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Because of recent corporate scandals, auditor independence and turnover have become the focus of much debate. For strengthening auditor independence , American government compulsorily stipulate that the firm has to replace its auditor every five years in Sarbanes-Oxley Act that was passed in 2002 to ensure that the increasing tenure can¡¦t lead to an bad audit quality. However, not every scholar all supports the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In order to analyze these issues, we try to find out the relation between the length of auditor tenure and behavior of corporate income tax evasion and auditor independence by using game theory and bargaining model. Our main results are as follows. In our model, we suppose the auditor bargaining ability is positively related to tenure. Manager will gain lower benefits of tax evasion with increasing auditor bargaining ability, implying that increasing tenure reduces managerial collusion incentives. Finally, manager decides to report higher income. In contrast, auditor will gain higher benefits of tax evasion with increasing auditor bargaining ability. But for the auditor, the precondition of making company to be willing to collude with auditor is to possess the evidence of corporate income tax evasion. Because of that, auditor will increase the level of auditing efforts and choose to help company to make an incorrect attestation. So increasing tenure will influence auditor independence and audit quality.

War is an inefficient outcome and therefore states ought to prefer to bargain over areas of conflict instead of fighting. However, in the anarchy of international relations there is no actor with a monopoly of power to enforce contracts between states. States then face a commitment problem when bargaining to prevent war. This dissertation explores three models where this commitment problem can lead to war. The first chapter presents a model that allows for shifts in the distribution of power which play out over an arbitrary number of time periods. This leads to a sufficient condition that implies war under a broader set of conditions than previously shown in the literature. This condition implies that preventive war may be caused by relatively slow, but persistent shifts in the distribution of power. As theorized in power transition theory, differential rates of economic growth can potentially cause war under this mechanism. Relaxing the unitary actor assumption of the first chapter, the second chapter analyzes how the domestic institutional structure of countries affects the likelihood of war. We model institutional divergence by comparing an infinitely lived dictatorship to a democracy with a replaceable leader and allow a range of leader incentives within these institutional frameworks. We show that dictators, even welfare maximizing ones, may lead to war if the initial distribution of resources is highly imbalanced whereas a democracy with a forward looking electorate is always peaceful. Yet when a democratic electorate is myopic, preventive war may result. Political parties act as a mechanism to prevent this outcome. In the third chapter, I investigate adding a third actor to the bargaining model of war. In a static setting, the model uses a notion of cooperative stability to predict balancing and bandwagoning behavior in alliance formation. When extended to a dynamic setting, changes to the system that result in alliance shifting may cause war. Additionally, alliance formation need not correspond to the static solutions, suggesting that the dynamics of power are as important as the distribution of power in alliance formation. / text

Master of Arts / Department of Security Studies / Carla Martinez Machain / BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Recent studies regarding war termination and the bargaining model of war focus on how belligerents use coercion to reach a war settlement, but neglect the importance of tactical decisions. Although strategies are the principal tool used to conduct war, only significant tactical achievements lead to significant strategic achievements. METHOD: In this paper I analyze the tactics employed in two case studies, the Second Boer War between Great Britain and the South African Boers and the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland. Using the bargaining model of war, I discuss two categories of tactics. Targeted tactics focus on destroying the enemy’s critical vulnerabilities and dislocating their strengths while minimizing one’s own vulnerabilities. Nontargeted tactics focus on centers of gravity, employing military strength in an effort to overwhelm enemy forces with superior resources and technology. RESULTS: I demonstrate that tactics have a marked impact on the duration and outcome of warfare and targeted tactics minimize the cost of fighting in order to achieve strategic objectives and increase the bargaining advantage. CONCLUSION: Targeted tactics are a significant tool in warfare that affect war termination and hold the potential to increase the bargaining advantage at a lesser cost.

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This thesis contributes to the cross-domain deterrence literature by examining how states use their various sources of power across its Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economic (DIME) instruments in order to determine the outcome of immediate deterrence stand-offs. With the increased complexities nation-states face in the 21st century, an update of the old framework was overdue. This study considers the Taiwan Strait Crisis and the Russian Invasion in Ukraine to expand the military-focused literature to incorporate all different sources of state power. This paper finds that cross-domain signals, through an interaction of the bargaining position and bargaining power, decide the outcome of immediate deterrence cases.

