Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The thesis examines how elite perspectives on foreign aid affect the subsequent path of aid dependence. The focus is on aid-seeking foreign policy change. Two foreign policy change cases are examined for the study, which took place in Korea under Park Chung-hee and in Ghana under Rawlings through a lens of comparative historical analysis. The thesis aims to make two original contributions to knowledge. First, it explains recipient foreign policy using two different forms of mercantilism, and second, it reveals the dependent path created by the mercantilist oriented elite. Mercantilism in the thesis is used as dual-frameworked concept. First, it is a lens to see state behaviour. Despite the fact that mercantilism has been mainly used to explain a donor‘s behaviour, it can elucidate that of an aid-recipient state when the aid-seeking country is in dire need of the foreign aid for the survival of the state. The thesis applies mercantilism to explain aid-receiving countries‘behaviour. Second, more importantly, mercantilism also explains elite perspectives. The elite in aid receiving countries search for foreign aid not only for the wealth and power of their state, but also for the prosperity and survival of themselves. Mercantilism is used as an ostensible principle in practicing the private search for advantages of the elite. The thesis uses the dual-mercantilism idea to examine aid-seeking foreign policy in Korea and Ghana. In Korea, the elite saw the key to their survival in industrialising the nation, and their search for foreign aid took place based on that raison d’être. In Ghana, on the other hand, the elite found the way to their survival and prosperity in acquiring more foreign aid and the aid per se became the ultimate goal. The thesis finds industrial mercantilism a useful framework to understand the elite perspective in Korea

A new technology is a bold new combination of production factors that potentially yields a higher level of total factor productivity. The optimal combination of input factors is unknown when an innovation is pursued. A larger targeted innovation may require a greater change in the optimal combination of production factors employed and increases volatility alongside with economic growth. We show that economic policy can interfere in this relationship with by adjusting source based capital income taxes. / Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordination

Sustainable development aims at improving human well-being, particularly by alleviating poverty, increasing gender equality, and improving health, human resources, and stewardship of the natural environment. Sustainable development is based on three pillars, namely, environmental protection and social progress and economic development. This study intended to contribute to sustainable development in the area of developmental social work practice by addressing the issues of new conceptualisations of social work practice, and in particular of intervention strategies, within the paradigm of sustainable social work practice. The purpose of this study was to explore and construct a foundation of general perceptions and tentative theories with regard to sustainable development and the position and value of the social work profession within the sustainable development paradigm. The goal of this research study was to explore current social work practice with regard to sustainable development and identify new challenges and opportunities for sustainable social work practice in the changing South Africa. The researcher utilised focus group discussions as a method of generating data and an exploratory research purpose as little is known about the topic of investigation and the utilization of focus groups are particularly useful in its ability to explore the topic. This study was a process of discovery and not the testing of a hypothesis. The researcher entered the realm of the participants’ everyday experience and through conversation extracted detailed descriptions of their perceptions, ideas and concerns. In this qualitative research the emphasis was on understanding the experiences, attitudes, assumptions and perspectives of the participants. The instrumental case study was used to provide insight into sustainable development as a new paradigm within the social welfare field and to discover the issues and challenges faced by the social work profession as it pertained to sustainable development. The data was organised around emerging themes and subsequently examined in relation to the literature. Based on the findings and conclusions drawn, the following recommendations were made: - The social work profession needs an information-sharing platform. - Collaboration and cooperation are crucial components in the process of sustainable development. - Social work practitioners have to become self-directed and lifelong learners who will be able to adapt to the changing circumstances in society. - Social work practitioners need to develop creative strategies within a multidisciplinary approach to address the issues of poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment in a sustainable manner. - Social work practitioners need to actively contribute to processes and structures that support the delivery of adult literacy and skills training efforts. - Social work practitioners need to explore ways and means of facilitating economic opportunities by addressing the obstacles and/or regulations that prevent people from accessing available markets. / Thesis (DPhil (Social Work))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Social Work / unrestricted

Les questions de croissance durable mêlées aux enjeux d’accès aux marchés financiers internationaux des pays riches en ressources naturelles ont souvent été occultées dans la littérature économique. Or, ces enjeux s’avèrent de plus en plus présents dans le débat public face à la baisse récente des prix du pétrole. Cette thèse tente de mieux comprendre comment des économies dépendantes de leur production de ressources épuisables gèrent leur dette externe en vue d’une croissance soutenable dans le long-terme et comment les marchés financiers perçoivent le risque souverain lors de l’émission de leur dette. Pour y répondre, elle recourt à de la modélisation dynamique, à travers un cadre théorique, ainsi qu’à des études économétriques. Elle contribue à la littérature en intégrant de nouvelles dimensions, comme l’ouverture financière dans un modèle de croissance avec des ressources épuisables, modèles qui jusque-là étaient étudiés sous la forme d'économies fermées. Par ses analyses empiriques, elle prend en compte la notion de volume à travers l’étude des réserves de pétrole et de gaz. Les principaux résultats sont que l'ouverture financière ne permet pas d’avoir une croissance soutenable à taux d’intérêt constant, mais la consommation peut croître un temps lorsque le taux d’intérêt est endogène à la dette du pays. Les réserves de pétrole et de gaz ont un effet significatif sur les spreads souverains. La thèse n'élude pas pour autant la question des prix, puisqu'elle montre que les rendements et la volatilité des prix du pétrole sont des déterminants significatifs des CDS du Venezuela, alors que l'effet des prix se répercute à travers le canal du taux de change pour la Russie. / The relationship between sustainable growth and international financial market access in natural resource rich countries has been overlooked in the economic literature. However, those issues have become more present in the public debate with the recent drop in oil prices. This thesis tries to better understand how natural resource dependent economies can deal with their external debt and how financial markets view this sovereign risk. To address those issues, this dissertation refers to dynamic optimization, as well as econometric studies. It contributes to the natural resource literature by including new dimensions, such as financial openness in a growth model with exhaustible resources, contrary to most growth models which are studied as closed economies. Concerning its empirical applications, this thesis takes into account natural resource stocks, through oil and gas reserves, whereas most of the empirical literature focuses on the natural resource price dimension. This price issue is also part of the analysis, especially with oil price returns and oil price volatility. The main results are that long-term sustainability is not feasible with a constant interest rate, but the consumption growth rate can be positive in the case of a debt elastic interest rate, before declining in the long-term. It is also shown that oil and gas reserves have a significant impact on sovereign spreads. Moreover, oil price returns are significant determinants of Venezuela's Credit Default Swaps (CDS), contrary to the case of Russia, where oil prices seem to impact CDS spreads through the exchange rate canal.

