Thesis (Ph.D. Law)--University of Waikato, 2008. / Title from PDF cover (viewed January 5, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 426-474)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1980. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-159).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1962. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

The increasing importance of the relationship between market structure and bank performance in general, together with the lack of empirical research on this relationship in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) banking markets, provide the main motivation for this study. Many researchers have sought to estimate the relationship between aspects of market structure such as concentration and market share, and indicators of bank performance such as profitability and prices. However, there is still no consensus with regard to the most appropriate theory in the light of the empirical data. In this study, the possible relationships between market structure and bank performance suggested by prior research are examined for the five main banking markets in ASEAN, i.e. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, for the period 1991 to 1995. This relationship is tested using pooled and cross sectional estimate, as well as on a country by country and year by year basis. This is the first study in which data for all five ASEAN countries has been analysed. The database which has been constructed for the present study has been obtained from a variety of primary sources, supplemented by commercial data services, thus providing the cross-national set of comparable data needed for the modelling of bank efficiency that is reported in this thesis. The study uses two measures of efficiency; (i) the standard accounting approach, i.e., the cost-toincome ratio, and (ii) the stochastic X-efficiency measure. Using the cost-to-income ratio as a proxy for efficiency, generally the pooled results suggest that both the Relative Market Power and the Relative Efficiency hypotheses may explain the profit-structure relationship in ASEAN banking markets. That is, firstly, market share appears to reflect market power, the larger firms in the market gaining higher profits; secondly, banks operating at higher levels of efficiency are also able to gain higher profits. Using the stochastic X-efficiency measure, the pooled results also provide support for both the Relative Market Power and Relative Efficiency hypotheses. In addition, we find that, overall, government ownership and market demand conditions are negatively related to bank profitability, whilst the level of risk capital is positively related. The individual country estimates suggest that Relative Market Power is supported only in the Philippines using the cost-to-income ratio and in the Philippines and Indonesia using the stochastic X-efficiency measure. Moreover, Relative Efficiency is also supported only in the Philippines and Indonesia using stochastic X-efficiency. In contrast, using the cost-to-income ratio, the Relative Efficiency hypothesis is supported in all five ASEAN countries which would imply that, in the region as a whole, bank efficiency is the primary driver of higher profits.

World perception is governed by an us-versus-them binary mode of thought, which has been tackled as “Orientalism” in Edward Said’s book of the same title, in which he shows the discursive nature of this pattern and shows its dissemination across scholarly work, fictional novels, travel literature, paintings and other works. However, to talk about Orientalism now is to talk about a stagnant academic debate over what counts as orientalist and what does not, and to discuss whether the word “Orientalist” is in any way derogatory. This debate and the notion of Orientalism as racism come from the association of Orientalist representations with an idea of a “truth” behind them. Fictional works fluctuate between a notion of representation, and an artistic license to produce whatever sells to the majority of the public. Orientalism only exists through the passive acceptance of such divisions. Edward Said began his project at this point of general passivity, but the weight of a categorical system of knowledge division weighed down on him, protecting the pure notion of “truth” and the way it reproduces its own “passivity” that is constituent of Orientalism and of representation by and large. While the textual academic debate on Orientalism remains stuck in a deadlock of mutual accusations of deliberate distortion, Orientalism itself continues in the melange of truth and fiction, across the images that dominate and shape our world, strategically making use of the blur of categories to defend itself against such criticism. Seeing Orientalism as a representational system, where the category and a mode of suitability is what determines whether something is in or out, sheds a new light on the power of this reproductive social system of expectations. By drawing upon the aesthetics of Orientalism, building upon theorists of the image, like Jacques Rancière, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Jean Baudrillard, this thesis aims to update Said’s theory by returning Orientalism to its image-based nature, and by looking at the ways in which an image has the capacity to structure a history of divisions, and to highlight the ways in which this continuity is achieved and how it is maintained in the new world of moving images, to affect the same binarism that constructs its own passive subjectivity.

Typescript. / Bibliography: leaves 205-213. / Microfiche. / x, 213 leaves ill

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-250).

Dissertations on Asia and Australia's relations with Asia, either completed in 1999 or 2000 or in progress in 2000 in Australian universities. The list was compiled by Robert Elson from information supplied to the Asian Studies Association of Australia. Arranged by regions of Asia: general or comparative; Australia and Asia; East Asia; South Asia; Southeast Asia; West Asia. / Description based on contents viewed June 4, 2002; title from home page.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 354-378).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universidad de Navarra, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 340-354).