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1
Gashi, Ferim. "Conditions for Development of Agriculture in the Municipality of Kline, Republic of Kosovo." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Sektionen för planering och mediedesign, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-5467.
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Agriculture is one of the most important branches of economical development in the Municipality of Klina. The Municipality’s geographical position, climate and earth conditions, as well as the manpower in the territory of enables cultivation of much agricultural cultivation and the growth of high efficiency in the area. Considering all the existing factors and the new factors (to be initiated) of the development which will be based on long term socio-economic development of the municipality of Klina, most important is the agriculture. Making use of and harmonizing the available natural factors, agriculture will secure to the municipality of Klina sufficient food, produce an important overflow of market, and a general growth of the overall income and employment of the inhabitants. Convenient fertile lands, the change of planting structure, adequate appliance of agro technique and watering will create propitious possibilities for increasing agriculture production, notably the development of farming. Agriculture will for a long time be bearer of general socio-economic development in the Municipality of Klina, all it is needed is to set and realize basic purpose, role and direction of agriculture development. This make possible orientation in development and creation of conditions for the alteration of the structure of the fabrication, utilization of the existing possibilities, and finding new ways of development, recommendation of the existing systems and building new watering systems, arranging terrene, increasing land fertility, reorganization of the manufacture and reinforcement of the private sector and execution of the more dynamic increase of trade products, intense urbanization of rural places, fair governing, equipping lands with more qualitative roads for agrarian needs. All this will contribute to more quality and quantity innovation of the existing state. In a direct connection with this is the increase of plan efficiency and the increase of productivity, the plant fabrication with organizing conditions for using more water for watering, larger mechanisms for ii productivity, the expansion of guanos and fertilizers and the application of contemporary agro technical measures. Except the efficiency increase and the assortment of agricultural production, it must be reckoned that the farming should rapidly be developed through the specialization of private sectorfarms, individual mini farms for cultivation of cattle and poultry, milk and dairy products and egg production. Buying stations and depot are necessary as well as the stations that sell cattle food, guanos, agriculture tools and mechanisms, the service for mending these tools, agrarian stations, farming pharmacy, and veterinary stations.Ferim GASHI, Str. Lakrishte L4 No: 57 10000 Prishtina, Republic of Kosova Office: +381 (0) 38 212 338 Cell: +377 (0) 44 114674; Cell: +386 (0) 49 114674 Fax: +381 (0) 38 212 338 Email: ferimgashi@yahoo.ca Email: ferimgashi@gmail.com Email: ferim.gashi@ks-gov.net
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Roy, Sutanuka. "Economics of social, gender, and income inequalities." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3727/.
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The thesis contains three chapters. The first chapter reports on the first large-scale randomized field experiment involving legally-recognized minorities to examine the causal effects of providing performance-based financial incentives based on social or income disadvantage on high stakes university test scores. The results are that the average test scores of the whole cohort goes down by .14 standard deviations when financial incentives were provided by income disadvantage while there is no effect on the test scores when financial incentives were provided by social disadvantage or when financial incentives were provided to all students. The chapter provides evidence of academic non-cooperation when financial incentives are offered by income status and no evidence of such peer effects when prize incentives are given by social disadvantage. The second chapter, which is a joint work with Dr. H.F.Tam, studies the impact of matrimonial laws introduced by the British in British provinces in colonial India during 1800s and early 1900s. Exploiting quasi-random variations of districts that were former British Provinces within each post-independent Indian states, we find that females have 5% lower chances of marrying under the current legal age, and 1.6% higher chance of attending school at 10-16 years old in regions that were formerly British Provinces. Furthermore, using historical Census of India 1901-1931 on marriage status of population between 0-15 years at district level, the chapter estimates the impact of Child Marriage abolition Act (1931) on child marriages in colonial India. The third chapter uses a large-scale novel panel dataset (2005-14) on schools from the Indian state of Assam to test for the impact of violent conflict on female student’s enrolment ratios. We find that a doubling of average killings in a districtyear leads to a 13 per cent drop in girl’s enrolment rate with school fixed effects.
