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This dissertation explores household risk and savings behavior in Zimbabwe, and agricultural technology adoption, and the impact of public investments on the economy and community health in Ethiopia. The first paper analyzes changes in per capita consumption and savings behavior in Zimbabwe before and after a range of financial and weather-related shocks using comparable national income, consumption and expenditure surveys of 1990/91 and 1995/96. The empirical results show that before droughts and macroeconomic adjustments Zimbabweans used savings to smooth consumption. In contrast, risk management strategies were severely limited after the shocks; consumption tracked income more closely in the latter period. The inability to effectively address the risks arising from droughts and economy-wide structural changes implies that any subsequent economic and social uncertainty will have serious welfare consequences. The second paper examines the interaction between public investments, community health, and productivity- and land-enhancing technology adoption decisions by farm households in Northern Ethiopia. It models technology adoption as a sequential process where the timing of choices can matter. The econometric test results indicate that the decision and intensity of technology adoption are highly correlated with the sequential nature of adoption. The most striking results concern the importance of disease - the amount of time spent sick and time spent caring for sick family members are inversely associated with both the decision and intensity of technology adoption. Finally the third paper looks at the welfare impacts of a public water resource development project with health side effects in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. It uses a model of a social planner to characterize the optimal implementation of such projects over time, showing how health and production are important considerations in this decision. The empirical analysis shows that the marginal net benefits of Tigray's current microdam investments are positive. The lost income households suffer from increased time away from productive activities (due to sickness) is compensated for by increased yields and market opportunities brought about through irrigated agriculture. However, it should be noted that this conclusion is based on efficiency and not equity. / Ph. D.

Firm size, in and of itself, is hardly a "goal" of the regulators. Indeed, the growth of very large firms, and the increase in market concentration that accompanies it, will add to the debate over the adequacy of the regulator's management of the industry. It must be demonstrable that very large firms assist the regulators in attaining some of their espoused goals, goals that they might not attain otherwise. What have we learned? The evidence does not all point in one direction. On the question of whether large firms can deliver their services more efficiently than can small ones, our answer is that scale economies are not as easily demonstratable as others have concluded. Such economies turn out to be crucially dependent on the way in which they are specified in the cost function. An examination of the likely biases of each functional form suggests that only relatively small firms would experience real efficiency gains from growth. Large firms seem to be neither more nor less efficient than their smaller cousins, insofar as private costs reflect public costs. / Ph. D.

In the 1950s and 1960s, after gaining independence from their colonial powers, most developing countries adopted “market substitution” as their policy for economic development and growth. In essence, this was an industrialisation strategy followed by these developing economies to concentrate on home-grown products and nurture their expertise in order to reach the status of industrialised nations. However, by the end of 1970s, many developing countries began to realize the failures of their inward-looking approach to industrialization when their economies were mired with high unemployment, inflation and chronic external debt. By the middle of 1980s, many of these countries began to change their policies and reorient themselves into market economies. However, with financial crises and economic recessions that resulted from pursuing market driven liberalization policies, these economies began to realize the flaws of the market driven approach to industrialization. Nevertheless, they continued with the liberalised policies incorporating market as well as non-market (institutional) reforms, aimed at strengthening regulation, improving corporate governance and curbing corruption to avoid the destabilising consequences of financial liberalization. The evolving economic policies that influenced financial development and growth in developing economies came about with the objective of enhancing household and private sector‘s savings. These policies have been designed to influence financial development and economic growth (which can impact upon private savings) in two different ways: (i) by increasing saving due to households taking precautionary motives, or (ii) negatively by spending more due to increase in overall expenditures. Theoretically, the combined effect on private saving is therefore ambiguous. The purpose of this thesis is to assess empirically the importance of various economic factors influencing private sector savings in emerging market economies. In addition, the influence of non-market institutional factors on savings is explored from the incorporation of newly institutional measures into these countries economic policies. Several econometric methodologies are employed with empirical analysis conducted on data for twenty emerging economies across three primary regions in the world, i.e. Asia Pacific, Middle East and North African (MENA), and South America. The twenty countries also include other emerging economies that are proximate to MENA regions such as South Africa, Turkey and Israel. In general, the findings based on SUR (Seemingly Unrelated Regression) methodology show that per capita growth, financial development, government savings, and trade openness have a positive impact on private savings; while youth and old dependency-age groups, real interest rate, and urban growth have a negative effect on private savings. In general, most of these results are consistent with previous studies for other countries. Additionally, causality tests are conducted using Vector Autoregressive (VAR) methodology as well as Pedroni and Johansen cointegration methods within the Vector Error Correction (VEC) model to determine both short-term and long-term causality effects between financial development and economic growth. The results indicate that in the long run financial development has a causal effect on growth; however, in the short run the results are quite mixed. For example, the short run result using the VAR method shows that income growth has Granger causality effect on financial development, but the F-test result for the VEC method shows evidence of bivariate causality. The long-term causality results also confirm the finding of previous research about the importance of developing financial sector in order to spur the country‘s economic growth. The final empirical investigation is to conduct panel data regression to test the impact of non-market institutions on private savings. The main result here is that sound institutional factors based on respect for property rights (e.g. bureaucracy, accountability and regulation quality) have a positive effect on aggregate private savings. Furthermore, political stability is found to have a negative impact on savings while efficient bureaucracy has a positive impact on savings. It can be construed that with an uncertain political environment, i.e. diminishing political stability, the public in general would save more than spend. On the other hand, efficient bureaucracy would boost public confidence about the country‘s governance, which can lead to increased overall savings by the public.

