This thesis investigates empirically three questions of key relevance for the life of disadvantaged people in developing countries. Using a sample of Ethiopian women and a regression discontinuity design exploiting age discontinuities in exposure to a law that raised the legal age of marriage for women, the first chapter documents for the first time (a) the effect of increasing the legal age of marriage for women on infant mortality and (b) the causal effect of early cohabitation on infant mortality. The analysis shows that, even though it was not perfectly enforced, the law that raised the legal age of marriage had a large effect on the infant mortality of the first born child. Furthermore, the estimates suggest that the effect of a one-year delay in women's age at cohabitation on the infant mortality of the ffrst born is comparable to the joint effect on child mortality of measles, BCG, DPT, Polio and Maternal Tetanus vaccinations. Using longitudinal data from northern Ghana, the second chapter shows that parents allocate more schooling to children that are more cognitively able. These results provide evidence for the main prediction of the model of intra-household allocation of resources developed in Becker (1981), which concludes that parents allocate human capital investments reinforcing cognitive differences between siblings. The third chapter uses the 8.8 Richter magnitude earthquake that struck Chile in February 2010 as a case study and employs a difference in difference strategy to investigate whether natural disasters have lasting effects on property crime. The results show that the earthquake reduced the prevalence of property crime the year of the earthquake and that this effect remained stable over the 4 post-earthquake years studied. The lasting drop in crime rates in affected areas seems to be linked to the earthquake strengthening community life in these municipalities.

Agricultural commercialisation via increased market participation and innovation adoption has been widely argued to reduce poverty. However, empirical evidence suggests that both of these are persistently low in developing countries. Recent analyses suggest that different types of transaction costs and social capital may influence both market access and innovation adoption decisions. This thesis investigates these two factors in agricultural commercialisation and poverty reduction. Using data from three GLSS survey rounds, Chapter 1 investigates the determinants of the decision to sell as well as the decision of how much to sell, focusing on the role of transaction costs. The empirical analysis is carried out at household level and for a specific crop (maize). A Heckman two-step model is used to control for self-selection into market participation, using measures of fixed transaction costs as identifier variables. The overall results, although generally consistent with previous literature, show an unexpected positive relationship between remoteness and market participation, which might reflect peculiarities of Ghanaian crop marketing systems. Chapter 3 investigates the relationship between social capital and innovation using primary data on 305 Ghanaian farmers collected during field work in 2012 (described in Chapter 2). The chapter analyses innovation (the decision to adopt, its timing and intensity) at crop level, focusing on a non-traditional cash crop, exotic varieties of mango. The analysis investigates the role of different types of social capital, both in disaggregated and aggregated forms. The results suggest that social capital should not be overlooked in the innovation process, supporting recent evidence that there exists a positive relationship between the “know-who” and adoption dynamics. Finally, Chapter 4 investigates the impact of innovation adoption on objective and subjective measures of poverty. Matching techniques are used to estimate the Average Treatment Effect on the Treated, using primary data. The results show that adoption does not impact objective poverty but it does have a significant positive impact on self-perceived poverty status.

This study is one of the first attempts to understand the long-term mechanisms of poverty dynamics at the household level in rural villages in Thailand. It does so by identifying dynamic patterns of poverty and by examining the factors and processes that underlie poverty dynamics in two major rice production regions of Thailand, namely, Khon Kaen province in the Northeast, Thailand's poorest region, and Suphanburi province in the Central plain, one of the richest regions of the country. The study is based on a survey of a panel of 240 households that were originally interviewed in 1988, and followed and interviewed again in 2009 for the purpose of this longitudinal study. The contrast between the survey areas is deliberate and has been useful for comparing economic and social structural changes of rural households across two decades, as well as examining disparities in the opportunities and resources between the two regions. In order to capture the complex and multidimensional nature of poverty, the study combines quantitative and qualitative methods in the analysis of poverty dynamics in Thailand. A quantitative survey analysis was merged with qualitative assessments by using the same sampling frame and then sequentially integrating life history interviews. The results show that both quantitative and qualitative approaches provide similar patterns of poverty transition. Notably, the study has found that the proportions of households moving into and out of poverty were higher than those remaining in chronic poverty, similarly to most experiences of poverty mobility in other developing countries. In addition, the study demonstrates the benefits of using a mixed-method approach for examining the factors underlying poverty dynamics. The study argues that combining these two approaches provides a richer insight of how rural households' economic, social and demographic characteristics have been associated with poverty dynamics. A number of similar factors that influence households' poverty dynamics were identified in both quantitative and qualitative approaches. These include asset factors, demographic factors and employment factors. However, the qualitative approach has provided further insight into additional contextual factors and processes not easily identified by the quantitative approach, notably the impact of ill-health shocks and behavioural factors. Understanding the distinction between the patterns of poverty dynamics and the mechanisms explaining them is of crucial importance for policy interventions. The implications derived from this study of poverty dynamics seek to strengthen poverty reduction efforts in Thailand, as well as to derive useful lessons to other developing countries.

