A partir des théories et approches de l'économie industrielle (SCP, filières, marchés contestables, comportements stratégiques etc...), complétées par l'économie de l'entreprise et l'économétrie, la thèse crée cinq outils génériques, interfaces entre Théorie et Applications qui sont ensuite appliqués au secteur spatial européen:-Analyse sectorielle (filière globale, stade système, filières satcom et lanceur Ariane 5)-Politique Industrielle (filière Ariane 5, stade système, cluster Aerospace Valley, ESA)-Stratégie des entreprises (Arianespace)-Modélisation et prévision (horizon 2015) à l'aide de l'économétrie-Prospective du secteur spatial européen (horizon à 20-30 ans) L'application au spatial a permis de valider ces outils, forme de pont entre Théorie et Application, mais tout secteur industriel, dont entreprises et pouvoirs publics constituent des acteurs majeurs, représente un champ d'utilisation potentiel. / Contribution of Industrial Economics to the European Space Sector Starting from theories and approaches of Industrial Economics ( SCP, filières, contestable markets, strategic behaviors etc...), complemented with economics of the firm and econometrics, the thesis creates five generic tools as interfaces between Theory and Applications that are then applied to the European space sector:-Sector Analysis (global filière, system stage, satcom and Ariane 5 launcher filières)-Industrial Policy (Ariane 5 filière, system stage, Aerospace Valley cluster, ESA)-Strategy of firms (Arianespace)-Modelling and prevision (2015 horizon) with econometrics-Prospective of the European space sector (20-30 years horizon) Application to Space has permitted to validate these tools, kind of bridge between Theory andApplication, but any industrial sector, whose firms and public authorities constitute the majoractors, represents a potential field for application.

abstract: Under the background of the "new normal" of China's economy and the contraction of traditional financial sector, the development of Internet finance provides new financing channels for SMEs and individual financial needs. But with rapid development of the Internet finance, the overall risk also appears gradually as well as the platform differentiation appears more evidently. China's Internet financial industry enters the stage of standardization development. In order to effectively prevent and resolve Internet financial risks and create a good internet financial environment, we need to identify the risk factors of Internet financial industry. Through reference carding of the existing literature, this paper proposes a research hypothesis that the industrial economic background is negatively related to the operating risk of the Internet financial platform. After descriptive statistical analysis of the current situation of the Internet financial industry in China, this paper collects 600 P2P net-lending platforms data manually, and uses Probit model to test the research hypothesis. Ceteris paribus, the result show that compared with the platform without industrial economic background, the risk probability of the industrial economic background platform will be reduced by 6.5 percentage points， and there is no regional difference in this result. This paper explains the result from two layers which are the relieving information asymmetry and the platform’s reputation mechanism. The study also finds that in addition to the industrial economic background, the P2P platform's registered capital, operation time, whether the platform funds have the corresponding third-party guarantee and the information disclosure of platform executives will significantly reduce business risk probability of the platforms. The above research conclusions also passed the robust test. Finally, this paper makes a case analysis of the two Internet Financial platforms in Suning Finance and Tuniu Finance, which have different industrial economic background and mode of operation. It also summarizes the risk control system. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2018

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation examines the measurement of business concentration by the Herfindahl- Hirschman Index (HHI). In the course of the examination, a modification to this method of measurement of business concentration is proposed, in terms of which the accuracy of the conventional depiction of the HHI can be enhanced by a formulation involving the Gini index. Computational advantages in the use of this new method are identified, which reveal the Ginibased HHI to be an effective substitute for its regular counterpart. It is found that theoretically and in practice, the proposed new method has strengths that favour its usage. The practical advantages of employing this method are considered with a view to encouraging the measurement of business concentration using the Gini-based index of the HHI. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling ondersoek die meting van sakekonsentrasie deur middel van die Herfindahl- Hirschman-indeks (HHI). ‘n Wysiging aan hierdie metode word voorgestel, deur middel waarvan die akkuraatheid van die konvensionele voorstelling van die HHI verhoog word, deur ‘n formulering wat die Gini-indeks betrek. Die berekeningsvoordele van hierdie nuwe metode word geïdentifiseer en dit word aangetoon dat die Gini-gebaseerde HHI ’n doeltreffende plaasvervanger vir sy meer bekende teenvoeter is. Daar word bevind dat die voorgestelde nuwe metode teoretiese en praktiese sterkpunte het wat die gebruik daarvan ondersteun. Die praktiese voordele van die voorgestelde metode word oorweeg met die oog op die aanmoediging van die gebruik van die Gini-gebaseerde HHI-indeks as maatstaf van sakekonsentrasie.

