This paper examines British Columbia's residency requirement on social assistance implemented by the NDP government on December 1, 1995. The policy created a three-month waiting period for newcomers to the province before they could apply for social assistance. Because it violated ;the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), the residency requirement put the BC government at risk of losing, through federal penalty, many millions of dollars more than the intended savings. To explain the BC government's decision-making, I use a rational choice nested games approach. I argue that the residency requirement policy produced two sets of interactions in two separate policy arenas. In the principal arena, the British Columbia Social Services Ministry negotiated with the federal Department of Human Resources Development (HRD). The negotiations centred on the possibility of federal concessions in- exchange for BC withdrawing the residency requirement. In the secondary arena, the federal Department of Finance was consulting with its provincial counterparts regarding the' long-term funding formula for the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) set to replace CAP on April 1, 1996. Social Services interacted with the federal Department of Finance to influence the outcome of the funding decision. I propose that the BC government risked minimal resources in the primary arena to gain substantially higher payoffs from the CHST funding formula. The government linked these two arenas through a 'trade-off strategy that allowed them to apply the political pressure and communication generated by the residency requirement and negotiations with HRD to the Finance arena. This enabled them to. increase the possibility of a favourable payoff in that arena. I find that the rational, choice approach produces an explanation that reflected the government's actual decision-making more closely than other theoretical approaches. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation studies the effects that government spending has on the well-being of individuals and on community-level economic outcomes. The first chapter examines federally funded disaster relief with the aim of explicitly quantifying the role that the government has in propping up labor markets after large storms that damage and destroy communities. The next two chapters are about welfare. The second chapter uses administrative data from the state of Michigan to study one of the largest, and most sudden, changes to a cash welfare program in the country's history. The aim of this piece is to quantify the holistic impact of losing welfare on the financial well-being of the affected mothers. The final chapter revisits one of the most consequential welfare-to-work experiments of the late 20th century with modern empirical tools to determine whether work-first retraining programs or remedial coursework benefit the marginal welfare participant more in the long-run. Together these essays highlight the role that the federal government plays in the lives of its citizens when they are at their most vulnerable. It is the hope of the author that economists and policymakers can use the conclusions herein when considering and drafting future programs that aim to assist those at the margin of society or those who will suffer the consequences of catastrophic climate disasters.

This manuscript reports on an exploration of whether shade provision is valued by urban users of cycling infrastructure. A description of the elicitation process has been outlined in order to build a general but detailed analysis of the different stages included in the exercise of attribute elicitation. As a departure point, a thorough literature review was conducted in order to establish a state of the art’s scenario. Different kinds of attributes that have been evaluated previously within discrete choice experiments and other relatable methods linked to bicycle commuting and bike route choices were compiled, however, shade appeared as an overlooked attribute. From this, a theoretical and methodological approach based on welfare economics and, the concept of willingness to pay as an indicator of shade provision’s value is proposed for the context of Neiva, Colombia, a medium size city in a developing country. Preliminary focus groups were conducted to build a surveying tool for eliciting the proposed attribute and gathered more contextual information. Finally, a pilot survey was launched in order to test the perceived value of shade and its importance for commuters. Special attention is devoted to the description of how the tools and methods were used in order to help future efforts. Several sets of data and information were reviewed and contrasted in order to build an accurate image of the current status of shade within the local commuters’ minds, what barriers were found while executing the research plan, and what can be some important implications for future urban planning studies and sustainable mobility research. Several different commuting conditions and individual realities were found, nonetheless, the existence of valuing shade provision was pervasive across all the surveyed university students and graduated staff. Furthermore, the benefits were perceived as socially broad, even by motorized, non-walking, and cycling commuters. Other valuable insights were found, like the effect of corruption when asking for policy implementation, further research needs to be conducted due to sampling limitations, the scarcity of previous research aimed at the subject, and for gathering more information about how acknowledging the attribute might be potentially critical for the future.

