This thesis provides four contributions to the literature on the productivity- internationalization nexus by considering some recent developments in the literature. A well-established stylized fact is reported by this literature, which is that exporters are more productive and larger than non-exporters, and two hypotheses attempt to explain this finding. The first, often referred to as the self-selection hypothesis, suggests that more productive firms select themselves into export markets, while the learning-by-exporting hypothesis highlights the role of learning from exporting. In this thesis, first, the self-selection hypothesis is revisited, and it is shown that evidence against self-selection exists in some UK industries. Second, it is demon- strated that some UK firms experience rising marginal costs, although both tra- ditional and new trade theories assume constant marginal cost. It is then shown that the evidence against self-selection that we report can be best explained by the existence of increasing, rather than constant, marginal costs. Third, the learning by exporting hypothesis is tested empirically for UK firms. Highlighting the importance of the scale effect in total factor productivity growth, it is shown that any learning by exporting effects are predominantly attributable to a change in scale efficiency. Unlike Melitz (2003), some recent studies consider some other strategies to access foreign markets, such as foreign direct investment, and cross-border mergers. Finally, following this new branch of the literature, the productivity-internationalization nexus is examined by utilizing a two-country oligopolistic model. It is shown that more productive firm might prefer greenfield investment over cross-border merger, which contradicts the findings provided by the relevant literature.

Migration has become an important feature of health labour markets due to the global shortage of health professionals. While there exists an extensive Labour Economics literature studying the general migration, policy development remains hampered by limited research undertaken in the health sector. This thesis fills some of that gap by examining the economic influences on and impacts of the migration of health professionals. The migration of skilled health professionals has exhibited strong sectoral properties, such as the motivation of career development and various regulatory regimes. We incorporate these features into the self-selection model by Borjas and Bratsberg (1996) and examine factors that influence the scale and skill composition of the migration flow. Our model suggests that the restrictive relicensing regime and work permit requirements for non-EEA professionals adopted by the British government to maintain practice standards and secure employment opportunities for native graduates, could only limit the migration from countries with higher returns to skills. The effect is ambiguous for most donor countries, which provide lower returns to skills.Using the administrative data derived from the Scottish dental system, we also examine the impacts of health professional migration within EU on the host country by investigating the performance of EEA dentists contracted under the Scottish NHS in terms of retention and treatment provision. A discrete-time survival analysis has been applied to characterize the time trend of the retention and identify factors associated with the likelihood of a dentist leaving the NHS. We also compare treatments provided by migrant and non-migrant dentists by estimating a difference-in-differences model. Unobserved heterogeneity in dentists is controlled using fixed effects.Our results suggest that EEA health professionals can be a good substitute to British graduates. They provide marginally different treatments and exhibit strong assimilation within two years post-entry. However, a constant issue we have found is their high turnover rates in the NHS: half of them left the service by the 26th month following entry. The primary policy recommendation of our analyses is that there is need for the government to develop recruitment initiatives so as to retain migrant dentists. Our results suggest hazards of leaving are significantly associated with dentists’ age-at-entry, arrival cohort and patient composition, but not with dentists’gender, country and practice deprivation. These findings potentially help to set evidence-based targets for international recruitment programmes

This dissertation was the first study to estimate the direct and indirect effects of living-learning community (LLC) participation on a standardized measure of critical thinking using a multi-institution longitudinal research design. It is possible that despite being lauded nationally as an effective institutional intervention, LLCs may simply cluster students predisposed to be more engaged with their environment, more academically prepared, and more open to growth compared with traditional residence hall peers. Recent studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between LLC participation and self-reported growth in critical thinking. The findings of this study demonstrate markedly different conclusions from previous LLC studies exploring the outcome of critical thinking. The results of this study suggest that net of academic ability and background and institutional characteristics, students who participated in LLCs did not demonstrate greater gains on a standardized measure of critical thinking than their peers in traditional residence hall environments. To investigate the relationship between LLC participation and growth in critical thinking, I performed secondary data analysis from the 2006, 2007, and 2008 cohorts of the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education - a longitudinal study of teaching practices, programs, and institutional structures that support liberal arts education. From the initial 53 colleges and universities in the WNSLAE study, I selected a sub-sample of 19 institutions with formal LLC programs to make a more conservative estimate of the reliability of participation in an LLC. The final sub-sample included 435 (25%) students in the experimental group (students participating in LLCs) and 1,282 (75%) students in the control group (students living in traditional residence halls). This study makes four important contributions to the literature on LLC. First, the longitudinal nature of the WNSLAE data allowed for an estimate of growth during the first-year of college and controls for students' self-selection into the experimental or control groups. Second, the critical thinking module of the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency allowed for an objective measure compared to previous studies that use students' self-reports. Third, this was the first multi-institution LLC study to include liberal arts colleges in the sample. LLCs at liberal arts colleges did not demonstrate a differential impact compared with LLCs at regional and research universities on students' growth in critical thinking. Finally, post hoc analysis did not demonstrate conditional differences of LLC impact between students background, institutional characteristics, or the degree of faculty and peer interaction.

