The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between reserved seats for ethnic groups in national legislatures and corruption. In 2008, over 30 countries were reserving seats for ethnic groups in their national legislature. The share of seats that was reserved ranged from a 2 percent reserved seats arrangement for a small ethnic minority, to a 100 percent reserved seats power-sharing arrangement between two or more ethnic groups. By applying theories of informal power, this essay hypothesizes that reserving seats reduces corruption. In contrast to the theory, an initial bivariate regression shows that reserved seats are associated with higher levels of corruption. However, when controlling for conflict history, democracy, ethnic fractionalization, GDP/capita, fuel exports, newspaper circulation, and region, this association turns into a negative one, indicating that reserved seats might reduce corruption. The main finding of the study is that having less than 25 percent of the total amount of legislative seats reserved for ethnic groups reduces corruption more than having no reserved seats at all or more than 25 percent reserved seats. This suggests that certain types of reserved seats arrangements are useful for fighting corruption.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / John M. Crespi / The EU is one of the world’s biggest importers of bananas and, as such, import policies enforced by this trade union are likely to have a great impact on major producers of bananas. Aiming to protect communitarian producers and exporters from selected ex-colonies of Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific and to honor previous agreements, the EU unified its import policy for bananas in 1993. This policy, known as the Common Market Organization for Bananas, generated one of the most controversial trade disputes in history. After several modifications of the original regime, in January 2006, the EU changed its import regime to satisfy a World Trade Organization mandate and to honor an agreement signed with the United States in 2000. This dissertation reviews the history of the trade disputes in the EU banana market and analyzes the effects that the new import regime will have on major suppliers. To do this, a theoretically-consistent demand system is estimated and then the calculated parameters are used to model the effects of the tariff-only import system in the EU banana market. Based on the results, producers surplus are estimated and Monte Carlo simulations are performed to do a sensitivity analysis of the results. In the demand estimation component, the EU market is modeled as a system containing four major suppliers using the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS). This estimation fills an important gap in literature regarding the lack of well-estimated demand elasticities of bananas in the EU. The EU banana market is then modeled based on a equilibrium displacement model framework. Results of this analysis are then used to calculate point estimates of producer surplus changes as a measure of the impact of the new import policy on banana suppliers. Monte Carlo simulations are based on parameter estimates obtained from the AIDS model. These simulations allowed not only sensitivity analysis but also probabilistic inferences about the statistical significance of the estimates obtained in the previous components. Results indicate that the hypothesis that the new import regime will not affect the major suppliers of the EU banana market cannot be rejected. This might indicate that the policy enforced by the Common Market Organization for Bananas and the current tariff-only import regime are statistically equivalent. In other words, the EU expertly enacted a tariff level that will leave much as status quo.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Andrew P. Barkley / Tariff rate quotas (TRQs) are one of the most widely used trade policy instruments in agricultural trade. The issue of whether TRQs are efficient trade policy instruments for improving market access has been widely debated. Some believe that TRQs impose an extra barrier to trade, circumvent the reforms sought under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO) and may not be as attractive as initially envisioned. Others believe that the TRQs are useful and facilitate trade and liberalization. Any expansion in quota, or decrease in tariffs, or combinations of the two, has the potential to liberalize trade in a specific industry. There is strong clamor for continued reforms in the conduct of agricultural trade – including the implementation of TRQs. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of TRQs, and determine the impact of their implementation on the Philippine corn market. Specifically, the study will estimate the quantities of supply, demand, imports, domestic equilibrium prices, and border prices under different TRQ liberalization regimes. In this study, an existing TRQ model was utilized to determine how effective TRQs are as a trade policy instrument for trade liberalization and increasing market access. The results reveal that the Philippine corn market was restricted by the out-quota tariff. De facto liberalization of the TRQ at the level of the out-quota rate (50%) or even at 35% (in-quota rate), does not completely liberalize the corn market. Progressively reducing both tariffs liberalizes the market and leads to increases in surpluses. The lower tariffs, however, lead to less government revenues. The smaller the gap between the in-quota and out-quota, the smaller the quota rents become. Increasing the quotas has no significant impact in liberalizing the corn market, and the increase in imports decrease producer surplus in all cases. The TRQ model of the Philippine corn sector reveals that changing the components of the TRQ would lead to different impacts on supply, demand, consumer, producer and net surplus, and government revenues. Knowledge of the regime in which the country is trading can determine which individual policy instrument of the TRQ, the in-quota and out-quota tariff and the quota, should be used to increase market access or address the concerns of stakeholders in the corn sector. It is thus important for policy makers to find a workable tariff level that would serve the interest of all stakeholders in the sector.

This thesis deals with diversity and its level in the company CSOB. The main objective is to describe the current situation, make an analysis, identify strengths and weaknesses and come up with suggestions for the company and government, which would have positive effect on diversity. The methods used in this work include an analysis of internal documents, comparison of theory and practise and personal interview with responsible manager. The thesis is divided into two main parts, theoretical and practical. The theoretical part is based on study of literature, legislation and actual studies and focuses on definitions and theoretical bases. The practical part contains an introduction of CSOB and evaluation of the state support effectiveness. Next part is focused on description of current activities in the company that support diversity and analysis of its current level. The final part contains recommendations for the company and government that should lead to an improvement of the current situation.

