"June 2002" / Bibliography: leaves 172-198. / viii, 198 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Proposes that the overall outcome of plant interactions along a temporal gradient of resource availability changes from positive during interpulses to negative during pulses. Examines negative interactions between 4 co-dominant chenopod scrubs in arid Acacia papyrocarpa woodlands. Negative interactions were more intense when conditions were least productive. Positive interactions between seedlings also changed over time, depending on the facilitation mechanism. Plant interactions seem to be most intense at the beginning of interpulses when plants are competing for diminishing water, or survivorship is enhanced in the favorable microsites provided by other plants. Later in the interpulse, interactions become less intense as conditions become more stressful and therefore survivorship and growth are affected more by abiotic conditions than plant interactions. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Environmental Biology, 2002

<p>This study describes the behavior of four important international construction companies within the Czech construction market. The chosen companies are following: SKANSKA CS, STRABAG, HOCHTIEF CZ and OHL ZS. The theoretical part of this paper dissertates about various methods suitable for market analyses, such as strategic maps or Porter´s diagram and foreign market entry modes in general. </p><p>The practical part begins with the general description of the Czech construction market and its history. The SWOT analysis of the Czech construction market also anticipates the future development of the Czech construction market in following five years.</p><p>The next chapters are devoted to the detailed description of chosen companies. The history and profile of the chosen international concerns and of the traditional Czech companies are described in this chapter. This part also characterizes the takeovers of Czech companies by international concerns of SKANSKA CS, STRABAG, HOCHTIEF CZ and OHL ŽS and their following development on the Czech construction market.</p><p>From the detailed description, economic data with the most predicative significance were chosen. This data was subsequently compared in the penultimate part of the study. The Economic data such as sales, profit, return on sales, number of employees, sales on employee and growth of the companies are significant for the comparison. The graphs clearly show the development of the companies since 2000.</p><p>The results of the analyses are concluded in the last chapter, which also contains a suggestion for the possible future research.</p>

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This study provides the model that first synthesizes strategic group theory with the New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) approach in the international trade analysis, and uses the annual group data (1953-1988) from the U.S. brewing industry with two strategic groups (national producers and regional producers) in the presence of growing import competition. The main goal of study is to examine the impact of import and strategic group competition on strategic group behavior and market power in the U.S. brewing industry. Using the conjectural variation technique under the profit maximization assumption, the model estimates directly conjectural elasticities and the Lerner indexes incorporating firm behavior in competing with rivals from imports, and inside and outside each strategic group. The thesis shows the main following conclusions. Inside the group, national and regional brewers behave like Bertrand-type competitors and regional firms are more competitive than national firms. In the cross-group rivalry, national firms expect a cooperative response from regional brewers and regional firms expect an aggressive response from national producers. Holding possibly a sufficient niche market, import competition does not affect the behavior and market power of national and regional producers. As for over-all behavior, neither national nor regional firms behave like price-takers. National firms exert a significantly higher degree of market power than do regional firms, the market power of which appears to be harmed by national brewers. However, an average brewer exercises no market power in the industry as a whole. / Graduation date: 1997

Finding an explanation for the rise and persistence of European unemployment has been one of the main research programmes of labour economists during the last decade. In this doctoral thesis, we contribute to this literature by questioning the causes of unemployment persistence in Belgium. To that purpose, we conduct an in-depth econometric analysis of the flows out of unemployment in this country. In Chapters 2 and 3, we study the behaviour of the exit rate out of unemployment over duration and calendar time. In Chapter 3, we investigate whether this behaviour differs according to the place of living and the skill level, as measured by the level of education. Finally, in Chapter 4, we determine to what extent the divergences in the rate of flowing from unemployment between workers with different levels of education can be explained by a skill mismatch phenomenon and/or by a job competition story. By refining the causes of unemployment persistence in Belgium, our doctoral research also contributes to the design of more effective labour market policies.