This research attempts to provide an explanation for the firm's choice of using either a dividend or a stock repurchase for distributing cash to its stockholders. It also provides an examination of the impact of the firm's disbursement decision on the stock market's resulting reassessment of the value of the firm. Before analyzing the disbursement decision, I examine the stock market effects of dividends and stock repurchases using an event study methodology that corrects for the possible variance change effects of cash distribution announcements. I find that the measured wealth effects are statistically significant and similar, for the most part, to that reported in earlier studies, notwithstanding increases in the variance of the abnormal returns distribution. I apply LIMDEP's full information maximum likelihood estimator (FIML) to investigate the factors influencing a firm's disbursement decision. I use proxies to represent the major theories put forward in the literature to explain firms' rationales for making cash disbursements, namely, signaling / asymmetric information, undervaluation hypothesis, agency theory, dividend clientele, corporate control, optimal capital structure theory, managerial incentives hypothesis, financial flexibility and cash flow permanence. I find that the firm's payout choice is related to the change in annual earnings per share, the residual volatility in daily stock returns prior to the distribution, the level of undervaluation, the free cash flows of the firm, the size of the firm, the extent of available managerial stock options, the average dividend yield, the volatility of operating earnings, the average daily stock return prior to announcement, the relative proportion of permanent cash flows, and the difference in the levels of permanent cash flows pre and post announcement. I evaluate the stock market impact of the disbursement choice by using a self-selectivity limited-dependent variables model. The findings indicate that while open market repurchasing firms make optimal disbursement choices, that is reflected in the reaction of the stock market to the disbursement announcement, firms using repurchase tender offers make disbursement decisions detrimental to the welfare of their stockholders. However, similar results were inconclusive with regard to firms choosing to utilize dividends as their cash payout mechanism.

We extend the model of Delfgaauw and Dur (2010) to analyze the occupation choice with the presence of the public service motivation. When the workers are purely altruistic, the lower is the acceptance rate of job application to the public sector, the higher is the possibility to have applicants with better managerial ability. In addition, when the friction cost of restarting job searching is higher, the applicants with less managerial ability tend to apply the private sector jobs from the beginning. On the other hand, when the workers are impurely altruistic, the applicants with less managerial ability will not self-select into the public sector. Finally, the highest social welfare level may not be reached if the acceptance rate in the public sector is not one hundred percent.

In this thesis we examined the export dynamics at the firm level. A two period model is proposed for the life of firms. The firms may have three different behaviors: staying out of markets, producing for the domestic market, and producing for both the domestic and the export markets. During two periods, firms may enter or exit the markets according to their expected) profits. All firms are profit maximizing such that they compare the maximum (expected) profits in the domestic and export markets. Firms are also heterogenous so that they have different levels of productivity. We examined changes in investment, market share and profits with respect to changes in the market and firm parameters. The profits and investments of the exporting and non-exporting firms are compared by both analytical and numerical methods.

Using paired tests of high and low minimum investment group funds on several performance measures for hedge funds and funds-of-funds from 1991-2005, we find that funds imposing a higher entry fee requirement on their investors produce significantly better performance both on a raw basis and a risk-adjusted basis. Differences in the performance of the high and low entry fee funds are found to be less significant economically and statistically in later years, suggesting a diminishing gap in performance differences. We also find that there is considerably more cross-sectional dispersion in investing in funds with lower minimum investment levels, which indicates a much higher level of fund selection risk for undiversified investors desiring investment in funds with low entry fee barriers. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2008-12-21 23:57:11.475

