China's rapid economic development and the emergence of its large firms have had much attention and commentary, but the important role of small businesses has received less focus. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to explore small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in China, with specific attention to people management. It examines the nature of people management in SMEs in China by assessing the extent to which human resource management (HRM) practices are appIfed in the organisations, and by evaluating the cultural and institutional impacts on human resource '{HR) practices adopted in these firms. Using a survey questionnaire and an in-depth semi-structured interview, an investigation of people management in SMEs was carried out centred on three main research questions: what is the role of the HR/personnel function in SMEs?; to what extent are HRM practices applied to SMEs?; and what are institutional and cultural factors that affect HRM take-up in SMEs? Several key findings are derived from this study. First, people management in SMEs is different from the traditional Chinese personnel administration system in the following ways: the terminology; the role of HR manager; the importance of the personnel function in the . ~-, organisation; the range of powers of the HR department; and the position of the personnel department in the company. Second, the extent of current HRfpractices in SMEs in China shows a slow convergence to Western HRM practices while the transferability is affected by cultural and institutional factors. Third, there are some similarities between people management in SMEs in China and management practices in SMEs in the West. These resemblances include the vulnerability ofSMEs in a changing environment; the difficulties in finding and retaining highly qualified employees; and an informal approach to key HR practices, namely, employee resourcing, training, and relations. Overall, the nature of people management in SMEs in China displays transitional features. In addition, this thesis suggests that current HR practices in SMEs could be improved and/or adjusted so as to support SMEs' future development in China.

This thesis addresses the topics of spot price modelling, risk management, and investment applications in the energy markets. Eight of the most important energy markets that trade futures contracts on NYMEX, and one Spot Energy Index (SEI) proposed for the first time in this thesis, are investigated. A new modelling approach is proposed for optimally capturing the behaviour of the energy spot prices, combining a mean-reverting and a spike model that incorporate two different speeds of mean reversion, and time-varying volatility modelled as a GARCH and an EGARCH process. The aforementioned modelling approach is also evaluated in terms of its ability to quantify energy spot price risk by accurately calculating Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) measures. A number of commonly used VaR methodologies are evaluated along with various Monte Carlo (MC) simulations based models and a Hybrid Monte Carlo with Historical Simulation (MC-HS) approach, introduced in this thesis for the first time. This thesis also delves into index investment applications for the energy markets that have recently attracted a lot of attention. To that end, the index tracking problem is addressed by applying equity algorithmic trading using two innovative Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), aiming to replicate the performance of a direct energy commodity investment which is proxied by the constructed spot energy index. The empirical evidence in this thesis shows that the proposed modelling approach can effectively capture the behaviour of the energy spot prices examined, and that it is the most reasonable, efficient, and consistent approach for calculating the VaR of spot energy prices and the SEI, for both long and short positions. Hence, it can be successfully applied for forecasting, risk management, derivatives pricing, and policy development and monitoring purposes. Finally, it is shown that energy commodities, proxied by the SEI, can have equity-like returns as they can be effectively tracked with stock portfolios selected by the investment methodology proposed in this thesis. The latter investment approach can be used by fund managers to set-up energy Exchange Traded Funds that would track the performance of the SEI, giving them the full flexibility of any investment style, long or short, that equities can provide.

