by Chan Yiu Keung, Victor. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990. / Bibliography: leaves 77-78. / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.i / LIST OF CHARTS/TABLES --- p.ii / LIST OF APPENDIX --- p.iii / CHAPTERS / Chapter 1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1-5 / Chapter 2 --- HISTORY OF THE HONG KONG DOMESTIC CAPITAL MARKET --- p.6-13 / Chapter 3 --- CAPITAL MARKET INSTRUMENTS --- p.14-23 / Chapter 4 --- HOW THE MARKET HAS STARTED TO BOOM --- p.24-32 / Chapter 5 --- DIFFICULTIES IN STEPPING FURTHER --- p.33-39 / Chapter 6 --- RECENT DEVELOPMENT --- p.40-42 / Chapter 7 --- DEMAND FOR CAPITAL MARKET INSTRUMENTS 一 INVESTORS' RISK --- p.43-52 / Chapter 8 --- DEMAND FOR CAPITAL MARKET INSTRUMENTS - INVESTORS' RETURN --- p.53-56 / Chapter 9 --- SUPPLY OF HONG KONG DOLLAR CAPITAL MARKET INSTRUMENTS --- p.57-65 / Chapter 10 --- CONCLUSION --- p.66-69 / FOOTNOTES --- p.70-72 / APPENDIX --- p.73-76 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.77-78

In recent years the rapidly growing Chinese real estate market has attracted the attention of investors from all over the world. Foreign investments in China, however, could be risky and difficult to be undertaken. This study investigates the opportunities and barriers that foreign real estate developers may experience in China. First, the features and the governmental role in the local real estate market are introduced. Next, the typical activities of a real estate investment are analyzed. Two US and Chinese cases are presented and compared. Lastly, opportunities and barriers to foreign investors are introduced and discussed. The study, in addition, contains some recommendations that are drawn from past successful foreign real estate investments.

