<p> Debates over food security strategies in the Philippines have pitted the neoliberal paradigm of trade liberalization, export cropping, and chemical and biotech agricultural methods against the food sovereignty paradigm of protectionism, staple cropping, and sustainable agriculture methods. </p><p> The Philippine government has long pushed for yield increases of staples. However, there has been dissonance between governmental desires for rice self-sufficiency and pursuit of a more export-oriented agricultural economy. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Trade Organization have pressured the government of the Philippines to adopt various tenets of neoliberalism (trade liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and budgetary austerity), which have hindered the achievement of Philippine goals for self-sufficiency in its staple foods and stunted the potential benefits of land reform. </p><p> Through ethnographic research of the social and ecological conditions in three rural villages in the province of Bukidnon, this examination of agrarian change explores how various actors&mdash;small farmers, collectives, large planters, and agribusiness corporations&mdash;have been scaling their projects in the agricultural economy. </p><p> The use of chemical inputs has damaged soils and saddled farmers with debts. In many cases, control of land has been lost to elites through sales or pawning arrangements. Relatively egalitarian corn- and rice-farming areas have given way to a stratified landscape of sugarcane and banana plantations, as former smallholders have been forced to work as wage laborers. Multinational agribusinesses have steered the area away from staple production and threatened human and environmental health with pesticide exposure and erosion. </p><p> Some farmers though have organized against these prevailing trends. Production and social reproduction have been rescaled through collective marketing, reciprocal labor arrangements, and more equitably gendered divisions of labor. Agroecological methods, such as composting, organic fertilization, seed saving, and indigenous pest control have scaled the reproduction of environmental conditions more locally and increased farmer incomes because their inputs are created on the farm. Protecting local control of the means of production&mdash;seeds, fertilizers, and especially land&mdash;has become an important method for preserving a smallholder class, maintaining more self-determination, and working toward greater food sovereignty.</p>

<p> This dissertation focuses on the effects of a third-party mediator in protracted conflict settings. I primarily use formal models based on game theory and mechanism design, employing case studies and empirical work to further my analysis. The question of mediation effectiveness in the literature is still an open one, addressed empirically but with little theoretical support. While some work has emphasized the important role of enforcement, there is no consensus as to whether, how and why these tactics work. I use formal modeling to examine the mediator's enforcement ability and show the ways in which manipulative mediation can in fact improve upon bilateral results. </p><p> The first chapter examines the use of different types of enforcement in conflict mediation. This paper compares potential outcomes of bilateral negotiations with the outcomes achievable with the help of a mediator capable of various levels of enforcement, seeking to gain insight into how to end ongoing war using a signaling framework. I find that a mediator with sufficient enforcement capabilities can improve on the bilateral outcome, perhaps creating peace that would not have been possible bilaterally. However, while exhibiting enforcement capabilities can help a mediator to mandate peace in the short term, there can sometimes be a lower likelihood of lasting results, consistent with stylized facts about mediation. </p><p> The second chapter models conditions for efficiency gains from third-party conflict mediation when concessions are risky. Each party engaged in a conflict can indicate its interest in peace through costly signaling, or concessions. Through a formal model, I explore ways in which a mediator can act as a guarantor that promised concessions will be delivered, thereby reducing inefficiencies and increasing the potential for peace. In this process, I open up a rationale for mediation: to remove the inefficiencies of signaling in the pre-play round of negotiations. </p><p> The third chapter uses a game-theoretic framework to explain the persistence of de facto independent states that are not internationally recognized. This paper uses a four-player, game-theoretic framework to model the stalemates that often arise between the secessionist elite and home state central government and leverages this model to explore paths to settlement. We emphasize the pivotal role of an outside patron in sustaining unrecognized statehood as a stable equilibrium, but we also argue that the international community is capable of inducing peaceful settlement in these conflicts if it is sufficiently motivated to do so.</p>

<p> In this world of globalized business, corporate training programs are based on the common belief that better-trained employees will enhance business performance. Early research was focused on the impact of training on company performance in the business- to-business (B2B) environment. All of the early studies included employee opinions to measure what is called internal market orientation (IMO) as well as identification of the key constructs of trust, commitment, and relationship satisfaction, which affect performance. Later, survey-based research on external (customer) market orientation (EMO) in an international business also expanded the cultural complexity of the supplier- buyer relationships. Targeted coaching, rather than generic training programs, became appropriate. No empirical evidence in the literature provided quantitative measurement of the results of coaching programs on either EMO or company financial results. This research served to analyze the impact of an ongoing salesperson coaching program on both customer perceptions (EMO) and the financial results of the company. Two surveys of two different customer populations, with a 6-month time span between surveys, provided data to quantify any shifts in EMO. No significant shifts were found in either the domestic or the international customer populations. However, the company financial data confirmed a positive impact on profitability and a strong return on investment (ROI). Further research is needed which takes into consideration different parameters, including longer time spans between customer surveys, deeper interview-based analysis of customer perceptions and buying habits, and the different coaching strategies employed during the study.</p>

<p> Since 2010, 2,000 U. S. leaders spent $150 billion on return on investment (ROI) training, yet questions still exist on how to measure the benefits of organizational change. The purpose of this embedded single-case study was to explore how business leaders could use ROI to characterize the benefit of intervention strategies for organizational change. Stakeholder theory and Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory formed the conceptual framework for this study. A purposive sample of 20 civilian personnel managers located at a medical facility for veterans in central Texas participated in semistructured interviews. The 5 primary themes that emerged using thematic analysis were (a) training, (b) leadership, (c) communication, (d) recognition, and (e) consistency. Implications for positive social change include the possibility of organizational leaders applying these findings to develop better intervention strategies. Such interventions could improve processes for stakeholders and create an open dialogue with business leaders within the government sector.</p>

