In recent years projects have increasingly used Last Planner System (LPS) in building construction. However project managers still struggle with figuring out how the LPS could be applied on their specific projects. One main reason for this struggle is that explicit instructions for systematically applying LPS are not available. This thesis offers practitioners and researchers an account of LPS implementation challenges and an indication of how LPS can be applied. The thesis qualitatively aggregates the results of 26 test case projects of LPS applications to show researchers and practitioners reasons why LPS was applied, what benefits were realized and what challenges were found during the implementation. Senior and mid-level managers in AEC industry were surveyed to assess the implementation challenges that they encountered. The main findings of this analysis are; (1) that practitioners have used LPS for the purpose of making plans more reliable, (2) get smooth work flow (3) improve productivity. The survey findings imply that improvements in LPS implementation strategies can be made which will facilitate LPS adoption by the industry. The findings of this thesis suggest that further research on the integration of LPS into work and business processes of project teams is needed to further the widespread use of LPS throughout the building industry.

This thesis examines the measurement, applications and properties of consumer inflation expectations in the context of eight European Union countries: France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. The data proceed mainly from the European Commission's Consumer Survey and are qualitative in nature, therefore requiring quantification prior to use. This study first seeks to determine the optimal quantification methodology among a set of approaches spanning three traditions, associated with Carlson-Parkin (1975), Pesaran (1984) and Seitz (1988). The success of a quantification methodology is assessed on the basis of its ability to match quantitative expectations data and on its behaviour in an important economic application, namely the modelling of wages for our sample countries. The wage equation developed here draws on the theoretical background of the staggered contracts and the wage bargaining literature, and controls carefully for inflation expectations and institutional variables. The Carlson-Parkin variation proposed in Curto Millet (2004) was found to be the most satisfactory. This being established, the wage equations are used to test the hypothesis that the advent of EMU generated an increase in labour market flexibility, which would be reflected in structural breaks. The hypothesis is essentially rejected. Finally, the properties of inflation expectations and perceptions themselves are examined, especially in the context of EMU. Both the rational expectations and rational perceptions hypotheses are rejected. Popular expectations mechanisms, such as the "rule-of-thumb" model or Akerlof et al.'s (2000) "near-rationality hypothesis" are similarly unsupported. On the other hand, evidence is found for the transmission of expert forecasts to consumer expectations in the case of the UK, as in Carroll's (2003) model. The distribution of consumer expectations and perceptions is also considered, showing a tendency for gradual (as in Mankiw and Reis, 2002) but non-rational adjustment. Expectations formation is further shown to have important qualitative features.