This thesis seeks to identify both the existence and cost of the military factor in RNZAF training. In the past, educational evaluation teams have had difficulty in assessing the efficiency of RNZAF training because no clear definition has existed for this uniquely military element. This thesis attempts to define the term by dissecting the popular use of the phrase into three separate parts: the true military factor, the corporate factor and inefficiencies. The true military factor is defined as the component of RNZAF training that inculcates the military culture in students during formal training. This culture is further refined to focus on the teaching of institutional values. The corporate factor however, refers to the selected methods and standards employed by a training provider. Instead of the military factor, it was hypothesised that the corporate factor represented the greatest cause for the cost difference between the RNZAF and civilian training providers. Based on the findings of overseas research, the thesis goes on to consider the possibility that the military factor may in fact be self-selected, rather than inculcated. To investigate this hypothesis, the study uses an established instrument to assess student attitudes of loyalty. To test whether the RNZAF self-selects pro-military attitudes, the study compared the scores of new recruits with the scores of serving personnel. To test whether the RNZAF inculcates promilitary attitudes during formal courses, the study compared students' pre- and post-course scores. The study found that only minimal increases in attitudes were evident as a result of formal courses and that no significant difference was found between recruits and serving personnel. In addition to those two investigations the thesis goes on to develop a spreadsheet model for optimising corporate factors and minimising inefficiencies. Although this model is functional in its present form, future developments will further enhance its potential. The study concludes that the RNZAF self-selects pro-military attitudes and, with the exception of recruit courses, does not teach them. The thesis argues that the military factor represents only a minimal part of RNZAF training.

This study primarily investigates the determinants of CEO membership of New Zealand (NZ) boards, and the effect of CEO board membership on firm performance, for publicly-listed NZ firms between 1997 to 2008. The project is conducted using a unique hand-collected panel dataset containing information about CEO participation on the board, firm characteristics, firm performance, ownership, and firm governance. The sample covers the twelve-year period. The sample statistics of CEO board membership reveal that on average, approximately 30% of NZ CEOs do not sit on their company board. In addition, the number (percentage) of incidences of CEOs off their company board has been increasing. Specifically, the percentage of CEOs off the board was approximately 20% in 1997 but 42% in 2008. Models examining the determinants of CEO board participation indicate that the probability of CEO board membership is significantly related to the opacity of firms' information environment and the strength of firms' governance environment. Specifically, the probability of CEO board membership is significantly affected by firm size, firm age, percentage of independent directors, board ownership, and multiple directorships in independent companies. In particular, firm size and percentage of independent directors on the board possess economic significance. The negative association between the probability of CEO board membership and the strength of firms' governance environment is consistent with CEO utility maximization. I also find that although CEO board membership is positively related to ROA, ROE and Jensen's alpha in basic regression models, the positive effect observed in accounting performance models disappears after controlling for self-selection. In other words, firms with better accounting firm performance tend to appoint their CEOs on the board. This may attribute to the possibility that CEO board membership is optimally determined by shareholders. The evidence from a market-based model also reflects shareholder interests after controlling for the negative self-selection behavior. As an additional analysis, I examine the determinants of different degrees of CEO board involvement where CEOs on the board are categorized into CEO-director and CEO duality (the CEO also holds the position of the chairman of the board). This analysis shows that a number of explanatory variables have a non-linear relationship with the degree of CEO board involvement. For example, CEO board involvement is negatively related to firm age and multiple directorships in independent companies but positively related to their squared terms. To the contrary, CEO board involvement is positively related to Tobin's Q ratio and percentage of independent directors but negatively related to their squared terms. Moreover, basic regression results examining the effect of the extent of CEO board involvement on firm performance reveal that dual firms and CEO-off-the-board firms are associated with lower accounting firm performance than CEO-director firms, but dual firms are associated with better Jensen's alpha and CEO-off-the-board firms are associated with lower Jensen's alpha. The robustness analysis finds that the negative effect of CEO duality on operating performance is significantly mitigated by self-selection and the effect of CEOs off the board on operating performance is intensified by self-selection. In other words, after taking into account the self-selection bias, CEO duality status provides strong evidence for CEO utility maximization whereas CEOs off the board are optimally chosen given the underlying characteristics. However, the results from the market-based models show the exact opposite story after controlling for the self-selection bias: CEO duality is optimally chosen whereas the costs of CEOs off the board are greater than their benefits in firms with CEOs off the board, providing evidence for CEO utility maximization.

Univ., Diss.--Freiberg, 2003.