Saudi Arabia faces a universally acknowledged need to diversify beyond hydrocarbons. The Saudi Arabian government has outlined a strategy to achieve diversification through its Vision 2030 reform plan. Contrary to the Vision 2030 plan, the Saudi government should allow for entrepreneurs and market signals to determine diversification when considering what sectors should receive investment, with the exception of broad infrastructure investments contributing to the overall enabling environment. Government lending for private-sector investments need to have plausibly high projected rates of return, and meet minimum standards of environmental and social responsibility, requiring participation by multiple government ministries sufficiently insulated from the government.

Normative economic theory provides justification for at least partially centralized renewable energy provision due to the large, positive externalities associated with renewable energy production. However, the United States is one of the few countries without centralized renewable energy policy. Instead, the federal government actively chooses decentralized renewable energy provision by using fiscal transfers to support subnational renewable energy development. This dissertation explores why U.S. legislators choose decentralized renewable energy provision by asking two primary questions. First, what is the motivation for using federal fiscal transfers for decentralized renewable energy output considering what we know about positive spillovers and market failure associated with decentralized renewable energy production? Second, do fiscal transfers for decentralized renewable energy provision increase renewable energy production at the local level? The theoretical model proposed in Chapter Four posits why policymakers choose decentralized renewable energy provision. The chapter argues that the current political price associated with a specific policy issue affects legislators’ choices regarding good provision. I hypothesize that when the political price associated with vying for centralized good provision is high, legislators are incentivized to choose decentralized good provision. Chapter Five applies this theory to empirically evaluate the choice to decentralize renewable energy provision. The chapter examines whether the current political price of renewable energy policy affects the likelihood of a legislator proposing decentralized funding for renewable energy provision. I hypothesize that legislators will propose funding to support decentralized renewable energy development when the political price associated with renewable energy policies is high at a given time. The results show that when the political price of renewable energy policy is low, a policymaker is less likely to use grants to support renewable energy projects, finding support for the hypothesis. Chapter Six empirically evaluates the effectiveness of renewable energy grants at the local level to further understand the theoretical model proposed in Chapter Four. I hypothesize that receiving a renewable energy grant increases renewable energy output at the local level. The results support this hypothesis by showing that receiving a renewable energy grant is associated with significant and positive increases in solar energy production. These findings provide further insight into legislative decision-making and the role of renewable energy grants in renewable energy development in the U.S.

Since 2014, Airbnb has been the poster-child for an impassioned debate over how to best regulate short-term home rentals (STR’s) in New Orleans, Louisiana. As critical perspectives toward on-demand economic practice become increasingly common, it is important to understand how the impacts of STR platforms like Airbnb extend beyond the realm of what is traditionally conceptualized as the economic (i.e., pressure on housing markets). In this thesis, I explore the ways in which Airbnb recalibrates the spatial and temporal rhythms of everyday neighborhood life for people external to the formal trappings of an STR contract. Drawing in particular on theories of authenticity and feminist political economy, I argue that locals’ emotional labor of “playing host” is necessarily enrolled into the creation of value for Airbnb, and is essential to the reproduction of the platform’s business model and marketing rhetoric.

Both Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan were part of the former Soviet Union and were integrated into its political, economic and governance systems. As Union republics, they remained isolated from the outside world, with little direct interaction with external actors. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, both Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan established relations with a number of bilateral donors and multilateral development agencies. Despite their many similarities (e.g., social, cultural, religious, linguistic, geographic) and a shared history, the two countries’ post-Soviet development trajectories diverged dramatically. While Kyrgyzstan quickly launched transition reforms, liberalizing its economy and polity with support from external donors, Turkmenistan adopted a more gradual approach to political and economic reform and managed to minimize the influence of external actors in domestic affairs. This thesis analyzes the donor-recipient interaction in Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan across three sectors: governance, rural development, and environment. The analysis focuses on the management of aid through an anthropological, political economy-directed inquiry of relations between foreign donors and aid recipients at the micro level (daily interactions in managing aid). Collective action theory, evolutionary theory and adaptive behavior approaches are utilized to analyze the interaction on micro-level. However, the analysis is also situated in a broader, macro-level context of development and security priorities of the two states, for which the realist branch of the international relations theories is applied. Methodologically, the study is based on the triangulation of findings from various sources, including the content analysis of primary and secondary sources as well as the analysis of over 60 semi-structured interviews involving government and donor officials from the two countries. The thesis does not attempt to analyze whether development aid was effective. Instead, using similar analyses of aid interactions (Mosse, 2005; Swedlund, 2017), this thesis aims to investigate how aid interactions ‘happen’ (Wedel, 1998). While I agree that the sustainability of development aid is hampered by the inability of both donors and recipients to ‘make credible commitments’ (Swedlund, 2017), in this thesis I argue that aid interactions are also influenced by other factors, namely the political sensitivity of the sectors to which the aid is given (governance, rural development, environment), regime characteristics, availability or absence of natural resource-based revenues, and geopolitics. These factors, taken together, affect the aid bargaining process in important ways. The thesis makes a three-fold contribution to the existing knowledge on aid relations. First, it expands the knowledge on the agency of recipient governments by putting them at the core of the analysis. Second, it contributes to the very limited number of cross-sectoral and cross-country comparative studies on both aid management and on public policy making in general and in Central Asia in particular. Thirdly, it provides a detailed account of how development aid has been managed in Turkmenistan, a country on which no serious academic literature related to aid management has been produced to date.

