Two drawbacks of current empirical studies on late medieval financial market integration are: the use of low frequency data; and the lack of a benchmark for comparison. As a result, there is a tendency to underestimate the degree of integration and one has no clear idea about whether the estimated degree of integration is high or low by the standards of the time. Consequently, there is not yet a satisfactory answer as to how integrated and efficient financial markets were in the late Middle Ages and early modern era. In tackling these two problems, this thesis employs monthly and weekly exchange rates to measure the degree of exchange market integration and the results are judged using the speed of communication as a benchmark since the flow of information played a critical role in financial arbitrage. Therefore, this thesis is able to show that exchange markets were already well integrated in the late fourteenth century. From then to the late seventeenth century, the high speed of adjustment to profitable opportunities was maintained, but the transaction costs associated with arbitrage fell over time. The reduction in transaction cost may be attributed to the financial innovations that took place in the sixteenth century. This thesis also finds that the type of information related to shocks received by economic agents had a decisive impact on the speed of price adjustment. The more explicit the information, the more efficiently the market responded to shocks.

This thesis presents three empirical essays on the interaction of housing and labour markets, which generates academically meaningful social outcomes. The first essay looks at whether one’s tenure choice affects unemployment as this question has potential implications for homeownership subsidy schemes adopted in many advanced countries. The contribution of this essay is mainly methodological in that it rigorously deals with the endogeneity of homeownership by taking an IV approach with instruments not adopted previously for studies in the UK in conjunction with panel data models. Using the local homeownership rate and parental homeownership status as an instrument, it shows that homeownership does not increase the probability of being unemployed. The second essay highlights the role of local housing market information as a determinant of housing tenure. As the distance a mover wants to move increases, the costs of collecting information on the destination housing market rise and the quality and amount of the information collected fall. Therefore, it is hypothesised that the longer the distance moved, the more likely movers are to choose private renting over owner-occupation since homeownership decisions require a large amount of information on the target properties and their neighbourhoods. Empirical tests that control for relevant characteristics correlated with distance moved and tenure decisions provide supporting evidence for this hypothesis. The last essay is the first UK study to confirm that commuting time has a negative influence on worker effort. The topic has important implications for transportation policy, employer’s commuting welfare strategy and hiring decisions and individual worker’s location decisions. As commuting is physically and mentally tiring, it could influence worker effort negatively. The hypothesis turns out to be true when the absenteeism rate and unpaid overtime hours are used as proxy variables for work effort.

This thesis explores the real estate and happiness consequences of public investment in local public goods improvements by using unique micro-geographical data from Beijing; it focuses on the spatial variations in park amenity values, and on the impact of transport improvements on land prices and homeowners’ happiness. Despite intense public interest, little is known about these effects. This thesis aims to fill these gaps. First, I explore the impact and sources of variations of park proximities as capitalized into the residential land prices. This analysis, using geographically-coded data from Beijing, provides new insights on the ways in which land markets capitalize the values of proximity to parks and suggests that this is highly dependent on the parcel’s location and local contextual characteristics. Next, I examine the real estate consequence of public investment in transport improvements using a rich data set of vacant land parcels in Beijing. I use a multiple intervention difference-in-difference method to document opening and planning effects of new rail stations on prices for different land uses in affected areas versus unaffected areas. Residential and commercial land parcels receiving increased station proximity experience appreciable price premiums, but the relative importance of such benefits varies greatly over space and local demographics. Finally, I investigate the impact of transport improvements on happiness that altered the residence-station distance for some homeowners, but left others unaffected. My estimation strategy takes advantage of micro happiness surveys conducted before-and-after the building of new rail stations in 2008 Beijing. I deal with the potential concern about the endogeneity in sorting effects by focusing on “stayers”and using non-market housings with pre-determined locations. I find the significantly heterogeneity in the effects from better rail access on homeowners’ happiness with respect to different dimensions of residential environment. The welfare analysis results suggest strong social-spatial differentiations. In combination, the three papers of this thesis make important contributions to a growing literature on public infrastructure, land market and happiness.

