Cette thèse procède à une analyse comparative de l’évolution de la pauvreté monétaire et non monétaire dans trois pays de la Communauté Economique et Monétaire de l’Afrique Centrale (Cameroun, Congo et RCA). Après un rappel des approches théoriques de la pauvreté, les différentes stratégies d’éradication de la pauvreté mises en oeuvre en Afrique subsaharienne, elle aborde quelques faits stylisés concernant la croissance économique et la pauvreté dans les trois pays susmentionnés. Enfin, nous traitons empiriquement la relation entre la croissance économique et la pauvreté non monétaire dans les trois pays en s’inspirant des travaux de Moser et Ichida (2001). Les résultats obtenus montrent que la croissance économique agit positivement sur l’espérance de vie, le taux d’éducation primaire et négativement sur le taux de mortalité infantile. Ces résultats ont des implications directes en termes de politique économique. / This thesis presents a comparative analysis of the evolution of monetary and non-monetary poverty of three countries of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (Cameroon, Congo, and Central African Republic). After a review of theoretical approaches of poverty and different strategies for poverty eradication implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa this work explores the stylized facts concerning the economic growth on poverty reduction in the three countries. Finally, we empirically examine the relationship between economic growth and non-income poverty using Moser and Ichida (2001) model. We find that an increase in GDP per capita leads to an increase in life expectancy, an increase in the rate of gross primary school enrolment and a decline in infant mortality rates. These results have direct policy implications.

Fifteen women who identify themselves as lesbians were located through snowball sampling. These women participated in confidential taped interviews and assigned pseudonyms. They were questioned on topics which included growing up gay, family, work relations and friendship associations. It was assumed that life experiences may differ on the basis of social environments. This study focused on the unique experiences of rural lesbians. Erving Goofman’s book, Stigma, provided the theoretical framework utilized in the analysis of lesbian identity management. It also allowed for a discussion of stigma and its effect on lesbians. The women in the study experiencing homosexual feelings during prior to adolescence. Their reactions to these feelings related directly to the amount of stigma that they had internalized. All women in the study developed maintenance strategies that prevented disclosure of their lesbianism. It was found that lesbians often suffer great consequences when their sexuality is disclosed.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Mathematics / Diego Maldonado / Originally introduced in 1961 by Carl Gustav Axel Harnack [36] in the context of harmonic functions in R[superscript]2, the so-called Harnack inequality has since been established for solutions to a wide variety of different partial differential equations (PDEs) by mathematicians at different times of its historical development. Among them, Moser's iterative scheme [47-49] and Krylov-Safonov's probabilistic method [43, 44] stand out as pioneering theories, both in terms of their originality and their impact on the study of regularity of solutions to PDEs. Caffarelli's work [12] in 1989 greatly simplified Krylov-Safonov's theory and established Harnack's inequality in the context of fully non-linear elliptic PDEs. In this scenario, Caffarelli and Gutierrez's study of the linearized Monge-Ampere equation [15, 16] in 2002-2003 served as a motivation for axiomatizations of Krylov-Safonov-Caffarelli theory [3, 25, 57]. The main work in this dissertation is a new axiomatization of Krylov-Safonov-Caffarelli theory. Our axiomatic approach to Harnack's inequality in spaces of homogeneous type has some distinctive features. It sheds more light onto the role of the so-called critical density property, a property which is at the heart of the techniques developed by Krylov and Safonov. Our structural assumptions become more natural, and thus, our theory better suited, in the context of variational PDEs. We base our method on the theory of Muckenhoupt's A[subscript]p weights. The dissertation also gives an application of our axiomatic approach to Harnack's inequality in the context of infinite graphs. We provide an alternate proof of Harnack's inequality for harmonic functions on graphs originally proved in [21].

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Todd Easton / Integer Programming (IP) problems are a common type of optimization problem used to solve numerous real world problems. IPs can require exponential computational effort to solve using the branch and bound technique. A popular method to improve solution times is to generate valid inequalities that serve as cutting planes. This dissertation introduces a new category of cutting planes for general IPs called inequality merging. The inequality merging technique combines two or more low dimensional inequalities, yielding valid inequalities of potentially higher dimension. The dissertation describes several theoretical results of merged inequalities. This research applies merging inequalities to a frequently used class of IPs called multiple knapsack (MK) problems. Theoretical results related to merging cover inequalities are presented. These results include: conditions for validity, conditions for facet defining inequalities, merging simultaneously over multiple cover inequalities, sequentially merging several cover inequalities on multiple variables, and algorithms that facilitate the development of merged inequalities. Examples demonstrate each of the theoretical discoveries. A computational study experiments with inequality merging techniques using benchmark MK instances. This computational study provides recommendations for implementing merged inequalities, which results in an average decrease of about 9% in computational time for both small and large MK instances. The research validates the effectiveness of using merged inequalities for MK problems and motivates substantial theoretical and computational extensions as future research.

