Traditional models of analyzing the general insurance market often focus on the behavior of a single insurer in a competitive market. They assume that the major players in this market are homogeneous and have a common goal to achieve a same long-term business objective, such as solving profit (or utility) maximization. Therefore these individual players in the traditional models can be implemented as a single representative economic agent with full rationality to solve the utility optimization. To investigate insurance pricing (or underwriting) cycles, the existing literature attempts to model various isolated aspects of the market, keeping other factors exogenous. We and that a multi-agent system describing an insurance market affords a helpful understanding of the dynamic interactions of individual agents that is a complementary to the traditional models. Such agent-based models (ABM) try to capture the complexity of the real world. Thus, economic agents are heterogeneous and follow divergent behavioral rules depending on their current unique competitive situations or comparative advantages relating to, for example, their existing market shares, distribution channels, information processes and product differentiations. The real-world continually-evolving environment leads agents to follow common rules of thumb to implement their business strategies, rather than completely be utility-maximizer with perfect foresight in an idealized world. The agents are adaptively learning from their local competition over time. In fact, the insurance cycles are the results of these dynamic interactions of agents in such complex system.

This thesis consists of three inter-related chapters designed to study the effects of fiscal policy on unemployment, the distribution of income, and social welfare in heterogeneous agent models incorporating unemployment. Each chapter employs a different setup for unemployment in a general equilibrium framework. These include models of equilibrium unemployment, right-to-manage union bargaining, and search and matching. Chapter 1 develops a model with equilibrium unemployment to study the effects of optimal taxation under commitment. Two models are explored: a model with zero economic profits and a model with non-zero economic profits due to the presence of productive public investment. We find that the optimal policy in these two models results in a different labour wedge which defines the gap between the marginal rate of substitution between labour and consumption and the marginal product of labour. In particular, the labour wedge can only be completely eliminated when the profits are absent from the model. It is further demonstrated that there exists a trade-off between efficiency and equity for the government in the model with non-zero economic profits. Chapter 2 examines the importance of imperfect competition in labour and product markets in determining the welfare effects of tax reforms assuming agent heterogeneity in capital holdings. The analysis shows that each of these market distortions, independently, results in welfare losses for at least one segment of the population after a capital tax cut and a concurrent labour tax increase. However, with both present in the model, the tax reform is Pareto improving in a realistic calibration to the UK economy. Chapter 3 extends a Mortensen-Pissarides search-and-matching framework with household heterogeneity to investigate the importance of search frictions in determining the welfare and distributional effects of tax reforms which re-allocate the tax burden from capital to labour income. The optimal tax policy under commitment is also analysed. We find that the tax reforms are Pareto improving in the long run, despite welfare losses for at least one segment of the population in the transition period. Finally, the long-run Ramsey policy implies a negative capital tax which is associated with a rise in the labour tax and a fall in the unemployment benefit.

The chapters in this thesis are each concerned with problems of coordination. The coordination issues examined here each arise in distinct situations and imply the need for a different modeling approach in each case. The first case, Chapter 2, considers gender discrimination in contemporary, competitive labour markets. It is sh9wn there that such discrimination can arise as an outcome of maximizing activities on the part of firms facing the problem of worker motivation in the light of imperfect monitorability. This is shown to lead to firms’ hiring practices (in particular discrimination) depending on the practices of other firms and consequently to labour market equilibria of discrimination and of non discrimination. It is shown that a policy of affirmative action can be useful in moving the labour market away from the discrimination equilibrium. The next chapter, Chapter 3, considers an avenue by which the structure of industries in an economy can affect the development of new technologies through its general equilibrium impact on profits relative to wages. It shows that a monopolistic structure in one industry, by increasing the share of profits in aggregate income, tends to increase the relative profitability of innovative activities elsewhere thereby leading to the creation of further monopoly rents which, in turn, feeds back into incentives for innovation thus causing a self-perpetuating cycle. This leads to the possibility of an economy exhibiting multiple steady states including a “Poverty trap” or situation of zero growth. The conditions under which multiple steady states exist are analyzed and the economy’s behaviour out of the steady state is also characterized. The role of government intervention, in the form of subsidies, direct provision of research and patent protection is also examined. Finally it is shown that the model can also explain the existence of clustering of innovations and consequent sporadic growth. The final substantive chapter, Chapter 4, centres on problems of investment coordination in the context of LDCs. These arise when the fall in the price of one good raises the demand for complementary goods, thereby implying that investment decisions leading to such price falls may not be privately undertaken whereas, when coordinated across sectors, such investments could be profitable. This chapter shows that the existence of multiple equilibria hinges upon the more restrictive Definition of complementarity between goods, namely, the Hicks definition. As a result, gross complementarity between goods (on its own), even though causing horizontal externalities, can not lead to the existence of multiple equilibria. A later section looks at gross complements in the presence of knowledge spillovers and shows, in contrast, that this can lead to multiple equilibria and coordination problems. The chapter also examines the social optimality of coordination in the Hicks complements case, showing that it is not always implied by the multiplicity of equilbria.

