Patriating appeals : New Zealand's withdrawal from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

In 1900, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was the final court of appeal for one-quarter of the world’s people residing in the British Empire, with the notable exception of those who lived in the British Isles. Despite the major exodus from the Judicial Committee’s jurisdiction in the two decades following the end of the Second World War, it was not until the late 1960s before the possibility of New Zealand’s departure was raised. A sporadic debate then ensued. In 1986, the Government initiated the first of three formal attempts to end New Zealand appeals to the Judicial Committee. Each attempt was very contentious, and it was not until 2003 when this objective was achieved. This thesis examines the ending of New Zealand appeals to the Judicial Committee. It identifies a series of debates, involving common themes and contrasting political positions, over more than 35 years. It also identifies changing legal features, which provide an important backdrop to the debates. It concludes with an assessment of why this process took so long

Inverse spectral theory for a class of non-compact Hankel operators

We characterize all bounded Hankel operators $\Gamma$ such that $\Gamma^*\Gamma$ has finite spectrum. We identify spectral data corresponding to such operators and construct inverse spectral theory including the characterization of these spectral data

Weighted model spaces and Schmidt subspaces of Hankel operators

For a bounded Hankel matrix $\Gamma$, we describe the structure of the Schmidt subspaces of $\Gamma$, namely the eigenspaces of $\Gamma^* \Gamma$ corresponding to non zero eigenvalues. We prove that these subspaces are in correspondence with weighted model spaces in the Hardy space on the unit circle. Here we use the term "weighted model space" to describe the range of an isometric multiplier acting on a model space. Further, we obtain similar results for Hankel operators acting in the Hardy space on the real line. Finally, we give a streamlined proof of the Adamyan-Arov-Krein theorem using the language of weighted model spaces.Comment: Final version, to appear in Journal of the London Mathematical Societ

Banking Crises

The history of banking around the world has been punctuated by frequent systemic crises. As with Tolstoy's unhappy families, not all crises are the same; distinct roles have been played at different times by mismanagement, government interference and macroeconomic shocks. This review identifies common features of crises in recent decades and describes how costly they have been in terms of their fiscal burden and the impact on macroeconomic growth. It proceeds to outline the conceptual issues identified by theoreticians and considers appropriate policy responses. A lull in the new millennium led to optimism that banking crises might be a thing of the past, but the events of 2007-8 have shown such optimism, often characteristic of previous macro upswings, to be unwarranted.