This dissertation presents an extension of the warlord competition models found in Skaperdas (2002) and Konrad and Skaperdas (2012). I consider two non-parasitic warlords located on a line. Each warlord allocates resources for the extraction of natural resources, the production of goods and services, and conflict with the opposing warlord. Within the symmetric rates of seizure model, I use three different forms of the contest success function, a primary tool in the conflict theory literature, in my analysis. I show that the warlord closer to the point of conflict will invest less into the hiring of warriors and more into the production of goods and services, yet wins a larger proportion of total goods and services produced within the economy. Under certain conditions, the placement of the point of conflict at the midpoint between the two warlords maximizes the total resources toward war and minimizes total production. Under the asymmetric rates of seizure model, I find that the warlord closer to the point of conflict invests more in warfare and less in production; that is, results that counter what is found in the symmetric model. / Economics

Thesis advisor: Geoffrey Sanzenbacher / Despite growing importance in the global economy, many of the countriees with large natural resource economies are among the poorest. In this paper, I first construct a theoretical model that provides a framework for the harm of natural resources on corruption levels and governance. Then, I construct what I call the Resource Volatility Index. This measures both a country's level of dependence on a category of resources and the price volatility of these resources themselves. Finally, I use Correlated Random Effects models to show that both average and year-varying levels of this index can explain the level of corruption and the quality of governance in a given country. The nagative impacts I find on both variables confirms previous economic theory on governments funded by natural resources. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics. / Discipline: Scholar of the College.

This thesis comprises three stand-alone chapters: The first chapter is on the effect of natural disasters on labor markets. Using data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey, the Desinventar database, the US Geological Survey and district level employment indicators, we explore how a large earthquake in Indonesia affected local labor markets, in particular the evolution of wages and employment across sectors. We find that wage growth in the agriculture sector is significantly higher in earthquake affected areas. We propose two mechanisms for this result and show evidence for both mechanisms. The second chapter investigates the intra-household allocation of leisure and consumption among siblings. Children are often treated as passive members in the household and their preferences over consumption and leisure are rarely modeled. This chapter considers children as agents with their own preferences over leisure and consumption and builds a theoretical and empirical model for children's time and consumption allocations in a household. We test the predictions of the model with data from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. The results suggest that differences in siblings' relative time and consumption allocations are driven by their relative preferences over leisure and consumption rather than differences in parents' relative altruism. The third chapter examines the cost of transport infrastructure in developing countries. To our knowledge, this is the first study that analyzes drivers of unit costs of construction of transport infrastructure using a large data set of 3,322 unit costs of road work activities in low and middle income countries. We find a large dispersion in unit costs for comparable work activities. Unit costs are significantly higher in conflict and corrupt countries, and these effects are robust to controlling for a country's public investment capacity and business environment. Finally, higher unit costs are significantly negatively correlated with infrastructure provision.

Against the backdrop of the brain drain-brain gain debate, this thesis explores certain facets of the return migration phenomenon. Drawing on several theories, the decision to return among high skilled migrants is likely to be influenced by the prospect of using their overseas-acquired knowledge to secure a better livelihood back home. While ample consideration is given to motivations to return, the choice of employer and issues adjusting to the work and social surroundings, the main objective of the research is to understand migrants' transfer of overseas-acquired knowledge upon their return to India. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, the scope of the thesis is focused on returnees working in two organizations in New Delhi—Fortis Escorts Hospital and Research Centre (EHIRC) and Tata Consultancy Services' Government Industry Solutions Unit (GISU). Adopting a mixed methods approach, survey data and case interviews are analyzed to address the core research question: “How and in which ways do returnees transfer their newly acquired knowledge, skills and experiences in employing organizations?” A key hypothesis is that returnees' social ties affect the extent and nature of knowledge transfers and thus confer intended benefits and may lead to unintended consequences for their organizations. The analyses pit McPherson's (2001) principle of homophily in social networks against Granovetter's (1973) weak ties hypothesis to grasp the role of returnees in knowledge transfers within EHIRC and GISU. Results drawn from data collected on returnees, non-migrants and transnationals strongly confirm that social ties—strong, intermediate or weak—affect the transfer of knowledge to stakeholders in their organizations. The contribution of this thesis to the existing body of research is to shed light on both the potential and limitations of returnees as a conduit for transferring knowledge, upgrading skills and relaying insights to non-migrants, teams or units in the workplace.