In Argentina and Brazil, the future never seems to arrive. Over the last three decades, successive waves of neoliberal and neodevelopmentalist reforms invariably ended in disappointment. The most relevant question defying the contemporary Brazilian and Argentinian political economy literature is why, despite being repeatedly predicted in economic programs and promised in political discourses, catch-up development never materialises? Neoliberal and neodevelopmentalist authors offer apparently contradictory answers to that question. For the former, economic underachievement is a result of insufficient or ill-conceived pro-market reforms. For the latter, it is a consequence of the lack of state-led national development projects. In this thesis, I challenge both mainstream narratives. I claim that the roots of Brazilian and Argentinian permanent underachievement are intrinsically related to the fragilities of neoliberal and neodevelopmentalist development strategies, which result in inherently inconsistent policies. Although representing themselves as complete opposites, both sides actually share two problematic premises: a narrow view of development, understood as capitalist catch-up, and a simplified opposition between state and market. My critique starts from a radical reappraisal of the very concept of development, informed by Leon Trotsky's idea of uneven and combined development and its contemporary interpretations. Defining development as the dynamic outcome of the interplay between class disputes and international pressures and opportunities, I argue that the shortcomings of the neoliberal and neodevelopmentalist reforms were determined by the specific responses given by dominant class alliances in the face of successive international crises. The argument is advanced through four in-depth case studies of the state reforms carried out in Brazil and Argentina since the 1990s, with particular attention to macroeconomic and foreign policies. By breaking the oligopoly of narratives about Brazilian and Argentinian development shared by neoliberals and neodevelopmentalists, I aim to contribute to the rise of alternative strategies of development from below.

This thesis investigates how involvement in networks contributes to firm-level upgrading in emerging markets. In the 1990s, the international de-localisation of production and global integration has brought about a process of upgrading for firms in the transition and latecomer industrialising countries that allowed them to approach the technological frontier and enhance their competitive position. Hence, the firm-level upgrading became a process of improving technological and organisational deficiencies in the firms' knowledge base, particularly through knowledge transfer and learning in networks they have involved in, enabling them to adjust to the new environment by doing things differently and/or better as well as doing different things. The literature on upgrading stresses the effects of value chains and production networks on industrial upgrading, while the role of various learning mechanisms is largely unexplored. Employing an evolutionary perspective, this thesis contributes to existing analyses by considering the role of knowledge networks and by using ‘learning in networks' as a bridging concept, by which the interaction between inter- and intraorganisational knowledge transfer is demonstrated to have significant bearing on hastening the process of catching-up in emerging markets. Specifically, this thesis examines what characteristics of the networks of Polish food-processing and clothing firms affect learning mechanisms in an inter-organisational context and how these mechanisms combined with internal factors supporting internalisation of externally acquired knowledge (including firm strategy orientation) contribute to various types of firm-level upgrading during the period 1989-2001. Methodologically, this thesis proposes a dynamic model of firm-level upgrading with a novel unit of analysis: the relationships of the firm. So, rather than using firm case studies, it provides statistical evidence typically lacking in the upgrading research, while not sacrificing the in-depth nature of case studies, as each relationship of the firms studied has been investigated through face-to-face interviews that are translated into a dataset of relationships analysed using multinomial logistic regressions. First, the network-related characteristics of external learning mechanisms were identified and then used as a reference point in the upgrading analysis. The results for product upgrading largely confirm the previous findings in the literature. However, the upgrading of production processes is a function of learning from advances in science and technology through knowledge networks. Strikingly, learning-by-interacting in production networks actually appears to impede managerial (rather than functional) upgrading, a previously unexplored upgrading type, which is also shown to be a prerequisite for functional upgrading. While learning-by-training and research within the firm is a potent condition for external learning mechanisms to contribute to all of the upgrading types, for successful functional upgrading, it is a must. These findings show the importance of the use of an integrative approach to learning in research on upgrading.

