Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Retirement – Economic aspects – Europe'
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1
Stef, Nicolae. "Four essays on the bankruptcy mechanism : legal and economic aspects." Thesis, Strasbourg, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014STRAB014.
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Les quatre chapitres de cette thèse analysent la manière selon laquelle les différents aspects du droit de la faillite influencent les résultats économiques d’une procédure de faillite notamment le degré de recouvrement de la dette des créanciers. Le premier chapitre montre que les lois sur les faillites présentent des conditions différentes de vote de créanciers en fonction de leur origine légale telle que : l’origine anglaise, l’origine française, l’origine allemande et celle nordique. Le second chapitre soutient que l’utilisation nationale de la procédure de réorganisation est favorisée par des processus moins stricts d’acceptation. Le troisième chapitre montre que les systèmes Est-Européens de faillite offrent une protection plus forte des créances garanties que dans le cas de créances publiques. Une concentration plus élevée de la dette diminue les taux de recouvrement en cas de la procédure de liquidation. Les estimations confirment l'existence de deux effets d'interaction entre les classes de créanciers Est-Européens: l'effet d'entraînement et l'effet de rivalité. Le dernier chapitre propose un modèle théorique qui prédit que les débiteurs ont des fortes incitations à proposer aux créanciers de plans de réorganisation avec un partage sous-Optimal de coûts quelque soit l'orientation de l'environnement juridique de la faillite y compris une orientation pro-Créancier ou une orientation pro-DébiteurThis thesis analyzes the influence of various aspects of bankruptcy law on the economic outcomes of bankruptcy proceedings, mainly the amounts of the debt recovered by claimants. First, we show that bankruptcy laws settle different voting conditions of creditors according to their legal origin, i.e. English origin, French origin, German origin, and Nordic origin. Second, the national use of reorganization procedures seems to be favoured by less strict approval processes. Third, we find that the Hungarian, the Polish, and the Romanian bankruptcy systems provide stronger protection of the private secured claims than the public ones. A higher concentration of the claims also decreases the total recovery rates produced by the liquidation procedure. Our estimations confirm the existence of two interaction effects between the claimants, i.e. the ripple effects and the rivalry effects. Fourth, we developed a theoretical model that predicts that debtors have strong incentives to submit reorganization plans with suboptimal cost sharing regardless of the orientation of the bankruptcy environment, i.e. creditor-Friendly or debtor-Friendly
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Missfeldt, Fanny. "Strategic aspects of nuclear safety in Eastern and Western Europe." Thesis, University of Stirling, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.297778.
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AAGAARD, Anders Juhl. "Family formation and stability in western welfare states since 1960 : the influence of family and housing policy." Doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/1814/68455.
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Defence Date: 29 September 2020 (Online)Examining Board: Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Blossfeld, (EUI); Prof. Dr. Anton Hemerijck, (EUI); Prof. Dr. Melinda Mills, (University of Oxford); Prof. Dr. Jon Kvist, (Roskilde University)
This thesis explains differences in changes to family formation and stability in France, Norway, the FRG and the GDR based changes to family- and housing policy. Focus is on developments from the 1960s to the early 2000s. Previous research has focused on more recent developments from the 1980s onwards. A new conceptualization of family policy is introduced that enables a distinction between policy that alleviate the care giving role of mothers (de-familialization) and policies that intervene more directly in the caring responsibility within the family, aiming for a more equal share of childcare between women and men (de-genderization). Findings show that higher educated women are more likely of entry into marriage, when family policy provides more de-familalization (France, GDR) or de-genderization (Norway). But higher educated women are less likely of entry into marriage in the FRG where family policy remained conservative, forcing these women to choose between family and career. In the FRG where family policy remained conservative, with low support for female employment, married women with low levels of education became more likely of entry into divorce. A difference between women with different educational levels is not observed where family policy has included more de-familialziaiton and de-genderization. Findings for changes to housing policy are less convincing. Soft deregulation of rent control and tenure security has a positive effect on entry into consensual union in all countries, making a two person income household better equipped to cover the cost of rent increases that this change introduced. But results for the influence of support for home-ownership show little effect on entry into a marriage and divorce in all four countries. This may be because the full effect has not manifested itself yet. Extending the time period of analysis may provide more insights on the influence of these changes.
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Zhelo, Inessa. "Impact of Economic, Political, and Socio-Demographic Factors on the Parliamentary Election Outcomes in Central and Eastern European Countries." Thesis, North Dakota State University, 2008. https://hdl.handle.net/10365/29712.
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This study determines how economic, political, and socio-demographic factors impact the parliamentary election outcomes in central and eastern European countries in transition period. A one-way fixed-effect method has been applied to analyze two main economic models. The dependent variables are share of the Western-oriented and traditional-oriented parties. Data of sixteen countries have been used in the thesis. According to the results of this study, it is possible to conclude that outcomes of parliamentary elections in central and eastern European countries depended on political and socio-demographic factors from I 990-2001. Factors such as loans, received from the United States, per capita in the pre-election year, as a measure of external pressure, and share of agriculture in GDP, as a measure of country`s level of development, demonstrate consistent significance in both variations of the model.
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Godard, Mathilde. "Trajectoires professionnelles et santé en Europe." Thesis, Paris 9, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015PA090010/document.
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Cette thèse se propose d'analyser les effets des ruptures dans les trajectoires professionnelles sur l'état de santé des individus en Europe. Nous considérons ici deux ruptures : l'une en début de carrière -- l'entrée sur le marché du travail dans une économie dégradée -- et l'autre en fin de carrière -- le passage à la retraite. Entre ces deux périodes critiques, nous portons un intérêt spécifique à l'impact sur la santé d'une rupture cette fois anticipée : la peur de perdre son emploi. Nos analyses empiriques combinent des données d'enquêtes Européennes et Britanniques. Afin de pallier les problèmes d'endogénéité propres à toute analyse empirique du lien entre santé et trajectoire professionnelle, nous exerçons des chocs exogènes sur la carrière des individus. Nous utilisons ainsi une expérience naturelle (la crise pétrolière de 1973) et les caractéristiques institutionnelles telles qu’elles sont définies dans la législation de chaque pays Européen (âges légaux de passage à la retraite, degrés de protection de l’emploi, règles de scolarité obligatoire). Les résultats soulignent l'effet néfaste des ruptures au cours de la vie professionnelle sur la santé des individus, à la fois à court et à long terme.Notre projet se propose d’identifier un lien causal entre l'activité professionnelle des individus et leur catégorie d'obésité via l’utilisation de techniques économétriques spécifiques tenant compte de l'endogénéité et l'utilisation des données de la cohorte GAZEL (qui suit depuis 1989 20 000 volontaires employés chez EDF-GDF)The main objective of this thesis is to analyse the health consequences of career shocks in Europe. It considers two actual career shocks over the lifecourse: leaving full-time education in a bad economy, and, at the other end of the age spectrum, retiring. In-between these two critical periods, it investigates how an anticipated career shock -- i.e. anticipated job loss -- damages health. Empirical analyses are conducted using large European and British surveys. We use institutional features and natural experiments to find neat instruments for causal identification~: the existence of compulsory schooling laws, the cross-country variation in employment protection legislations, the cross-country variation in retirement systems and the 1973 oil crisis. The results emphasise the causal and health-damaging impact of career shocks, both in the short and in the long-term
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Ou, Po-Hsiang. "Climate change v Eurozone crisis : social and economic views of risk in inter-expert risk communication." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f3619fc5-fd2a-483b-92b5-94aa90ce13d1.