This project approaches ongoing debates over the impact of increased Chinese engagement in African countries through the lens of production and industrialisation. Emerging market FDI into Africa is growing rapidly, and an increasing proportion of this investment is into manufacturing and productive sectors. This trend is led by the commercial expansion of private Chinese manufacturing firms across the continent. The goal of this project is to examine the differentiated impacts on African industrialisation attempts of this phenomenon. It takes as its case study industrial zone development projects in Nigeria, namely, the two official economic and trade cooperation zones being developed as large-scale FDI projects by Chinese firms, with Chinese and Nigerian government support, in Lagos and Ogun states. Analytically, four dimensions of this process are identified for study: the home country context, the host country context, the zone structures and institutions, and the firms themselves. Special attention is paid to the interface between foreign actors and the particular political economy of Nigerian manufacturing, as well as the at times substantial gaps between policy and practice in terms of industrial planning, investment and production. The thesis argues that SEZ projects in general, including the Chinese ETCZs, are industrial policy tools that operate on particular assumptions regarding the organisation of global production. As such, they incentivise the insertion of export-oriented firms into established global networks supplying international markets. However, a closer examination of industrial policy in China, the production environment in Nigeria and the behaviour of internationalising firms reveals that these assumptions are not always accurate. Thus, the SEZ institution as it is currently conceived in Nigeria is ill-suited to lend support to the trend towards Chinese relocation of producer firms, as well as to the reality of Nigerian production—both of which are predicated on domestic and regional markets as the primary driver of African industrialisation and productive sector growth.

Division One: “Malthus Gets Fat” (Two Chapters) Chapter One develops a simple dynamic model to examine the takeoff from a Malthusian economy to a modern growth regime. It finds that several factors, most notably the rate of technological progress and the economic structure, determine the fastest rate at which the population can grow without declining living standards; this is termed maximum sustainable population growth. It is only when this maximum sustainable rate exceeds the peak rate at which a society expands that takeoff can occur. I also investigate the effects of trade and international income transfers on the ability to sustain takeoff. It is also shown that present income growth is not necessarily indicative of the ability to sustain takeoff and that factors which increase current income growth may actually inhibit takeoff, and vice versa. Chapter Two applies the sustainable population growth framework to Britain during the Industrial Revolution. The model shows a dramatic increase in sustainable population growth at the time of the Industrial Revolution, well before the beginning of modern levels of income growth. The main contributions to the British breakout were technological improvements and structural change away from agricultural production. At least until the middle of the 19th Century, coal, capital and trade played a minor role. Division Two: “Leverage and Financial Market Instability” (Four Chapters) Chapter One develops a model of how leverage induces explosive behavior in financial markets. I show that when levered investors become too large relative to the market as a whole, the demand curve for securities can suddenly become upward-sloping as levered investors are exposed to forced liquidations. The size and leverage of all levered investors defines the minimum elasticity-adjusted market size for stability or MinEAMASS, which is the smallest elasticity-adjusted market size that can support the group of levered investors analyzed. This gives rise to a measure of instability that can predict when markets become vulnerable to a leverage-driven market liquidity crisis. Chapter Two iterates the model of Chapter One forward in time to generate an inflating bubble that suddenly bursts, reproducing many of Kindleberger's (1996) stylized facts about the dynamics of bubbles in a simple framework. Chapter Three applies my measure of instability in a historical investigation of the 1998 demise of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). I find that a forced liquidation of LTCM threatened to destabilize some financial markets, particularly for bank funding and equity volatility. Chapter Four discusses how the model applied to the stock market crash of 1929. There the evidence suggests that a tightening of margin requirements in the first nine months of 1929 combined with price declines in September and early October caused enough investors to become constrained that the market was tipped into instability, triggering the sudden crash of October and November.

This work proposes a new theory of authoritarian regimes: responsive authoritarianism. Most existing theories of autocracies take as their point of departure elite politics or the state’s repressive apparatus to explain the rise and fall of regimes. I argue that, for many states, regimes also have to consider the consent of the governed when designing policies. Specifically, when regime legitimacy is low but the central leadership maintains a long time horizon, autocratic regimes are predicted to become more responsive to the needs of citizens. This theory is tested against a number of aspects of the Chinese fiscal system dealing with public goods provision during the period of 2002-2011 and generally finds in favor of the theory. Chapter 4 tests the fiscal transfer system, Chapter 5 tests the fiscal expenditure data, and Chapter 6 tests data on the results of the transfer and expenditure data: actual public goods provision. This theory has a number of implications that suggest that scholars begin to rethink how they conceptualize power dynamics within an authoritarian regime, in particular paying closer attention to the relationship between the ruler(s) and the ruled. It suggests that, at least in the political science literature, power be returned to the people.

