International finance is often understood to be a rational practice, taking place within an autonomous, coherent and clearly bounded structure. This thesis questions the naturalness implied by such understandings of the international financial system. It argues that the contingencies and ambiguities of financial history have been largely written out of the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE) in general and the study of international finance in particular. The thesis presents a detailed account of the conceptual histories that enable us to think of a domain called finance. It does so in terms of a 'genealogy,' the concept offered by French philosopher Michel Foucault to denote a historical study that resists being a linear and frictionless account of the emergence of modern practices. A genealogy of finance discusses the continggeenntt emergence of fi'n ancial thought, thus arguing that no logical or evolutionary trajectory for the development of fi' nancial rationality was implicit in history or human nature. The thesis analyses a range of archival materials debating the emerging fin ' ancial sphere in London and NewYork, beginning with the birth of the credit economy in seventeenth-century England and proceeding into to the 1990s. The analysis' looks at political contestations over understandings of time and money, the gendered discourse of credit and credibility, the proper meaning of the free market, understandings of financial crisis, the morality of speculation, the differences between gambling and fin' ance, and the imagination of fi' nance as a rational and scientific practice. The thesis emphasises how these political controversies assume, in' yoke and debate a subject called 'fin ' ancial man.' The debates analysed in this thesis have shaped the regulatory and institutional structures of modern in ' ternational fin ' ance. In an era when fin ' ancial practices are closed off from democratic politics through the assertion that fin' ance is too specialist for broad-based public debate, the exposure of contingencies and ambiguities in financial practices must be regarded as a political critique.

<p>Since the 1980s China had different exchange rate regimes. For example, in 1981, a dual-exchange rate system was introduced, with the official exchange rate applying to non-trade-related foreign exchange transactions and the depreciated internal settlement rate (ISR) applying to trade related transactions. This system was discontinued in 1985, but after the establishment of special economic zones to boost the country&rsquo / s export performance, the dual-exchange rate system was reintroduced in 1986. In 1994 the country informed the IMF that it will be switching to a managed floating exchange rate system and this was the official policy for almost ten years. However, de facto, the country chose to peg its currency to the USD during all these years (whilst Japan was the most important trading partner).</p> <p><br /> The report provides a descriptive analytical overview of how China in this era of globalization and with the importance of the World Trade Agreement, managed to keep its currency pegged to the USD over such a long period of time. The most important factors explaining this choice were identified as the desire to stimulate export-let economic growth, the risk related to capital mobility, financial sector liberalization, relative price level stability, dollarization and politics.</p>

This thesis addresses learning in engineering management.

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2004

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Southern California, 2008. / Adviser: Stanley Rosen. Includes bibliographical references.

Zugl.: Wien, WirtschaftsUniversiẗat, Diss., 2002.

<p>Upplevelsens era är här och ställer samtliga aktörer i samhället inför utmaningar. Upplevelsen ska inte längre bara fylla ett funktionellt behov, den ska beröra konsumenten på ett helt annat sätt. Allt i syfte att kunna erbjuda konsumenten en upplevelse utöver det vanliga för att som företag lyckas med att särskilja sig från sina konkurrenter. En strategi för att lyckas med differentiering är att engagera konsumentens sinnen i upplevelsen. Uppsatsen tar utgångspunkt i två teoretiska begrepp: Pine & Gilmore´s (1999) strategimodell, The Experience Realms, och Hulténs m.fl. (2007) teori om sinnesmarknadsföring. Vårt arbete syftar till att utreda vad som händer i mötet mellan dessa två teorier på ett konkret fält – Orbaden Konferens och Spa. Studien har varit av deduktiv karaktär. Vi har tillämpat kvalitativ metod då vi med utgångspunkt från valda teorier önskat undersöka hur ett spa-besök upplevs av gäster, samt utreda hur en specifik anläggning arbetar med att skapa upplevelser. Vi genomförde fyra kvalitativa intervjuer, två med representanter från Orbaden Konferens och Spa, två med personer som har gedigen erfarenhet av att vara besökare på spa. Då teorin kopplades till empirin kunde flera mötespunkter av vikt urskiljas. Mötespunkterna som framträtt kan vara av avgörande vikt vid skapandet av upplevelser.</p>