This thesis addresses two issues which arise in the context of airline revenue management. In the first part of the thesis, we develop an incentive mechanism to prevent revenue leakage caused by customers buying down. In the second part of the thesis, we discuss the revenue sharing problem between alliance partners and develop a mechanism by which the combined revenue can be distributed fairly among them. Situations which give rise to impossibility and possibility results are established. The practice of revenue management, employs the principle of differential pricing of a product based on various product restrictions. These product restrictions segment the market in such a manner so as to maximize the revenue. Airline industry which pioneered the practice of revenue management generally prices low for those who book early and high for those who book late for essentially the same seat. The low-fare products are targeted towards the market segment comprising of those customers who have a low valuation (reservation price) for the product (who are typically leisure customers, also called as low-fare customers).The high-fare product, on the other hand is targeted at the market segment comprising of customers who have a high valuation (reservation price) for the product (business class customers, also called as high-fare customers). However, it may happen that customers with high valuation for the product may also buy the low-fare product if it is available. This behavior of high-fare customers buying a low-fare product due to its availability is called the customer buy-down behavior. Such a customer behavior causes revenue leakage to the airline industry. Revenue management literature that primarily focuses on pricing and seat inventory control does not account for the customer buy-down behavior. In Part I of the thesis we address this issue of customer buy-down behavior. We develop an incentive mechanism in the form of a new product bundle which would attract only the high-fare customer. High fare customers such as business class customers typically have repeated travel plans, while low fare customers such as leisure travelers typically do not travel repeatedly. The proposed incentive mechanism takes advantage of this characteristic of high fare customers that distinguishes them from the low fare customers. In general, high fare product permits cancellation and does not impose any travel restrictions, and a low fare product, on the other hand does not permit cancellation and has other travel restrictions associated with them. A high fare customer with potential future travel plan might associate uncertainties with respect to travel dates and his ability to procure a low fare ticket for future travel. This uncertainty is exploited in the proposed product bundle. The new product bundle permits the customer to cancel the ticket for the future journey and relaxes the restrictions associated with the requested day and the future travel day. Such incentives would attract only the high fare customer and the low-fare customer will not be enticed by this product bundle. This is because the low fare customer is a one-off traveler. Thus, the acceptance of the product bundle by the customer reveals that he is a high-fare customer and its denial reveals that he is truly a low-fare customer. We determine the optimal price to be charged for each of the days (requested day and the future travel day) and the refund value for the future travel day. We find that multiple optimal solutions exist, and its existence indicate a win-win situation for both the customer and the seller. The customer benefits through the incentives offered and the seller benefits in the form of additional revenue that is achieved in the process of preventing revenue leakage. In Part II of the thesis, we discuss the revenue sharing problem between alliance partners of a network. Airlines form alliances and coordinate through activities such as code sharing, scheduling of flight arrival and departure times, arrival and departure gates, frequent flyer programs, airport lounges and ground facilities among several others. Code sharing is a key feature among the coordinated activities of alliance partners. Parallel code sharing refers to code sharing between carriers operating on the same route to increase frequency of services and to strengthen market position. Complementary code sharing refers to carriers using each other’s flights to provide connecting services, where they do not offer a full service on their own. The main objective of the complementary code share flights is to increase scope of the partner’s network, allowing them to supply service on markets where they did not operate before. When complementary code shared flights aim at maximizing their combined revenue, it might lead to inequitable distribution of revenue and may cause an alliance partner to lose revenue. In Part II of the thesis, we address this issue of achieving a fair division of the combined revenue generated by the alliance network. The common assumption in revenue sharing methods that are generally practiced is that airline’s valuation of seats in the alliance network is common knowledge. However, in reality it is not true. We therefore consider the valuations of the carriers of their respective products as private information and the price of the product over the entire network to be common knowledge. Under such an information environment, we formulate the problem in the bargaining framework. We discuss the implementation of two solution concepts; namely the Shapley value and the Core of a cooperative game. For the two person cooperative game, the Shapley value equally distributes the surplus among the two parties, while the core allocations of two person cooperative game consists of all possible proportions of the distribution of the surplus. In a bargaining set up, the parties communicate their valuations through sealed bids and agree upon a transfer rule. We analyze two situations. In the first situation we assume that the two parties do not associate any cost towards failure to arrive at an agreement. We determine the optimal bids for the two parties and prove that these optimal bids do not implement any desired point on the core i.e., desired proportion of the distribution of the surplus (which includes the Shapley value).This impossibility result motived the analysis of the second situation, in which we assume that the two parties associate costs towards failure to arrive at an agreement. We once again determine the optimal bids and prove that for a certain structure of the bargaining costs, any desired point on the core, including the Shapley value can be implemented by enticing the players to reveal their true valuations.

This dissertation examines why military decision makers struggle to evaluate their policies and why they often stick to unsuccessful strategies for so long. The core argument is that strategic assessment involves genuine analytic challenges which contemporary scholarship typically does not take into account. Prominent theoretical frameworks predict that the longer decision makers go without achieving their objectives, the more pessimistic they should become about their ability to do so, and the more likely they should be to change course. This dissertation challenges those ideas and explains why we should often expect the very opposite. The theoretical crux of this argument is that standard models of learning and adaptation (along with many people’s basic intuitions) revolve around the assumption that decision makers are observing repeated processes, similar to the dynamics of slot machines and roulette wheels – but in war and other contexts, decision makers often confront cumulative processes that have very different dynamics, along with a different logic for how rational actors should form and revise their expectations. Empirically, this dissertation examines U.S. decision making in Iraq, Vietnam, and the American Indian Wars. These cases demonstrate how cumulative dynamics affect strategic assessment and how understanding these dynamics can shed light on prominent theoretical frameworks, ongoing policy debates, and salient historical experience.

