The purported costs of provincial autonomy in Canadian securities regulation have been well documented. Proposals for centralizing the securities regulatory regime, whether under a national regulator or through restricting the scope of provincial divergence from national standards, have consistently cited the costliness of the current regime. However, policymakers' cognitive biases lead them from time to time to overemphasize the need for decisive and swift action, which in turn causes them to abandon sound decision-making processes. Provincial autonomy ensures that policymaking with national reach is process-oriented and is more likely to be guided by facts and rational projections. Supporters of centralization discount or ignore these features of decentralization and are too sanguine about the ability of centralized regulators to adhere to process. Any further proposals for reform should properly account for these effects.

本文研究目的，在於探討台灣資訊科技（information technology）產業廠商的研發資本存量及產業內（intra-industry）研發資本存量的外溢效果（spillover effect）對於生產技術效率的影響。文中所採用的資料，主要來自於台灣經濟新報資料庫及廠商的財務報表，利用1997-2003年402家於台灣證券交易所上市及上櫃廠商的財務資料，並對Battese and Coelli（1995）所提出隨機邊界生產函數（stochastic frontier production function）與技術無效率效果（technical inefficiency effect）模型，同時進行實證估計。本文主要研究發現為，不論是以整體IT產業的廠商來看，或是分別就電腦硬體產業、半導體產業、通訊產業及光電產業的廠商來看，產業內R&D資本的外溢對於廠商的生產技術效率有正向的影響。但廠商自身的R&D資本存量對於其生產技術效率卻無顯著的影響，而軟體產業的廠商，卻現負面影響。另外，台灣IT產業廠商亦存在著技術進步的情形，但其技術效率則隨著時間而遞減。再則，本文研究也發現，台灣的IT產業中，半導體產業的廠商在生產技術效率方面表現最好，光電產業的廠商則最差。此外，上市廠商的技術效率較上櫃廠商佳。而有在科學園區設立工廠的廠商，除了半導體產業的廠商之外，其他四個產業的在科學工業園區設立工廠的廠商生產技術效率與未於科學園區設立工廠的廠商並無顯著差異。 / This paper aims to investigate the influence of and intra-industry spillovers of R&D spending on firm’s technical efficiency of production in Taiwan’s information technology (IT) industry. Firm-level panel data of 402 firms in IT industry from 1997~2003 provided by Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) data bank and the stochastic frontier production function and technical inefficiency function proposed by Battese and Coelli (1995) are adopted in this study. The primary finding of this study is that the intra-industry spillovers of R&D spending on firm’s technical efficiency exist in Taiwan’s IT industry. This finding also exists in sub-industries of IT industry: computer hardware industry, semi-conductor industry, software industry, telecom industry, and photoelectric industry. However, influence of R&D capital on firm’s technical efficiency is insignificant in whole IT industry in Taiwan. Besides, in the period, there are technical advancements in firms of whole IT industry. Finally, the performance of the IT firms inside the Science Park is insignificant better than the firms outside in terms of technical efficiency, but excluding semi-conductor firms.