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This thesis investigates characteristics of the prices of shares traded on the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE), an important and fast-growing market. We look at five issues: the shape of the distribution of daily returns the predictability of these returns the presence of day-of-the-week effects in the mean and variance of returns the behaviour of the mean and variance of returns around stock split and dividend dates and the predictability of variances, and in particular the performance of adaptive models relative to the GARCH models. Our main findings can be summarised as follows. First, the hypothesis of normality is rejected, mainly due to excess kurtosis. To explain excess kurtosis, we used an autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (ARCH) model, and a GARCH(1,1) model is found to fit the ISE index data well. A significant further finding, based on a t-GARCH-M model is that in the early years of the exchange, mean returns were significantly influenced by the returns variance. Second, standard tests for serial correlation, and for runs of same-sign returns, show that the hypothesis of a random walk can be rejected, with index returns showing significant first and second order serial correlation. Again, these effects are stronger in the early years of the exchange. Third, using a GARCH model, we find no strong evidence of the day of the week effect in mean returns on the index or on the 20 actively traded companies. But there is evidence to suggest that the market is more volatile on Mondays and after holidays. Again, these effects are not stable over time. Taken together, these results point to the market becoming progressively more efficient and more integrated with the international capital market over the period of the study. Fourth, the results from the EV-GARCH model, a GARCH model with event dependent intercept terms, a technical novelty, show that there is no effect on mean returns from stock dividends. Surprisingly, cash dividends do cause returns to rise/fall after their payment. On the other hand, stock dividends do significantly increase the variance of returns around the event day, and for several weeks thereafter. Finally, although we have characterised the daily returns series by an autoregressive model with a GARCH process for volatility, it turns out that the GARCH model does not unambiguously dominate alternatives in forecasting and trading applications. In 5- to 20-day ahead forecasts, the GARCH model is slightly more accurate than four alternatives, including exponential smoothing models (RiskMetrics) and historic volatility. However, it is (inevitably) less accurate than a model which pools forecasts from all models. In a simulated options market - another technical innovation of the thesis - we find that traders using a GARCH model would on balance lose money to traders using other methods, in spite of the apparently greater accuracy of the GARCH forecasts. This confirms for volatility forecasts an important result which is already know to hold for mean forecasts - that in forecasting financial markets, there is little correlation between meansquare accuracy and trading profitability.

