This thesis is a multidisciplinary analysis of Arab regional integration using the neo- functionalist and transactionalist approaches to integration. Neo-functionalism analyses the process of integration in the Arab World by studying the role of regional institutions including the league of Arab States and three Arab joint ventures. The transactionalist approach examines the impact of regional trade on political and economic integration in the Arab Mashreq. The analysis of the Arab joint ventures is taken further by using elements of business and finance theories. It is conducted on two different levels: the first analyses the operational and financial performance of these ventures. The second examines their role in promoting regional integration especially in the sectors concerned. The analysis is intended to find out whether these ventures were commercially viable or were more politically inspired. Qualitative information was collected from conducting constructive interviews with Arab economists, politicians and managers of the Arab joint ventures examined. The quantitative data was collected from recognisable resources including the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and the Arab Monetary Fund. The problems encountered in this thesis resulted from the application of these theoretical approaches to integration, which are designed to study integration in politically developed societies with more advanced economies. However, the choice is justified since there are no alternatives. Secondly, the data on trade and Arab joint ventures may not be completely accurate since it does not record all transactions. The thesis concludes the following: at the political level, regional institutions did not promote Arab integration since they lacked aspects of supranationality and collective decision-making processes. Also, they did not affect the Arab elite's attitudes and could not initiate a viable process of integration that would spill over from one sector to another. At the economic level, the low level of regional trade in the Arab Mashreq did not prevent the occurrence of many attempts at Arab integration. Moreover, the Arab joint ventures were more politically inspired than commercially. Although they were more resilient to economic and political instability in the Arab World, their role in promoting regional integration was limited.

The feature of Yiwu economy lies in the commodity wholesale market, which was founded in 1982. After over-20 years¡¦ development, Yiwu has formed a market system characterized by China Small Commodity City as the centre, as well as a range of supplementary factor markets such as transportation,property right, labor force, etc.. This thesis primarily concentrates on studying the economic development of Yiwu. How does the process of transforming form a traditional market fair to an international wholesale market city? Why does the wholesale industrial clusters in this city? What is the advantage of wholesale industry in Yiwu? The local government of Yiwu plays a considerable role in the process of developing economic by means of appropriate policy and privatized The Zhejiang China Small Commodities City Group, cultivating an environment for wholesale commodities trading center.

The first essay of this dissertation analyzes the claim that a Marshallian total surplus optimum characterizes a second-best Pareto optimum in a general equilibrium model with price makers. The main result of this essay is that a Marshallian total surplus optimum corresponds to a second-best Pareto optimum when (i) the consumer's preferences are quasi-linear with respect to a numeraire, and (ii) for all other markets except the one under consideration, first-best (or Paretian) optimality conditions are satisfied. The second essay characterizes the optimal regulatory policy for point-source pollution emissions when firms are competing in Cournot fashion in the product market and have private information about their own cost. It is shown that the optimal regulatory policy benefits from the strategic interaction between the firms in the output market even though the firms' private information is uncorrelated. The firms strategic interaction in the output market acts as an information correlation externality that mitigates the wellknown "rent-extraction efficiency" trade-off. Each firms' opportunity to over-report their costs is reduced because the output market's strategic interaction reduces the profitability of infra-marginal units if they do. The main result shows that optimal environmental regulations discriminate between firms of given industry. Moreover, it is shown that if the regulator believes that firm A is always more likely to be efficient than firm B (in the sense of first-order stochastic dominance) and that both firms are equally efficient ex post, then firm A faces a higher marginal tax than its competitor. In light of this result, it is argued that the model provides theoretical foundations for grandfather clauses in environmental regulations.

