This paper develops a spatial theoretical growth model in order to study the impact of physical and human capital relocations on the growth of open economies. Analytical and simulation results show how the respective neighbours determine an economy's development, why convergence and divergence may alternate in the medium-run, and that interregional migration as a consequence of wage inequalities causes disparities to prevail in the long-run. The empirical part applies spatial econometric specifications for European regions on the NUTS2 level for the observation period 2000-2010. The estimations underline the importance of human capital endowments and its relation with spatial location. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers in Regional Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-82). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how individual consumers negotiate in the collective community in order to co-create value. By making use of the concepts of ‘resources’ from the Service Dominant Logic of Marketing and ‘cultural lens’ from Consumer Culture Theory, this dissertation considers both individual and collective interaction in order to demonstrate the roles of individual consumers in the value creation process and how the value creation process works. A comprehensive and up to date review of literature provides a guide to the theory and a path for research. This dissertation employed netnography to understand social and cultural aspects of consumption from an online football fan community. The data collection also included participant and non-participant observations, and local fans interviewings. Hermeneutical framework of interpretation was used to analyse data. The findings show that consumers can co-create value among themselves through the roles of ‘provider’ and ‘beneficiary’. It shows the dynamic movement of individual consumers within the continuous learning process of value creation. This dissertation demonstrates that brand community plays a role as a platform of value creation. Consumers can co-create value among themselves through the process of engaging, educating and enriching. The finding demonstrates active roles of consumers in value creation process. This dissertation also discusses how inequalities between resources of consumers in brand community can cause conflicts among them and how these conflicts stimulate consumers to co-create the collective resources. Within this process, consumers have collectively balanced the power through the social interaction in order to eliminate the domination and conflicts. This dissertation extends the previous researches in value creation within brand community by demonstrating how individual consumers engage and negotiated in value creation process. It contributes to respond working consumers and double exploitation through ‘sacrifice’.

Most small new firms face problems in surviving the gestation process and achieving a viable performance thereafter because of the very fact of their smallness and newness. Due to a lack of internal resources, entrepreneurs of small new firms find it necessary to seek resources from outside the firm through their external social network. The theory of social capital that prescribes valuable resources are embedded in social relations is, thus, particularly relevant to the small business start-up situation. The embedded resources within an external network are hypothesized to have a positive impact on the business performance of these new firms. The main objective of the present study is to empirically investigate the impact of external networks, and in particular the initial social network of entrepreneurs, to the success of small firm start-up in Hong Kong. The second objective is to determine whether there is any interaction effect of the entrepreneur’s networking capability with the external network structure on the start-up success of small Hong Kong firms. / To carry out the research, this study offers a conceptual model linking initial network start-up success to initial network structure of start-up, and including an interaction effect from the entrepreneur’s networking capability. The study operationalizes social capital in four types of network constructs: network size, trustworthiness, network support and network diversity. A series of hypotheses relating to these four dimensions asserting external network determinants of the start-up success of small firms is posited. Other hypotheses which assert the interaction effect between an entrepreneur’s networking capability and the initial network structure on the success of small firm start-up, are also posited. A field survey, administered to 1,000 small Hong Kong firms of various industries, is used to gather the data. The questionnaire survey was developed in two languages – Chinese and English – to ensure a good level of understanding in the bilingual business environment of Hong Kong. Of the 1,000 questionnaires dispatched, a final sample of 89 small firms was used to empirically test the hypotheses using multiple regression analysis and multiple hierarchical regression analysis. Control variables such as entrepreneurs’ experiences and education prior to the firm start-up are included. / Empirical results indicate that the verification of social capital theory’s prescription for start-up success cannot be supported unequivocally. The results suggest that some initial network conditions such as initial size of strong tie network, network support and network diversity are positively associated with some measures of start-up success, but trustworthiness of network ties and the size of weak tie network do not figure among them. No evidence is found to support that entrepreneurs’ networking capability can positively enhance the effect of the initial network structure on start-up success. Overall, the study raises some questions on the positive linear relationship of certain operationalized constructs such as network size and trustworthiness of social capital with start-up success. Following the findings of this research, future studies may choose to further investigate social capital theory on small start-up success by refining the operationalization of social capital, and verify other interaction effects of entrepreneurs’ networking capabilities.

No description available.

Higher education is often considered as one of the safest and most profitable investments in human capital. There are, however, signals that this sector has been experiencing unsustainable economic boom in the United States. This study examines the ability of Austrian Business Cycle Theory to explain the possibility of such boom, i.e. to explain the potential systematic errors in the allocation of human capital. We find that respective allocation is driven by the similar market forces as the allocation of physical capital and hence, that it may fall victim to the same, or similar false market signals, thus creating the cycle of boom and bust. Credit expansion in the sector of student loans can be the trigger then. Furthermore, we study the actual development in this sector and find that empirical evidence provides many reasons to believe that there has actually been unsustainable boom i.e. an economic bubble in the sector of post-secondary education in the United States.

Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att identifiera vilka bootstrappingsmetoder som svenska småföretag tillämpar samt hur dessa tillämpas. Dessutom ämnar studien att kartlägga vilka av de identifierade bootstrappingskategorierna som anses vara mest effektiva på att tillfredsställa behovet av kapital. Teoretiskt perspektiv: Den teoretiska referensramen utgörs av teorier om det finansiella gapet samt asymmetrisk informationsfördelning. Vidare behandlas entreprenörens preferensordning av kapital i Pecking Order Theory samt teorier om finansiell bootstrapping och dess olika metoder. Metod: Studien utgår från ett positivistiskt inslag och besitter en iterativ forskningsansats. Undersökningen utgörs av en surveyundersökning med semistrukturerade intervjuer som datainsamlingsmetod. Urvalet i denna studie består utav ägare av små företag som uppfyller EU kommissionens krav på ett litet företag. Primärdata i undersökningen genereras av intervjuer genomförda på dessa småföretag. Empiri: Empirin består av en presentation av den data som samlades in från de tio personliga intervjuerna genomförda på tio ägare från olika verksamheter. Slutsats: Studien visar att de sex mest tillämpade bootstrappingsmetoderna är inte tagit ut någon lön, delat utrustning med andra företag, använt eget konto för att finansiera verksamheten, samarbetat med andra företag, använt leasad utrustning samt förhandlat bästa villkor med leverantörer. Vidare har det visat sig att relationsorienterade- samt ägarfinansierade bootstrappingsmetoder anses vara mest effektiva på att minska verksamhetens kapitalbehov. / Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify what financial bootstrapping methods small Swedish enterprises exercise and also how they exercise these methods. Furthermore, this study will seek to map which of the identified bootstrapping categories are the most effective at relieving the company’s need of capital.  Theoretical Framework: The theoretical framework in this study compiles theories of The Financial Gap and asymmetrical information. Furthermore, it consists of theories about entrepreneurs and their preferences of capital in The Pecking Order Theory, as well as theories about Financial Bootstrapping and its different methods. Methodology: This thesis has a positivistic and an iterative approach. Furthermore,    this thesis consists of a survey research and applies semi-structured interviews as a method to generate data. The sample in this study consists of owners of small enterprises that meet the criteria for a small business according to the EU. The primary data used in this thesis has been generated through interviews with the selected business owners.  Result: The empirical findings in this thesis consist of a presentation of the data generated from the interviews with ten different business owners from various enterprises. Conclusion: The most frequently-used bootstrapping methods are: Withhold managers salary, share equipment with other businesses, use own credit cards to finance the enterprise, cooperate with other businesses, lease equipment and seek out best conditions with suppliers. Furthermore the findings in this thesis show that relationship-oriented and private owner-financed financial bootstrapping categories are the most effective at relieving the company’s need of capital.

In today’s multicultural Sweden, museums need to work more inclusively to reflect the country’s national identities. This is both difficult and complex. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of whether and, if so, the museums’ diversity work affects the museums’ role in society as either a meeting place or as an exclusionary field in contemporary multicultural Sweden. More specifically, the thesis aims to investigate how museums’ diversity work is perceived by both museum staff and new Swedes, especially with regards to recruitment, staff composition and treatment of visitors, and how new Swedes relate to the cultural heritage as presented and reinterpreted in exhibitions at museums in Stockholm. The qualitative material consists of seven individual in-depth interviews with new Swedes who are non-academics, a focus group interview with seven new Swedes who are academically educated and three in-depth interviews with three museum employees from different museums. The results show that the museums have difficulty recruiting more widely and this lack of diversity among staff contributes to the critique expressed by the new Swedes about the museums’ diversity work and the expertise of the museums that interpret cultural heritage from different parts of the world. These attitudes and experiences have reproduced various notions of museums, Swedishness, cultural heritage and class differences that exist in Swedish society. The results show that the new Swedes consider the museums to be white rooms, mainly for white children. Five non-white new Swedes testify that they have been exposed to racism in the museums and these individuals believe that the museum staff is the source of their perceived insecurity. Both the new Swedes and the museum staff agree that the museums maintain old habits that hinder the museums’ diversity work.

