Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rethinking The Development Of The Automobile Industry In China, Chen Gu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Governmental industrial policies have significant influence on industrial performance. Many developing countries that lack capital and a good technology base use foreign direct investment (FDI)-dependent governmental policies to induce multinational corporations (MNCs) to invest in their indigenous immature industries. In this article, the Chinese automotive industry, which is regulated directly under the Chinese central government, is used to illustrate the interactions between the complex FDI-dependent governmental policies and the industrial development of developing countries. According to changes in Chinese automotive industry policy, the Chinese auto industry’s development process is divided into four phases: extremely passive FDI-dependent policy phase, partial strategic …

Debtor's Empowerment: Muhammad Yunus And The Rhetoric Of Microfinance, Kaleb W. Brooks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the rhetoric of Muhammad Yunus as an articulation of a new governing logic, one that reconstitutes the concept of poverty and binds the poor to the apparatus of global capitalism through a new logic of micro-enterprise. Working within a Foucauldian critical framework informed by the rhetorical scholarship of Ronald W. Greene and Joshua Hanan, the argument proceeds by first paying careful attention to Yunus' work as constitutive of a new grid of intelligibility through which to view the poor and then demonstrating the application of this reformed discourse on "creditworthiness" in articulating a novel regime of commensuration. …

The Effects Of Foreign Aid For Health On Health Outcomes In Developing Countries, Leah R. Burfeind

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effectiveness of foreign aid for health on the child mortality rate in developing countries. This is a controversial subject as many economists have found grounds to believe it is effective while others provide rationale for why it is ineffective. Based on panel data analysis, this study looks at the effects of external resources for health as a percentage of health spending on the child mortality rate in developing countries to determine how effective aid for health is in terms of improving health outcomes. With an understanding of the current nature of …

Global Capitalism And The Energy Crisis: Challenges And Opportunities Associated With A Transition To Renewables, Hillary Fronk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels have provided a cheap and efficient source of energy. Reliance on fossil fuels, especially oil, supported economic growth under capitalism but also has led to climate change. As peak oil approaches, a transition towards renewable sources of energy is mandatory for ensuring future prospects of development and for reducing the effects of climate change. The transition to renewable energy sources could be made smoother if the subsidies provided to the fossil fuel industry were phased out and governments provided incentives for initial investment, financing for research and development, and direct investment. With reference to …

The Climate Emergency And The Need For Global Climate Stabilization: The Role Of Energy Efficiency In Climate Policy, Amy G. Laughlin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Global climate change is a worldwide challenge requiring a coordinated, international policy response. However, political pressures and disagreements between developed and developing countries have obstructed past climate negotiations and have stalled the adoption of binding greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Despite slowmoving international climate negotiations and comprehensive climate policies, many countries have turned to energy efficiency as a politically feasible tool to lower energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Economists debate the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies due differing perspectives regarding the relationship between energy use and economic growth. Because of this fundamental disagreement, economists often come to different conclusions …

Future Work: Denver Metropolitan Area Jobs In A Globalizing Economy, Sharon Gabel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past twenty years, globalization has had both observable and intangible impacts on business and labor markets at the local level, that are of critical importance to communities and the people who inhabit them. While impacts of global economic change on local labor markets have been anticipated, there is little insight in the research literature into the empirical dynamics of the interrelationship between global economic change and local labor markets. This study examined the impacts of globalization on local labor markets through three lenses: (1) quantitative analysis of employment change in the Denver Metropolitan Region local labor market, (2) …

The Impact Of World Bank’S Conditionality-Ownership Hybrid On Forest Management In Cameroon: Policy Hybridity In International Dependence Development, Asongayi Venard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many developing countries depend on the World Bank for development assistance, which the Bank often provides with policy reform conditions. Resistance to World Bank’s conditionality caused the Bank to posit “ownership” as a country’s real assent to its development policies. The combination of ownership and conditionality invalidates the neocolonial, false-paradigm and dualism theses in explaining the international dependence development model. This study explains this model by investigating how the relationship between conditionality and ownership in the context of this model impacts forest management in Cameroon.