Implementation of the database concept has organisational implications, the most widely recognised being the emergence of the specialist function of data or database administration (DBA) 'usually in data processing departments. This research study is an investigation of U.K. database projects, undertaken to obtain a view of the managerial issues and organisational consequences which arise in practice. The findings are based on the completion of a simple postal Questionnaire by 212 organisations with database projects and in-depth interviews in 21 of these organisations with the staff member bearing overall responsibility for the development. The surveys were conducted in 1976-1981. The study employs qualitative methods to explore the inter-dependencies between organisations' objectives for embarking on a database project, features of the project environment, approaches to staffing including characteristics of the DBA function and the nature of the problems faced. The major finding is that organisations experience more serious 'political ~ problems than technical ones. The predominant type of political problem is not resistance to data sharing, but rather related to the emergence of a DBA function-dissatisfaction over organisational placemen.t and the working relationship with data processing functions such as systems development. Moreover these organisational problems occur from the earliest phase of database projects - the feasibility stage. The study concludes that with management backing, analysis and design skills and control over database usage, the DBA function has been able to acquire technical and political weight in organisations in a relatively short period of time. The current data processing environment however contains unique opportunities for the function - in the areas of systems planning, systems development and the administration of shared data - which suggests that the notion of the DBA as the organisation's overall data resource manager is still a viable one.

This thesis examines the economic evaluation of forecasting strategies based on past prices, bringing together academics and practitioners techniques Forecasting methods based on past prices are convex and path-dependent dynamic strategies Therefore, they must be able to profitably exploit positive serial dependences in financial prices The most important measure of financial forecasting ability is the rate of return achieved by the predictor The expected return of forecasting strategies is first investigated by applying stochastic modelling Then, the presence of serial dependences in financial prices is tested by comparing expected and observed rates of returns of forecasting strategies According to the academic literature, the expected return of investment strategies is best established by applying stochastic modelling That is done analytically for linear forecasters, assuming that the underlying process of asset returns is not only a random walk with drift but any Gaussian processes The rate of return from financial strategies is zero under the assumption of a random walk without drift, and non-zero in all the other cases Then, it is shown that many forecasting techniques used by market participants are in fact linear forecasters and consequently fall in the scope of this study. Minimising the mean squared error is a sufficient but not necessary condition to maximise returns Under the random walk without dnft assumption, error measures and profits arenegatively correlated but very few in absolute value Only the directional accuracy exhibits high degree of linear association with profits When the true Gaussian process is not known, there are cases for which a decrease in mean squared error does not imply an increase in returns Therefore the mean squared error criterion is of poor use to maximise returns when the true model is not known The directional accuracy is of no further help Market timing ability tests based on the percentage of correct forecasts have very low power in presence of low positive autocorrelations. It is why a test of the random walk hypothesis based on the joint profitability of trading rules is investigated It happens to be powerful against a broad range of linear alternatives Its ruee feature is to exhibit a power almost equal to the best of its components unknown when the true model is unknown It constitutes as well a tool to separate mean from variance non-hnear models Simple tests of adequacy of Gaussian processes are subsequently proposed from the joint profitability of trading rules Applying previous tests, the random walk hypothesis is rejected for daily exchange rates against Dollar, over the period 1982-1992 The hypothesis of normal underlying returns is very weak compared to the independence assumption Among a few Gaussian processes, the price-trend model along with some technical models appear to be the best alternatives to explain observed trading rule returns Statistical forecasters based either on ARMA(1,1) or fractional Gaussian processes do not outperform simple technical rules Taking Into account transaction costs reduce profits to zero for individual but not for institutional Investors who might have to act on strategies that assume the foreign exchange markets exhibit positive dependencies, if not inefficiencies.