This dissertation examines metropolitan areas subject to exclusive cruising regulations which prevent taxis affiliated with one city from picking up passengers in other neighboring cities. It examines the regulatory structure that evolved in North America, compares exclusive cruising regulation to a combined regulatory regime, and proposes a market-based mechanism to improve upon existing regulations. The first chapter examines the evolution of regulation of the taxicab industry in different metropolitan areas in North America. It provides an explanation for the prevalence of price and quantity regulations at the local level, and why the industry remains heavily regulated despite numerous attempts at deregulation. The second chapter theoretically investigates the efficiency of exclusive cruising regulation when there are multiple exclusive cruising locations in close proximity. Conventional wisdom suggests it is better to operate a combined regulatory regime, thereby eliminating the empty return trips that occur under exclusive cruising regulation. Under combined regulation, however, drivers have an incentive to be in the location with the highest expected revenue. It is shown that this can undermine regulators' control over the allocation of taxis across disparate locations, outweighing losses from empty return trips. In such situations exclusive cruising regulation would be preferred to combined regulation. When locations are sufficiently similar, it is shown that combined regulation will be preferred to exclusive cruising. The third chapter proposes a regulatory exchange market as an alternative to existing regulatory structures. The proposed mechanism maintains separate affiliations, but allows taxi drivers to exchange the right to pick up passengers in each others' affiliated location by participating in a bilateral market. In this market, taxis can exchange the right to pick up passengers in each others' affiliated locations, for a price paid by market participants affiliated with one location to those affiliated with the other location. It is shown that such an exchange market can be designed to achieve superior outcomes to both exclusive cruising regulation and combined regulation modes. We describe situations where the regulatory exchange market cannot be dominated by any other conceivable regulatory mechanism.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays on agricultural incentives, risk, and rural labor markets. Chapter 1 empirically estimates the effect of agricultural price support policies on crop choice and input (mis-)allocation, with important implications for spillover effects to other sectors. Agricultural price support policies are a popular way to alleviate the risk inherent in volatile prices, but, at the same time, may distort input allocation responses to agricultural productivity shocks across multiple sectors. This could reduce productivity in the agricultural sector in developing countries. I empirically test for misallocation in the Indian agricultural setting, with national price supports for rice and wheat. I first motivate the setting using a two-sector, two-factor general equilibrium model and derive comparative statics. I then use annual variation in the level of the national price supports for rice and wheat relative to market prices, together with exogenous changes in district-level agricultural productivity through weather shocks, in a differences-in-differences framework. I derive causal effects of the price supports on production patterns, labor allocation, wages, and output across sectors. I find that rice area cultivated, rice area as a share of total area planted, rice yields, and rice production all increase, suggesting an increase in input intensity (inputs per unit area) dedicated to rice. Wheat shows a similar increase in input intensity. The key input response is a reallocation of contract labor from the non-agricultural sector during peak cultivation periods, which results in an increase in wages in equilibrium in the non-agricultural sector (especially in response to price supports for the labor-intensive crop, rice, of 23%). The reallocation of labor reduces agricultural productivity by 82% of a standard deviation, and simultaneously reduces gross output in non-agricultural firms by 2.6% of a standard deviation. I also find that rice- and wheat-producing households do not smooth consumption more effectively in response to productivity shocks in the presence of price supports. Chapter 2 (with Emily Breza and Supreet Kaur) demonstrates the influence of collective action - specifically, through social sanctions imposed by informal labor unions - on labor supply in rural labor markets. A distinguishing feature of the labor market is social interaction among co-workers---providing the ingredients for social norms to develop and constrain behavior. We use a field experiment to test whether social norms against accepting wage cuts distort workers' labor supply during periods of unemployment. We undertake our test in informal spot markets for casual daily labor in India. We partner with 183 existing employers, who offer jobs to 502 randomly-selected laborers in their respective local labor markets. The job offers vary: (i) the wage level and (ii) the extent to which the offer is observable to other workers. We document that unemployed workers are privately willing to accept work at wages below the prevailing wage, but rarely do so when this choice is observable to other workers. In contrast, observability plays no role in affecting take-up of jobs at the prevailing wage. The consequences of this behavior are substantial: workers are giving up 38% of average weekly earnings in order to avoid being seen as breaking the social norm. In a supplementary exercise, we document that workers are willing to pay to punish anonymous laborers who have accepted a wage cut. Costly punishment occurs both for workers in one's own labor market, and for workers in distant other labor markets---suggesting the internalization of norms in moral terms. Our findings support the presumption that, even in the absence of formal labor institutions, collusive norms can constrain labor supply behavior at economically meaningful magnitudes. Chapter 3 investigates how households use engagement in criminal activity to smooth consumption in the face of agricultural risk. About 400,000 barrels of oil are stolen per day in the Niger Delta region. Much of this oil is stolen by militia groups with the help of local youth (who have the requisite knowledge about the terrain and placement of the pipelines). I use exogenous variation in households' access to oil pipelines, together with local shocks to agricultural productivity (both self-reported and due to variation in rainfall) to show that a proxy for theft from oil pipelines increases in the vicinity of households located close to pipelines that suffer unanticipated crop losses. This coincides with non-food expenditure-smoothing for these households (relative to households that are far from pipelines). Finally, I look at heterogeneity by household characteristics to identify households that are more likely to be affected by agricultural shocks or more likely to be targets for militia recruitment - households with young unemployed men and young men who are not in school, and households that lack financial infrastructure in their vicinity (which I take to be a proxy for a household's ability to access credit when faced with economic shocks). The findings from this paper suggest that there is potential for large spillover savings - in terms of reducing theft of oil from pipelines - for any policy that provides credit or other kinds of risk-mitigation mechanisms to households.

This research contributes to the much-debated literature existing on the relationship between the economy, merger and acquisitions (M&A), and investors’ behaviour by empirically examining the relationship between aggregate M&A transactions, Real GDP and the stock market in the top nine countries with respect to M&A activity globally from the period 1999-2018. Interestingly, according to the cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity tests conducted, the research finds that when a specific country's stock market, Real GDP or M&A activity is affected or influenced in some way, this may also have an affect or influence on the other countries considered in this research as well. Each of the nine countries have some common economic characteristics. Additionally, each country has its system with reference to how the stock market index(s), economic activity and M&A activities influence each other and operate individually. This indicates that an economic relationship between the variables in one country may not be replicated by the others. Furthermore, in a country-by-country causality analysis using the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) approach, the research finds considerable evidence in support of the behavioural school of thought where investors’ behaviour and M&A activity seem to influence each other. Out of the nine countries investigated, six countries support the behavioural school of thought, i.e., show strong to moderate causality between M&A activity (number or value) and stock market price index. On the other hand, with reference to the neoclassical theory, surprisingly, there seems to exist a relationship between M&A activity and economic activity where M&A activity (number or value) leads economic activity in two out of the nine countries investigated. Finally, the research also suggests that economic activity seems to have an impact on how investors behave in six out of the nine countries investigated.

