Economics Commons^™

College As Capability Enhancement, Cristina Lee

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis I wanted to apply the Sen’s framework in Development as Freedom to college campuses. In my experience at Claremont McKenna College, I have seen how some students are able to take advantage of the resources better than others. Given that we were all accepted by the same admissions office, I always questioned why did some students know how to take advantage of the system. In order to explore this, I first discuss Sen’s capability approach. Then, I show how the capability approach is more comprehensive than social networking theory and William Deresiewicz’s account on elite colleges. Finally, …

Marketing And Poverty Alleviation: Synergizing Research, Education, And Outreach Through The Subsistence Marketplaces Approach, Madhubalan Viswanathan, Arun Sreekumar

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In this article, we describe our journey through the creation and development of the stream of subsistence marketplaces, summarize our learning, and discuss implications at the intersection of the field of Marketing and poverty alleviation. Distinct from macro level economic research in impoverished contexts, or mid-level approaches, such as the base of the pyramid (BOP) approach in business strategy, this approach is rooted at the micro-level, enabling bottom up understanding of buyer and seller. The term, subsistence marketplaces, reflects understanding these contexts in their own right, not just as markets to sell to, but as individuals, communities, consumers, …

Information Transmission And The Oral Tradition: Evidence Of A Late-Life Service Niche For Tsimane Amerindians, Eric Schniter, Nathaniel T. Wilcox, Bret A. Beheim, Hillard S. Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Storytelling can affect wellbeing and fitness by transmitting information and reinforcing cultural codes of conduct. Despite their potential importance, the development and timing of storytelling skills, and the transmission of story knowledge have received minimal attention in studies of subsistence societies that more often focus on food production skills. Here we examine how storytelling and patterns of information transmission among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists are predicted by the changing age profiles of storytellers’ abilities and accumulated experience. We find that storytelling skills are most developed among older adults who demonstrate superior knowledge of traditional stories and who report telling stories most. We …

Globalization Tumult And Civilizational Greatness, Pradip N. Khandwalla

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In the kind of tumultuous, strife-torn, and stressful world we are living in, we need to ask the questions: “Is our civilization moving in the right direction? What makes a civilization great?” Greed for power and greed for money, unless offset by a shared conception of civilizational excellence, often degenerate into widespread corruption, fraud, and violence. In developing countries like India, the challenge is to design a civilization that uses the creativity and enterprise of the market economy, the freedom of choice of democracy, and the altruism of the developmental state – to reverse degeneration and foster social, economic, and …

Transforming The Mortgage Sub-Sector Using The Fss 2020 Platform, Patrick E. Aririguzo

Bullion

This paper examines the Mortgage sector of FSS2020 Strategy document which falls within the category of the drivers of the FSS2020 Strategy implementation blueprint. FSS2020 Mortgage: Vision and Mission. The paper further explores the Strategic Objectives of FSS2020 Mortgage Sector and the Transformational Programmes which includes: Ml - Establish a secondary mortgage market; M2 - Attract affordable international credit to fund affordable housing programmes; M3 - Advocate for mortgage ready and affordable housing. Three Transformational Programmes were designed to support the realization of the three objectives of the Mortgage Sector namely: TPl - Establishment of Mortgage Refinancing Companies (MRC) TP2 …

Tallahassee Central City Planning Study, Tallahassee-Leon County Planning Department

City and Regional Planning -- Florida

Study on Developing Downtown Tallahassee

[Review Of The Book Employment And Development: A New Review Of Evidence, By David Turnham], Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] I first encountered David Turnham’s work after majoring in labor economics in undergraduate and graduate school and spending a year in Nairobi studying and modeling the labor market there. The atmosphere in Kenya was crackling with intellectual excitement: John Harris and Michael Todaro had just showed how the solution to urban unemployment might be rural development, George Johnson had demonstrated that earnings function analysis ‘worked’ despite doubts about the quality of developing country data and the applicability of developed country concepts, Dharam Ghai was developing the basic human needs approach to development, and Joe Stiglitz was formulating efficiency wage …

Individual And Household-Level Effects Of Energy Poverty On Human Development, Brandon Bridge

Economics ETDs

This study investigates some of the predictors of energy poverty, the interrelationships between different expressions of energy poverty, and the human development impacts of energy poverty on primarily rural individuals and households in an underdeveloped country. It uses data from four rounds of Nicaragua's Living Standards Measurement Survey, and examines the effects of energy poverty on income, education, and health.

