This research assesses the impacts of developing shale gas in the UK, with the focus of determining whether or not it is possible to develop it sustainably and how it could affect the electricity and gas mix. There is much uncertainty on the impacts of developing shale gas in the UK, as the country is currently in the early stages of exploration drilling and the majority of studies which have been carried out to analyse the effects of shale gas development have been US specific. To address these questions, the environmental, economic and social sustainability have been assessed and the results integrated to evaluate the overall sustainability. The impacts of shale gas electricity have been assessed so that it can be compared with other electricity generation technologies (coal, nuclear, renewables etc.), to ascertain its impacts on the UK electricity mix. Life cycle assessment is used to evaluate the environmental sustainability of shale gas electricity (and other options), while life cycle costing and social sustainability assessment have been used to evaluate the economic and social sustainability. Multi-criteria decision analysis has been used to combine the results of three to evaluate the overall sustainability. The incorporation of shale gas into the UK electricity mix is modelled in two future scenarios for the year 2030. The scenarios compare different levels of shale gas penetration: low and high. The results show that shale gas will have little effect on improving the environmental sustainability and energy security of the UK’s electricity mix, but could help ease energy prices. In comparison with other options, shale gas is not a sustainable option, as it has higher environmental impacts than the non-fossil fuels and conventional gas and liquefied natural gas: 460 g CO2-Eq. is emitted from the shale gas electricity life cycle, while conventional gas emits 420 g CO2-Eq. and wind 12 g CO2-Eq. The power plant and drilling fluid are the main impact hot spots in the life cycle, while hydraulic fracturing contributes a small amount (5%). In addition to this, there are a number of social barriers which need to be addressed, notably: traffic volume and congestion could increase by up to 31%, public support is low and wastewater produced from hydraulic fracturing could put strain on wastewater treatment facilities. However, the results indicate that shale gas is economically viable, as the cost of electricity is cheaper than solar photovoltaic, biomass and hydroelectricity (9.59 p/kWh vs 16.90, 11.90 and 14.40 p/kWh, respectively). The results of this thesis show that there is a trade-off in the impacts, but because of its poor environmental and social ratings shale gas is not the best option for UK electricity. The results also identify areas for improvement which should be targeted, as well as policy recommendations for best practice and regulation if shale gas were to be developed in the UK.

We compare the effectiveness of different climate policies in terms of emissions abatement and costs in the British and German electricity markets. The two countries follow different climate policies, allowing us to compare the effectiveness of a relatively low EU ETS carbon price in Germany with a significantly higher carbon price due to a unilateral top-up tax (the Carbon Price Support) in the UK. We first estimate the emissions offsetting effects of carbon pricing and of subsidized wind and solar feed-in, and then derive the abatement costs of one tonne of CO2 for the different policies. We find that a reasonably high price for emissions is the most cost-effective climate policy, while subsidizing wind is preferable to subsidizing solar power. A carbon price of around EURO 35 is enough in the UK to induce vast short-run fuel switching between coal- and gas-fired power plants, leading to significant emissions abatement at low costs. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Nora Koubová, Dětský koutek na Filozofické fakultě UK v Praze 1 Abstract: Koubová, Nora. Crèche at the Faculty of Arts CU in Prague. Prague: Faculty of Arts Charles University, 2014. Number of pages 79. Dissertation. The translated dissertation "Crèche at the Faculty of Arts CU in Pragueˮ discusses the establishment of a "co-operative model of a crèche care centre", with regards to the currently popular topic about the co-ordination of professional life and personal life (work-life balance). In the first part, the dissertation discusses the theoretical level of considered issues, includes overview and basic interpretation of legal framework, describes pre-school children care system and considers pre-school children care at universities. Also, it considers the corporate social responsibility of businesses and contemporary conditions and practices in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, the second part of the dissertation, with regards to the existing example of the "co-operative model of a crèche" at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, aims to provide a solution for the parents that oscillate between personal life and professional life, and not wanting to give up one on the detriment of the other. Moreover, the dissertation considers the useful suggestions and requirements of the facility's...