Thesis (doctoral) - Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-234)

<p>"Effects of Changes in the Unemployment Insurance Eligibility Requirements on Job Duration — Swedish Evidence"</p><p>This paper investigates the impact of the unemployment insurance (UI) entrance requirement on employment duration among earlier unemployed in Sweden. I exploit changes in the rule taking place in 1994 and 1997 to study behavioural adjustments in the timing of job separation between 1992, 1996, and 1998. Performing across-year analyses, I find evidence of clustering of job exits at the time of UI qualification. By using predicted hazard rates for each week, I calculate an approximate 2.9-week extension in average employment duration between 1996 and 1998 due to the 5-week prolonging of the entrance requirement.</p><p>"Job-search Assistance Using the Internet – Experiences from a Swedish Randomised Experiment"</p><p>This paper reports the experience from a randomised experiment offering voluntary job-search assistance on the Internet to job seekers at Swedish public employment offices. The purpose is to, i) investigate to what extent the evaluation design manages to avoid common difficulties in experimental evaluation, ii) assess the effect of the programme on the employment outcome, and iii) use the nonbiased experimental results as a benchmark evaluating the performance of frequent nonexperimental estimators. I find that the evaluation design successfully circumvents inherent difficulties in the experimental approach, such as ethical concerns, bureaucratic behaviour and randomisation bias. However, the voluntariness of the programme caused severe compliance problems in terms of both no-shows and dropouts. This is accounted for by analysing the effect of the “intent-to-treat” (the policy parameter of most interest), which is close to zero. Studying the effects of various doses of actual treatment, using an nonexperimental instrumental variable model, I fail to reject the hypothesis of a zero programme effect. Finally, a methodological comparison suggests that standard nonexperimental techniques succeed in reproducing the nonbiased experimental results.</p><p>"Are there Pre-programme Effects of Swedish Active Labour Market Policies – Evidence from Three Randomised Experiments"</p><p>This paper takes advantage of unique experimental data from three demonstration programmes in 2004 to investigate pre-programme incentive effects of active placement efforts at the employment offices in Sweden. The exit rate from unemployment between referral to and start of the programme services is compared between UI eligible experiment and control group members. The results are mixed. In one of the experiments, targeted towards a broad group of UI receivers, arranged job-search activities in groups combined with increased monitoring of job-search efforts generated a 38 per cent increase in the escape rate from unemployment in the weeks leading up to programme start. This translates into an almost two-week reduction of the ongoing UI spell. Referrals to increased monitoring alone did not have the same effect on exit behaviour. In the other two experiments, targeted towards youth and highly educated respectively, referrals to active placement efforts had no effect on the pre-programme outflow.</p>

No description available.

<p>Syftet med denna studie är att öka förståelsen för hur värderingar kan användas som styrmedel och dessutom klarlägga dess fördelar och nackdelar sett ur ett medarbetarperspektiv. Vi kommer i vår undersökning ta reda på vilken funktion värderingarna har på ett företag och dessutom undersöka hur de anställda på företaget upplever användandet av värderingar. Eftersom syftet med undersökningen är att öka vår förståelse för fenomenet värderingar valde vi att använda oss av en kvalitativ metod. Studien är gjord på ett företag i tjänstesektorn som vill vara anonymt, och vi har sammanlagt genomfört sju intervjuer, där en av intervjuerna hölls med en representant från ledningen. Genom att diskutera och resonera kring ämnet värderingar har respondenterna hjälpt oss att svara på våra frågeställningar som vi presenterar i olika kategorier som urskiljt sig ur vårt insamlade material. Slutligen diskuterar vi själva resultatet och presenterar de slutsatser vi kommit fram till. Syftet med denna studie är att öka förståelsen för hur värderingar kan användas som styrmedel och dessutom klarlägga dess fördelar och nackdelar sett ur ett medarbetarperspektiv. Vi kommer i vår undersökning ta reda på vilken funktion värderingarna har på ett företag och dessutom undersöka hur de anställda på företaget upplever användandet av värderingar. Eftersom syftet med undersökningen är att öka vår förståelse för fenomenet värderingar valde vi att använda oss av en kvalitativ metod. Studien är gjord på ett företag i tjänstesektorn som vill vara anonymt, och vi har sammanlagt genomfört sju intervjuer, där en av intervjuerna hölls med en representant från ledningen.Genom att diskutera och resonera kring ämnet värderingar har respondenterna hjälpt oss att svara på våra frågeställningar som vi presenterar i olika kategorier som urskiljt sig ur vårt insamlade material. Slutligen diskuterar vi själva resultatet och presenterar de slutsatser vi kommit fram till.</p>