I examine the importance of human capital for economic development in Thailand during the period of high economic growth and structural transformation (1985-2000), using labour force survey data. The three main chapters attempt to estimate the effects of education, as a measure of human capital, on three major outcomes in the Thai labour market, namely (i) earnings; (ii) sector of employment; and (iii) earnings inequality. I address the endogeneity problem of education using an education policy shift—the change in the compulsory schooling law—that produces exogenous variation in education. The three main chapters adopt distinct modelling frameworks. The details of each of the main chapters are as follows. The third chapter investigates how education increases earnings and the probability of being in the non-agricultural sector. As the education policy shift influences educational attainment in a discontinuous way, a regression discontinuity (RD) framework is adopted to identify the average returns to education and the effect of education on the sector of employment. It is important to emphasise that the RD technique constrains the effects of education on the two outcomes to be linear and to be applicable only to sub-populations. My results confirm significant effects of education on both earnings and the sectoral sorting process. In addition, there are heterogeneous effects of education by gender. The fourth chapter is an extension of the previous chapter. I allow the returns to education to be heterogeneous across education levels and sectors of employment, while attempting to estimate the returns for the entire population. I use a control function (CF) approach and a double selection correction to estimate the sectoral earnings process, while jointly accounting for the choice of education and the selection into sectors and paid employment. I find that the returns to education are non-linear and higher in the non-agricultural sector especially for medium and highly educated workers. This suggests that human capital plays a crucial role in facilitating a structural transformation towards the non-agricultural sector. In the final chapter, I study how the increased primary education completion rate affects earnings inequality. While there exists a burgeoning literature on the average returns to education, less attention has been devoted to estimating the effects of education on the distribution of earnings. I identify the effects of primary education completion on earnings at different points of the distribution, and thus earnings inequality, using a recently developed approach, called regression discontinuity distributional treatment effects. My results suggest that the increased primary education completion rate reduces earnings inequality as the returns to primary education are larger for the poor than the rich.

During the transition era, economic resurgence in post-Soviet petro-states, such as Russia and Kazakhstan, was decisively fuelled by an abundance of oil and gas resources during a time of high and long-sustained demand for hydrocarbons in the world market. Thus, these states' energy sectors acted as the cornerstone of their post-Soviet economic and political development. However, in regard to foreign investment in their energy sectors, the governments of the different former Soviet states took strikingly different approaches: Russia for instance imposed restrictions on foreign economic groups, while Kazakhstan was more receptive to foreign investment in the sector. Given their shared economic and political background in the Soviet era discovering what accounts for this policy trend helps understand the divergence in the transition experience and more deeply rooted differences. This policy-oriented study examines perceptions, chiefly by interviews, and foreign investment strategies in the energy sector. It assesses institutional, economic and social background factors shaping perception and, to the degree that it can be determined, policy-making in post-Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Development Planning, 2016 / Over the last decade national, provincial and local governments within South Africa have paid considerable attention to the benefits and need for an effective and reliable public transport system to meet the social challenges facing South African cities. The development of public transport systems is viewed as a tool to alleviate poverty and unemployment, as they provide access to opportunities and services previously out of reach. In Johannesburg the Spatial disparities created during the apartheid era continue to divide the city along the lines of class and race, and serve to marginalise low income groups located on the periphery, far from economic centres. Over the last 10 years urban and economic growth in the west of Johannesburg has occurred at a rapid rate giving rise to numerous informal settlements and government subsidised homes. These developments occurred without the development of public transport systems isolating low income residents. This study seeks to examine the extent to which public transportation systems are responding to the growth of new urban and economic nodes in Johannesburg in a manner that supports the interests and needs of the city’s low income residents. The study investigates the cases of the Gautrain and Rea Vaya. The study evaluates the systems through an analysis of the state’s public transportation plans and policies and the challenges and successes of each system, taking into account what are the state’s current and future public transport plans and how are they responding to urban and economic growth in the west of Johannesburg. Through the use of spatial data, the study examines the spatial and economic trends in Johannesburg, the location of the urban poor and the effects of changes in commuter patterns. The study takes into account current and future urban and economic trends and examines the way in which public transport systems can make a positive impact upon the urban poor. This evaluation is done through an analysis of international literature and best practices that can be used in the development of public transport systems that are responsive, effective and reliable. Key respondents were interviewed to examine the impediments facing the development of responsive public transport systems and how this affects low income commuters in Johannesburg. Through the use of numerous forms of data including maps, policy documents and key respondent interviews, study reveals that future transport developments see the Gautrain and the Rea Vaya expanding to the west of Johannesburg. These developments will only occur in the late future, leaving low income residents without a formal means of public transport for many years to come. Low income residents within these regions lack the means to access opportunities and services. Research into the phenomenon reveals that in order to address the challenges faced by the urban poor in the west a more dynamic and integrated approach is required in the development of public transport systems in Johannesburg. These findings provide a critical understanding the development of public transport systems and the impediments that restrict the responsiveness of public transportation development in Johannesburg. / MT2017