Under början av 1900-talet rådde det stor bostadsbrist i Stockholm. För att komma till buktmed det växande problemet lät Stockholm stad upplåta mark i stadens närförorter.Småstugebyrån bildades år 1927 i syfte att förmedla dessa tomter till mindre bemedladepersoner samt barnfamiljer. Syftet med den här undersökningen är att ta reda på hur man löstebostadsbristen tiden kring sekelskiftet och hur förutsättningarna för dessa lösningarförändrades fram till mitten av 1900-talet. För att ta reda på detta kommer jag studeraSmåstugebyrån och de informationsbroschyrer som årligen gavs ut från startåret år 1927 framtill år 1959. Min undersökning visar att det egna arbetet i form av småstugor som skulle hjälpamindre bemedlade personer till en egen bostad senare kom att ersättas av inflyttningsklarasmåhus anpassat för personer med högre inkomster och större kapital.

This thesis draws upon anthropological fieldwork carried out in 2010–11 in the Tikveš wine region of the Republic of Macedonia. Unlike most other countries of the former Eastern Bloc, Macedonia’s post-socialist transition was held off due to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The result is that a slower, more subtle shift has occurred there yet it has been one guided by neoliberal principles, thus significantly altering the livelihoods of the country’s inhabitants. My research in Tikveš illustrates the role privatisation (privatizacija, a term known and used locally) is playing in the region’s transition from government to private ownership and production, specifically in the wine industry. Although the quality and selection of wine in Tikveš has improved, the lives of the independent grape growers and their families have not. Instead, the growers have been subject to the leverage of the winery owners—who have reduced and delayed payments to them—while a neoliberalised government has taken a laissez-faire approach to market regulation. Combined with EU accession development policy, this thesis therefore focuses on how individuals in the region are both protesting and adapting to the change at hand through rearranging their livelihoods and work. Indeed, grape growers have been left with a surplus of grapes and a dearth of income and certainty, inciting some to produce vast quantities of homemade rakija (brandy) while others replace, abandon or sell their vineyards. New ways of bringing in income, such as selling one’s brandy, produce or homemade goods are also modes of survival. Yet many claim that is all they are doing, merely ‘surviving, not living’. An argument is thus made that there is a return to the peasantry. Such repeasantisation is a process whereby the focus of economic activity becomes further centred on households and the pooling of family resources drawn from working the land and engaging in non-professional types of work. This form of repeasantisation is essentially that increasing numbers of individuals are not only working their small plots of land to provide produce for their family and for sale, but that in replacing the employment and income once provide by the state they are engaging in petty trade and precarious employment when it can be found. The thesis is comprised of six chapters, with an introduction and conclusion as well.

The central driving force behind this thesis was to study and analyse the balance of power, influence and wealth held by the landed gentry and the middle classes during the period 1840 to 1914. This was accomplished by focusing on thetown of Bromley, Kent, which historians and modern commentators alike havechampioned as the archetypal middle-class suburb. The thesis begins with an in-depth examination of the origins, ideals and actions of the small group of individuals who, in 1840, owned between them the majority of land in the town. Findings about the local gentry challenge existing theories about landowners' alleged antipathy towards commercial interests and show that landowners were not averse to exploiting prevailing economic conditions to their own financial gain. Gradually the local gentry's 'social' power and influence was surrendered to the middle classes which were gaining in wealth and self-confidence. Even though the socio-economic composition of the local middle class was increasingly diverse, there existed no conspicuous divergence in their aspirations or intentions. Indeed, unity of purpose intensified their impact upon the social and economic life of the community, as well as upon prevailing ideals. An ever-growing influx of commuters residing in the town, notably affluent financiers, merchants and professionals working in the City of London, occasionally challenged this unity over demands for improvements in facilities for urban - or suburban - living. However, in the long run these wealthy commuters were adopted as the 'new' elite of local society, helping to promote deferential and paternalistic relationships in a class that was drawn together within a complex web of social, cultural and economic ties. Whilst social harmony was secured by such ties, an obsession with image and perceived status helped preserve social ranks and social distinctions, of which geographical segregation became the most overt illustration. Such were the middle classes' fears of social degradation that they raised a united defence against the emergence of radicalism and socialism. This helped Bromley to emerge, or to be seen to emerge, as the most middle-class of English suburbs, even though this misjudges its more complex Victorian and Edwardian past.

