This Master’s thesis deals with designing a measuring device that would record driver’s movements during dynamic riding states known as localization, and based on the recorded data creating a simulation in multi-body software. The first part reviews the current state of knowledge in the field of photogrammetry, sensors, and motorcycles’ characteristics. Moreover, the second part focuses on constructing the measuring device, practical aspects of data collection, processing, and evaluation in multi-body software.

Late nineteenth-century Victorian adventure novels offer a complex depiction of manhood in relation to colonial adversaries. H. Rider Haggard's 1880s novels portray imperial adventure as an opportunity for masculine rejuvenation, while later adventure novels express a sense of imperial dread and suggest that adventure traumatizes, instead of rejuvenates, masculinity. All of these novels offer insight into a larger shift in Victorian thought concerning Britain's role as an imperial power. The novels define masculinity in two distinct ways: as modern and as medieval. Each novel approaches modern manhood as impotent when faced with the colonial threat, but the narratives all offers a different interpretation of medieval masculinity, underscoring the vexed nature of the Victorian's relationship with the past. H. Rider Haggard's novels, King Solomon's Mines (1885) and She (1887), suggest that imperial adventure offers modern manhood rejuvenation and purpose through interaction and eventual suppression of the colonial female. Haggard offers an optimistic portrayal of adventure because of both the men's distinctly medieval form of physical rejuvenation and the men's ability to influence the landscape in their favor. Authors Bram Stoker and Richard Marsh present a vastly different interpretation of empire and medieval masculinity in their 1897 novels Dracula and The Beetle. Adventure traumatizes the men in the later novels, and their hysteria attests to their effeminate lack of masculine virility. The 1897 novels critique both the optimistic depiction of imperial adventure and the unnatural reliance on medieval forms of masculinity offered in novels such as Haggard's.

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This dissertation consists of three essays studying the theory of dynamic contest. This analysis mainly focuses on how the outcome and the optimal design in a dynamic contest varies on contest technology, heterogeneous players, contest architecture, and bias instruments. The first chapter outlines the dissertation by briefly discussing the motivations, methods, and main findings in the following chapters. Chapter 2 considers a situation in which two groups compete in a series of battles with complete information. Each group has multiple heterogeneous players. The group who first wins a predetermined number of battles wins a prize which is a public good for the winning group. A discriminatory state-dependent contest success function will be employed in each battle. We found that in the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (equilibria), the lower valuation players can only exert effort in earlier battles, while the higher valuation players may exert effort throughout the entire series of battles. The typical discouragement effect in a multi-battle contest is mitigated when players compete as a group. We also provide two types of optimal contest designs that can fully resolve the free-rider problem in group contests. Chapter 3 investigates optimal contest design with multiple heterogeneous players. We allow the contest designer to have one or multiple/mixed objectives, which includes the following parts: the total effort; the winner's effort; the maximal effort; and the winning probability of the strongest player. We provide a one-size-fits-all contest design that is optimal given any objective function. In the optimal contest, the designer will have one of the weaker players exhaust the strongest in the contest with infinite battles. We obtain the required conditions on different contest frameworks (e.g., all-pay auctions and lottery contests) and bias instruments (e.g., head starts and multiplicative bias). This means the contest designer has multiple alternatives to design the optimal contest. The last chapter investigates a situation where two players compete in a series of sequential battles to win a prize. A player can obtain certain points by winning a single battle, and the available points may vary across the battles. The player who first obtains predetermined points wins the prize. We fully characterize the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium by describing the indifference continuation value interval. We found that when two players are symmetric, they only compete in the separating battle. In the general case, we found that winning a battle may not create any momentum when the weight of the battle is small. A small enough adjustment of a battle's weight will not change both players' incentive to win the battle. Increasing (or decreasing) a battle's weight weakly increases (or weakly decreases) both players' incentive to win. / Doctor of Philosophy / A contest in economics is defined as a situation in which players exert positive effort to win a prize. The effort can be money, time, energy, or any resource that is used in a competition. The prize can be monetary or other perks from winning a competition. In this dissertation, we explore dynamic multi-battle contests where the winner is not decided by one single competition but by a series of sequential competitions. For example, the US presidential primary begins sometime in January or February and ends about mid-June and candidates will compete in different states during the time. In NBA finals, the winner is decided by a best-of-seven contest. The team that first wins four games becomes the champion. In the second chapter, we explore multi-battle group contest in which each group has multiple heterogeneous players. The group who first wins a certain number of battles wins a prize. The prize is a public good within the winning group so players in the winning group can enjoy the prize regardless their effort. We found that players with high prize valuation will be discouraged in earlier battles due to high expected effort in later battles. This may make high-value players only exert effort in later and more decisive battles. The low-value players will exert effort in earlier battles and will free rider on high-value players in later battles. We also provide the optimal contest design that can fully resolve the free-rider problem. In the optimal contest design, the designer should completely balance two groups in every battle. In the third chapter, we explore the optimal contest design in the multi-battle contests with multiple heterogeneous players. The contest designer can have one or multiple/mixed objectives. We found a "one size fits all" multi-battle contest design that is optimal for various objective functions. In the optimal contest design, the designer should give different advantages to the strongest player and one of the weaker players. More specifically, the weaker player is easier to win each battle, while the strongest player needs to win fewer battles. This overturns the conventional wisdom that the advantage should be only given to the weaker players. In the fourth quarter, we explore the multi-battle contest that in which each battle has a different weight, that is, some battles may more or less important than others. We found that when a battle's weight is small, players may feel indifference between winning or losing the battle. Therefore, winning such battles will not create any momentum, and players tend to give up those battles by exerting no effort. We also found that when we increase or decrease a battle's weight, if the adjustment is small, it will not change players' incentive to win a battle. However, if the adjustment is large enough, it will increase or decrease players' incentive to win in the same direction.