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Seibold, Arthur. "Essays on behavioral responses to social insurance and taxation." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3759/.
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This thesis contains three essays on behavioral responses to social insurance and taxation. The first chapter documents and analyzes an important and puzzling stylized fact about retirement behavior: the large concentration of job exits at specific ages. In Germany, almost 30% of workers retire precisely in the month when they reach one of three “statutory” retirement ages, although there is often no incentive or even a disincentive to retire at these thresholds. To study what can explain the concentration of retirements around statutory ages, I use novel administrative data covering the universe of German retirees, and I take advantage of unique variation in retirement incentives as well as in the location of statutory ages across individuals created by the German pension system. Measuring retirement bunching responses to 644 different discontinuities in pension benefit profiles, I first document that financial incentives alone fail to explain retirement patterns in the data. Second, I show that there is a direct effect of “presenting” a threshold as a statutory age, which is substantially larger than that of financial incentives. Further evidence on mechanisms suggests the framing of statutory ages as reference points for retirement as an explanation. A number of alternative channels including firm responses are also discussed but they do not seem to drive the results. The second chapter analyzes bunching responses around reference points and argues that bunching methods are naturally suited to quantify reference-dependent preferences. Using a standard labor supply model, the workhorse of the bunching literature, I first show that different types of reference dependence all have a key prediction in common: They imply sharp bunching of the outcome at the reference point. Observed bunching can be linked to underlying parameters, which motivates both structural and reduced-form estimation methods to implement an empirical bunching approach to reference dependence. Finally, I present two applications in the context of retirement decisions. First, I find significant bunching responses at a type of “pure” reference point, namely round retirement ages. Second, I complement the analysis from chapter 1 with structural estimation and find a quantitatively important role of reference dependence at statutory retirement ages. Counterfactual simulations highlight that shifting statutory ages via pension reforms can be an effective policy to increase actual retirement ages with a positive fiscal impact. The third chapter turns to a topic from the realm of taxation. Modern systems of firm taxation typically feature a combination of payroll, valued-added, and corporate income taxes. However, they often exist alongside special presumptive tax regimes targeted at small and medium enterprises (SME), such as a single turnover tax. This chapter uses novel administrative data from S ̃ao Paulo (Brazil), including data on inter-firm trade, to shed light on the effects of such dual tax systems on firm growth, market competition, and production decisions. First, we show that the firm size distribution is distorted by the eligibility threshold for the presumptive tax system. Second, ineligible (larger) firms are adversely affected by reductions in the tax and compliance burden for SME. Third, we study the relationship between tax systems and production choices. The presumptive tax mainly replaces a payroll tax and a value-added tax by a turnover tax in our context. Accordingly, we find that firms in the presumptive tax regime use relatively more labor input and source more of their intermediate input from other firms in the same regime. This leads to partial segmentation of the trade network between firms in the two systems. We show that heterogeneity in firm production choices drives part of these correlations, but there is also a causal effect of tax regimes on input choices.
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Browne, Phyllis. "Educational reforms in Barbados, 1966-1986 : social implications." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66015.
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Tait, Irvine Wallace. "Voluntarism and the state in British social welfare 1914-1939." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1995. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5065/.
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The New Right's critique of the welfare state has generated considerable interest in the history of alternative forms of welfare provision. Recent work has focused upon the continued existence of voluntarism alongside the growth of twentieth century state welfare. In doing this, it has reacted against the tendency of post-war social welfare writing to concentrate exclusively on the statutory social services. This thesis, therefore, adds to a growing body of writing on inter-war voluntary social action. However, it differs from the work of others by focusing upon the interplay of voluntary and statutory sectors in the face of war, industrial unrest and mass unemployment: in other words the upheavals of the early twentieth century. The main body of the research not only deals with the part played by both sectors in the delivery of social services, but also places voluntarism in a wider social context by exploring its ideological response to working-class assertiveness. Indeed, the belief in a British national community with interests that transcended class or sectional divisions was a common feature in voluntarism's attitude towards the above challenges and their implications for social stability. Thus, by highlighting the class objectives of the middle-class volunteer, this thesis avoids treating voluntary groups as simply the deliverers of social services in partnership with the state. As middle-class organisations operating within civil society, the charities covered in the pages ahead are placed alongside the state and capital in the defence of the existing economic and social order. Differences may have existed amongst charities over the correct mix in the statutory-voluntary welfare mix, but, as this thesis seeks to prove, this should not blind us to voluntarism's commitment to an over riding class interest.