The main purpose of this diploma thesis is development of the economy of Ireland and its position in EU. The work is divided into three main parts. First chapter describes the development of irish economy in the past until half of the 90's. Second part includes period of great economic growth, which is called the period of "Celtic Tiger." It concerns with main economic indicators and also with grounds for this fast economic growth, this in connection with EU as well. Third part includes period of economic crisis in the irish economy, main causes of this crisis and changes in an attitude of the Irish towards the membership in EU and also position among the rest of member states. Ireland still belongs to great supportes of EU. Irish economy's joined the most mature and the fastest growing economies of EU. The global crisis has hit irish economy as the first state of eurozone and its impacts were very hard. The duration of this crisis is not known, even it is possible, that period of great economic growth was only excaption.

This thesis deals with the convergence of European economies in the context of the deepening global inequality in the world. The theoretical part discusses the concept of convergence and the basic theories of economic growth, explaining the convergence of economies to their steady state. This part also deals with global inequality. Different types of inequalities and methods of measurement are identified, with focus on external inequality measured by GDP per capita in purchasing power parity. The analytical part examines the development of gross domestic product of the analyzed economies. The regression analysis of beta convergence shows that the economies converge and that the inequality between them is decreasing. One part of the analytical section also clarifies the relationship between long-term growth and its determinants. The section is concluded with the regression analysis of dependence between the long-term growth and selected determinants. The analysis shows that the statistically significant main factors contributing to long-term growth in the analyzed economies are the level of investment, openness of the economy, and government capital expenditures. Foreign direct investment inflows are also an important determinant, but not statistically significant. On the other hand, long-term economic growth is negatively influenced by the rate of population growth.

The victory of the Conservatives in the 1979 General Election brought a government into office which is traditionally said to pursue a programme of economic liberalism. The new government was determined to end British economic decline and the crisis of state authority by making an ideological and political break with the policy of consensus. But it was only after September 1981, when "the dries" achieved dominance in Conservative Government and the new liberal policy finally prevailed. Their goals were to reduce the role of the government in economy, to start privatization of nationalised industries and to achieve reduction in the size and scope of welfare state. This objective became an important part of Thatcher's second- and third-term economic policy. This thesis describes how the particular factors influenced the privatization programmes. The main aim is to answer the question whether the delays in privatization programmes were given by objective obstruction by Thatcher's political opponents and interest groups or whether "the dries" themselves did not support denationalization of strategic industries. The privatization is examined and brought into context of fiscal and monetary policy to unveil the role of privatization in Thatcher's economic policy. The success of privatization is limited by regulations imposed on denationalized industries and the author of this thesis puts emphasis on the description of the extent to which the members of the conservative party supported free market. The author uses a description of various privatization programmes, including related political and economical discussions, to answer these questions. The thesis includes a description of popular capitalism and a connection between foreign policy and privatization as well as the author's evaluation of privatization program.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the relation between two highly relevant documents for the Colombian society: Firstly, The peace agreement between the Colombian Government and the FARC guerrilla. Secondly, the agreement of the authorities of the country to follow and pursuit the new Sustainable Development Goals – Agenda 2030 from United Nations. For this research, an extensive existing literature review was done. Throughout the empirics, the analysis looked at the relation between these two documents to show the level of compatibility for the Sustainable Development agenda in Colombia. This compatibility is important to determine as both documents have a vital importance for the Colombian Society. The first, Peace Agreement, as it is the text that aims to propose the political agenda after more than 50 years of conflict between the authorities and the FARC guerrilla. Secondly, the SDGs – Agenda 2030 is a political agreement that countries in the world will follow to contribute to the sustainability of the planet. Thus, after having the chance to review and analyze both documents, there exist clear synergies between both documents, with the exceptions of certain topics. It can be concluded that there is much room for being optimistic in the case of Colombia, but to keep in mind that the agreements are just that: the entrance to a route that now the whole country needs to take, the path of sustainability.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze and compare the economic development of Finland and Sweden with the emphasis of the current economic crisis. The first chapter presents basic characteristics of both economies and their development till 2008. The second chapter shows the development of both economies from the beginning of the crisis until now. The chapter is divided into sub-chapters that analyze individual economic indicators.

This thesis main topic is the social-economic polarization in Czech Republic and its development process within past two decades. The main aim is to define growth poles with positive social-economic development and peripheric areas with stagnating or negative development. Consequently the secondary aim of this thesis is to confirm or disprove hypothesis resulting from Myrdal's theory of cumulative causation: "Growth poles grow faster over time and conversly peripheric areas decline further over years." In next step growing and peripheric regions are described and the possible causes of develepment within this areas are interpreted. Leading theories of regional development focusing on social-economic growth polarization are described in the theoretical part. The emphasis is on core -- periphery theories with main focus on theory of cummulative causation by Gunnar Myrdal.