The International Monetary Fund has often been accused of adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to the resolution of financial crises. However, its programs present substantial differences in terms of their relative size and conditionality among other characteristics. This dissertation examines the causes and consequences of this variation through the lenses of two cases in which the contrast between the Fund´s interventions was particularly marked: Argentina and Uruguay during the period that surrounds the financial crash of 2001-02. The first part of this study analyses the determinants of these multilateral interventions through an adaptation of Robert Puntam´s two level games, exploring the way in which national politics interacted with international priorities to produce distinct outcomes in Argentina and Uruguay. The two experiences confirm that domestic ratification processes impose significant constraints on the negotiation of IMF programs, potentially conferring localized bargaining advantages to borrowing governments. Beyond a certain point, however, an intensification of these ratification constraints can result in a suspension of the Fund´s support, after which borrowers´ bargaining position weakens dramatically. That this point of rupture was reached in Argentina but not in Uruguay was due primarily to the different propensity to cooperate exhibited by political actors in these two countries, itself the product of certain institutional conditions such as the strength of their systems of checks and balances or a varying distribution of veto power. In turn, the second part of this thesis applies a hypothetical counterfactual approach to assess the consequences of the multilateral decisions adopted during the 2001-02 crisis in the Southern Cone. Although the contrast between the suspension of the Argentine program in December 2001 and the Uruguayan bailout of August 2002 had surprisingly modest macroeconomic consequences, its impact on politics and institutions was profound both in the short and in the medium-term. As a result of these findings, this dissertation argues that a better understanding of the implications of multilateral crisis resolution loans on the political economy of the countries concerned is still needed.

Accounts of economic development during mid-twentieth century have been dominated by import-substituting industrialisation (ISI) and/or state-led industrialisation frameworks. is literature attaches considerable importance to such policy areas critical to manufacturing as: trade and tariffs, foreign exchange and the promotion of credit. According to this view, industrialisation became an official goal and in many developing economies governments committed to it seriously. Focusing on Colombia, this dissertation challenges conventional wisdom. It demonstrates that the Colombian state did not provide financial aid, or implement deliberate trade-protectionist support, for industrialists to the degree hitherto argued. A distinct political-economy configuration, in which small-scale agriculturalists, particularly coffee exporters, wielded significant power within the state, meant that the type of distortive pro-ISI macro policies pursued in other Latin American economies were eschewed. Industrialisation proceeded apace in Colombia, but this was chiefly a market- or private-led phenomenon. e methodology employed to substantiate this claim is not comparative, yet frequent references are made to other Latin American nations to serve as benchmarks and counterpoints. New archival material, both quantitative and qualitative, is combined in novel ways to substantiate the original, revisionist interpretations advanced in the thesis. Policy-makers, targeting the twin challenges of managing external-account pressures and sustaining fiscal revenue, rather than promoting inward-looking development, best explain moderate levels of tariffs and slight overvaluation of the currency observed in Colombian trade policy. e heretofore untold history of the Institute for Industrial Development, a direct supplier of venture capital, shows a government agency with major organisational weaknesses, incapable of fulfilling its legal mandate, least of conforming to the major role attached by the literature as key agent for industrialisation. Findings regarding credit demonstrate that neither ordinary nor subsidised credit flowed to manufacturing to the extent previously thought. Patterns of legislated credit, sector-targeted banking and privileged access to the Central Bank, all show that agrarian ventures, not industrialists, were the recipients of subsidised official financing. A growing incompatibility between the financial requirements of advanced industrialisation and the clientelistic nature of the domestic polity that had to cater for the needs of agrarian groups, prevented policy elites from adopting a pro-manufacturing stance in financial and credit policies, even had they so wished.

How do falling barriers to flows of trade and information both within and across countries affect economic livelihoods in developing countries? The three chapters presented in this PhD thesis aim to contribute to our understanding of this question.

This thesis contains three independent chapters aimed at increasing our understanding of the effects of Internet diffusion on politics and development. The first chapter proposes a novel methodology for measuring Internet penetration. Using IP geolocation data, a new measure of Internet access is created, which counts the number of IP addresses per person in a region. This is the first measure of Internet penetration that is comparable not only across countries but across sub-regions of countries such as states or even electoral districts. The second chapter applies this measure to test whether Internet diffusion can weaken incumbent power in a semi-authoritarian regime. Using Malaysia as a test case, I find that the Internet is responsible for a six point swing away from the incumbent party in the 2008 elections. In the third chapter, co-authored with Valentino Larcinese, we look at the effects of the Internet on U.S. presidential elections. In accordance with anecdotal evidence, we find that increased Internet penetration leads to an increase in small donations to the Democratic Party and a swing towards the Democratic presidential candidate.

