Political Economy Commons^™

Pushing The Limits: International Land Acquisitions In Comparative Perspective, Ariane Goetz

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The role of investor countries in large-scale land acquisitions is poorly understood in the contemporary “land grab” literature. Orthodox explanations largely build on deductive analyses that deviate from the emerging empirical evidence, and/or face analytical difficulties when trying to capture why large-scale land acquisitions happen. This thesis investigates the global phenomenon of “land grabbing” from the comparative perspective of two major investor countries: the UK and China. The regional focus is on Sub-Saharan Africa, a major target of land-consuming investments since 2000.

The dissertation advances three arguments: Firstly, the specific details of the home country’s industrial set-up, development challenges, ideological …

The Political Economy Of Environmental Justice: A Comparative Study Of New Delhi And Los Angeles, Ratik Asokan

CMC Senior Theses

Though mainstream environmentalism, both in the U.S. and India, was initially rooted in social justice, it has, over time, moved away from this focus. The Environmental Justice Movement consequently arose to reunite social and environmental activism. In this thesis, I trace the historical relationship between the mainstream environmentalism, the Environmental Justice Movement, and marginalized communities. After providing this general overview, I examine two case studies – in Los Angeles and New Delhi respectively – where marginalized communities have been involved in Environmental Justice activities. My analysis reveals that marginalized communities often act in an ‘environmentalist’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ manner, without …

Feasibility Analysis And Strategic Measures For Promoting Viable New Urban Development, Elizabeth J. Farr

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis demonstrates that New Urbanism is both an advisable and feasible method for reducing carbon emissions to mitigate global climate change. New Urban areas commonly generate lower carbon emissions compared to conventional suburban development due to lower car use and higher levels of walking and use of other forms of transportation. Economic and political feasibility of New Urban development is determined by analyzing case studies, housing price premia, financing, and fiscal impact. The many contexts and perspectives involved in the planning process are analyzed to determine if New Urbanism is advisable in the larger setting in which developers, advocates, …

Book Review Of: Why Nations Fail, Ashutosh Mani Dixit

Business Review

The purpose of this article is to assess the contribution of Why Nations Fail about its forefront claim that institution is exclusive determinant of nation’s economic outcome. This paper will examine its findings and put forward arguments and claims of prominent studies about economic development. The paper has been organized in two more section. Immediate section presents chapter wise summary of the book highlighting strengths and key outcomes. While the third section, which is the purpose of the article, offers a critique, than sums up in final section providing some concluding comments.

Critique And Transformation: On The Hypothetical Nature Of Ecosystem Service Value And Its Neo-Marxist, Liberal And Pragmatist Criticisms, Andony P. Melathopoulos, Alex Stoner

Journal Articles

Ecosystem service valuation (ESV) attempts to transform the opposition of human economic necessity and ecological conservation by valuing the latter in terms of the services rendered by the former. However, despite a number of ESV-inspired sustainability initiatives since the 1990s, global ecological degradation continues to accelerate. This suggests that ESV has fallen far short of its goals of sustainable social transformation—a failure which has generated considerable criticism. This paper reviews three prominent lines of ESV criticism: 1) the neo-Marxist criticism, which emphasizes the “fictitious” character of ecosystem commodities; 2) the liberal criticism through Friedrich Hayek's concept “scientistic objectivism”; and 3) …

The Macroeconomics Of The Declining U.S. Labor Share: A Debt-Led Explanation, Alex Jianan Xu

Senior Projects Spring 2015

This paper aims to answer two major conundrums in macroeconomic theory with regards to the U.S. economy. First, standard macroeconomic models such as Harrod-Domar and Solow theoryze that factor shares are constant; however, actual measures of the U.S. labor share have been on a downward trend since the early 1980s. The second conundrum relates to the Post-Kaleckian wage-led or profit-led view of economic growth. It indicates that a fall in the labor share in a wage-led economy will result in a fall in aggregate demand (due to deceases in consumption), and an increase in aggregate demand in a profit-led economy …

Efectos Del Mecanismo De Transmisión Tradicional De Tasa De Interés De Política Monetaria, Sobre El Consumo Periodo De 2002 2013, Laura Paola Cortés Murcia

