Growth and Development Commons^™

Democratic Economic Planning From And For Social Reproduction: Foundations For A Postcapitalist Research Agenda, Sophie Elias-Pinsonnault, Bengi Akbulut, Audrey Laurin-Lamothe

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

As ecological and social crises render the transformation of capitalist economic organization increasingly urgent, the resurgence of interest in democratic economic planning confronts a foundational blind spot: the systematic neglect of social reproduction. This paper argues that any genuinely needs-based planned economy must extend its scope beyond formally recognized productive activities to encompass the full spectrum of reproductive labor through which human and non-human life is sustained and regenerated. Drawing on feminist political economy and the Marxist-feminist tradition, the authors argue that meeting needs requires more than reorganizing production: it demands confronting the question of who does reproductive work, at …

The Asymmetric Effect Of The Rupiah Exchange Rate On Indonesia's Non-Oil And Gas Exports, Muhammad Sugiantoro, Diah Wahyuningsih, Ris Yuwono Yudo Nugroho, Widita Kurniasari, Ahmad Kamil

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Studi Pembangunan

This study aims to analyze the asymmetric effect of the rupiah exchange rate on Indonesia's non-oil and gas sector exports, by considering the control variables. As well as identifying whether Indonesia's non-oil and gas sector exports are more responsively influenced by rupiah exchange rate depreciation or rupiah exchange rate appreciation. The analysis technique used is Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) with quarterly data from 2016 to 2023. The results showed that the rupiah exchange rate has an asymmetric effect on Indonesia's non-oil and gas sector exports, both in the short and long term. Depreciation and appreciation of the rupiah exchange …

Building Community Leadership Capacity Through Extension Partnerships: An Evaluation Case Study, Paul A. Hill, Lendel K. Narine

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

This evaluation study examines the effectiveness of the Leadership Dixie program in enhancing leadership capacity among participants in Washington County, Utah. As a program partner, Utah State University (USU) Extension conducted the evaluation on the program’s 25th class, comprising 27 participants (N = 27). The program, characterized by 10 monthly “Challenge Day” field tours, was evaluated using two instruments to collect data on participant learning and satisfaction levels, overall program experience, demographics, and impacts on social capital, interpersonal leadership skills, community engagement, and volunteerism. Results indicate strong positive outcomes in social capital, community engagement, and volunteerism while highlighting areas for …

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Md Tahmeed Hossain

Economics Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to empirical economics research by examining three settings in which historical shocks, behavioral constraints, and localized public events affect social relations, decision quality, and public safety. The first chapter examines the persistence of historical religious conflict in contemporary Hindu–Muslim relations in India. The second chapter studies how time pressure affects decision quality in online chess. The third chapter analyzes the localized traffic-safety externalities of NFL game days. Across these settings, the dissertation uses large-scale data and quasi-experimental research designs to distinguish causal effects from selection, spatial concentration, and persistent local conditions.

The first chapter asks whether historical …

Mengukur Capaian Dan Identifikasi Konvergensi Pembangunan Infrastruktur Antarprovinsi Di Indonesia, Ressa Isnaini Arumnisaa', Aisyah Fitri Yuniasih

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

Indonesia’s economic challenges are characterized by stagnant economic growth and regional development disparities. This study analyzes the achievement and convergence of infrastructure development across provinces in Indonesia during 2011–2021 through the construction of an Infrastructure Development Index (IPI). The study employs panel data from 33 provinces, using factor analysis to construct the IPI and the First Difference Generalized Method of Moments (FD-GMM) to examine convergence and its determinants. The results show that many provinces still have IDI scores below the national average. Furthermore, the FD-GMM model shows that σ-convergence and β-convergence occur in Indonesia. In addition, GRDP per capita, inflation, …

Value-Chain Factors Influencing Production Volume And Gross Margin: Evidence From A Thai Dairy Processing Firm, Jiranij Jareonsawat, Aqeel Raza, Kittisak Ajariyakhajorn, Davids Makararpong, Henk Hogeveen, Chainarong Paoin, Nampueng Mesprasat, Chaidate Inchaisri