This study undertakes an examination of the representation of nature in works of literature that it regards as early British ‘mythopoeic fantasy’. By this term the thesis understands that fantasy fiction which is fundamentally concerned with myth or myth-making. It is the contention of the study that the connection of these works with myth or the idea of myth is integral to their presentation of nature. Specifically, this study identifies a connection between the idea of nature presented in these novels and the thought of the late-Victorian era regarding nature, primitivism, myth and the impulse behind mythopoesis. It is argued that this conceptual background is responsible for the notion of nature as a virtuous force of spiritual redemption in opposition to modernity and in particular to the dominant modern ideological model of scientific materialism. The thesis begins by examining late-Victorian sensibilities regarding myth and nature, before exposing correlative ideas in selected case studies of authors whose work it posits to be primarily mythopoeic in intent. The first of these studies considers the work of Henry Rider Haggard, the second examines Scottish writer David Lindsay, and the third looks at the mythopoeic endeavours of J. R. R. Tolkien, the latter standing alone among the authors considered in these central case studies in producing fiction under a fully developed theory of mythopoesis. The perspective is then widened in the final chapter, allowing consideration of authors such as William Morris and H. G. Wells. The study attempts to demonstrate the prevalence of an identifiable conceptual model of nature in the period it considers to constitute the age of early mythopoeic fantasy fiction, which it conceives to date from the late-Victorian era to the apotheosis of Tolkien’s work.