The existing body of knowledge attributes to informal land transactions in sub-Saharan African cities observed problems in city neighbourhoods. However, the dearth of empirically insightful studies of how this eventuates continues to leave a vacuum in terms of practical solutions. But it is commonly held that bureaucratic intervention offers a way out. Substantial resources, often backed by donor agencies, are therefore being spent in revamping bureaux and governmental bodies in a bid to solving the problems. This thesis sets as its central aim to identify and establish the costs to agents of the real causes of the problems. It also aims to assess the economic impact of formal policy measures on agents and recommends feasible approaches to market regulations. To address the objectives insights from property rights, transactions costs and public choice economics are brought to bear. Based on a survey of market participants of sampled informal neighbourhoods in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, it employs regression and discriminant analyses to analyse the data generated. In the process helpful insights are gained. It has been possible to put some figures to the extent of costs that lead agents to operate in ways that eventually translate into the problems commonly witnessed. The study finds that actual costs to market participants of government activities are too high to be of any benefit. These costs mainly derive from rent-seeking behaviour which extensive bureaucratic intervention of transactions in urban residential lands bring about. On the basis of the results of the regression analysis, arguments implying inefficiency of informal land markets, specifically relating to the arbitrary nature of prices, are refuted. The futility of the use of compulsory purchase powers to create residential neighbourhoods also emerges from the results of the discriminant analysis. Similarly, efficiency' enhancing bureaucratic interventions in the informal market lead to the diversion of real resources into wasteful rent-seeking expenditures. The sum of these wasteful diversions of resources explains a great deal of the haphazard developments that have come to characterise many neighbourhoods of cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Market led regulation emerges as the needed focus of future land policy and management strategy. But to work the study calls for the removal of unwarranted market interventions extant at the present moment and the reorganisation of bureaux to be responsible in ways that would induce them to operate efficiently.

The term ‘de-industrialization’ stands for an element of structural change, indicating some form of decline within the secondary sector of a national economy. Sociologists use relative decline of manufacturing as their standard definition while economists often consider re-ductions in sectoral output as equally or even more important. There is a variety of other current descriptions. As a key element of this thesis, rigid definitions were constituted and utilized in two complementary models of de-industrialization. These were tested by macro-economic data for 12 mature and 25 emerging countries, covering the years 1973-2008 with successive 15 + 5 +15-year sub-periods. Productivity was identified as the key driver and indicator for success of the manufac-turing sector. It was found that the country-specific maximum in relative employment in manufacturing is reached at a threshold productivity that can be calculated by two linear functions of productivity over time, related to mature and emerging economies, respec-tively. On the basis of the model-based findings and additional socio-economic analyses, differ-ent paths of industrial development were distinguished for mature economies (i.e. fully industrialized states beyond their maximum relative employment in manufacturing) and emerging economies (i.e. states that have not yet industrialized to their full potential) with regard to their final outcome, i.e. the sectoral parameters and the resulting GDP per capita, employment and trade. From these findings, lessons to be learnt for policy makers were derived.

This thesis examines the international political economy of China’s exchange rate policymaking from a theoretical and an empirical perspective. The literature review identifies the limitations in the existing Economics studies on the RMB exchange rate and the research gap of the Comparative Political Economy (CPE) and International Political Economy (IPE) approaches to exchange rate politics. The author develops a three-level game framework for China’s exchange rate policymaking based on revision and synthesis of the existing CPE and IPE approaches. Specifically, the three-level game framework refers to the Chinese leadership’s negotiations with the international bargainers (mainly the U.S. government and the IMF) at the international level (level I), negotiations between central government’s ministries (People’s Bank of China and Ministry of Commerce) at the central governmental level (level II) and negotiations with the domestic interest groups and local governments at the local level (level III). The main argument of the thesis is that the three-level game framework provides a richer portrait of the dynamism and complexity of China’s exchange rate policymaking. The three-level game framework is applied empirically through an examination of China’s exchange rate policymaking between 2003 and 2013. The empirical studies have four major findings. First, the level I game played an agenda-setting role in China’s exchange rate policymaking before the 2005 exchange rate reform. Second, the level II game determined the limited scope of the initial reform and the subsequent gradual RMB appreciation. Third, the level III game provided the most important sources for China’s exchange rate policy returning to the de facto dollar-pegged exchange rate regime during the global financial crisis. Lastly, the level I game once again played an agenda-setting role in the 2010 exchange rate reform, but the level II game was important as well, in which the Chinese leadership reached the consensus to allow the RMB to appreciate against the dollar in a gradual and steady manner to improve the confidence and promote the international use of RMB. This thesis provides original and systematic research on China’s exchange rate policymaking in the Hu-Wen era to the academic literature. It makes a modest theoretical contribution to the existing body of CPE and IPE literature by developing the three-level game framework to explain China’s exchange rate policymaking. More importantly, this research sheds light on the international political economy of China’s exchange rate policymaking based on documentary analysis and primary data from interviews and questionnaire surveys. Overall, this is a timely and rigorous study on the role that international and domestic politics play in forging China’s exchange rate policymaking.

Employability has become a new buzzword of the 21st century. It advocates that to keep oneself attractive - through lifelong learning and the continuous acquisition of skills - protects oneself from the vulnerabilities of the labour market. The purpose of this PhD project is twofold: First, I investigate in what ways the employability agenda recreates neoliberal hegemony. Second, I analyse through what type of collective agency people contest the concept of employability. It is a comparative project of two main employability sectors, namely welfare to work programmes and higher education. In particular, I elaborate on the link between employability and the rise of unpaid labour in form of work-experiences. In line with neo-Gramscian theory and my critique of it this PhD research looks at the material structures, institutions and ideology which have shaped the political economy of employability through processes of class contestation. Participatory Action Research methodology is used to provide insights into the formations, dynamics, and outcomes of the main social forces resisting employability outside of established trade unions. This PhD, thereby, feeds into broader discussions on the decline and future of trade unionism and new ways of organising around work, which go beyond the workplace and might demand new workers institutions as well as a greater engagement with other actors in the community.