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This DPhil thesis discusses how two divergent risk conceptions, a 'social view' and an 'economic view' of risk, are constructed through inter-expert risk communication. Different and sometimes contradictory concepts of risk are mobilised in regulatory practice, but the origins of these divergent risk conceptions are not extensively studied. This thesis seeks to unpack this divergence. Empirically, I analyse risk communication among experts in the European Union (EU) during the creation of two risk regulation standards. The two case studies, one related to the development of the two-degree target of EU climate policies (the climate case) and the other about the negotiation of the excessive deficit criteria of the Maastricht Treaty (the euro case), can shed light on the relations between risk conceptions and inter-expert risk communication. I argue that through risk communication, an initial 'view' of risk can be entrenched and developed into a paradigmatic 'risk conception'. My analysis uses historical and sociological institutionalism, by focusing on path dependence of risk communication and social construction risk conceptions among EU experts. Through the two case studies, I identify four analytical dimensions of inter-expert risk communication: networks (the institutional setting and relationships between different experts), cultures (the mentalities of experts in relation to discussing risks), dynamics (the actual processes of transmitting and receiving risk messages) and strategies (the rationales supporting the decisions of risk regulation standards). My thematic analysis reveals four key distinct 'features' of social/economic views of risk: expertise (the types of knowledge mobilised), normality (characterising risk as either 'special' or 'routine'), probability (considering risk as either uncertain or calculable) and impact (seeing risk as either negative or positive). I argue that these four features can help explain the construction of risk conceptions, and more broadly, provide an analytical framework for studying how views of risk evolve and interact over time.
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Ferreira, Antunes Sandrina. "New pragmatic nationalists in Europe: experienced flemish and scottish nationalists in times of economic crisis, 2004-2012." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/209497.
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In the 90´s, Europe used to be depicted as the most privileged political arena for regional nationalist political parties to access for “more” political power. In that sense, whereas formal channels of regional interest representation were taken for granted by those standing within federal political systems; informal channels of regional interest representation were highly valued by regional nationalists standing in decentralized or devolutionary constitutional settlements. In spite of nuanced institutional preferences, Europe was rationally inspired (Ostrom 2005) as it used to be perceived as an aggregation of formal-legal structures that could be used as a means to prescribe, proscribe and permit a certain behavior in exchange of a personal utility. Moreover, regional nationalists were policy “maximizers” who acted in isolation, away from the center, using their own limited political resources to maximize their policy gains by pursuing distinctive forms of political autonomy. However, by the end of the 90’s, both categories of regional nationalists plunged into European disillusion due to the limits of a sovereign logic prevailing in Europe.However, in the 21st century, as soon as a new European policy cycle started to emerge and the economic crisis started to cripple, experienced regional nationalists realized that they could use the benefits of regional economic resources in face of the European Economic strategy to justify further concessions of policy competences that are still shared, either in theory or in practice, as well as to argue for new ones. The political plan would consist of using the reference of the European Economic targets to deliver policies, which would allow them to legitimize their nationalist aspirations, in both layers of governance, as well as to induce regional citizens into their political plan so they can finally reach the legal threshold to endorse a new state reform. Moreover, since they were rationally bounded, in the sense that they were lacking the policy expertise to perform these goals, they have learned to rely on a policy narrative (Shabahan et al 2011; Jones and Beth 2010; Radaelli 2010) embedded in a territorial economic argument to make sense of an advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993), using informal channels of regional interest intermediation as “cognitive” structures (Scot 1995a) to articulate a policy strategy to be implemented in Europe and at the regional level of governance.
Therefore, and irrespectively of nuanced constitutional settlements, all experienced regional nationalists have returned to the center, using informal channels as an instrument of governance (Salamon 2002) to clarify the best policy options to be implemented in both layers of governance. In other words, regional nationalists have become “policy satisficers” (Simon 1954) who have learned to forgo immediate satisfaction in Europe to collect major gains of political power across multiple layers of governance. If the term “usage” can be defined as the act of using something to achieve certain political goals (Jacquot and Wolf 2003), in this research, we will apply the concept of “usage” to demonstrate that experienced regional nationalists in government have moved from a rational to a cognitive “usage” of the European institutions to perform renewed political preferences across multiple layers of governance.
Departing from an actor centered institutionalist approach (Mayntz and Sharp 1997), we will demonstrate that the N-VA in Flanders, since 2004, and the SNP in Scotland, since 2007, have become new pragmatic nationalists. In that sense, we will argue that, in a clear contrast with pragmatic nationalists of the 90’s who expected to legitimize their nationalist aspirations in Europe by the means of a rational “usage” of the European institutions; experienced regional nationalists have become new pragmatic nationalists as they have learned to rely on a cognitive “usage” of the European institutions to legitimize their nationalist aspirations, no longer in Europe, but through Europe.
We will then conclude that in the 21st century, and against traditional dogmas of the 90’s, the “usage” of Europe by regional nationalists is cognitively twisted, economically driven and collectively performed. It embraces all experienced regional nationalist political parties in government, irrespectively of their constitutional settlement or nationalist credo, as long as they possess the ability to anchor a political strategy embedded in “identity” without sticking to strict politics of nationalism.
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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Schneider, Christian Elias. "Orientation towards Asia Pacific or Europe - Political, economic and socio-cultural aspects of the current discourse on identity in New Zealand." St. Gallen, 2006. http://www.biblio.unisg.ch/org/biblio/edoc.nsf/wwwDisplayIdentifier/02604973001/$FILE/02604973001.pdf.
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Burger, Csaba. "Occupational pensions in Germany : an economic geography." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:94e64b94-3bf7-4fb6-b8f5-102a472f4be7.
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By the end of the twentieth century, the generous German public pay-as-you-go pension system had been struggling with a serious deficit due to the country’s ageing population. In 2001, the German government enacted the “Riester” pension reform, named after Mr. Walter Riester, the Labour Minister brokering it, which reduced the level of publicly provided pensions, and strengthened the funded occupational and private pillars in order to replace the loss in retirement income. This thesis investigates the role and structure of occupational pensions during the Riester-reform and in its aftermath, using an economic geography perspective. In doing so, it discusses the role of trade unions and employer associations (social partners) in moulding the structure of the occupational system, and investigates the geography of occupational pensions both at employer and at employee level. Empirically, the thesis is based on an in-depth interview with Mr. Walter Riester, and a unique, proprietary data-set of a German occupational pension provider, containing information on 332 thousand employees and over 12 thousand employers. The results show that the internal division of social partners played a critical role in leaving occupational pensions voluntary, but they have been successful in setting standards on the occupational pension market by means of collective bargaining. Employers and employees show systematic spatiotemporal patterns in their pension-related decisions, confirming the importance of local relationships and local contexts in implementing social partners’ measures and in the transformation of the welfare state. It is finally pointed out that the Riester-reform was a part of a gradual transition, which has been reducing employers’ autonomy in order to reinforce the social role of occupational pensions. To achieve that and to catalyse the reform process, employers’ and employees’ risk exposure has been mitigated in the hope that old-age poverty can be avoided.
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Sapsalis, Eleftherios. "Essays on the value of academic patents and technology transfer." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210686.