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Bulczak, Grzegorz. "Essays on social networks, participation, and outcomes in education." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2012. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/346631/.
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This thesis explores the role of social networks in determining adolescents’ outcomes in schools. The thesis consists of three papers that seek to empirically test how characteristic of friendship networks and peers affect adolescents’ choices and performance in education. The main goal of the first paper is to estimate the effects of ego’s friends age diversity on academic performance. The findings provide evidence that having an age diversified friendship network results in significantly worse academic outcomes. Contrary to the previous research, no evidence is found that having a best friend of a different age, or a group of friends of average age that differs from an individual’s age is associated with worse outcomes in education. This paper addresses concerns about self-selection into networks and unobserved school level differences by using within-school variation and instrumental variable methods. The findings remain robust after the sample is limited to students with no criminal background and those that are in the expected grade for their given age. In the second paper a hypothesis that more interconnected networks (those with high density of friendships) positively impact on adolescents’ school performance due to more scope for norms and sanctions, is tested. The findings provide evidence that for an individual having a close network during high school results in significantly better academic outcomes. Individuals with friends that know each other are found to be more likely to go to college. This examination addresses concerns about self-selection into networks and unobserved school level differences. Instrumental variable approach is used to investigate the effects of closure on college attendance. The effects of closure on years of schooling are found to persist for both low and high quality networks. The findings remain robust for samples consisting of non-white and white individuals. The last paper takes a closer look at participation in extracurricular activities, a factor that is likely to influence network formation. In this chapter, the role of community composition in determining participation outcomes is examined. This investigation provides evidence suggesting that racial composition of communities affects adolescents’ participation in school extracurricular activities. The main contribution of this chapter is that problems related to sorting within communities and selection into schools, are carefully addressed.
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Haston, Catriona M. "A tale of two states : a comparative study of higher education reform and its effects on economic growth in East and West Germany 1945 - 1989." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2010. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1780/.
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The hypothesis at the heart of this thesis is that long-term economic growth depends on the discovery and development of new ideas and technologies which enable innovation resulting in increased productivity. As technological innovation generally results from research processes instigated and performed by those with higher levels of education, it becomes important to analyse higher education as an economic actor as well as a symbolic institution of cultural and elite reproduction. The thesis compares the development of higher levels of human capital in East and West Germany over the period 1945 – 1990: states with two very different and competing myths of democratic legitimacy and radically opposed social, political and economic systems but both convinced that human capital development held the key to reconstruction and economic growth. In highlighting the imperatives for reform and outlining the main changes which took place in higher education within the strictures imposed by competing ideologies, the thesis assesses the effectiveness of human capital investment in terms of the success of the economic objectives identified by both countries. The thesis finds that the initial hypothesis is proven, albeit that its effectiveness was mitigated by a number of external economic shocks and internal social and political factors which, in the end, led to the demise of the East German regime.
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Dang, Thi Thu Hoai. "Poverty in Vietnam : the effects of shocks and sectoral growth patterns." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2659/.
