This doctoral dissertation presents evidence based research into climate change policy. The research technique of political economy is used to investigate policy development. A major change in the Anglo-American growth paradigm from unconstrained to constrained growth is identified. The implications of this change for climate change policy are identified. The political economy of climate change policies is expressed in a new Spatial Climate Economic Policy Tool for Regional Equilibria (Sceptre). This is an innovative bechmarking approach to computable general equilibrium (CGE) that provides a spatial analysis of geopolitical blocs and industry groupings within these blocs. It includes international markets for carbon commodities and geophysical climate effects. It is shown that climate constrained growth raises local policy issues in managing technology diffusion and dysfunctional resource expansive specialisations exacerbated by the creation of global carbon markets.

This doctoral dissertation presents evidence based research into climate change policy. The research technique of political economy is used to investigate policy development. A major change in the Anglo-American growth paradigm from unconstrained to constrained growth is identified. The implications of this change for climate change policy are identified. The political economy of climate change policies is expressed in a new Spatial Climate Economic Policy Tool for Regional Equilibria (Sceptre). This is an innovative bechmarking approach to computable general equilibrium (CGE) that provides a spatial analysis of geopolitical blocs and industry groupings within these blocs. It includes international markets for carbon commodities and geophysical climate effects. It is shown that climate constrained growth raises local policy issues in managing technology diffusion and dysfunctional resource expansive specialisations exacerbated by the creation of global carbon markets.

<p>The dissertation consists of three self-contained essays on Public Finance.</p><p>“News Droughts, News Floods and U.S. Disaster Relief” studies the mass media's influence on the U.S. government response to about 5,000 natural disasters in developing countries in 1968-2002. These disasters took around 63,000 lives and affected 125 million people per year. Given the huge losses involved, it is essential that disaster relief is provided to those most in need. We show that U.S. disaster relief depends on the occurrence of other newsworthy events at the time of the disaster, such as the Olympic Games or the O.J. Simpson Trial, which are obviously unrelated to need. We argue that the only plausible explanation for this is that relief decisions are driven by news coverage of disasters, and that this news coverage is crowded out by other newsworthy events.</p><p>“Fiscal Policy and Retirement in the Twentieth Century” proposes a model that explains the trend in labor supply among older workers through changes in fiscal policy, including social security. The essay re-introduces social security as a major determinant of retirement behavior, while simultaneously offering an explanation to the two main puzzles in the literature: (i) the small contemporary retirement elasticities and (ii) the drop in the retirement age prior to the introduction of social security.</p><p>“Sustainable Fiscal Policy and the Retirement Decision” concerns the sustainability of fiscal policy in aging economies and the retirement decision. The essay develops an applied general equilibrium model, where the retirement age is endogenous and current fiscal policy is a response to future demographic developments. Three policies are analyzed: (1) raising taxes (2) reducing the replacement rate and (3) raising the Full Retirement Age. All policies are found to have a substantial impact on retirement. Sustaining fiscal policy will result in falling interest rates, inducing a general delay in retirement. This general equilibrium effect on retirement can be substantially larger than the direct effect of changing social security incentives.</p>