Real estate remains to be a major component of wealth for households as the market value of houses continues to rise noticeably again, as before the global recession 2007. Understanding households’ responses to changes of house prices and interest rates is important as fluctuations of these kind affect their preferences of saving. This thesis examines the impact of house price- and interest rate changes on household savings with the usage of secondary panel data from seven European countries. Providing a definite estimation of the interest elasticity of saving for households is not conceivable with any confidence considering the difficulties in estimating differential behavior. In accordance to previous studies the result of house prices is significant negative regarding household savings. However, the repo rate contradicts earlier results with a significant negative correlation toward household savings indicating an increased confidence due to a behavioral shift. In conclusion, this study shows that internal effects are of great importance as several factors suffer from high internal impact.

The main purpose of the thesis is to analyse contemporary legal regulations governing the field of building savings in the Czech Republic and recent changes of these legal regulations. The thesis is composed of six chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of building savings' legal regulation, the introduction, the closing part, lists and annexes. The matters already mentioned above are described in chapters two, three and five. Divided into remaining chapters and within the capacity limits, the thesis also includes secondary issues, such as the evolution of building savings and its legal regulation in Europe and in the Czech Republic in connection with the description of changes made to the legal regulations rather long time ago and followed by research of the practical application of these legal regulations. The aim of the thesis is to complete pieces of knowledge gathered from the legal regulations, from practical research and from my two years expirience as a building savings commercial broker and create an integrated thesis that is transparent and complete from different angles of view. Conclusions are drawn particularly in the closing part of the thesis where are briefly summarized the author's opinions on problems described in each chapter.

Contributions for pension savings This thesis in the first place deals with the contributions of pension savings and the process of it's administration. The purpose of my thesis is a description, analysis and evaluation method of selection contributions for pension savings. The thesis is based on some new concepts that are associated with administration of insurance. It means that new contributions for pension savings are closer to taxes than to the premiums for social security. The basic source of legislation is Act No. 397/2012 Collection of Laws, about contributions for pension savings (ACPS). This thesis is divided systematically into six chapters. The first chapter is introductory. This chapter defines the aim, the methods of use and literature. The second chapter briefly describes the implementation of the pension reform, focusing on II. pillar, it's current status, proposed changes and possible future developments. The largest chapter is Chapter Three - financing of retirement savings. The starting point for description, analysis and evaluation of the regulation of contributions is Comment to the Act about contributions for pension savings. The third chapter is divided into five parts - Legislation before taking ACPS, approval of new legislation, contributions, administration of contributions...

by Po Yee Wan, Anne , Wong Ming Tak. / Bibliography: leaves 80-83 / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1984

by Yung Kit-lin, Benjamin Chan Hing-tim. / Bibliography: leaves 95-96 / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1982

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