University of Macau / Faculty of Law

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Government and Public Administration

This study builds an integrative framework to delineate the process of growing entrepreneurial firms in developing countries. Deriving from the existing entrepreneurship literature, this thesis uses two notions to delineate the process of growth of indigenous firms: entrepreneurial intent and entrepreneurial capability. Then, drawing on the literature of economic development, it identifies three key sectors, the state, the market and the social sector, that foster entrepreneurial intent and cultivate entrepreneurial capability. / The research setting is the information technology (IT) industries in China and Taiwan, each of which has had impressive performance when compared with their counterparts in other developing countries. This study differentiates the growth of entrepreneurial firms into three stages, getting started, getting there, and staying there, and proceeds to analyze the comparative-historical experiences of six IT firms, three in China and three in Taiwan. The firms in China are the Advanced Technology Service Division (ATSD), Lenovo Computer, and Great Wall Computer. The firms in Taiwan are United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), Acer, and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS). / It is found that at the stage of getting started, the government tends to be key among the three sectors, and can broadly influence the firms' entrepreneurial intent by building the national institution context, and more specifically through industrial policies. At the stage of getting there, the domestic social sector becomes more salient, and can transfer technology to entrepreneurial firms either from abroad or from their own research; they can also help defend entrepreneurial firms in intellectual property disputes with multinational firms. At the stage of staying there, due to their advanced technology, multinationals as forces in the market become more prevalent, and can enhance or destroy the capability of entrepreneurial firms. Overall, the state can act as context builder, champion and confronter; the social sector can play the roles of capability builder and capability defender, while the market, via multinational firms, can play the roles of capability destroyer and capability enhancer.

Over the past few decades, many countries have experienced a marked decline in the volatility of output. However, there is still a significant difference between developed and developing countries in the level of output volatility. A proposed explanation for this phenomenon is the impact of economic policies on output volatility in developing countries. The empirical results reported in this study support this view. Trade openness and discretionary fiscal policy seem to increase volatility in developing countries, while the converse is true in developed countries. Furthermore, a flexible exchange rate regime is desirable to decrease volatility. However, many developing countries still use fixed rates for reasons such as a fear of floating, which contributes to volatility. The impact of monetary policy was found to be stabilising, but this could be the result of a favourable global economic environment. It should be noted, however, that uncontrollable factors such as financial systems and institutions play a vital role in all the above relationships. / Economics / M.Com. (Economics)

No description available.

The focus of this thesis is the question whether or not the WTO discriminates unfairly against developing economies. In the absence of a test of guidelines for detennining unfairness or fairness of WTO provisions or Agreements has been drawn up using welfare economic and constitutional law principles as a foundation. Unfairness is therefore determined by asking whether the provisions of each Agreement are rational, proportional, efficient and whether they prevent the abuse of power amongst states. In addition, the economic effects of the provisions of the selected Agreements have been analysed to determine whether the relevant provisions are welfare enhancing and conclusive to promoting growth and development within developing economies. The Agreements chosed for analysis are the Agreements on Trade-related Investment Measures (TRIMS), Trade-related Intellectual Property (TRIPS), Agriculture and Services (GATS). The dispute settlement and negotiating process, labour standards and the impact of decreasing most-favoured nation rates on developing economy competitiveness is also discussed. Application of the test has shown that the WTO provisions do not reflect the interests of all members. Even though most member states are developing economies, the3 Agreements constantly cater foe developed country concerns and interests. Where provision is made for developing country interests, it is the LDC's who are favoured, with nonnal developing economies being bound by the same provisions as the developed economies. A fonnal, as opposed to a substantive, defmition has been adopted by the WTO, with a result that the process of equality is placed above the outcomes. While concessions have been made to development, members have not gone for enough. A main reason for the imbalance can be attributed to the negotiating process, which is based upon concessionary bargaining and trade-off. Those states with greater economic power are therefore at an advantage as they have the leverage needed to influence the outcomes of negotiations and hence the provisions of the various Agreements. Even with the LDC's, the WTO has been found to discriminate unfairly against developing economies because it does not adequately address developing country concerns. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