Cette thèse établit la conditionnalité de la performance urbanistique à une réforme totale. Elle révèle un syndrome d'inefficacité générale dont le traitement des symptômes est indispensable à un tel objectif. Le spectre des symptômes inclut principalement les missions publiques problématiques, les principes et modèles de base inadéquats, une législation d'urbanisme incompatible avec les objectifs de performance urbanistique, ainsi que les pratiques déviantes ou anarchiques d'aménagement et d'équipements publics. Cette thèse montre en outre l'état de délaissement de nombreux aspects d'urbanisme au libre-arbitre des personnes privées et des organisations non gouvernementales. Les hypothèses de solutions proposées englobent un remodelage total des structures de gouvernance publique, un réglage du droit de l'urbanisme sur une théorie de performance la moins altérable possible, l'édification des préalables théoriques et structurels de la performance, ainsi qu'une réforme spécifique porteuse de la performance du droit de l'urbanisme. Cette thèse identifie divers exemples de performance susceptibles de participer au processus de cette réforme et présente une démarche méthodologique de théorisation et de mise en œuvre d'un tel droit de l'urbanisme en Haïti. Elle explique, de plus, les énormes défis de la performance de ce droit par rapport au système politique et juridique. On y trouve aussi plusieurs propositions pour le relèvement de ces défis, pour la résorption des divers obstacles identifiés, ainsi que pour l'établissement d'un système global de performance apte à porter durablement celle du droit de l'urbanisme. / This thesis establishes the conditionality of an urban planning and development performance upon a comprehensive reform in Haiti. It highlights a general inefficiency syndrome whose treatment is essential for such purpose. The range of symptoms mainly comprises problematic government tasks, inadequate basic models and principles, an urban planning law incompatible with objectives in terms of urban planning and development performance, along with anarchic and deviant practices in development and public facilities. Furthermore, this thesis outlines the state of many aspects of urban planning left to the free will of private individuals and non-governmental organizations. Hypotheses of solutions involve a complete remodeling of public governance structures, an urban planning adjusted upon a performing theory as little alterable as possible, some well-made theoretical and structural prerequisites of performance, as well as a specific reform promising a performing urban planning law. This thesis also identifies various performance examples likely to participate in this reform process and presents a theorization and implementation methodological approach of such an urban planning law in Haiti. It also explains the tremendous challenges for the performing urban planning law in relation to the political and legal system. Several propositions are included aimed at answering various challenges, removing a number of identified barriers and establishing a global management system suitable for accomplishing sustainable performance in urban planning law.

Evaluations of the Higher Education Sector are receiving increased attention, due to the rising expenditures and the absence of efficiency enhancing market pressure. To what extent universities are able to eliminate inefficiency is a question that has only partially been answered. This paper argues that heterogeneity among universities as well as persistent inefficiency hinder the institutions to achieve full efficiency - at least in the short run. Two standard and one novel specification of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis are applied to a new, comprehensive set of panel data to show how the standard efficiency evaluation changes when both aspects are taken into account. It is the first time that the idea of persistent inefficiency is considered in the analysis of the German Higher Education Sector. The comparison reveals that the disregard of heterogeneity distorts the estimation results towards lower efficiency values. The newly introduced specification improves the accuracy of the heterogeneity assumption and exposes that inefficiency tends to be long term and persistent rather than short term and residual. This implies that increasing efficiency requires a comprehensive change of the university structure.

Evaluations of the Higher Education Sector are receiving increased attention, due to the rising expenditures and the absence of efficiency enhancing market pressure. To what extent universities are able to eliminate inefficiency is a question that has only partially been answered. This paper argues that heterogeneity among universities as well as persistent inefficiency hinder the institutions to achieve full efficiency - at least in the short run. Two standard and one novel specification of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis are applied to a new, comprehensive set of panel data to show how the standard efficiency evaluation changes when both aspects are taken into account. It is the first time that the idea of persistent inefficiency is considered in the analysis of the German Higher Education Sector. The comparison reveals that the disregard of heterogeneity distorts the estimation results towards lower efficiency values. The newly introduced specification improves the accuracy of the heterogeneity assumption and exposes that inefficiency tends to be long term and persistent rather than short term and residual. This implies that increasing efficiency requires a comprehensive change of the university structure.

Despite measures on the European level to increase the compatibility between the HE sectors of the member states, the recent literature exposes variations in their efficiencies. To gain insights into these differences we split the efficiency term according to the two management levels each university is confronted with. Utilizing a recent advancement in the method to measure efficiency, we separate short-term (transient) and long-term (persistent) efficiency, while controlling for unobserved institution specific heterogeneity. While the first term reflects the efficiency of the individual universities working within the country, the second term echoes the influence of the country specific overall HE structure. The cross-country comparison displays if the overall efficiency difference between countries is related to individual performance of their universities or their HE structure. This allows more purposeful policy recommendation and expands the literature regarding the efficiency of universities in a fundamental way. Choosing Italy and Germany as two important illustrative examples we can take advantage of a novel dataset including characteristics of institutions in both countries for an exceptional long period of time from 2001 to 2011. We show that the Italian universities exhibit a higher overall efficiency value than their German counterparts. With the individual universities working at the upper bound of efficiency in both countries, the overall inefficiency as well as the gap between the countries is caused by persistent, structural inefficiency. To expedite a true European Area of Higher Education future measures should hence aim at the country specific structure, not solely at affecting the activities of single universities.

