The purpose of this study is to investigate some widely-held assumptions regarding the value of diversification as an economic strategy. It has ofien been suggested that economic diversity enhances economic performance, either by promoting higher levels of economic well-being or by improving the ability of regions to cushion the adverse effects of economic cycles. This is the conventional wisdom, but it has not been adequately tested, although some attempts have been made to relate measures of diversity to other economic indicators (e.g., Rodgers, MacLaughlin, Conkling). The current study explores this particular issue, and the results obtained should be of interest to economists, regional scientists, and development planners and policymakers. Shannon's entropy function, applied to the distribution of employment in different economic sectors, was used as an index of diversity. This measure allows not only comparison of changes in diversity over time, but also, through its decomposition properties, a means of analyzing the nature of such changes. Economic performance was assessed in terms of unemployment and per capita income, considered in four ways: the level of the variable, its rate of change over time, the degree of instability of the level, and the degree of instability of its rate of change. Eight hypotheses were formulated and tested with data from the counties of Oregon for the ten-year period from 1972 to 1981. To provide a comparative perspective for the Oregon investigation, a U.S. study was also conducted for the same period. Calculations of both studies revealed diversity to be negatively but very weakly correlated with unemployment; the Oregon finding, however, did not quite satisfy the 5% significance standard used throughout this research. While a weak positive association was found between diversity and per capita income of Oregon counties, a larger negative association was observed between the two variables in the U.S. study. These results can be explained either as an effect of differing levels of geographic aggregation or in terms of differences among the particular specializations of low diversity counties and states. For Oregon, relations between the variables for nonrecession years were stronger than for recession years. The study further showed that diversified counties of Oregon were more stable in unemployment and per capita income and showed lower rates of growth of unemployment and higher rates of growth of per capita income than the more specialized counties. None of these associations, however, was particularly strong. For the U.S. study, no evidence was found for any relation between diversity and either growth rates or stability. In general, correlations between diversity and income-based measures were larger than between diversity and unemployment-based measures; also, percentage changes associated with differences in diversity were considerably greater for the income-based measures. Although expected patterns of relationship were thus found to hold, if weakly, for the counties of Oregon, comparison with the national study suggests that results may not be generalizable to other, especially larger, geographic units. Whether diversification is useful for regional development depends at least partially on the specific character of the industries in the region's economy.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Mémoire (M.E.R.)-- Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1983. / Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993.

Les Néotropiques représentent un réservoir exceptionnel de biodiversité mais l'origine de cette diversité ainsi que les patrons de diversification in situ restent peu compris. La compréhension des histoires évolutives des lignages commence par celle de leur phylogénie, et cela est souvent une étape critique. Sur la base de deux familles de plantes à fleurs tropicales : les Chrysobalanaceae et les Humiriaceae, nous avons mis en évidence l'utilité des génomes chloroplastiques complets dans la résolution de relations phylogénétiques particulièrement difficiles à inférer. Ces phylogénies ont permis une avancée des connaissances concernant l'histoire biogéographique de ces familles mais représentent surtout un cadre solide pour de futures études. L'approche développée devrait permettre d'éclaircir les relations phylogénétiques d'autres clades restées irrésolues jusque là. / The Neotropics represent a vast reservoir of biodiversity but the origin of this diversity and patterns of in situ diversification remain poorly understood. The understanding of evolutionary histories of lineages begins with the understanding of their phylogeny, ani this is often a critical step. On the basis of two tropical flowering plant families: the Chrysobalanaceae and Humiriaceae, we highlighted the usefulness of full plastid genomes to resolve phylogenetic relationships particularly difficult to infer. These phylogenies allowed to go further concerning the understanding of the biogeographical history of these families but represent, above all, a robust framework for future studies. The approach developed should allow to clarity phylogenetic relationships of other clades remained unresolved up to now.

In recent years, diversification has become a common strategy used by companies in emerging markets. It is believed that diversification operations could help firms get better performance and gain higher profits from a larger internal market. However, contradictory results reveal that diversification empirically hurts firm value and other studies show the relationship between diversification and firm performance is complicated that should be studied in separate industries. The opinion is inconclusive on this topic. This study developed a performance index to see how diversification impact on various perspectives of firm performance. Conclusions as follow. International diversification has a positive correlation with firm performance in several aspects whereas industrial diversification helps firms’ developing ability. However, due to the unavailability of long-term data, we can not rule out the possibility that well-performed firms go for international diversification. Besides, The relationship between diversification and firm performance affected by different industries. The agricultural and natural resource firms tend to exceed manufacturing firms in the efficiency aspects whereas manufacturing companies tend to have advantages in the sustainability aspect compared to service firms. There is also evidence showing that the largest shareholders’ holdings rates have a positive impact on firm performance and state-owned rate has a negative relation with firm performance.

