Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is a delivery system for public works projects to design construct, manage and maintain public facilities by using private capital, management skills, and technical abilities. It was introduced in Japan about 10 years ago to encourage the stagnant Japanese...

I study the economic impact of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) on the refining industry in Europe. I contrast previous ex-ante studies with the lessons from a series of interviews I conducted with industrials, and the public data available on the first phase of the scheme,...

Real-time retail pricing (RTP) of electricity, in which the retail price is allowed to vary with very little time delay in response to changes in the marginal cost of generation, offers expected short-run and long-run benefits at the societal level. While the effects of RTP on most market...

This thesis uses an innovative approach to explore the much-analyzed U.S. Healthcare system. To be sure, we are fully aware of the challenges involved in making robust system level policy recommendations and how local inefficiencies and hidden uncertainties undermine attempts proposing sweeping...

This thesis proposes a practical approach to defining flexible design and development strategies for maximizing the expected value of engineering systems. Specifically, the approach deals with the fact that it is generally computationally impractical to explore all the possible ways a system...

This thesis discusses ensemble forecasting, a promising new weather forecasting technique, from various viewpoints relating not only to its meteorological aspects but also to its user and policy aspects. Ensemble forecasting was developed to overcome the limitations of conventional deterministic...

This thesis assesses fare payment technologies for Transport for London in 2015. Based on a survey of technical literature, feasible payments technologies in 2015 include current smartcard technology, contactless bankcards and near-field communication (NFC) mobile phones. Five fare payment...

Globalization is changing the way in which the world is organized. The world trade regime is increasingly the dominant mode of organizing international relations. Within this context of globalization and liberalization of trade, empirical examples of a race to the bottom co-exist with examples...

The solar power sector grew quickly in Japan during the decade 1994 to 2003. During this period, annual installations increased 32-fold from 7MW in 1994 to 223MW in 2003, and annual production increased 22-fold, from 16MW in 1994 to 364MW in 2003. Over these years, the growth of Japan's solar...

The airport industry is changing. Once understood as stand-alone public infrastructures, many modern airports now operate within privatized multi-airport systems and contend with previously unknown competitive pressures. As a result, many of the same airports which once enjoyed natural...