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Around the world, knowledge and technology transfer have moved to the forefront of attention in economic, social and industrial policy. As the origins of future development increasingly derives from innovation, attention is paid more and more to non-traditional sources that have the potential to become the basis for creation of new businesses or the catalyser for the rejuvenation of old ones. Among those sources, we find university. These last years, academic patents have been one of the emerging phenomena witnessing the growing evolvement of university in the innovation process. The aim of this doctoral dissertation is to analyse the transfer of technology from university to industry through the analysis of patents. This work pursuits a threefold approach. First, it intends to analyse which characteristics determine the propensity of a university to get involved in technology transfer and more specifically to apply for a patent. Second, it disentangles the underlining value determinants of the patents to decode the value of academic patents and to identify the research processes that are leading to the most valuable inventions. Finally, it investigates the relevancy of academic patenting for innovation in general and wonders if on the long run, such practices could put innovation at risk.Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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ZAICEVA, Anzelika. "Three essays on migration from transition economies." Doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/7014.
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Defence date : 6 February 2007Examining Board: Andrea Ichino, (Università di Bologna and the EUI) ; Riccardo Faini, (Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata") ; Hartmut Lehmann, (Università di Bologna) ; Richard Spady, (European University Institute)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
Are migrants from a transition economy positively self-selected not only with respect to observable characteristics, but also with respect to the unobservales? Moreover, since the decision to migrate is endogenous, what are the causal returns to geographic mobility, net of unobservable confounders? Finally, does gender matter? Do female migrants from a transition economy experience a gain or a (double) disadvantage in the western labour market of being both female and migrants compared to female stayers and to male migrants?
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Sejanamane, Nkhahle Daniel. "Challenges in distribution of old age pensions in Lesotho." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/20477.
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The research set out to explore the nature of challenges in distribution of old age pensions in Lesotho. Poor institutional capacity failed the implementing agency, the Department of Pensions; to set up competent administrative structures to run run the pensions effectively and efficiently. A number of challenges have been identified, some of which were: inadequate supervision of the paying officers, fraud by workers and community agents, missing funds, insufficient resources, inadequate administrative capacity, overworked employees, faulty targeting, soft and discriminatory approach to non-compliance with rules and multiple use of identity documents by recipients. On the other hand, a number of opportunities have been identified to counteract the challenges. The main recommendation of the study was the engagement of mobile phone-based money transfer facilities to transfer the old age pensions from the government to the recipients. The Department of Pensions should make use of baseline database like information from civil registration agency like the Ministry of Home Affairs to confirm the validity of the pension recipients. Other recommendations included moving the division of old age pensions from the Pensions Department to the Ministry of Social Development which is the controlling body for other forms of social grants in Lesotho. The Ministry of Social Development is regarded as well equipped with qualified staff and facilities to deal with vulnerable people like the elderly.
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Lu, Tailai. "International Debt Crisis: Interaction of Economics and Politics." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1987. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc935791/.
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This study attempts to examine the international debt crisis in the 1980s from a primarily political perspective, to permit a greater understanding of the interaction between economics and politics in the course of crisis management The process of dealing with the current international debt crisis provides an pat case for investigation of how economic concerns affect political outcomes, and how political factors influence economic outcomes, and how political factors influence economic policies. This study concentrates on the two regions of Latin America and Eastern Europe where the debt crisis started. The study emphasizes that the international debt crisis started. The study emphasizes that the international debt problem has been increasingly politicized in the contemporary international relations, and that its solution, in addition to the economic aspects, calls for political willingness by all parties concerned.
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Palmedo, P. Christopher. "Equality, Trust and Universalism in Europe, Canada and the United States: Implications for Health Care Policy." PDXScholar, 2014. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1929.
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A number of theoretical explanations seek to describe the factors that have led to the position of the United States as the last industrialized Western nation without a universal health care program. Theories focus on institutional arrangement, historic precedent, and the influence of the private sector and market forces. This study explores another factor: the role of underlying social values. The research examines differences in values among ten European countries, the United States and Canada, and analyzes the associations between the values that have been seen to contribute the individualism-collectivism dynamic in the United States. The hypothesis that equality and generalized trust are positively associated with universalism is only partially true. Equality is positively associated (B = .301, p < .001), while generalized trust is negatively associated with universalism (B = -.052, p < .001). Not only do Americans show lower levels of support for income equality and universalism than Europeans, but the effect of being American holds even after controlling for socio-demographic and religious variables (B = .044, p < .01). When the model tests the association of equality and trust on universalism in each region, it explains approximately 17 percent of the variance of universalism for the United States, and approximately 13 percent in Europe and Canada.
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Zigante, Valentina. "Consumer choice, competition and privatisation in European health and long-term care systems : subjective well-being effects and equity implications." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/850/.
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Consumer choice has become a key reform trend in the provision of public services in Western European welfare states. Research on the welfare effects of choice reforms – including greater provider choice for the individual and competition between providers – has largely focused on economic evaluations of the extrinsic (outcome) effects of choice, thereby leaving its intrinsic, or procedural, value unexplored. The overarching objective of this thesis is to investigate the welfare effects of choice in the provision of health and long-term care (LTC) and their implications for equity. The thesis utilises the subjective well-being approach – incorporating both procedural and outcome utility from choice – to measure welfare effects based on quantitative analysis of survey data. Welfare effects and equity implications are examined in relation to: competition in health care in the English National Health System (NHS); choice of care package in the German long-term care system; and individual preferences and views of choice as a priority in the provision of health care in three NHS countries. The thesis argues that both service characteristics – extent of competition, information availability, technical complexity – and individual capabilities – ability to process information, capacity to manage transaction costs, availability of private support – influence the benefits that individuals derive from choice. Results suggest that choice policies have an overall positive welfare effect in both health and long-term care. However, while direct evidence of outcome improvements is found, the empirical analysis only finds indirect evidence of procedural utility. Middle class characteristics, primarily income and education, are found to have a positive influence on the benefits of choice, amounting to evidence of inequitable facets of choice policies. The middle class further exhibits preferences for choice over and above other characteristics of health care systems. Overall, this thesis advocates a holistic approach to the analysis of choice, incorporating its procedural value and paying particular attention to the equity implications of the choice situation, information processing and differences in available options as well as preferences for choice.
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Karakaya, Gungor. "Essays on population ageing, dependency and overeducation." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210405.
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The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the problem of population ageing in terms of the cessation of professional activity (and especially premature labour market withdrawals) and non-medical care needs of persons who are dependent or have lost their autonomy, in order to provide the various public and private administrations active in these fields with some food for thought.Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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GUARDIANCICH, Igor. "Pension Reforms in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe: Legislation, implementation and sustainability." Doctoral thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/13297.
