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<p>Economic inequality is increasing in Canada and throughout the world. In addition to the equity concerns of distributive justice, growing economic inequality negatively impacts poverty, social cohesion, and the stability of the economy. This master’s thesis undertakes a major literature review to explore the trends in economic inequality and the policies that influence it.</p> <p>The current increase in economic inequality has been dominated by an increase in the income and wealth of the 1% to which the Occupy movement has drawn significant attention. Policies to directly counter this rise in both before- and after-tax top incomes are critical to combatting economic inequality. In addition to highlighting policies that target the very rich, this thesis examines intersections between traditional social policy and broader public policy in the field of economic inequality. It also argues for increased consideration of economics in social work research and policy practice. Economic inequality should be a concern to social workers alongside poverty.</p> <p>Policies in four areas are considered: income taxes and transfers, public services, labour market institutions, and capital market interventions. Recommendations are made for the future. Addressing economic inequality through national policy is both possible and advantageous. A comprehensive policy package involving policies from the four areas explored has the potential to reduce economic inequality.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

The goal of this dissertation was to model and test whether political parties once in power skew the federal budget in favor of their base. The theory includes the formation of a comprehensive theoretical model, which divided the budgetary instruments into two categories: monetary and political transfers. Using statistical tools, the dissertation examines the budgetary bias itself, the timing of its usage across the electoral cycle, and the substitutability of the instruments. The results found that political parties do bias budgetary funds towards their base. However, they tend to use tools, which are less visible to the opposition party and more evident to their base. The results confirmed that when parties use more of one type of transfer, they use less of the other. Finally, parties use alterations in total transfers to influence their base early in the election cycle, and move on to other means, such as platform alterations, as the next election draws closer. / Economics

Transmission line is a crucial role in power transmission network which connects generating units to consumers. Some unpredicted failure events such as lightening or system faults can cause transmission line tripped, which may bring about a large interruption to the system and causes damage. When line outage happens, the power flow on the tripped line will be redistributed to the rest of lines in the system. It may cause risk of overload happens on other lines, and results in a cascading failure and system collapse. Reasonably, a single line outage will not affect all other lines in the system. Therefore, when a line outage happens, it is important for the system operator to have a preview of which lines will have serious impact and which lines will not, so that the operator can only focus on monitoring certain lines which will be seriously affected, rather than keeping monitoring the whole system. In this thesis, A Line Outage Distribution Factor (LODF) method is proposed and implemented in the IEEE 118 bus system to estimate active power flow redistribution after a line outage. After that, a definition of Thevenin electrical distance between two transmission lines is derived and applied to calculate electrical distances between the outage line and each line in the system. An exponential convergence tendency is found between maximum possible LODF predicted power flow variations and electrical distance, and an exponential regression method is applied to analyze this tendency. The contribution of this work is a rule has been found that starting from the outage line, the maximum possible active power flow variation on transmission lines exponentially decreases exponentially while the electrical distance increases. With only the information of system's normal operating condition and topological information, the maximum possible active power change on each lines caused by single line outage, and the margin of the impact of single line outage on power flow variations may propagate along electrical distance can be easily and quickly predicted. Ultimately, the goal of this work is to allow operators at the control center can concentrate on lines within a certain electrical distance instead of keeping monitoring the whole system when a line outage happens. / Master of Science

Yes / The redesign of defined benefit pension schemes usually results in a substantial redistribution of wealth between age cohorts of members, pensioners, and the sponsor. This is the first study to quantify the redistributive effects of a rule change by a real world scheme (the Universities Superannuation Scheme, USS) where the sponsor underwrites the pension promise. In October 2011 USS closed its final salary scheme to new members, opened a career average revalued earnings (CARE) section, and moved to ‘cap and share’ contribution rates. We find that the pre-October 2011 scheme was not viable in the long run, while the post-October 2011 scheme is probably viable in the long run, but faces medium term problems. In October 2011 future members of USS lost 65% of their pension wealth (or roughly £100,000 per head), equivalent to a reduction of roughly 11% in their total compensation, while those aged over 57 years lost almost nothing. The riskiness of the pension wealth of future members increased by a third, while the riskiness of the present value of the sponsor’s future contributions reduced by 10%. Finally, the sponsor’s wealth increased by about £32.5 billion, equivalent to a reduction of 26% in their pension costs. / The full text will be available at the end of the publisher's embargo; Oct 16 2017

