Les imperfections des marchés financiers et l'incomplétude des contrats financiers compliquent la conclusion d'ententes entre les firmes et les parties prenantes. Plusieurs solutions sont proposées pour réduire ces problèmes et faciliter la conclusion des contrats financiers. Les contrats étant enveloppés par un cadre institutionnel, ils en sont imprégnés et affectés. Les institutions sont donc une des solutions aux imperfections des marchés et à l'incomplétude des contrats. Les résultats de notre étude le prouvent clairement. Cette étude montre que le niveau de développement et la structure du système financier (en particulier la part relative des financements bancaires et de marché), les conditions de régulation du système bancaire (les formes et l’étendue de la supervision) et certaines caractéristiques des systèmes juridiques (la protection des créditeurs), ont un effet significatif sur les contraintes d'investissement. Il apparaît que la bonne qualité des institutions facilite l'accès aux financements et qu'elle renforce les garanties exigées pour l'octroi de la dette. De fait, la piètre qualité des institutions d’un pays constitue une entrave à l'accès au financement par le secteur privé. / The imperfections of financial markets and the incompleteness of financial contracts cause commitments between firms and stakeholders to become more complex. Several solutions are suggested in order to reduce such problems and to facilitate the conclusion of financial contracts. Contracts evolve within an institutional structure, an environment by which they are conditioned. Institutions are one of many solutions to market imperfections and to contract incompleteness. Results bring out relevant effects of the financial system’s development and structure (particularly the amount of banking over market financing), banking regulation (the supervisory methods and their extent) and some characteristics of the legal systems (such as creditor protection) on investment constraints. It appears that sound and healthy institutions facilitate access to funding and strengthen the collateral required to secure bank financing. Consequently, poor quality of a country’s institutions hinders access to financing by the private sector.

Transformation of the higher education system has come under the spotlight recently. At the core of this debate are issues pertaining to access and throughput rates at universities. Although access has improved significantly, throughput rates remain relatively low especially amongst black students (Council on Higher Education, 2017). The current study aims to explore the learning experiences and academic performance of postgraduate black students at the university of South Africa. Through a qualitative approach that included interviews, a phenomenological research design and critical race theory to gain an insiders perspective. This approach is chosen for its ability to generate rich descriptive and interpretive accounts of events based on the participant’s narratives. The findings revealed that the variation in learning experiences and academic performance was accounted for by background factors rather than student’s own intellectual or academic competencies. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology with specialisation in Research Consultation)

The dissertation consists of three empirical papers in institutional microeconomics. The first paper examines the role of institutional quality in international trade, the second paper focuses on unintended consequences of intellectual property rights for social welfare, and the last one addresses the impact of banking on corporate financing and investment. An introductory chapter puts these three papers into perspective. In the first paper I analyze the role of institutions in price dispersion among cities in the European region in the 1996-2009 period. Using a number of institutional quality measures I find that the better the institutions, the lower the predicted dispersion. The result is robust to different specifications of the regression model and is consistent with a hypothesis that arbitrage, as an entrepreneurial activity and the main power behind the law of one price, is influenced by institutional quality. In the second paper I use a large data set of U.S. patents applied for between 1980 and 2007 by 22 large technology companies to study development of strategic patenting over time and across industries. Using two complementary methods I reveal strong evidence against the hypothesis of more strategic patenting after 1995. Contrary to the expectations, aerospace patents appear to be on average...