The contemporary American welfare state is a highly controversial institution plagued with tremendous deficiencies. There is agreement over the entire political spectrum that the current welfare system needs an overhaul, but there is considerable disagreement on how this should or could be accomplished. Neither liberal nor conservative reform proposals can be understood as solutions to the problem because they lack an appropriate analytical framework. This thesis tries to contribute to the current welfare debate by developing an analytical framework by which we can judge welfare policies. It is based upon contemporary theories of the welfare state and the concept of equality, by which we can judge welfare policies. This framework will be used to reveal how and why existing policies fail to achieve the central purpose of the welfare state and to re-introduce a policy proposal that might be able to avoid the difficulties that have plagued existing policies. / Master of Arts

Univ., Diss.--Kiel, 2003. / Literaturverz. S. 157 - 168.

In view of the dimension of its agricultural production, the biodiesel development policies adopted and the increasing global demand, Argentina became in the last years an important actor of the biodiesel market. The industrialization of the primary production within the agricultural sector is a strategic action towards adding value to the great exported volume allowing economic growth while boosting development and social welfare. Using Welfare Economics as a theoretical background, this study analyzes the socio-economic gains resulted from the biodiesel production chain, their distribution in regional and individual terms and the role of this industry as a driver to increase social welfare in Argentina. The recent development of the biodiesel industry has contributed to a general improvement of the society´s welfare adding an extra value to the great existing volume of soybean oil, by an average of USD 94 per produced ton in 2010. Moreover, although it is not a labor intensive industry, it has also contributed to the reduction of the unemployment rate creating direct and indirect job positions. While the big-scale biodiesel industries are mainly export-oriented the state has guaranteed market to the small-scale actors through local consumption quotas, however until now there is no redistribution scheme towards the geographical deconcentration of the income.

In this thesis we define and study the existence of an equilibrium situation in which producers maximize their profits relative to the production vectors in their production sets, consumers satisfy their preferences in their consumption sets under certain budget constraint, and for every commodity total demand equals total supply. This competitive equilibrium situation is referred to as the Walrasian equilibrium. The existence of this equilibrium is investigated from a various mathematical points of view. These include microeconomic theory, simplicial spaces, global analysis and lattice theory.

