Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-106).

Thesis (doctoral) - Freie Universität, Berlin, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Portfolio theory is a cornerstone of modern finance, and it is based on the idea that an investor can reduce risk by diversifying their investments across various assets. In practice, Harry Markowitz mean-variance optimization theory is expanded upon by taking into account variable and fixed transaction cost, making the model slightly more reliable. Estimation of parameters is done using historical data and the portfolios considered are those that would be of interest to Generation Z. Using transaction costs from some of Sweden's biggest and most popular banks, the impact of the transaction costs can be seen in the presented graphs. Though many more aspects could be considered to make the model even more realistic, the presented results give insight into how one might want to invest in the stock market to increase their chances of a good expected return given a minimal variance (risk).

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Social capital is becoming a core concept in economics, political science, sociology and public policy. Trust, norms and social networks, constitute the three major components of social capital. These three factors interact together and play a significant role in transactions between people and organizations. However, there is no consensus about the influence of social capital on transaction costs. Some researchers have stated that social capital could reduce transaction costs associated with adapting, monitoring and enforcing transactions; some have analyzed the negative impacts of social capital on transaction costs; and still some have focused on transaction costs in the formation of social capital. Using organizations as the unit of analysis and concentrating on trust, this paper analyzes how trust, the central concept of social capital, impacts transaction costs in inter-organizational transactions. At the same time, it is argued that trust building is costly, and some activities that constitute transaction costs help to form a mutual-trust between organizations. Further, the paper points out that transaction costs and trust differ depending on the characters of transactions. The paper also studies the lock-in effects of trust on inter-organizational relationships and the role of intermediaries to mitigate the negative impacts. Finally, the paper intends to find policy and strategy implications for organizations and government to build a healthy and vigorous transaction environment. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

Dissertation : Berlin :Freie Universitat Berlin, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-294)

Presidents have two major assets at their disposal when seeking to alter policy: executive orders and legislative action. There are certain advantages and disadvantages to each course. Although presidency scholars have focused extensively on presidential efforts in the legislative arena, little attention has been paid to how a president affects policy through direct action. Because executive orders have been under-researched, there has been a dearth of theory development that adequately explains when presidents will act unilaterally through executive orders and when they will instead seek legislative avenues to policy change. This project develops a parsimonious theory grounded in the transaction costs framework that explains how a president chooses between seeking congressional action versus acting unilaterally through executive orders to accomplish policy change. The theory holds that when presidents desire policy change, they balance the transaction costs executive orders and legislative action present, selecting the course that presents the greatest benefit after accounting for the transaction costs present. After outlining the theory, I test my predictions using an original data set. Each executive order from 1946 to 2004 was read and examined for policy content. Unlike most prior studies of presidential use of executive orders, this study only includes orders that affect policy in the data analyses. The series of empirical tests provide support for my theory: Presidents consider the transaction costs that executive orders and the pursuit of legislation pose and take the action that maximizes their utility when seeking policy change

The aim of this thesis is to explore the applicability of transaction cost theory to an emerging market context, and to complement it with institutional theory to achieve a closer fit. The research questions are: (1) Which causes of high transaction costs are perceived by firms in the research site? (2) How do they respond to these costs? The responses could range from internalisation, through cooperation, to the new concept of trading isolation, which is the first of two observed gaps in the literature. (3) Could an institutional perspective help to explain firms’ responses, if they differ from what is expected by theory? The consideration of informal institutions with regard to transaction costs in China addresses the second observed gap in the literature, which focuses mostly on formal institutions. Despite the strengths of transaction cost theory in identifying sources of friction in exchange and proposing resolutions, it has been criticised for making assumptions concerning behaviour and the strength of formal institutions that reduce the degree to which it applies in non-Western, emerging market research contexts. This thesis explores these limitations in the context of the inbound tourism sector in the Tiger Leaping Gorge, in rural Yunnan Province, Southwest China. The author’s exploratory study had suggested that some of these firms attempted to reduce transaction costs by decreasing the number of transactions conducted, resulting in their relative isolation from – rather than integration into – a trading network. This hinders the firms’ ability to develop and specialise, limiting their contribution to local economic growth in this relatively undeveloped region of China. In the principal field study, qualitative data were collected through interviews conducted with the proprietors of the population of tourism firms in the research site. The interviews sought to understand the transaction costs the proprietors perceived, their views of institutional strength or weakness (in areas including local government, legal system, financing, development of trust, kinship, guanxi and networks), and the ways they organised their firms. The data were explored first with a thematic analysis, then by coding into fuzzy sets for analysis with the Qualitative Comparative Approach to help identify causal associations between transaction costs, institutions, and responses of isolation from or integration into the market. The main causes of transaction costs were found to be opportunism, uncertainty and bounded rationality. High transaction costs were generally associated with a response of isolation, but they were not the sole causal factor: every isolated firm reported weak informal institutions combined with a variety of transaction cost and formal institutional conditions. The difficulty of establishing new trust relationships increased the isolation of the worst-affected firms, in an environment where weak formal protection from transaction risks confined many firms to personal exchange. A recommendation for local practice is made for firms to attempt to broaden the networks within which they develop trust, to reduce the constraint of personal exchange and consequent isolation. Two policy recommendations are made that could apply here and in emerging markets more generally: a mainstream recommendation to strengthen the enforcement of formal institutions, aiming to facilitate rule-based, impersonal exchange based on generalised trust, and an alternative approach deriving recommendations from the local context and including the consideration of informal institutions. This thesis contributes to theory by highlighting the critical influence of informal social structures on the cost and extent of exchange, and adapting transaction cost theory to better apply to this institutional context. It also constitutes a novel application of the Qualitative Comparative Approach to interview data.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 1988. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-85). Also available on the World Wide Web.