The Abstract The thesis is focused on views on the role of women in decision-making processes. Public and private sector is characterised by a low level of representation of women in decision-making positions. In connection to the directives of the European Commission, which introduce mechanisms supporting an increase the number of representatives of underrepresented sex in supervisory boards, the debate unleashed on the subject of quotas. Opinions on the effectiveness of quota mechanisms in the Czech Republic are reflected in the media space. This paper aims to describe and analyze the opinions of public discussion on the mechanisms of quotas. Through a discourse analysis of media contributions it tries to determine what arguments planes occurring in the public debate on a subject introduction of quotas. Analyzed articles are dated to the period between May 2014 and May 2015. Individual argumentative discourse planes are systematically coded by discursive rules in recurrent categories. Categories are also thematically merged into discursive planes with respect to their intertextuality and intediscursivity. The results of the analysis are then subjected to a comparison to the development of discursive anchoring the topic of quotas in the European environment.

RQ1: What diversity management practices facilitate gender representation in the workplace? RQ2: Which challenges arise when implementing gender quotas into the work environment?  Purpose: The impact of this research is twofold: it will address a knowledge gap in the academic literature on gender challenges, gender quota application and follow-up in business, as well as contribute to research on practice-based diversity and quotaring. Additionally, this study will have an impact on how issues like this are handled in practice.  Method: Five semi-structured interviews with managers in various positions in a multinational organization, as well as three focus group discussions, were conducted as part of this qualitative study to allow interactions between theories and empirical findings. In addition to the interviews, the theoretical framework allowed for a thematic analysis. Conclusion: The empirical data gathered for this study has provided sufficient evidence to conclude that a firm's acceptance of diversity and diversity management policies and practices, such as gender quotas, is highly valued by stakeholders, but often difficult to admit. When it comes to incorporating efforts like inclusion and diversity into a firm’s plans, diversity has proven to be quite beneficial, however using gender quotas as part of diversity management techniques is frowned upon. We can also conclude that women still face significant challenges solely based on gender in the business world, such as salary differences, pregnancy, attitudes and males’ perceptions, to name a few. Thus, gender equality still has a long way to go.

This thesis aims to explore the link between women’s descriptive representation and substantive representation in the 20th National Assembly of the Republic of Korea according to the different conceptualization of women’s substantive representation. First, the link between women’s descriptive representation and substantive representation is examined by investigating whether women legislators introduce bills for women’s interests and succeed in passing such bills more than men. Plus, women legislators’ impact on the introduction of bills for women’s interests and success to pass such bills is explored separately according to different definitions of women’s interests, feminist and traditional women’s interests. This thesis also seeks to compare the influence of quota women with non-quota women on introducing bills for women’s interest and being able to pass such bills. The effect of legislators’ gender and quota women on women’s substantive representation is analyzed by running multivariate OLS regressions. The result strongly supports the positive impact of female legislators on the substantive representation of women. The regression analysis result indicates that being female is positively and significantly related to all types of women’s substantive representation, except the introduction of traditional women’s interests bills. The positive effect of the female legislators is more robust on the introduction of feminist women’s interests bills than the passage of them. However, the positive effect of the female legislators is stronger on the passage of traditional women’s interests bills than the introduction of them. When I compare the connection between women’s descriptive representation and substantive representation according to the different definitions of women’s interests, female legislators are more positively related to feminist women’s interests than traditional women’s interests. The result mildly supports the positive moderating effect of quota women on the link between women’s descriptive representation and substantive representation. These findings indicate that women legislators and quota women improve women’s substantive representation in the Republic of Korea. Specific effects of female legislators and quota women on women’s substantive representation are varied depending on different aspects of substantive representation and different definitions of women’s interests.

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Since its founding, the economic opportunities and quality of life present in the United States of America have drawn millions of people across the oceans to seek out a better existence for themselves. America's Founding Fathers believed that the country needed as large a population as possible to become a strong nation. The capitalistic economy of the new nation caused immigration to become critically important in the expansion of its manufacturing infrastructure. Once the growth of the nation's population began to exceed that of the economy's needs, the federal government attempted to limit further immigration. The government focused on restricting how many people of certain ethnicities could enter the country each year, ignoring the problems facing those immigrants who were already in the United States. Even worse, the policy, through various quota restrictions and fees, encouraged people from Canada and Mexico to enter the country illegally. This paper is intended to analyze the flaws of the major immigration acts passed between 1882 and 1952.

This study investigates what factors impede women's ability to be included in politics in Kenya in light of reforms such as decentralization and electoral gender quotas. The Kenyan case highlights a paradox: reforms are progressive in reaching a more gender-balanced representation, including women from more levels of the country in the political sphere. Despite this, women in Kenyan politics face several barriers when aiming for a position in office and partaking in political activities on equal terms as men. The material was collected through a three-week field trip to Nairobi, interviewing female politicians either elected through the number of votes or nominated through quota in the National Parliament and the devolved level of Nairobi City County Assembly. Findings suggest that women on both levels face several barriers when attaining a political position and performing their roles in the office. Women face unattainable financial requirements, violence and threats, voters' biases towards their capacity, and parties favoring men. Patriarchal structures also hinder women's political inclusion, where non-governmental organizations play an important role by offering different venues for political training to build aspiring female politicians from the bottom-up. More work is needed to ensure women's political inclusion in Kenya, starting with implementing the two-thirds gender rule in National Parliament and pressuring political parties to be gender-inclusive. To reach women's political inclusion, educating people on women's equal rights to gain political representation and be included in political work on similar terms as men is vital.