As the globalisation process accelerates there is a growing need for individual countries to understand the bases for effective performance in international trade. Because it makes up such a large share of world trade, it is especially important to understand what determines effectiveness in exporting. Despite much empirical research, especially over recent decades, the state of knowledge on this topic remains fragmented, unclear and unsatisfactory. The motivation for the present study was therefore twofold: dissatisfaction with the present state of knowledge in this vital area and the importance to the UK economy of improving its export performance in a world of increasing competition. Its aim was to contribute to the resolution of both. In addition to finding what appeared to be quite serious methodological problems in a group of earlier studies, our review of the literature indicated that the best prospects for identifying the determinants of effective exporting were to be found, not at national or sectoral level but at that of the individual firm. Accordingly, an empirical survey research project was developed. To minimise unquantifiable inter-sectoral variability, it was focused on a single sector of industry. For a range of reasons, including the limited amount of information available about its current export activity and prospects, the UK knitted apparel industry was chosen.. Special care having been taken to assemble the fullest possible sampling frame and to develop a suitable instrument (which included an export performance model), a mail survey in the form of a stratified random sample of exporting UK manufacturers of knitted apparel was carried through from late 2000. Persistent follow-up by mail and telephone generated a response rate of 70 per cent, comprising close to half of the sampling frame, that was representative of all company size bands, levels of exporting and products. The overall quality of the responses was good; tests of non-response did not find any indications of non-response bias. Data analysis, designed to test thoroughly our 10 export-determinants hypotheses, relied primarily on Pearsonian correlation at the bivariate level then sequentially on Multiple Regression Analysis, Canonical Correlation Analysis and Partial Least Squares. A perhaps slightly novel aspect of the research was that it was not solely cross-sectional in format; a longitudinal element was provided by drawing on the researcher¿s earlier surveys ; and a panel element by following-up, in 2007, the main 2000 field survey. Where possible, these data were drawn upon in the analysis and interpretation. There did not appear to be any conflict between the three multivariate techniques employed and indeed their findings were not dissimilar. The outcome of the data analysis was to uphold, to varying degrees, most of our hypotheses about the determinants of effective/ or successful exporting. Those that did not find support were three: firm size, product adaptation, and price determination method. Most strongly supported as determinants were promotional intensity, serving many markets and visits to trade fairs/ exhibitions; others which were statistically significant, included management commitment, special staff skills and the use of Commission Agents. While the conclusions must remain a bit tentative they are encouraging.

The point of this thesis is to compare classic asset pricing models using historic UK data. It looks at three of the most commonly used asset pricing models in Finance and tests the suitability of each for the UK market. The models considered are the Capital Asset Pricing Model (1964, 65 and 66) (CAPM), the Fama-French 3-Factor Model (1993) (FF3F) and the Carhart 4-Factor Model (1997) (C4F). The models are analysed using a 34 year sample period (1980-2014). The sample data follows the structure explained in Gregory et al (2013) and is compiled of stocks from the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The stocks are grouped into portfolios arranged by market capitalisation, book-to-market ratio, past 2-12 month stock return and past 12 month standard deviation of stock return. Statistical analysis is performed and the suitability of the models is tested using the methods of Black, Jensen \& Scholes (1972), Fama \& MacBeth (1973) and Gibbons, Ross \& Shanken (1989). The results compare descriptive and test statistics across the range of risk factors and test portfolios for the each testing method on all three models. They show that although the UK market has some noticeable factor anomalies, none of the models clearly explains the 1980-2014 stock returns. However, of the three models, C4F shows the highest explanatory power in predicting stock returns.