Economía

La presente investigación estudia la efectividad de la política monetaria, de cómo modificaciones de las tasas de interés del Banco de la República afecta las decisiones de consumo, al incidir en el comportamiento de la demanda agregada. Las maneras cómo se transmiten al resto de la economía las decisiones del Banco Central se conocen como los mecanismos de trasmisión de la política monetaria. En esta investigación se analiza el canal de la tasa de interés, que es el de mayor importancia y describe la relación que hay en la tasa de intervención del banco y el consumo. De sus resultados …

Does The Message Matter? A Field Experiment On Political Party Recruitment, Jessica Robinson Preece

Faculty Publications

Do men and women respond to various party recruitment messages similarly? Working with the Utah County Republican Party, we designed a field experiment in which we invited over 11,600 male and female party activists to attend a free, party-sponsored “Prospective Candidate Information Seminar” by randomizing different invitation messages. We found that women were half as likely as men to respond to recruitment—log on to the seminar website for more information, register for the seminar, and attend the seminar. While we found some suggestive evidence about what recruitment messages may particularly motivate women or men vis-a-vis a control message, our findings …

Bridging The Gap Between Unmet Legal Needs And An Oversupply Of Lawyers: Creating Neighborhood Law Offices - The Philadelphia Experiment, Jules Lobel, Matthew Chapman

Articles

In the United States there is, simultaneously, an abundance of unemployed lawyers and a significant unmet need for legal care among middle-class households. This unfortunate paradox is protected by ideological, cultural, and practical paradigms both inside the legal community and out. These paradigms include the legal chase for prestige, the consumer’s inability to recognize a legal need, and the growing mountain of debt new lawyers enter the profession with. This article will discuss a very successful National Lawyers Guild experiment from 1930s-era Philadelphia that addressed a similar situation, in a time with similar paradigms, by emphasizing community-connected lawyering. That is, …

The (Il)Legitimacy Of Bankruptcies For The Benefit Of Secured Creditors, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper explores the legitimacy—or illegitimacy—of filing and maintaining a case under the Bankruptcy Code when the sole or principal beneficiary or beneficiaries of the case would be a secured creditor or secured creditors. In the situation posited here, the application of the usual distributional priority rules would not produce any distribution for the general, unsecured creditors of the debtor. In the prototypical case virtually all of the assets of the debtor would be subject to secured claims securing obligations that exceed the value of the collateral, i.e., the secured creditor would be undersecured and there would be no equity …

Fractured Markets And Legal Institutions, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This article considers how we can improve legal outcomes of conflicts that occur in very small arenas. The conflicts can be of many kinds, including a nuisance dispute between neighbors, an impending collision between two moving vehicles, a joint decision between spouses about whether or on what terms to continue their marriage, or a disagreement between managers and shareholders within a firm.

The prevailing literature typically refers to these small environments as “markets.” Thinking of them as markets, however, averts our attention from larger environments that should be considered but that often do not function well as private markets. For …

Preparing For Service: A Template For 21st Century Legal Education, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Legal educators today grapple with the changing dynamics of legal employment markets; the evolution of technologies and business models driving changes to the legal profession; and the economics of operating – and attending – a law school. Accrediting organizations and practitioners pressure law schools to prepare new lawyers both to be ready to practice and to be ready for an ever-fluid career path. From the standpoint of law schools in general and any one law school in particular, constraints and limitations surround us. Adaptation through innovation is the order of the day.

How, when, and in what direction should innovation …

Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Spearit

Articles

This essay examines hip hop music as a form of legal criticism. It focuses on the music as critical resistance and “new terrain” for understanding the law, and more specifically, focuses on what prisons mean to Muslim hip hop artists. Losing friends, family, and loved ones to the proverbial belly of the beast has inspired criticism of criminal justice from the earliest days of hip hop culture. In the music, prisons are known by a host of names like “pen,” “bing,” and “clink,” terms that are invoked throughout the lyrics. The most extreme expressions offer violent fantasies of revolution and …

Evolving Standards Of Domination: Abandoning A Flawed Legal Standard And Approaching A New Era In Penal Reform, Spearit

Articles

This Article critiques the evolving standards of decency doctrine as a form of Social Darwinism. It argues that evolving standards of decency provided a system of review that was tailor-made for Civil Rights opponents to scale back racial progress. Although as a doctrinal matter, evolving standards sought to tie punishment practices to social mores, prison sentencing became subject to political agendas that determined the course of punishment more than the benevolence of a maturing society. Indeed, rather than the fierce competition that is supposed to guide social development, the criminal justice system was consciously deployed as a means of social …

O Espaço Como Palavra-Chave / Space As A Keyword, David Harvey

Publications and Research

Neste artigo, David Harvey discute teoricamente “espaço” como uma palavra-chave, associando a visão tripartite espaço absoluto-relativo-relacional com a leitura lefebvreana dos espaços percebido, concebido e vivido (também denominados espaços material ou experimentado, conceitualizado e da representação).

