La Suisse et l'Afrique du Sud, 1945-1990 : commerce, finance et achats d'or durant l'apartheid

Ce travail se concentre sur le rôle des échanges commerciaux, des mouvements de capitaux et du négoce de l'or dans les relations entre la Suisse et l'Afrique du Sud de 1945 à 1990, sans faire l'impasse sur les dimensions politiques et sociales et sur le contexte international, dont l'influence sur les liens économiques bilatéraux est significative. Ce constat est d'autant plus pertinent en ce qui concerne les rapports avec un Etat engagé dans une politique basée sur la discrimination et l'oppression raciales, politique qui sera l'objet, dès la fin des années 1940 de critiques reposant sur les droits de l'homme et l'anticolonialisme. D'abord cantonnées au sein de l'Assemblée générale de l'ONU, ces attaques contre la politique de l'apartheid seront relayées, dès le début des années 1960, par des associations antiracistes dans le monde entier, et évolueront, tardivement, vers une politique étatique de sanctions économiques internationales, prises à grande échelle dès le milieu des années 1980. Dans ce contexte, il apparaît que les facteurs principalement d'ordre économique mais également fondés sur une proximité idéologique ayant conduit à l'établissement, dès la fin des années 1940, d'un «climat de confiance »réciproque entre les milieux industriels et bancaires helvétiques et l'establishment blanc sud-africain, aient été suffisamment solides pour perdurer jusqu'à la fin de l'apartheid. De plus, le développement des liens d'affaires entre les deux pays a été favorisé par la politique du gouvernement helvétique vis-à-vis du régime de Pretoria. En effet, si la Suisse officielle «condamne moralement» l'apartheid, elle se montrera inflexible dans son refus d'appliquer des mesures économiques contraignantes. Ce travail vise en premier lieu à améliorer la compréhension du rôle des grandes banques suisses dans la commercialisation de l'or sud-africain et, plus largement, dans l'évolution du marché international du métal jaune. L'intérêt scientifique de creuser ce domaine peut être résumé en trois points. Premièrement, ce champ a été peu approfondi dans l'historiographie sur les rapports économiques entre la Suisse et l'Afrique du Sud, bien que le négoce de l'or représente un élément crucial dans le renforcement des liens d'affaires entre les deux pays et qu'il ait été grandement facilité par la politique des autorités helvétiques en matière d'or. De plus, la volonté des grandes banques suisses d'obtenir un arrangement privilégié pour la commercialisation de l'or sud-africain constitue également un élément explicatif de l'intérêt accru de la place financière helvétique à investir en Afrique du Sud dès la fin du Second Conflit mondial. En fait, exportations de capitaux et négoce de l'or sont intrinsèquement liés. Si la place financière helvétique s'est profilée dès la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale comme un centre de premier ordre, il semble - et cela constitue le deuxième intérêt d'approfondir la thématique du négoce de l'or - que les établissements bancaires suisses estimaient que leur compétitivité en tant que place financière internationale serait consolidée grâce au contrôle de la commercialisation du métal jaune du premier producteur mondial. Et, selon l'hypothèse développée dans ce travail, le commerce de l'or a effectivement joué un rôle significatif dans le développement spectaculaire de la place financière suisse durant les soixante dernières années. Troisièmement, la bataille qui se joue autour du contrôle du commerce de l'or sud-africain dès les années 1950 donne un éclairage original à l'analyse historique de la rivalité entre les places financières londonienne et suisse, un aspect encore largement inexploré dans les relations économiques entre la Grande-Bretagne et la Suisse.

Integrating life cycle costs and environmental impacts of composite rail car-bodies for a Korean train

Background, aim, and scope A coupled Life Cycle Costing and life cycle assessment has been performed for car-bodies of the Korean Tilting Train eXpress (TTX) project using European and Korean databases, with the objective of assessing environmental and cost performance to aid materials and process selection. More specifically, the potential of polymer composite car-body structures for the Korean Tilting Train eXpress (TTX) has been investigated. Materials and methods This assessment includes the cost of both carriage manufacturing and use phases, coupled with the life cycle environmental impacts of all stages from raw material production, through carriage manufacture and use, to end-of-life scenarios. Metallic carriages were compared with two composite options: hybrid steel-composite and full-composite carriages. The total planned production for this regional Korean train was 440 cars, with an annual production volume of 80 cars. Results and discussion The coupled analyses were used to generate plots of cost versus energy consumption and environmental impacts. The results show that the raw material and manufacturing phase costs are approximately half of the total life cycle costs, whilst their environmental impact is relatively insignificant (3-8%). The use phase of the car-body has the largest environmental impact for all scenarios, with near negligible contributions from the other phases. Since steel rail carriages weigh more (27-51%), the use phase cost is correspondingly higher, resulting in both the greatest environmental impact and the highest life cycle cost. Compared to the steel scenario, the hybrid composite variant has a lower life cycle cost (16%) and a lower environmental impact (26%). Though the full composite rail carriage may have the highest manufacturing cost, it results in the lowest total life cycle costs and lowest environmental impacts. Conclusions and recommendations This coupled cost and life cycle assessment showed that the full composite variant was the optimum solution. This case study showed that coupling of technical cost models with life cycle assessment offers an efficient route to accurately evaluate economic and environmental performance in a consistent way.