The thesis collects four essays in the fields of competition and innovation economics. In chapter 1, we review the recent growth literature that analyses the effects of product market competition on growth. Contrary to the negative effect predicted by the early endogenous growth models, this literature emphasises that product market competition may foster innovation and growth. We argue that a common characteristic of this literature is a decrease in the intensity of technological competition relative to the early models, which seems to support the positive link between product market competition and growth. In chapter 2, we study the effect of product market competition on growth in an endogenous growth model that maintains the intensity of R&D competition of the early models. We extend the early models by accounting for the possibility that many asymmetric firms (i.e. successive innovators) are simultaneously active in each industry. We show that an increase in competitive pressure exerts two positive effects on the incentive to innovate, which contrast the negative effect due to lower prices: the productive efficiency effect and the front loading of profits. We demonstrate circumstances in which the productive efficiency effect dominates the price effect, leading to a positive link between competition and growth. In chapter 3, we reconsider the comparison between Bertrand and Cournot competition in a differentiated duopoly with asymmetric costs. Our main finding is that, with high degrees of cost asymmetry and/or low degrees of product differentiation, the efficient firm’s and the industry profits are higher under Bertrand competition. This contrasts with Singh and Vives (1984) seminal result that, with substitute goods, equilibrium profits are always higher with Cournot competition. In chapter 4, we study vertical integration and product innovation as interdependent strategic choices of vertically related firms. Our main finding is that, although product differentiation allows to soften product market competition and to avoid market foreclosure, the downstream market may prefer less product differentiation to prevent vertical integration. Therefore, less product innovation can be a possible social cost of a lenient antitrust policy.

The evaluation of economic forecasts is a substantial and important aspect of economic research, and a considerable part of such evaluation is performed by comparing competing forecasts. This thesis focuses on the development of statistical procedures in order that reliable comparison of contending forecasts can be made. The study considers three issues in particular. The first two issues are closely related and concern testing the companion null hypotheses of equal forecast accuracy and forecast encompassing. The established equal accuracy and encompassing tests are found to display problematic behaviour in certain situations, and new modified tests are proposed to overcome these shortcomings. Analysis of the tests results in a recommendation for employing one of the newly proposed tests for each of the respective hypotheses. The recommended tests follow parallel formulations and have a number of attractive features, notably robustness to likely forecast error properties of contemporaneous correlation, autocorrelation, non-normality and autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity, reliable behaviour in finite samples, and good power performance. The third issue examines the ranking of rival forecasts according to a pre-determined evaluation criterion. A recently proposed summary criterion for multi-step-ahead forecasts, comprising a single measure for all model representations and all forecast horizons of interest, is analysed, and a more reliable alternative proposed. This summary criterion approach is compared to the more conventional method of ranking forecasts at a specific horizon for a particular model representation, and the related issue of forecast encompassing for linear combinations of forecasts is discussed. This thesis therefore develops robust well-behaved tests for equal forecast accuracy and forecast encompassing, and advances techniques for ranking competing multi-step forecasts, providing improved, more reliable procedures for conducting economic forecast evaluation.

The thesis aims to contribute to the literature on two fronts. Firstly, it aims to contribute to the literature by developing a conjectural variations model of price transmission in vertically related markets where the final product sector exercises both oligopoly power and oligopsony power. It finds that oligopoly and oligopsony power do not necessarily weaken the degree of price transmission relative to that under perfectly competitive markets although they can. The key to these outcomes is to be found in the functional forms for retail demand and farm supply. Secondly, it attempts to draw inferences about the conditions under which the prices of the farm and retail prices cointegrate by themselves based on the predictions of the existing theoretical models of vertical price transmission. It then evaluates whether these conditions are borne out empirically. To this end, it tests for the existence of a co-integrating relation between the raw input and retail prices for a sample of 11 food and energy markets in the UK using the Johansen Full-information Maximum Likelihood Procedure. It finds that a co-integrating relation is identified for only 4 out of 11 price pairs; i.e., for potato, fresh fruits, milk and oil. For all other price pairs, it is not identified unless the cointegration regression allows for sector shocks. This result seems to support our theoretical prediction that, given information provided by a price pair alone, co-integration can be observed only for products for which the cost share of the farm input is unity; i.e., for products with a constant margin. And obviously, potatoes, fresh fruits and milk are products which are sold in supermarkets as they appear in their raw form with minimum processing involved suggesting that the share of processing cost for these products is minimal.