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The thesis aims to examine the effects of adverse shocks and sectoral growth patterns on poverty. The issue of adverse shocks has recently drawn the attention of academics and policymakers alike, but evidence of the persistent impacts of different types of shocks on poverty is limited due to a lack of data; the significance of the impacts compared to other factors has also not been well studied. With the advantage of the unique data set for Vietnam, this thesis deals with the above issues and provides the most comprehensive study of the effects of shocks on poverty. Secondly, it is argued in the current literature that sectoral growth pattern matters for pro-poor growth. Current findings in the literature reveal a mixed picture regarding which industries contribute most to poverty reduction. It is stressed that a labour-intensive feature tends to make an industry more pro-poor. This study provides a wider and more consistent approach to explaining the mixed results in the literature, and compares different growth patterns in terms of poverty reduction. The issues have been examined in the context of Vietnam, a country successful in fighting poverty over the last decades. The two issues are investigated in three core chapters, in addition to the introduction and conclusion chapters. The first core chapter deals with the issue of adverse shocks by applying an econometric method. It confirms that four types of shocks, namely natural disaster, illness of a household member, crop failure and disease of livestock, generate a negative impact on poverty. The effect of natural disasters and health shocks can be persistent, lasting for more than three years and keeping people in persistent deprivation. The negative effect of shocks on poverty is significant enough to nullify the poverty-reduction achievements of other policies, such as the education policy. Government intervention in relieving the negative impact of shocks is necessary, and has helped Vietnam reduce its poverty headcount rate by up to 10%. The second and third core chapters study the effects of sectoral growth pattern on poverty and inequality by combining a Social Accounting Matrix multiplier decomposition technique and a Computable General Equilibrium micro-simulation modelling. The first approach is used in the second chapter, where it allows examination of the issue in the short term and identifies the factors that can affect the pro-poorness of the sectoral growth. The results show that some agricultural sectors, food processing and some non-financial services sectors contribute most to poverty reduction in Vietnam. The magnitude of the poverty reduction from sectoral growth depends on four features of the industry, namely labour-intensiveness, production linkage with the labour-intensive sector, the degree of sector interdependency, and the poverty sensitivity to income of the people who benefit from the growth of the sector. The growth rate of the sector itself also determines its contribution to poverty reduction. Sub-sectors of either agriculture, industry or service sectors can have these features; this explains the mixed findings in the literature. The second approach is applied in the third core chapter, which examines the issue in the medium and long term. The issues of inequality and spatial and ethnic poverty are also discussed in this chapter. The result confirms that more rapid growth of the sectors identified as the most pro-poor in the previous chapter is the most pro-poor long term sectoral growth pattern. Even the most pro-poor growth pattern generates a difference in spatial and ethnic poverty, and increases inequality. The thesis contributes to the improvement of the research methodology and a better understanding of the relationship between shocks, sectoral growth and poverty. The findings of the thesis provide policy implications for poverty reduction. There is an urgent need to improve the safety net system that helps people cope with adverse shocks. Promoting labour-intensive industry is not the only way to promote pro-poor growth. Industries that have a close production linkage with labour intensive industry have a strong interdependency with the rest of the economy, and the high poverty sensitivity of the people who benefit from the industry growth can also contribute largely to poverty reduction. As a result, the most pro-poor sector can be a sub-sector in the agriculture, industry or service sectors. This introduces more diversified and broader insights into the pro-poor sectoral growth pattern, which can widen policy choices for countries and be tailored to the country’s condition rather than narrowly advocating the development of the agricultural sectors.
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King, Anthony. "Managing without institutions : the role of communication networks in governing resource access and control." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/36402/.
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The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the way groups or individuals tackle resource access and control problems does not always reflect identifiable institutional processes. This was tested through a case study of livelihoods and resource access problems of a Kenyan coastal community dependent on small scale fisheries. The structure of the study was based on the need to understand the context in which people live in order to interpret their behaviour. Each chapter sought to examine aspects of people's social and biophysical setting, paying particular attention to changes and causes of change. This involved a reconstruction of the community's historical relations with other groups in their area; socio-economic analysis of the livelihoods of different groups within the community; and social network analysis of people's actions in response to resource access and control problems. All groups within the community depended on a range of activities to provide food and income, but the role of fishing was dominant. Changes in local natural environments were shown to have led to a decrease in household productivity over the last five decades. This was attributed to colonialism, international development and cultural changes. This also led to increased effort in the sea, leading to overfishing. The overall socio-economic situation of the community was revealed as poor. Social network analysis showed that administrative and political actors were found to be more important than actors with a legal mandate to solve resource related problems. It was shown that formal institutions relating to natural resources stifled the process of problem resolution. Local people were found to use alternative processes, based on communication networks, to solve problems, thus supporting the hypothesis. The findings stress the importance of understanding local people's socio-economic and socio-political situation before developing resource management strategies. Resource managers could make use of social network analysis to identify and understand the roles of key people, groups and organisations.
