSUM) test for the null hypothesis of quantile cointegration. A fully modified quantile estimator is adopted for serial correlation and endogeneity corrections. The CUSUM statistic is composed of the partial sums of the residuals from the fully modified quantile regression. Under the null, the test statistic converges to a functional of Brownian motions. In the application to U.S. interest rates of different maturities, evidence in favor of the expectations hypothesis for the term structure is found in the central part of the distributions of the Treasury bill rate and financial commercial paper rate, but in the tails of the constant maturity rate distribution. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2012-07-30 15:20:38.253

Interest in controlling the synthesis of silver nanoparticles in colloidal solutions has increased during the last two decades. There is also growing interest in forming layers of silver nanoparticles on substrates, particularly for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy applications. However, methods to grow silver nanoparticles directly on substrates have not been studied extensively, and there are few techniques for controlling the size, shape, density, and location of the particles. This work presents a simple and reliable method to photodeposit silver nanoparticles onto transparent substrates. The size, shape and deposition density of the nanoparticles are influenced by the precursor solution, light intensity, and surface modification of the substrate. This allows control of the optical and electrical properties of the nanoparticle films. Furthermore, the particles can be patterned using direct laser exposure, scanning probe methods, and electron-beam lithography. Applications and advantages of this deposition method are proposed and explored.

This dissertation treats a topic that has received increasing attention as of late, namely that of the environment and in particular increasing levels of CO2 emissions caused by transport. The aim of the dissertation is to explain how a shipper, through various measures, can reduce transport-related CO2 emissions when centralising a distribution system and how this affects the provision of cost efficient customer service. Earlier research has stated that this type of structural change is considered unfavourable from an environmental viewpoint as it increases the amount of transport work generated by the system and thereby transport-related CO2 emissions. The argument that is made in this dissertation, however, is that transport work is only one aspect to consider when evaluating how transport-related CO2 emissions are affected by this type of structural change. The reason for this being that a change in structure and management of the same can enable a shipper to make other changes within the distribution system that can prove beneficial from an environmental perspective as they decrease the amount of CO2 emissions per tonne kilometre. Theoretically, the dissertation has its foundation in two different areas in logistics research. The first area concerns logistics and the environment, where the frame of reference examines measures discussed in previous research with reference to how a shipper can reduce CO2 emissions related to transport. The second area treated in the frame of reference concerns how costs and service are affected by the structural change of centralising a distribution system and how this relates to the measures discussed in the first part of the framework. From a methodological viewpoint, the dissertation is based on case studies. These are presented in four appended manuscripts (a licentiate thesis and three papers), where the results of these studies are used as empirical input for the synthesising analysis that is led in the dissertation. A key deliverable from the research presented in this dissertation is a classification of measures that increase transport-related CO2 emissions and measures that decrease transport-related CO2 emissions when a distribution system is centralised. By presenting this classification, the dissertation extends previous research on the environmental impact of various logistics strategies, where centralised distribution is an example of such a strategy. With regards to this classification, it is concluded that a shipper that seeks to centralise its distribution system in a more CO2 efficient manner will aim to identify a structural configuration that minimises the increase in transport work. This is imperative as there is a close link between transport work and CO2 emissions. Hence, a CO2 efficient centralised distribution system will include more central warehouses than that advocated by earlier research on centralised distribution. This in turn implies that a shipper may not reach the full potential in economies of scale as advocated in earlier research. However, such a configuration will simultaneously lead to less transport work, whereby a shipper will be able to offset the increase in transport work by employing measures that decrease the amount of transport-related CO2 emissions per amount of transport work. The results also indicate that in addition to reducing transport-related CO2 emissions, some of these measures come with a cost incentive. By employing such measures, a shipper can come to compensate for the potential loss in economies of scale caused by employing a structural configuration that seeks to minimise the increase in transport work rather than to maximise economies of scale. By this means, the dissertation contributes to research on centralised distribution by considering how a reduction in transport-related CO2 emissions is interrelated with the provision of cost efficient customer service.

In this paper we analyse the influence of sector specific developments in productivity and demand on net entry and employment in 19 industrial sectors of the Austrian economy. Based on the model of structural dynamics of Pasinetti, we develop an identification scheme that allows us to extract technology and demand shocks, by means of a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model with long-run restrictions. We study the patterns of productivity and demand shocks across industries by means of a principal components analysis and find that sectoral and macro-economic developments in demand strongly correlate, while this is not the case for technology shocks. Impulse-response analysis shows that for almost all sectors productivity growth rates experience an immediate increase to positive technology shocks while the hours worked decline as conjectured by Pasinetti. Finally, we use the identified shocks as explanatory variables in time-series cross-section regressions on net-entry and employment data. Both types of shocks are able to explain dynamics on the industry level in terms of employment and sales but not firm dynamics. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers Series "Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness"

I traditionella analyser av exportmarknadsandelsutvecklingen antas den vara bestämd av det exporterande landets kostnadsutveckling eller av den strukturella sammansättningen i det exporterande landets export. Utredningar baserade på dessa typer av analyser lyckades inte på ett tillfredsställande sätt förklara de svenska exportmarknadsandelarnas utveckling under andra hälften av 1970-talet och under 1980-talet. I denna avhandling diskuteras uppläggningen och resultaten av de ovanstående slagen av analyser och lanseras ett tidigare oprövat angreppssätt för att förklara exportmarknadsandelarnas utveckling. Detta angreppssätt är baserat på industriell omvandlingsteori, vilket för analyser av exportmarknadsandelarnas utveckling innebär att denna antas vara bestämd av det enskilda landets industriella omvandling. Utifrån detta angreppssätt genomförs ett antal analyser. Syftet med dessa är att undersöka samband mellan å ena sidan av industriell omvandlingsteori bestämda faktorer och å andra sidan exportmarknadsandelarnas utveckling. Avhandlingen avslutas med en diskussion om hur exportmarknadsandelarnas utveckling kan studeras med en ansats som både tar hänsyn till strukturella förhållanden – arbetskraftskostnader och exportens strukturella sammansättning – och den industriella omvandlingen. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.