This thesis is composed of four chapters and addresses the contracting issue under strategic experimentation. The first chapter presents an overview of the thesis and introduces the strategic bandit model, which is commonly adopted in the other three chapters. The chapter also previews the main results and implications of the thesis. The second chapter discusses the contracting issue between a principal and a team of agents where the actions of agents are unobservable to the principal. The main contribution of this chapter is to fill the gap of strategic experimentation literature by introducing the free-rider problem in teamwork. The chapter first deals with the optimal hiring choice of the principal under perfect information. Since the belief of the state being good decreases if no one succeeds over time, the paper shows that the principal tends to hire fewer agents in response to the downward-adjusted posterior belief. When the principal can neither monitor the agents' actions nor distinguish the agents who succeed, this chapter shows the optimal incentivising contract consists of an upfront payment from the agents to the principal, a bonus to every agent conditioning on success and a stopping time. Under this contract, the principal can implement first-best experimentation and incentivise all agents to work until the optimal stopping time. The third and fourth chapters discuss the financial contracting issue in innovation where an innovator requires external funding from an investor. The third chapter adopts a \bad news" exponential bandit to study the financial contracting under adverse selection between the innovator and the investor. The innovator, owns the innovation project, is privately informed of either a high or low prior belief of the good state but seeks a large amount of external investment from the less-informed investor. Experimentation is conducted by the innovator using internal funding before the external investment. The posterior belief about the good state increases in the amount of internal funding if no bad news arrives during experimentation, but the project will be abandoned as long as bad news arrives. The chapter shows that the amount of internal funding can be used by the investor to separate the agents with different priors. Under the unique least-costly separating equilibrium, the high-prior innovator spends even more than the low-prior first-best internal funding in order to deter the low-prior one from mimicking, and the low-prior one remains at his first-best. This chapter enriches the financial experimentation literature by proposing internal funding as a novel signalling tool and establishing a Pareto dominating separating equilibrium. The fourth chapter studies a multi-stage innovation financing problem between an agent and an investor with asymmetric information on the progress of the project. The innovation is comprised of two stages where the agent needs to complete the first development stage in order to proceed to the second experiment stage. The model assumes that the completion of the first stage can be early or late following a binary distribution, and the arrival of success in the experimentation stage follows a "good news" exponential bandit. Each period, a fixed amount of investment is needed from the investor. However, the investor can not observe nor verify the project progress. The chapter shows that the optimal incentive-compatible contract consists of differential maximum funding periods in the event of early and late completion of the first stage respectively and subsequent bonuses to the investor conditioning on a success in the second stage. We prove that the first-best experimentation time is attainable as long as the bonus of the late completion exceeds that of the early completion, and the difference between the two bonuses should be confined within a certain range. In the extension, we consider the case when the first stage completion time is informative such that an early completion indicates a higher prior in the good state than the late completion. Under imperfect information, the agent has a stronger incentive to mimic the early completion if the first stage is completed late as a longer experimentation time will be granted according the first-best contract. The chapter proves that the first-best is still achievable under a similar bonus contract but the difference between the two bonuses becomes smaller. This chapter contributes to the experimentation financing literature including the information imperfectness on project progress and multi-stage spillover effects.

This thesis consists of three self-contained essays dealing with different aspects of macroeconomics and political Economy. The Relative Price of Investment Goods and Sectoral Contract Dependence I develop a quantitative model to explain the relationship between TFPs at the aggregate and sector levels and contracting institutions across countries. The incomplete contract enforcement induces distortions in the production process which come from the “hold up” problem between a final goods firm and its suppliers. Because investment goods sector is more contract dependent, its productivity suffers more from the distortion. In turn, countries endowed with weaker contract enforcement institutions face higher relative prices of investment goods. A Ricardian Model of the Labor Market with Directed Search I analyze how search friction affects the allocation in a Ricardian model of the labor market. The equilibrium shows that the matching pattern is partially mixed: Some tasks are only performed by skilled workers; some are only performed by unskilled workers; the remaining tasks are performed by both skilled and unskilled workers. The mixed matching pattern implies a mismatch in equilibrium. It turns out that the reason for the mismatch has its roots in search friction. In addition, I show labor market institutions have interesting implications for the unemployment rate and mismatch. A Dynamic Analysis of the Free-rider Problem I argue that special interest groups overcome their free-rider problem thanks to distorted government policy. As policy confers monopoly privileges on a group, it can also preserve and promote group’s organization. The key to sustaining the organization of the group is a dynamic incentive: when distorted policy generates rents for a group, each member of the group wish to make contributions not just to raise their rents today; they want to sustain their cooperation so that they will be able to influence policy in the future.

Genom att undersöka Djävulens utseende och roll, har jag försökt beskriva hur Djävulen porträtteras i de serietidningar jag valt ut. Djävulen avbildas på en rad olika sätt i serietidningsform i vårt till stor del sekulariserade samhälle. Vissa av dessa avbildningar har religiösa föregångare, vissa har föregångare i annan litteratur och vissa är helt nya. De tyder på att man inte använder Djävulen alltför lättvindigt i serietidningar och att man ofta är medveten om de kulturella konnotationer han för med sig. Han är en karaktär som ofta framställs som en negativ karaktär, vilket inte är lustigt med tanke på hans roll inom religion och litteratur. Tack vare de förutfattade tankar som finns om honom är han lätt att använda för att skapa effekter inom serierna, antingen genom att spela på den negativa inställningen eller genom att ställa läsarens förväntningar på ända. Han framställs främst i tre större roller: som tragisk, skrämmande eller komisk. Det är inte ovanligt att flera av dessa roller används till samma karaktär. I de serier jag analyserat har han alltid ställts som en kontrast till seriens protagonist, även om han inte alltid är serietidningens antagonist. Djävulens utseende speglar hans roll i serierna på så sätt att han, när han ska vara skrämmande eller antagonist, har ett mer monstruöst utseende än vad han har när han har en tragisk roll. När han ska vara komisk har han ett utseende som kan ses som löjeväckande, men är inte mänsklig för den saken skull. En gemensam faktor är att samtliga djävlar hade någon form av skräckskapande element till sin karaktär. Sammanfattningsvis kan man säga att Djävulen framställs på minst sagt olika sätt i de olika serierna, vilket tyder på att det kan vara svårt att säga något klart generellt om hur denna karaktär porträtteras i serietidningsmediet.

