Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Productive Stagnation And Unproductive Accumulation In The United States, 1947-2011., Tomas N. Rotta

Doctoral Dissertations

My doctoral research addresses the question of how productive and unproductive forms of capital accumulation interact in the United States. My contribution is to first develop a new understanding of the labor theory of value in order to better explain how financial and rentier forms of revenues relate to the wealth created in productive activities. Second, I offer an innovative analysis of historical trends regarding unproductive accumulation in the postwar United States economy. For that purpose, I propose a new methodology to estimate Marxist categories from conventional input-output matrices, national income accounts, and employment data. A core feature of my …

Output Fluctuations And Economic Growth In Latin America In The Aftermath Of The Great Recession, Gonzalo Hernandez Jimenez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the short and long run effects of the Great Recession on Latin America. For the short run, this study evaluates (i) the existence of a business cycle co-movement between the US and Latin America, (ii) the role of the Latin American export structure as an aspect that may amplify the growth spillover effects of the output fluctuations in the US, and (iii) the terms of trade as a determinant of the short run output fluctuations in Colombia, a primary commodity exporter that resembles the assumptions of open small dependent economies. Consistent with the historical evidence, the US …

Essays On The Evolution Of Inequality, Cem Oyvat

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the evolution of inequality during the development process. Specifically, the study will focus on two factors that crucially in influence the evolution of distribution: 1) industrialization and urbanization, and 2) agrarian structures and land inequality. The dissertation consists of three essays: The first essay examines the impact of the initial conditions of agrarian structures on income inequality over the long run. It develops a model showing that at the same level of national income, countries with more unequal land distribution can be expected to experience greater agglomeration in the urban sector. The excess labor in the urban …

The Financial Sector And Inclusive Development In Africa: Essays On Access To Finance For Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises In South Sudan And Kenya, James A. Garang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation, consisting of three essays, uses data from field surveys of banks and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) conducted in South Sudan and Kenya from July 2011 through September 2012. The first essay examines the role of financial sector development in expanding access to finance by SMEs in Kenya. We find that while the financial system in general, and the Central Bank of Kenya in particular, have made headway in expanding financial inclusion in Kenya, small firms continue to face more constraints in access to finance compared to larger firms. The policy emphasis on financial inclusion, coupled with the …

Essays On Fiscal Policies In Open Economies, Ahiteme Nicodeme Houndonougbo

Doctoral Dissertations

Investigating various fiscal policy issues in the context of an open economy, this dissertation consists of three essays.

The first essay addresses the question of the volatility of foreign aid and its impact on resource-constrained developing economies. A small open-economy business cycle model is developed that accounts for the effect of external shocks specific to developing economies. The model produces business cycle patterns consistent with the data and key stylized facts. The model is calibrated to reflect the structural empirical regularities of an aid-dependent developing country. The parameters of the exogenous stochastic shocks are estimated using Bayesian methods and 50 …