This thesis is about the provisioning of development assistance, as a major component of foreign aid. Conventional approaches to the subject have tended to focus on the determinate interactions of discrete agents as the principle units of analysis. This necessarily obscures the functional role development assistance fulfills in relation to the global politico economic order, however. This study, by contrast, properly situates individual programs of development assistance as belonging to a much larger historical pattern, or system of coordinated politico-economic behavior. The objective, therefore, is to apprehend the systematic and functional interrelations existing (i) among the various agents engaged in the transfer of assistance, on the one hand, and (ii) between these institutions and organizations as an aggregate and the global order itself, on the other. ‘Regime analysis’ is utilized as the preferred method of analysis. The basis of the argument is that the regime for the provision of development assistance functions as a regulative-control mechanism, ancillary to the prevailing economic arrangements and relations within the global political economy. Altogether, I argue that regime apparatuses have been configured so as to (i) forestall cataclysmic instabilities in the global politico economic order, and (ii) to induce compliance among developing nations to the order’s organizing principles and-or logic. This is revealed in phases in the liberalization and-or illiberalization of access to external financing over different global-historical epochs and during periods and in contexts of either instability or stability. I find that during periods and in contexts of instability, development assistance has been initiated or expanded in geo-strategic ways so as to regenerate markets and, thereby, obviate, or thwart the anticipated metastasization of adversarial politico-economic organizational frameworks. During periods and in contexts of relative stability, conversely, I find that the provision of development assistance becomes contracted, or made less expansive, as well as increasingly driven by conditionalities. Consequently, the functioning of the regime structurally conditions the developmental orientations and prospects of peripheral nations and regions and, thereby, also contributes to the overall evolution of the global politico-economic order.

The thesis explores puzzling change in Chinese state sector over the past two decades. China’s debt-ridden state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were long seen as the most thorny reform dilemma; however, in the past decade, the surging profitability of large SOEs in the so-called “monopoly sectors” (longduan hangye 垄断行业) have made them lynchpins of an emerging state capitalist system. The main argument is that the state sector’s apparent reversal of fortunes is, in large measure, a legacy of the brief period of neoconservative rule (1989-1992) following the Tiananmen uprising in spring 1989. The fleeting ascendance of Chen Yun’s neoconservative faction provided them the opportunity to redirect the reform course set by Deng Xiaoping and embed a market vision which saw SOEs as pillars of the economy. The neoconservative leadership laid the normative and institutional foundations of a robust SOE-directed industrial policy regime which has gained momentum through the 1990s and into the last decade. The study also sheds lights on the political and economic drivers of China’s unfolding market order through analysis of the industry foundations of China’s emerging state capitalist system. In recent years, state ownership has concentrated in some industries and largely retreated from others. What is driving this process of what Pei (2006) terms the “selective withdrawal” of the state from the economy? To address this question, the nature of ownership change across Chinese industry in recent years is first analyzed. Focus then shifts to comparative analysis of the reform pathway of two industries in which state ownership remains dominant: telecommunications and airlines. Combining insights from the partial reform equilibrium model and historical institutionalism, the study argues that both the particularist interests of “short-term winners” in industry and the neoconservative policy legacy have left an imprint on the process of selective withdrawal.

Vor 50 Jahren löste sich Algerien nach langem Kampf endgültig aus dem französischen Kolonialreich. Die anschließend durchgeführten Wirtschaftsreformen konnten das Land aber nicht befrieden, weil sie keine effektive Nutzung der Rente verwirklichten. Bis heute ist die Wirtschaft des Landes wenig diversifiziert und stark von Erdöleinnahmen abhängig. Ist eine exportorientierte Industrialisierung als Lösung der Probleme denkbar?

<p>The study focuses on the political and economic geographies of pharmaceutical delivery. In 1997 the South African government passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act, sparking outrage from both the local and international pharmaceutical industry, and resulting in court action in 2001. The industry believed that South Africa was in breach of its obligations under international intellectual property law. Those fighting for pharmaceutical security hoped the court case would be a &lsquo / landmark&rsquo / in the global campaign for equitable access to medicines. This investigation seeks to analyse the domestic and international legacy of the court action. The inquiry takes its significance from the high prevalence rates of treatable diseases and the need for pharmaceutical security in South Africa and its neighbouring African countries. The absence of a sustainable international medicines delivery system is a global political, economic and moral failure. A solution is required that balances the positive productive forces of the market with a philosophy of justice and equity.</p>

