Das Wachstum multinationaler Unternehmen (MNU) wird zunehmend durch Investitionen von Dienstleistungsunternehmen vorangetrieben. Die Produktion von Dienstleistungen unterscheidet sich allerdings in mehreren Aspekten von der Herstellung klassischer Industriegüter. Eine zentrale Eigenschaft ist...

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the potential contribution of transnational corporations (TNC) to the upgrading of systems of innovation in late-industrialising countries. This study looks specifically at TNC-affiliierter in Thailand’s manufacturing sector and compares them with...

This dissertation consists of three essays on modeling and parameter estimation for covariance non-stationary processes. The first essay considers the non-linear deformation of time scale for G(lambda)-stationary processes developed by Jiang, Gray and Woodward [2006]. After the appropriate...

This thesis focuses on two statistical problems related to credit scoring. In credit scoring of individuals, two classes are distinguished, namely low and high risk individuals (the so-called "good" and "bad" risk classes). Firstly, we suggest a measure which may be used to study the nature of a...

The lognormal distribution is useful in modeling continuous random variables which are greater than or equal to zero. Example scenarios in which the lognormal distribution is used include, among many others: in medicine, latent periods of infectious diseases; in environmental science, the...

The beta distribution is useful in modeling continuous random variables that lie between 0 and 1, such as proportions and percentages. The beta distribution takes on many different shapes and may be described by two shape parameters, alpha and beta, that can be difficult to estimate. Maximum...

In the study of finance, likelihood based or moment based methods are frequently used to estimate parameters for various kinds of models given the sampled return data. While the former method is not robust, the latter one suffers from loss of efficiency and high noise-to-signal ratio in the...

This paper assesses the implications of spatial dependence of outward FDI flows toclarify the importance and prominence of complex foreign direct investment bymultinational enterprises, which are neither purely horizontal nor vertical integrationstrategies. Empirical tests compare the ordinary...

Regional policy has taken the centre stage in delivering current UK government efforts to promote productivity-driven economic growth. This article considers the validity of the prime indicator being used to assess regional economic performance: gross value added (GVA) per head. Evidence...