This study investigates the potential role of ownership structure as a determinant of the corporate dividend policy. A firm's dividend policy is modelled as the outcome of a voting game among groups of asymmetrically informed shareholders, who also have different marginal tax rates for dividend income. The outcome of the voting game is determined by the relative voting powers of these shareholder groups. Voting power is denned as the probability that a particular block of shares will be pivotal in determining the outcome of the voting game. Using Shapley values as instruments for shareholder groups' voting powers, data on firms which traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange during the 1976-88 period are employed to test the model's predictions. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The U.S. airline industry's experience under a regime of deregulation, as well as the potential forms of strategic interaction in a duopoly are examined in order to determine what strategies Canada's two major carriers should adopt in the deregulated Canadian airline industry. The following recommendations are made to Air Canada and to Canadian Airlines International regarding price, service, and network strategies. First, the carriers should strengthen their hub and spoke operations (i.e. by further consolidating feeder carriers, and offering a high quality of service network-wide). Second, the airlines should strive to control costs (i.e. by reducing labour and fuel costs, while capitalizing on the potential economies of scope attainable through international operations). Finally, the carriers should apply their marketing expertise (i.e. by continuing to develop their yield management systems and frequent flier programs, as well as adopting innovative, new pricing strategies). / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

A continual problem in Canadian politics is regional conflict. There are several reasons why the major issues in Canadian politics are regionally-defined. Some of the socio-economic variables include ethnicity and economic bases, which are reinforced by geography. Some of the political variables include the division of powers between the central and provincial governments, and the regional concentration of party representation in the central government legislature. At the level of the electorate, Canada's national political parties actually receive multi-regional support. Thus, introducing an electoral system that translates votes into seats more proportionately than the present system should increase the multiregional representation of Canada's political parties at the level of seats in the legislature. However, introducing a more proportional electoral system would probably decrease the likelihood of a party forming a majority government. Consequently, if Canada's legislators felt that executive stability through majority government was a more important normative criterion (along with whatever vested interests they might have) than a government with multiregional representation, then proposals for a more proportional electoral system will remain an academic exercise. The objective of this study was to find an alternative electoral system which satisfies both the criteria of majority government and multiregional representation. Based on the premise that the most significant independent variables affecting majority government and multiregional representation are district magnitude and geographical distribution of partisan support, it was hypothesized that Increasing the district magnitude from one to two, or from one to three, would maintain the bias in favour of and increase the multiregional representation of a large, diffuse party. The results of the study show that a district magnitude of two would provide a large diffuse party with a majority of seats for the same voter support as the present system does. In addition, DM2 rewards this large diffuse party with the seats necessary to form a minority government at a much lower voter support level than does the existing system. Thus, DM2 solves the problem of underrepresentation of regions in the government party, and is at the same time even more advantageous to a large diffuse party than is the present electoral system. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this thesis was to develop a model that would demonstrate whether the government of Canada can effect an independent, or partially independent long-term interest rate policy with respect to the United States. The theoretical analysis of the economics resulted in four distinct equations for long-term interest rate determination; two for each of a closed economy model and an open economy model. The first equation for the closed model relates long-term interest rates to the rate of change of money supply, government expenditure and inflation. The second equation replaces government expenditure with unemployment, all other variables remaining the same. The variables of the two equations for the open economy were identical with those of the closed model. However, the open economy had values of the dependent variable which were the difference between the Canadian and U.S. long-term interest rates and values for the independent variables which were the differences between the Canadian and U.S. values of the rate of change of (for the first equation) money supply, inflation and government spending and (for the second equation) money supply, inflation and unemployment. Quarterly data were used over 92 periods from 1953 to 1975 inclusive with money supply and government spending being corrected for inflation. The long-term interest rate were government bond yields of ten years and over; the money supply were the sum of demand deposits plus currency held outside the banks; the government spending were total federal government expenditures and; the inflation rate were the gross national expenditure deflator. The equations were analysed using a routine which combined the Almon lag technique with the Cochrane-Oreutt method of regression. This allowed a selection of the lag length and the degree of the polynomial of the equation. In all of the equations in this paper the lag length is four periods and the degree of the polynomial is two. For the closed economy model the results showed the expected signs (money supply and unemployment negatively related, and inflation and government spending positively related), with few exceptions, the most notable being a negative government expenditure in the first lag period. The values of the coefficients indicated that inflation was the greatest influence on long-term interest rates, money supply and unemployment having a much smaller influence,and government expenditure having almost no affect over the four lag periods. The open economy model results showed the expected signs for the coefficients with a similar exception to the closed model. The value of the coefficients indicated that the inflation differential of the two countries was the greatest influence on the long-term interest rate differential with the money supply differential second, unemployment differential third and government expenditure differential having almost no explanatory power. Money supply differential had four significant lag coefficients indicating a divergence between monetary policy of Canada and the U.S. (whether intended or not). It appears from the results that although the U.S. largely controls Canada's long-term interest rate, Canada has the ability, whether it is used or not, to control part of its long-term interest rate. The differential of Canada and the U.S's rate of change of inflation, money supply and unemployment all influence the level of long-term interest rates. The control of these variables is the key to the government's control over the long-term interest rate. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1997. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 397-423). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ27314.

Privatization of federal correctional services in Canada is extensive. It has gained considerable momentum since the present Conservative government came into power in 1984. Privatization has allowed the government to cut costs, but has not addressed the underlying issue: the high rate of delinquency. The author argues that, in the future, correctional services will not be purely private, but neither will they be wholly public. Correctional services and the operational aspects of corrections will involve a mix of the public and private sectors. Privatization will have its largest impact on concrete auxiliary services of the Correctional Service of Canada; to a lesser degree it will have an impact upon all or most post-release programmes. However, privatization should not affect penitentiaries that are classified as medium security and higher.

The links between national identity and the music industry in Canada are too diverse to be understood with any simplistic model of the nation. In early twentieth century Italy Ahtonio Gramsci examined the consumption of serialized stories written by foreigners. He developed a view of popular culture which focussed upon the role of the State in maintaining national unity. Since the federal State in Canada has intervened in the country's music business in recent years, Gramsci's schema provides us with a useful framework for that case. Moreover, his work avoids an orchestrated view of the nation or a narrow specification of the contents of culture. It allows us to take a view that Canadian culture is whatever Canadian's choose to write. Due to its inductive beginnings and theoretical shortcomings, the schema is not applied rigidly to music made by Canadians. Rather it has been kept on the sidelines to explore representations of Canadian music, the broadcasting, sound recording and concert promotion industries, and finally the future of music made in Canada. Gramsci's schema is one way to distinguish between the cause and uses of the nation in particular arguments. His ideas also explain why popular culture matters, without specifying its content or giving it artificial coherence. A framework is provided which admits that, in a society based upon exchange, the nation is fully implicated within a wider social fabric, so frequently cultural differences cannot be simplistically aligned with national borders. It allows us to reject essentialist nationalism and therefore the possibility of using the nation as a reason to suggest Canadian musicians are falling short, by not doing something different from their foreign counterparts. In its place the schema enables us to celebrate Canadian artists for what they have done in contributing to a wider sphere, and allows us to praise environments in which Canadian talent can be recognized and allowed to grow, whatever forms it takes.