No description available.

Paper [I] tests the success rate of trades and the returns of the Opening Range Breakout (ORB) strategy. A trader that trades on the ORB strategy seeks to identify large intraday price movements and trades only when the price moves beyond some predetermined threshold. We present an ORB strategy based on normally distributed returns to identify such days and find that our ORB trading strategy result in significantly higher returns than zero as well as an increased success rate in relation to a fair game. The characteristics of such an approach over conventional statistical tests is that it involves the joint distribution of low, high, open and close over a given time horizon. Paper [II] measures the returns of a popular day trading strategy, the Opening Range Breakout strategy (ORB), across volatility states. We calculate the average daily returns of the ORB strategy for each volatility state of the underlying asset when applied on long time series of crude oil and S&P 500 futures contracts. We find an average difference in returns between the highest and the lowest volatility state of around 200 basis points per day for crude oil, and of around 150 basis points per day for the S&P 500. This finding suggests that the success in day trading can depend to a large extent on the volatility of the underlying asset. Paper [III] performs empirical analysis on short-term and long-term Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) strategies regarding their exposures to unanticipated risk shocks. Previous research documents that CTA strategies offer diversification opportunities during equity market crisis situations when evaluated as a group, but do not separate between short-term and long-term CTA strategies. When separating between short-term and long-term CTA strategies, this paper finds that only short-term CTA strategies provide a significant, and consistent, exposure to unanticipated risk shocks while long-term CTA strategies do not. For the purpose of diversifying a portfolio during equity market crisis situations, this result suggests that an investor should allocate to short-term CTA strategies rather than to long-term CTA strategies.

L’objectif principal du présent mémoire réside dans l’exploration des liens concomitants existant entre les trois dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel telles que définies par Maslach (1981) et la consommation de substances psychoactives, plus précisément au niveau de la consommation épisodique excessive et hebdomadaire à risque d’alcool et de la consommation de médicaments psychotropes. À partir d’un échantillon composé de 1809 travailleurs provenant de 83 milieux de travail québécois, des profils-types correspondant à des formes particulières de comorbidité de santé mentale au travail sont identifiés grâce à la méthode d’analyse en classes latentes. Ainsi quatre profils-types sont dégagés: un premier regroupant les individus dits «sains», dont les scores aux différentes dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel sont faibles et dont la consommation de substances psychoactives est modérée; deux autres correspondant à des formes intermédiaires de risques; et un quatrième rassemblant des travailleurs dits «fragiles» dont les scores pour chacune des dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel se situent dans le quintile le plus élevé et dont les probabilités de consommation de substances psychoactives sont grandes. De plus, cette recherche s’est penchée sur l’identification de facteurs de risque et de protection associés à chacun des profils-types. À cet effet, les résultats des analyses corroborent la plupart des associations retrouvées au sein de la littérature quant aux facteurs du travail (composantes des modèles du stress professionnel de Karasek et Theorell (1990) ainsi que de Siegrist (1990)), hors travail (statut matrimonial, obligations parentales, revenu du ménage) et certaines caractéristiques individuelles (âge et genre). De faibles récompenses et un fort degré de surinvestissement de la part de l’individu se révèlent être des facteurs de risque particulièrement significatifs pour les formes intermédiaires et à risque de comorbidité de la santé mentale au travail. Dans une moindre mesure, une faible utilisation des compétences, des demandes psychologiques élevées, un soutien social inadéquat et le jeune âge expliquent une part de la variation observée entre les différents profils-types. Enfin, les résultats soutiennent une conceptualisation tridimensionnelle de l’épuisement professionnel. / The main objective of this master is to explore the concurrent associations between two phenomena related to stress, burnout and the use of psychoactive substance. Particularly, this research focuses on the three dimensions of burnout as defined by Maslach (1981), on two hazardous alcohol patterns consumption, binge drinking and weekly alcohol abuse, and on psychotropic drugs utilization. From a sample of 1809 workers issued from 83 workplaces in Quebec, typical profiles corresponding to different forms of comorbidity are identified with the use of latent class analysis. Four typical profiles were identified. The first one referred to “healthy” individuals who presented the lowest scores for the three dimensions of burnout without misuse of any psychoactive substances. Two more groups corresponded to intermediate health risk forms of comorbidity patterns. The fourth one was composed of “fragile” workers, with the highest burnout scores and the highest probabilities for misusing alcohol and psychotropic drugs. In addition, this research identified some risk and protective factors associated with each profiles. Multivariate analyses results corroborated most associations found in the occupational stress literature on organizational work conditions (model components of occupational stress developed by Karasek and Theorell (1990) and Siegrist (1996)), non-work determinants (marital status, parental status and household income), and on individual characteristics (age and gender). Low rewards and high overcommitment appeared as particularly significant risk factors for the intermediate and severe forms of comorbidity. Low skills utilization, low social support at work, high psychological demands and a young age explained to a lesser extent part of the variation observed between the comorbidity profiles. Results supported a three-dimensional conceptualization of burnout.