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Defense Date: 28/10/2009Examining Board: Nicholas Barr (LSE), Martin Kohli (EUI), Martin Rhodes (University of Denver, formerly EUI) (Supervisor), Tine Stanovnik (University of Ljubljana)
The study analyses the legislation and implementation of pension reforms in four Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries: Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. By comparing the political economy of their policymaking processes, it pinpoints regularities between institutional settings, actor constellations, decision-making strategies and reform outcomes. The dissertation addresses three research questions: Why was reform possible and how was it carried through? What are its distributive consequences? Does it guarantee long-term political support? The main argument is that viable pension reforms should not be seen as an event, but rather as a continuing process that must be fiscally, socially and politically sustainable. The primary goals of a pension scheme are poverty reduction, consumption smoothing and insurance. These can be achieved only if the scheme enjoys continuing political support at all levels. Elaborating on this premise, the research makes four broad claims; two related to legislation and two to the implementation of reforms. First, policymakers in post-socialist countries quickly exhausted the possibility of enacting simple corrective measures and were hence forced to negotiate pension reforms with the pro-welfare coalition. Complex exchanges between policy and politics became central to these negotiated bargains. Second, systemic reforms introducing policy innovations, such as funding, were politically superior to parametric changes. Systemic innovations are a source of popular support and free room for manoeuvre. The new funded elements are traded for cuts in public pension schemes. Third, trade-offs between fiscal and social sustainability emerged during legislation, jeopardizing successful implementation. Excessive emphasis on financial viability conflicts with sound social policy. Conversely, failure to eliminate extreme imbalances between contributions and benefits, and unjustified special privileges disrupt the fiscal budget. Finally, how legislation is conducted is important for a reform’s political acceptability. Negotiated bargains are qualitatively different from other modes of policymaking. Contrary to a received wisdom in the literature, the thesis argues that inclusive decision-making, as opposed to limited bargaining, increases both the effectiveness of reforms and their political sustainability over time. The involvement of a greater number of stakeholders allows for smoother implementation: costly deviations from efficient solutions are avoided, and incentives to stick to the reform’s initial rationale are put in place. With respect to existing work, this study makes two innovations. First, it extends analysis to ten years of implementation, following the reform wave of the late 1990s. Second, it employs theoretical instruments to study Eastern pension reforms that are entirely consistent with those applied to the West. The dissertation links the legislative and the implementation phases together by adapting the Natali-Rhodes’ theoretical framework, developed for pension reforms in Continental Europe. The ‘spillover’ is justified on multiple grounds. First, sufficient analogies exist between the institutional structure and the mounting problems of Bismarckian retirement arrangements and post-socialist pension schemes. Second, this approach accounts for the popularity of systemic pension reforms in the region. By focussing on the ‘creative opportunism’ of policymakers, it shows how they simultaneously introduced policy improvements and imposed benefit cuts. Finally, the framework is easily extended to the implementation of reforms, thereby linking individual decision-makers’ preferences to policy outcomes and their consequent sustainability in time.
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"Retirement consumption and time spent on home production in the transition to retirement." 2011. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5894855.
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Kong, Kwok Ho."August 2011."
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-68).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract --- p.ii
摘要 --- p.iii
Acknowledgements --- p.iv
Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 2. --- Literature Review --- p.4
Chapter 2.1 --- The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle --- p.4
Chapter 2.2 --- Food Expenditure and Food Consumption --- p.7
Chapter 2.3 --- Heterogeneous Impact of Retirement on Consumption Expenditure --- p.7
Chapter 3. --- Data Sources and Description --- p.10
Chapter 3.1 --- Surveys --- p.10
Chapter 3.2 --- Sample --- p.12
Chapter 4. --- Methodology --- p.16
Chapter 5. --- "Comparison of the NHAPS, ATUS, and ASEC Estimates" --- p.18
Chapter 6. --- Empirical Results-Demographic Characteristics --- p.21
Chapter 6.1 --- Male and Female Householders --- p.23
Chapter 6.2 --- Marital Status --- p.25
Chapter 6.3 --- Education --- p.27
Chapter 7. --- Empirical Results-Financial Characteristics --- p.29
Chapter 7.1 --- Housing Ownership --- p.30
Chapter 7.2 --- Interest and Dividend Income --- p.32
Chapter 8. --- Empirical Results-Dependency Status --- p.35
Chapter 9. --- Potential Bias of Using Age as an Insturment for Retirement --- p.38
Chapter 10. --- Robustness Checking --- p.40
Chapter 10.1 --- Estimation with Restricted Samples --- p.40
Chapter 10.2 --- Ordinary Least Square (OLS) Estimation --- p.41
Chapter 11. --- Conclusions --- p.43
Chapter Figure 1 --- Level Changes of Time Spent on Food Production for Household Members by Three-year Ranges --- p.46
Chapter Figure 2 --- Percentage Change of Time Spent on Food Production for Household Members by Three-year Ranges --- p.47
Chapter Table 1 --- "Descriptive Statistics of Non-retired and Retired Individuals in NHAPS, ATUS, and ATUS-ASEC" --- p.48
Chapter Table 2 --- Descriptive Statistics of Time Spent on Home Food Production (in minutes per day) of Non-retired and Retired Households --- p.49
Chapter Table 3 --- Comparison of Regression Result between the Estimation of Aguiar and Hurst (2005) and the Author's Estimation --- p.50
Chapter Table 4 --- Descriptive Statistics of ATUS Non-retired and Retired Individuals by Gender --- p.51
Chapter Table 5 --- 2SLS Estimates of ATUS-ASEC Householders by Gender --- p.52
Chapter Table 6 --- 2SLS Estimates of ATUS-ASEC Female Householders by Marital Status --- p.53
Chapter Table 7 --- 2SLS Estimates of ATUS-ASEC Male Householders by Marital Status --- p.54
Chapter Table 8 --- 2SLS Estimates of ATUS-ASEC Householders by Education Attainment --- p.55
Chapter Table 9 --- 2SLS Estimates of ATUS-ASEC Householders by Housing Ownership --- p.56
Chapter Table 10 --- 2SLS Estimates of ATUS-ASEC Householders by Interest Income and Dividend Income during the Survey Year --- p.57
Chapter Table 11 --- 2SLS Estimates of ATUS-ASEC Householders by Dependency Status during the Survey Year --- p.58
Chapter Table 12 --- Comparison of Regression Results under Full Samples and Restricted Samples --- p.59
Chapter Table 13 --- Comparison of Regression Results between the Use of 2SLS and OLS Methods --- p.60
Chapter Appendix: --- Data --- p.61
Chapter Appendix Table 1 --- Time Spent on Home Food Production (in Minutes per Day) of Householders by Marital Status --- p.62
Chapter Appendix Table 2 --- Time Spent on Home Food Production (in Minutes per Day) of Householders by Education Attainment --- p.63
Chapter Appendix Table 3 --- Time Spent on Home Food Production (in Minutes per Day) of Householders by Housing Ownership and the Sum of Interest Income and Dividend Income --- p.64
Chapter Appendix Table 4 --- Housing Ownership and Education Attainment of Individuals in 2003-2009 ATUS-ASEC --- p.65
Chapter Appendix Table 5 --- Time Spent on Home Food Production (in Minutes per Day) of Householders by Dependency Status --- p.66
References --- p.67
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"The role of marital bargaining in the retirement-consumption decision: evidence using food intake data." 2012. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5549216.
Full textAbstract:
Lundberg et al. (2003)主張的婚姻談判理論指出退休家庭消費驟降現象是由於夫妻間的相對談判能力在丈夫退休後出現變化而造成。而且該下跌的幅度取決於二人年齡的差異。本論文考慮到 Aguiar and Hurst (2005)的評論消費應該被視為支出和時間的輸出，嘗試修改 Lundberg et al. (2003)的婚姻談判模型，並從食物攝取量的角度重新探討它在退休消費決策中所扮演的角色。我利用美國全國食品調查的食品消費支出和攝取量數據，結果發現儘管退休已婚夫婦的消費支出有下降跡象，但無論是已婚還是單身家庭均沒有減少消費的數量或降低消費的品質。此外，我發現並無任何證據顯示在已婚家庭組別中，夫婦間年齡差距較大的家庭會傾向於丈夫退休後削減更多消費或支出。這些結果與理論預期不符合。因此，認為婚姻談判理論能充分解釋已婚家庭退休消費行為的推斷還是言之過早。The Marital Bargaining Theory proposed by Lundberg et al. (2003) suggests that a discontinuity in consumption expenditure at retirement is attributable to the change in the relative bargaining power of husbands and wives upon the husband's retirement, and that the extent of such a decline depends upon age differences in couples. This thesis responds to Aguiar and Hurst (2005)'s critique that consumption should be regarded as an outcome of market expenses and time. With this taken into consideration, I attempt to rewrite the marital bargaining model and reexamine its role in the retirement-consumption decision empirically from the perspective of food intake. By exploiting data on food expenditures and intake from U.S nationwide food surveys, I show that despite a drop in expenditures for married couples, neither married nor single households experience a decline in consumption associated with retirement in terms of food quantity and quality. Also, I find no evidence that married couples with big age gaps suffer from a larger decline in either expenditures or consumption relative to those who are closer in age. These results are inconsistent with a modified model of marital bargaining. It is thus premature to conclude that the Marital Bargaining Theory plays an important role in explaining the retirement-consumption behavior of married couples.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Wong, Lok Sze.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83).
