International and Area Studies Commons^™

The Impact Of Fdi On Co₂ Emissions In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Fidel Gonzalez, Isabel Ruiz

School of Public Policy Working Papers

This paper uses panel Granger causality tests to study the relationship between sector specific FDI and CO₂ emissions. Using a sample of 18 Latin American countries for the 1980-2007 period, we find causality running from FDI in polluting intensive industries (“the dirty sector”) to CO₂ emissions per capita. This result is robust to controlling for other factors associated with CO₂ emissions and using the ratio of CO₂ emissions to GDP. For other sectors, we find no robust evidence that FDI causes CO₂ emissions.

Berita Autumn 2011, Derek Heng

Berita

Chair’s Address... 2

Editor’s Foreword...3

Members’ Updates...4

Announcements...5

John A. Lent Prize...6

Islam, Corporatization and Economy in Southeast Asia...8

Singapore’s Democratic Opening? 2011 Elections...12

What is National Education in Singapore?...15

Researching the Colonial Ethnology of British Malaya & the Netherlands Indies...20

Reader Responses: Celebrating Jianbing, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

[Editor’s note: It seems that quite a few of our readers are as fond of jianbing as we are here at China Beat HQ. This morning’s post on the tasty breakfast dish garnered a number of responses on Twitter (revealing that not everyone is a fan, though all have strong feelings on the jianbing issue), which I’ve collected below, followed by one story sent in by a reader via email. And fellow UC Irvine graduate student Aubrey Adams directed my attention to this basic recipe for jianbing, in case I (or anyone else) wants to attempt making them at home.]

Soft Power Struggle: Ai Weiwei And The Limits Of Sino-German Cultural Cooperation, Adam Cathcart

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As an attempt to drain the seemingly endless reserves of paranoia fed by China’s rise, the extension of Chinese “soft power” [ruan shi li 软实力] into Western Europe is one of the more interesting stories of our day. How the Chinese Communist Party uses culture and cultural exchange to shape its image in Europe varies, like any good guerrilla strategy, depending on conditions. In the performing arts, PRC-sponsored groups tour European stages, acting out a meta-drama that pits twirling autonomous-region Uighurs against the ubiquitous Falun Gong-affiliated Shen Yun ballerinas (and their army of granny pamphleteers). Embassy-sponsored photographic exhibits celebrating modernization …

Institutions, The Rise Of Commerce And The Persistence Of Laws: Interest Restrictions In Islam And Christianity, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Why was economic development retarded in the Middle East relative to Western Europe, despite the Middle East being far ahead for centuries? A theoretical model inspired and substantiated by the history of interest restrictions suggests that this outcome emanates in part from the greater degree to which early Islamic political authorities derived legitimacy from religious authorities. This entailed a feedback mechanism in Europe in which the rise of commerce led to the relaxation of interest restrictions while also diminishing the Church's ability to legitimise political authorities. These interactions did not occur in the Islamic world despite equally amenable economic conditions.

L’Évolution Du Patrimoine: Identity Politics And Cultural Policy In Contemporary Senegalese Art, 1960-2010, Hannah Shambroom

Art History Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

The Olympics In East Asia: Nationalism, Regionalism, And Globalism On The Center Stage Of World Sports, William W. Kelly, Susan Brownell

CEAS Occasional Publication Series

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 3

Explaining The Rise Of The Left In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Robin Grier

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Latin American politics has taken a left-hand turn in the last decade, with an increasing number of chief executives hailing from left-of-center parties. We investigate the political and socio-economic factors explaining political ideology of the chief executive in a sample of 100 elections taking place between 1975 and 2007 in eighteen Latin American countries. We find that the commodity booms in agricultural, mining and oil are positively and significantly related to the probability that a country will have a chief executive from a left-of-center political party. However, for oil exports, we observe that this effect only holds for Venezuela. We …

The (Non) Effect Of Natural Resource Dependence On Capital Accumulation In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Robin Grier

School of Public Policy Working Papers

In a simultaneous model of human and physical capital accumulation for 17 Latin American countries from 1975 to 2004, we show that overall resource dependence is not significantly related to physical and human capital. Disaggregating the natural resource variable into subcategories, we find that petroleum export dependence is associated with higher physical capital and lower human capital, while agricultural export dependence is often associated with lower levels of physical capital. All of these effects are quantitatively small, however, casting doubt on the idea that natural resource dependence has stifled the accumulation of capital in the region.

The Impact Of Spatial Interdependence On Fdi In Latin America, Luisa Blanco

School of Public Policy Working Papers

This analysis considers whether spatial interdependence is an important determinant of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America. Two types of spatial interdependence are explored: 1) surrounding market potential and 2) spatial autocorrelation of FDI. Using a sample of 17 Latin American countries, with observations from 1986 to 2006, we find that spatial interdependence matters for world net FDI in the region. Surrounding market potential has a positive effect on FDI of significant magnitude, but there is no evidence that FDI is spatially autocorrelated. Other contributors to FDI in this analysis include governance, specifically control of corruption, and exports of …

Immigration Regulation, Luisa Blanco, Odinakachi Anyanwu

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Immigration regulation is defined here as any policy that has the objective of encouraging or discouraging immigration. There are two major categories of immigration regulation: those policies that directly affect the inflow of immigrants and those that influence the everyday lives of immigrants and processes related to the acquisition of legal permanent residency or citizenship. Immigration regulation is quite diverse across time and space; immigration policy is fluid and dynamic and is affected by socioeconomic, cultural, and political factors. Thus, immigration regulation evolves in response to current conditions in a specific country. The role of race in immigration regulation also …

