This thesis gives a voice to the chronically poor people of rural Bangladesh, enabling them to tell their own stories about the nature of their financial decision making which is taking place within the marketing systems that are operating in all poor villages in the region. Financial decision...

The important role of efficiency in the health care foodservice sector has been widely addressed in the literature. Different methods for assessing performance have been proposed. In general, most measures were calculated as simple ratios such as food and labour cost per meal or limited...

This thesis examines the determinants of corporate performance and likelihood of default of Jordanian publicly listed companies. Despite the large body of work that has investigated the determinants of corporate performance and default, no comprehensive study has emerged in an emerging market....

Research in this thesis deals with some unexplored, or only partially explored, issues relating to the information content of volatility of the idiosyncratic component of asset returns at the firm and industry-level, both in the context of developed and emerging stock markets. Specific issues we...

We begin with the outlining the motivation of this research as there are still so many unanswered research questions on our complex financial and economic systems. The philosophical background and the advances of econometrics and econophysics are discussed to provide an overview of the...

A large body of the literature argues that the soundness of financial system is largely determined by the economic and institutional environment in which the financial system works. Drawing on this theoretical underpinning, research in this thesis models financial soundness indicators (FSIs)...

Organizational learning and innovation capabilities are widely regarded as important sources of competitive advantage as they enhance a firm?s capacity to create, maintain, expand and renew its bases of strategic resources, and, as a result, increase its chances of success in the marketplace....

How should a policy-maker prioritize interventions to improve the public infrastructure with which firms operate and how large are the benefits from doing so likely to be? To address these questions we use survey data on the obstacles arising from poor quality public inputs that managers face in...

We use data from over 20,000 firms in 60 countries to identify constraints on the growth of firms. We interpret managers’ answers to survey questions on the extent to which various aspects of their external environment inhibit the performance of their firm as measuring the shadow cost of...