David Harvey in this article discuss theoretically “space”as a keyword, by associating the tripartite approach absolute-relative-relational space with Lefebvre’s view of perceived, conceived andlived spaces (also called material or experienced space, conceptua-lized space and spaces of representation

Decentralization In Violent Conflict Zones: Views From The Periphery, Emmi Bevensee

Capstone Collection

This thesis looks at the question of, “How can nations on the periphery of global capitalism sustainably negotiate with nations in the center of global capitalist power in the process of governance decentralization in violent conflict zones?” Decentralization here describes the process of power transfer of fiscal, political, and administrative duties from higher and more centralized entities to lower and more localized divisions. The process of decentralization is employed to cultivate participatory democratization, minority advocacy, peacebuilding, and development. Because of the nature of these needs decentralization is often accompanied by international intervention that uses the justification of “failed statehood.” This …

County Level Economic Voting In U.S. Presidential Elections, Martin R. Sartorius

CMC Senior Theses

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 …

"Microfinance As A Determinant Of Domestic Violence In Bangladesh: Who Is At Risk?", Alvin Christian

Dissertations and Theses

This paper examines the impact that microfinance participation has on reported domestic violence rates among women in Bangladesh. While microfinance programs are aimed at reducing poverty, they may have unintended consequence and contribute to domestic violence or Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Using nationally representative data from the Urban Health Survey (2006), I study the association between microfinance participation and domestic violence among currently married women. The outcome variable is domestic violence, which is coded as a dummy variable, where a women either has experienced domestic violence episodes or she hasn’t. Predictor variables include microfinance participation, community attitudes, liberal views, labor …

Political Choice And Economic Crisis In Brazil: A Case Of Mismanagement Of Public Money, Evellyn Brasil Monteiro

Dissertations and Theses

A few years ago, Brazil was the country where everybody would like to invest. Because it was one of the members of the BRIC, group of emergent countries with fast-growing economies including also Russia, India and China that gave the investors warranties that those investments would be successful. The current situation is very different from the one pictured not too long ago. High interest rates, high inflation, undervalued currency, and international political scandals describe the very serious economic crisis the country has been facing recently, making the economic growth forecast decrease. In 2013, the variation of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) …

World Bank, Agriculture And Policy: A Case Study In Ghana And Ethiopia, Steven Margel

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis tests the effectiveness of the World Bank’s agricultural-aid policy by examining case studies in Ghana and Ethiopia in the period of 2000-2010. Each study examines the policy context, project/program success, overall human development results, and threats to sustainability, of agricultural aid. The primary hypothesis of the paper is that participatory processes and inclusive institutions will prove to be decisive factors. Each case is tested against this political view of aid in addition to three additional images (Destructive, Ineffective, Effective Technical), in order to ensure a comprehensive review.

The Ghana case showed a lack of participation in forming the …

Política Fiscal En Un Contexto De Crisis De Deuda Externa: Análisis Del Caso Colombiano En La Década Pérdida, José Manuel López Castellanos, Yessica Alexandra Sánchez Caro

Economía

La crisis de la deuda externa en América Latina durante la década perdida constituyó un proceso de desajuste macroeconómico en las economías de la región, economías que estaban amparadas bajo el modelo de desarrollo por sustitución de importaciones y tendencia al endeudamiento externo con el propósito de financiar sus procesos de industrialización. Pero la recesión obligó a que los países optaran por tomar diferentes medidas de política económica para enfrentar la crisis. Colombia, a diferencia del resto de la región, se muestra en la literatura como un caso excepción debido al buen manejo que tuvo en su política de endeudamiento …

Inventing The Classical Constitution, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