Yes / This paper presents test results of six full scale reinforced concrete continuous T beams. One beam was reinforced with glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars while the other five beams were reinforced with a different combination of GFRP and steel bars. The ratio of GFRP to steel reinforcement at both mid-span and middle-support sections was the main parameter investigated. The results showed that adding steel reinforcement to GFRP reinforced concrete T-beams improves the flexural stiffness, ductility and serviceability in terms of crack width and deflection control. However, the moment redistribution at failure was limited because of the early yielding of steel reinforcement at a beam section that does not reach its moment capacity and could still carry more loads due to the presence of FRP reinforcement. The experimental results were compared with the ultimate moment prediction of ACI 440.2R-17, and with the existing theoretical equations for deflection prediction. It was found that the ACI 440.2R-17 reasonably estimated the moment capacity of both mid-span and middle support sections. Conversely, the available theoretical deflection models underestimated the deflection of hybrid reinforced concrete T-beams at all load stages.

This dissertation consists of three papers: two theoretical explorations of the relationship between globalization and unilateral policies and an empirical study on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and standardization. The first two chapters contribute to the literature on trade models with heterogeneous firms, focusing on offshoring as a form of trade in tasks. These tasks—one of which may be offshored to a lower-wage or lower-emission tax country—are inputs in the production of intermediate goods, which are then assembled into a final product. The intermediate goods sector is characterized by monopolistic competition, with firms varying in productivity according to Melitz (2003). Factor allocation is determined by an occupational choice mechanism based on managerial ability. This framework allows for an exploration of the connections between globalization, redistribution, and environmental policies. The third paper shifts focus to the financial aspect of globalization, contributing to the literature on the determinants of FDI, particularly the role of management standards. The theoretical models in Chapters 2 and 3 are set in an asymmetric two-country context where firms from a higher-wage country (the North) relocate parts of their production to a lower-wage country (the South). Both chapters examine unilateral policies in the North: Chapter 2 explores a redistribution policy involving an increase in the corporate tax rate, while Chapter 3 investigates an increase in the emission tax rate. Financially, this shift in production patterns mirrors North-South FDI. Chapter 4 examines the role of the ISO 9001 management standard in various FDI scenarios. Chapter 2 investigates the effects of a unilateral redistribution policy in an asymmetric two-country setting where globalization is modeled as offshoring. It combines the offshoring model from Egger et al. (2015) with a redistribution scheme from Kohl (2020), offering insights into how welfare states impact globalization. The framework involves two countries: a source and a host country. In the source country, individuals can choose to become workers or managers (owners of firms), while in the host country, this option is unavailable, creating asymmetry. Individuals in the source country differ in their managerial ability, and only the most capable become managers. These firms produce in the intermediate goods sector, characterized by monopolistic competition. Intermediate goods production involves two tasks: a non-routine task and a routine task, with the latter being offshorable to the host country. Offshoring allows firms to benefit from lower effective wages in the host country but involves fixed costs, so only the most productive firms choose this option. Profit income is taxed, representing a progressive income tax, while tax revenue is redistributed to individuals in the source country. The key finding is that increasing the tax rate in the source country alters factor allocation, making the worker occupation more attractive, increasing the number of workers, and decreasing the local wage rate. This adjustment reduces the marginal cost advantage of the host country, making offshoring less attractive and resulting in reshoring. This mechanism introduces an indirect channel through which a tax rate increase affects factor allocation, aggregate income, and inequality. While aggregate income decreases due to occupational choice distortion and tax-induced reshoring, inequality decreases. These results differ from related work where a tax increase is linked to decreased market share and increased attractiveness of exporting (Kohl and Richter, 2023). An extension considers the deductibility of offshoring fixed costs, affecting the tax base. A broader tax base due to lower deductibility reduces offshoring. Chapter 3 uses the same asymmetric two-country setting from Egger et al. (2015) but generalizes intermediate goods production to include emission generation, as modeled by Copeland and Taylor (1994). Firms now decide how to allocate labor between non-routine and routine tasks and how emission-intensive production should be. Emissions are taxed in both countries, with each government redistributing tax income. Unlike in Chapter 2, firms' offshoring decisions depend on wage differences and emission tax differentials. Managerial ability and firm productivity follow a Pareto distribution, leading to higher profits and lower emission intensity. The model examines the impact of a unilateral increase in the source country's emission tax rate, making emission-intensive production more expensive. This leads to several outcomes: productive domestic firms begin offshoring, domestic firms reduce their emission intensity, and the average emissions of domestic firms decrease (the technique effect). The increase in offshoring raises labor demand in the host country, increasing local wages and shifting offshoring firms' production towards more emission-intensive methods. Less productive firms enter offshoring, lowering average productivity and increasing emissions leakage. If offshoring is already high, the tax increase could lead to higher global emissions. Additionally, income shifts from the source to the host country, reducing between-country inequality but increasing within-country inequality in the source country. These findings contrast with models where an emission tax increase reduces global emissions (Egger et al., 2021b). An extension incorporating border carbon adjustment shows that such reforms prevent emission leakage, lowering global emissions but increasing global income losses. This chapter offers insights into the effects of policy instruments on climate change. Chapter 4 shifts focus to the financial aspects of cross-border activities, specifically the role of standardization in management practices, as exemplified by the ISO 9001 standard, in driving cross-border investments. This certification helps firms increase productivity, align with customer needs, and signal quality to potential partners and investors. Drawing on the literature on the role of institutions (North, 1991), globally recognized certificates can reduce frictions in cross-border investments, especially in countries with weak institutional quality. The analysis in Chapter 4 examines the effect of ISO 9001 certification diffusion on destination country inward FDI stocks, using bilateral panel data from 1995 to 2020. The estimation follows the gravity model literature, controlling for economic and institutional variables, as well as pair- and year-fixed effects. The findings reveal a positive impact of destination country certification on FDI inward stocks, particularly in North-South pairs, where lower-developed countries attract higher FDI stocks from developed countries when more local firms are certified. Origin country certification also boosts cross-border investments, especially for high-income countries, aligning with findings from Clougherty and Grajek (2008). These results highlight a novel determinant of cross-border investments, particularly relevant for firms in lower-developed countries facing higher transaction costs and information asymmetries due to weak institutions. The mechanism, beginning with the membership of national standardization bodies at ISO, suggests a policy channel through which the diffusion of certificates and, consequently, FDI can be encouraged.