This thesis consists of three chapters. All three are linked by our desire to better understand the determinants of labour migration; that is, the motivation for a person to change his or her location of residence for a period of at least a year. While immigration receives much public discourse, the economic evidence on how migrants self-select is still lacking. In particular, we have little evidence on the relative importance of determinants. We focus on three areas that have received substantially less attention in the migration literature: the importance of relative versus absolute income motives for migration; the effect of wealth and intertemporal choice on return migration; and the role of place attachment as an obstacle to labour mobility. Common to all three chapters is an emphasis on counterbalancing forces that tend to offset spatial income differentials in determining migration. The first chapter examines the extent to which relative income – that is, one’s position in the income distribution – matters in migration choice. Virtually all studies of migration focus on absolute income. This is at odds with the mounting evidence that suggests people care about their relative position in the income distribution. We argue that, in order to test between the absolute income and relative income theories of migration, one needs individual-level panel data on before and after migration outcomes. Indeed, since one has to estimate counterfactual migrant earnings of non-migrants, if migrants are selected on unobservables then cross-sectional estimates will systematically bias the predicted migrant earnings of non-migrants. We estimate the relative importance of the two main theories in explaining interstate migration in the U.S. using a panel of individuals. Relative income is calculated with respect to those persons in the same U.S. state. We find that, although migration leads to a substantial rise in absolute income, the trigger for migration is low relative income and not low absolute income. In the second chapter we show analytically that, under some conditions, return migration is optimal. We build a model where consumers choose either to never migrate, permanently migrate or, migrate and subsequently return. To generate an incentive for return migration, the model assumes a nominal income differential between the source and destination and a compensating differential – which exerts a counterbalancing force to the income differential. Examples of compensating differentials may include differences between the source and destination in climate, place attachment, price levels, unemployment and average consumption. We characterise the optimal migration decision space with respect to the three key variables: initial wealth, the income differential and the compensating differential between the source and destination. The marginal utility of consumption is assumed to be location-dependent due to a non-separable nonpecuniary preference for the source. Consequently, when the region with the best economic opportunities is not the source region, there is a trade-off between income maximisation on the one hand and the marginal utility of consumption on the other. We find that, all else equal, those with low wealth are more likely to migrate and, conditional on migration, those with higher wealth are more likely to return migrate. The third chapter seeks to estimate a key obstacle to migration: place attachment. Place attachment refers to the emotional bonds a person feels towards the place (or area) he or she resides. We estimate place attachment within a tructural model of spatial job search where migration is a by-product of accepting a job offer from another region. The chapter can broadly be split into two parts. The first takes a standard job search model and adapts it to allow search in many potential destinations. Acceptance of an offer from a destination necessarily involves migration to that destination and its associated costs. We consider two types of costs: a cost of migration that is related to distance-to-destination and a non-pecuniary cost of leaving the current region. The latter is deemed to be the negative of place attachment. In the second part, we estimate the structural model for a sample of individual durations in a U.S. state. Our estimates suggest that place attachment is steeply increasing in duration for our reduced-form model; however, the opposite is true for our structural model. We also find that for half the population, the dollar values of place attachment are prohibitively large.

The traditional view of the Canadian economy from the late nineteenth century onward has been one of failure relative to the United States. This thesis examines the Canadian experience from the late nineteenth century in relation to other ‘settler economies’. Similarities between these countries include their resource abundance, low population density and European institutions. In the first essay, creation of long-run, sectorally disaggregated, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjusted Canadian/ Australian data reveals that the Canadian economy was characterised by relatively strong and sustained growth in real output per capita and labour productivity. This paper takes a first step in estimating the importance of many potentially relevant factors. Results indicate that acceptance of foreign technology from abroad was a significant determinant of success. From 1870 to World War One, Canada performed particularly well against settler economies like Australia and New Zealand in terms of output and productivity in manufacturing. The second essay looks more deeply at the question of manufacturing success. A novel approach is taken by applying non-parametric frontier analysis to manufacturing census data in order to make cross-country efficiency comparisons. Measures of Total Factor Productivity indicate that nineteenth century Canadian manufacturing was surprisingly efficient relative to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The third essay takes a comparative approach in analysing market potential. Historically there has been a predisposition to view settler economies like Canada and Australia as part of a homogeneous ‘periphery’ relative to a British ‘metropole’. This concept serves to mask important differences in the ‘peripherality’ of each country. This study suggests the key geographical factor in explaining relative success amongst settler economies was access to markets. Peripherality is observed by estimating an aggregate measure of distance including adjustments for falling transport costs, tariff barriers and border effects. This aggregate distance estimate is used to form a measure of market potential that can be compared with observed trade behaviour. Focus is on the Australian colonies given their acute isolation. Counterfactuals are then generated to quantify the effects of distance on long-run growth during the period from 1870 to World War One.

The global economy is controlled by an 'international economic–legal regime' (hereinafter "IELR"), in which international economic institutions (hereinafter "IEIs") are the major nonstate actors. They provide the rules of the game for the interaction of the States in an international economic scenario. These IEIs, through their institutional capacity, enhance certainty and predictability within the IELR, thereby passively supporting stable and a balanced growth of global economy. This thesis argues that opportunities to achieve stable and balanced growth, in which both the financial and the real side of the economy grow, can be improved if the IEIs increase their focus on the relationship between the Economic Cycle and the IEIs' institutional role. This argument is developed by analysing the relationship between the IEIs' institutional role and the Economic Cycle, first describing the Economic Cycle, and then clarifying the functioning of the IEIs in their institutional role. To narrow the scope of this research, this thesis takes two IEIs as case studies; namely, the IMF and the WTO.