In this dissertation the technical efficiency in gold mining is investigated. To the best available knowledge, this is the first such study on gold mining, whether on a localised (one country) or for a cross-section of countries. Since the work by Farrell (1957), much work has been done using nonparametric methods such as DEA. Although extensions in DEA technique, such as bootstrapping have been available for some time, their use has been limited in comparison with the number of overall DEA studies carried out. In this dissertation both DEA and bootstrap DEA are applied to two gold mining cross sectional samples, one on Zimbabwe consisting of thirty-four mines, and the an international one which also included some Zimbabwean mines which comprise fifty-nine observations. The main reason for carrying out the study is an interest in gold mining in general and its importance to Zimbabwe in particular. As will be noted in Chapter 2, the economic development of Zimbabwe has been linked, to a varying extent over the ages, to its growth of the gold mining sector. The results of the dissertation provide some useful insights into the relative performances of gold mines and also some characteristics of the Zimbabwean gold mining sector. The main results indicate that gold mining is characterised mainly by technical efficiency dominating scale efficiency. This is particular relevant when the Zimbabwean mines are compared with their international counterparts. Zimbabwean mines are found to be relatively technically efficient but less so when overall efficiency is considered. In fact they have the lowest overall efficiency scores in the international sample. The results also indicate that mines from the so-called developed mining economies, Australia, Canada, the US and South Africa are the benchmarks in terms of optimal operations. It is mines from these countries which define the overall efficiency frontier. The results of both the samples highlight potential shortcomings in applying DEA and bootstrap extension to gold mining, both for single country and for cross-country cases. Additionally, there are possibilities, with adequate data, of relating country-specific characteristics to differences in overall efficiency among countries. Finally there are indications that including mineralogical factors such as the recovery rate in the production technology has an effect on technical efficiency. Mines with low recovery rates tend to exhibit comparatively higher technical efficiency. The study does have some limitations, mainly because of lack of data. In particular, there were problems in coming with attributing the contribution of capital services to efficiency with the result that a different measure for the flow of capital services is used for each sample. In addition, the two samples are for different time periods. This limits comparative analysis.

An increasing number of organisations are attempting to enhance their pool of available talent as there has been a shrinking pool of potential effective key leaders. Organisations are interested in developing and further enhancing their leaders to boost their efficiency and effectiveness in order to retain a competitive edge. Therefore, this thesis seeks to identify the extent of the capacity gap in leadership, determine the key competencies required in leaders that are influenced by personality and recommendations for averting a capacity gap in the banking industry in Malaysia. Prior research has demonstrated the beneficial consequences of leadership attributes. However, with the recent financial turbulence and economic meltdown, the subject of leadership has become an intense area of discussion in many fields, such as business, industry, government and even education. As a result, major changes in the way leadership is perceived, sustained and developed are required to understand leadership complexity. The emergence of such leadership, in contrast, has received less scholarly attention, particularly in the banking industry in Malaysia. To address these issues, the personality traits (Big Five Personality Model), Competencies (Great Eight Competency Model) and Leadership Styles (Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire) to transform average leaders to good/effective leaders in the banking industry of Malaysia are examined. This study, with a sample of 150 leaders, first revealed that the personality of introverted leaders who prefer to be modest, silent and approachable is more appropriate than that of extroverted leaders. These introverted leaders tend allow followers to be more open to discuss issues and bring about changes. Secondly, in terms of competencies, it was found that important competencies such as ‘leading and deciding’; ‘supporting and cooperating’; and ‘interacting and presenting’ are lacking in leaders. Thirdly, transformational leadership style appears to be positively related to personality but transactional leadership style did not show any relationship with personality. More specifically, the transformational leadership style was shown to make a major contribution, in contrast with previous studies, where it favoured females rather than males gender. In addition, sub-attributes of transformational leadership style showed that males are more effective than females in terms of ‘idealised influence’ and ‘intellectual stimulation’, while the reverse is the case for the sub-attributes of inspirational motivation’ and ‘intellectual consideration’. Importantly, the study reveals that in order for females to be visible and successful in senior level management or as CEOs, these sub-attributes of ‘idealised influence’ and ‘intellectual stimulation’ have to be enhanced in order for them to be seen as role models, to outshine males’ gender, and to be effective leaders. These findings confirm the crucial role of minimising the leadership capacity gap in building, maintaining effective leaders and developing a pool of potential leaders within the banking industry. In sum, this thesis provides empirical evidence for minimising the leadership capacity gap. It also builds new theory to further advance these areas of research. Thus, the thesis contributes to a better understanding of the development of effective leadership for the banking industry in Malaysia. It indicates important directions for future research and outlines practical recommendations on how to nurture personality traits, competencies and leadership styles.