For the past 50 years, Americans have turned to the federal government to solve pressing environmental problems like air and water pollution and climate change. Major environmental policies have helped improve environmental quality to varying degrees, but these policies also have resulted in negative consequences, such as high costs, inefficiency, violations of property rights, or environmental degradation. By applying public choice theory to the evolution of federal environmental policies, we can understand how negative consequences have arisen from seemingly good intentions. Public choice theory rejects the romantic notion that government officials work solely for the public good. Legislators and bureaucrats are rationally self-interested individuals who try to make themselves better off, like all people. Because legislators are interested in reelection and maximizing their power, they respond to special interest groups and lobbyists who can benefit them. Legislators often codify special benefits for certain companies or industries within environmental legislation and choose winners and losers, regardless of the economic or environmental outcomes. Environmental policies distort markets, altering the price signals that communicate what people value and imposing higher costs on taxpayers and consumers. Legislators often write environmental laws vaguely, giving bureaucrats wide discretion on how to implement the laws. Bureaucrats often write environmental regulations quickly and without scientific evidence or limited economic considerations, making many of the regulations costly and ineffective in many cases. The number of regulations also grows each year, raising compliance costs while the marginal benefit of these regulations continues to decline. Major federal environmental policies have had negative consequences, but experts have debated whether these outcomes were or were not intentional. Key politicians and bureaucrats may want to keep the current flawed laws in place because either they or their friends benefit from the status quo. Regardless of the intentionality or unintentionality of these negative consequences, large-scale federal environmental policies have provided decades of evidence that even the most nobly intended laws have significant drawbacks of which the public should be aware.

This dissertation studies the political economy of natural resources and how these resources may pose an opportunity or a threat to a country and comprises three essays. The first essay explores how economic development can impact the consumption behavior of natural resources, with focus on fossil fuels. It suggests the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between fossil fuel share in the energy mix and economic development. Particularly, the essay illustrates an evidence that fossil fuel's share in the energy mix increases as a country develops, however, after reaching a real income per capita of around US$16,000, the country reduces the share of fossil fuel in its energy mix. Perhaps this policy shift is due to concerns about air quality from its population. The second essay analyzes the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows on the risk of violence both theoretically and empirically. The theoretical model suggests that FDI inflows into skilled-labor intensive resources sector reduce the risk of violence, while such inflows increase the likelihood of violence when these are channeled through the unskilled-labor intensive resources sector. The empirical analysis focusing Sub-Saharan African countries indeed supports the outcome of the theoretical model. To understand the donor behavior in aid allocation, the third essay presents a theoretical model of aid allocation and political alignment. The equilibrium of this model suggests that geopolitical alignment with the donors increases the aid receipts. The model also suggests that donors allocate more aid to recipient countries with higher human capital levels. These propositions are empirically tested using a unique dataset of aid allocation by the resource-rich Arab donors. The results of empirical analysis support the predictions of the theoretical model.