This paper examines the American Dust Bowl to understand the political impacts of the catastrophe which devastated the American Plains during the 1930s. I use county-level panel analysis to analyze whether the Dust Bowl led to a change in voting patterns in more eroded counties compared to less eroded counties. I look to see whether, in the years following the Dust Bowl, there was shift in vote shares against the Democratic Party who were typically the incumbents during the period of the Dust Bowl. I use presidential, congressional, senatorial and gubernatorial election return for approximately the three decades following the Dust Bowl, i.e. between 1940 and 1968. My results show that the Dust Bowl is associated with a shift away from the Democratic Party for more affected counties. I find these effects to last for at least a decade (throughout the 1940s). I also look at the potential effects of the net migration and New Deal expenditure in the Plains. I find that less net migration may have been one of the reasons behind this change in voting behavior of counties and that New Deal expenditure could potentially have been a strong mitigative tool for the Democratic Party. / Graduate

The aim of this thesis is to provide a theoretical critique of the Knowledge Economy discourse, the dominant discourse in which development is equated with the economic exploitation of knowledge. The nature of the critique is political in the sense that the problem with 'building a knowledge economy' as a model for development is that the accounts (such as they are) of how to go about doing so seem fatally undermined by their neglect of questions of power and politics - questions which this thesis will argue are essential to understanding the relationship between knowledge and development. The emergence of the discourse itself and the way in which its ideas are implemented can also be seen in political terms, in that the depoliticisation of development that it entails is itself a political position. The thesis is structured as an introduction followed by three main parts and a conclusion. In the Introduction and Part 1, I explain the nature of the research and the methods used, and provide a genealogy of the Knowledge Economy (KE) discourse, which includes the empirical element of this research, namely a series of interviews with key actors in the emergence of the discourse. In so doing, I historicise the discourse within the specific institutional history and politics of the major organisations (World Bank and the OECD) which have done the most of any to promote it. From this I identify the key theoretical ideas (Human Capital Theory, Innovation Systems, Hayekian Neoliberalism, Information Economics and Endogenous Growth Theory) which underpin the discourse and which are then the subject of critical analysis in Part 2. I make the case that the Knowledge Economy should not be understood as a robust analytical framework, empirical methodology or policy template, but instead as the reconceptualisation of 'questions of knowledge' in terms of markets. Specifically, the discourse depends upon a number of qualitatively different ways in which knowledge can be represented in, and transformed by, the operations of markets. These representations derive from three main schools off economic thought. I describe how each offers a critique of the others and yet how the Knowledge Economy is obtained as a synthesis of the three. In Part 3, I firstly illustrate a case of the Knowledge Economy discourse in action, namely Higher Education reform in India. I explain how the approaches that were studied in Part 1 and which were developed at the World Bank and the OECD in the late 1990s and early 2000s were applied in practice in India in the mid 2000s. I argue that these applications illustrate the claims of Part 2 regarding knowledge and markets. I then describe the politicised nature of Indian Higher Education and argue that no satisfactory account can be given without an engagement with these political economy factors. Following on from this, I then consider how adopting a KE approach of conceptualising knowledge in terms of markets might be subject to various forms of political analysis and develop a political economy critique that synthesises three theoretical approaches: (a) the politics of markets; (b) commodification; and (c) governmentality. From this I conclude that the KE approach is fundamentally flawed as an account of development.

Jamaican family structures have long felt the impact of unstable internal economic conditions and high volume of labor demands originating from England, Canada, the United States, and other larger societies. In response to the economic conditions and labor demands, increasing numbers of Jamaican women have migrated away from home, both within Jamaica and to other countries. Subsequently, many Jamaicans' households are restructured using a method called child shifting. This refers to "the relocation of children between households." Using three major theoretical paradigms: cultural diffusion, social pathology, and structural functionalism, this study explores the literature of child shifting to understand how economic conditions influence matrifocal families and in particular their child rearing practices. This study employs the structural functionalism paradigm's focus on "adaptive responses" to find plausible explanations for child shifting patterns. The primary premise of the "adaptive responses" approach is that economic marginality leads to certain adaptive responses in residential, kinship, and child rearing patterns. This study finds certain adjustment problems associated with child shifting. These include shifted children developing feelings of abandonment, of anxiety, of loss, and having difficulty trusting after the shifting occurs. These costs may outweigh the benefits of child shifting.