This thesis consists of eight studies that cover topics in the increasingly influential field of futures- commodities, macroeconomic volatility and financial development. Chapter 2 considers the case of Argentina and provides a first thorough examination of the timing of the Argentine debacle. By applying a group of econometric tests for structural breaks on a range of GDP growth series over a period from 1886 to 2003 we conclude that there are two key dates in Argentina's economic history (1918 and 1948) that need to be inspected closely in order to further our understanding of the Argentine debacle. Chapters 3 and 4 investigated the time-varying link between financial development and economic growth. By employing the logistic smooth transition framework to annual data for Brazil covering the period 1890-2003 we found that financial development has a mixed (either positive or negative) time- varying effect on growth, which depends on trade openness thresholds. We also find a positive impact of trade openness on growth while a mainly negative one for the various political instability measures. Chapter 5 studied the convergence properties of inflation rates among the countries of the European Monetary Union over the period 1980-2013. By applying recently developed panel unit root/stationarity tests overall we are able to accept the stationarity hypothesis. Similarly, results from the univariate testing procedure indicated a mixed evidence in favour of convergence. Hence next we employ a clustering algorithm in the context of multivariate stationarity tests and we statistically detect three absolute convergence clubs in the pre-euro period, which consist of early accession countries. We also detect two separate clusters of early accession countries in the post-1997 period. For the rest of the countries/cases we find evidence of divergent behaviour. For robustness check we additionally employ a pairwise convergence Bayesian framework, which broadly confirms our findings. Finally, we show that in the presence of volatility spillovers and structural breaks time-varying persistence will be transmitted from the conditional variance to the conditional mean. Chapter 6 focuses on the negative consequences that the five years of austerity (2010-2014) imposed on the Greek economy and the society in general. To achieve that goal we summarize the views of three renowned economists, namely Paul De Grauwe, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz on the eurozone crisis as well as the Greek case. In support of their claims we provide solid evidence of the dramatic effects that the restrictive policies had on Greece. Chapter 7 analyzes the properties of inflation rates and their volatilities among five European countries over a period 1960-2003. Unlike to previous studies we investigate whether or not the infl ation rate and its volatility of each individual country displayed time-varying characteristics. By applying various power ARCH processes with structural breaks and with or without in-mean effects the results indicated that the conditional means, variances as well as the in-mean effect displayed time-varying behaviour. We also show that for France, Italy and Netherlands the in-mean effect is positive, whereas that of Austria and Denmark is negative. Chapter 8 examines the stochastic properties of different commodity time series during the recent fi nancial and EU sovereign debt crisis (1997-2013). By employing the Bai-Perron method we detect five breaks for each of the commodity returns (both in the mean and in the variance). The majority of the breaks are closely associated with the two aforementioned crises. Having obtained the breaks we estimated the power ARCH models for each commodity allowing the conditional means and variances to switch across the breakpoints. The results indicate overall that there is a time-varying behaviour of the conditional mean and variance parameters in the case of grains, energies and softs. In contrast, metals and soya complex show time-varying characteristics only in the conditional variance. Finally, conducting a forecasting analysis using spectral techniques (in both mapped and unmapped data) we find that the prices of corn remained almost stable while for wheat, heating oil, wti and orange juice the prices decreased further, though slightly. In the case of natural gas, coffee and sugar overall the prices experienced significant defl ationary pressures. As far as the prices of oats, platinum, rbob, cocoa, soybean, soymeal and soyoil is concerned, they showed an upward trend. Chapter 9 examines the effect of health and military expenditures, trade openness and political instability on output growth. By employing a pooled generalised least squares method for 19 NATO countries from 1993 to 2010 we fi nd that there is a negative impact of health and military expenditures, and political instability on economic growth whereas that of trade openness is positive.

This thesis examines the perceptions of poverty and own-poverty held by people living in poor communities, and uses these to understand their realities as evident in the risks they face and the livelihood strategies they carry out. It engages with the debate on relationships between perceived poverty and objective indicators which dominate the poverty discourse. A comparative analysis of rural and urban areas is carried out motivated by literature findings on differences in perceptions between these areas. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected during seven months of fieldwork (2006) in relatively poor areas of Lagos state, South-West Nigeria. Perceptions of poverty in a highly populated and commercial area such as Lagos were found to be consistent with the factors that have informed traditional approaches to poverty. However, the identification of the poor based on perceptions of own-poverty differed remarkably from that based on locally identified indicators of poverty, and relative deprivation was found to be a key explanation. In using the perceptions of poverty and own-poverty to further understand the realities of poverty as understood by the poor, risks and livelihoods are also examined. The poor are faced with risks which they have limited capacities to insure themselves against and health risks featured prominently as the most anticipated and realised risk. Informal risk-sharing was the main risk-response used, however its capacity to cope is limited. Livelihood diversification is also a response to risks and in analysing this further (with a focus on the rural poor), a diversification spectrum made up of three categories: the least, mid and highly diversified, was constructed. The majority of those who perceived themselves as poor were in the middle of the spectrum and were engaged in a non-farm activity, suggesting that diversification into non-farm activities was not necessarily the preferred option in their perspective.