Le couplage des propriétés ferromagnétiques et semiconductrices représente une perspective prometteuse, afin de réaliser des technologies qui exploitent le spin des électrons. Ceci permettra de stocker et traiter des bits informatiques de façon instantanée dans le même dispositif, plutôt que dans des dispositifs séparés (mémoire et processeur). La Spintronique pourrait alors révolutionner la technologie de l'information. Un candidat potentiel pour la fabrication d'hétérostructures métal ferromagnétique/semiconducteur pour des applications en Spintronique, est le système Mn-Ge. Ce système qui est compatible avec la technologie CMOS, présente une phase intéressante pour la Spintronique qui est Mn5Ge3, avec une possibilité d'épitaxie sur le Ge(111). Afin d'intégrer cette phase dans des procédés de fabrication, nous étudions la diffusion réactive à l'état solide entre un film de Mn et un substrat de Ge (comme dans le cas de la formation des siliciures dans la technologie CMOS). L'accent a été mis sur la séquence de formation de phases lors de la réaction entre un film nanométrique de Mn et le Ge, l'influence de l'interface sur cette réaction, et sur la diffusion du Mn dans le Ge. L'incorporation du carbone dans des films minces de Mn5Ge3 a montré une augmentation notable de la température de Curie : nous présentons alors l'effet du carbone sur la réaction Mn-Ge, et sa redistribution dans les couches minces MnxGey. / Coupling ferromagnetic and semi-conducting properties represents a pathway toward producing technologies that exploit the spin of electrons. That would allow store and process computer bits instantly in a same device, rather than separate devices (memory and CPU). The Spintronics could then revolutionize the information technology. A potential candidate for the fabrication of heterostructures ferromagnetic metal / semiconductor for Spintronics applications is the Mn-Ge system. This system is compatible with CMOS technology, and presents an interesting phase for Spintronics which is Mn5Ge3 phase, which is able to be grown epitaxially on Ge(111). To integrate this phase in the manufacturing process, we study the solid state reactive diffusion between a thin Mn film and Ge substrate, to form a germanide upon the Ge substrate (as in the case of the formation of silicides in CMOS technology). Emphasis was placed on the sequence of phase formation during the reaction between a 50 nm thick Mn film and Ge, the influence of the interface on the reaction, and the diffusion of Mn in Ge. Incorporation of carbon in thin Mn5Ge3 films showed a significant increase in the Curie temperature, we then present the effect of carbon on the reaction Mn-Ge and its redistribution in thin MnxGey films.

