Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1993. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-104). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Jeffrey Miller, Dept. of Economics. Includes bibliographical references.

Στη διπλωματική αυτή εργασία εξετάζονται οι τρέχουσες τεχνικές εξοικονόμησης ενέργειας σε κτιριακές εγκαταστάσεις, το τρέχον νομικό πλαίσιο και γίνεται μια μελέτη εξοικονόμησης ενέργειας κατοικίας. / --

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Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Eritrea, a relatively young African nation, is one of the least developed countries in the world. Its economy is predominantly dependent on subsistence agriculture and the level and magnitude of poverty is more severe in rural areas. The formal financial sector is underdeveloped, state-owned, far from being competitive, and limited in terms of depth and breadth as measured by the relevant financial sector development indicators. To address the limitations of the formal banking sector and to help fill the financing gap, and improve the general livelihood of those at the lower income group, the Government of Eritrea introduced a Saving and Microcredit Programme (SMCP) in 1996 for which no scientific study measuring its impact has been done at the household level. The study was conducted in rural areas to find out whether the SMCP as a microfinance institution has improved the livelihood of its clients. The specific objectives of the study were to describe the characteristic feature of rural livelihoods in terms of the resources owned, the strategies pursued and outcomes achieved, identify and examine the determinants of household participation in the SMCP and finally assess the impact of participation in SMCP on household livelihoods. The study employed a quasi-experimental cross-sectional survey design involving structured and semi-structured questionnaire administered to 500 respondents of whom 200 represented the treated group and 300 the controlled group. Logit regression was employed to identify the factors that determine household participation in the SMCP. In regard to this, age of the client household, household size, marital status, level of education of the client household, the size of first round loan, entrepreneurial experience, type of loan product offered by the institution, ownership of livestock and microenterprise, the perception of the client on involuntary deposits, the occurrence of a negative events (shock) to the household and village access to electricity were found to have statistically significant effect on the household‟s probability to participate in the SMCP. Furthermore, the marginal effects were also computed to evaluate the contribution of each of these factors to the likelihood of participating in the SMCP. A propensity score matching model was applied to assess the impact of the programme on the livelihood of its clients. The findings reveal that participation in the SMCP has a significantly higher average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) households. Profits generated from off-farm and small microenterprises, the values of household and livestock assets, food and non-food consumption expenditures and nutrition quality, were found to be on average higher for the treated households than for the controlled households. Therefore, it could be argued that the provision of micro financial resources has significant positive effects on household livelihood outcomes. The study has important social and economic policy implication regarding the role of finance in rural development.

The aim of this dissertation was to develop a novel behavioural method to assess young children’s capacity for episodic foresight. Specifically, I developed a marble game paradigm to assess whether 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children would save marbles for future enjoyment. Study 1 demonstrated that preschoolers will save more spontaneously when they can draw on a recent past experience compared to when the context is completely novel. Results from study 1 also suggest that preschoolers are sensitive to the relative value of future rewards. Study 2 revealed that providing children with a verbal prompt alerting them to their possible courses of action (i.e., saving or spending) facilitated saving, that 5-year-olds saved more than 3-year-olds, and that children’s performance on this behavioural (i.e., nonverbal) measure of saving was independent of their language proficiency. Children’s saving was not associated with other capacities hypothesized to relate to episodic foresight (theory of mind, inhibitory control, and working memory). Implications for children's saving, the development of episodic foresight, and future research are discussed.

The aim of this research was to minimize the damage of textile fibres (wool and cotton), in the wet processing, such as bleaching and dyeing, and also seek to reduce fresh water usage during these processes. Typically bleaching of textiles involves the application of oxidative and reductive whitening agents. However a detrimental side-effect is a reduction in their strength. Therefore the approach to developing robust processes is to optimize the chemical treatments and incorporate protective agents in to the treatment baths. This study has demonstrated the application of fibre protective agents were successful in maintaining fabric strength, as defined by flat abrasion, without affecting the improvement in fabric whiteness for both wool and cotton. While the protective mechanism for wool is probably based on restricting damage to the cell membrane proteins and minimizing internal lipid loss, the protective effect on cotton is less certain. Colouration of wool requires elevated temperatures through boiling of aqueous treatment baths or steaming after printing. In this study the effect of blank dyeing of wool fabrics was examined and the extent of hydrothermal damage and yellowing established. In addition the potential effect of fibre protective agents, such as protein hydrolysates and formaldehyde-based agents, were assessed and their benefits in terms of fabric tensile strength, colour, mechanical properties related to fabric handle, and abrasion resistance determined. It was demonstrated that both protective agents offer fibre protection as individual additives and co-applicants. Fresh water is a vital component in the processing of textiles. However water is a scarce commodity and the need for efficient use of it is important. Therefore in this study the use of simulated seawater as an alternative processing medium for bleaching and colouration was evaluated. It was found alkaline hydrogen peroxide bleaching of wool and cotton could be performed successfully in the seawater and benefits in terms of good whiteness and improved abrasion resistance achieved. Building on the previous fibre protection study the incorporation of Byco C into the salt water bleach bath was evaluated and flat abrasion strength benefits again demonstrated. In this research a modified paper-based filter was be used as the “clean” industrial textile water effluent. Initially the filter paper based on poultry feathers was evaluated. The keratinous byproduct/waste material offers a cheap potential source of fibre and was successfully converted into paper. The strength and dye adsorption properties of the papers filters were assessed and it was observed that the important wet strength was considerably improved by the application of a cationic reactive polymer. Novel C30-modified PVP based nanofibres were force spun and as evaluated as a dye absorbent for Direct and Disperse dyes. The nanofibre web offered significant potential for absorbing the comparable non-polar disperse dyes.

