This thesis includes two essays. Essay 1 analyzes the diffusion process of a cost-reducing technology innovation within an industry. Two factors generate the diffusion. The first factor is the gently declining production cost with the innovation, which makes technology adoption more profitable...

Contests are economic or social interactions in which two or more players expend costly resources in order to win prize(s). The resources expended by players determine their probability of winning a prize. This dissertation investigates theoretical and experimental applications of Contest theory...

Under pressure from donor agencies such as the World Bank, a number of developing countries have experimented with the privatisation of water services. This study reviews the existing econometric evidence on the effects of water privatisation in developing economies before presenting new results...

Rate of return or cost of service regulation was the traditional means by which governments, especially in the USA, regulated profitability and prices in privately-owned public utility businesses. However, rate of return regulation was associated with efficiency disincentives. Hence, in 1983...

After the ten Regional Water Authorities (RWAs) of England and Wales were privatized in November 1989, the successor Water and Sewerage Companies (WASCs) faced a new regulatory regime that was designed to promote economic efficiency while simultaneously improving drinking water and environmental...

The water and sewerage industry of England and Wales was privatized in 1989 and subjected to a new regime of environmental, water quality and RPI+K price cap regulation. This paper estimates a quality-adjusted input distance function, with stochastic frontier techniques in order to estimate...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the current status of strategic group theory in the light of developments over the last three decades. and then to discuss the continuing value of the concept, both to strategic management research and practising managers....

Foreign direct investment has been important in China's economic development since the early 1980s. In recent years, the volume of inward FDI into China, according to some estimates, has been second only to that into the USA. The Chinese government has emphasised the need for FDI to be coupled...

Over the last two decades electricity sectors in both developed and developingcountries have been subject to restructuring to introduce private capital and increasecompetition. Although the effects of such reforms in a number of the developedeconomies are now well documented, apart from a few...

Strategic group research originated in the 1970s and a number of notable studiescentered on the US pharmaceutical industry. Results were however, conflicting. Thisthesis explores the nature of strategic groups and the related concept of competitivegroups in the UK pharmaceutical industry during...