Identifying the complex channels through which civil war affects household decisions is important in the design of policies that eliminate or mitigate the consequences of armed conflict on household welfare. This is particularly relevant in conflict-affected countries looking to establish a transitory justice towards a post-conflict. In this dissertation, I analyze the micro-level impact of civil war and illicit activities on household welfare, using the case of Colombia and Burundi. For doing this, I develop five chapters where I provide an empirical investigation on three dimensions: (i) the impact of armed conflict on agricultural production; (ii) the role of institutions on the “war of drugs”; and, (iii) the determinants and socio-economics consequences of household migration during and after being exposed to civil war.The first part investigates the impact of armed conflict on the agricultural production, using the case of coffee growers in Colombia. After being many years out of conflict, coffee producer regions in Colombia were exposed to violence as a consequence of the intensification of conflict during nineties and the deteriorate of the world coffee market. In order to initially understand such relationship, in Chapter 1, co-authored with Ana María Ibañez and Philip Verwimp, we use unique census data sets from two different years (1997 and 2005) to estimate the relationship between coffee and violence. First, we explore how conflict generates disincentives to continue on agricultural production. Second, we examine the direct impact of conflict on agricultural production through different productive outcomes. We find a significant negative relationship between levels of violence and the decision to continue coffee production as well as the levels of productivity of the coffee production to coffee. Results are robust after controlling for sample selection bias and alternative specifications.After establishing observational evidence from the census analysis on the presumably negative impact of armed conflict on the agricultural production, I make a step further to establish a causal link in Chapter 2. I take advantage of a natural experiment in the levels of violence due to the unexpected rupture of the peace dialogues between Colombian Government and guerillas groups in 2002. Using data provided by National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia, I estimate the Intention to Treat (ITT) effect using a difference-in-difference specification. Results suggest that an exogenous increase of the levels of violence induced a reduction of hectares allocated to coffee, on average, -0.06 hectares (ha). Moreover, an average farm, which is 2 ha of coffee, an exogenous increase of the levels of violence induced a reduction of the sowing new coffee until 3.5%. This paper contributes to the literature on the microeconomics costs of conflict in Agricultural Production, providing further information about mechanisms (labor market).In long civil conflicts, rebel groups may eventually be evolved in production of illicit crops to finance their activities, boosting the intensity and prevalence of armed confrontations. Despite the different multi-lateral drug policies, the production continues increasing. In the second part of the dissertation I study this fact using the case of coca crops in Colombia. In Chapter 3, co-authored with Santiago Tobon and Jesse D’Anjou, we analyze the role of formalization of land property rights in the war against illicit crops in Colombia. We exploit an exogenous variation in the level of formalization of land property rights, as result of the application of a national land-titling program during 1994-2000. We argue that, as a consequence of the increase of state presence and visibility during the period of 2000-2009, municipalities with a higher level of formalization of their land property rights saw a greater reduction in the area allocated to illicit crops. We found a significant negative relationship between the level of formalization of land property rights and the number of hectares allocated to coca crops per municipality. We hypothesize that this is due to the increased cost of growing illicit crops on formal land compared to informal, and due to the possibility of obtaining more benefits in the newly installed institutional environment when land is formalized. Empirical results validate these two mechanisms. The third and last part of this dissertation, studies the nutritional status of formerly displaced households after return and the determinants of household structure during civil war in Burundi. In chapter 4, co-authored with Philip Verwimp, we investigate the food security and nutritional status of formerly displaced households. Using the 2006 Core Welfare Indicator Survey for Burundi we compare their food intake and their level of expenses with that of their non-displaced neighbors. We test whether it is the duration of displacement that matters for current food security and nutritional status or the time lapsed since returning. We use log-linear as well as propensity score matching and an IV-approach to control for self-selection bias. We find that the individuals and households who returned home