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.

Between 1660 and 1720 the British American empire expanded to incorporate new settlements, new trade routes, and it occupied a growing place in the British export economy. This expansion created challenges in transoceanic navigation and understanding of local geography, particularly as ambitions to trade in new markets in Spanish America gained traction. Mariners, merchants, scientists and policymakers required useful knowledge to enable their voyages and imperial activities. To meet this growing demand, print artisans in London produced an increasing amount of printed geographical information in the form of maps, charts and geographical texts. Draftsmen, engravers and printers applied their skill and labour to produce 179 maps and charts of the British Americas, and these artisans in turn benefitted from the income supplied by consumers. The increasing valorisation of empiricism and eyewitness knowledge resulting from the 'scientific revolution' also informed the inclusion of useful and practical information on maps and charts, and publishers asserted their credentials in claims to accuracy and novelty. Crown-sponsored voyages, buccaneers and chartered companies supplied eyewitness information from the Spanish Pacific and Caribbean, although the quality of information varied depending on the voyage itineraries and priorities. The growth of this market for maps and charts of the Americas highlights how the economic and territorial exploitation inherent to British empire was partly enabled by artisans living thousands of miles from colonial spaces. It further demonstrates the pivotal role of empire in Britain's long-term economic growth, and highlights that useful knowledge was central not peripheral to early modern socio-economic development.

O objetivo deste trabalho visa analisar a relação entre produtividade e o crescimento econômico no Brasil, ou seja, quais são os impactos daquela variável no padrão de vida da população de um país. Para tanto é revisada a literatura acerca da produtividade e do crescimento, sua mensuração, definições, abordagens e determinantes. Avalia-se a experiência internacional tomando como fundamento grupos de países mais e outros menos desenvolvidos. Analisa-se a experiência e realidade brasileira acerca do tema, com um foco mais específico na década de 90 e nos anos 2000. / The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between productivity and economic growth in Brazil, it means, what are the impacts of that variable on the standard of living of a country’s population. For that, it is reviewed the productivity and growth literature, its measurement, definitions, approaches and determinants. It is assessed the international experience taking as base a group of countries more and other less developed. It is analyzed the Brazilian experience and reality about the topic, with a specific focus on 90 decade and 2000 years.

A presente tese tem como objetivo realizar uma aplicação empírica da Lei de Thirlwall para a economia peculiar da China, a fim de apresentar mais uma contribuição que busque explicar os possíveis determinantes do crescimento Chinês. São escassos os estudos que objetivam aplicar a Lei de Thirlwall para o estudo da economia chinesa, conforme afirmado pelo próprio Thirlwall. A tese conta com uma revisão de literatura acerca do crescimento da China, e uma breve contextualização histórica do país, necessária à compreensão do crescimento chinês no longo prazo. Faz-se a apresentação do modelo que respalda a chamada Lei de Thirlwall, bem como, suas principais extensões, seguida de uma revisão de literatura acerca de estudos aplicados sobre a Lei de Thirlwall. Nos capítulos seguintes são apresentados dois estudos aplicados de séries temporais a fim de estimar as elasticidades renda, taxas de câmbio e taxas estimadas de crescimento econômico. O primeiro testa a lei de Thirlwall para a China isoladamente, e o segundo busca uma análise destas variáveis para um conjunto de países. Ao final são apresentados brevemente os resultados obtidos neste estudo. / This thesis aims to perform an empirical application of Thirlwall's law for the peculiar economy of China, with the goal of presenting another contribution that seek to explain the possible determinants of Chinese growth. Are scarce studies that aim Thirlwall's law applied to the study of Chinese economy, as stated by the Thirlwall. The thesis has a review of literature on the growth of China, and a brief historical contextualization of the country needed for understanding of Chinese growth over the long term. The model that supports Thirlwall's law is presented, as well as, its main extensions, followed by a review of literature on applied studies on Thirlwall's Law. In the following chapters are presented two studies applied time series in order to estimate the income elasticities, exchange rates and estimated rates of economic growth. The first test Thirlwall's Law to China alone, and the second seeking an analysis of these variables for a set of countries. At the end are presented briefly the results obtained in this study.