This research offers an empirical analysis of the economic effects on Morocco from implementing a Free Trade Area (FTA) with the European Union (EU) signed in 1996. Since the FTA translates largely into unilateral discriminatory tariff elimination against EU imports, there are concerns about the...

This dissertation develops a cost benefit framework that explains firms' international entry decisions, accounting for consumer demand for differentiated products, competitors' strategies and distributors' market power. It is used to explain the economics of observed entry patterns of Spanish...

Empirical research in manufacturing and service operations management is an emerging and promising area of research with potential to contribute significantly to our understanding of companies' operational practices. In the first part of the dissertation, we describe a study of the consequences...

This thesis maintains that transaction cost analysis provides a well grounded theoretical foundation for strategic management research. The paradigmatic issues involve vertical integration theory, the evolution of vertical integration in the American enterprise, diversification and the...

This study is structured as a set of three essays which focus on the economics of information technology in the retail banking industry. Employing a game-theoretic analysis, the first paper explains the economic reasoning behind the trend in retail banks in the U.S. to develop most of their...

This dissertation examines the following three issues that are relevant to retailers. In the first essay, we examine category management from an analytical perspective. The practice of category management involves a strategic alliance between a retailer and a leading national brand at the...

Input users and producers seek to increase their profitability by locating near each other. This self-reinforcing relationship between input producers and users can be views as a basic agglomeration force to enable the modeling of agglomeration economies based on a standard monopolistic...

The dissertation is focused on studying the behavior of aggregate asset market and its relationship to real economic activity. Chapter 1 offers a new empirical perspective on the relationship between the conditional mean and volatility of stock returns. Chapter 2 builds a general equilibrium...

This first chapter develops an economic model of the firm linking current financial and non-financial measures to future earnings for retail banks. The data support the associations among current financial and non-financial measures predicted by model, suggesting that the economic model is...

This dissertation analyzes specific issues in the distribution of air travel. In three separate chapters, I analyze (1) the nature competition among online travel agents, (2) travel agent commission overrides as an explanation of dispersion in quoted ticket prices and (3) the response of a...