Abstracts also in Chinese.
Abstract --- p.ii
摘要 --- p.iii
Acknowledgements --- p.iv
Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 2. --- Literature Review --- p.4
Chapter 3. --- Data --- p.13
Chapter 3.1 --- Survey Description --- p.13
Chapter 3.2 --- Sample Selection --- p.18
Chapter 3.3 --- Summary Statistics --- p.20
Chapter 4. --- Change in Expenditure and Time use at Retirement --- p.21
Chapter 5. --- Modified Model of Marital Bargaining --- p.26
Chapter 6. --- Methodology for Consumption Analysis --- p.32
Chapter 7. --- Comparison of the CSFII and NHANES Estimates --- p.37
Chapter 8. --- Retirement-Consumption Behaviors across Married Couples --- p.40
Chapter 9. --- Discussion and Implication --- p.47
Chapter 10. --- Conclusion --- p.50
Chapter Figure 1: --- Retirement Rates by Age in the CSFII --- p.52
Chapter Table 1: --- Demographic Statistics of Male Household Heads Aged Between 57 and 71 in the CSFII and NHANES by Marital Status --- p.53
Chapter Table 2: --- Descriptive Statistics of Self-Reported Health Status and Specific Health Conditions of Male Household Heads Aged Between 57 and 71 in the CSFII and NHANES by Marital Status --- p.54
Chapter Table 3: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Log Food Expenditure and Shopping Frequency Upon Retirement by Marital Status --- p.55
Chapter Table 4: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Log Food Expenditure and Shopping Frequency Upon Retirement for Married Couples by Difference in Age --- p.56
Chapter Table 5: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Log Food Expenditure and Shopping Frequency Upon Retirement for Married Couples by Difference in Age (Three Groups) --- p.57
Chapter Table 6: --- Comparison of Predictions Between Standard and Modified Marital Bargaining Models --- p.58
Chapter Table 7: --- Comparison of Regression Results for Average Population Between the CSFII and NHANES (Nutritional Compositions) --- p.59
Chapter Table 8: --- Comparison of Regression Results for Average Population Between the CSFII and NHANES (Propensity to Consume Food Categories) --- p.60
Chapter Table 9: --- Comparison of Regression Results for Average Population Between the CSFII and NHANES (Propensity to Eat Away from Home) --- p.61
Chapter Table 10: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Nutritional Compositions Upon Retirement by Marital Status --- p.62
Chapter Table 11: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Propensity to Consume Food Categories Upon Retirement by Marital Status --- p.63
Chapter Table 12: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Propensity to Eat Away from Home Upon Retirement by Marital Status --- p.64
Chapter Table 13: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Nutritional Compositions Upon Retirement for Married Couples by Difference in Age (Three Groups) --- p.65
Chapter Table 14: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Propensity to Consume Food Categories Upon Retirement for Married Couples by Difference in Age (Three Groups) --- p.66
Chapter Table 15: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Propensity to Eat Away from Home Upon Retirement for Married Couples by Difference in Age (Three Groups) --- p.67
Chapter Table 16: --- Comparison of Empirical Results and Predictions of Two Models, With and Without Change in Bargaining Power Within Marriage, for Married Couple Households --- p.68
Chapter Appendix Table 1: --- The Median Annual Household Incomes in the 1999-2008 CPS March Supplement and the Corresponding Income Ranges in the NHANES --- p.69
Chapter Appendix Table 2: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Nutritional Compositions Upon Retirement for Married Couples by Difference in Age (Non-Household Head) --- p.70
Chapter Appendix Table 3: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Propensity to Consume Food Categories Upon Retirement for Married Couples by Difference in Age (Non-Household Head) --- p.71
Chapter Appendix Table 4: --- Instrumental Variable Regression of Changes in Propensity to Eat Away from Home Upon Retirement for Married Couples by Difference in Age (Non-Household Head) --- p.72
Chapter Appendix: --- Proof 1 --- p.73
Chapter Appendix: --- Proof 2 --- p.76
References --- p.81
20
Hildebrandt, Antje [Verfasser]. "Central and eastern europe in transition : economic and institutional aspects / von Antje Hildebrandt." 2002. http://d-nb.info/966273672/34.
Full text
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YARASHYNSKAYA, Aksana. "The performance of agriculture in transition economies : evidence from Poland and Belarus, 1990-2004." Doctoral thesis, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/40748.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 18 May 2015Examining Board: Professor Govanni Federico, EUI and University of Pisa, Supervisor; Professor Youssef Cassis, EUI; Professor Vicente Pinilla,University of Zaragoza; Professor/Academic Director, Alexei Pikulik, European University of St.Petersburg/Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies.
This thesis contributes to the existing literature on the agricultural reforms that took place in Central and Eastern European countries during the transformational period (1990-2004) and on the agricultural development in Europe in general in the long-term (1960-2004). The study explores the history of the agricultural transformations in Poland and Belarus through a detailed analysis of the agricultural production and productivity dynamics, aiming to answer (i) whether the reforms succeeded or failed in terms of agricultural production and agricultural productivity; and (ii) what were the determinants of the agricultural reforms' success or failure. The research is centered on a comparative analysis of Polish and Belarusian agricultural performance, but it also incorporates the other CEE countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Russia and Ukraine), as well as the advanced Western European economies.
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INNSET, Ola. "Reinventing liberalism : early neoliberalism in context, 1920-1947." Doctoral thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/48324.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 27 September 2017Examining Board: Professor Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic, Sciences Po; Dr. João Rodrigues, University of Coimbra (external advisor); Professor Youssef Cassis, European Universiy Institute; Professor Lucy Riall, European University Institute (supervisor)
Awarded the 2019 Dorfman Dissertation Prize by the History of Economics Society
The thesis is a close study of a transnational group of intellectuals, mainly economists, who met in Paris in 1938 and at Mont Pèlerin in 1947 with the explicit aim to create a new liberalism for the modern world. At times they would use neoliberalism as a description of the creed they were developing, later they would opt for classical liberalism, in a bid to highlight continuities in their approach to political philosophy. Was their liberalism classical or was it new? The verb to reinvent is used frequently in modern academe, but its meaning is somewhat unclear. In the history of political thought, however, and especially the history of liberalism, the term can become a useful tool for enquiry. One way or the other, all new creeds build on previous ones, but the intellectuals in question were involved in a conscious, explicit attempt to change liberalism. This involved restating certain aspects of what they perceived as “true liberalism” and updating these to a different social and historical context, while also purging liberalism of all they felt was wrong with it. The contextualization of the many layers of interpretation involved in making these arguments is the main topic of this thesis. The intellectuals in question argued that “economic planning” was what had led to the rise of dictatorships in Europe. They included the communist dictatorship in Russia and the fascist dictatorships in Germany and Italy as part of the same phenomenon, totalitarianism, and further claimed that democracies like the USA, Great Britain and France were headed in the same direction. In this way, other, tangential movements to reinvent liberalism under labels such as new liberalism or social liberalism also came under attack, as it was argued that they were taking society in a totalitarian direction through collectivism and economic planning. The latter concept was defined loosely as any government “intervention” in the economy or, more precisely, attempts at subverting the mechanisms of markets in order to improve on their outcomes, redistribute wealth or counter business cycles. This strong criticism of economic planning did not lead these thinkers to advocate a position of “laissez-faire”. On the contrary, the second major plank of their intellectual project was an attack on the ideas of laissez-faire liberalism, a creed they claimed was rigid and outdated. Their internal debates can be seen as an attempt to incorporate a theory of states into right-wing liberalism, and focused on how to use states to spread, protect and foster what they still saw as a largely self-regulating mechanism. The first part of the thesis traces this dual argument to books, articles, lectures and correspondence by and between the intellectuals involved, from the German language socialist calculation debates in the 1920s, to the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947. The second part of the thesis uses some of the tools of micro history to conduct an in-depth study of this ten-day meeting in the Swiss alps. In the conclusion I argue that neoliberalism is best understood as a theory of modernity arising out of the historical conjuncture of Europe in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. This theory was based on a novel conceptualization of markets as mediators of modernity, the only mechanism through which order and prosperity could be achieved in a modern mass-society. Neoliberals took this new understanding of markets and combined it with an embrace of state power as legitimate within a theory of liberalism when put to use in concordance with what was believed to be logic of markets. The work may contribute to a deeper understanding of neoliberalism, whether this is seen as a philosophy inspiring a political movement, a political rationality, or some sort of combination of the two.