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Sales, Heredia Francisco Javier. "Distributive justice and poverty alleviation in Mexico (1992-2000)." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2667/.
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The liberal debate on egalitarian distributive justice was originally developed with affluent occidental countries in mind. We might ask whether the liberal egalitarian distributive question has a different answer when we consider countries with a different social justice answer should in principle better interpret a political conception of social justice for a poor society, and within this general distributive principle provide specific theoretical distributive criteria for the design of poverty alleviation programmes. I claim, as a possible answer to this theoretical question that egalitarianism could be better served by using a mixed distributive. I maintain that in extreme scarcity situations egalitarians should rather appeal to a moral pluralist view where many factors matter when we compare various feasible distributions, not only equality. This “hybrid” distributive view, which I have called Progressive Sufficiency would not give ultimate importance to equality; it would give priority to the worse off over the better off individuals only under some circumstances and would consider that several morally relevant thresholds should be clarified. Another problem relates to the type of goods upon we should focus when dealing with interpersonal comparisons. Three types are commonly distinguished: welfare, resources and capability. Progressive sufficiency for instance would recommend thresholds in advantage with the first one described in absolute terms and the second and third described in progressive increases of benefits, taking as the measure of benefits the average held by the proportion of the population within thresholds. Thus we could conclude that both analysis either of the distributive criterion and the currency of the distribution naturally fit together in a general prioritarian argument with graded steps of benefits. My case study is Mexico and some of its recent poverty alleviation programmes (1992-2000). In terms of developing countries, the Mexican case is interesting because most of its institutions and policies have being inspired by liberal ideas that have succeeded in creating a moderately strong economy, but have failed in the fair distribution of scarce resources.
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Tabet, Marie-Christine. "Household labour supply in Great Britain : can policy-makers rely on neoclassical models?" Thesis, University of Sussex, 2010. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/2358/.
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This thesis empirically examines whether the neoclassical economic model provides an adequate framework to analyse a couple's labour supply behaviour in Britain using recent data from the British Household Panel Survey. The thesis comprises three empirical chapters. The first chapter uses the instrumental variable (IV) estimation procedure to model the hours of work of married couples. This approach allows us to test whether some of the assumptions of the neoclassical model (e.g., income pooling and Slutsky properties) are satisfied by the data. In addition, further variables that have been identified as distribution factors in the literature are introduced to the empirical model to assess whether they play a role in explaining a couple's hours of work. The first chapter only considers couples in which both spouses work. In the second chapter, the sample is amended to include all couples (i.e., those that work and those that do not) and the analysis conducted models a couple's labour market participation decisions rather than their hours of work. After testing for income pooling and the impact of distribution factors, a further variable, the wife's mother-in-law work status when the male spouse was aged 14, is introduced into the model. This is done to determine the effect of 'cultural' variables on labour market decisions. In the last chapter, this issue is explored further by explicitly modelling attitudes to a woman's role in the labour market. This approach uses a bivariate ordered probit model given the ordinal nature of responses to the attitudinal questions and again restricts the analysis to couples only. Finally, gender-role attitudes are introduced to the labour supply framework used in the second chapter in order to evaluate whether beliefs regarding women's role impact on a couple's labour market decisions.
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Masset, Edoardo. "Food demand, uncertainty and investments in human capital : three essays on rural Andhra Pradesh, India." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2010. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/2420/.