This paper studies the contribution behavior and cooperation of subjects in different immigration situations via a dynamic public good game. This dynamic environment, in which a subject’s income at the end of the decision will become an endowment for the next decision, also offers an opportunity to study growth as measured by group income and inequality via the Gini coefficient. Overall, contribution does not converge to zero, nor does it decrease over time, and subjects are very contributive in nature. The best scenario to boost contributions among subjects is when immigrants reduce a subject’s income in the current period, but promise to increase growth in the future. In all treatments, inequality significantly increases over time for the unsuccessful group (below the median group income), while the successful group (above the median group income) mostly has lower inequality with a constant, or slightly increasing, trend. There is a positive relationship between growth and inequality in the treatment where immigrants have no impact on subjects’ income, and also where immigrants reduce subjects’ income without future promise. This positive relationship implies that the group growth can be achieved only with an increase in inequality (or less cooperation between subjects). However, a slightly negative relationship occurs in the scenario where the immigrants reduce subjects’ income in the current period, but promise to increase growth in the future. This negative relationship implies that group growth can be achieved without any inequality (or more cooperation between subjects). The overall findings in this paper provide insights into the contribution behavior and cooperation of subjects, when considering the different economic impacts of immigrants in their society.

Studies of terrorism have explored a number of factors thought to drive the phenomenon. Authors often tie socioeconomic development to reducing terrorism. Among structural explanations of terrorism, however, authors generally neglect the effect of gender inequality, though studies show that gender inequality increases the risk of international and civil conflict. Therefore I explore the impact of gender inequality in important socioeconomic issues on terrorism for 143 countries from 1998-2009. I argue that socioeconomic gender inequality reflects poor state capacity, resulting in grievances that contribute to domestic non-suicide and suicide terrorism. I study gender inequality in the areas of education, labor participation, and life expectancy. Results indicate that education and life expectancy inequality increase the risk of terrorism, while labor inequality is unrelated. While the time frame and data used in this study limit generalizability, results indicate that states should provide socioeconomic gender parity to reduce the risk of domestic terrorism.

This qualitative case study explores the post-Katrina experiences of African Americans in Houston and in New Orleans. When the levees failed, residents from New Orleans were scattered across the country. Houston housed the largest population of displaced low-income African Americans from New Orleans. As the rebuilding process began, housing, employment, education, and healthcare policies in New Orleans changed. These institutional changes employed urban revitalization and poverty removal strategies adapted to disaster recovery. This study differs from previous research by examining these changes with an intersectional approach. It explores how African Americans frame obstacles as they attempt to return to a city with reformed housing, employment, education, and healthcare policies. To do this, I analyze three different cases 1) those that returned to New Orleans, 2) those still displaced in Houston, and 3) those that relocated to Houston after returning to New Orleans for over a year.

This thesis supplements existing literature by examining the relationship between institutional regulations and gendered assumptions about bodies. This thesis draws from feminist social constructionist perspectives and gendered organizational theories to explore the role of gendered body assumptions in the organizational framework of a hypermasculine political institution. Using the U.S. military as an illustrative example, this thesis studies military policies and rationales historically, focusing on the post-Vietnam accelerated inclusion of women, the increasing use of combat as a divisive component, and the gendered structural elements that are used to determine physical competence. Findings coincide with existing literature and suggest that social meanings relating to gender are a prominent influence in U.S. military policy historically and contemporarily, even when biological reasons are cited as justification. This research provides implications for understanding institutional, strategic use of gender and provides analysis of how physical bodies and accompanying social meanings are impacted by institutional goals.

This thesis is focused on questions of state redistribution and income inequality in the Czech republic. It explains the main ideas of state redistribution, income inequality and relation between them. It anlyzes the particular instruments of state redistribution such as tax systems and systems of social transfers which the government uses to achiave more equal distribution of incomes in society. The object of the thesis is to find out how the particular instruments contribute to filling the essentials goal - lower the income inequality in society. It is based on the data from years 2006 until 2008 from the statistics of household accounts published on the web site of the Czech statistical office. Finally, it is devoted to the trends of state redistribution and income inequality in OECD countries.

Orientador: Marcos Simão Figueiras / Resumo: O presente trabalho, em síntese, tem por objetivo investigar como o princípio da capacidade contributiva, previsto no artigo 145, § 1°, da Constituição Federal, tem sido aplicado pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal. Parte-se do pressuposto de que o Estado como instituição politicamente organizada atrai para si atribuições destinadas ao desenvolvimento e bem estar social dos cidadãos e que estes, por sua vez, devem contribuir financeiramente para o custeio das atividades desenvolvidas pelo Estado. Neste contexto, a imposição tributária se instala como contribuição de cada indivíduo em prol da coletividade. É justamente esta possibilidade de cada indivíduo concorrer para o financiamento do Estado, ou seja, a medida do sacrifício individual que o Estado poderá legitimamente cobrar revela a importância do princípio da capacidade contributiva como requisito a ser avaliado para garantir justiça na imposição tributária. Neste passo, a pesquisa se justifica para averiguar se há compatibilidade entre a interpretação dada pela doutrina e a jurisprudência da Corte Suprema do Brasil. A pesquisa parte da premissa de que a forma de tributação de Estado pode ser um instrumento de redução da desigualdade e promoção da cidadania e, desta forma, pretende contribuir para fomentar as discussões sobre a justiça fiscal no país. / Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the progress of the contributory capacity, provided for in article 145, paragraph 1, of the Federal Constitution, which has been applied by the Federal Supreme Court. The State has a political organization to attract and the attributions to the development and social welfare of the citizens and that, in turn, contribute financially to the cost of activities rich by the State. In this context, taxation imposes itself as a contribution of each individual to the benefit of the collectivity. It is possible that each individual competes for state funding, that is, a measure of individual sacrifice that can be assessed to do justice to taxation. In this article, the research is justified to ascertain if there is any difference between a given given by the doctrine and a jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Brazil. The formation of an instrument to reduce inequality and promote citizenship and, thus, the use of an instrument to reduce inequality and promote citizenship in the country. / Mestre