Esta tese é resultado do desdobramento de reflexões iniciadas em trabalho anterior, quando se buscou compreender o conceito de financeirização e discutir algumas das questões que ele envolve. Dada a importância desse fenômeno para a compreensão do capitalismo contemporâneo, bem como da necessidade de se levarem em conta as especificidades de países e regiões, trata-se agora de compreender como se deu a evolução desse processo no Brasil recente, mais precisamente durante o período de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva na Presidência da República (2003-2010), por três motivos principais. Primeiro, a década de 1990 momento de penetração do neoliberalismo no país e de integração deste à mundialização financeira já foi devidamente estudada. Segundo, a importância de se investigarem os desdobramentos do capitalismo brasileiro no pós-liberalização sob a égide das finanças. Terceiro, o interesse em compreender as contradições que perpassavam, nesse contexto, um governo do campo da esquerda, bem como as consequências que elas tiveram. Assim, visando contribuir para o debate sobre os governos Lula, um dos objetivos centrais desta pesquisa é fornecer um panorama mais integrado de diferentes elementos do processo de financeirização no Brasil e de seus impactos, já que a maior parte dos trabalhos sobre o assunto foca-se em um ou outro aspecto. Busca-se, a partir disso, dialogar com diferentes análises sobre o período. Outro objetivo central é realizar uma reflexão que se beneficie da distância dos anos e do conhecimento dos desdobramentos posteriores a 2010 a fim de (re)interpretar alguns aspectos do período Lula e avançar alguns comentários sobre o governo Dilma. A principal conclusão é a de que, apesar de o receituário neoliberal stricto sensu ter sido revertido em alguns pontos, o processo de financeirização continuou avançando e se aprofundando no Brasil, tanto em razão de medidas implementadas pelo governo quanto por fatores para além delas. Os bancos continuaram dominantes no país e, apesar da melhora da situação de outros setores econômicos, pode-se dizer que a fração bancário-financeira da grande burguesia (incluindo o capital de aplicação financeira internacional) conservou sua hegemonia. As consequências políticas dessa situação foram sentidas mais tarde, quando o fim do bom momento econômico que permitia a conciliação de objetivos e o enfrentamento mais direto dos interesses financeiros por parte do governo contribuíram para a crise política que levou à remoção de Dilma Rousseff da Presidência. / This thesis is a development of the reflection, made in previous work, on the concept of \"financialization\" and some of the issues it involves. Given the importance of this phenomenon to the understanding of contemporary capitalism, as well as the need to take into account the specificities of countries and regions, it is now a question of understanding how the evolution of this process occurred in recent Brazil, more precisely during the period of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the Presidency of the Republic (2003-2010), for three main reasons. First, the 1990s the moment of the penetration of neoliberalism in the country, and the integration of the latter into financial globalization has already been duly studied. Second, the importance itself of investigating how the Brazilian capitalism unfold in \"post-liberalization\" under the aegis of finance. Thirdly, the interest in understanding the contradictions that permeated, in this context, a left-wing government, as well as the consequences they had. Thus, in order to contribute to the debate on the Lula governments, one of the main objectives of this research is to provide a more integrated picture of the financialization process in Brazil and its impacts, since most of the work on the subject focuses in one aspect or another. Based on this, we seek to dialogue with different analyzes about the period. Another important objective is to carry out a reflection that benefits from the distance of the years and from the knowledge of the developments after 2010 in order to (re)interpret some aspects of Lulas period and to make some comments about Dilmas government. The main conclusion is that, although the neoliberal \"recipe\" stricto sensu was reversed in some points, the process of financialization continued to evolve and deepen in Brazil, both due to measures implemented by the government and by factors beyond them. Banks kept their dominance over the country and, despite the improvement in the situation of other economic sectors, it can be said that the banking-financial fraction of the big bourgeoisie (including international financial capital) retained its hegemony. The political consequences of this situation came to light later, when the end of the good economic moment which allowed the reconciliation of objectives and the more direct confrontation of financial interests by the government contributed to the political crisis which led to the removal of Dilma Rousseff from Presidency.

This thesis investigates the potential for radio on the Internet to enhance processes of communication and media practice in the form of new a public sphere. Drawing on the work of Marshall McLuhan, the early stages of this thesis present an enquiry into the unique positive qualities of both radio and the Internet. The argument that follows contends that radio presented on the Internet can draw from the perceived technological benefits of each individual medium, combining as a potential site for public spheres. Both Habermas’s liberal public sphere and contemporary critiques of the concept are examined to define a range of principles that could be tested against relevant examples. The increasing commercialisation of the Internet is presented as a challenge to the normative ideals of a public sphere and counter-balances the optimism of a technologically determinist approach. A series of thematic codes are developed from the relevant theory and combined with qualitative interviews. This forms the framework for a thematic analysis of three individual case studies: Unwelcome Guests, an anti-corporate radio programme, SW Radio Africa, “the independent voice of Zimbabwe,” and NH Making Waves, the radio arm of a community peace activist group. The study investigates opportunities for these three individual case studies to act as public spheres, by examining the interplay that occurs between both Internet and radio practices. As the thematic analysis will demonstrate, placing radio content on the Internet presents new opportunities to diversify content and audiences through collaborative production and improved distribution. Recommendations for further research emphasise the need to pursue the Internet’s role in the public sphere potential of radio.

The purpose of this study is to explain how Australia has bargained for improved outcomes in its trade with the United States over the 1980s and into the early 1990s. This explanation is sought by means of an analysis of the forces which have shaped Australia's trade policy-making towards the U.S. in the five trading sectors of wheat, sugar, beef, steel and international air passenger transport. The study adopts a theoretical framework which postulates that state actors and institutions are principally responsible for trade policy-making and the concomitant bargaining strategies adopted to improve trade outcomes. However, a state-centred approach needs to be qualified by state actors' accomodation of societal-actor demands for policy action. While exogenous to this domestic bargaining process, influences emanating from the international political economy must also be taken into account. The relationship within and between state and societal actors, influenced as they are by international institutions and ideas, are critical to understanding the bargaining approaches made by one state towards another. It is argued that sectoral trading outcomes between Australia and the U.S. can be understood by reference to a bilateral bargaining process within each trading sector. Within each such bargaining process, Australia has, within broad bilateral and multilateral approaches, devised strategies by which it could mobilize sectorally-specific resources to seek to exploit opportunities and minimise problems so as to improve its trading outcomes. The nature of these sectoral strategies has been influenced by first, the nature of the U.S. policy and policy-making process; second, the Australian domestic bargaining process between state and societal actors; and third, and to a lesser extent, prevailing ideas and the perceptions of the negotiating parties.

This thesis deals with two related topics: core development objectives in community forestry in the Philippines, and the 'instruments' of development practice which have been used to address these objectives. The two topics have currency beyond forestry development and are at the centre of a debate about sustainable development. Community forestry aims to democratise resource access, alleviate poverty, and ensure the sustainability of forest resources. Development practice, however, has often led to contradictory outcomes. This paradox is examined from three perspectives: that of political economy, characteristics of practice, and the theory of rationalisation. ¶Four government-initiated community forestry projects in the Philippines are analysed. These projects provide an historical trend on the development and refinements of the different techniques from the early 1980s to the present. The relationship between the use of these techniques and improved outcomes in terms of the three core concerns is established. Empirical findings from the cases suggest that there is no necessary relationship between the employment of these instruments and better development outcomes. The attempt to democratise forest resource access through the use of access instruments has benefited the local elite and reinforced the government's jurisdiction over these resources. Similarly, the use of appraisal and participatory planning techniques has homogenised views of the local community and advanced a centrally determined agenda in forest management that has worked against the alleviation of poverty. Forest degradation is likely to continue, even with the incorporation of social factors into the concept of sustained-yield forest management. ¶The political economy perspective suggests that contradictory effects can be explained by the country's historical and political structure which has been shaped by an economically-driven development model and dominated by a more privileged sector. Despite genuine efforts for reform, this perspective contends that community forestry projects and related development interventions will always be influenced by political forces, and their benefits will be captured by the privileged sector. On the other hand, a focus on the characteristics of practice leads to the conclusion that contradictory effects are results of the limitations of these techniques, including their poor application. This implies that the adverse effects may be addressed through the refinement of these techniques and improvements in their application. Finally, the rationalisation thesis reveals that paradoxical effects are inherent in the use of these techniques. This perspective posits that even with the apparent shift from a state-controlled to a more participatory and decentralised approach in forest management, such as community forestry, the instrumentalist nature associated with the application of these techniques reinforces the characteristics of homogeneity, technocracy, and centralism which are inclined to produced paradoxical outcomes. ¶Both the political economy and the rationalisation perspectives provide a gloomy prognosis for community forestry. However, the recognition of the dual problems of poverty and environmental degradation in the Philippine uplands, suggests that community forestry should not be abandoned. Through a responsive mode of practice, there is room to move to improve the outcomes of the three central objectives. But responsive practice is not a panacea for all development ills. The process is bound to be slow, strategies will vary from one place to another, and success will be patchy. But because responsive community forestry practice is not amenable to central programming and control, it is more likely to result in sustainable outcomes than the present approaches.