Submitted in fulfillment of the academic requirement for the degree Master of Engineering in Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2017. / Provision of microbiologically safe drinking water for people living in the rural areas of developing countries remains a major challenge to date. One of the reasons is due to the inability to access potable water mainly because of poor existing water purification systems. Current measures have been put in place to address the challenges of rural water supply. Development of appropriate technologies such as decentralized water treatment supply in the form of point of use (POU) systems are been considered. In lieu of the above, an appropriate POU system known as the Remote Rural Water Treatment System (RRWTS) was developed at Durban University of Technology (DUT). The RRWTS is polyester based locally sourced Woven Fabric Microfiltration (WFMF) membrane system. The unit is made up of flat sheet modules that are assembled into a pack. It is a robust gravity driven system with the ability to remove suspended solids and colloids in the form of turbidity. The system has high flux of 35 ± 7 LMH and turbidity below 1 NTU, it has the ability to remove pathogens well above 95%. However, this does not comply with WHO and SANS drinking water standards of zero E. coli count/100 ml of treated water. In order to bring the water treated by RRWTS to a satisfactory level for drinking, it is then necessary to add a separate disinfection step like chlorination step to further remove the remaining microbial contaminants. Thus the main objective of the study was to evaluate the disinfection efficacy of two disinfectants namely waterguard and bromochlor tablet disinfectants and investigate their integration with the WFMF membrane. The study was categorised into three parts. The first part is the addition of disinfectants to unfiltered river water sources for the determination of residual chlorine and the most optimum dose that will yield effective disinfection and also evaluate the extent of E. coli removal by the disinfectants. The second stage was the filtration of four river water sources using the woven fibre membrane (WFM) to determine the efficiency of WFMF. Finally the effect of disinfection kinetics on disinfection was achieved by agitating the water after disinfection and allowing it to stand at different contact times. Performance of the RRWTS was determined by the amount of E. coli and turbidity removed during filtration using WFMF and by chemical disinfectants after filtration. The results on residual chlorine for different water sources showed that feed quality and disinfectant dose determines the quantity of residual chlorine on all the water sources. The effectiveness of chemical disinfectants in E. coli removal is affected by the quality of water to be disinfected. The study showed that turbidity plays a major role on disinfection by increasing chlorine demand on water sources with high turbidity levels. The WFMF demonstrated excellent filtration performance by producing permeates with turbidity less than 1 NTU for feed turbidities ranging from 10 to 200 NTU. The E. coli removal efficiency by WFMF was very high on all the water sources treated. There was 95-99.8% E. coli removal on raw feeds with influent E. coli ranging between 500 and 44500 CFU/100 ml. It was seen that major benefits are derived from integrating the WFMF (RRWTS) with chemical disinfection. The benefits includes; better disinfection that meets drinking water set guidelines of zero E. coli and improved quality of water. The need for disinfection kinetics in order to obtain superior disinfection was eliminated. The possibility of disinfection-by-product formation was reduced as smaller quantities of chemical disinfectants were required for complete disinfection on the filtered water. / M

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to document seven selected sets of minimum housing design standards in two specific case locations, New Delhi and Madras, in India, and to evaluate criteria used for establishing these standards. A model of selected criteria from the different frameworks was then developed as part of an overall housing strategy. An integrated concept of housing as an environment, need, process and product was used as the basis of this study which was documented through review of literature and field research in India. The minimum standards were broadly classified as minimum space requirements, recommended building materials and general subdivision requirements. variations and ranges across the sets of standards were then tabulated to indicate the multiplicity of recommendati0ns, an initial premise of this study. Implications, based on broad premises, for future strategies in this field were developed. These suggestions were grouped into three clusters, namely, access to shelter by the abjectly poor, access to shelter by the low income groups in general and the restructuring of extant institutional and implementation frameworks. / Master of Science

Foreign aid is publicly motivated by a moral obligation to help the poor and develop underdeveloped countries. Donors have invested more than US$2.3 trillion in foreign aid, but despite this significant investment, 3 billion people are still living on less than $2 a day, 840 million are hungry, 10 million children die from preventable disease, and 1 billion adults are illiterate. This study focuses on the impact of foreign aid on economic growth and development of underdeveloped countries. It was found that many variables influence growth and development and that cross-country regression analysis is an inappropriate method to measure the effectiveness of aid. The methodology is too generalist, and treats foreign aid as a homogenous entity that works equally in all countries in all types of environment and across all times. There is an urgent need to develop a new methodology for measuring the effectiveness of foreign aid. / Development Studies / M. A. (Development Studies)