The UK credit card market has attracted significant interest since the late 1990s, partly because of the strong growth it has enjoyed and also because of the aggressive behaviour of a number of new entrants. The credit card market consists of two very different businesses: card issuance - the...

Re-investment is vital to the business angel "industry" because re-investing angels endorse a greater number of entrepreneurs and invest more funds than non-reinvesting angels. In this exploratory empirical analysis, the appraisal qualities of business angels are examined relative to their...

The aim of this thesis is to analyse formal and informal credit in Ethiopia and Malawi. As credit markets in developing economies are dominated by informal institutions, the analysis of the interaction between formal and informal institutions is crucial to understanding how welfare improvements...

In this thesis the various arguments that have been put forward for the determinants of a company's capital structure are examined critically. However, none of these succeeds convincingly in reflecting actual practice. Furthermore, it is argued that the common practice of concentrating on...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) plays an important role in development strategies in developing countries. In particular, policy makers in developing countries and development agencies alike believe that FDI is growth enhancing, as suggested by their policy stand (in particular, promoting...

Financial intermediation has been associated with several risks. We study sunspot panics, information-based bank runs, contagion, uncertainty about consumption time preference, twin crises and a number of policies attempting to resolve these issues. We offer a basic model where sunspot panics...

To stay competitive and sustain long-term profitability, Business Process Improvement (BPI) methodologies have become strategically important for financial institutions in recent years. These include well-known approaches such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Business Process Reengineering...

The long term behaviour of primary product prices has been a central issue underlying projections of commodity price series. Against the background of the Prebisch Singer Hypothesis, the presence, magnitude and direction of a secular trend in commodity price series have themselves become the...

This thesis examines the capital structure determinants of private SMEs in China and the extent to which financial theories of capital structure adequately explain their financing behaviour. It also investigates whether other theoretical perspectives can be utilised to explain their capital...

Multiple solutions often exist in both non-cooperative and cooperative games. In this thesis we use game theoretical arguments and experiments to examine multiplicity in two different areas, namely uniform price auctions and weighted voting games. In the second chapter we develop a theoretical...