Sabbatical Leave Proposal And Sabbatical 2011 (Blog), Paul Young

Sabbaticals

I am an associate professor at Parkland College in Champaign IL USA. After teaching graphic design full-time for 10 years, I'm very pleased to be taking a semester off for sabbatical leave in spring 2011. My sabbatical application was approved on December 22, 2009 and we immediately starting making plans. With an extented period of time available for recuperation and renewal, my partner and I wanted to do some serious traveling. At first, we thought an around-the-world trip would be rather exciting, but both the cost and weather proved to be challenging. So we narrowed our choices down to destinations …

Palestinian Women: Mothers, Martyrs And Agents Of Political Change, Rebecca Ann Otis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to understand the role of women as political actors in the rise of Islamo-nationalist movement in Palestine. Using a historical and ethnographic approach, it examines the changing opportunity structures available to Palestinian women in the nationalist struggle between 1987 and 2007. It looks into the sites of political engagement of Palestinian women as mothers, organizers and political candidates, suicide bombers, and nonviolent activists with attention paid to the evolution of the Islamist ideology within these four pathways for political participation. The goal of this work is to engage the question of how some Palestinian women who appear …

Instability In The South: The Implications Of Mexican State Failure On U.S. National Security, Shadd Allen Pease

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the implications of Mexican state failure on United States national security. The growing instability in Mexico due to the actions of the various drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), government corruption, possible human rights abuses and Mexican insurgent groups is examined in order to understand why the Mexican state may fail.

This thesis explores the implications of Mexican state failure on U.S. national security by providing possible scenarios such as continued operations into the United States by Mexican drug trafficking organizations, DTO relationships with American street gangs, regional instability, possible exploitation of the Mexican homeland by terrorist organizations, U.S. …

Peripheral Pariah Or Regional Rebel? The Allied Democratic Forces And The Uganda/Congo Borderland, Lindsay Scorgie

Faculty Publications

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have inflicted damage and insecurity on the Rwenzori region of Uganda for over a decade and, although their strength has diminished, still constitute a threat. This article argues that it is inadequate to see the ADF primarily as an internal Ugandan rebel group. Rather, the group's cross-border dimension with the Democratic Republic of the Congo should be conceptualised as a transnational phenomenon. A borderland analytic framework offers the best means of understanding the movement.

No. 56: Right To The Classroom: Educational Barriers For Zimbabweans In South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Godfrey Tawodzera

Southern African Migration Programme

This report examines the obstacles to access by Zimbabwean children and students to schools and tertiary institutions in South Africa. There is a common assumption in South Africa that these children and students have no right to an educa­tion in South Africa. In fact, this view contravenes various international human rights conventions to which South Africa is a signatory. At the regional level, it is inconsistent with the SADC Education Protocol. At the national level, it violates the South African Constitution as well as legislation and stated government policies concerning the access of all children in the country to education. …

No. 55: The Engagement Of The Zimbabwean Medical Diaspora, Abel Chikanda

Southern African Migration Programme

Despite the well-documented negative impacts of the ‘brain drain’ of health professionals from Africa, there is an argu­ment that their departure is not an absolute loss and that transnationally-oriented medical migrants (or diasporas) can act as development agents in their home countries. Financial remittances, in particular, are said to have significant transformative development potential. African countries are also expected to benefit from knowledge and skills transfer through the return of health professionals from abroad. Other diaspora engagement initiatives that do not require permanent return (such as short term work assignments, technological transfer to country of origin and ‘virtual’ participation of …

Immigration And The Extreme Right: An Analysis Of Recent Voting Trends In Western Europe, Andrew Walchuk

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

Western European politics have been marked over the last couple of decades by a fierce debate about the place of Europe’s increasingly large immigrant population in society. Across the continent, far-right parties campaigning on nationalistic platforms opposing immigration have seen great electoral success. The debate is undoubtedly becoming more heated as more immigrants pour into the area, and these anti-immigrant parties seem to have established themselves in the political arena. Immigration does not appear to be slowing down at any point in the near future, so what is going to happen to these far-right parties as we move into the …

Singapore Management University Report To Stakeholders 2011 - 2012, Singapore Management University

Report to Stakeholders

“Student Life” offers exciting updates on undergraduates’ achievements; “Academic Review” shares key news about our faculty and programmes; “Global Profile” surveys how SMU is raising its international profile; and “Horizons” reviews how the University is building strong, lasting relationships with our partners. Each story is a single tile and together they form a mosaic which portrays the creativity, colour and dynamism of SMU today. Three feature articles offer in-depth analysis of the ways SMU is striding towards meeting its strategic goals. The proactive, collaborative efforts of the SMU community are explored in “SMU President’s ‘Want Something, Do Something’ Culture”. A …

Women In Transition: Experiences Of Asian Women International Students On U.S. College Campuses, Siva Jeyabalasingam

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

Often referred to as people in transition, international students usually arrive in the U.S. with a clear sense of their academic goals; however, they often have not considered what their lives will be like or how they may change in non-academic ways. In addition to the typical level of university-related stress, international students face additional problems and difficulties generated in part by the cultural differences between the U.S. and their own countries. This is particularly true for Asian students. Of several studies that have investigated the experiences of international students in the U.S., only a handful have examined Asian students' …