Bibliography: p. 257-268. / x, 268 p. : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Social Inquiry, 2000

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Social Inquiry, 2000. / Bibliography: p. 257-268.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2005. / "Spring 2005." "Fall 2006"--Spine. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-73).

Thesis (doctoral)--Göteborgs universitet, 2000. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-266).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2007. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-298)

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Economics, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Provincial competitiveness is strategically and imperatively important for China to achieve and sustain its economic leadership in the global economy. Albeit recent attention of scholars and government officials, the studies to date have produced limited empirical evidence that could aid policy makers to understand the contributing factors and development strategies for provincial competitiveness. Hence, this thesis develops a production approach to decompose Chinese provincial competitiveness index into two productive-efficiency-based components, so as to uncover development strategies hidden in the index. The resulting model fully retains the information embodied in the original index and implements a mechanism to generate development strategies. Applying the proposed model to China’s provincial data of competitiveness for the period 2005-2008, the thesis finds that coastal provinces can adopt an unbalanced development strategy by expanding their relatively uncompetitive sectors. For western provinces, however, what is better for them is to take the balanced development strategy through simultaneous enhancement of every aspect of the competitiveness index. Moreover, a combination of the two strategies would better match the specific circumstances of some particular provinces. Besides that, the results show that reducing provincial disparity in terms of competitiveness would firstly require focusing on narrowing the regional gap. In addition, this thesis attempts to seek a set of benchmark weights for dimensions of provincial competitiveness.

In view of the prevalence of information asymmetry and incentive incompatibility problems, the market for capital and the employment relationship are shown to be prey to pervasive agency problems that make economic transactions subject to enforcement costs. The presence of these costs subverts the Walrasian presumption of efficiency for decentralized markets, and the separation between efficiency and ownership concerns, resulting in forms of capital rationing and productive inefficiencies. Under these conditions, government intervention might help to attenuate the coordination failures and their associated efficiency losses for the economy by facilitating ownership of assets by those economic agents for whom information is relatively costless, and who have the capacity to take into account the consequences for all stakeholders. In this dissertation, we test the hypothesis that a union-controlled investment fund, such as the Fonds de solidarite des travailleurs du Quebec (FSTQ) might constitute an institutional innovation attenuating problems of information asymmetry and incentive incompatibilities. Through a case-study, we first analyze the original institutional features of the FSTQ that could help alleviate and/or compound the said agency problems. We then turn to an analysis of a segment of the FSTQ investment portfolio to verify whether these FSTQ-specific institutional features generate gains or losses for stakeholders, the economy and the government. On the basis of the evidence gathered, it is shown that the FSTQ effectively helps relieve problems of capital rationing; and fosters greater labor-management cooperation that results--under certain conditions--in measurable labor productivity gains, thus engendering a net social gain. In view of these gains and of the concentration of the FSTQ investments in the riskier end of the investment spectrum, it is argued that government support of the FSTQ in the form of tax expenditures is justified and engenders a net fiscal surplus.

Despite the voluminous literature on North-South macroeconomic interactions and the key role of terms of trade variations in growth transmission from one region to another, a significant research gap persists for two reasons. First, there has been very little empirical work on testing of the relationships between growth patterns and terms of trade movements. Second, the empirical studies dedicated to testing the Prebisch-Singer Thesis (PST) focused on testing the long-run tendency for the terms of trade of primary commodities to deteriorate and neglected the joint nature of the predictions arising out of a complete formulation of PST. This dissertation seeks to properly specify the PST, provide a generalization of it to the case of imbalanced trade, and extend it to a three-region framework through a structuralist North-South model. Multiple paths of growth divergence/convergence and terms of trade deterioration/improvement emerge depending on the structural changes influencing the income-elasticity differentials. I carry out two sets of empirical analyses. First, I use aggregate data on North-South terms of trade indices to test the presence and significance of a downward trend. Second, I use panel data analysis and rolling regressions to show the evolution of income-elasticity differentials. The results suggest that the growth rates of developing countries during the 1980s declined in both absolute and relative terms partly as a result of the downward trend in terms of trade and partly as a result of income elasticity differentials reflecting the productive and technological asymmetries between the developed and developing economies. However, these structural asymmetries have not remained constant: the results show that they changed both over time and over cross-sections of different groups of countries. In general the countries that diversified towards manufactured exports had better chances of eliminating the elasticity differentials, and thus attaining relatively higher rates of growth. The cross-country study is complemented by a comparative case study of Turkey and Malaysia. The results show that industrial and trade policies, if carefully designed and effectively implemented, can counter potential costs of external market dynamics while taking advantage of the opportunities for advancing dynamic comparative advantages.

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