Three essays in dynamic corporate finance

The three essays constituting this thesis focus on financing and cash management policy. The first essay aims to shed light on why firms issue debt so conservatively. In particular, it examines the effects of shareholder and creditor protection on capital structure choices. It starts by building a contingent claims model where financing policy results from a trade-off between tax benefits, contracting costs and agency costs. In this setup, controlling shareholders can divert part of the firms' cash ows as private benefits at the expense of minority share- holders. In addition, shareholders as a class can behave strategically at the time of default leading to deviations from the absolute priority rule. The analysis demonstrates that investor protection is a first order determinant of firms' financing choices and that conflicts of interests between firm claimholders may help explain the level and cross-sectional variation of observed leverage ratios. The second essay focuses on the practical relevance of agency conflicts. De- spite the theoretical development of the literature on agency conflicts and firm policy choices, the magnitude of manager-shareholder conflicts is still an open question. This essay proposes a methodology for quantifying these agency conflicts. To do so, it examines the impact of managerial entrenchment on corporate financing decisions. It builds a dynamic contingent claims model in which managers do not act in the best interest of shareholders, but rather pursue private benefits at the expense of shareholders. Managers have discretion over financing and dividend policies. However, shareholders can remove the manager at a cost. The analysis demonstrates that entrenched managers restructure less frequently and issue less debt than optimal for shareholders. I take the model to the data and use observed financing choices to provide firm-specific estimates of the degree of managerial entrenchment. Using structural econometrics, I find costs of control challenges of 2-7% on average (.8-5% at median). The estimates of the agency costs vary with variables that one expects to determine managerial incentives. In addition, these costs are sufficient to resolve the low- and zero-leverage puzzles and explain the time series of observed leverage ratios. Finally, the analysis shows that governance mechanisms significantly affect the value of control and firms' financing decisions. The third essay is concerned with the documented time trend in corporate cash holdings by Bates, Kahle and Stulz (BKS,2003). BKS find that firms' cash holdings double from 10% to 20% over the 1980 to 2005 period. This essay provides an explanation of this phenomenon by examining the effects of product market competition on firms' cash holdings in the presence of financial constraints. It develops a real options model in which cash holdings may be used to cover unexpected operating losses and avoid inefficient closure. The model generates new predictions relating cash holdings to firm and industry characteristics such as the intensity of competition, cash flow volatility, or financing constraints. The empirical examination of the model shows strong support of model's predictions. In addition, it shows that the time trend in cash holdings documented by BKS can be at least partly attributed to a competition effect.

Governance by Contract? The impact of the International Finance Corporation's Social Conditionality on Worker Organization and Social Dialogue

This study considers the question of the relationship between private labour regulation and workers' capacity to take collective action through the lens of an empirical study of the International Finance Corporation's (IFC) 'performance standards' system of social and environmental conditionality. The study covered some 150 IFC client businesses in four world regions, drawing on data made public by the IFC as well as the results of a dedicated field survey that gathered information directly from workers, managers and union representatives. The study found that the application of the performance standards system has had remarkably little impact on union membership and social dialogue. In those few cases where change could be causally linked to the standards, the effect depended on the presence of workers' organizations that already had the capacity to take effective action on behalf of their members. The study also uncovered some prima facie evidence of breaches of freedom of association rights occurring with no reaction from IFC. The study concludes that the lack of impact is largely due to the private contractual structure that supposedly guarantees standards compliance.

Association of car ownership and physical activity across the spectrum of human development : Modeling the Epidemiologic Transition Study (METS).

BACKGROUND: Variations in physical activity (PA) across nations may be driven by socioeconomic position. As national incomes increase, car ownership becomes within reach of more individuals. This report characterizes associations between car ownership and PA in African-origin populations across 5 sites at different levels of economic development and with different transportation infrastructures: US, Seychelles, Jamaica, South Africa, and Ghana. METHODS: Twenty-five hundred adults, ages 25-45, were enrolled in the study. A total of 2,101 subjects had valid accelerometer-based PA measures (reported as average daily duration of moderate to vigorous PA, MVPA) and complete socioeconomic information. Our primary exposure of interest was whether the household owned a car. We adjusted for socioeconomic position using household income and ownership of common goods. RESULTS: Overall, PA levels did not vary largely between sites, with highest levels in South Africa, lowest in the US. Across all sites, greater PA was consistently associated with male gender, fewer years of education, manual occupations, lower income, and owning fewer material goods. We found heterogeneity across sites in car ownership: after adjustment for confounders, car owners in the US had 24.3 fewer minutes of MVPA compared to non-car owners in the US (20.7 vs. 45.1 minutes/day of MVPA); in the non-US sites, car-owners had an average of 9.7 fewer minutes of MVPA than non-car owners (24.9 vs. 34.6 minutes/day of MVPA). CONCLUSIONS: PA levels are similar across all study sites except Jamaica, despite very different levels of socioeconomic development. Not owning a car in the US is associated with especially high levels of MVPA. As car ownership becomes prevalent in the developing world, strategies to promote alternative forms of active transit may become important.