Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2008. / Adviser: Shin-Yi Chou.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2008. / Adviser: Shin-Yi Chou.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4534. Adviser: Geoffery J. D. Hewings. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-144) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Economics, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 15, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4783. Adviser: Pravin K. Trivedi.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Economics, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 6, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-10, Section: A, page: 3955. Adviser: Michael Alexeev.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Sociology, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 6, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-10, Section: A, page: 4076. Adviser: Arthur S. Alderson.

This thesis analyses the contemporary phenomena of globalisation, the knowledge economy and internationalisation in terms of their synergistic impacts on higher education and with special reference to China and New Zealand. Globalisation and the knowledge economy are seen to fuel each other as well as driving trends in higher education. Internationalisation is shown to be intimately related to, but conceptually distinguishable from, globalisation, and to occur partly as a consequence of the latter (and of developments in the knowledge economy) but partly also as a response to these forces. All three phenomena are addressed through assessments of their dominant economic imperatives. As a prerequisite to understanding and critiquing these forces and their dominant imperatives, the early chapters expound a further tripartite structure, this time of political-economic theories: neoliberalism, neo-Marxism, and Giddens' 'Third Way'. The lens through which the analysis is made is explicitly neo-Marxist. The thesis critiques the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the discourse of globalisation, and the knowledge economy and the internationalisation of higher education. Neoliberalism's ascendancy is shown to be promoted through global, regional, national and sub-national entities, and this promotion is found to be often covert. The middle section of the thesis traces the effects on higher education of the economic, and specifically neoliberal or global-capitalist imperatives that the foregoing analysis reveals. Policies of deregulation, liberalisation, marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation are shown to exert largely negative influences on universities and, by extension, on other higher education institutions. They over-emphasise the private value of both knowledge itself and higher education as a knowledge agent, something which leads to a homogenising, devaluing 'commodification' of higher education. Having made the general case, the thesis then considers the Asia-Pacific region before focusing in depth on China and New Zealand. This structure makes for a macro-meso-micro approach to the development of the inquiry but with emphasis on the macro and the micro. Key questions raised in the thesis concern the establishment of a 'counter-hegemony' to oppose the dominance of neoliberal principles and policies. The study culminates by recommending the emergent concept of interculturalism as both an accurate description of the intersection of cultures on campus and a desirable nonnative policy which should complement internationalisation as part of national and institutional response strategies. The thesis argues for the legitimation and encouragement of neo-Marxist interculturalisation and outlines its relevance to New Zealand higher education institutions, which host many international and new immigrant students, above all from China. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Dennis L. Weisman / This first essay empirically tests the Peltzman Effect utilizing a unique dataset that is used to investigate the behavior of Formula One race car drivers. The race-level dataset was culled from various sources and includes detailed information from a total of 547 Formula One races. A fixed effects model is used to determine whether or not Formula One race car drivers alter their behavior in response to changes in the conditional probability of a casualty given an accident. The empirical estimates support economic theory; Formula One race car drivers become more reckless as their cars become safer, ceteris paribus. Furthermore, the behavioral response of drivers is larger when the analysis is confined to changes in the conditional probability of a fatality given an accident. The second essay utilizes data from the National Youth Survey to reevaluate key conclusions from Fair (1978). This study supports some of Fair's empirical findings; however, the estimates obtained from this research contradict Fair in several key ways. For example, this paper finds that the coefficients of occupation and education are both statistically significant but the signs are opposite to those in Fair (1978). An even more noteworthy contradiction is the negative relationship between years of marriage and infidelity; this suggests that marriage longevity is positively related to that of match quality of the relationship. Also included in these new specifications are independent variables that better control for individual heterogeneity, factors such as general health, race, and alcohol consumption. This essay presents a simple model to characterize the outcome of a land dispute between two rival parties using a Stackelberg game. This study assumes that opposing parties have access to different technologies for challenging and defending in conflict. Conditions are derived under which territorial conflict between the two parties is less likely to persist indefinitely. Allowing for an exogenous destruction term as in Garfinkel and Skaperdas (2000), it is shown that, when the nature of conflict becomes more destructive, the likelihood of a peaceful outcome, in which the territory's initial possessor deters the challenging party, increases if the initial possessor holds more intrinsic value for the disputed land.