The law is stated as at July 2006, before the enactment of the United Kingdom Fraud Act 2006. This thesis covers ‘serious’ corporate fraud and not commonplace petty fraud. I examined corporate fraud, concentrating on a comparison of the United Kingdom’s fraud with that of two civil law neighbouring countries, France and Germany, both with high financial activity, and also with a few American states, common law systems like the English legal system. The objective of this study is to identify ways of combating fraud in the UK by enquiry and discovery as to how fraud occurs and how the two different legal systems- civil and common law- treat fraud. The study reveals factors contributing to corporate fraud and recommendations for combating corporate fraud. Exploring the concept of fraud, my findings are that corporate fraud is facing exponential increase, with the UK government beginning to acknowledge this. I examined the agencies that combat fraud in the states mentioned above including the UK. Although the UK is party to an impressive number of Treaties, which help to combat fraud, treaties dealing with terrorism, drug dealing, money laundering, and other organised crime, corporate fraud is still a serious problem. The conclusions can be summarised as follows. The UK could learn much from the French legal system and the way France prosecutes corporations as per Articles 132, 222, 432, 433 and 435 of the French Penal Code. Germany’s Criminal Code is equally comprehensive in its prescriptive definitions of frauds including corporate frauds as in chapters 8, 19, 2, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 30 of the German Criminal Code. The new UK’s non-codified general, core, offence of fraud, with fraud offences maintained in other statutes such as the Companies Act, likens the UK fraud regulation closer to the US’s with its Criminal Code and other statutes that deal with fraud. The UK has not yet caught up with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 as regards electronic business systems’ rules. The USA’s federal prescriptive code for fraud offences is akin to the French and German criminal codes and these are found in US Federal Penal Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47, sections 1020 to 1084. Legal privilege is fraud exempt in the United but not in France and Germany. Legal privilege in the UK is partly exempt for SFO investigations and mandatory money laundering reporting.

This research project is an analysis of the use of digital propaganda by the three major parties in the UK 2010 General Election. In addition to this empirical aim, the study also employs the discipline of memetics to generate a theoretical and methodological approach with which to study digital propaganda. Memetics is an evolutionary theory of culture based around the concept of the ‘meme’ or cultural replicator. This study contends that propaganda can be understood as an evolutionary phenomenon, with the ethical implications of its use specifically addressed in each instance, rather than assumed as part of its definition. The memetic ‘methodological toolkit’ which is used to analyse the data on the 2010 election is a means by which key concepts from within the literature on memetics can be practically deployed. As part of the study this ‘toolkit’ is presented and the testing of it is continually evaluated in order to improve upon the initial design, something which also has implications for the use of memetic concepts within thematic textual analysis. The election itself was not an ‘Internet election’ in the way that the 2008 Presidential Election in the USA might be characterised. Such an election can be identified by a convergence of factors from within the party campaign structures and the wider political environment on a specific subject or individual – commonly a candidate for office – resulting in a high degree of spontaneous online participation and organisation amongst citizen supporters. This study argues that the UK 2010 election did not produce such a convergence due to low levels of voter enthusiasm, uneven social and financial resources and an inability by the major parties to capitalise on the potential opportunities for digital campaigning which arose.

Previous research into website and e-business acceptance and usage has not been completely successful in establishing how this links with factors related to culture. Furthermore, most new technologies have originated within a developed cultural context—namely the United States and Western Europe. Consequently, when new technology transfers to different cultural settings we can predict some sort of cultural gap because of their technology acceptance modes. Most studies have focused on technology transfer into the developed countries with an a priori assumption about the fit of that technology without taking into consideration cultural values that would make impact its ultimate uptake and acceptance. Few of these studies have tried to investigate how Arab cultural values could influence general acceptance and use of e-business websites. The aim of this study is to explain the influence of culture on a user's acceptance behaviour and to develop a new website acceptance model that includes cultural variables. The researcher reviewed the existing literature related to culture, technology acceptance theories, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and e-business. A Culturally- Sensitive Technology Acceptance Model (CTAM) was devised and a pilot study conducted to test the cultural variables considered relevant. Along with Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Cultural Variables and Website Quality, these variables affect user Intention to Use e-business websites. The research combines both qualitative and quantitative methods to reflect the nature of the research problem and to determine whether any relationships between variables can be identified to determine behavioural patterns. A random sample consisting of 623 respondents was drawn from Arab and UK tourists visiting Jordanian tourist sites. A survey questionnaire and semi-structured interview were employed to obtain data from the selected sample. Questions contained in the questionnaire were derived from existing literature and were piloted to enhance its reliability and validity. Statistical methods were used to analyse the data in three main phases. The first phase aimed to establish that there were differences between the Arab and UK samples in terms of e-business website acceptance. This was found to be the case. The second phase aimed to establish that these differences were directly related to culture. Again, the results confirmed that there was a significant relationship between cultural variables and ebusiness website acceptance. In the third phase, a multiple regression analysis was applied to find the relationship between the independent variables (Website Quality, Cultural Variables, Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use) and the dependent variable (Intension to Use). The results show that some of the cultural variables are not significant for either sample. Within the Arab sample, Trust, Tangibility, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance and Individualism were found to be significant but Subjective Norms and Masculinity were not. For the UK sample Trust, Power Distance and Individualism were significant but Tangibility, Subjective Norms, Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance were not. Hence, the results show that cultural variables have a significant impact on user acceptance of e-business websites and Davies’ 1989 original and general Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was found to be moderately applicable in an Arab milieu. However, not only do the Arab and UK groups have different preferences in website quality (such as website design, content, etc), but there are also differences in the acceptance process. For the UK, acceptance is routed through design preferences, usefulness and attitude of satisfaction. However, for the Arabs, it seems to be determined by ease of use. The results also indicate that factors such as tangibility and trust are playing an important role in determining website acceptance in Arab countries.