Introduction and background: Malnutrition, particularly undernutrition remains a major development challenge for sub-Saharan Africa. There has been mixed progress in reducing undernutrition and the numbers remain unacceptably high. However, high impact nutrition interventions have been recommended for implementation in high burden malnutrition countries to address undernutrition. Countries have responded by designing policies and programmes that reflect these recommendations. However, there is limited evidence of what works and how in local contexts. Objectives: This research explored the efficacy of nutrition interventions and modality of delivery of interventions and programmes in Uganda at national, local government and community levels. Specifically this study examined key stakeholders’ experiences of current nutrition interventions at district level in Uganda; assessed the effectiveness of previous nutrition specific and nutrition sensitive interventions on maternal and child health outcomes in Uganda; and examined the relationship between socio demographic and health factors on nutrition outcomes in Uganda. Methods and subjects: Using a combination of methods (mixed methods), this study explored nutrition interventions targeting mothers of reproductive age and children (0-5 years) in three separate studies. A systematic review was conducted to explore existing evidence on the nature of maternal and child health and nutrition interventions; and methods used to deliver them since 1986-2014. Studies were included if they were done in Uganda and reported health and nutrition related outcomes among the study group. Included studies were assessed for quality using the Newcastle Ottawa Scale. Twenty-two predominantly cross-sectional and longitudinal studies were included in the review. A qualitative study covering project implementers and project beneficiaries (n=85) in local communities was conducted using face-to-face interviews. Interviews explored methods used to deliver interventions and implementers’ and community participants’ perspectives and experiences of on-going nutrition interventions at local government (LG) and community level. Community beneficiaries were mothers or caretakers of children aged 0-59 months accessing interventions from two studied projects, while implementers were project staffs or health workers on the same projects. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Population based data of the 2011 Uganda demographic and health Survey (DHS) was quantitatively analysed. Logistic regressions analyses were done to establish factors that influence child stunting and anaemia in Uganda. Models were constructed based on 2350 stunted and 2056 child anaemia cases in the data set. Using a multilevel model design of mixed methods research, findings from each study were triangulated to obtain complementary information on the study phenomena. Results: Results suggest that planning and implementation of nutrition interventions in Uganda has transformed from random to systematic implementation since 1986. Nutrition interventions delivered diverse activities to address multiple causes of undernutrition in Uganda. However, activities were predominantly non-integrated delivered specifically at facilities or in communities. Methods of delivering interventions were broad to include community and health system compatible strategies (community mobilisation, outreaches and individual or group nutrition education and counselling) to prevent, manage and treat undernourished cases at facilities and within communities. Results further showed that maternal anaemia status, age of child and geographic factors were associated with stunting and anaemia in children. Further, the qualitative study showed, there was a conducive policy environment to implement multi-sectoral nutrition interventions in Uganda. There were linkages, collaborations and partnerships to delivery multi-sectoral integrated nutrition actions in communities and LG. Results however reveal that the dominance of external partners in implementing nutrition interventions; and absence of functional coordinating structures and mechanisms hinders intervention scale up. Further there was a need to address system and community barriers that affect implementation to improve nutrition outcomes and scale up at LG and community level. Conclusion: There have been great strides towards solving challenges of malnutrition in Uganda. Integrated approaches using community mobilisation and nutrition education and counselling at health facilities were among common delivery methods. However, bottlenecks exist in prioritisation and commitment to scale. There is a need to strengthen integrated approaches to delivering interventions across the LG and communities for multi-sectoral programming and implementation to reduce the number of undernourished Ugandans.

The Liberal welfare reforms were a series of bills passed in the British Parliament in the early twentieth-century. Initiated in response to a number of pressing economic and social issues, the Liberal welfare reforms were legislated with the purpose of combating poverty and improving the livelihood of the British working-class citizen. This thesis in economics outlines and examines critically the economic design behind the Liberal welfare reforms between 1906 and 1914.

I aim to explain significantly different industry abnormal returns and changes in risk as a result of the 1933 Bank Holiday imposed by President D. Franklin Roosevelt from March 3, 1933 to March 15, 1933. I identify no strong relationship between unregulated industry leverage and abnormal returns following the Bank Holiday, but find regulated industries, the most highly levered at the time, experienced the most statistically significant negative abnormal returns. I find a strong correlation between abnormal returns and leverage when including regulated and unregulated industries. Thus, the evidence is consistent with the story that highly regulated industries who experienced negative abnormal returns were not able to take advantage of the benefits brought on by the Bank Holiday. The addition of historically accurate leverage data fails to fully account for a lack of significant results from Ingram (2016), who analyzed industry specific returns and risk surrounding the Bank Holiday and attempted to explain industry differences by including measures of industry leverage by using a proxy for leverage. I find that industries related to manufacturing experience positive abnormal returns following the Bank Holiday, most likely due to the ability to borrow money and finance capital, brought on by newly established financial stability.