Marine reserves have increasingly been recognised for their potential to address the pervasive problem of unsustainable harvest of fisheries worldwide. Biologists advocate the benefits of increased spawning biomass, larger modal sizes and greater densities of fish within marine reserves, and the possibility of spillover to adjacent fishable areas. Bioeconomic studies, however, find that pay-offs from stand-alone marine reserves rarely compete with sustainable yield management schemes, but that they can be beneficial when stocks are heavily exploited. Most of these bioeconomic models are analytical and deterministic in nature, and therefore ignore the redistribution of effort in response to closure and the inherent uncertainty of the marine environment. We present a bioeconomic analysis of a network of no-take areas around Stewart Island in New Zealand applied to the shellfish species paua (abalone) that incorporates both predicted redistribution and reduction in effort, as well as stochastic recruitment. A nested logit model is applied to spatially recorded catch and effort data by the Ministry of Fisheries between 1998 and 2003 to capture the two level decision-making process of divers. On any given day, divers decide whether to go diving at all, and if so, which of the 16 statistical areas around Stewart Island to visit. Weather conditions, spatially varying levels of catch per unit of effort and distance are used as explanatory variables to select areas for closure according to the �least economic impact� in terms of loss of diving trips. An age-structured biological model is developed with parameters specifically applied to paua stocks around Stewart Island. Virgin paua biomass as of 1974 is estimated on the basis of growth, survival, post-larval recruitment and egg production in the absence of fishing. Historic catch rates are then applied to find overall and area-specific levels of exploitation rates, spawning biomass, egg production, legal biomass and numbers of paua. In a final step, the economic model is linked to the biological model to simulate the imposition of no-take areas when taking account of the initial disproportional shift of harvest to fished areas in the first year, and the increase in overall pressure on legal biomass in the years thereafter. We contribute to the marine reserve debate by showing that in the very long run, the overall yield under closure of a relatively small area approaches and even slightly surpasses the yield under no closure for an assumed spillover gradient of 40% despite the redistribution of effort. The most important benefits of marine reserves emerge when stochastic recruitment is included in the recruitment function. In practice, predictions about the stock status and the impact of different harvest levels become much more difficult when acknowledging the inherent variability of the marine environment. The likelihood of stock collapse depends on the assumed value of two recruitment parameters, which highlights the effects of parameter uncertainty and emphasizes the role of marine reserves for population persistence. We also show that under uncertainty average yields under a management regime of a network of no-take areas in addition to the quota system can equal yields under no closure for an assumed spillover gradient of 40%, despite the increased pressure on areas adjacent to the closed areas. Our findings have significant implications for the management of the paua fishery at Stewart Island. For a heterogeneously abundant species, such as paua, spatial management in addition to quota limits could be vital in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the fishery given the inherent variability of the marine environment.

Traditional financial theories see capital structure as a result of mainly financial, tax and growth factors (Modigliani & Miller, 1958). But corporate governance theories (Jensen & Meckling, 1976) and business strategy theories (Barton & Gordon, 1988) suggest that ownership structure and ownership concentration, product diversification and asset specificity may also influence capital structure. Focusing on the examination of the determinants of capital structure in Chinese listed companies, this research goes beyond financial factors and considered business strategy and corporate governance approaches, and their impact on capital structure, in a transitioning Chinese context where institutions, expertise and regulatory processes are different to, but converging on, Western approaches. A panel data set of 1,098 Chinese listed companies for the period of 1991 to 2000 was collected from published sources, and conventional and innovative econometric methodologies were used to model a range of relationships between capital structure and its financial and non-financial determinants. The statistical approaches used in this study included Ordinary Least Squares Model and also Linear Mixed Model, which is a powerful tool to examine panel data where independence of explanatory variables is not assumed. The analysis also involved Hox’s model building procedures to measure model fit. The capital structure of listed companies in both the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Securities Exchange is positively related to a firm’s tax rate, growth and capital intensity and negatively related to a firm’s profit and size. Other financial factors such as tangibility, risk and duration are non-significant. The capital structure of listed companies, particularly in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, is positively related to product diversification and negatively related to asset specificity. The capital structure of listed companies in the Shanghai Securities Exchange is positively related to government ownership and ownership concentration of the largest shareholder and negatively related to legal person ownership and ownership concentration of the ten largest shareholders. The data and modelling support financial and non-financial determinants of capital structure. In particular, information asymmetry, business diversity and asset specificity have a significant impact on capital structure. In addition the empirical work in the study supports agency cost explanations of debt and equity. Finally the research demonstrates that the two main financial markets in China, Shenzhen and Shanghai, have operated differently but are converging towards a common norm. The research contributes to the general field of capital structure and provides valuable insights into the nature of the Chinese firm and the evolution of the Chinese financial system. / Doctor of Philosophy