Les fondements philosophiques de la théorie du choix social sont l’objet de cette thèse. La théorie du choix social est un champ de l’économie normative qui traite de l’agrégation des préférences individuelles. L’objectif de ce travail est d’analyser les postulations philosophiques de la théorie du choix social afin de comprendre dans quelle mesure celle-ci pourrait contribuer à une théorie de la justice sociale basée sur les capabilités d’Amartya Sen. Ce travail est par conséquent élaboré à partir de l’idée d’une « approche comparative » de la justice sociale, défendue par Amartya Sen, et que ce dernier oppose à l’ « approche transcendantale » de John Rawls. Nous tentons d’y préciser l’interprétation de la théorie du choix social requise pour spécifier l’approche par les capabilités, et en particulier l’évaluation et la construction d’un indice de capabilités et de fonctionnements. Ce travail de thèse défend l’hypothèse selon laquelle la tension apparente entre l’agrégation des préférences et l’approche par les capabilités est due à une interprétation étroite du cadre conceptuel de la théorie du choix social. En effet, l’approche par les capabilités est généralement comprise comme incompatible avec le préférentialisme de la théorie du choix social. Cela est dû à ce que l’approche par les capabilités s’est construite en partie comme une réponse au problème des préférences adaptatives. Cette thèse consiste donc à élargir le champ des interprétations de la théorie du choix social et de son cadre conceptuel, principalement de sa base d’information.La première partie de ce travail de recherche traite la question suivante : les préférences sont-elles déterminées par une source individuelle pouvant être pensée indépendamment de sa position sociale et économique ? Afin de montrer que ce n’est pas nécessairement le cas sur le plan logique, nous y analysons trois types de base informationnelle : les utilités cardinales, les préférences ordinales et les capabilités.L’objectif de la seconde partie est de déterminer ce que les préférences décrivent. Nous y analysons d’une part la nature de la préférence elle-même dans ce contexte. S’agit-il d’une décision déterminant une action, d’un désir, d’un état mental ou encore d’un jugement de valeur ? D’autre part, les différents critères éthiques de préférence sont étudiés, à savoir le plaisir hédoniste, la satisfaction des désirs et un critère de bien-être objectif. Cette exploration nous amène à défendre la conclusion suivante : la conception des préférences la plus en phase avec la structure formelle de la théorie du choix social est une conception comparative requérant d’excellentes conditions cognitives pour que les préférences puissent être considérées à proprement parler comme les véritables préférences de l’agent.La troisième partie revient à l’approche des capabilités. L’argumentation s’appuie sur les conclusions des deux parties précédentes afin de jeter les bases d’une théorie de la justice démocratique et non-idéale basée sur les capabilités d’Amartya Sen. Dans cette partie, nous montrons qu’une évaluation des capabilités indépendante des préférences tend à nier l’importance de la liberté et de la qualité d’agent dans l’approche par les capabilités. Nous défendons donc l’hypothèse selon laquelle les capabilités et les fonctionnements comme objets de préférence permettent de filtrer celles-ci afin de parer au problème des préférences adaptatives. / This dissertation examines the philosophical foundations of social choice theory. Social choice theory is the area of normative economics which is concerned with the aggregation of individual preferences. The aim of this work is to investigate the philosophical assumptions of social choice theory in order to understand to what extent it can contribute to a theory of justice based on capabilities. Therefore, the dissertation is build up on Amartya Sen’s idea of a “comparative approach” of justice, as opposed to the Rawlsian “transcendental approach”. It is an attempt to precise which understanding of social choice theory is required to specify the capability approach, especially the evaluation and the indexing of capabilities. In this dissertation, we argue that the apparent tension between preference aggregation and capability approach is due to a narrow interpretation of social choice theory’s conceptual framework. Capability approach is generally conceived as non-compatible with the preferentalism of social choice theory: after all, capabilities are seen as a response to the recurring problem of adaptive preferences. This dissertation thus consists in widening the scope of interpretations of social choice theory framework. This research deals mainly with the informational basis of social choice theory.This dissertation is in three parts. The first part tackles the following problem: are preferences determined by an individual source that can be thought independently of its social and economic position? To answer these questions, three kinds of informational basis in social choice theory and normative economics are investigated: cardinal utilities, ordinal preferences and capabilities.The second part aims at defining what preferences do describe in this context. Firstly, the nature of preference itself is examined: can it be assimilated to choice? Or is it a mere evaluation? A desire? A mental state? This analysis points out the comparative structure of preferences. Secondly, the various ethical criteria of preference are investigated: hedonistic pleasure, desire satisfaction and objective well-being. We argue that preferences are better conceived as comparative evaluation and require actually excellent cognitive conditions to be truly the agent’s own real preferences.The third part goes back to capability approach. The argument relies on the previous results to build up a first account of a democratic non-ideal theory of justice based on capabilities. In this part, we show that a preference-independent capability evaluation turns out to dismiss the importance of freedom and agency in capability approach. Then we argue that capabilities and functionings as an object for preferences do provide a first filter against adaptive preferences.

Univ., Diss.--Jena, 2001.

The principal aim of this thesis is to elaborate a politicized reading of Amartya Sen's Capability Approach. It explores how capabilities are augmented through the forging of contentious political subjectivities. In it, I build on the criticism that Sen's framework can be more sensitive to questions of power and politics. Against some of his critics, however, I argue that its 'politicization' must focus analytical attention on politics as the struggle to produce subjects rather than limiting its understanding to negotiations over authority, resources and allocations. I draw on quantitative and qualitative analysis of ethnographic data from rural eastern India to substantiate my argument. The first two chapters outline the contours of the debates and introduce the social, economic and political life of the study localities. Each of the four subsequent chapters elucidates the manner in which the contentious processes through which political subjectivity are forged augments capabilities. In Chapter 3 I advance the case that any discussion on capabilities needs to analyze how subjects interrogate the relations of domination and subordination which they have hitherto been compelled to inhabit. Based on an analysis of the contentions spawned by the Indian Government's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, I point to how the notion of cooperative conflict is helpful in understanding these processes. In Chapter 4, I draw attention to the analytic importance that needs to be accorded to 'voice' in order to understand how subjects contest and reconstitute these relationships: I base my analysis on the claims made on elected representatives by different groups of people in respect to 'poverty cards'. This emphasis leads in Chapter 5 to an investigation of the ways in which agonistic exchanges in public spaces augments capabilities: this I do through an examination of two specific disputes involving a variety of local actors. I develop these insights further in Chapter 6 to show how our understanding of the processes through which capabilities may be enhanced gains analytically from an analysis of the manner in which subjects construct their identities. Chapter 7 concludes.