Chapter 1 provides background information on energy poverty in general, as well as the specific situation that has developed in Nicaragua. It also provides a modeling framework, both conceptual and mathematical, for the ways in which energy poverty impacts human …

Social Innovation, Gender, And Technology: Bridging The Resource Gap, Tonia Warnecke

Faculty Publications

Some of the most important resources are intangible, such as knowledge and access to networks. In the developing world, technology can facilitate these resources and address basic human needs in a variety of ways: from provision of farmer training and cloud-controlled clean water systems to health information and mobile money services. Some of these services expand access to resources in ways that particularly benefit women. In environments where women are disadvantaged socially and economically, information and communications technologies (ICT) can enable women to access valuable information, consider a broader range of business opportunities, access wider markets, partake in educational programs, …

Ambiguity Aversion: Adoption, Uptake, And Trends, Adam Franklin

Master's Theses

What is ambiguity aversion and what is its role as a determinant of technology adoption? This study develops and implements a novel ambiguity preference instrument in the context of an ongoing RCT pilot program in southwest Uganda promoting adoption of an improved variety of sweet potato. No correlation between ambiguity aversion and crop adoption is observed, although it is suspected that RCT treatment arms including supply- and demand-side information reduced the ambiguity of the new variety, probably overcoming any ambiguity-preference-related constraints and clouding the picture. Methodological lessons learned regarding the development and implementation of an apporopriate ambiguity preference measure point …

Marketing And Poverty Alleviation: The Perspective Of The Poor, Aneel Karnani

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The best way to reduce poverty is to focus on raising the productive capacity – not the consumption capacity – of the poor. This implies poverty reduction efforts must focus on two dimensions: raising income of the poor, and providing the poor access to basic public services (such as public health, education, sanitation, infrastructure and security). First, the best way to raise income is to create employment opportunities for the poor. The private sector is clearly the best engine for job creation; the government can play a useful facilitating role. Second, governments are responsible for, and should be held accountable …

Does Globalization Improve Quality Of Life?, Laura E. Hirt

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

‘Community Of Schools’: A Case Study Of Development, Participation And Integration In Cato Manor Township, South Africa, Anthony L. Wagner

Student Publications

By the end of the twentieth century, a subfield of anthropology known as critical development studies emerged - in large part due to the work of James Ferguson and Arturo Escobar - as a critique of post-colonial development programs and NGOs of the West that were at work in much of the developing world - most notably sub-Saharan Africa. Development was largely panned by these early researchers as a means by which Western powers habituated problems in the developing world so as to create a profitable industry of development. Contemporary anthropological inquiries have called for an increasingly field-based approach to …

Barriers To The Diffusion Of Renewable Energy Technology In Mongolia Lee, Madeline Academic Director: Sanjaasuren, Ulziijargal Claremont Mckenna College International Relations Mongolia: Ulaanbaatar, Darkhan, Salkhit, Hatgal Nomadism, Geopolitics, And The Environment Sit Study Abroad Spring, Madeline Lee

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As the international community looks promote sustainable development in developing countries, many policies have focused on the introduction of renewable energy technology (RET). For Mongolia specifically, RET is both a viable and optimal option, considering the country’s vast natural resources and the unsustainability of the country’s existing energy system. However, Mongolia has faced challenges with the development of its RET sector and still largely relies on international assistance and funding to develop largescale projects.