This thesis presents two chapters on credence goods and one on ongoing partnerships in an infinitely repeated game. The chapters on credence goods focus on the welfare and efficiency of equilibria in overcharging models of credence goods, something which has not been explicitly addressed before. The chapter on partnerships presents a theory explaining ongoing partnerships as solving a commitment problem for clients. There is a small literature on partnerships, and this chapter represents a novel but complimentary approach to that literature. At core, chapters 2, 3 and 4 of this thesis ask the following questions respectively: Do competition and information increase welfare in credence goods markets? How do customers in credence goods markets discipline experts from committing fraud? Can these strategies be welfare ranked? Why do ongoing partnerships exist? What problem do they solve?

The existing literature on information disclosure commonly assumes full commitment to truthful disclosure and therefore revelations are always credible, which can be quite unrealistic in many circumstances. This thesis mainly contributes to the literature by studying information disclosure in the form of cheap-talk in auctions and monopoly pricing, which allows for mis-reporting and false disclosure. The thesis is composed mainly of three research papers. The first paper (Chapter 2), also the major chapter of this thesis, investigates cheap-talk information disclosure in auctions, where bidders' preferences are horizontally differentiated. The seller may reveal information of product attributes before the auction, and the disclosure policy is characterized by a partition of the attribute space. In a symmetric setting, I first show that informative equilibria reveal the feature that more precise information is provided for less popular product attributes. Second, I prove an equilibrium existence theorem that an informative equilibrium can be supported by an information partition of any degree, as long as the number of bidders is sufficiently large. And finally, the optimal disclosure policy reveals a complementarity relationship between the number of bidders and the optimal degree of equilibrium partitions. In this chapter, optimal information structure is endogenously determined. In the second paper (Chapter 3), I turn to study how a monopoly seller should reveal a product's horizontal attributes, when consumer preferences conform to a mixture distribution. I show that the optimal disclosure policy largely depends on the characteristics of the mixture distribution. Specifically, when consumer preferences are highly heterogenous, it is better for the seller to reveal information and serve different groups of consumers separately. And when the preference distribution becomes more asymmetric, cheap-talk disclosure is more likely to be dominated by no disclosure at all. In this chapter, information structure is taken as given. The third paper (Chapter 4) studies optimal regulation of risk-averse producers, in a setting of complementary production with independent cost realization. The production can be organized in the form of either component, or integrated production. I show in this paper that the relative virtues of these two forms of production depend on the degree of risk aversion of the producers.

This thesis consists of three chapters that analyze theoretically the role of income inequality in consumer markets. Each chapter introduces distributional considerations into an economic model where previously inequality did not play a major role. Chapter one uses a consumer search model to show under what conditions the distribution of income within a community is related to the type of firms that exist within that community, impacting the level of prices. We show that if time and money costs of search are high enough, only the middle class have incentive to search and therefore are the most aggressive shoppers. Using a supply side model, we argue that firms located in more informed communities are more likely to enter the market as large low-priced retailers. Connecting these two results, the model shows under what conditions the size of the middle class can have a negative relationship with the level of prices. Chapter two demonstrates how firm pricing strategy and determinants of household location can interact to determine city structure. In this city, consumers and firms live on a continuous line interval. The model consists of two types of firms; many high-cost perfectly competitive firms located in the Central Business District, and one large low-cost "Superstore", choosing its price strategically. We show how the shopping habits of the consumer population, as determined by the relative price of the Superstore and the Corner Stores, can contribute to the various income segregation outcomes described in previous literature. In addition we consider the impact of city population structure on the pricing decision of a monopolist facing a competitive fringe. Chapter three uses a simple model of banking services to consider how deposit-taking banks price for their services and choose the type of deposit customers that they target. This chapter goes beyond previous theoretical work on consumer banking, identifying the role of household income in the access to deposit services. We show that a higher rate of return on investments available to banks lowers financial exclusion, increasing the profitability of low-income consumers for deposit-taking institutions. This suggests that the possibility of financial exclusion increases in periods of recession. The chapter demonstrates how an increase in income dispersion can lead to a greater proportion of consumers excluded from mainstream banking.

This thesis consists of three closely connected pieces of work and an enhanced version of my M.Phil. thesis. The first three substantive chapters analyse vertical contracting in input markets under the exercise of differential buyer power. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the case of a supplier selling its output via a supermarket that offers captive demand (due to customers who anyway make a trip for their weekly shopping), which its rival, a local store is not able to offer. It is shown that the supermarket can negotiate an input price lower than the local store's only if its advantage translates into sufficient bargaining strength in setting contracts. The existence of a waterbed effect, the implications of a partially covered market, a nonlinear pricing structure and welfare implications of a ban in discrimination are also explored. Chapter 4 modifies the standard model where size determines buyer power to show that if quantities need to be decided in advance, an increase in a retailer's size is always welfare improving. For the presence of waterbed effects, we propose a novel insight that runs across different classes of models: following a discount to one retailer, the supplier faces two competing incentives - it wants to extract profits from the rival retailer but it also wants to transfer sales towards it. The waterbed effect is shown to be present only if the discount to the retailer is small, so incentives for profit extraction outweigh those for transferring business. Finally chapter 5 studies a firm's strategic incentive to outsource when its product displays network effects. It shows that a firm would choose to increase its observable marginal cost to make its competitor less aggressive and thereby increase its own probability of winning competition for the market. This is robust to small levels of uncertainty.

