Essays on Risk-Sharing and Development.

Individuals living in developing economies are subject to a wide variety of risks. Moreover, since private and public formal institutions designed to help individuals coping with risks tend to be weaker and narrower than in rich countries, these risks very often bear a heavy burden on welfare. If the preferences of agents can be characterized by concave utility functions, these agents will want to spread risk across time and among themselves. We focus here on mechanisms allowing agents to share risk among themselves, and we look more particularly at environments where formal insurance options are incomplete or absent. This thesis offers three chapters which goal is to analyze the extent to which risk sharing is affected by imperfections in the insurance or in the credit markets. In the first two chapters, we take a microeconomic perspective and we examine how rural farmers cope with income shocks in village economies characterized by the absence of formal insurance markets. In the last chapter, we adopt a macroeconomic perspective and we look at the role of the domestic financial sector development in fostering risk sharing through financial integration between countries.Development economics -- Pacific Area; Risk assessment -- Vietnam; Depressions -- Developing countries; Social security -- Developing countries; Vietnam -- Economic conditions -- 21st century;

Relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance : the role of family involvement amongst small firms in Vietnam : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Management at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

This thesis broadly investigates entrepreneurship and its intersections with other related research fields, principally family business and organisational behaviour, using multiple studies with different respondent groups in the context of Vietnam. The thesis follows a PhD by publication approach by presenting four studies that examine different sets of relationships among the research variables and presents each of these as a separate paper. Studies 1 and 2 use resource-based theory to test the influence of entrepreneurial orientation and family involvement (i.e., involvement of the owner-manager’s family in the firm in terms of the family’s power, experience, and culture) on firm-level performance. Using a firm-level dataset of 170 Vietnamese small firms, the research confirms the direct effect of entrepreneurial orientation and the moderating effect of family culture, based on results from two hierarchical moderated regression models for firm outcomes (Study 1) and the owner-manager’s goal attainment (Study 2). Study 3 employs social contagion theory and crossover theory to test the crossover from the owner-manager to his/her employees under the involvement of the ownermanager’s family. Results from a multilevel analysis using a dataset of 67 small firm owner-managers and 343 employees confirm that the owner-manager’s entrepreneurial risk-taking has a detrimental effect on both employee job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Study 3 also found the power dimension of family involvement reduces the negative effect of the entrepreneurial risk-taking as the family pursues socioeconomic wealth preservation. Finally, Study 4 explores the notion of becoming an entrepreneur and tests whether the employee’s turnover intentions, under the proximal withdrawal states approach, contribute to development of their entrepreneurial intentions. Results from a structural equation modelling analysis use a dataset of 147 employees to confirm that turnover intentions are positively related to entrepreneurial intentions, but this effect is fully mediated by personal attitudes towards being an entrepreneur. Overall, this thesis contributes to the literature of entrepreneurship and its intersections with family business and organisational behaviour. Based on the research findings, the thesis suggests further research and discusses implications for researchers, policy makers, and business practitioners

14 YEAR OLD STUDENT REPRESENTATIONS RELATED TO THE COLOR: A TEACHING INTERVENTION

In this article is presented a research on the transformation of mental representations of 102 students 14 years old for the color in in a teaching context of optics. The empirical data were collected through an interview with an open discussion based on four tasks before and after a teaching intervention by a researcher to a small number of student groups. The research results show that the teaching intervention allow the cognitive progress of learners and are a suitable tool for systematic didactic intervention on the color.  Article visualizations

人的資本と社会関係資本が農村工業産地の変容に果たす役割: 北ベトナムでの実証研究

公共政策プログラム / Public Policy Program政策研究大学院大学 / National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies論文審査委員: 園部 哲史（主査）, 大塚 啓二郎, 大野 健一, 大山 達雄, 山野 峰, 戸堂 康之（東京大学大学院新領域創成科学研究科

Inactivation of Choline Oxidase by Irreversible Inhibitors or Storage Conditions

Choline oxidase from Arthrobacter globiformis is a flavin-dependent enzyme that catalyzes the oxidation of choline to betaine aldehyde through two sequential hydride-transfer steps. The study of this enzyme is of importance to the understanding of glycine betaine biosynthesis found in pathogenic bacterial or economic relevant crop plants as a response to temperature and salt stress in adverse environment. In this study, chemical modification of choline oxidase using two irreversible inhibitors, tetranitromethane and phenylhydrazine, was performed in order to gain insights into the active site structure of the enzyme. Choline oxidase can also be inactivated irreversibly by freezing in 20 mM sodium phosphate and 20 mM sodium pyrophosphate at pH 6 and -20 oC. The results showed that enzyme inactivation was due to a localized conformational change associated with the ionization of a group in close proximity to the flavin cofactor and led to a complete lost of catalytic activity