This study explored how Indonesian voters’ perceptions about trust have changed over time and what factors affect their trust in the context of transitional democracy. This study identifies the antecedents of trust in the context of electoral behaviour in democratic transition in Indonesia and extends Dermody and Hanmer-Lloyd’s model of electoral behaviour (Dermody and Hanmer-Lloyd, 2005a; b), which seeks to explain the relationship between trust and electoral behaviour. An intergenerational perspective was used in this study to compare and contrast the differences between parents who are familiar with the previous political system and children who have only been exposed to a new democratic system. This study provides an empirical model of trust in electoral behaviour based on the grounded theory approach involving 32 voters who are parent-child pairs. This model operationalizes the antecedents of trust, distrust, and the relationship between trust and electoral behaviour. This study identified that trust falls into two categories, namely trust in political system and trust in political candidate. The results of this study indicate in Indonesia parents have adapted to the new political system well; however young people, in line with extant literature, remain cynical about the political system and political candidates. This study contributes to operationalize trust in electoral behaviour and argued that trust is crucial for engagement in electoral behaviour in a transitional democracy. For policy maker, reducing distrust in political system is very important to develop a healthy democracy whilst for politicians they need to have a good characteristic and capabilities to ensure that the political candidates are elected.

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This thesis presents an exploratory analysis into the communicated and lived accountability practices of Muslim charity organisations in the UK, utilising Suchman’s perspective on legitimacy and the Islamic theoretical framework. Communicated accountability was explored by examining the extent to which Muslim charity organisation’s [MCO’s] trustee annual reports [TARs] comply with the narrative elements of the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) 2005 through a comparative analysis with the TARs of Christian charity organisations [CCO]. 123 CCO TARs and 238 MCO TARs were analysed. This part of the research sought to understand how MCOs managed their pragmatic legitimacy. Findings from this stage of the study suggest CCOs and larger charities of both groups of RCOs provide more disclosure and better quality TARS, RCOs do not disclose the whole range of accountability as required by the SORP framework, none of the MCOs provided any disclosure in relation to how their zakah or waqf funds have been distributed and there was evidence of complacency by external examiners and account preparers. Lived accountability was explored using a qualitative approach. Interviews with 18 trustees, senior executive, management and charity personnel of the eight largest MCOs in the UK were undertaken. This stage of the research sought to understand how MCOs enacted accountability to achieve moral and cognitive legitimacy. It was found that functional accountability of MCOs and the subsequent moral legitimacy was linked to two core areas of accounting and auditing, and governance and oversight. A number of aspects were identified which either drove or impeded accountability in MCOs. Islamic religious values were found to be important aspects helping MCO members navigate cognitive legitimacy. This study provides a unique lens through which the theoretical analysis of accountability within religious organisations and charity organisations can be extended.