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This thesis explores how, and to what extent, farm businesses are responding to changing demands on agriculture in terms of resource efficiency, entrepreneurship and understanding the role of soft technology in supporting these strategies. This is in response to a changing business environment which is challenging farming income streams and profitability. The research questions in this thesis are resolved by adopting a multi-method research strategy. This includes a survey of 738 Welsh Upland hill farmers from a population of 7,500, 10 semi-structured interviews and action research in the design, development and implementation of decision support systems. Together the methods address the issues of strategic stance, and technology adoption in agriculture. The study findings are intended to be useful for farm decision-makers, support and advisory bodies, and for informing policy in terms of farming approaches, technology infrastructure and farm resource management. The research outcomes presented in the main chapters provide, individually and in synthesis, a better understanding of farming strategies and the role of technology in assisting such strategies. Collectively, the multi-phased approach to the research topic identifies many important farm responses to the economic and political tensions facing agriculture. Farmers can decide on entrepreneurial and efficiency driven strategies whilst making the best use of resources and technology. The findings also show that the strategic objectives of farm decision makers are far more influential in technology adoption than the technology itself and therefore leadership and market maturity are key factors that must be considered as influencing the degree of technology adoption. Additionally, insights are provided regarding wider issues of ICT adoption amongst farmers with particular regard to barriers to technology adoption.

The objective of this study is to answer the following research question: How large is a diversified portfolio? Although previous work is abundant, very little progress has been made in answering this question since the seminal work of Evans and Archer (1968). This study proposes two approaches to address the research question. The first approach is to measure the rate of risk reduction as diversification increases. For the first approach, I identify two kinds of risks: (1) risk that portfolio returns vary across time (Evans and Archer (1968), and Campbell et al. (2001)); and (2) risk that returns vary across portfolios of the same size (Elton and Gruber (1977), and O'Neil (1997)). I show that the times series risk reaches an asymptote as portfolio size increases. Cross sectional risk, on the other hand, does not appears to reach an asymptote as portfolio size increases. The second approach consists of comparing portfolios' performance to a benchmark portfolio that is assumed to be diversified (Statman (1987)). I develop a performance index. The performance index is calculated, for any given test portfolio, as the ratio of the Sharpe-like measure of the test portfolio to the Sharpe-like measure of the benchmark portfolio that is assumed to be diversified. The index is based on the intuition that an increase in portfolio size reduces times series risk and cross sectional risk, and increases transaction costs. Portfolio size is worth increasing as long as the marginal increase in the performance index from a decrease in risk is greater than the marginal decrease of the performance index from an increase in transaction costs. Diversification is attained when the value of the index reaches one. The results of my simulations indicate that the size of a well diversified portfolio is at the very least 30. This number can be substantially higher if, for example, the investment horizon length, the benchmark portfolio, and/or the cost of investing in the benchmark portfolio are changed. The active diversification strategy considered in this study, which consists of optimizing randomly selected portfolios, does not seem to produce smaller diversified portfolios. This result supports the market efficiency hypothesis.

This work further elucidates processes involved in promoting and sustaining evolutionary diversification within the gall-inducing thrips that specialise on Australian Acacia. A phylogenetic approach was taken to determine modes of diversification available to these insects. The extension and revision of the gall-thrips phylogeny is central to the work and primarily focuses on cryptic populations of the Kladothrips rugosus and Kladothrips waterhousei species complexes. Parallel diversification, where the radiation of the K. rugosus and K. waterhousei lineages broadly mirror one another, offered a rare opportunity to test hypotheses of coevolution between gall-thrips and their Acacia hosts. In the absence of a reliable host Acacia phylogeny, indirect inference of insect/plant cospeciation can be arrived at as these two complexes share the same set of host species. The expectation is that if the phylogenies for the gall-thrips complexes show a significant level of concordance, then cospeciation between insect and host-plant can be inferred. Results indicate that the K. rugosus species complex comprise populations at species level. A significant level of phylogenetic concordance between the two species complexes is consistent with gall-thrips lineages tracking the diversification of their Acacia hosts. Given the less than strict form of insect/host cospeciation, factors impacting host diversification become important to gall-thrips diversification. Gall-thrips radiated over a period during the expansion of the Australian arid-zone. Cycles of host range expansion and fragmentation during the Quaternary could have played a major role in gall-thrips diversity. An interesting feature of resourse sharing amongst the K. rugosus and K. waterhousei complex members is the apparent absence of competitive exclusion between them. The persistence of this sympatry over millions of years is an unusual feature and merits further investigation.