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Bruhn, Aaron Grant. "What happens when it all goes wrong? A study into the impacts of personal financial shocks." Phd thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/156096.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the impact on individuals who suffer from significant financial loss. It also highlights broader environmental issues relating to financial provision for individuals, particularly in retirement. Such issues include regulation, financial literacy, the significant choice available, and the need for professional financial advice. These are particularly significant in the Australian context where financial self-sufficiency is promoted as a desired option in retirement. The collapse of Queensland-based Storm Financial is used as a casestudy to investigate these matters. A qualitative approach was taken with elements of grounded theory and narrative inquiry utilised when engaging with the available data. Available data from a 2009 Parliamentary Inquiry includes 823 pages of public hearing transcripts and 2879 pages of written submissions. Interviews with 15 different parties were also carried out, giving rise to 33 hours of recorded conversation. To mitigate issues of researcher and participant bias and a reliance on qualitative interpretation as the primary tool of analysis, various procedures including triangulation and member checking were adopted. It is apparent that sudden and significant financial loss is devastating. An individual's emotional wellbeing is a primary casualty, and one's mental health is also vulnerable. An individual's social world is also impacted, including relationships with family and friends, how one engages in community activities, and the ability to partake in familial and cultural roles. Financial victims also perceive a sense of judgement from society at large about their losses. A loss of trust may be the epitome of financial loss. Any financial promise requires trust in institutions, professional service providers, government via licensing and regulation, and others including oneself. Trust in all of these entities is impacted when loss occurs, and is highly dependent on not just the size but also the circumstances of those losses. The loss of trust and the loss of financial means leads in turn to a lack of control over one's life. Many of these impacts are reflected in other traumatic circumstances, and some are seen to be particularly exacerbated in the specific case of Storm. These impacts demonstrate that vulnerability exists when encouraging self-sufficiency in retirement. Greater individualisation in financial provision introduces risks that current regulation may not be equipped to mitigate, particularly in the areas of licensing and disclosure. Information asymmetry between informed and non-informed participants exacerbates these risks. This highlights the importance of ethical disposition when dealing with financial affairs. The current retirement 'pillars' of the age pension, superannuation and other savings describe 'mechanisms' of income, but an alternative pillared system of government, other institutions, and oneself is offered to highlight the underlying sources of trust. Storm's collapse highlights that money matters but not for its own sake - it is the subsequent loss of control and options that is tangibly impacted. Significant financial loss is therefore anything but trivial, and a strong dependence of overall wellbeing on financial wellbeing is highlighted. Any system which allows unnecessary risks upon the attainment of such financial wellbeing for individuals should therefore be subjected to critical scrutiny.
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SPAGNOLO, Carlo. "The Marshall Plan and the stabilization of Western Europe : counterpart funds and corporatist trends in Italy, France and Western Germany (1947-1950)." Doctoral thesis, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5982.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 4 May 1998Examining board: Prof. Werner Abelshauser, University of Bielefeld (external supervisor) ; Prof. Richard T. Griffiths, University of Leiden (supervisor) ; Prof. Charles S. Maier, Harvard University ; Prof. Alan S. Milward, EUI ; Prof. Raffaele Romanelli, EUI
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
Sulla base di un'ampia ricognizione degli archivi americani, francesi, italiani e tedeschi, l'autore avanza un'innovativa interpretazione del piano Marshall e ricostruisce per la prima volta gli effetti sulla vita politica ed economica italiana, individuando i complessi fili che legarono la politica di De Gasperi, l'espansione dell'intervento pubblico, la nascita della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno e le origini dell'integrazione europea.
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COTTA, Benedetta. "The "business" of compliance." Doctoral thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/38944.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 12 January 2016Examining Board: Professor László Bruszt, European University Institute (EUI Supervisor); Professor Adrienne Héritier, European University Institute; Professor Wade Jacoby, Brigham Young University; Professor Frank Schimmelfenning, ETH Zürich.
The dissertation aims at understanding and explaining the existence of variation in sustainable compliance with EU legislation in two similarly rule-taking countries. The cases under examination are Hungary and Poland which have experienced a similar historical background, similar environmental problems and have been subject to similar EU conditions and requirements for accession. Nevertheless, the EU Annual Progress Reports and the Tri-Annual Monitoring Reports showed a variation in their compliance with European environmental requirements. The existing literature has explained this divergence by taking a supply-side approach, focusing on those state actors and incumbents who could decide to supply compliance or not. In particular, researchers of compliance and of Europeanisation have focused on differences in capacity limitations or incentives to domestic actors. These supply-side approaches, however, do not seem to fully explain the existing divergence between the performances of Hungary and Poland nor do they sufficiently tackle the issue of "sustainable compliance" in the post-Accession period. In my analysis, I instead explain variation in sustainable compliance by exploring demand-side explanations. To this end, the thesis explores the hypothesis of demand for compliance emerging on the part of stakeholders who recognise its potential for profitability and, thus, influence its sustainability. Its starting point is the Tsebelis' study on stakeholders which describes them solely as "veto players" along the road to compliance; however, this analysis demonstrates that there is also another dimension to the influence they may have. I build my hypothesis around the existence of such factors as market incentives and pre-existing cooperative strategies that make compliance convenient for stakeholders. Moreover, I consider the role played by external assistance and the existence of alliances between external and domestic stakeholders to improve the overall compliance performance of less-regulated countries. The study proves the significance of market incentives and pre-existing cooperative strategies in fostering sustainable compliance while showing how the two strong explanatory variables are interlinked: compliance is not a "business" per se. It has a potential to be made a "good deal" via cooperative strategies among diverse stakeholders creating a win-win settlement.
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DARBY, James. "The political economy of Japanese manufacturing investment in France and the United Kingdom (1970-86)." Doctoral thesis, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5162.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 8 October 1987Examining board: Prof. Vincent Wright, Nuffield College ; Prof. Yves Morvan, University of Rennes ; Prof. Julien Savary, University of Toulouse ; Prof. Stephen Young, Strathclyde University
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
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FEYS, Torsten. "A business approach to transatlantic migration : the introduction of steam-shipping on the North Atlantic and its impact on the European Exodus 1840-1914." Doctoral thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/10407.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 13 May 2008Examining Board: Prof. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (EUI) - supervisor; Prof. Bartolomé Yun (EUI); Prof. Eric Vanhaute (Ghent University); Prof. Lewis Fischer (University of Newfoundland).