Integrating theoretical and methodological insights mainly from political science, economics, geosciences, and sociology, the study …

Bankruptcy Stigma: A Socio-Legal Study, Michael D. Sousa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For as long as the institution of bankruptcy has existed, legal commentators have debated whether it is appropriate for debtors to experience some social stigma upon filing for personal bankruptcy--that is, whether it serves the goals of bankruptcy law for debtors to feel shame. While this issue has been extensively discussed as a theoretical matter, to date no legal commentator or scholar has examined the question as an empirical matter: do debtors in fact associate feelings of shame with filing for bankruptcy, and, if so, why (or why not)? This article, for the first time, undertakes precisely this inquiry. Specifically, …

An Analysis Of The Appreciation Of The Chinese Currency And Influences On China's Economy, Lina Ma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, China's economy development has had more and more impact on the global economy. The Chinese currency continued to appreciate since 2005, which has had both positive and negative results on Chinese's economy. The Chinese government uses the monetary policy to control the inflation pressure, which could work counter to Chinese exchange rate policy. RMB appreciation also has some effects on the Chinese banking system. Through the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), a global computable general equilibrium model, we analyze how, when there is RMB appreciation, the Chinese exports and imports, and Chinese employment and income inequality react. …

The Rise Of The Dark Side: Dark Pool Trading And The Two-Tiered Implication, Katerina Ruth Mills

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The United States equity market is made up of both private and public trading venues, creating a framework dark and light trading liquidity. Private or non-publicly visible liquidity is housed in dark venues while liquidity visible to the public sits in light locations. Light markets follow strict real-time public reporting requirements for trade volume and price; their dark counterparts execute transactions without a real-time reporting requirement. The informational asymmetries that result from this difference in reporting create a "two-tiered" market. The dark sector's participants know both the public and dark, private, trade volumes and price, while the public participating in …

The Reliability Of Chinese Economic Statistics, Lili Yu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

China's rapid economic growth over the past three decades has drawn attention from all over the world. The sources and reliability of the official statistics behind the tremendous growth have been the subject of heated debate among economists. This paper contributes to this data reliability debate by analyzing on the GDP statistics of China and seeks to establish whether or not the official data are valid.

This study begins with a review of the prominent research on the topic. The majority of these studies, reviewed in chapter two, point to a series of inherent contradictions in the official figures, which …

The Education Lorenz Curve: Exploring Education And Social Mobility In A Lorenz Curve Framework, Nichole D. Alexander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within any society the level of social mobility, the distribution of income, and equality of opportunity work together to determine the ease with which a child born into poverty can make it to the middle class during his or her lifetime. Education plays a large part, if not the largest part, in the analysis of these areas within a given society. Therefore, an equal distribution of education among those born into all income levels is one key ingredient to ensuring that all children who are born into poverty get the same chance of succeeding in the workforce as their more …

Corruption, Information, And Reelection Chances Of Incumbent Parties' Presidential Candidates In Developing Countries, Mavuto Kalulu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A large volume of literature shows that corruption affects economic growth through the lowering of the level investment. Slow economic growth is associated with high poverty levels. If corruption makes the voters economically and socially worse off, one expects the citizens to punish the corrupt politicians by not reelecting them. However, evidence shows that even in countries which are perceived to be highly corrupt, incumbents still do get reelected. Chad, for example, is ranked the third most corrupt country in Africa according to the 2010 Transparency International Report, and yet in 2011 presidential elections the incumbent was reelected. A possible …

Monetary Policy And The Housing Market During The Last Decade, Jing Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines how monetary policy influences the housing market in U.S. with a special emphasis on the recent financial crisis dating from 2007, which started from the burst of bubbles in the housing market. Using monthly U.S. data spanning over the period from January 2000 to July 2011, I estimate Vector Auto-regressive(VAR) models using data for each metropolitan statistical area (MSA) to analyze the interaction between local housing markets and monetary policy. Aggregate responses of housing variables to monetary policy are also estimated by adopting composite data. Empirical results show that employment and housing price index both respond negatively …

The Importance Of Housing Variables In Predicting Economic Fluctuations, Wenxian Xu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates the importance of housing variables in predicting the six recent recessions using factor analysis model. It shows that housing variables have great predictive power in forecasting the downturn of the economy, but little predictive power when the economy is steady or is expanding. The explanation is that housing variables match consumers' expectations of future income and employment, and consequently predict future economic downturn. By using Granger-Causality test and vector autoregression (VAR) model, combination of factor analysis and VAR model, and hard thresholding method to identify the importance of each housing variable, the results show that housing price …

Three Essays On Diversification Strategy, Diversification Performance, And Corporate Misconduct, Brandon Charles Lee Morris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The first essay investigates the relationship between diversification strategy and firm performance in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry. Prior literature has evaluated the effect of total diversification on insurer performance; however, there is an absence of evidence on the effect of diversification strategy for multi-line insurers. Theory suggests that related diversifiers should benefit from economies of scope while unrelated diversifiers should benefit from uncorrelated earnings streams. We test for the net effect of diversification strategy and find that relatedness negatively impacts accounting performance. However, we find that the relatedness penalty is confined to stock insurers while mutual insurers' profitability appears …