One recurring call over a century of American constitutional thought is for return to a "classical" understanding of American federal and state Constitutions. "Classical" does not necessarily mean "originalist" or "interpretivist." Some classical views, such as the attempt to revitalize Lochner-style economic due process, find little support in the text of the federal Constitution or any of the contemporary state constitutions. Rather, constitutional meaning is thought to lie in a background link between constitution formation and classical statecraft. The core theory rests on the assumption of a social contract to which everyone in some initial position agreed. Like any contract, …

A Market-Oriented Analysis Of The 'Terminating Access Monopoly' Concept, Jonathan E. Nuechterlein, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers have long invoked the concept of a “terminating access monopoly” to inform communications policy. Roughly speaking, the concept holds that a consumer-facing network provider, no matter how small or how subject to retail competition, generally possesses monopoly power vis-à-vis third-party senders of communications traffic to its customers. Regulators and advocates have routinely cited that concern to justify regulatory intervention in a variety of contexts where the regulated party may or may not have possessed market power in any relevant retail market.

Despite the centrality of the terminating access monopoly to modern communications policy, there is surprisingly little academic literature …

Moore’S Law, Metcalfe’S Law, And The Theory Of Optimal Interoperability, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Many observers attribute the Internet’s success to two principles: Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. These precepts are often cited to support claims that larger networks are inevitably more valuable and that costs in a digital environment always decrease. This Article offers both a systematic description of both laws and then challenges the conventional wisdom by exploring their conceptual limitations. It also explores how alternative mechanisms, such as gateways and competition, can permit the realization benefits typically attributed to Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law without requiring increases in network size.

Antitrust, Competition Policy, And Inequality, Jonathan B. Baker, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Economic inequality recently has entered the political discourse in a highly visible way. This political impact is not a surprise. As the U.S. economy has begun to recover from the Great Recession since mid-2009, economic growth has effectively been appropriated by those already well off, leaving the median household less well off. The serious economic, political and moral issues raised by inequality can be addressed through a panoply of public policies including competition policy, the focus of this article. The article describes the channels through which market power contributes to inequality, and sets forth a range of possible antitrust policy …

Profundización Financiera Y Política Monetaria: Una Aproximación Empírica Y Teórica, 1991-2013, Lina Zoraya Cuellar Vargas, Juan David Montaño Becerra, Boris Santiago Rodríguez Torres

Finanzas y Comercio Internacional

Este trabajo pretende investigar la relación entre la profundización financiera y la política monetaria en una economía pequeña y abierta como la colombiana, desde un punto de vista del dinero exógeno, para determinar si un mayor grado de integración del sistema financiero permite, a través de la cantidad del dinero, afectará el objetivo primordial del Banco Central de mantener un control sobre los precios. Debido a que no existen suficientes estudios que aborden la relación directa entre la profundización financiera y la política monetaria, el presente estudio utiliza los objetivos intermedios del Banco del Central para determinar dicha relación entre …

Do Democratic Governments Improve Environmental Quality?, Yoonsoo Nam

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My research question is whether democratic countries improve the environment. This research question is important because many nowadays people are more than ever concerned about environmental quality, and researchers have produced mixed results of democratic governments’ effects on the environment. As an attempt to contribute to this area of research, I implement three different types of heterogeneity in the relationships between democratic countries and environmental quality. These three different types of heterogeneity include different environmental outcomes, separate components of democracy, and countries with different income levels. By using these three different types of heterogeneity, I may better understand the mechanisms …

The Role Of Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan In The Breakdown Of The Ussr, Ezoza Nomazova

Undergraduate Research Posters

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was one of the biggest historic events of XX century. Much like the Roman Empire, the USSR breakdown was due to an aggregate of factors, some internal, and some foreign. Unlike, the Roman Empire, the Soviet Empire collapsed suddenly. Among the reasons for the fall of the Union, the invasion of Afghanistan was one of the poorest decisions that was made by the Soviet government. What factors did this event contribute to the fall of the USSR?

The Russian invasion of Afghanistan had big impact on the attitude of the developing countries …

Policy Change And Coups: The Role Of Income Inequality And Asset Specificity, Taeko Hiroi, Sawa Omori

Taeko Hiroi

Religion And Innovation, Andrea Vindigni

Andrea Vindigni

No abstract provided.