This dissertation consists of four chapters on the economics of marriage and divorce in Iran. The first chapter outlines major forces driving the recent transitions in Iran's marriage market. Age structure of the population, the rise of women's education, marriage and divorce laws, and fertility decline are the four main forces influencing marriage transitions, that is, the age of marriage, couple's age and education gaps, quality of marriage (stability, education status of children), and women's power within marriage. Chapter two looks at the change in age structure that influences the sex ratio. I consider the influence of the sex ratio on couples' age and education gaps using data from multiple national surveys from 1984-2007. The findings of this chapter show that a lower sex ratio, i.e. a greater supply of marriage-age women, increases the bargaining power of men at the time of marriage and thereby increases their ability to marry younger and more educated women. In chapter three, I evaluate the effects of demographic change, the sex ratio, and policy change, particularly the provision of family planning programs through health clinics on delayed marriage in rural Iran. I use data from Iran's 2000 Demographic and Health Survey to estimate a hazard model of timing of marriage. The results show that a lower sex ratio decreases the chances of a woman finding a man five years older, and easier access to family planning decreases her probability of marriage. In chapter four, I provide a legal history of Iran's marriage and divorce laws and then discuss how changes in the legal structure of marriage and divorce alter the terms of marital bargaining and force women to circumvent inequitable Iranian laws to improve their position. Then, I present a model of how Mahrieh could improve a woman's position within the household in light of the unequal divorce rights favoring men. As women cannot exit their marriage, they request a conditional and legally enforceable bond known as Mahrieh from their husbands to secure themselves against the risks of divorce or maltreatment within marriage. / Ph. D.

本文研究重點為探討跨國公司對在地國之影響，分析與比較俄羅斯天然氣工業集團(Gazprom Group)在烏克蘭與白俄羅斯兩國之議價關係。 Gazprom為全球壟斷性天然氣公司，在2006年冬季俄、烏天然氣談判破局而發生歐洲大規模斷氣事件後，其對在地國的特殊影響力才逐漸成為各界熱烈討論之議題。一般而言，在全球化下的跨國公司研究多半聚焦在跨國公司的經濟影響力，然而Gazprom在母國政府的支持下，在全球市場上除了經濟面外，還對其他國家發揮著政治面向上的影響力，特別是在烏克蘭與白俄羅斯的例子上格外明顯。學界目前對於Gazprom的主流評論認為Gazprom為母國外交工具，然而追溯Gazprom、在地國與俄羅斯三方之天然氣關係背景，發現Gazprom在烏、白兩國之作為不能單純將Gazprom設想為「母國外交工具」，Gazprom與兩國之天然氣衝突是俄羅斯政府「外交目標」與Gazprom「商業獲利」考量下之綜合結果；以Gazprom為主體方向下思考，對Gazprom來說，俄羅斯政府是企業對在地國的「產業政策影響工具」，更正確地來說，Gazprom與俄羅斯政府是屬於互相為用的關係。 為破除既定「外交工具」思考方向，本文採議價能力衰減模型(Obsolescing Bargaining Model)作為基礎研究架構，以Gazprom為研究主體，突破以往傳統上單層議價模型中只論跨國公司與在地國之議價過程，加入母國政府與在地國政府之議價關係，分析俄與烏、白兩國政府議價結果與Gazprom影響力之關聯，以貼合本文案例實際研究需要。 / This paper examines the impact of multinational corporations (MNC) on host country, analyzes and compares the two cases in Ukraine and Belarus of bargaining relations between Gazprom Group and host governments. Gazprom is a global natural gas monopoly, after the breakup of gas negotiation between Russia and Ukraine and cut-off of Russian gas to Europe, its special impact on host country has attracted people of all the different circles to discuss it. In most cases of globalization researches on MNC’s role, people concentrate on the economic impact of MNC; however, with the support from home government, Gazprom has shown not only its economic power, but also its political impact on host country, especially on Ukraine and Belarus. Till now, the academic circle has seen Gazprom as an instrument of Russian foreign policy, but after tracing back the historical background of gas relations between Gazprom, host country, and Russia, we can figure out Gazprom can’t be simply regarded as the policy instrument, in fact, the Russia-Ukraine and Russia-Belarus gas disputes between are the complex of Russian foreign policy consideration and Gazprom commercial actions. For Gazprom, Russian government is an instrument as well to influence host country’s policy in gas sector. More correctly, Gazprom and Russian government use each other for their own purposes. To break through the existing “instrument of foreign policy” research direction, this paper uses obsolescing bargaining model as the basic framework, regarding Gazprom as the main subject, changing the traditional one-tier bargaining model into two-tier, including bargaining relationship between home government and host government, then analyzes the correlation between the governmental bargaining results and Gazprom’s bargaining power for the practical case study needs.