This dissertation investigates whether differences in organizational innovation amongst health care providers can explain the huge variation in costs and outcomes. I specifically consider two facets of organizational innovation: the deployment of information technology and the relationships between hospitals and physicians. In the first chapter, I investigate IT adoption in a service setting by considering the impact of electronic medical records (EMRs) on the length of stay and clinical outcomes of patients in US hospitals. To uncover the distinct impacts of EMRs on operational efficiency and care coordination, I present evidence of heterogeneous effects by patient complexity. I find that EMRs have the largest impact for relatively less complex patients. Admission to a hospital with an EMR is associated with a 2\% reduction in length of stay and a 9\% reduction in thirty-day mortality for such patients. In contrast, there is no statistically significant benefit for more complex patients. However, I present three additional results for complex cases. First, patients returning to the same hospital benefit relative to those who previously went to a different hospital, which could be due to easier access to past electronic records. Second, computerized order entry is associated with higher billed charges. Finally, hospitals that have a high share of publicly insured patients, and hence a bigger incentive to curb resource use, achieve a greater reduction in length of stay for complex patients after EMR adoption. In the second chapter, co-authored with Robert Huckman, I investigate the role of process specialists in guiding customers through such complex service transactions by considering the management of patients admitted to U.S hospitals. Traditionally, a patient's primary care physician has been in charge of his or her hospital admission. Over the past decade, however, there has been a steady rise in the use of hospitalists - physicians who spend all their professional time at the hospital - in managing inpatient care. Using data from the American Hospital Association and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database, we find that hospitals with hospitalist programs achieve reductions in the risk-adjusted length of stay of inpatients over the time period 2003 to 2010. The effect is strongest for complex patients who have a higher number of comorbidities. Our findings support the view that process specialists such as hospitalists are particularly beneficial for complex transactions that entail a greater degree of coordination. In the final chapter, I document the positive relationship between consolidation in the health care industry and technology adoption. I propose several mechanisms that could explain the association between the adoption of electronic medical records and greater hospital-physician integration. I show that the positive correlation between technology adoption and hospital consolidation has been increasing over time. I show that hospitals located in concentrated markets are more likely to adopt electronic medical records and to use hospitalists. Moreover, for a limited set of hospitals, the quality of management is positively associated with the adoption of electronic medical records and the use of hospitalists. / Business Economics

Participatory development is widely touted as the remedy for ineffective and disempowering top-down development models of the past. However, participation can take many different forms, so an important open question for effective delivery of development assistance is: Which forms of participation influence which development outcomes under which circumstances? In this dissertation, I identify six key areas of research related to participatory development: the initial adoption of a participatory institution, the decision by individuals to participate or not, the direct outcomes of the participatory process, the effects on participants themselves, changes in the process over time, and carefully selected comparisons across contexts. I then make specific contributions to three of these areas through empirical research. The first essay, Popular Participation, Reciprocity Norms and Conservation Incentives in Bolivia, examines the decision to participate. In it, I compare the characteristics of participants and non-participants in a compensation program for environmental conservation in Bolivia, and I show that in addition to material incentives, social embeddedness plays a role in motivating participation. The second essay, Poverty Targeting and Elite Capture in Participatory Planning in Indonesia, addresses the direct outcomes of participation. In it, I examine the geographical distribution of the outcomes of a participatory planning process in Indonesia, and I show that the benefits are captured most by the least poor areas, but that this occurs in ways distinct from how capture is typically conceived. The third essay, Gender Inequality and the Multi-Dimensionality of Power in Northern Kenya, addresses the effects of participation on the empowerment of participants themselves. In it, I assess the impact on women’s empowerment of a program meant to enhance women’s political participation in northern Kenya, and I find that while the program largely fails to promote political participation, it has an impact on women’s empowerment within the household, very likely due to a component of the program which engaged directly with men. Overarching themes that emerge across these studies include (1) the importance of increased conceptual clarity not only with respect to the various forms that participation can take and the various goals it can be invoked to seek, but also regarding various hypothesized effects of and motivations for participation, (2) the potential relevance of the implementing agency and its relationship with pre-existing, overlapping social institutions, and (3) the usefulness of engaging with literature on psychology and behavioral economics. Understudied areas for future research include the evolution over time of a particular participatory process and more systematic comparisons of participatory processes across settings. / Public Policy