This research is an investigation into the effects of culture on management practices. The investigation centres primarily in the theory of culture patterns. It illustrates how the behaviour patterns are formed through socialization in the institutions of the society, and how they are transmitted into an organizational environment through the individual member's attitudes, perceptions, interpretations and interaction with one another. The objective of the investigation is to understand the mechanics of the effects of culture in management practices, so that complementary theories, techniques and practices can be developed to avoid conflict of culture and management practices. The absence of conflict between culture and management practices can create a desirable atmosphere for organizational efficiency and effectiveness. The research uses a phenomenologically-based method in investigating the conflict of culture and management practices. The essential feature in the phenomenologically-based research method is in the understanding of the individual subjective experience as a source of knowledge about the subject or the phenomena of investigation. In this research the subjective experiences of eight senior local government administrators from the Southern Sudan are used to illustrate the conflict of culture and management practices in public service organizations in that environment. The research concludes that the conflict of culture and management practices can be resolved by doing the following two things: First, by identifying the forces of divergence and convergence in the cultural and organizational environment. Second, by reducing the process of cultural and organizational divergence in order to achieve a considerable convergence through a mutually-inclusive model that accommodates both the local culture and the local organizational interest.

In this PhD we analyse some topics about food-retail pricing behaviour from the point of view of the empirical industrial organisation. Large UK supermarkets chains are actively involved in quality discrimination; they offer three quality variants for most of the products they sell. These quality variants are from higher to lower quality: branded products, high quality own brand products and low quality own brands. Hence, the first two empirical chapters of this PhD are aimed at studying the implications of the supermarkets chains multiquality nature over supermarkets patterns of price competition. The first of these chapters compares the pattern of price dispersion and price competition for each quality variant. In the second of them we build an econometric model that allows to take into account the effects of competition over the price setting for each quality variant of: different quality variants sold at the same supermarkets, and variants of the same and different quality sold at different supermarkets. The results of these two chapters suggest that competition is less intense for the quality variant with greater possibilities of supermarket product differentiation, the high quality own brand products. The joint consideration of this softer price competition and the higher market share of this quality variant in UK food retailing (if compared with continental food retailing) offers a new explanation for the high profits enjoyed by the UK supermarkets in comparison with their continental counterparts. Claims for antitrust actions against low-price guarantees have been quite common in the USA for some time now. In the UK, the report "Competition in Retailing" written by London Economics for the Office of Fair Trade recognises the anticompetitive effects of low-price guarantees. However, the analysis of Tesco 's Unbeatable Value low-price guarantee did not detect any anticompetitive effect. Tesco 's Unbeatable value triggered a process of reduction of the prices of the products included in the guarantee. Further analysis of the data and the consideration of the supermarket as a multiproduct firm lead us to analyse the possible relationship between this low-price guarantee and a lossleaders strategy. Our analysis seriously advises to reconsider the effects of low-price guarantees when the firms offering them are multiproduct firms. • Large UK supermarket chains face not only the competiticin of other supermarkets but also the competition of discounters. Whereas large UK supermarkets chains offer a homogeneous level of service quality, the level of service quality offered by the discounters is manifestly lower. We propose a model controlling both for locational asymmetries and service quality differentials to analyse the ability of service quality as a market segmentation tool. Also with the aim of analysing this segmentation ability, we study the differential effects of Tesco 's Low Price Guarantee over a supermarket and a discounter store affected by it. The results of these two analysis confirm the ability of service quality differentials to segment the market and advice the consideration of supermarkets and discounters as forming part of two different relevant markets. All the empirical analysis is carried out using a panel of prices that were collected in three supermarkets and a discounter in the south area of Coventry.