just before the time of the survey are worse off compared to those who returned several years earlier. On average, the formerly displaced have 5% lower food expenses and 6% lower calorie intake. Moreover, we found evidence in favor of duration of displacement as the main mechanisms through which displacement affect household welfare Results are robust after controlling by self-selection bias. Despite international, government and NGO assistance, the welfare of recent returnees is lagging seriously behind in comparison with the local non-displaced populations.The final chapter, co-authored with Richard Akresh and Philip Verwimp, analyzes whether civil war modifies household structure by boosting individual migration. The identification strategy uses a unique two waves longitudinal data set from Burundi, for 1997 and 2008. This data set was collected during ongoing conflict and allows tracking individual migration decision over ten years. Besides the traditional conflict exposure measures at village level, our data gathered yearly information on household victimization. Results show that higher exposure to violence increases the probability to individual non-marital migration. These effects are concentrated on poor households and those household members that are adults or men. Our results are consistent with aggregated measure of conflict exposure, as well as household level victimization measures. Furthermore, we found that whereas marital migration in adult un-married women is unrelated with exposure to violence at village level, it does with household victimization approaches. In particular, we found that being victim of any assets related losses is related to an increase of marital migration for middle age unmarried women. It could imply the use of marriage market as strategy to face liquidity constraints. Results are robust to including province–specific time trends, alternative conflict exposure measures, and different levels of aggregation. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Les dernières décennies ont été marquées par d’importantes évolutions au sein du secteur laitier au Sénégal. En effet, l’industrie et le commerce du lait se sont beaucoup développés, en raison de l’urbanisation et des changements des habitudes alimentaires des populations urbaines. Cette thèse s’interroge sur les effets de ces évolutions sur le développement de la chaîne laitière locale et sur l’état de vulnérabilité des populations d’éleveurs. En s’appuyant sur la théorie de la gouvernance des chaînes globales de valeur et sur l’économie des coûts de transaction, la thèse cherche à appréhender quels modes de gouvernance permettent la viabilité des chaînes laitières industrielles sénégalaises. Grâce à la collecte de données qualitatives auprès des acteurs de ces chaînes de valeur et à l’analyse approfondie de dix entre elles dans les régions de Dakar et Kolda, cette thèse met en évidence deux facteurs principaux à la base de la viabilité des chaînes laitières industrielles. Premièrement, des stratégies de qualité portant sur l’origine locale de la matière première sont gagnantes sur le marché, puisque les consommateurs leur attribuent une valeur particulière. En outre, les services offerts par les laiteries aux producteurs locaux dans le cadre de telles stratégies de qualité contribuent à réduire la vulnérabilité de ces derniers et consolident donc la viabilité des chaînes de valeur, notamment sur le plan social. Deuxièmement, l’adoption de formes plurielles de gouvernance, dans le cadre d’un approvisionnement mixte lait en poudre/lait local, permet aux laiteries d’être économiquement viables. Elles sont en effet en mesure d’exploiter pleinement leurs capacités de production, de maîtriser les coûts d’achat de la matière première et de répondre aux exigences des consommateurs. / The Senegalese dairy sector has been marked by important changes in the last decades. Indeed, dairy industry and trade have been growing, because of urbanization and new dietary habits of urban populations. This thesis inquires into the effects of those changes on the development of the local dairy value chain and on the vulnerability of the local herder communities. Based on the theory of the governance of global value chains and on transaction cost economics, the thesis aims to understand which modes of governance enable the viability of the Senegalese industrial dairy chains. Through the collection of qualitative data from the actors of these value chains and through an in-depth analysis of ten of these chains in the regions of Dakar and Kolda, this thesis highlights two main factors underlying the viability of the industrial dairy chains. First, quality strategies focusing on the local origin of the raw material are successful on the market, since consumers attach to them a particular value. Moreover, the services that the dairy processors implementing those quality strategies offer to local producers contribute to reducing their vulnerability; hence, the social viability of the value chains is improved. Second, the adoption of plural forms of governance, within a mixed supply (milk powder/local milk), enables dairy processors to be economically viable. In fact, they are in a position to fully exploit their productive capacities, to control the cost of raw material purchases, and to meet consumer demands. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Present-day development theory and practice highlight the potential of micro-entrepreneurship for poverty reduction in least developed countries. Fostered by the seminal writings of microfinance founder Muhammad Yunus and the bottom-of-the-pyramid propagator Krishnarao Prahalad, the new approach is marked by a stress on participation and sustainability, and the new, market-based development models. With the growing popularity of the new approach there has been an increased demand for research on the efficacy and impact of innovations. What has scarcely been addressed, however, is the legitimacy of the new paradigm within its contexts of application. Since engagement and participation have been made the focal point of the new approach, my research investigates how the innovative, mostly market-based models have been received by the local populations on the ground. This doctoral dissertation is looking up-close at the rural populations of Burundi, describing and explaining their perceptions, behaviors and actions in response to the market-based development innovations: microfinance, rural entrepreneurship and community social enterprise. Do the concepts of entrepreneurship, community engagement and participation find a fertile ground among the poorest rural dwellers of sub-Saharan Africa? Can subsistence farmers be entrepreneurs? How to create social value in the context of extreme resource scarcity? It is investigating these and other questions that guided the subsequent stages of my work. I based my dissertation on extensive field research, conducted periodically over the period of four years in the remote areas of rural Burundi.In the first chapter, I question the applicability of entrepreneurship-based interventions to the socio-cultural context of rural Burundi. Basing my quantitative analysis on a unique cross-section dataset from Burundi of over 900 households, I look into the entrepreneurial livelihood strategies at the near-subsistence level: diversifying crops, processing food for sale, supplementary wage work and non-agricultural employment. I find that the farmers living closer to the subsistence level are indeed less likely to pursue innovative entrepreneurial opportunities, unable to break the poverty cycle and move beyond subsistence agriculture. The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on by analyzing its drivers and inhibitors in the context of a subsistence economy. It questions the idea of alleviating rural poverty through the external promotion of entrepreneurship as it constitutes ‘a denial of the poor’s capacity for agency to bring about social change by themselves on their own terms’.Drawing on these findings, the second chapter focusses on the role of local communities as shareholders of projects. The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which the agrarian communities in rural Burundi accommodate the model of a community social enterprise. The project understudy, implemented by the UNICEF Burundi Innovation Lab, builds upon the provision of green energy generators to the village child protection committees in the energy-deficient rural regions of the country. The electricity-producing machines are also a new income source for the groups, transforming them into economically viable community enterprises. Since the revenue earned is to directly support the village orphans’ fund, the communities in question engage in a true post-development venture: they gradually assume the role of the development-provisioning organizations.The third chapter of this work focusses on the complex interaction between the microfinance providers and the population of its clients and potential clients: the rural poor. It draws on the existing research on positive deviance among African communities and explores the social entrepreneurial potential of the rule-breaking practices of microfinance programs’ beneficiaries. Using the storyboard methodology, I examine the strategies employed by the poor in Burundi to bypass institutional rules. My results suggest that transgressive practices and nonconformity of development beneficiaries can indeed be seen as innovative, entrepreneurial initiatives to reform the microfinance system from within, postulating a more participatory mode of MFIs’ organizational governance. The three empirical chapters provide concrete examples illustrating the contested nature of the development process. In the last, theoretical, chapter, I examine how the different conceptualizations of social entrepreneurship have been shaped by the disparate socio-political realities in the North and in the South. I then analyze how the process of constructing academic representation has been influenced by the prevalent public discourses.Since doubling or tripling of the external development finance has not sufficed to bring about systemic change, the assumption that technology, managerial efficacy and the leveraging power of financial markets could be applied to solving the problem of persisting global poverty has a lot of appeal. At the same time, my findings point to the fact that if the ultimate objective of development is broadly defined value creation, the definition of what constitutes value should be negotiated among all the stakeholders. The dissertation makes an important contribution to the understanding of participation, entrepreneurship and community engagement in the context of development studies.I strongly believe that development organizations must have a quality understanding of the social and cultural characteristics of the need or problem they are targeting in order to make productive decisions about the application and scaling of interventions. I very much hope that my work can provide some guidance for their work on the ground. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Using public support as the baseline, the aim of the Ph.D. thesis is firstly to assess its effectiveness in alleviating firms’ financing constraints (Chapter 2) and in enhancing the innovation-growth linkage (Chapter 5), in comparison with other financing sources. Secondly, the research undertaken also explores public policy effectiveness in two periods of time: ex-ante and ex-post analysis. In the former, effectiveness is assessed according to whether the characteristics of the project selected for the subsidy are in line with the policy targets (Chapter 3). In turn, the ex-post analysis assesses firms’ effectiveness in achieving the planned goal and the sustainability of the achieved outcomes (Chapter 4). Chapter 2 provides evidence that, in addition to a guarantee for loans, measures to facilitate equity investments and making existing public measures easier to obtain could be considered as the main solutions for future financing. Tax incentives for financially constrained firms are revealed to be the least important factor. Chapter 3 aims to understand which kinds of projects are selected for an innovation subsidy and if the characteristics of the project selected are in line with the policy target. The results show the selection process seems to be particularly effective in meeting the goals as regards the amount of investment, as well as the expected effect on enhanced internationalization and productivity. Nevertheless, the study also reveals some failures in the selection process, namely in terms of the intensity of the project’s contribution to growth. Chapter 4 assess firm performance after project implementation. Results show that subsidized firms reached targets linked with employment level and sales more easily than labour productivity and value creation. Chapter 5 reveals that equity financing has a greater effect on the strategic decision to innovate and the highest output additionality on firm turnover growth. Grants have a more moderate effect on innovation and firm growth (both turnover and employment). / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Bien que les pays de l’Europe Centrale et Orientale montrent de plus en plus des similitudes structurelles avec des pays développés, leurs économies restent vulnérables aux facteurs d’instabilité financière caractéristiques aux pays en développement. La présence de ces vulnérabilités a conduit aux débats sur les avantages de l’adhésion rapide à l’Union Economique et Monétaire (UEM). Traditionnellement, selon de la Théorie des Zones Monétaires Optimales, l’adoption de l’euro peut être bénéfique éliminant le risque du taux de change, donnant un meilleur accès au financement externe et atténuant l’impact des crises financières. De l’autre côté, l’abandon de l’autonomie de la politique monétaire et du taux de change prive les autorités nationales d’une marge de manœuvre dans le cas où le pays soit touché par les chocs asymétriques (d’offre) ou sa réponse aux chocs symétriques diverge de celle de la zone monétaire. L’objective de cette thèse est de déterminer les vulnérabilités financières des PECO et le degré d’asymétrie de leurs économies afin de participer aux débats sur la stratégie d’adhésion à l’euro. / Although the Central and Eastern European countries show in many respects increasing similarities to developed economies they still present some characteristics pointing to potential sources of increased financial vulnerability. The presence of these vulnerabilities has raised the discussion about whether early euro adoption could represent an effective policy remedy for the CEECs’ economies. Traditionally, in the sense of the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) Theory, the arguments vary between two points of view. On the one side, the EMU adhesion would have a beneficial effect eliminating exchange rate risks, giving a better access to external financing and attenuating the impact of financial crises. On the other side, EMU membership may not protect these countries against asymmetric shocks. In fact, in the case of (real) asymmetric shocks or asymmetric response to common (real and nominal) shocks, the output and employment costs of the euro adoption could be very high. The objective of this dissertation is to study these issues, focusing first on potential source of financial vulnerabilities, and then to assess the degree of the CEECs’ shock asymmetry to participate in debates on the euro adoption.