This thesis attempts to empirically investigate the different factors that have relation with the adoption, use and success (Dependent variables) of Internet Banking (IB). It extended the previous marketing literature and TAM model by investigating different factors that might have relationship with the adoption and use of the IB. In addition to that, and since the success of IB has not been found in the reviewed literature, this study introduces the success variable following the DeLone and McLean (2003) IS success model. This thesis responds to several researchers’ calls by conducting an investigation in Saudi Arabia (SA), where it has special socio-economic motives and social values such as Islamic Banking (IsB). The data of this study were collected through a survey (postal questionnaires), sample (n=1000), which has been conducted randomly using SA’s Residential Telephone Directory. A total of 228 usable questionnaires were returned (22.8% response rate). The data were analysed using descriptive statistics method, and a factor analysis was also used to classify the variables into a set of dimensions. Moreover, multiple regression analysis was performed to test the research hypotheses. As a result, the researches’ models of adoption, use and success have shown high, good and fair prediction powers (R²=62%, 39.4% and 30%, respectively), which are comaparable to other studies in the area. The research findings suggest that awareness, resistance to change, satisfaction, perceived ease of use, self-efficiency, high cost, availability of IsB services online, and income (independent variables) were affecting the IB customers’ adoption, use and success in different degrees. The awareness and self-efficiency of the IB were found to significantly affect the adoption of IB, whereas self-efficiency and satisfaction “convenience” significantly affect the use of IB. However, frequency and wide range of the used IB services, satisfaction “time saving and customers’ needs fulfilment”, income and the availability of IsB services were found to also affect the success of the IB services. Surprisingly, the research findings indicate that security does not contribute significantly to the adoption, use, and success of IB services and that is due to some reasons which is recommended for future studies. It is also essential to highlight that IB customers’ satisfaction was found to be a very significant factor in motivating the new adopters to use the services frequently, which will lead to a successful competitive performance. This thesis concludes with implications for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in addition to research limitations and recommendations for future studies.

This study aims to advance empirical research in the realm of the use of professional online communities for knowledge sharing. Use of these communities is likely to be influenced not only by social factors but also by cognitive and technological factors. Hence, drawing upon theoretical and empirical foundations and contextually relevant previous research, three theoretical frameworks were developed and applied, in which relational factors (trust), individual factors (knowledge/system self-efficacy), and technological factors (system quality and content quality) were integrated together with the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to examine the use of professional online communities to acquire/provide knowledge among professionals. To test these theoretical models, an online web-survey was administered to 366 members of eight professional communities in Egypt. Employing covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM), the results of this study confirmed that professional online communities have emerged as an essential channel to facilitate knowledge sharing among professionals. Performance expectancy and personal outcome expectancy were found to be the strongest determinants of professional online community use. Relational capital - trust - was found to be a significant predictor of usage behaviour. However, for members who used the community for knowledge provision, trust was found to have a stronger influence than was perceived trust on using the community for knowledge acquisition. For members who used the community for knowledge acquisition, effort expectancy and social influence revealed significant effect, in contrast to members who use the community for knowledge provision. Regarding the hypotheses common to both use behaviours, the findings demonstrated some significant differences. Content quality, for example, seemed to have a clearly stronger influence on trust than system quality in all models. Content quality showed stronger effect on trust for using professional online communities for knowledge provision than using for knowledge acquisition, while system quality was found to be a stronger predictor of trust in the use for knowledge acquisition. For effort expectancy, system quality tended to have a stronger influence than system self-efficacy in all models; however, the influence of system quality on effort expectancy tended to be more important when online communities are used for knowledge acquisition. As for moderating effects, the influence of performance expectancy on use for knowledge acquisition and the influence of personal outcome expectancy on use for knowledge provision were found to be moderated by users’ gender (stronger for men) and age (stronger for younger users), while the influence of performance expectancy on use for knowledge acquisition was found to be influenced by users’ experience (stronger for less experienced users).

This thesis presents three papers on fiscal policy. The first paper "Macroeconomic impacts of fiscal policy shocks in UK; a DSGE analysis" (joint with Keshab Bhattarai) uses an estimated new-Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to analyse the effects of fiscal policy in the UK. We show that positive shocks in government consumption and investment result in the highest stimulus in the short term, whereas the capital tax cut and the positive public investment shock in the longer horizon. On the government’s expenditure side public investment remains the most stimulating instrument even if we allow for a constant elasticity of substitution index of private and public consumption in utility. We also find that, the nominal and real frictions present in the model tend to influence stronger the level of labour and capital tax multipliers and less public expenditure multipliers. The second paper "Credit constraints, the housing market, and fiscal policy" investigates the effects of fiscal policy in an estimated new-Keynesian open-economy DSGE model with a housing market and indebted households. We show that house prices drop following a negative shock to government transfers, and a positive shock to public spending, public investment and taxes. The results reveal that the financial deregulation increases the sensitivity of fundamentals to fiscal policy. In particular, in the case of a stimulus, the financial deregulation contributes to a weakening of multipliers in the case of government consumption and investment and tends to improve multipliers for public transfers and tax cuts. The third paper "Who is afraid of austerity? The redistributive impact of fiscal policy in a DSGE framework" (joint with Richard McManus and Gulcin Ozkan) explores the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity using a medium scale new-Keynesian DSGE model with a richly specified fiscal sector. We show that agents who are credit constrained are most exposed to austerity in contrast to agents with full access to financial markets. This is particularly true in the case of rises in taxes on labour income and cuts in transfers. In general, tax based consolidations exhibit more conflict than spending based ones. Our results also reveal that the distributive impacts of fiscal consolidations are amplified the longer the austerity persists; the slower the policy reversal and when monetary policy reaches its zero lower bound.

In light of the new Basel Capital Accord, Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) play a fundamental role in the economic performance of major economies. Several lending communities proposed to treat SMEs as retail clients to optimize capital requirements and profitability. In this context, it is becoming critically important to have a detailed understanding of its risk behavior for appropriate pricing of credit risk. Thus, this thesis presents four essays on SMEs insolvency risk starting from chapter 3 through chapter 6 that investigates different dimensions of their default risk. My first essay makes distinction among SMEs that report operating cash flow and those which do not while modeling their default risk. However, I do not report any significant improvement in model’s classification performance when operating cash flow information is made available. Similarly, my second essay considers domestic and international SMEs separately while modelling their default risk and report almost identical classifications performance of the models’ developed for both the groups. The third essay compares the default risk attributes of micro, small and medium-sized firms respectively with SMEs. Test results suggest significant difference in the default risk attributes of only micro firms and SMEs. On a different line, my fourth essay deals with the methodological issues that have been witnessed recently in the bankruptcy literature that use hazard models for making bankruptcy predictions. This essay highlights the critical issues and provides appropriate guidance for the correct use of hazard models in making bankruptcy predictions. Here, I also propose a default definition for SMEs which considers both legal bankruptcy laws and firms’ financial health while defining the default event. Empirical results show that my default definition performs significantly better than its respective counterparts in identifying distressed firms with superior goodness of fit measures across all econometric specifications. Detailed abstract of respective essays are as follows. Evidence pertaining to SMEs financing strongly motivates me to believe that firms which are unable to generate sufficient operating cash flow (OCF) are more susceptible to bankruptcy. However, the role of OCF in bankruptcy of SMEs lacks empirical validation. Thus, my first essay (chapter 3) investigates the role of operating cash flow information as predictors in assessing the creditworthiness of SMEs. One-year distress prediction model developed using significant financial information of United Kingdom SMEs over a period of 2000 to 2009 confirm that the presence of operating cash flow information does not improve the prediction accuracy of the distress prediction model. My second essay (chapter 4) considers domestic and international small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of the United Kingdom separately while modelling their default risk. To establish the empirical validation, separate one-year default prediction models are developed using dynamic logistic regression technique that encapsulates significant financial information over an analysis period of 2000 to 2009. Almost an identical set of explanatory variables affect the default probability of domestic and international SMEs, which contradicts the need for separate default risk models. However, the lower predictive accuracy measures of the model developed for international SMEs motivate me to compare the weights of regression coefficients of the models developed for domestic and international firms. Test results confirm that four out of the nine common predictors display significant statistical differences in their weights. However, these differences do not contribute to the discriminatory performance of the default prediction models, given that I report very little difference in each model’s classification performance. A huge diversity exists within the broad category of Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). They differ widely in their capital structure, firm size, access to external finance, management style, numbers of employees etc. Thus, my third essay (chapter 5) contributes to the literature by acknowledging this diversity while modeling credit risk for them, using a relatively large UK database, covering the analysis period between 2000 and 2009. My analysis partially employs the definition provided by the European Union to distinguish between ‘micro’, ‘small’, and ‘medium’ sized firms. I use both financial and non-financial information to predict firms’ failure hazard. I estimate separate hazard models for each sub-category of SMEs, and compare their performance with a SMEs hazard model including all the three sub-categories. I test my hypotheses using discrete-time duration-dependent hazard rate modelling techniques, which controls for both macro-economic conditions and survival time. My test results strongly highlight the differences in the credit risk attributes of ‘micro’ firms and SMEs, while it does not support the need to consider ‘small’ and ‘medium’ firms’ category separately while modelling credit risk for them, as almost the same sets of explanatory variables affect the failure hazard of SMEs, ‘small’ and ‘medium’ firms. My fourth essay (chapter 6) considers all serious and neglected concerns while developing discrete and continuous time duration dependent hazard models for predicting failure of US SMEs. I compare theoretical and classification performance aspects of three popular hazard models, namely discrete hazard models with logit and clog-log links and the extended Cox model. I report that discrete hazard models are superior to extended Cox models in making default predictions. I also propose a default definition for SMEs which considers both legal bankruptcy laws and firms’ financial health while defining the default event. My empirical results show that my default definition performs significantly better than the default definitions which are only based on legal consequence or firms’ financial health in identifying distressed firms. In addition, my default definition also shows superior goodness of fit measures across all econometric specifications.

This study investigates the implications of the asymmetric information between managers and shareholders and the resulting costly agency problems. In doing so, it focuses on the heterogeneity of executive directors with respect to their trading behaviour and personal characteristics, and the corporate governance mechanisms which can help lessen the adverse effects of the manager-shareholder agency conflicts. The study recognises that executive directors cannot be treated as a homogenous group and their incentives and the ability to impact decisions differ significantly. Two top executive directors are considered throughout this study, namely Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Finance Officers (CFOs). In this study, we address several important research questions. First, we consider whether executive directors have an informational advantage over outsiders. Second, we address if the heterogeneity of directors with respect to their role in the company and personal characteristics matters. Third, we examine whether internal corporate governance mechanisms play a significant role in moderating the manager-shareholder agency problem. Last but not least, we investigate if the nature of the interactions between asymmetric information, agency issues and corporate governance change during and after the global financial crisis of 2007-08. In carrying out our empirical analysis, we employ a unique dataset on the UK nonfinancial firms during the sample period 2000 to 2010. The detailed information about the corporate governance structure of firms and the personal characteristics of CEOs and CFOs enable us to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the research questions outlined above for three distinct periods, namely the pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis periods. Our analysis shows that the position that directors hold in the company and their characteristics can help explain the subsequent market-adjusted returns on insider trading. We find that the returns to insider purchase transactions are generally positive. However, they are weaker in the longer term, possibly suggesting that the informative content of director trades is less significant than it is perceived by the market. The main finding of our analysis in relation to the link between insider trading and the probability of bankruptcy is that insider trading increases the predictive power of insolvency models. This study also reports that CEOs exert a greater influence on the leverage decision than CFOs in firms that seem to operate under their optimal leverage. However, we observe that the CFO’s characteristics become more significant in determining leverage after the recent financial crisis. Overall, the analysis of this study provides strong evidence for the view that the presence of asymmetric information between insiders and outsiders and the costly manager-shareholder agency conflict are central to our understanding of the corporate finance decision making process and its consequences. However, more importantly, the findings of this study provide a relatively new notion that considering the heterogeneity of top executive directors in the empirical analysis of corporate decisions is essential, especially in exploring modern corporations.