This thesis examines whether two well documented financial market anomalies - the "Mehra & Prescott puzzles" and the dividend controversy - can be resolved by allowing for the effects of uninsurable risks. The dissertation contains an extensive review of the theory of consumption based asset pricing and the Mehra & Prescott puzzles. This provides more comprehensive coverage of this material than any previous review of the area: see chapters 2 & 3. The role that uninsurable risk might play in resolving market anomalies is clearly demonstrated. Three chapters of substantive original contribution follow that examine: (i) the predicted equity premium when marketable and nonmarketable risks are independent (ii) the potential relevance of aggregate dividends to equilibrium asset prices in economies with idiosyncratic endowment shocks and (iii) the response of the stock market and riskfree rate to unemployment shocks. The main findings are: (i) Chapter 4: an integrated approach to local proper risk aversion is presented and a new form of risk aversion emerges naturally (ii) Chapter 4: it will not, in general, be possible to make accurate quantitative predictions concerning the impact of a small probability, high impact, negative shock to endowment ("unemployment") on asset prices on the basis of current knowledge concerning investor preferences (iii) Chapter 5: aggregate dividends are shown to play an important role in helping individuals to consumption smooth in incomplete markets if the level of aggregate investment is uncertain. The observed behaviour of dividend smoothing and concentrating rights issues into times of economic prosperity is consistent with the model that is presented (iv) Chapter 6: the rise (fall) in the riskfree rate prior to "bad" ("good") unemployment news does not appear to be consistent with precautionary savings behaviour. It is concluded that, while incomplete market models have great theoretical strength and some empirical support, 'Current applications of this theory leave many issues unresolved.

In chapter I, we model monopolistic competition in the spirit of Blanchard and Kiyotaki (1987) and we study the implications of this market structure for the existence of dynamically inefficient equilibria. We show that, with free entry, the presence of some pure profit does not rule out dynamic inefficiency, while the assumption of blockaded entry makes dynamic inefficiency impossible, since every firm grows at the aggregate growth rate and all future profits are capitalised in advance. Chapter II is devoted to the analysis of some recent developments of the theory of long-run endogenous growth. We build a model where technology is non rival but partially specific to each firm, and monopolistic competition is modelled assuming that output is produced by means of a fixed measure of intermediate goods. The main result obtained in this chapter is that the growth rate, with infinite lives, is independent from the degree of monopolistic power; with finite lives this relation becomes more complex. The purpose of chapter III is to show that a negative relationship between capital accumulation and money growth is not incompatible with the common practice of inserting money into the utility function in the fashion of Sidrauski (1967). Adopting an instantaneous utility function allowing for a non-unit elasticity of substitution between real money balances and consumption, we find that the occurrence of the Tobin effect depends on the values of the parameters. In chapter IV we consider the effect of technological uncertainty on welfare in an endogenous growth model based on positive spillovers.

This thesis uses general-equilibrium numerical-simulation techniques to analyse trade and environmental issues. It tries to take applied general equilibrium modelling in these areas beyond their traditional confines in a number of ways. These include endogenous incorporation of international capital flows into trade models, decomposition of observed economic outcomes, and computation of bargaining solutions and non-cooperative equilibria. Chapter 1 analyses the welfare, income distribution and macroeconomic implications of trade liberalisation and increased indirect taxation in El Salvador. It is found that these policies have little effect on welfare and income distribution, but a significant impact on macroeconomic aggregates. Chapter 2 examines trade liberalisation when foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and international capital income taxation are present, using data for Costa Rica. The main finding is that, once FDI flows and its taxation are taken into consideration, trade liberalisation can hurt a small open economy, whose optimal policy is no longer free trade but a combination of taxes and subsidies on imports. Chapter 3 deals with the decomposition into trade and technology constituents parts of recent increased wage inequality in the UK. It analyses how decomposition is affected by the way in which labour markets are modelled. It is found that when labour markets are perfectly competitive, the main force behind increased wage inequality is technological change, with trade playing only a small role; but when labour market inflexibilities are taken into account, any of the two factors considered can become dominant, depending on the parameter specification used in the model. Chapter 4 examines the incentives for developing-country participation in possible future negotiation on trade and the environment, assumed to break down on North-South lines. It finds that developing countries will do better if they negotiate jointly on trade and environmental policies than if they negotiate over trade policy only. However, negotiations accompanied with side payments of cash will be even better for them. Finally, Chapter 5 analyses the role of adaptation responses to damage from externalities. Using a hierarchy of models calibrated to UK data, we compare internalisation effects in the presence of these responses with a case where they are absent. We find that taking account of adaptation responses significantly reduces the level of full-internalisation taxes and the associated welfare gains from externality correction.