L’objectif central de cette thèse est d’appréhender « le maillon faible » du système français de régulation et de contrôle des dépenses de santé, entendu comme un élément résiduel, « caché », qui empêche le système de parvenir aux objectifs ciblés. Nous mettons en œuvre les outils économiques et économétriques pour tester l’hypothèse selon laquelle les comportements dépensiers et inattendus des médecins sont liés aux politiques publiques. Pour appréhender le phénomène recherché nous menons quatre études micro–économétriques (qui sont économiques, quantitatives et sociologiques) de l’évolution du comportement du médecin omnipraticien libéral français. Nous nous sommes intéressés aux choix volontaires des praticiens portant sur les pratiques tarifaires et sur l’organisation du travail. Dans le cadre de l’approche économétrique, nous utilisons les données d’un panel non-cylindré de 8131 médecins libéraux différents observés durant la période 1979-2000 et représentatifs de la population concernée, ainsi que les méthodes économétriques appropriées à chaque cas étudié selon sa nature. Outre la validité de l’hypothèse, les résultats obtenus apportent des éléments de compréhension du type de rationalité du médecin, de ses motivations, des facteurs qui guident ses choix et des pistes d’explication de l’inefficacité des dispositifs politiques mis en œuvre. Ils fournissent également des réflexions sur les recommandations à faire en matière de mesures politiques et suggèrent de nouvelles pistes de recherche. / The main aim of that doctoral dissertation is to comprehend "the weak link" in the French system of regulation and control of health expenditure, understood us a residual, "hidden" element, which prevents the system from reaching the targets. We use the economic and econometric methods to prove the hypothesis that unexpected and wasteful medical behaviour can be caused by the public policy. There are four micro-econometric studies (which are economic, sociological and quantitative) of the French general self-employed practitioner’s behavioural evolution. We focus on the practitioner’s voluntary choices of the pricing practices and on the medical practice organisation. In the econometric studies, we use an unbalanced panel data comprising 8131 self-employed physicians who were observed over the 1979-2000 period and who are representative of the medical population, and different econometric methods depending on the analysis. Our results offer an empirical understanding of an unexpected medical behaviour phenomenon; they offer information about the practitioner’s rationality kind, the practitioner’s motivations, the factors exerting influence on their choices; and they offer clarification of the public policy’s inefficiency. Also, our results propose observations about a recommendation for policy measures and new approaches for the future research.