Le chapitre 1 porte sur une équation des ondes monodimensionnelle soumise à une condition aux limites unilatérale. Sous des hypothèses de régularité appropriées sur les données initiales, une nouvelle preuve d’existence et d’unicité est proposée. La méthode de redistribution de masse qui repose sur une redistribution de la masse d’un corps de telle sorte qu’il n’y ait pas d’inertie au niveau du nœud de contact est introduite et sa convergence est prouvée. Une approximation de ce problème d’évolution combinant la méthode des éléments finis ainsi que la méthode de redistribution de masse est analysée dans le chapitre 2. Puis deux problèmes ainsi que leurs solutions analytiques respectives (l’une étant nouvelle) sont présentés et des discrétisations possibles en utilisant différentes méthodes d’intégration en temps sont décrites. Enfin, des simulations numériques de ces problèmes sont reportées. Dans le chapitre 3, la masse des nœuds de contact est redistribuée sur les autres nœuds et sa convergence ainsi qu’une estimation de l’erreur en temps sont établies. Ensuite, une solution analytique déjà introduite dans le chapitre 3 est comparée aux approximations obtenues pour plusieurs redistributions de masse possibles mettant ainsi en évidence que plus une redistribution de masse d’un corps se fait à proximité des nœuds de contact meilleures sont les solutions approchées obtenues. Les problèmes de contact élastodynamique en dimension d’espace deux et trois sont étudiés dans le chapitre 4. Comme pour les problèmes de contact monodimensionnels, une solution approchée combinant les éléments finis et la redistribution de masse est exposée. Quelques simulations numériques utilisant des méthodes d’intégration en temps mettent en évidence les propriétés de convergence de la méthode de redistribution de masse. / The chapter 1 focuses on a one–dimensional wave equation being subjected to a unilateral boundary condition. Under appropriate regularity assumptions on the initial data, a new proof of existence and uniqueness results is proposed. The mass redistribution method based on a redistribution of the body mass such that there is no inertia at the contact node is introduced and its convergence is proved. An approximation of this evolutionary problem combining the finite element method as well as the mass redistribution method is analyzed in chapter 2. Then two benchmark problems (one being new) with their analytical solutions are presented and some possible discretizations using different time–integration schemes are described. Finally, numerical experiments for these benchmark problems are reported. In chapter 3, the mass of the contact nodes is redistributed on the other nodes and its convergence as well as an error estimate in time are established. Then an analytical solution already introduced in chapter 3 is compared to approximate ones obtained for different choices of mass redistribution highlighting that more a mass redistribution of the body is done near the contact nodes better the approximate solutions are obtained. The two and three–dimensional elastodynamic contact problems are studied in chapter 4. As for the one–dimensional contact problems, an approximated solution combining the finite element and mass redistribution methods is exhibited. Some numerical experiments using time–integration methods highlighted the convergence properties of the mass redistribution method.

Pour résoudre le problème de déclin de la biodiversité, l'économie de la biodiversité, une branche de l'économie de l'environnement, suggère le recours aux mécanismes marchands. Lors de la Conférence des Nations Unies sur l'Environnement et le Développement (CNUED) de Rio en 1992, notamment durant les négociations de la Convention sur la Diversité Biologique (CDB), cette idéalisation du marché en faveur de la conservation de la biodiversité influe fortement les décisions. Les pays riches en biodiversité, paradoxalement les plus pauvres, vont alors mettre en place des politiques basées sur la conciliation entre marché, développement soutenable et préservation de la biodiversité. Madagascar, un des hotspots en biodiversité, va prioriser dès la ratification de cette Convention, la valorisation de sa biodiversité par les marchés. Cette thèse a pour objectif d'analyser les retombées de ces marchés pour les populations locales et les impacts sur la conservation de la biodiversité. Basé sur l'étude de deux dispositifs marchands, à savoir les contrats de bioprospection et la filière huiles essentielles, ce travail montre que compte-tenu des objectifs de soutenabilité visés, intégrer la question de la redistribution permet de mieux répondre aux attentes des différents acteurs, en particulier celles des acteurs locaux, et de prendre en compte la diversité des enjeux. La première partie est axée sur l'analyse institutionnelle de la bioprospection et de la filière huiles essentielles. La seconde partie analyse les retombées économiques et les impacts de ces deux activités sur la conservation de la biodiversité, et propose l'utilisation d'une approche par les scénarios pour traiter de la question de redistribution.