This study analyzes the barriers that Mongolia faces to the effective diffusion of RET into Mongolian society. Over the course of four weeks, 10 individuals were …

Winning The Virtuous Battle, But Losing The War? The Tradeoffs Of Humanitarian Aid And Its Impact On Human Development, Sierra Miller

International Political Economy Theses

This paper addresses the question of what conditions best enable recipient countries to harness humanitarian aid to create long term human development. In an examination of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka, it becomes clear that the conditions that limit humanitarian aid’s potential for human development are more apparent than those that enable it. Political conflict, instability, inequalities, and social divisions in the recipient countries contribute to the limited effect of humanitarian aid on development, but institutional weakness, inconsistency, and competition within the international humanitarian aid community have a larger impact on …

Politics Below The Surface: A Political Ecology Of Mineral Rights And Land Tenure Struggles In Appalachia And The Andes, Lindsay Shade

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation examines how confusion and lack of access to information about subsurface property rights facilitates the rapid acquisition of mineral rights by mining interests, leaving those who live 'above the surface' to contend with complicated corporate and bureaucratic apparatuses. The research focuses on the first proposed state-run large scale mining project in Ecuador, believed to contain copper ores, and on the natural gas hydrofracking industry in three counties in north central West Virginia. Qualitative and visual methods, including mapping, are employed to determine (i.) how the geography of subsurface ownership patterns is changing, (ii.) links between changes in subsurface …

How Does The Million Baht Village Fund Impact Fertility In Thailand?, Kaci Felstet

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study evaluates the impact of Thailand’s Million Baht Village Fund program on household fertility decisions. Thailand’s fertility rates are alarmingly low and it is imperative to recognize the unintended consequences a microfinance program may have on fertility choices within Thailand. Using panel data from pre- and post-program years, this research identifies the change in number of babies in a household associated with getting a microloan from the Village Fund program. The quasi-experimental nature of the program and an instrumental variable model with fixed effects identifies a negative relationship between the number of babies within families and participation in the …

Institutional Development: Interpreting The Russian Case, Joshua W. Rooney

CMC Senior Theses

A fundamental question to both historians and development economists is why countries today are able to reach and maintain such starkly different economic outcomes. Popular explanations include geographic and climatological features, short-term policy decisions, and economic institutions. This paper looks at the importance of violence and social pressure in the transformation and conservation of political and economic institutions in Russia. It finds that several major historical legacies including serfdom, Mongol dominance, Orthodoxy, and authoritarianism significantly influence both the past a present institutional setting. Furthermore, such legacies have proven to be major obstructions to the emergence of economic liberalism.

Health Aid In Africa: Placement, Service Utilization, And Benefit, Carrie Dolan

Theses and Dissertations

While the health sector has attracted significant foreign aid, evidence on the effectiveness of this support is mixed. This dissertation examines the allocation of health aid within the context of placement, service utilization, and benefit. The first paper examined the sub-national allocation of Chinese development aid projects across Africa. I determined how political preferencing of Chinese aid specifically, allocating aid to the birth region of the current political leader differs across sectors such as health, education, and transportation. I find some evidence that aid, more broadly defined, is subject to political preferencing in recipient countries, which could potentially limit its …

Gender Empowerment In The Development Economics Literature: The Language Of Choice, Preferences And Agency, Pranay Panday

Senior Projects Spring 2017

In my project, I try to trace how our present understanding of gender empowerment is formed, and how mainstream economics literature has accommodated feminist contributions to the concept. I look at neoclassical household models, feminist critiques of the same models, foundational ideas on gender empowerment, and finally the current development economics literature on empowerment. I find that the concept of choices and preferences, and in particular the formation of preferences, is central to understanding gender empowerment. I deduce that a) empowerment is both a process and an outcome, b) that the end goal of empowerment is the access to resources …

An Outlay Equivalence Analysis Of South African Households, Samuel Peevey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A significant amount of evidence suggests that gender inequality in the developing world negatively impacts women and girls’ health, education and future wage potential. This thesis investigates whether households in South Africa discriminated against their girl children, in favor of their boy children. Additionally, I will investigate whether household heads favored children matching their own sex. Using the 1^st wave of the National Income Dynamics Study and Angus Deaton’s outlay-equivalence ratio method, I will estimate the impact, 8 age and sex categories have on their household’s adult goods expenditure. I found statistically significant but practically insignificant evidence, from a …