The Dirty Faces game requires players to perform iterative reasoning in order to arrive at equilibrium play. The game is dominance solvable with a unique equilibrium when it is correctly specified. The particular payoff structure has significant implication on whether the reasoning process leads to equilibrium play. This paper illustrates that the traditional specification - as used by Weber (2001) - leads to multiple equilibria and the game loses its dominance solvability. We modify the payoff structure and restore uniqueness. The resulting game, which is dominance solvable, is implemented in an experiment to test the depth of iterative reasoning in humans. Our data analysis suggests that some deviation from equilibrium play is due to limited depth of iteration. Additionally, we find evidence that the lack of confidence in other players’ iterative abilities also induces deviations from equilibrium play. / Thesis (M.Ec.) -- School of Economics, 2007

Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2007.

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Agricultural Economics. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Göteborg University, 2004. / "Essays include applications of the existing DEA (Data Envelopment Agency) toolbox on real world datasets"--P. iii. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed April 6, 2006). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-206).

No description available.

This thesis studies the emergence of financial exposures between banks and introduces a novel game of financial network formation. It shows empirically that governance structures influence how banks use the interbank market to manage liquidity and that strategic factors are additional drivers of interbank lending for private banks (Ch. 2). It further develops a model of optimal bank behaviour in the absence of liquidity shocks considering the effect of an exogenous bailout probability (Ch. 3), and introduces a model of endogenous liquidity co-insurance formation (Ch. 4). The first chapter, The Purpose of Interbank Markets, tests competing theories of interbank lending using 43 quarters (2002-2012) of confidential data on the German banking sector and interbank market. It shows that banks use the interbank market for liquidity co-insurance as traditionally assumed. However, the importance of the liquidity management function is higher for regionally-focused credit cooperatives and savings banks than for private commercial banks. A distinct effect for private banks is identified; for private banks, increases in interbank liabilities are shown to correlate with a proxy for the bailout probability of banks. The chapter thus offers empirical support for an emerging literature on strategic behaviour in interbank markets and highlights the need to extend the traditional model of liquidity co-insurance. The second chapter, The Emergence of Interbank Exposures, develops a model showing that, even in the hypothetical absence of liquidity shocks, under some conditions the presence of conditional liability guarantees can lead to interbank exposures as an equilibrium outcome. It shows that such an equilibrium is characterised by banks of different sizes and asymmetric bank behaviour. Some banks are active only as lenders with others investing in a productive technology while borrowing in the interbank market. An equilibrium interbank rate is derived which depends on parameters characterising the bailout probability, including different parameters of government behaviour. The third chapter, Coordination and Competition in the Formation of Financial Networks, introduces a generalisation and extension of the seminal work of Allen and Gale (2000). It studies liquidity co-insurance between deposit-taking banks in an n-region economy. Both a static and a dynamic model of the endogenous formation of interbank liquidity co-insurance links are examined. Using a novel approach to model liquidity co-insurance, it is shown that contrary to previous findings it is not possible for banks with limited information to insure optimally against liquidity shocks. However, in a dynamic formulation of the model with best-response dynamics and learning, socially optimal insurance is an evolutionary stable equilibrium. The chapter also studies an extension to the model that introduces non-zero bailout probabilities, which endogenously leads to interbank networks consistent with the structure of interbank exposure networks documented empirically.