Stable networks of cooperation, through which persons act under assumptions of reciprocity, promise-keeping and trust, are necessary for any society to flourish. These relationships have been described as “social capital”, defined as the norms and networks that enable collective action. Whilst study of social capital has generated much attention from those interested in its consequences for economic development and social unity, there remains a certain gap within the social sciences between homo economicus assumptions of self-motivated behaviour and manifestations of social capital. This invites analysis into the causes of social capital, which is the question taken up in this thesis. Asking what necessary conditions facilitate social capital’s emergence, this study analyses trustful relationships in urban Kenya and Tanzania. Urban living acts as a litmus test to trust relations and helps expose the necessary forces for social capital’s creation. Alongside this, the research sites of Kenya and Tanzania assisted in controlling for historical and cultural factors that may blur causal accounts of social capital. The two countries share similarities in their political, social and economic histories and, at the same time, exhibit diverging political emphases since independence and resulting levels of citizen-on-citizen trust. The country-level similarities and differences thus help contrast the lower levels of urban trust found in Kenya against the higher levels found in Tanzania, allowing in-depth examination of the conditions that support social capital’s emergence. Evidence is offered firstly through qualitative exploration of the formation of trustful relationships in economically competitive scenarios. Study of a single social network of plastic-bag sellers in Mwanza, Tanzania, reveals the importance of early anchors of trust as zones of reputation-indication. The comparative experiences of local market-sellers in Kisumu, Kenya, and Mwanza, Tanzania, support understanding higher levels of trust to pervade in Tanzania than in Kenya, and evaluate the influence of ethnic homogeneity for community solidarity. Interviews with business owners of Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, proceed to offer insights on alternative, normative dimensions that may help explain different levels of trust found amongst citizens. To measure the quantitative extent of trust and particular factors influential for its formation, “trust games” were deployed in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The experiments were engineered to test areas of common knowledge, specifically ethnicity and the “social virtue” of integrity. Engaging with common knowledge variables in this way offered for analysis areas of mutual understanding between citizens. Alongside confirming higher levels of trust in Tanzania than in Kenya, the games revealed how common knowledge of ethnicity and integrity bore influential effects on levels of trust that were country-specific. Whilst common knowledge of ethnicity tended to have a negative impact on levels of cooperation in Tanzania as compared to Kenya, the effect was the opposite for the social virtue of integrity. The thesis’ central argument is that congruence between citizens on what marks out a trustworthy person is a precondition for relationships of trust to emerge; some symmetry in the moral discourse surrounding agency, character and reputation is thus critical for bringing about the economic and political benefits associated with social capital.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:48:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thatiana de Barros Valentino.pdf: 567967 bytes, checksum: bb3b9d377372817fb67be186122bb7dd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-06-05 / This dissertation analyzes the pattern of financing of 105 medium-sized enterprises of processing industry of the State of São Paulo, with capital closed. The methodology used in the analysis is the construction of economic-financial indicators using information from Balance Sheets published on the Gazeta Mercantil newspaper. The study covers the period from 2003 to 2007 to analyze the behavior of indebtedness and the pattern of financing of medium-sized enterprises in the years of significant expansion in credit to industry and fluctuations in the growth of the economy. The sample was constructed by the selection of companies that had net operating revenue between R$10.5 millions and R$60 millions in 2007 and published their balance sheets in the Gazeta Mercantil newspaper from 2003 to 2007, regardless of the net operating revenue presented in the other years of the period be in the range of the classification of company average. The predominance of self-financing and the assumption of the existence of an order in the use of funding sources, with internal resources as the first option, followed by debt, they are favorable to the assumptions of the pecking order theory. Despite the increase in supply of credit, it is observed in the companies of the sample to maintain high utilization of internal resources and the low level of indebtedness / Esta dissertação analisa o padrão de financiamento de 105 empresas de médio porte da indústria de transformação do Estado de São Paulo, de capital fechado. A metodologia utilizada na análise é a construção de indicadores econômicofinanceiros a partir dos dados dos Balanços Patrimoniais publicados no jornal Gazeta Mercantil. O estudo compreende o período de 2003 a 2007, de modo a analisar o comportamento do endividamento e do padrão de financiamento de empresas médias em anos de expressivo aumento do crédito para a indústria e de oscilações no crescimento da economia. A amostra foi construída pela seleção de empresas que apresentaram receita operacional líquida entre R$10,5 milhões e R$60 milhões no ano de 2007 e publicaram seus balanços patrimoniais na Gazeta Mercantil de 2003 a 2007, independente de a receita operacional líquida apresentada nos demais anos do período estar no intervalo de classificação de média empresa. A predominância do autofinanciamento e a hipótese da existência de uma ordem na utilização das fontes de financiamento, tendo os recursos internos como primeira opção, seguida do endividamento, favoráveis às hipóteses da teoria de pecking order. Apesar do aumento na oferta de crédito, verifica-se nas empresas da amostra a manutenção de elevada utilização dos recursos internos e de baixo grau de endividamento