The Thai Journal of Veterinary Medicine

The dairy industry is vital for food security and economic stability, particularly in developing markets such as Thailand. Understanding factors related to production volume and gross margin in dairy processing firms can help inform performance and profitability considerations. Based on Porter’s value chain framework and a perception-based survey approach, this study used document reviews, in-depth interviews with 14 key informants, and an employee perception survey (n = 21) covering 74 relevant factors. Results indicated significant differences across ten activity categories for both production volume (Χ2 = 53.59, df = 9, P < 0.001) and gross margin (Χ2 = 26.89, df = 9, P < 0.001). For production volume, research and development (3.96 ± 0.66), human resources management (3.93 ± 0.63), and external factors (3.82 ± 0.82) had the highest mean perceived importance scores. For gross margin, external factors recorded the highest mean score (3.96 ± 0.81). At the factor level, the Thai government-regulated raw milk price was classified as the most important factor associated with production volume, while fuel prices were the most important factor related to gross margin. Both factors had the highest proportion of “High” and “Very High” responses (90.5%). These findings highlight the importance of aligning internal activities with external conditions within an institutional and policy context. This study provides insights into how institutional and policy constraints shape the way firm-level activities and external conditions are perceived and prioritized, and how these perceptions relate to performance in dairy processing firms in Thailand.

Expansion, Diversification, And Delinquency In Indonesian Fintech Lending Platforms, Muhammad Miqdad Robbani, Megat Nagainaka, Mahanani Margani

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

This study examines the impact of loan expansion and diversification strategies on credit risk in Indonesia’s fintech lending sector using panel data from 102 registered platforms between 2022 and 2025. Employing fixed-effects regression models, we analyse how loan growth and diversification influence delinquent loans. The findings reveal a non-linear relationship between loan growth and delinquent loans, implying that while moderate expansion reduces risk, excessive growth is associated with increased credit defaults, and diversification is not significant. These findings emphasise the importance of prudent growth and targeted risk management to ensure the sustainability of the fintech lending ecosystem.

Education For Sustainable Economic Development – Insights From Brazil, Ozéias Rodrigues Da Rocha

Doctoral

Purpose: This doctoral thesis examines the impact of Education for Economic Sustainable Development (ESD) in the municipality of Turmalina-MG, Brazil, with a focus on how primary education contributes to sustainable economic growth, environmental sustainability, and social equity. The research is guided by the central question: What is the impact of Education for Economic Sustainable Development (ESD)? The study also evaluates the extent to which local educational initiatives align with specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).

Methodology: Data were collected from one dominant primary school in Turmalina-MG through semi-structured …

Manufactured Homes In The Mountain West, 2025, Yiselle Olivas Ruiz, Dre Boyd-Weatherly, Taylor Volk, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet presents 2025 data on manufactured homes in the five Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The Construction Coverage report, “U.S. States Investing Most in Manufactured Homes,” based on analysis from the U.S Census Bureau and Zillow’s Home Value Index, includes data on all fifty states. This fact sheet focuses on the number of manufactured homes, site-built home permits, and the average price of manufactured homes in the Mountain West.

Driving Development: Coalitions, Policies, And Upgrading Brazilian Automotive Technology (1988–2025), Henrique Estides Delgado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among industrial activities in Brazil, the automotive sector generates some of the most significant and multifaceted multiplier effects on the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The sector integrates activities ranging from raw materials to high-tech services, incorporating advanced technologies that influence innovation and positioning in global value chains (GVCs). Remarkably, this industry has been structured over time by public policies that have decisively shaped incentives for its participants. The world’s largest automotive multinationals have been attracted to operate in the country through varied institutional arrangements involving domestic capital and incentives across federative units. This dissertation analyzes how variations in institutional …

Unionization Rates And Wage Growth: Trade, Transportation And Utilities, Nathaniel V. Thomas