The first chapter considers a common agency model where two competition authorities share information about a firm under investigation. It shows that information-sharing can sometimes be welfare detrimental unless the authorities coordinate their enforcement policies as well as share information. The reason behind is that the authorities may have different leniency levels and the firm may decide to provide less precise information to one in an attempt to appeal the other. Furthermore it shows that the authorities may want to distort their policies in order to prevent the firm from obscuring the information it provides. The second chapter studies the seller's incentives to provide misleading advice about complex goods such as consumer electronics, banking or phone services. It shows how the incentives to give biased and imprecise advice are affected by the possibility of ex-post litigation, when a court or consumer protection authority investigates how biased the advice is and penalises accordingly. It finds that a more biased advice will also be less precise, thus, a stricter punishment for deceiving consumers also increases precision. The third chapter analyses the impact of trade credit on a relational contract between two vertically related firms. The firms operate in an environment with unobservable shocks, like a developing country or a black market, which create moral hazard in the repayment decision. It shows that the quantity sold in the market will be distorted downwards in order to curb the constrained firm's incentives to steal the credit and derives the optimal repayment scheme.

This thesis explores the causal relationships between tax incentives, research and development (R&D) and productivity. Using R&D survey data from the United Kingdom (UK) Office for National Statistics and administrative data on corporation tax returns from HM Revenue and Customs, I first conduct empirical analyses of tax incentive policies for R&D, and then estimate the elasticity of output with respect to firms' own R&D efforts as well as external R&D performed by neighboring firms in technology and product space. In the first two chapters which focus on tax incentive policies and their evaluation, I am able to identify the policy effect of interest by exploiting two significant reforms in the UK in 2002 and 2008. I find that tax incentives had a positive and significant stimulating effect on businesses' R&D spending. I argue that the availability of a quasi-experimental set up helps in better identifying the policy impact. The production function estimation exercise in the third chapter shows that double counting of R&D human resources and materials in the production function causes the elasticity of output with respect to the firms' own R&D to be substantially underestimated. I also find that the R&D done in multi-unit enterprise groups is productive for the production facilities which themselves do not perform R&D. The Jaffe (1986) and Bloom et al. (2013) measures of external R&D, which account for closeness of firms in technology and product space can be constructed and included in the production function in the spirit of Griliches (1979). I find that the point estimate for the elasticity of output with respect to firms' own R&D is around 3 percent and statistically significant. Evidence is mixed regarding the productivity effects of R&D carried out by competitors in the product market or neighboring firms in technology space. The detailed data sets used in this study offer valuable resources for empirical work on R&D and productivity.

In this collection of essays, I explore three topics where space and distance plays a fundamental role in international economics. Not only do spatial considerations affect the pattern of trade, the frictions that arise from distance also determine where and how goods are produced and where people live. In Chapter 1, I show that human made locational characteristics can determine the spatial allocation of economic activity. I take the standard core-periphery model and add endogenous housing to its forward-looking dynamic adjustment process. By introducing a model of adjustment with an extra state variable, which I interpret as housing, I show that the distribution of housing allows the model to converge to a unique spatial equilibrium. This explains the observed persistence and robustness of economic agglomerations in the data. Chapter 2 is a theory of task assignment in the production of final goods and across countries. By allowing for tasks to differ in their suitability of being used in the production of multiple goods, my model endogenizes the allocation of tasks in the production of goods that use them. The resulting equilibrium task allocation defines the pattern of off-shoring. Tasks that are used in only one good concentrate in the country with a specialization in production of that good. Tasks used in many goods are allocated across countries, with the more substitutable tasks located in the country with the larger overall output. Gains from off-shoring are derived from a better mix of allocation of tasks into goods as well as larger scale of production. Finally in Chapter 3, I study how real exchange rate fluctuations determine the size and composition of the export sector. Using the methodology set out in Dixit and Pindyck (1994) in a heterogeneous firms model, I determine the set of trigger real exchange rates for entry and exit into exporting. My primary result of this chapter is that exchange rate uncertainty coupled with sunk cost of entry causes hysteresis in the number and productivity of exporting firms. I then extend the model to allow free entry of firms. This explains the stylized fact of the existence of non-exporting firms with higher productivity than some exporting firms.