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This dissertation provides some explanations of the causes of poverty in rural India, by investigating poverty determinants that are too often neglected in the literature and in policy debates. It proceeds in three main chapters, each addressing a specific research question. The first chapter focuses on the process of agricultural transformation in the state of Andhra Pradesh. In the early stages of economic development, all countries undergo a process of transformation of their production and employment structure. As a result, agricultural output as a share of total GDP decreases, as does rural employment as a share of total employment. Over the last 50 years, the share of agriculture in total output has considerably declined in Andhra Pradesh. However, the agricultural sector continues to employ the great majority of the labour force. The theoretical section of this chapter shows how structural change is affected by the characteristics of food demand and by income inequality. The empirical analysis, using novel semiparametric methods, estimates food Engel curves and food elasticities, which are used to simulate the effects on changes in income distribution on the composition of demand. The second chapter analyses the stabilising effect of irrigation on household expenditure. The expansion of irrigation infrastructure, together with the introduction of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers, was the most important technological advancement in Indian agriculture of the last 50 years. The positive impact of irrigation on income of rural households has been extensively documented, but its stabilising effect has been largely neglected. The first part of the chapter builds a theoretical model that establishes the causal links between access to irrigation, income stability, and consumption smoothing over the seasonal cycle. The empirical analysis assesses the stabilising impact of irrigation on expenditure using modern impact evaluation techniques. The findings indicate that consumption patterns of households with access to irrigation are more stable over the seasonal cycle and over the years. The third chapter studies the effect of income uncertainty on educational choices made by the rural poor. It investigates the demand side of education in order to understand why a large number of rural children do not enrol or complete primary education. The theoretical part of the chapter presents an inter-temporal consumption model that shows how the expectation of income variability negatively affects household expenditure on education. The empirical analysis uses a duration model with time covariates in order to estimate the determinants of child progress in school, and provides evidence that income variability negatively affects investments in education.
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Gifford, Julie Louise. "Financial systems and risk management : the nature and role of financial services for managing poor urban livelihoods in Kampala, Uganda in 2000." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2007. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/906/.
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The concept of urban poverty has developed from a static income-based absolute approach to a holistic dynamic and complex state, embedded in livelihood assets and a vulnerability context. A variety of livelihood assets including labour, housing, intra-household, human and social capital are important for risk management strategies. Microfinance has been seen as a key panacea for livelihood development. Using the livelihoods framework this research analyses the nature of livelihoods and financial services within Bwaise, Kampala, Uganda, a poor, densely populated area with a mixture of residential and commercial activities. Financial services available in the area at the time of the research were diverse, ranging from formal banks and donor-led microfinance to cash rounds and informal loans. These financial services, mainly developed by the poor, were used to secure livelihoods with a cumulative nesting of use by the poor. The influence of external factors was high and significantly affected how the poor managed their livelihoods and impeded livelihood development. Theft, ill health and unstable employment were key factors contributing to a highly vulnerable environment. The complexity of urban livelihoods created the need for diverse financial services because expenditure requirements often outstripped income flows. A diverse range of financial services became a vital part of income and consumption smoothing risk management strategies, and these were key for protecting and managing livelihoods.
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Uzuki, Yuka. "Intergenerational persistence of poverty in the UK : empirical analysis of economic outcomes for people born from the 1950s to the 1980s." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2010. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/870/.
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Further income redistribution is an obvious way of alleviating child poverty. However, whether this effectively improves life chances of children growing up in poverty is debated, and there might be less expensive ways of doing so. Drawing on competing models explaining intergenerational persistence of poverty, this thesis investigates some of the links between childhood poverty and later economic outcomes in the UK. Aiming to identify policy areas where intervention would be helpful, it examines continuities and changes over time in these links and mechanisms that create them, analysing longitudinal data from people born in 1958, 1970 and the 1980s. This thesis shows that a negative effect of childhood poverty on adult earnings remains for the 1970 cohort (although not for the 1958 cohort), even after controlling for educational attainment in particular, and for other individual and family characteristics. This appears to be a reason that intergenerational persistence of poverty is stronger for the younger cohort. Teenage occupational aspirations do not seem to explain this residual effect, but unemployment in early working life contributes to it. An original contribution is the investigation of different effects of childhood poverty on later onset of and exit from unemployment, and the relative strength of the effects of parental worklessness and income poverty on these outcomes. A main finding is that income poverty more strongly affects the rapid onset of unemployment following employment, although parental worklessness appears to be associated with the slow exit from unemployment. The results suggest that policy interventions in education or (potentially cheaper) interventions affecting youth aspirations would not completely remove the disadvantage experienced by children growing up in poverty. There is therefore evidence that further income redistribution would be beneficial in improving their future life chances, while the findings suggest that the design of income redistribution also matters.
