<p>Arbetets syfte är att studera hur vissa utvalda skolor i en viss kommun i södra Sverige har arbetat med det så kallade Wärnerssonpengarna. Uppsatsen anknyter också till hur bidraget är formulerat från statens sida, samt vad den studerade kommunens villkor är till dess skolor.</p><p>Jag har genomfört intervjuer med en tjänsteman inom kommunen, samt med sex rektorer från sex olika skolor. Jag vill här fokusera på hur de olika skolorna har arbetat med Wärnerssonpengarna. Analysarbetet visar att många skolor inte ändrat sin pedagogiska arbetssätt efter Wärnerssonpengarna. Skolpersonalen diskuterar inte detta bidrag mer än något annat bidrag. Eftersom bidraget är specialdestinerat till skolan, vill jag också veta vad rektorerna anser om detta.</p><p>Uppsatsen hävdar att regeringes formuleringar angående hur kommunerna ska arbeta, varit otydliga. Det finns heller inga omfattande mätinstrument som kommunerna kan använda sig av då de utvärderar. Den undersökta kommunen har ett utvärderingssätt, men resultatet från dem kan bara antyda om en viss skola har arbetat effektivt, eftersom det inte är samma elever som testas varje år.</p>

With regard to government-owned firm privatization and technology spillovers effect, many papers had investigated before. But the combination of two type of topics, mixed oligopoly and R&D spillover effects ,is unusual. This paper will show how technology spillovers effects markets including both private and public firms. We apply the model of D¡¦Aspremont and Jacquemin (1998) and reassign the objective function of White (1996). In this paper, we present two main results. First, when the commodity is easily replicated due to spillover effect, its production cost must lower. The existence of government-owned firms can higher social welfare and market output. Therefore, government intervention can correct market failure. Second, That government subsidize research cost to public firms can encourage firms to proceed to research and develop. But subsidy cause social welfare reduction under no spillover effect situation. On the contrary, subsidy to public firms higher social welfare in spillover effect situation.

Abstract The study aims to understand the policy development of elderly welfare subsidy. This issue was firstly proposed at end of 1991 during the election of Parliament Representatives. After 10 years development, by conducting propaganda, publishing reports and sharing experiences with local governments, the Legislative Yuan has finally established the Temporary Provision of Elderly Welfare Subsidy in May 2002 and the act is then legalized and nationalized. The related amendment has been continuing till today. Since 1991 the researcher has started the long and coherent observation; in between the history and literature analysis were applied in order to collect relevant documents. After ascertaining its historical periods and generalization, the esearch concluded that there¡¦s significant correlation between this policy development and the democratic election. As a result, simple democratic mold is taken as the theoretic foundation and the framework is then built up. The study result shows that the election plays an important role for the formation and development of elderly welfare subsidy. The mplementation guarantees certain economic safety for the silver citizens but some ¡§free-cost¡¨ measure did cause some fair and financial burden to the authority. It also gives a cognitive bias against social welfare. Yet the increasing silver citizens may cause financial burden to the government, the distribution of social welfare should then be well considered. A complete system of national pension has to be set up soon.

Our purpose is to examine: what should be the best subsidy mechanism which can reduce the lost from the asymmetric information problem whereas the administration performs a subsidy policy. We use the incentive contract theory to establish our models, and analyze different kinds of subsidy policy results. We prove that: compare with the partial equally subsidy, zero-subsidy and full-purchase subsidy, the partial discriminably subsidy is the best subsidy policy.

<p>This report presents findings from research in Ribáuè district, Nampula province, in northeast Mozambique. Our aim was to understand the living conditions of the impoverished elderly and identify strategies that may improve their situation. We conducted semi-structured interviews with elderly people, including some of the most vulnerable and some who receive income from the social assistance programme. To gain a wider context we met representatives of governmental and non-governmental organisations and referred to secondary sources.</p><p>We use the Sustainable Rural Livelihoods framework to present the capital assets (natural,social, financial, physical and human) of Ribáuè district and of its elderly inhabitants. We consider how access to assets is affected by political, economic and cultural factors in the community. We set the situation of the elderly against the development history of postindependence Mozambique, and international concern about poverty, the ageing population and their human rights.</p><p>We find that social assets in the form of human relationships, and natural assets in the form of land, are essential for elderly people’s livelihoods. Most of the elderly have very limited access to financial assets, apart from the few who receive social ssistance. This programme makes a very small but appreciated contribution to family welfare. However the programme’s reach has been limited geographically and eligibility regulations tend to obstruct access for the very poorest. In general the human capital of the rural and uneducated elderly is declining, as society increasingly values modern skills and knowledge. However the Ribáuè residents we met experience some benefit from infrastructure modernisation. Elderly people are receiving more attention, especially as carers of children.</p><p>We have identified existing strategies for improving elderly people’s livelihoods. We suggest ways to build on these, as well as possible new strategies. If development policies are both equitable and successful, increased employment and taxation should enable formal pension and social security systems to provide for the elderly in the long-term future. In the short to medium term, expansion of the social assistance programme must be prioritised, as it is vital to the most vulnerable. It is also important that people’s customary engagement in mutually supportive social networks is strengthened rather than undermined by development changes.</p><p>Key words: Mozambique, Nampula, elderly, social assistance, the food subsidy program (PSA), Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (SRL)</p>

In this dissertation, we show how the firm can improve its revenue and competitiveness through segmenting the market by exploring consumer heterogeneity. In the first essay, we show that asymmetric assortment breadth among two competing retailers can emerge as an equilibrium when consumers differ in their prior knowledge about their product preferences and their shopping costs. Under this equilibrium, the full line retailer expands the market demand by attracting the uninformed consumers with large shopping costs and the single product retailer passes on the savings from a streamlined assortment to the informed consumers by setting a lower price. Therefore, the two retailers soften the competition between them and both achieve higher profits. In the second essay, we consider a setting in which consumers experience distinct instances of need for a durable product at random intervals and derive random amount of utility from each instance. Consumers are differentiated according to the frequency with which they experience instances of need. For a firm that provides a durable product to such a market, we consider the implications of selling versus renting on a per-usage basis. Selling minimizes transaction costs, but may result in inefficient utilization of units that are produced. Alternatively, per-usage rentals allow more utility to be generated per unit of product that is produced. Focusing on these trade-offs, we identify conditions under which the firm should sell, offer per-usage rentals, or offer a combination of the two. In the third essay, we continue to use the durable good framework to study how various forms of government subsidy programs shift consumer's demand patterns and thus generate different magnitude of additional savings in resource consumption. We give the conditions under which each type of cash rebate programs does the best in generating resource savings per dollar spent. / text

Arbetets syfte är att studera hur vissa utvalda skolor i en viss kommun i södra Sverige har arbetat med det så kallade Wärnerssonpengarna. Uppsatsen anknyter också till hur bidraget är formulerat från statens sida, samt vad den studerade kommunens villkor är till dess skolor. Jag har genomfört intervjuer med en tjänsteman inom kommunen, samt med sex rektorer från sex olika skolor. Jag vill här fokusera på hur de olika skolorna har arbetat med Wärnerssonpengarna. Analysarbetet visar att många skolor inte ändrat sin pedagogiska arbetssätt efter Wärnerssonpengarna. Skolpersonalen diskuterar inte detta bidrag mer än något annat bidrag. Eftersom bidraget är specialdestinerat till skolan, vill jag också veta vad rektorerna anser om detta. Uppsatsen hävdar att regeringes formuleringar angående hur kommunerna ska arbeta, varit otydliga. Det finns heller inga omfattande mätinstrument som kommunerna kan använda sig av då de utvärderar. Den undersökta kommunen har ett utvärderingssätt, men resultatet från dem kan bara antyda om en viss skola har arbetat effektivt, eftersom det inte är samma elever som testas varje år.

Detrital subsidy from highly productive kelp beds and forests to adjacent habitats represents a major form of connectivity between coastal ecosystems that regulates regional patterns of community organization and production. In this thesis, I investigated environmental and biological factors that influence the rate of detrital production in Nova Scotian kelp beds, with emphasis on the role of invasive species in altering these dynamics. The rate of blade erosion of the dominant kelp species (Saccharina latissima and Laminaria digitata) increased significantly with the level of encrustation by the invasive bryozoan Membranipora membranacea and the extent of grazing damage by the native snail Lacuna vincta, and by increased water temperature and site exposure. The rate of detrital production (as dry mass) ranged from 0.5 to 1.71 kg m-2 y-1 across 5 sites, and increased linearly with kelp bed biomass. Spatial variation in the total level of grazing damage on kelp blades by L. vincta was explained in part by a negative relationship with site exposure, and the distribution of grazing along blades was regulated by kelp growth rate and the associated production of grazing-deterrent polyphenolics. Grazing damage by L. vincta that exceeded 0.5 to 1.0% of blade area caused increased rates of erosion during heavy wave action associated with a passing hurricane. The maximum stress before breakage, toughness, and extensibility of blade tissues decreased with the degree of encrustation by M. membranacea or grazing damage by L. vincta, which cause degradation and removal of the outer cell layers of kelp tissues, resulting in stress concentration and breakage at lower force applications than required to break undamaged tissues. The invasive green alga Codium fragile and S. latissima differed with respect to nutritional quality and changes in biochemical composition that occurred over the course of degradation on a sandy bottom adjacent to a kelp bed. Macrofaunal communities colonizing detrital deposits responded to these differences. These findings demonstrate that invasive species can alter the quantity and quality of detritus produced from subtidal kelp beds, and that their community-level effects can extend well beyond the invaded habitats via the export of detritus.

This dissertation investigates how competition among heterogeneous firms affects R&D in quality enhancement in a quality-ladder type framework for a Cournot oligopolistic industry. The research also analyzes the welfare implications of various policies that promotes R&D. Some of the theoretical predictions are then tested empirically using firm-level data for Bangladesh from the World Bank's enterprise survey. Chapter 1 shows that a rise in the cost of production of the competitor will induce a firm to invest more in R&D if and only if the quality difference between the existing product and the product emerging from R&D activities is sufficiently large. Also, welfare-reducing effect of helping a `minor' firm is lower in the presence of possible quality differences. Empirical results supports the theoretical findings. Chapter 2 shows that protecting domestic industry of high quality goods encourages firms to invest more in R&D. The size of the optimal tariff depends on the degree of product differentiation and market share of the foreign firms and is not necessarily positive. Chapter 3 shows that a small tariff imposed by the trading partner on the high quality good will deter R&D. However, as the tariff gets bigger, the relationship changes sign. The size of an R&D subsidy depends on the market share of the firms. Empirical results provide support to the theoretical findings.

Si la raison d'être des aides sociales, les conditions de leur versement, l'étude des bénéficiaires sont des préoccupations anciennes et constantes de la sociologie politique de l'aide sociale, la question des modalités techniques de versement de ces aides a peu été travaillée. Parmi ces diverses modalités, des outils tels que les chèques sont restés dans l'ombre. Partant de la notion de « voucher » développée aux Etats-Unis dans les années 60 par Milton Friedman et tout particulièrement du « school voucher » ou « chèque éducation », certaines collectivités françaises ont introduit au début des années 1990 ce concept sous la forme de chèques cultures destinés au jeune public en se revendiquant d'idées libérales. Dans les années qui suivirent, on a observé un essaimage important des chèques dans les collectivités françaises sans pour autant que la filiation libérale et anglo-Saxonne ne soit revendiquée. Parallèlement, le chèque en France est arrivé sous une forme encadrée par la loi et principalement destiné au versement d'aides sociales : le Chèque Emploi Service Universel, le Chèque d'Accompagnement Personnalisé, sont désormais bien implantés dans le paysage des interventions sociales françaises. La possibilité ouverte par le législateur de payer certaines aides sociales obligatoire a permis à ces chèques d'entrer en nombre au sein des Conseils Généraux. Après avoir démontré que les chèques sociaux et culturels sont, malgré leurs modalités d'apparition différente, les descendants des « vouchers » friedmaniens, l'enquête de terrain, portant sur 6 dispositifs présents dans 3 collectivités françaises (Conseil Régional Rhône-Alpes, Conseils Généraux de la Drôme et de la Saône et Loire, a principalement consisté en la comparaison entre le discours des acteurs et les arguments traditionnellement employés dans la littérature anglo-Saxonne. Le résultat de l'enquête qualitative menée en utilisant une méthode proche de l'approche phénoménologique et priorisant donc la représentation de l'objet par l'acteur montre en effet que les 6 attributs les plus fréquemment cités dans la littérature reviennent régulièrement dans les propos des acteurs même si ces derniers ne revendiquent qu'à la marge le caractère libéral du chèque. L'enquête a pu démontrer que c'est l'action décisive de médiateurs et la promotion d'un argument absent des analyses anglo-Saxonnes qui a favorisé cette diffusion. Les acteurs citent en effet, dans les avantages du chèque, la notion de visibilité de l'aide et d'outil de communication. Il s'agit en effet de l'argument le plus répandu parmi les entreprises commercialisant ces dispositifs. Nous avons donc étudié à la fois la formation de réseaux formels et informels entre collectivités et l'apport, selon nous décisif, des entreprises ayant pu réorienter leurs « business model » afin de rendre cet outil plus attractif pour des collectivités qui auraient eu plus de difficultés à l'accepter si elles en avaient connu la vraie nature. / In France, more and more social or cultural subsidies, given by local authorities to a targeted group of the population are not distributed directly in cash but under the shape of vouchers. In fact, the first local government to have proceeded like this is the Conseil Régional Rhône-Alpes in 1993 that have launched the “cultural voucher” which was given to the high school students. During the 90s, this way to proceed has become a kind of “fashion” among the French local authorities and nowadays, everything the French Region has at least one subsidy given through vouchers. This kind of tools are very wide-Spread over the world, especially in the US. As a tool of public policy it has been studied first by Milton Friedman and categorized as a pro-Choice and a libertarian tool. The most famous example of “liberal” voucher is the “school voucher” that permits the parents to choose the school of their children (it has been tested in Florida, Milwaukee and New York). The school voucher and a lot of other ones (stamp foods, medical vouchers…) has been implemented all over the world within the framework of programs leaded by institutions as the World Bank of the International Monetary Fund. The arrival of such vouchers in France seems surprising because of the political ideas of the leaders of most of the local government. It seems at least paradoxical to note that social democrat leaders have been the first to use vouchers to pay some social, cultural or other individual subsidies. This thesis tries to answer questions such “how such tools have been to spread through the French regions so easily” and “why haven't the local governments recognize that it was a pro-Choice and liberal tool that they were supposed to fight against?” Vouchers are in fact part of the French culture. France has developed in the 60s a program of luncheon vouchers that everybody knows named “Ticket restaurant”. Four firms composed the national market of the vouchers editors, three of them are the three world leaders of this global market. By using the example of the first cultural voucher created in France in 1993, they have gradually made their Business model evolved to suit these new market opportunities. One of the conclusions of the thesis is that the spreading of the vouchers among French local authorities has not only an ideological cause, but is simply the consequence commercial actions of French vouchers editor companies that have detected a new important market to conquer.