The dissertation consists of three self-contained essays on Public Finance. “News Droughts, News Floods and U.S. Disaster Relief” studies the mass media's influence on the U.S. government response to about 5,000 natural disasters in developing countries in 1968-2002. These disasters took around 63,000 lives and affected 125 million people per year. Given the huge losses involved, it is essential that disaster relief is provided to those most in need. We show that U.S. disaster relief depends on the occurrence of other newsworthy events at the time of the disaster, such as the Olympic Games or the O.J. Simpson Trial, which are obviously unrelated to need. We argue that the only plausible explanation for this is that relief decisions are driven by news coverage of disasters, and that this news coverage is crowded out by other newsworthy events. “Fiscal Policy and Retirement in the Twentieth Century” proposes a model that explains the trend in labor supply among older workers through changes in fiscal policy, including social security. The essay re-introduces social security as a major determinant of retirement behavior, while simultaneously offering an explanation to the two main puzzles in the literature: (i) the small contemporary retirement elasticities and (ii) the drop in the retirement age prior to the introduction of social security. “Sustainable Fiscal Policy and the Retirement Decision” concerns the sustainability of fiscal policy in aging economies and the retirement decision. The essay develops an applied general equilibrium model, where the retirement age is endogenous and current fiscal policy is a response to future demographic developments. Three policies are analyzed: (1) raising taxes (2) reducing the replacement rate and (3) raising the Full Retirement Age. All policies are found to have a substantial impact on retirement. Sustaining fiscal policy will result in falling interest rates, inducing a general delay in retirement. This general equilibrium effect on retirement can be substantially larger than the direct effect of changing social security incentives.

The thesis consists of three papers, summarized as follows. "Female Policymakers and Educational Expenditures: Cross-Country Evidence" This paper investigates the influence of women in politics on decision-making using public educational expenditures as the outcome of interest. The results suggest that an increase in the share of female legislators by one percentage point increases the ratio of educational expenditures to GDP by 0.028 percentage points. The effect of female legislators on educational policies is strengthened accounting for forms of government, but not influenced by left-wing government, electoral rules, parliamentary system and non-marriage. Moreover, this study supports the hypothesis that the identity of the legislator matters for policy. "Women in Politics: A New Instrument for Studying the Impact of Education on Growth" This paper tests the growth model of distance to the technological frontier, which states that an economy closer to the technological frontier should invest more in skilled labor since innovation is a skill-intensive activity. In contrast to Vandenbussche, Aghion, and Meghir (henceforth VAM) (2006), I use the proportion of female legislators as an instrument for skilled labor, instead of lagged educational expenditures. The results with the new instrument are consistent with the theoretical prediction and the previous results of VAM (2006). "Do Gender Quotas Influence Women's Representation and Policies?" This paper investigates the effect of applying gender quotas on policy decisions. The results show that an increase in the share of female legislators by one percentage point increases the ratio of government expenditure on health and social welfare to GDP by 0.18 and 0.67 percentage points, respectively. The robustness check supports that the effect of quotas on female legislators is likely to be translated into the influence of female policymakers on social welfare.

Ecuador was ‘refounded’ at the turn of the 21st century, with the articulation of progressive and inclusive ideals in a new Constitution. Social movements and leftist intellectuals in Ecuador have expressed that president Rafael Correa has failed to uphold the 2008 Constitution’s goals and values. President Correa and his Alianza PAIS government have utilized the rhetoric of the revolutionary ideals articulated in the Constitution, but in practice, they have continued to implement the status quo Western development model, and a large part of their development strategy involves ‘neo-extractive’ activities. Hydroelectric energy production is contributing to the ‘neo-extractive’ development model in Ecuador, and its implementation has often violated Constitutional rights. This thesis is an analysis of natural resource extraction in Ecuador and its social repercussions, with a focus on hydroelectric energy production. It is shown that the hydroelectric industry in Ecuador is not as “clean,” sustainable, or non-extractive as it is purported to be, through a case study of the San José del Tambo hydroelectric project and the exploration of an international support for hydroelectric extractivism, the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, and its misleading framing of extractive projects as “sustainable development.” Social movements in Ecuador are acting to reverse the perversion of their originally revolutionary ideals, and to implement a post-extractive model informed by those revolutionary ideals.