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

This research examines how unionization rates influence wage growth in the United States’ transportation, trade, and utilities sector. Drawing on secondary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the study compares union and non-union wage trends while taking in factors like industry characteristics. By using historical and comparative analyses across multiple industries, it aims to determine if higher union density consistently translates into stronger wage gains. Prior research in both U.S. and international contexts shows that union presence can positively affect wages, but this influence varies by sector, labor strength, and political backdrop

The Economic Benefits And Costs Of State And Local Incentives For Clean Energy Projects, Timothy J. Bartik, Gerrit Anderson, Brian J. Asquith, Kathleen Bolter, Kyle Huisman, Iryna V. Lendel, Jeremy Morris, Sevrin Williams

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

This report evaluates the benefits and costs of investment incentives for 50 large clean energy supply chain manufacturing and infrastructure projects. The findings suggest that these incentives generate modest but typically positive economic returns, with a median benefit-cost ratio of 1.47, meaning benefits exceed costs by 47 percent for the typical project. Returns vary significantly across projects—approximately 70 percent of projects produced net positive benefits over a 20-year period, while 30 percent failed to recover incentive costs. Project performance depends heavily on incentive design and local conditions. Excessively large cash incentives reduce returns, while customized services, strong job multipliers, investment …

Transitioning To Privatization With An Employee-First Approach: The Role Of The Employee Success Team, Hanna E. Andersen

Certified Public Manager® Applied Research

Convention centers are vital economic and cultural assets, driving commerce, tourism, and local engagement. In addition to hosting conferences and trade shows, they serve as gathering spaces for civic events and community celebrations. Like many municipalities, the City of Waco shifted the Waco Convention Center from direct municipal operation to private management to improve efficiency and service quality. Guided by its commitment to community assets, the city adopted an employee-first approach through its Employee Success Team (EST). The EST addressed the challenges of privatization—such as staff uncertainty and restructuring—by placing employees in roles within the city or with the new …

The Nexus Between Economic Growth, Energy Consumption, Technology Innovation, And Co2 Emissions In Vietnam, Ha Thi Thu Nguyen

Economic and Business Review

Vietnam's rapid economic growth has intensified environmental pressures, heightening concerns about the country's ability to decouple growth from rising CO₂ emissions. Although green policies and initiatives have been introduced, questions remain regarding their effectiveness and the extent to which technological innovation and renewable energy can mitigate environmental degradation. This study applies the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) framework and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to investigate the short- and long-run impacts of economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), technological innovation, renewable energy consumption, and forest area on CO₂ emissions in Vietnam, using annual …

Incentives, Evidence, And Reminders For Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers To Policy Scale Up, Patrick Agte, Daniel R. Morales, Christopher Neilson, Sebastian Otero, Guatam Rao

Discussion Papers

Scaling up effective policies often requires the attention of frontline bureaucrats with many competing responsibilities. Even when policymakers adopt effective programs, implementation may not follow. In a nationwide experiment in the Dominican Republic, we test interventions to increase school principals' implementation of an educational program proven effective in a previous RCT. Only 37% of control schools verifiably implemented the intervention when ordered to by the Ministry of Education, compared with 83% in the original trial. Implementation was no higher among schools that previously implemented the program in the RCT, suggesting that fixed costs of adoption do not explain non-adoption. We …

From Trade War To Green Transition: Optimal Electric Vehicle Tariffs With Revenue-Funded Subsidies, Panle Jia Barwick, Jack Collison, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Shanjun Li, Yucheng Wang

Discussion Papers

We study the optimal design of trade and industrial policy when governments pursue environmental objectives alongside traditional national welfare. Motivated by the global transition to electric vehicles (EVs) and growing concerns about competitiveness, resilience, and the environment, we develop a framework in which policymakers choose tariffs and domestic production subsidies to maximize national welfare, defined as the sum of consumer surplus, domestic profits, environmental benefits, and tariff revenue net of subsidies. We combine a theoretical model of differentiated-product oligopoly with a structural demand model estimated using vehicle-level data from 13 countries during 2004-2023 that together account for the vast majority …

The Impact Of Corruption On Private Investment In The Mena Region: An Empirical Study On The Period Of 1996-2023, Mohamed A. El Regdawy

