This thesis investigates the role of Canadians in the international trade in human organs and the factors influencing patient decision making, assuming that patients make decisions regarding the management of their illness in a complex social, cultural, political and economic nexus. It engages a broad theoretical question of whether Canadians uphold values consistent with a commitment to consumerism, commodifying organs as needed and afforded, or altruism, supportive of voluntary organ donation systems. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with hemodialysis patients and their care givers in a southern Ontario hospital. Based on this analysis, Canadians appear to fall somewhere in the middle of the consumer-altruist divide. The dominant sentiment among participants was that Canadians ought not to be commodified, but the organs of foreign others in places removed from the Canadian value system hold potential, and provide opportunities for participating in a market when the supply of organs falls short of demand.

<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>

Much literature has documented the high levels of burnout, stress, and grief in HIV physicians and nurses due to the challenging nature of the chronic, fatal disease with which they deal on a daily basis. Providers of social and HIV prevention services face similar challenges while working with stigmatized, terminally ill clients. However, since these latter occupations deal with social, rather than clinical interventions, their experiences may differ from those of medical personnel. Through open-ended interviews with HIV counselors, educators, case managers, and outreach workers, this exploratory study assesses the occupational stressors of providers of social and HIV prevention services in the Tampa Bay area. By addressing the factors that contribute to stress in HIV prevention work, coping strategies and structural interventions are recommended to an AIDS service organization to combat the ill effects of these problems.

The central aim of this dissertation is to make an unambiguous international trade policy recommendation for developing countries grounded on rigorous economic theory. As is generally known, trade models featuring increasing returns to scale and imperfect competition have challenged the mainstream case for free trade which is built upon unrealistic assumptions like constant return to scale and perfect competition. In this context, the core contribution of this dissertation is the restatement of the original free-trade case made by the classical political economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo. This restatement is based on the accurate interpretation of Ricardo's famous numerical example in chapter 7 of the Principles. The classical case for free trade formulated by Smith and Ricardo neither relies on unrealistic assumptions nor the laissez-faire doctrine. On the contrary, it stipulates that free trade should always be accompanied by public policies that expand the provision of public education, job training, health care and infrastructure. Moreover, a widespread policy change towards free trade should always be implemented gradually, in order to take care of those groups who might be affected in the short run by the increased level of international competition and technological progress. The main conclusion of the dissertation is that free trade - as conceived by classical political economy - is the most suitable international trade policy for developed as well developing countries for achieving sustainable economic growth and development. (author's abstract)

This thesis seeks to understand the relationship between county level economic voting and county level economic voting by demographic group on county level vote shares for U.S. presidential elections. Using an entity and time fixed effects regression model, I study the effects that county level growth in real per capita personal income and unemployment rate change have on county level two-party vote share for the Democratic Party. Additionally, I observe the responsiveness of a county’s voting behavior due to the demographic makeup of that specific county. I then compare my initial results to those of Eisenberg and Ketcham (2004) for the 1992-2000 presidential elections. I utilize the same models for the 2004-2012 elections to compare these results to those from the 1992-2000 elections. Additionally, I rerun my model for the 1992-2000 presidential elections, after restricting my economic data to non-outliers, to study the effects that outliers in economic conditions have on my original results.

Questions on the optimal size of government always provoke intense political debate. At the center of this is the public goods problem, where certain goods and services are “under-provided” by the market due to problems with rivalry and excludability. These goods are usually provided by the public sector and financed through taxes. Questions emerge over the optimal level of provision, as different individuals value these goods differently. This dissertation consists of two studies which address preferences for the size of government from different perspectives. The first study provides a method that can be used to estimate demand for changes in levels of public provision. Using individual level Census data on migration from 1990 and 2000, I demonstrate how preferences are revealed through migration responses. Though policy convergence precludes the estimation of optimal levels for different demographic groups, I find that balanced-budget increases in education expenditures tend to attract most demographic groups while other expenditures tend to repel most individuals. Young, college educated, relatively high-income individuals tend to be more responsive to, and therefore appear to have higher preference intensity for, fiscal changes. This is true even when controlling for their increased propensity to migrate. Evidence inconsistent with welfare migration is found, suggesting that policies intended to address the race-to-the-bottom in welfare benefits may be counterproductive. In addition, the ability of the Tiebout migration process to homogenize a jurisdiction is limited by relatively small fiscal changes among jurisdictions and similar migration responses among demographic groups. The second study empirically explores the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on government size for countries throughout the world. In the developed world, heterogeneity is found to reduce the size of budgetary government, consistent with previous studies and predictions in the literature. In the undeveloped world, however, heterogeneity is found to increase the size of non-budgetary government and may increase the overall size of government.