First made available online on 24 August 2018
Why, yet another study on the long 19th century European mass-migration movement to the US, when during the last decade migration historians have encouraged a shift away from the Atlanto-centrism and Modernization-centrism that has dominated the sub-discipline (Lucassen and Lucassen, 1996, 28-30; Hoerder, 2002, 10-18)? For many, the topic seems saturated, yet one particular and reoccurring question has not yet received a satisfying answer: how did the migrant trade evolve and influence the relocation of approximately thirty five million migrants across the Atlantic, of whom an ever increasing percentage returned and repeated the journey during the steamship era? More than half a century ago Maldwyn Jones, Frank Thistletwaite, and Rolf Engelsing drew attention to the fact that transatlantic migration was determined by trade routes (Jones, 1956, Engelsing, 1961; Thistletwaite, 1960). Migrants essentially became valuable cargo, on a shipping route made up of raw cotton, tobacco or timber from the New World; a route that had room to spare on the return leg of the journey. Rolf Engelsing in particular documented how the maritime business community reacted to this trade opportunity, by erecting inland networks, directing a continuous flow of human cargo to the port of Bremen during the sailship-era. Marianne Wokeck later stressed the Atlantic dimensions of these networks, by dating the origins of non-colonial mass migration movements to the 18th Century (Wokeck, 1999).
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HARRYVAN, Anjo G. "In Pursuit of Influence : aspects of the Netherlands' European policy during the formative years of the European Economic Community, 1952-1973." Doctoral thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/7002.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 2 April 2007Examining Board: Prof. P. Winand (EUI) ; Prof. B. Stråth (EUI) ; Prof. A. Kersten (University of Leyden) ; Prof. W. Loth (University of Essen)
First made available online 2 August 2018
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MARZAGALLI, Silvia. "I negozianti delle citta portuali in eta napoleonica : Amburgo, Bordeaux e Livorno di fronte al blocco continentale, 1806-1813." Doctoral thesis, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5897.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 16 December 1993Examining board: Prof. Louis Bergeron ; Prof. Paul Butel ; Prof. Carlo Capra ; Prof. Christof Dipper ; Prof. Raffaele Romanelli ; Prof. Stuart Woolf (supervisor)
First made available online: 1 June 2016
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BALLI, Volker. "Power and Gestalt of political concepts : a study of the emergence, nature and self-understanding of the Europe Union Polity." Doctoral thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/11973.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 7 February 2009Examining Board: Prof. Peter Wagner, University of Trento and formerly EUI (Supervisor); Prof. Richard Bellamy, University College London; Prof. Claus Offe, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin; Prof. Neil Walker, University of Edinburgh and formerly EUI
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis proposes a new way of addressing two central questions in the study of the European Union: What is the nature of the European Union as a political entity and how does it emerge? The point of departure is the, by now widely accepted, conceptualisation of the EU as a polity and the extensive discussions, not least in normative and prescriptive terms, that this process implied. Judging that many of the debates have reached dead-ends, the thesis proposes a novel way of conceptualising the concept ‘polity’ in its application to the European Union. It argues that the European Union polity should be understood as a configuration of agreements to collectively address common problems. The thesis then offers an analysis of three such fields of agreed upon common activities over the period 1992 to 2005 which are constitutive of the European Union polity and construct its boundedness: ‘Enlargement to the East’; ‘Immigration policy’; and ‘Europe as an actor in the world.’ Under scrutiny includes: the context in which these policies emerged; the normative ideas through which the problems at stake were identified; and the agreed-upon mechanisms for addressing common problems. To understand the emergence and nature of these common activities, the thesis proposes a concept-centred approach. It argues that concepts are constitutive for the European Union polity. The concepts constitute the agreements to address problems in common and thus ‘form’ the European Union polity. Thereby, the thesis shows the ways in which five key concepts - human rights, democracy, diversity, prosperity and security - are effective (‘their power’ or ‘efficacy’) and which Gestalt (‘meaning’) they take on in these specific problem-ridden situations. Particular attention is paid to the relationship and, specifically, tensions between the different normative concepts as well as the compromises that they form and the re-configuration of the respective policy fields they bring about. The thesis concludes that these findings should be interpreted as a self-understanding of the European Union. This self-understanding encompasses the commitment to a set of ideas, the decision to take action in certain political domains and, not least, the selfidentification as a political actor and entity. Thus, focusing on the power and Gestalt of concepts without falling into an abstract idealism, the thesis combines an approach of a historical sociology, cultural sociology and the history of concepts with key concerns of European Union studies.
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VAN, DER HARST Jan. "European union and Atlantic partnership : political, military and economic aspects of Dutch defence, 1948-1954, and the impact of the European Defence Community." Doctoral thesis, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5831.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 1 February 1988Examining Board: Prof. A. S. Milward (supervisor), London School of Economics and Political Science ; Prof. R.T. Griffiths, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam ; Prof. Prof. A. Kersten, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden ; Prof. Dr. W. Loth, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster ; Prof. R. Poidevin, Université de Strasbourg III
First made available online 21 March 2019
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Elston, Denise E. "Characterizing community impacts of small dam removal : a case study of the Brownsville Dam." Thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1957/11968.
Full textAbstract:
Emerging river policy has launched small dam removal as a viable option to meet the ecological and social demands for river restoration. As small dam removals gain precedence as a policy tool in river restoration projects there exists a glaring gap in the social considerations, in particular how small dam removals may affect existing community conditions. In order to determine the community impacts that may result, a case study of the Brownsville Dam Removal, in Brownsville Oregon was investigated to address two questions: 1) how has the Brownsville Dam removal affected the social and economic conditions of the community and 2) what indicators can be used to characterize and monitor the impacts. Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with four community affiliations: 1) Canal Company members; 2) Calapooia Watershed Council members; 3) City Officials; and 4) community residents. A participatory social impact assessment (SIA) approach was used to validate existing and/or emergent impacts and indicators. The semi-structured interviews assisted in the development of a matrix of impacts and indicators specific to small dam removal. The local impacts and indicators were operationalized and measured.
Findings suggest that the social and economic impacts when distributed across the community are minimal in this case of small dam removal. Because local data availability is limited, it was determined that the traditional social impact assessment framework can be vastly improved through the engagement of the community. This research further suggests that when collaboration is extended beyond a unidirectional flow of information (which is often the case in a traditional SIA), issues and concerns are open to deliberation in a non-threatening arena. The Calapooia Watershed Council served as the forum through which the residents of Brownsville were able to enhance their participation in decision making. This also contributed to a learning process that in the end furthered the community's understanding of the dynamic physical changes to the Calapooia River as well as their capacity to solve complex decisions. The case also demonstrated that collective learning is a reflective process of adjustment to the changing circumstances in which the community came to perceive, interpret, and act upon their interest. With a growing number of collaborative partnerships of watershed based management, distinguishable by their decentralized, participatory engagement of stakeholders, it may be likely that these place-based mechanisms will become the nexus to the successful coordination of small dam removal deliberation in the future.Graduation date: 2010
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KUNNAS, Jan. "Fire and Fuels: CO2 and SO2 Emissions in the Finnish Economy, 1800-2005." Doctoral thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/11753.