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to examine and understand empirically the impact of corruption on private investment in the MENA region during the period of 1996-2023, as private investment is a key enabler for sustainable economic growth. To better understand such a relationship, a Pooled Mean Group estimator was implemented to figure out this relationship in both the short run and long run. The findings confirm that in the long run, within the context of MENA, corruption was used as a tool to overcome the lack of quality in the regulations that were supposed to enable the role of the private sector. …

Fiscal And Monetary Policies For Inclusive Growth In Developing And Emerging Markets, Collins Anosike

Journal of Global Awareness

The study examined the effects of monetary and fiscal policies in attaining inclusive growth for some developing countries and emerging markets. The study selected 20 countries and grouped them into group one and group two. The study is unique because it captures a broader range of countries compared to previous studies and shows their effect on economic growth. We use panel data and employ OLS regression and Johansen cointegration. We examine how each variable, general government expenditure, gross national expenditure, total revenue, official exchange rate, broad money, and deposit interest rate, affects the dependent variable (real GDP) from 1980 to …

What Complexity Costs: Growth, Productive Capability, And The Vulnerability Of Interconnectedness, Pete Mcniff

Master's Theses

Growth depends on the sophistication of what an economy can produce, but economies that have specialized more deeply depend on the market access that sustains it. I test whether this dependence makes complex economies more vulnerable when access is disrupted, computing the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) from firm-level records in the U.S. Census of Manufactures (1850--1880) and using the Panic of 1873 as a natural experiment to measure county-level market access shocks from railroad bond defaults following Dutta (2024) and Donaldson and Hornbeck (2016). ECI predicts production and employment growth across all three decade windows, with the association strengthening as …

Spatial Analysis Of Maize Yields And Household Dietary Diversity In Sub-Saharan Africa: Causal Evidence From A Machine Learning Instrument, Addi Joof

Master's Theses

MAIZE YIELDS AND HOUSEHOLD DIETARY DIVERSITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: EVIDENCE ON THE CAUSAL EFFECT FROM A MACHINE LEARNING INSTRUMENT

Addi Joof, University of San Francisco, May 2026

This paper provides estimates of the effect of maize yield on household dietary diversity across seven Sub-Saharan African countries, using data from 36,474 maize-growing households in the Living Standards Measurement Study Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) panels for the period 2008--2021. OLS estimates which include district and country-by-wave fixed effects yield a positive and significant coefficient of 0.070 (SE = 0.006, p < 0.001), implying that a 10 percent increase in maize yield raises the Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) by approximately 0.007 food groups. Because self-reported yields are subject to classical measurement error and unobserved household characteristics confound the OLS estimate, we construct an instrumental variable using a Random Forest model trained on satellite-derived agro-environmental features including the Enhanced Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Growing Degree Days, precipitation, and soil moisture obtained from Google Earth Engine at the GPS-coordinate-by-year level. Our preferred 2SLS specification, which adds region fixed effects to absorb persistent sub-national geographic variation, returns a positive point estimate of 0.217 (SE = 0.206; 95% CI: -0.19 to +0.63, p = 0.294) larger than OLS and consistent with downward attenuation bias, but imprecisely estimated and statistically indistinguishable from zero at conventional levels. We interpret the OLS estimate of 0.070 as a credible lower bound on the true effect, with the IV evidence pointing to a moderately larger but uncertain magnitude. Heterogeneity analysis reveals a declining gradient across consumption quintiles the effect is strongest among the poorest households (Q1: 0.055, p < 0.01) and diminishes with wealth (Q5: 0.015, not significant) while showing no gradient across market-integration levels. These patterns are consistent with own-consumption, rather than market income from surplus sales, as the primary pathway from yield to dietary diversity. OLS estimates are positive and significant in five of six estimable countries. The findings suggest that maize yield improvements can serve as a nutrition co-investment, particularly for subsistence-oriented smallholders, though the available data do not permit a sharp causal quantification of the effect size.

Keywords: dietary diversity, maize yields, instrumental variables, Sub-Saharan Africa, LSMS-ISA, satellite …