The first essay of this dissertation analyzes the claim that a Marshallian total surplus optimum characterizes a second-best Pareto optimum in a general equilibrium model with price makers. The main result of this essay is that a Marshallian total surplus optimum corresponds to a second-best Pareto optimum when (i) the consumer's preferences are quasi-linear with respect to a numeraire, and (ii) for all other markets except the one under consideration, first-best (or Paretian) optimality conditions are satisfied. The second essay characterizes the optimal regulatory policy for point-source pollution emissions when firms are competing in Cournot fashion in the product market and have private information about their own cost. It is shown that the optimal regulatory policy benefits from the strategic interaction between the firms in the output market even though the firms' private information is uncorrelated. The firms strategic interaction in the output market acts as an information correlation externality that mitigates the wellknown "rent-extraction efficiency" trade-off. Each firms' opportunity to over-report their costs is reduced because the output market's strategic interaction reduces the profitability of infra-marginal units if they do. The main result shows that optimal environmental regulations discriminate between firms of given industry. Moreover, it is shown that if the regulator believes that firm A is always more likely to be efficient than firm B (in the sense of first-order stochastic dominance) and that both firms are equally efficient ex post, then firm A faces a higher marginal tax than its competitor. In light of this result, it is argued that the model provides theoretical foundations for grandfather clauses in environmental regulations. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

Le téléphone portable va au-delà de ses fonctions premières de communication en intégrant des fonctions de paiement. Cette thèse propose une analyse économique des principaux enjeux du paiement mobile ; elle tente d’expliquer les causes de retard de cette technologie, ses difficultés d’émergence, d’envisager certaines pistes à même de modifier les trajectoires. Tout d’abord la technologie doit se stabiliser, offrir un service unique et interopérable pour tenter de faire émerger un réseau d’utilisateurs suffisant. L’analyse de l’environnement juridico-financier du m-paiement, technologie à mi-chemin entre la téléphonie et l’activité bancaire, a été nécessaire. La suite de la thèse est consacrée à une analyse orientée d’abord vers le consommateur puis évolue vers une analyse des relations entre fournisseurs de service. Un chapitre est consacré à l’élaboration d’un modèle empirique analysant les motifs et modalités d’adoption des utilisateurs, en fonction de la forme de la technologie mais aussi en fonction de l’usage de cette technologie. Enfin, les deux derniers chapitres sont consacrés à la modélisation des relations possibles entre fournisseurs de service. Ces deux chapitres présentent plusieurs modèles permettant de comprendre les atouts multiples mais aussi les limites du paiement mobile dans un environnement bancarisé. Ils proposent aussi un scenario explicatif du succès des solutions de m-paiement en pays émergent. Ils mettent ainsi en évidence l’intérêt du point de vue de la bancarisation de ces zones, de la présence d’offres coopératives mais surtout et paradoxalement de solutions simplifiées gérées par les opérateurs seuls. / Mobile phone overtakes its first communication functions including payment functions. This thesis proposes an economic analysis of the key issues of mobile payment, it attempts to explain the reasons of the delay and its difficulties to emerge. First technology must stabilize, offer a unique and interoperable service to try to bring out a sufficient network of users. The analysis of the legal and financial environment of m-payment technology halfway between telephony and banking was necessary. The rest of the thesis is devoted to an analysis oriented to consumer then progresses to an analysis of the relationship between service providers analysis. A chapter is devoted to the development of an empirical model analyzing the reasons and conditions of user's adoption. Finally, the last two chapters are devoted to the modeling of possible relationships between service providers. These two chapters have several models to understand the many advantages but also the limitations of the mobile payment in a banked environment. They also offer an explanatory scenario to the success of m- payment solutions in emerging countries. And they highlight the interest from the point of view of banking services in these areas, the presence of co-offers, but especially and paradoxically solutions managed by operators.