L'objectif de cette thèse était d'analyser les interactions entre le dos du cheval et la selle dans les conditions de l'exercice sportif et de développer, à partir de ces connaissances nouvelles, une gamme de selles adaptées au cheval en mouvement et à son cavalier. L'originalité de cette thèse était entre autre de mesurer les mouvements de la colonne vertébrale dans la région thoracique située sous la selle. Un protocole original de mesure biomécanique des interactions entre le dos et la selle a été mis en place et validé. Ce protocole couplait différents matériels (tapis capteur de pression, cinématique 2D, capteur de force d'étrier et centrales de mesure inertielle) synchronisés et miniaturisés. Grâce à ce protocole, il a été possible de quantifier le mouvement de la colonne vertébrale du cheval, les pressions au cours de l'effort et l'effet du cavalier en comparant des selles dites « standard » avec de nouveaux prototypes de « panneaux » permettant de modifier la portance de la selle sur le dos du cheval. Les résultats de ces études ont permis de mettre en évidence l'impact du cavalier sur l'amplitude des mouvements du dos du cheval et sur sa locomotion au cours du trot et de démontrer qu'une selle dont la portance est modifiée provoque des modifications significatives de la locomotion du cheval au trot. Ces travaux ont permis d'apporter des informations quantifiées sur l'effet de la selle et du cavalier sur la biomécanique dorsale du cheval dans la condition montée lors de l'effort. Ces connaissances nouvelles seront utilisées (1) pour la conception de nouvelles selles mieux adaptées au cheval en mouvement et (2) pour mieux comprendre, prévenir et traiter les dorsalgies chez le cheval / The aim of this thesis was to analyze the interactions between the horse’s back and the saddle during exercise and develop, thanks to these new knowledges, a new range of saddle adapted to horse’s movements and to the rider. The originality of this thesis was to measure the movements of the spine in the thoracic region located under the saddle. An innovative protocol was developed to measure the interactions between the back and the saddle using different materials (pressure mat, 2D kinematics, stirrup force sensors, and inertial measurement units) synchronized and miniaturized. With this protocol, it was possible to quantify the movement of the horse’s spine, the pressure under the saddle and the effect of the rider by comparing a “standard” saddle with new prototype “panels” modifying the contact area of the saddle on the horse’s back. The results of these studies have helped to highlight the impact of the rider on the range of motion of the horse’s back and locomotion during the trot and to demonstrate that a saddle, which the contact area is modified, causes significant changes in the locomotion of the horse. This work helped to provide quantified information on the effect of the saddle and the rider on the horse’s back biomechanics in the ridden condition. These new knowledges will be used (1) to design new adapted saddles to the horse in motion and (2) to better understand, prevent and treat back pain in horses

H. Rider Haggard's imperial gothic novel, She, A History of Adventure (1887), is a narrative of ruins that speak of a vanished past and presage ends: of empire, of history, of culture. Haggard's novel follows two British adventurers as they travel to Africa in search of a mysterious woman that a potsherd--a ruin in miniature--tasks them with killing. There, they encounter ruin after ruin: pots, roads, caves, canals, sculptures, and more. These ruins serve as sentinels, as walkways, and as homes; they signal, warn, resist, witness, remind, and--not least--exist in a landscape that is anything but empty. Though seemingly inert, the ruins are actants possessing agency and able to influence the people and objects around them. But in Haggard's novel of colonization and conquest, these ruins do not act alone. Instead, they form an assemblage, a group of vibrant materials that collaborate and collude to resist twin onslaughts from ancient Egypt and Victorian Britain. Two accounts thus emerge from the encounter of human and ruin. In one, the ruins establish a symbiotic relationship with their would-be possessor. In the other, the ruins reject the men who seek to make the artifacts part of the narrative of imperialism. In this way, the ruins in She become counteragents of empire, as heroic as Haggard's human characters and worthy of recognition for the pivotal role they play in the novel.