In spite of decades of research into corporate turnaround strategies, corporate failures persist. Knowledge of remedies appears to be a necessary but insufficient condition for turnaround. There exists yet a serious gap in extant knowledge on what motivates managers to choose or avoid well-documented restructuring strategies. Further, extant research has focused predominantly on severely distressed firms. Though contributing immensely to corporate management out of a crisis, it throws little light in the direction of management to avoid a crisis, and thus avoidance of economic value destruction. Also, no large sample analysis has properly tested the general effectiveness of prescribed turnaround strategies. This research attempts to fill these empirical gaps by exploring three key research questions: I. What are the determinants of restructuring strategy choice in response to performance decline 2. How effective are the prescribed turnaround strategies in contributing to corporate turnaround from performance decline? 3. Are the turnaround strategies equally applicable and effective to both poorly performing and financially distressed firms? We integrate the disparate studies to date and devise a coherent framework for performance decline research and corporate restructuring. We also design a comprehensive strategy determinants framework for explaining the firm strategy selection process corporating the impact of lenders, owners, corporate governance structure and control factors. We employ the standard event study methodology to examine effectiveness of strategies. We then separate implementation success from other sources of strategy effectiveness- choice, timing and intensity of restructuring strategies. We also explore differences in the determinants and effectiveness of strategies between two samples comprising nearly 300 poorly performing and 200 financially distressed firms, as a function of the extent of firms' performance decline. Our results show that turnaround strategy choices are significantly influenced by the complex interplay of the ownership structure, corporate governance and lender monitoring of the firms in decline. While there is agreement among stakeholders on certain strategies there is also evidence of conflict of interests. The results also show the somewhat detrimental effects of dominance by certain stakeholder groups. However, no support for managerial inaction as a contributor to non-recovery from performance decline iss found. Instead of being paralysed by inertia, managers of on recovery firms appear to take vigorous and intensive restructuring actions. Our results suggest the root cause of non-recovery is bad implementation of restructuring strategies. Although pursuing similar strategies, non-recovery firms' managers are perceivedb y the markett o be far lesse ffective in their implementationst han those of recovery fin-ns. Comparative analysis of poorly performing and financially distressed firms reveals a striking similarity in determinants of strategy choice but some differencesi n the impact of restructurings trategieso n corporatet urnaround.

The first objective of the research presented in this thesis, was to perform an investigation into the challenges of business performance measurement. The second objective of the research was to respond to these challenges, by articulating a Soft Systemic approach to business performance measurement. To meet the objectives of the research, the project draws on two key areas: a review of literature about measurement in different fields of study; and three real world action research case studies. The work in these areas is presented in this thesis, the main topics of which are: - Identifying specific challenges to measurement in the area of business performance measurement. - Identifying a number of generic causes of complexity in measurement situations; and introducing a new measurement classification based on the complexity of measurement situations. - Using the new classification of measurement situations to critique the traditional approach to measurement; and thereby identifying situations, such as business performance measurement, where a new approach to measurement is needed. -Proposing a set of Soft Systemic principles to measurement; and showing that this Soft Systemic approach is significantly different to the traditional approach. -Showing that the Soft Systemic approach is more suitable to the complex challenges of business performance measurement. -Translating the Soft Systemic approach into a practical framework, the Soft Systemic Performance Measurement Framework (SSPMF), to assist measurement practitioners in business performance measurement; and validating that framework in case study work.

This thesis that I am submitting to the department of Insurance and Investment studies at the City University Business School is essentially a report on the development, formation, operation and effects of the NSSS to the local Zimbabwean market. The NSSS is a quasi- independent government company that operates under the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) whose formation was to provide a framework for the provision of various social security benefits by such organisations as the NSSS. This thesis is divided into three broad parts. The first part draws from an historical experience of the development of social insurance in general and Zimbabwean oldage insurance in particular. This part is the basis of understanding the foundation and philosophy behind the formation and expansion of the social security programmes as strong economic and political tools across the modem world. The second segment of this report is the focus on political and economic theories that seek to explain the existence of social insurance in various economies. The last part of the thesis is a particular study of the Zimbabwean pensions market following the introduction of the NSSS and draws from household survey and original source material that has not previously been subject to analysis. This study has paid particular attention to the forces that have played crucial roles in shaping the development of the NSSS. Contrary to what we expected at the beginning of this study, the NSSS has had little adverse effect to the private schemes and general perception in risk taking behaviour, particularly to the middle class. The NSSS has in fact, had a marginal and effective positive effect in changing people's attitude towards the risk of longevity and long-term loss of income due to perils otherwise insured under the national scheme. This study has also shown that there was inadequate consultation prior to the formation of the NSSS and that political interests took priority over economic considerations. The scepticism and forces of suspicion within the market are explained within the framework of this thesis.