The thesis contributes to the study of the relationship between competition and incentives, when asymmetric information is taken into account. Our main focus is the analysis of loan relationships. The first two chapters analyze the relationship between borrowers' financial constraints and endogenous fluctuations. We try to provide a potential departure from the traditional corporate finance theories by showing that the characteristics of firms' capital structure (i.e. their debt-to-equity ratio) can be affected by macroeconomic conditions. We construct a dynamic economy with asymmetric information in the credit market. The features of optimal securities issued at equilibrium are influenced by macroeconomic conditions. As a by-product, the debt-to-equity ratio in the overall economy will evolve according to the dynamics of aggregate variables. The remaining of the thesis develops a theoretical analysis of credit relationships where multiple financiers compete over the loan contracts they are offering to entrepreneurs-borrowers. To this extent, Chapter 3 proposes a unified framework to analyze the so-called literature on competing mechanisms and provides new results in terms of characterizing the equilibria of multi-principal multi-agent games. In the specific context of common agency games, we show that the introduction of a separability requirement on agent's preferences with respect to the contract offers she receives from principals is a sufficient condition to retrieve the Revelation Principle. Importantly, no restriction on principals' preferences is introduced. Chapter 4 investigates credit market relationships when competing lenders are explicitly considered. A reformulation of the traditional credit channel of Monetary Policy is then suggested. When lenders are strategically competing on their credit contract offers, positive-profit equilibria typically arise. Our analysis considers both the exclusive case and the non-exclusive one and it argues that monetary factors may affect the real sector mainly by modifying the structure of markets. The last chapter discusses the welfare implications of contractual externalities that arise in the presence of multiple financiers. We consider a scenario where a Social Planner is subject to the same informational constraints faced by principals in a simple model of the credit market. We identify conditions that sustain constrained-efficiency of market equilibria.

The interaction between optimal contractual design and macroeconomic aspects of economic systems is a sensitive issue for contemporary economics, in particular within the framework of the incentive theory. Information problems are crucial for incentives. Typically, in the credit markets lender-borrower interactions are affected by incentive problems and financial intermediation can be helpful. This work deals with financial markets, contracts and asymmetric information, with particular attention on how incentives and competition model the structure of the credit markets when the entrepreneur can simultaneously contract with more than one lender. In these cases we examine the implications of strategic competition on contracts among loans suppliers. Dealing with economies affected by information incompleteness or imperfection, competition on contracts delivers externalities among the players in the credit markets that can be responsible for inefficient outcomes. The issue of whether there could be any welfare-enhancing role of policy intervention, to improve on market outcomes is also analyzed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2007. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2004. / Supervisors: Milena M. Head, Yufei Yuan. Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-144). Also available via World Wide Web.

Savannas comprise over one eighth of the world's land surface with some 50 Mha in North America alone. They are productive systems supporting a high level of both faunal and floral diversity and are of increasing socioeconomic importance. The maintenance and formation of savannas have been attributed to climate, soils, herbivory and fire. However, the reasons for the coexistence of trees and the grass layer have still to be determined. These two contrasting life forms create a complex of intra- and interspecific positive, negative, and neutral interactions, few of which have been quantified. Under lower-than-average rainfall, tree effects on grasses in a Prosopis savanna in northern Texas were largely neutral with few measurable competitive or facultative effects from the tree canopy. However, grasses demonstrated increased productivity where belowground competition with neighboring trees was removed. Similarly, tree growth increased following the removal of grasses under and around individual trees, particularly on shallower soils, but only during a season of significant precipitation. Low intensity burning of grasses enhanced growth of adult trees, but patterns were inconsistent between two different sites. Moderate clipping around individual trees had no apparent effect on tree growth. Intraspecific competition between savanna trees was not evident, but may have been blurred by an extensive, lateral distribution of near-surface roots. Overall, tree intraspecific competition was neutral regardless of soil depth, suggesting lateral tree roots may be only used opportunistically. Although some competitive relationships were verified, the differences in the responses between the two years of study, and at different sites indicated that soil depth and climate may have overriding impacts on tree-grass interactions and savanna dynamics in this system.