My doctoral thesis “Essays on Lifetime Uncertainty: Models, Applications, and Economic Implications” addresses economic and mathematical aspects pertaining to uncertainties in human lifetimes. More precisely, I commence my research related to life insurance markets in a methodological direction by considering the question of how to forecast aggregate human mortality when risks in the resulting projections is important. I then rely on the developed method to study relevant applied actuarial problems. In a second strand of research, I consider the uncertainty in individual lifetimes and its influence on secondary life insurance market transactions. Longevity risk is becoming increasingly crucial to recognize, model, and monitor for life insurers, pension plans, annuity providers, as well as governments and individuals. One key aspect to managing this risk is correctly forecasting future mortality improvements, and this topic has attracted much attention from academics as well as from practitioners. However, in the existing literature, little attention has been paid to accurately modeling the uncertainties associated with the obtained forecasts, albeit having appropriate estimates for the risk in mortality projections, i.e. identifying the transiency of different random sources affecting the projections, is important for many applications. My first essay “Coherent Modeling of the Risk in Mortality Projections: A Semi-Parametric Approach” deals with stochastically forecasting mortality. In contrast to previous approaches, I present the first data-driven method that focuses attention on uncertainties in mortality projections rather than uncertainties in realized mortality rates. Specifically, I analyze time series of mortality forecasts generated from arbitrary but fixed forecasting methodologies and historic mortality data sets. Building on the financial literature on term structure modeling, I adopt a semi-parametric representation that encompasses all models with transitions parameterized by a Normal distributed random vector to identify and estimate suitable specifications. I find that one to two random factors appear sufficient to capture most of the variation within all of our data sets. Moreover, I observe similar systematic shapes for their volatility components, despite stemming from different forecasting methods and/or different mortality data sets. I further propose and estimate a model variant that guarantees a non-negative process of the spot force of mortality. Hence, the resulting forward mortality factor models present parsimonious and tractable alternatives to the popular methods in situations where the appraisal of risks within medium or long-term mortality projections plays a dominant role. Relying on a simple version of the derived forward mortality factor models, I take a closer look at their applications in the actuarial context in the second essay “Applications of Forward Mortality Factor Models in Life Insurance Practice. In the first application, I derive the Economic Capital for a stylized UK life insurance company offering traditional product lines. My numerical results illustrate that (systematic) mortality risk plays an important role for a life insurer's solvency. In the second application, I discuss the valuation of different common mortality-contingent embedded options within life insurance contracts. Specifically, I present a closed-form valuation formula for Guaranteed Annuity Options within traditional endowment policies, and I demonstrate how to derive the fair option fee for a Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefit within a Variable Annuity Contract based on Monte Carlo simulations. Overall my results exhibit the advantages of forward mortality factor models in terms of their simplicity and compatibility with classical life contingencies theory. The second major part of my doctoral thesis concerns the so-called life settlement market, i.e. the secondary market for life insurance policies. Evolving from so-called “viatical settlements” popular in the late 1980s that targeted severely ill life insurance policyholders, life settlements generally involve senior insureds with below average life expectancies. Within such a transaction, both the liability of future contingent premiums and the benefits of a life insurance contract are transferred from the policyholder to a life settlement company, which may further securitize a bundle of these contracts in the capital market. One interesting and puzzling observation is that although life settlements are advertised as a high-return investment with a low “Beta”, the actual market systematically underperformed relative to expectations. While the common explanation in the literature for this gap between anticipated and realized returns falls on the allegedly meager quality of the underlying life expectancy estimates, my third essay “Coherent Pricing of Life Settlements under Asymmetric Information” proposes a different viewpoint: The discrepancy may be explained by adverse selection. Specifically, by assuming information with respect to policyholders’ health states is asymmetric, my model shows that a discrepancy naturally arises in a competitive market when the decision to settle is taken into account for pricing the life settlement transaction, since the life settlement company needs to shift its pricing schedule in order to balance expected profits. I derive practically applicable pricing formulas that account for the policyholder’s decision to settle, and my numerical results reconfirm that---depending on the parameter choices---the impact of asymmetric information on pricing may be considerable. Hence, my results reveal a new angle on the financial analysis of life settlements due to asymmetric information. Hence, all in all, my thesis includes two distinct research strands that both analyze certain economic risks associated with the uncertainty of individuals’ lifetimes---the first at the aggregate level and the second at the individual level. My work contributes to the literature by providing both new insights about how to incorporate lifetime uncertainty into economic models, and new insights about what repercussions---that are in part rather unexpected---this risk factor may have.