This dissertation consists of three essays studying the dynamic and strategic interactions of oligopolistic firms in developing countries using dynamic structural models. We focus on industries which have positive social benefits for the communities in which they operate, namely radio and banking. We use the estimated models to simulate counterfactual policies aimed at improving access for individuals in underserved areas. The first essay studies the social impacts of the liberalization of the radio broadcasting sector in Ghana. I analyze how the regulator affects commercial stations' decisions to enter and the resulting effects of coverage spillovers in rural areas. I exploit random variation in radio coverage caused by coverage spilling through gaps in mountainous areas and use this to estimate the effects of coverage on malaria incidence and development. I then estimate a dynamic structural entry model for commercial stations. In counterfactual simulations, I find that the allowance of more powerful transmitters is particularly effective in delivering the social benefits of radio to new communities. The second essay (joint with Calixte Ahokossi) studies voter turnout and regulatory inefficiency in the radio broadcasting market in Benin. We find an inverted-U relationship between the number of radio stations and voter turnout. We estimate a dynamic structural model for radio stations, taking into account the regulatory inefficiency in the market. Counterfactual simulations suggest that either removing the regulatory inefficiency or introducing targeted entry subsidies can spur entry in areas without radio stations, which would increase voter turnout in these areas. The third essay (joint with Marc Rysman and Robert M. Townsend) studies the banking sector in Thailand. Here, we argue that the effect of financial crises on bank branch location choices provides an unexplored channel by which crises affect access to credit. We estimate a dynamic structural model of oligopolistic location choice, allowing for complementarity in payoffs for bank branches in nearby locations, as well as competitive effects between rival banks. Using this model, we can predict counterfactual expansions of the bank branch network under policies focused on opening rural bank branches, or in the absence of the 1997 financial crisis.

This discussion paper looks at the connections between economies and ecosystems, or more generally biophysical reality. The term "economies" is used, rather than "the economy", because of the prevalent false claim that there is only one type of economic system that is possible. We outline how the ecological crises is linked to the dominant drive for economic growth and the tendency to equate growth with progress and development; common even amongst those apparently critical of the need for continued growth in the materially rich countries. The unreality of mainstream economics is epitomised by the accolades given to those justifying mild reformist policy in response to human induced climate change in order to continue the pursuit of economic growth. We emphasise the structural aspects of economies as emergent from and dependent upon the structure and functioning of both society and ecology (energy and material flows). Finally, that the structure of the global economy must change to avoid social ecological collapse, poses the questions of how that can be achieved and what sort of economics is necessary? We explain the need for: (i) a structural change that addresses the currently dysfunctional relationships between economic, social and ecological systems, and (ii) an economics that is interdisciplinary and realist about its social and natural science relations. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Malaria is a daunting epidemic killing millions of people annually and no region is harder hit than Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Each year there are more than 247 million malaria cases in SSA, resulting in more than 600,000 deaths. Despite a comprehensive understanding of the parasite and its transmission, worldwide eradication campaigns have failed to adequately control or eliminate the disease. This paper provides a meta-analysis of historical and current approaches to malaria eradication throughout SSA, highlighting past success and perceived failure to avoid repetitive progression down a path of narrowly focused eradication efforts. Through consideration of the economic costs associated with malaria, as well as a critique of current international elimination strategies, this analysis suggests sizeable and widespread returns to pursuing eradication measures. However, this paper finds that current methods are not sufficient to eradicate the malaria burden and multi-dimensional and all-encompassing approaches are essential to making malaria history.

The lead essay measures the long-term impact of famine severity during the 1959-1961 Great Chinese Famine on contemporary per capita GDP and rural household income in China. Empirical results present a consistently negative relationship between famine severity and per capita GDP in 2010 supported using an instrumental variable approach. The instrumental variable (IV) based on the sequence in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took over continental China, exploiting the relationship between a local community's demonstration of loyalty to the new CCP regime, the radicalism of leadership during the Great Leap Forward social and agricultural reform starting in 1958, and the consequences of the Great Famine. The second essay utilizes the interaction of malaria prevention and the historical geographic distribution of malaria endemicity to estimate the average global impact mosquito-control has had on population growth. The differential benefit mosquito-control health campaigns may have had with respect to the initial malaria prevalence provides useful counterfactual groups for empirical analysis as well as possible evidence for the divergence in population development between the temperate and tropical regions of the world.

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / Political Science Dept. Includes bibliographical references.