The UK government, under the Primary Capital Programme, is planning to rebuild or refurbish approximately half of all primary schools by 2022/23. The aim is to create primary schools that are equipped for 21st century teaching and learning. Around £7 billion will be invested in the scheme with £1.9 billion of the budget being spent 2008-11, £650 million for all local authorities in 2009-10 and £1.1 billion in 2010-11. However, this substantial investment will only meet the target of providing a 21st century educational environment, with opportunities for exemplary teaching and learning, if the design of new and refurbished schools is fit for this purpose. The research set out to answer the question ‘How can all user groups be involved in the evaluation of newly built primary schools?’ This question was addressed by achieving the aim of developing a post-occupancy evaluation toolkit specifically for primary schools which accounted for the views of all stakeholders. The research focussed on primary schools in the city of Coventry in the UK West Midlands and was conducted in two phases: an examination of schools built before the introduction of a model brief in 1996 and an evaluation of schools that were built using its guidance. The findings from the initial case studies indicated issues to be addressed in the design of the toolkit. Following the initial case studies in pre-1996 schools, the research focussed on five recently built primary schools that were constructed according to the guidelines contained in Coventry’s model brief. At the time of commencing the research, six primary schools had been built using this framework. However, there had been no attempt to evaluate the schools to establish whether they met the needs of all stakeholders. The post-occupancy evaluation toolkit that was developed took a multi-stakeholder perspective on primary school builds and resulted in findings which indicate the variability in responses between different stakeholder groups and schools. The research concluded that the post-occupancy toolkit can provide information on school buildings, from a multi-stakeholder perspective, which may be useful architects and designers. It also proposes an approach to primary school design which accounts for the variability in the needs of diverse stakeholder groups and the individuality of each school, including their geographical location.

Assessing performance, quality, and excellence in services are critical topics in the literature. As such, this thesis evaluates aspects related to conceptualisations and measurement models across different disciplinary perspectives. This thesis develops, and validates a multiple-item scale for Modelling service excellence in the UK retail banking sector, according to the perceptions of customers. The scale development method follows Churchill’s (1979) well founded process, and is informed by Anderson and Gerbing’s (1988), and Rossiter’s (2002) guidelines. The model estimates whether the hypothesised antecedents are considered valid for identifying banks which provide excellent services. The findings reveal that reputation, rates, innovation, and technology significantly determine service excellence. This thesis was undertaken in a critical timing, between 2007 and 2012. During that time, the economy and particularly, the banking sector faced a major credit crunch and crisis of confidence in the sector per se. The crisis caused banks to rethink their competitive positioning by re-assessing their strengths (Akdag et al. 2011). Hence, initiating a differentiation between quality and excellence in services was essential. Overall, this thesis contributes to the literature by offering an integrated solution to assessing service excellence, from concept definition and differentiation, to scale development and validation. A new definition of services excellence is introduced and components of services excellence are identified. Hence, distinguishing between service quality and service excellence. Furthermore, the relationship between service excellence and its determinants is explored. Based on an updated set of antecedents and corresponding items, the measurement model provided in this thesis is considered as one of the best available options, realised by testing the postulated hypothesis and the alternative model testing.