Full textAbstract:
The full text available is only the introduction of the thesis.Defence date: 15 June 2009
Supervisor: Giovanni Federico External supervisor: Timo Myllyntaus Examining Board: Giovanni Federico Bartolomé Yun Casalilla Magnus Lindmark Jan Luiten van Zanden
This thesis examines Finland‘s transition from a solar based energy system to a fossil fuel based one, and the environmental consequences of this transition. The period under examination is from the beginning of the 19th century to the present, covering Finland's transition from a proto-industrial agricultural society to a --post- industrial| society. The theoretical starting point has been the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, which proposes that some pollution or measures of environmental degradation would follow an inverted U-curve related to incomes, increasing at low income levels and decreasing at high income levels. Based on the historical approach used in this thesis, two new explanations for the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve are added: 1) The severity of environmental degradation might itself create a turning point for the emissions, or in some cases fear of severe effects. 2) What at a first glance seems to be a genuine environmental improvement might just be a transformation of one environmental problem into another. Some proponents of economic growth go as far as claiming that economic growth is a necessary condition for proper protection of the environment. This thesis turns the argument around, claiming that the causal connection goes in an opposite direction: proper environmental standards and conservation comprise a necessary condition for economic growth in the long run. Finland industrialized by means of renewable, indigenous energy sources. The switch to imported fossil fuels in the 1960s led to exceptionally fast growth of carbon and sulphur dioxide emissions. The emissions of sulphur dioxide started to decline in the 1970s while the emission growth of carbon dioxide only slowed down. The initial decline of sulphur dioxide emissions was mainly a side-effect of changes in industrial processes rather than an outcome of a deliberate policy. Furthermore, anxiety about large and widespread damage to the forests was a major reason for active measures to decrease sulphur dioxide emissions since the mid- 1980s. Thus the emissions themselves provoked their downturn. Quantitative calculations on the use of natural resources provide valuable tools, which can give new insights to old questions and raise new questions. Burning cultivation of peatlands, which has been neglected in historical research, was found to be the greatest source of carbon dioxide in Finland during the whole of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. Another neglected occupation, the production of potash might have consumed as much wood during the 19th century as the production of tar.
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Ndlovu, P. G. "South African citrus farmers' perceptions of the benefits and costs of compliance with private sector certification schemes for citrus exports." Thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/5331.
Full textAbstract:
The main objective of this study was to analyse South African (SA) citrus farmers’ perceptions of the benefits and costs of complying with quality assurance (QA) certification schemes for citrus exports to the European Union (EU). The study used an e-mail and postal survey questionnaire mailed to a stratified random sample of 260 SA commercial citrus growers during July 2007. The survey yielded 108 usable responses - a response rate of 10.8% from the target population of 1001 commercial SA citrus growers. The main factors motivating respondents to adopt QA certification were to keep and maintain access to existing markets; to improve customer confidence in their products; to access new markets; and to meet food safety and retailer requirements. Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
identified six underlying dimensions of motivators, which suggest a drive by sampled respondents to gain certification to meet market requirements, achieve intra-farm benefits such as cost-reduction, and to remain competitive in existing and new foreign markets. The sampled respondents identified the main internal benefits from QA certification as the ability to retain existing markets; improved worker health and safety; better access to foreign markets; better farm organisation; and improved fruit safety
and orchard management. The PCA identified six broad dimensions of these internal benefits. Comparing the motivator and perceived benefit dimensions, most of the motivators seem to have been in part realised by the respondents. Respondents rated shared goals and values about the product; more joint decision making on fruit safety; more working together on quality assurance; a better business working relationship; improved
coordination; and improved trust as the six major supply chain benefits from QA certification. The two dimensions identified from these external benefits by PCA were: (1) Improved working relationship and product quality benefits, and (2) Improved cooperation and contractual benefits. The major costs of implementing EUREPGAP certification related to initial investment costs and the recurrent annual costs of compliance. The respondents, on average, spent an estimated R70655 on initial compliance
costs, mainly for infrastructure, additional buildings and employees training. Some 60% of respondents spent less than 1% of annual farm turnover on initial compliance costs, while most of the respondents (84%) spent less than 1% of annual farm turnover on recurrent costs of compliance. Growers that owned a pack-house had statistically significantly higher initial and annual costs of compliance. Most (63%) of the respondents had a relatively high level of overall satisfaction with QA certification. The second objective of this study was to analyse the determinants of SA citrus farmers’ overall level of satisfaction with QA certification. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression estimated that perceived dimensions of internal benefits, namely (1) Foreign market access benefits; (2) Intra-farm benefits; (3) Improved fruit safety and orchard management; (4) Quality and worker welfare benefits; and (5) Ability to retain existing markets, all had a statistically significant positive influence on the sampled growers’ overall level of satisfaction with QA certification. Supply chain benefits also had a positive effect on overall level of satisfaction, although the effects were not
statistically significant. Similarly, no statistically significant relationship could be established between farm size or the respondents’ level of satisfaction with their certifying agents and their overall level of satisfaction with QA certification. Record keeping is required by nearly all EUREPGAP control chapters and for farm audits. Crop protection is also perceived as a complex requirement of the EUREPGAP protocol. Policymakers thus need to be aware of the extra costs that protocols create for management. The Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa (CGA) could consider providing more extension advice to farmers on the technical requirements of certification (particularly best practices for implementing the control
chapters). Comparing the motivator and perceived benefit dimensions, most of the motivators for QA certification seem to have been in part realised by the respondents. For instance, the drivers to improve business image/market competitiveness/market access requirements/farm profitability were realised via perceived reputation/input cost savings/foreign market and profit improvement benefits. The study results, therefore, provide some evidence that QA certification is a necessary strategy for maintaining competitiveness in EU citrus markets.Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.
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GLENCROSS, Andrew. "E Pluribus Europa? Assessing the Viability of the EU." Doctoral thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/7766.
Full textAbstract:
Defence date: 28 May 2007Examining board: Prof. Friedrich Kratochwil, European University Institute (Supervisor) ; Prof. Daniel Deudney, Johns Hopkins University ; Prof. Sergio Fabbrini, Università degli Studi di Trento ; Prof. Alexander H. Trechsel, European University Institute
As a novel and complex polity, also subject to endless proposals for institutional reform, the viability of the EU is an open but under-theorized question. This thesis conceptualizes EU viability from an internal perspective, that is, the viability of the process of integration rather than Europe as a viable actor in international politics. Adopting the concept of a compound polity to understand the tensions inherent in the EU, viability is defined in relation to the -rules of the game- of this compound system. This gambit has a twofold purpose. Firstly, it permits an analogy with another historical case of a compound system, the antebellum US republic. Secondly, it enables the specification of two scenarios of viability in a compound polity: dynamic equilibrium and voluntary centralization. Four aspects of the rules of the game (institutions, expectations, competence allocation and representative functions) are analysed to determine which scenario the EU follows. The analogy with the early US and its own conflicts over these four elements of the rules of the game is then contrasted with the EU experience. Five differences in how these disputes arise and the means for trying to settle them are singled out to explain the differing problems of viability in both compound polities. The results of this analogical analysis are then used to explore the appropriateness of certain proposed changes to the rules of the game in the EU, notably in the area of political representation. In a system accustomed to dynamic equilibrium, enhancing the representation of individuals is often seen as a condition for favouring more voluntary centralization. However, the analysis of conflicts over the rules of the game in two compound systems suggests a more cautious approach is required in the interests of viability. Hence this study presents itself as a significant, if incomplete, initial step in the process of identifying what makes the EU viable.