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The impact of clusters on entrepreneurship has not been adequately and formally substantiated through empirical analysis. This dissertation looks at the effect of clusters on entrepreneurship at the regional level in the United Kingdom and a comparison is made with a similar study already carried out in Germany. A combination of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data with Eurostat, European Cluster Observatory, European Innovation Scoreboard, and the UK Office of National Statistics data is used on the UK’s 37 NUTS 2 EU structural fund assistance regions to test the hypotheses regarding entrepreneurship, clusters, and innovation. A logistic regression model result reinforced further by a Generalised Linear Latent and Mixed Model, and a random intercept logit model showed that there is a positive impact of clusters on entrepreneurship. Formalizing the relationship between clusters and entrepreneurship can help practitioners and policymakers to make informed choices, conduct better monitoring, and to make better forecast nascent clusters for potential success or failure in terms of propagating entrepreneurship.

International cooperation on export controls for technology is based on three assumptions, that it is possible: to know against whom controls should be directed; to control the international transfer of technology; and to define the items to be controlled. These assumptions paint a very hierarchical framing of one of the central problems in export controls: dual-use technology. This hierarchical framing has been in continual contention with a competitive framing that views the problem as the marketability of technology. This thesis analyses historical and contemporary debates between these two framings of the problem of dual-use technology, focusing on the multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. Using a framework of concepts from Science & Technology Studies and the theory of sociocultural viability, I analyse the Arrangement as a classification system, where political, economic, and social debates are codified in the lists of controlled items, which then structure future debates. How a technology is (not) defined, I argue, depends as much on the particular set of social relations in which the technology is enacted as on any tangible aspects the technology may have. The hierarchical framing is currently hegemonic within Wassenaar, and I show how actors that express this framing use several strategies in resolving anomalies that arise concerning the classification of dual-use technology. These strategies have had mixed success, and I show how they have adequately resolved some cases (e.g. quantum cryptography), while other areas have proved much more difficult (e.g. focal plane arrays and computers). With the development of controls on intangible technology transfers, a third, egalitarian framing is arising, and I argue that initial steps have already been taken to incorporate this framing with the discourse on dual-use technology. However, the rise of this framing also calls into question the fundamental assumption of export controls that technology is excludable, and therefore definable.

It is known that the impact of transactions on stock price (market impact) is a concave function of the size of the order, but there exists little quantitative theory that suggests why this is so. I develop a quantitative theory for the market impact of hidden orders (orders that reflect the true intention of buying and selling) that matches the empirically measured result and that reproduces some of the non-trivial and universal properties of stock returns (returns are percent changes in stock price). The theory is based on a simple premise, that the stock market can be modeled in a mechanical way - as a device that translates order flow into an uncorrelated price stream. Given that order flow is highly autocorrelated, this premise requires that market impact (1) depends on past order flow and (2) is asymmetric for buying and selling. I derive the specific form for the dependence in (1) by assuming that current liquidity responds to information about all currently active hidden orders (liquidity is a measure of the price response to a transaction of a given size). This produces an equation that suggests market impact should scale logarithmically with total order size. Using data from the London Stock Exchange I empirically measure market impact and show that the result matches the theory. Also using empirical data, I qualitatively specify the asymmetry of (2). Putting all results together, I form a model for market impact that reproduces three universal properties of stock returns - that returns are uncorrelated, that returns are distributed with a power law tail, and that the magnitude of returns is highly autocorrelated (also known as clustered volatility).

This paper focuses on problems in megaproject policy and planning and their causes and possible cures. After considerations of methodology, the paper first identifies as a main problem in megaproject development pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of misinformation is cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, the paper explores the causes of misinformation and finds that political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not the competition's, that gain approval and funding. This results in the "survival of the unfittest," where often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, the paper presents measures for reforming megaproject policy and planning with a focus on better planning methods and improved governance structures, the latter being more important.