<p> Economic models generally fail to adequately measure positive and negative growth paths in development through agrarian, industry, and service economies. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to design a new model that could accommodate both directions of growth and better measure development paths with particular attention to labors contributions. The theoretical foundation for this study was Walt Whitman Rostow's 5 economic stages of growth classifications. This Study attempted to find the most common economic growth path. While most development models use three to five classifications, this study used nine new classifications giving it a unique and specific look at international development. The two model indicators used were gross domestic product composition by sector (the economic success of the system) and labor force occupation by sector (labors activity to help define behavior of the system). The sample included data from 279 nations from the CIA World Factbook. A systematic method of analysis was used in the open, axial, and selective theoretical coding phases. The key findings reveal 9 distinct growth phases, 15 identified growth paths, and 4 distinct path clusters which helps measure and define development behavior. This analysis resulted in building upon Rostow's original observations. The implications for social change show that policy makers can benefit from using this new model, named the behavioral international economic development growth path model, to provide improved decision making measurements related to agrarian, service, and industry sectors of the economy. In addition, public administrators in developing nations may benefit from a better understanding of more specific development paths, probabilities of path movement, and comparison of policies from same classification nations.</p>

<p> Ghana has experienced solid economic and social development during the years before the finding of oil. Now that oil has been found, one should not forget that there are many countries in Africa which are rather cursed than blessed with natural resources. This phenomenon is known as the resource curse or more specifically the oil curse. This paper attempts to uncover the most challenging areas for Ghana, when its government wants to lift the resource curse. It further shows that Ghana is well prepared to tackle the negative effects of being oil abundant, by using the well-established models and concepts, which build on empirical analysis. Literature provides a lot to describe the oil curse, including the so called Dutch disease as well as conflicts, corruption, violence and bad governance, to mention a few. This paper will - in a case study approach- apply the concepts on Ghana and -with a qualitative comparative research design- expose the best practices from which Ghana can learn most. It will also show that Ghana's relatively good institutions will be able to implement most of the suggested policies which oppose the resource curse. </p><p> The outcome will be that Ghana's political environment, although far from perfect, is well prepared to deal with windfall oil revenues. Furthermore Ghana due its good structure of institutions and its stabilizing macroeconomic policies in the last decades, Ghana will be able to engage in best practice policies.</p>

<p> This paper explores the relationship between a state's use of voter-approved debt and its credit ratings. The variation in credit ratings from 1973 - 2008 across the 50 US states is explained as a function of states' use of voter-approved debt while controlling for confounding variables. The analysis attempts to estimate the effect of issuing voter-approved debt on credit ratings relative to the effect of issuing legislature-approved debt using a panel dataset constructed from three data sources: the National Conference of State Legislature's Ballot Measure Database, the US Census Bureau's Survey of Government Finances and Standard &amp; Poor's credit ratings. While prior literature has focused on the effect of voter approval requirements on measures of state credit health, this paper investigates the use of voter-approved debt by relying on a variable that measures the share of voter-approved debt issued by a state, in a given year and over time. Ordered probit models controlling for state and year fixed effects, as well as state demographics, finances, economic performance and financial institutions are used to explore the relationship between the use of voter-approved debt and a state's credit rating. The paper finds a statistically significant negative relationship between a state's use of voter-approved debt and its credit ratings. The results show that issuing 60% of state debt using voter-approval (the average for states that issue voter-approved debt in a given year) is related to a 0.71 lower state credit rating on a scale from 1-7 (BBB=1, AAA=7).</p>

<p> In just 30 years microfinance has transformed from a credit-based rural development scheme that has claimed to reduce poverty and empower poor women, to a $70 billion financial industry. In the process, the traditional NGO-led model has given way to commercialized institutions, resulting in an increased emphasis on profitmaking. This has also led to confusion in the sector around its mission: is it to alleviate poverty and empower poor women or simply to provide the "unbanked" with access to formal sources of finance? This research considers the main debates in microfinance with regard to its mission and presents empirical evidence on the effectiveness of microfinance. The study is based on the Pakistani microfinance sector, which provides an ideal opportunity for a comparative analysis of two distinct models of microfinance &ndash; the nonprofit microfinance institutions (MFI) and the microfinance banks (MFB). The research compares the depth of outreach, mission, practice, and borrower experiences of MFIs and MFBs, employing a political economy framework. The data includes 140 interviews with policymakers, donors, senior, mid and low-level microfinance officers, and their clients; as well as observations of practitioner-client interactions, including the process of disbursement and collection, group meetings, and field visits with loan officers in urban Pakistan. It also comprises two district-level surveys: the microfinance outreach survey from the Pakistan Microfinance Network (PMN) and the Government of Pakistan's Social and Living Standards Survey (PSLM). The surveys are analyzed econometrically to test whether district-level socioeconomic differences affect patterns of outreach. This study broadens our understanding of the extent to which the local political economy shapes the outcomes of a market-based intervention, such as microfinance. It also provides an insight into the evolution of microfinance, specifically as framed by the global development discourse and subsequent public policy choices. Finally, the study provides an authoritative account of how institutional structure affects microfinance's effectiveness as a tool for poverty alleviation, empowerment and financial access.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0665. Adviser: Charles H. Nelson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-131) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, School of Public Environmental Affairs, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 17, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-12, Section: A, page: 4698. Adviser: Robert Agranoff.