This dissertation empirically studies the interplay of government policies, finance, and economic development. More specifically, it considers the impact of corporate taxes on employment, of bank regulation on financial information sharing on banking stability and of banking crises on democracy. Two of the chapters focus on Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The third one takes a more global perspective. Chapter 1 evaluates the impact of corporate income tax rates (CIT) on employment at the firm level for a sample of SSA countries. It finds that on average, firms employ more workers in countries with higher CIT rates. This is consistent with the fact that corporate tax revenues allow governments to provide public goods and infrastructure which are crucial to firm activities. We report estimation results to support this assumption. More specifically, while the marginal effect of CIT decreases with income level or with government expenditures, it increases with the level of democracy. Furthermore, we also find that the effect of CIT rates on employment works partially through improvements in the business environment in which firms operate. Chapter 2 assesses the effects of government policies setting the extent to which credit information on the credit history of borrowers is shared among lenders. It shows that credit information sharing stabilizes banks. Moreover, despite foreign banks having an informational disadvantage over domestic banks due to information frictions and would hence benefit more from credit information sharing, the results indicate that both types of banks are affected in the same way. This suggests that foreign banks rely on alternative strategies to compensate for their informational disadvantage in local markets. Lastly, Chapter 3 documents the impact of banking crises on the level of democracy. It provides evidence that democracy improves in the 10-year window following the occurrence of a banking crisis. The results also highlight the presence of several non-linearities. First, severe banking crises have larger effects on democracy than moderate ones. Second, the positive effect of banking crises on democracy is mostly driven by non-democratic countries. Finally, the bulk of the effect materializes from the third year after the crisis occurred. / Cette thèse étudie empiriquement l'interaction des politiques gouvernementales, de la finance, et du développement économique. Plus précisément, il examine l'impact de la fiscalité des entreprises sur l'emploi, de la réglementation bancaire relative au partage d'informations sur le crédit sur la stabilité bancaire, et des crises bancaires sur la démocratie. Les deux premiers chapitres se focalisent sur les pays d'Afrique subsaharienne. Le troisième adopte une perspective plus globale pour couvrir. Le premier chapitre évalue l'impact des taux d'imposition des sociétés (IS) sur l'emploi au niveau de l'entreprise pour un échantillon de pays d'Afrique subsaharienne. Ses résultats montrent qu'en moyenne, les entreprises emploient plus de travailleurs dans les pays où les taux de taxation des entreprises sont plus élevés. Cela s’explique par le fait que les recettes de l'impôt sur les sociétés permettent aux gouvernements de financer des biens publics et des infrastructures qui sont essentiels aux activités des entreprises. Nous présentons des résultats d'estimation pour soutenir cette hypothèse. Plus précisément, alors que l'effet marginal de l'IS diminue avec le niveau de revenu ou avec les dépenses publiques, il augmente avec le niveau de démocratie. En outre, nous constatons également que l'effet des taux d'IS sur l'emploi s'explique en partie par l'amélioration de l'environnement des affaires dans lequel opèrent les entreprises. Le second chapitre évalue les effets des politiques gouvernementales fixant la mesure dans laquelle les informations sur les antécédents de crédit des emprunteurs sont partagées entre les prêteurs. Il montre que le partage d'informations sur le crédit permet de stabiliser les banques. De plus, bien que les banques étrangères aient un désavantage informationnel par rapport aux banques nationales en raison de frictions d'information et bénéficieraient donc davantage du partage d'informations sur le crédit, les résultats indiquent que les deux types de banques sont affectées de la même manière. Cela suggère que les banques étrangères s'appuient sur des stratégies alternatives pour compenser leur désavantage informationnel sur les marchés locaux. Enfin, le chapitre 3 documente l'impact des crises bancaires sur le niveau de démocratie. Il fournit la preuve que la démocratie s'améliore dans la fenêtre de 10 ans suivant l’occurrence d'une crise bancaire. Les résultats mettent également en évidence la présence de plusieurs non-linéarités. Premièrement, les crises bancaires graves ont des effets plus importants sur la démocratie que les crises modérées. Deuxièmement, l'effet positif des crises bancaires sur la démocratie est principalement attribuable aux pays non démocratiques. Pour finir, l'essentiel de l'effet se matérialise à partir de la troisième année après la survenance de la crise. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished