This dissertation considers two of the most pressing concerns of the current time, income inequality and exposure to pollution, and provides evidence that these two concerns may in fact be causally linked. In order to do this, I assemble novel datasets on income inequality and pollution exposure, and propose an strategy for causally identifying the effect of the former on the latter. In the first substantive chapter, I develop a new dataset on income inequality measured at the US state and metropolitan area level. I compare the trends in income inequality measured using different income definitions. In general, pre-tax, pre-transfer income inequality has increased in most states since 1980, but post-fiscal income inequality has seen slow or no growth since about 2000. I conduct inference on how income inequality has changed using a semi-parametric bootstrap method, and consider potential correlates with state-level income inequality. I find that de-unionization is perhaps the most important factor driving rising inequality. In the second substantive chapter, I leverage satellite-derived remote sensing data on ground-level concentrations for two important pollutants (NOx and PM2.5) to measure the distribution of pollution exposure. I propose a dashboard approach to measuring environmental inequality and environmental justice, proposing and applying several candidate measures to the satellite datasets. I find that environmental inequality has largely decreased since 1998, as has average exposure. I consider potential correlations between neighborhood demographics and the distribution of exposure, but find inconclusive results. In the third substantive chapter, I attempt to resolve this ambiguity by considering whether rising income inequality within metropolitan areas (the subject of the first chapter) might causally affect the distribution of exposure across people (the subject of the second). Using a simulated instrumental variables identification strategy designed to address potential endogeneity due to locational sorting, I find that income inequality decreases the average level of exposure, but increases environmental inequality. I argue this is consistent with the benefits of pollution reduction accruing to the most advantaged, and provide evidence that this may work through the political system: inequality increases the responsiveness of politicians to the environmental demands of the rich.

Esta tese consiste em três estudos que investigam os impactos políticos do investimento em ajuda externa, assim como as estratégias de alocação interna por parte dos líderes dos países receptores. Explorando diferentes níveis de análise e conjuntos de países, eles buscam contribuir com o entendimento de escolhas estratégicas feitas por parte dos países doadores e por parte dos países recipientes. O capítulo 1 explora como líderes locais utilizam recursos de ajuda externa para se perpetuar no poder. Os resultados mostram que, em eleições competitivas, líderes direcionam recursos com o objetivo de ampliar sua base para além dos core voters. Quando as eleições não são competitivas, os líderes têm menos motivos para duvidar de sua sobrevivência eleitoral e direcionam recursos para distritos de sua etnia. A disponibilidade de informações sobre ajuda externa em nível sub-nacional é rara, e esse estudo toma proveito da liberação de novas bases de dados que sistematizam os investimentos chineses na África. O capítulo 2 adota um nível de análise mais tradicional nos estudos de ajuda externa. Utilizando-se dados de 155 países entre 1960 e 2011, ele investiga se o investimento em ajuda externa tem efeitos heterogêneos em países com regimes democráticos e autoritários. Os resultados demonstram que países democráticos alocam ajuda de maneira mais efetiva do que países autoritários, mas as estimativas apresentam volatilidade. O capítulo 3 investiga o possível impacto da ajuda externa sobre a intensidade de conflitos civis. Em países com menor grau de institucionalização, investimentos em ajuda externa podem ser utilizados como uma ferramenta para fortalecer facções que estão no poder. O trabalho usa uma estimação em dois estágios para calcular o impacto dos fluxos de ajuda sobre a probabilidade de intensificação do conflito. Os resultados mostram que a ajuda externa pode contribuir para transformar pequenos conflitos em conflitos maiores, mas não dão evidência de que ela cria conflitos em países anteriormente pacíficos. / This thesis consists of three studies that investigate the political impacts of foreign aid investment, as well as the internal allocation strategies by the leaders of the recipient countries. Exploring different levels of analysis and sets of countries, they seek to contribute to the understanding of strategic choices made by donor countries and recipient leaders. Chapter 1 explores how local leaders use foreign aid resources to perpetuate themselves in power. The findings show that in competitive elections, leaders direct resources to broaden their base beyond core voters. When elections are not competitive, leaders have less reason to doubt their political survival and direct resources to their ethnic districts. The availability of foreign aid information at the sub-national level is rare, and this study takes advantage of the release of new databases that systematize Chinese investments in Africa. Chapter 2 adopts a more traditional level of analysis in foreign aid studies. Using data from 155 countries between 1960 and 2011, it investigates whether investment in foreign aid has heterogeneous effects in countries with democratic and authoritarian regimes. The results demonstrate that democratic countries allocate aid more effectively than authoritarian countries, but the estimates present robustness problems. Chapter 3 investigates the possible impact of foreign aid on the intensity of civil conflict. In countries with a lower degree of institutionalization, foreign aid investments can be used as a tool to strengthen factions in power. The paper uses a two-stage estimation to calculate the impact of aid flows on the likelihood of conflict escalation. The results show that foreign aid can contribute to turning small conflicts into major conflicts, but they do not give evidence that it creates conflicts in previously peaceful countries.

This thesis is concerned with the rise of independent booksellers in China since the late 2000s. Drawing on the findings of a qualitative study I conducted with 55 independent booksellers between 2014 and 2015, I argue that independent bookselling in China is an economic activity politicized, and the emergence and development of independent booksellers has been a process shaped by both economic and socio-political factors stemming from both inside and outside the book industry. Studying independent bookselling, a significant change in the Chinese book industry in recent years, my thesis advances our understanding of the transformation of the book industry in China. The notion of ‘politicization’ provides a useful analytical framework for understanding bookselling and publishing in parallel contexts. Finally, by elucidating the distinctive relationship between the evolution of the book industry and some wider social, political and economic processes in China, my thesis adds to the political economy of the media industry in non-Western societies and contributes to the de-Westernization of this long-dominant and yet problematic approach to the study of the media and media industries.

Sofosbuvir-based medicines, approved in late 2013, offer a long-sought after cure for patients with hepatitis C, a virus that disproportionately affects marginalized populations around the world. But the prices set by its manufacturer at approximately $90,000 for a three- month regimen intensified a global debate about the pricing of breakthrough medicines. The dominant economic explanations for pricing have centered on ‘risk’, with prices representing the costly and failure-ridden process of drug development, and ‘value’, with higher prices said to reflect improvements in patient health as well as savings from averted downstream medical expenses. These economic explanations are limited, however, by their focus on prices at the point of exchange between drug manufacturers and public health systems. Instead, I took a historical view, using the case of sofosbuvir to trace the political- economic dynamics and organizational relations of power across the innovation process – from early stage science to deployment. Data from documentary sources, semi-structured interviews, databases, and observations at meetings allowed me to build an account of the sofosbuvir case. Combining this data with sociological and political economy literatures on the roles of an entrepreneurial state, the rise of financial capital, and the pricing and valuation strategies used by businesses, I argue that sofosbuvir’s prices did not represent the tangible costs of innovation or the health value for patients. Rather, the prices were a product of financialization: a pattern of accumulation in which growth was pursued through the capitalization and control of intangible hepatitis C assets in financial markets. As part of this pattern, I map the mobilization of speculative capitals behind Pharmasset, a small biotechnology company that emerged from public investments to develop the compound sofosbuvir, as well as the extractive logics driving the shareholders of Gilead Sciences, a large publicly traded pharmaceutical company that ultimately acquired Pharmasset and then set the prices for the therapy. I demonstrate that though an entrepreneurial state shaped the direction of the innovation process towards a curative therapy, the processes of financialization disconnected the distribution of risks and rewards, undermined the sustainability of future innovation, and diminished patient and public health outcomes. I conclude by responding to dominant economic answers on drug pricing in light of the evidence on financialization.

Este trabalho realiza uma revisão teórica e crítica dos debates marxistas relacionados à questão da mulher dentro de um escopo econômico, buscando identificar sua inserção acadêmica atual e sua possível capacidade de interpretação da posição econômica das mulheres. O trabalho apresenta um levantamento bibliográfico, apresentando as principais premissas e conceitos utilizados por essa vertente de pensamento e suas correntes internas, e um estudo de caso da Rússia Soviética desde o triunfo da revolução bolchevique até a década de 40 (período da chamada “contrarrevolução feminista”), a fim de verificar como alguns desses preceitos foram aplicados e como as experiências de socialismo real contribuíram para o desenvolvimento da teoria tanto internamente, quanto em relação ao seu prestígio perante as demais escolas de pensamento feministas. Conclui-se que houve um período de fértil debate no marxismo feminista nas décadas de 60 e 70, mas que seu desenvolvimento posterior rumou ou para a fusão entre a teoria marxista e outras correntes de pensamento, afastando-se da economia, ou para o debate interno relacionado à inclusão de um recorte de gênero aos conceitos marxianos. Atualmente, o feminismo marxista parece voltar sua atenção para o resgate à obra original de Marx, em uma tentativa de propôr uma nova teoria feminista anticapitalista metodologicamente ortodoxa. / This paper presents a theoretical and critical review of Marxist debates related to the woman’s question inside the economic scope, seeking to identify it's current academic status and it's capacity to interpret the economic situation of women. A literature review is exhibited in order to present the main assumptions and concepts used by this school of thought and its internal divisions, and a case study of the Soviet Russia since the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution until the 40s (the period of the "feminist counterrevolution") is presented in order to see how some of these principles were applied and how socialism experiences contributed to the development of the theory and to its prestige towards the other feminist schools of thought. It concludes that there was a period of fruitful discussion of feminist Marxism in the 60s and 70s, but it's further development headed or to the merge between Marxist theory and other currents of thought, moving away from the economic scope, or for the debate related to the inclusion of a gender approach to Marxian concepts. Currently, Marxist feminism seems to turn it's attention to the rescue of Marx's original work, in an attempt to propose a new anti capital feminist theory methodologically orthodox.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / A frequent discussion in the Political Economy literature is that of the directionality in the relationship between economic and political variables. Are our society's ideas, political orientation, concepts of morality and values conditioned by our economic development or, on the contrary, are our ideas, values and worldview what determine our political and economic attitudes, and, thereby, our economic performance and political development? This thesis comprises two parallel projects that address these two different approaches. The first project studies the effect of having land or housing property rights on the decisions of households' members of whether or not to participate in civil society organizations; I develop this idea in a paper called "Civil Society and Land Property Rights: Evidence From Nicaragua". For doing this I use household level panel data for the years 1998, 2001 and 2005. I conclude that contrary to what happens in more developed countries, in developing societies a household receiving formal property rights reduces the incentives to participate in civil society. The second project is aimed at studying the relationship between religion and welfare states: given the different possibilities available in terms of data sources and methodologies, this project is integrated by two papers. In the first one. "Religion, Political Attitudes and Welfare States" I use data from the World Values Survey in order to study the effect of individual religiosity on attitudes towards the welfare state and, thus, its aggregate impact on welfare state policies. In the second paper of this project, "Political Elites, Religion and Welfare States in Latin America" I continue studying this relationship but instead of using data from ordinary citizens I focus on the study of legislators in Latin America. I combine quantitative and qualitative data and show that more religious legislators have less progressive attitudes towards the welfare state. Similarly. I find important differences across religions in the attitudes of their members towards the relationship of religion wits state, politics, society and the economy. / 2031-01-01

This doctoral project explores the evolution of regional uneven development in Jiangsu province under China’s growth-oriented state ideology during the economic reform era. Based upon a set of political-philosophical and historical analyses, it is argued that, as the foundation of China’s regime legitimacy in the reform era, the growth orientation of China’s dominant state ideology consisted of two key rationales, those are, China’s utilitarianism and its pragmatism. And, in order to concretely study the evolution of the regional unevenness between the south and north of Jiangsu province, two city-regions were selected as the basis for detailed empirical research. They are Changzhou city in the south and Nantong city in the north. Both the theoretical and empirical analyses were conducted under a three-stage periodization of economic reform. These are: the first stage (the late 1970s – the earlier 1990s), the second stage (the mid-1990s – the earlier 2000s), and the third stage (the earlier 2000s – 2013). It is found that, generally speaking, the dominant growth-oriented state ideology exercised key influences on regional unevenness in Jiangsu through a set of utilitarian and pragmatic institutional expressions and practices. And, corresponding to the influence of the growth-oriented state ideology, there are different kinds of strategically inscribed structural selectivities being expressed during different stage of the economic reform. Such selectivities are mainly exhibited by, and practised through, the dominant local growth patterns of the respective stage of the reform. Those are: TVE-driven growth, development zone-driven growth, and state-led, urbanisation-driven growth. Whilst the actual practices of these local growth patterns all decisively (re)produced and (re)shaped regional unevenness, they also exhibited, and were subject to, polymorphic and multidimensional sociospatial relations and processes which may be explored from the perspective of the so-called TPSN framework. It is proposed that whilst regional unevenness in Jiangsu province was increasing during the first two stages of reform, it was reduced during the third stage, though in a highly unsustainable and socially unjust fashion.

This thesis consists of three stand-alone chapters studying theoretical models concerning a range of issues that take place within the context of political delegation: tax enforcement, political selection, electoral campaigning. First chapter studies the problem of a small electorate of workers who cannot influence tax rates but can influence their local politicians to interfere with tax enforcement. It develops a two-candidate Downsian voting model where voters are productivity-heterogenous workers who supply labour to a local firm that can engage in costly tax evasion while facing an exogenously given payroll tax collected at the firm level. Two purely office motivated local politicians compete in a winner-takes-all election by offering fine reductions to take place if the firm gets caught evading. Two results stand out. First, equilibrium tax evasion is (weakly) increasing in the productivity of the median voter as a result of the latter demanding a weaker enforcement regime through more aggressive fine reductions. Second, if politicians were able to propose and commit on tax rates as well, then the enforcement process would be interference-free and the tax level would coincide with the median voter's optimal level. These two results underline the fact that from voters' perspective, influencing enforcement policy is an imperfect substitute for influencing tax policy in achieving an optimal redistribution scheme due to tax evasion being costly. In other words, a lax enforcement pattern in a given polity can be indicative of a political demand arising as an attempt to attain a redistributive second-best when influencing tax policy is not a possibility. Second chapter turns attention to the role and incentives of media in the context of ex ante political selection, i.e. at the electoral participation level. It constructs a signalling model with pure adverse selection where a candidate whose quality is private information decides on whether to challenge an incumbent whose quality is common knowledge given an electorate composed of voters who are solely interested in electing the best politician. Electoral participation is costly and before the election, a benevolent media outlet which is assumed to be acting in the best interest of voters decides on whether to undertake a costly investigation that may or may not reveal challenger's quality and transmit this information to voters. The focus of the chapter is on studying the selection and incentive effects of changes in media's information technology. The setting creates a strategic interaction between challenger entry and media activity, which gives rise to two main results. First, an improvement in media's information technology, whether due to cost reductions or gains in investigative strength always (weakly) improves ex ante selection by increasing minimum challenger quality in equilibrium. Second, while lower information costs always (weakly) make the media more active, an higher media strength may reduce its journalistic activity, especially if it is already strong. The intuition behind this asymmetry is simple. While both types of improvements increase media's expected net benefits from journalism, a boost to its investigative strength also makes the media more threatening for inferior challengers at a given level of journalistic activity. Combining this with the first result implies that the media can afford being more passive without undermining selection if it is sufficiently strong to begin with. In short, a strong media might lead to a relatively passive media, even though the media is "working as intended". Third chapter is about electoral campaigns. More precisely, it is a theoretical investigation into one possible audience-related cause for diverging campaign structures of different candidates competing for the same office: state of political knowledge in an electorate. Electorate is assumed to consist of a continuum of voters heterogenous along two dimensions: policy preferences and political knowledge. The latter is assumed to partition the set of voters into ignorant and informed segments, with the former consisting of voters who are unable to condition their voting decisions on the policy dimension. Political competition takes place within a probabilistic voting setting with two candidates, but instead of costless policy proposals as in a standard probabilistic voting model, it revolves around campaigning. Electoral campaigning is modelled as a limited resource allocation problem between two activities: policy campaigning and valence campaigning. The former permits candidates to relocate from their initial policy positions (reputations or legacies), which are assumed to be at the opposing segments of the policy space (i.e. left and right). The latter allows them to generate universal support via a partisanship effect and can be interpreted as an investment into non-policy campaign content such as impressionistic advertising, recruitment of writers capable of producing emotionally appealing speeches, etc. The chapter has two central results. First, a candidate's resource allocation to valence campaigning increases with the fraction of ignorant voters, ideological (non-policy) heterogeneity of informed voters and proximity of candidate's initial position to the bliss point of the informed pseudo-swing voter. The last one results from decreasing relative marginal returns for politicians from converging to pseudo- swing voter's ideal position. Second, even if candidates are otherwise symmetric, a monotonic association between policy preferences and political knowledge can induce divergence into campaign structures. For instance, if ignorance and policy preferences are positively correlated (e.g. less educated preferring more public good) then the left candidate would conduct a campaign with a heavier valence focus and vice versa. Underlying this result is again the decreasing relative marginal returns argument: a candidate whose initial position is already close to that of the informed pseudo-swing voter would benefit more from a valence oriented campaign. An implication of this is that a party that is known having a relatively more ignorant voter base can end up conducting a much more policy focused campaign compared to a party that is largely associated with politically aware voters.

This discussion paper looks at the connections between economies and ecosystems, or more generally biophysical reality. The term "economies" is used, rather than "the economy", because of the prevalent false claim that there is only one type of economic system that is possible. We outline how the ecological crises is linked to the dominant drive for economic growth and the tendency to equate growth with progress and development; common even amongst those apparently critical of the need for continued growth in the materially rich countries. The unreality of mainstream economics is epitomised by the accolades given to those justifying mild reformist policy in response to human induced climate change in order to continue the pursuit of economic growth. We emphasise the structural aspects of economies as emergent from and dependent upon the structure and functioning of both society and ecology (energy and material flows). Finally, that the structure of the global economy must change to avoid social ecological collapse, poses the questions of how that can be achieved and what sort of economics is necessary? We explain the need for: (i) a structural change that addresses the currently dysfunctional relationships between economic, social and ecological systems, and (ii) an economics that is interdisciplinary and realist about its social and natural science relations. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

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