This thesis analyses the dimensions and dynamics of clientship in the microfinance sector in Sri Lanka with a special focus on multiple clientship. It examines the extent of different dimensions of clientship and how they have changed between 2006/07 and 2009/10, based on an original framework developed in this thesis. It further explores the reasons for households to borrow and save with multiple financial institutions and the implications of multiple borrowing and multiple saving on households and on microfinance institutions (MFIs). The research is based on mixed methods and uses both primary and secondary data sources. The findings reveal that MFI clients are heterogeneous in terms of financial services utilised and the number and the types of financial institutions accessed by them. The majority of MFI clients are multiple clients and the level of multiple clientship has increased significantly between 2006/07 and 2009/10, with the majority of clients accessing a combination of MFIs and commercial financial institutions (CFIs) like commercial banks. The findings reveal that the microfinance sector and the formal financial sector, that are conventionally believed to serve distinct segments of the market, have converged over time, catering to the financial needs of a broad group of clients. The factors that have contributed to such a high level of financial access and increasing convergence between MFIs and CFIs in Sri Lanka are also examined in the thesis. The research finds that multiple borrowing among households is driven by both promotional and protectional needs, though for the majority of households, it is driven either entirely or at least partially, by promotional needs such as income-generation activities. By contrast, multiple saving among households is driven by a combination of reasons rather than a single reason. One of the key reasons for the widespread use of CFIs among MFI clients is to access pawning facilities. Such services are not available from most MFIs, and are largely used as a strategy to deal with emergency financial needs among lower income households. While the high level of financial services in Sri Lanka should be lauded, debt levels among households, particularly among multiple borrowers have increased and some of the key MFIs have experienced deteriorating portfolio quality and weak financial performance in recent years, bringing concerns to the microfinance sector of the country. The findings stress the need to monitor multiple borrowing and to strengthen the performance of MFIs, to enable them to better face the rising competition and multiple clientship in the sector, and to ensure sustainable access to financial services by all.

Ma thèse aboutit à un programme de recherche qui étudie l'investissement (et l'épargne) sous trois angles différents. Il renseigne sur 1) le comportement d'épargne des pays riches en pétrole, 2) la formation des prix et la dynamique de l'investissement sur le marché pétrolier, et 3) le rôle des rachats d'actions dans l'inhibition de l'effet positif d'une politique monétaire accommodante sur l'investissement au niveau des entreprises. Le point commun sous-jacent de ces trois axes de travail est la compréhension des facteurs qui influencent les décisions d'investissement au niveau de l'entreprise, de l'industrie ou du pays. Le premier chapitre de ma thèse, External Saving and Exhaustible Resource Extraction, aborde précisément la question de la gestion épuisable des ressources face à l'incertitude. En reliant le comportement d'extraction et d'économie dans un cadre théorique cohérent, ce chapitre contribue à deux veines de la littérature qui se sont développées séparément jusqu'à plus récemment. Le deuxième chapitre, L'effet retardateur du stockage sur l'investissement : Les données du secteur pétrolier américain continuent d'explorer le rôle de l'incertitude, mais cette fois-ci, elles analysent à la fois la dynamique des prix et celle des investissements lorsque les décisions d'investissement sont irréversibles. Le dernier chapitre de cette thèse, Rachat d'actions, politique monétaire et coût de la dette, porte sur une étude empirique des déterminants de l'investissement. Partant de la structure du capital des entreprises, cette partie de ma thèse porte sur le rôle des rachats dans le détournement de la dette à faible coût des investissements et de l'emploi. / My thesis culminates into a research program that studies investment (and saving) from three different perspectives. It informs on 1) the saving behaviour of oil-rich countries, on 2) price formation and investment dynamics in the oil market, and on 3) the role of share buybacks in muting the positive effect of accommodative monetary policy on firm-level investment. The underlying common thread among these three work streams is understanding factors that mediate the investment decisions at the firm, industry, or country level. The first chapter of my thesis, External Saving and Exhaustible Resource Extraction, addresses precisely the issue of exhaustible resource management in the face of uncertainty. In linking the extraction and saving behavior under a coherent theoretical framework, this chapter contributes to two veins of the literature that have developed separately until more recently. The second chapter, The Delaying Effect of Storage on Investment: Evidence from the US Oil Sector, continues to explore the role of uncertainty but this time analyses both price and investment dynamics when investment decisions are irreversible. The last chapter of this thesis, Share Buybacks, Monetary Policy and the Cost of Debt, turns it attention to an empirical investigation of the determinants of investment. Starting from the capital structure of firms, this part of my thesis focuses on the role of repurchases in diverting low-cost debt away from investment and employment.