Environmental regulatory policy in the U.S. is a mixture of federal, state, and local activity and impacts. This is true of air quality regulations, which are governed at the federal level by the Clean Air Act. This dissertation analyzes both the political economy of federal environmental regulations and the empirical effects of ozone regulations under the Clean Air Act.A political economy model is developed that offers a motivation for political support of national environmental policy that regulates strictly local pollution. Altering local environmental policies in other jurisdictions will cause capital migration, which may increase local welfare. Thus, individuals have an incentive to influence local policies in other jurisdictions. National environmental policy then becomes a potential tool for inter-jurisdictional competition.The empirical impacts of ground-level ozone regulations under the Clean Air Act are also analyzed. The Clean Air Act established minimum air quality standards; localities failing to meet the established standards are classified as nonattainment areas and are subject to additional environmental regulations. These new regulations have a direct impact on polluting industries, and therefore also an indirect impact on the revenues and expenditures of local governments.First, nonattainment status is seen to alter regional industrial geography. Overall economic activity declines in both nonattainment areas and the surrounding jurisdictions. Gaining attainment status partially mitigates these impacts, although to some extent theeconomic impacts in both nonattainment areas and the surrounding jurisdictions do permanently persist. I also find evidence that manufacturing activity relocates from nonattainment areas to surrounding areas that face more lenient air quality regulations.Ozone nonattainment status is also seen to produce fiscal effects for local governments as changes in industrial geography alter local tax bases. Revenues and expenditures decline in regulated population centers, while they increase in surrounding areas. These increases diminish with distance from the urban center. Also, the fiscal impacts persist even after attainment status has been gained.

This thesis has two central objectives. First, drawing on both the insights contained in the staples approach and the frames and narratives mobilized by contemporary political actors, it attempts to provide insight into the political-economic drivers underpinning the large and growing political influence of the Canadian oil sands. Second, it assesses the effects of this influence on Canadian society and the Canadian state. This influence is observable materially, as with the federal government’s oil sands-oriented policy changes and mobilization of the state security apparatus in its defense, and in less concrete ways, as with the rise of discourses conflating national interest with continued oil sands expansion. This thesis concludes that the effects of this influence have been negative and profound, and in an era of climate crisis, alternatives to Canada’s dominant political economic trends must be urgently sought. / Graduate / paulnoblegreen@gmail.com

Policy responsiveness to the demands of the whole is important because it is a determinant of growth and development: Institutions that make governments more inclusive favor economic progress and factors that make governments more exclusive inhibit prosperity. Growth-enhancing policies likely to please the citizenry include policies that ensure the prevalence of the rule of law, policies that protect property and intellectual rights, and policies that foster competition, access and the perfection of markets. In contrast, growth-retarding policies likely to initiate from the representation efforts of politicians advancing narrow concerns include infringement on property rights, diffuse patent legislation, regulation to rise some price or wage, regulation blocking the entry into specific markets, official protection to monopolistic markets and adoption of legal barriers against international competition. If policy responsiveness to the interests of the whole favors economic affluence, what political institutions matter for the advancement of wide-encompassing interests through the policy making process? This dissertation examines the idea that the incentives provided by the intra-party candidate selection methods are crucial in order to understand the politicians' representation efforts. Expressly, increasing participation and democratization of the intra-party nomination process increase the incumbent's propensity to represent wide-encompassing interests and adopt policies that favor economic affluence. In contrast, elite-centered nomination methods decrease the incumbent's incentive to be politically responsive to the interests of the whole in favor of the representation of narrow concerns that often demand policies that benefit the group at the expense of overall economic growth. Empirically, the idea that aspirants to party tickets must first respond to the demands of those with the power to add their names to the electoral ballot finds robust support. In the developed world, candidate nomination appears largely informed by inclusive and democratic practices. Quite the opposite, in the less-developed world events of intraparty participatory politics are for the most part absent, with nomination decisions often monopolized by national party leaders and local party bosses.

Il fine di questa tesi e’ offrire un contributo per la compresione di due problemi presenti nella letteratura di political economy, il primo dal punto di vista teoretico, il secondo attraverso un’analisi econometrica. Questi due temi sono come i sistemi politici reagiscono rispetto alla scarsita’ di offerta di “buoni” politici, e se i trasferimenti intergovernativi sono influenzati dai fini politici ed elettorali del governo centrale. L’analisi teorica fornisce alcune intuizioni relative alle ragioni per cui osserviamo politici di bravura molto variabile, e quali meccanismi potrebbero invece migliorare la qualita’ della classe politica. L’analisi empirica invece si concentra su un altro problema conseguente all’interazione tra le sfere politica ed economica. I trasferimenti intergovernativi tra Stato centrale e amministrazioni locali e’ stato oggetto di grande attenzione nella letteratura economica. Le ragioni di efficienza ed equita’ che rendono ragione dei trasferimenti intergovernativi sono state esplorate a lungo. Questa tesi si focalizza invece sulle cause di “political economy” di questi finanziamenti. Si e’ infatti tentato di verificare se l’allineamento politico tra sindaci e primo ministro determini o meno la quantita’ di fondi afferenti ad un comune. / This thesis aims to offer a contribution to the understanding of two problems present in the literature on political economy, one from a game theoretical perspective, and the other through an econometric analysis. These two issues are how polities cope with the scarce supply of ‘good’ politicians, and whether intergovernmental grants are affected by the political and electoral goals of politicians in central government. The theoretical analysis attempts to give some insights into the reasons why we observe politicians of very different valence in office, and what are the mechanism that could enhance the quality of the political class. The empirical analysis instead focuses on another problem found in the interaction between the political and the economic spheres. Economic literature extensively described the rationale behind intergovernmental grants, how for example they can help solving externalities between local governments, or contribute to a more equitable distribution of resources among areas of the same country. The political economy literature focuses instead on establishing and testing the less noble sources of intergovernmental grants and the political and electoral strategic reasons that might drive the decisions of the central government regarding the allocation of resources between localities. The first and primary aim of my analysis in that chapter is to verify if political alignment between mayors and prime ministers over time determines the size of grants received by municipalities.