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Gulesci, Selim. "Poverty, occupational choice and social networks : essays in development economics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2011. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/205/.
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This thesis contains three independent chapters that are aimed towards contributing to our understanding of three questions in the literature on poverty, occupational choice and social networks. The first chapter asks whether labor contracts in a rural economy play a significant role in insuring workers against risks and if the outside options of workers determine the extent to which their labor contracts are interlinked with their insurance arrangements. As such, it provides evidence on a well-established idea in the study of rural labor markets - that of labor-tying - by showing that it is an important channel through which the poor workers smooth their income and that an exogenous improvement in their outside options induces them to exit labor-tying and switch to alternative channels of informal insurance. The second chapter provides evidence on whether transfer of capital and skills enable the poor to permanently exit poverty by entering into higher return occupations. It shows that such a transfer not only transforms the occupational choices of the targeted poor, but has significant general equilibrium effects on the local markets, and corresponding spillover effects on non- targeted households. The third chapter provides evidence on the question \do formal transfers crowd out informal transfers", exploiting the randomized roll-out of a large scale asset transfer and training program to test for its effects on the informal transfer arrangements of the poor. It shows that the informal transfers to the poor are crowded out by the program, but this effect is highly heterogenous depending on the location of the sender and the vulnerability of the targeted poor.
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Yip, Pui-wah, and 葉佩華. "A study of True Light Middle School's pioneering work in women's education, 1872-1949." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1997. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31951582.
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Mathien, Julie. "Children, families, and institutions in late 19th and early 20th century Ontario." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/MQ58891.pdf.
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Lui, Ka-wah, and 呂嘉華. "Li Chi's (1527-1602) view of women in society." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1997. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31951375.
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Chapman, Christine. "'My name was mud!' : women's experiences of conformity and resistance in post-war Rhondda." Thesis, University of South Wales, 2016. https://pure.southwales.ac.uk/en/studentthesis/my-name-was-mud(63bcfe0d-2c25-4524-abb4-f5a7174b5118).html.
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This thesis contributes to debates on the changes and continuities affecting women's lives in mid-twentieth century Britain, examining the factors that shaped what was possible for women coming of age in the immediate post-war years. Within the developed historiography on the coalfields, women's histories have been limited to broad overviews of women's social history. This thesis enriches these overviews by offering a close reading of a small cohort of women's composure of their life narratives. It thus promotes an understanding of a fuller 'life history', as affected by changes with the onset of the welfare state and the impact of community on women's well-being. The thesis contributes to the growing body of literature combatting the silencing of women in the male dominated historiography on industrial working-class communities. Specifically, it does so in the context of the interplay and tensions between a community and its individuals, and the impact of that community on women's life trajectories. The south Wales community of the Rhondda is utilised as a case study. Culturally and economically significant, the Rhondda has been the focus of much of the historiography on the coalfields. I conclude that the impact of gender ideology and community structures on Rhondda women's experiences were diverse, complex and contradictory. In composing their life narratives, the cohort negotiated aspects of their lives experienced as poor, unchallenging and unsatisfying. Rhondda's poverty had a detrimental impact on the women's lives. Relationships between community values and individuals emerged as structures enabling and constraining the potential of women in the cohort to live their lives freely and satisfactorily. The pressure for respectability within the community was a major constraining force. Early experiences were influential in how they conducted themselves in adulthood. Yet evidence of happiness is present, particularly around experiences of married life, which presents as an antidote to the frequently pessimistic discourses surrounding the debates on companionate marriage. Utilising their own experiences of struggle and disadvantage, many of the cohort emphasised their support for increased opportunities for subsequent generations of Rhondda women.
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Waldinger, Maria. "Historical events and their effects on long-term economic and social development." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/963/.
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This thesis uses econometric methods to examine the effects of historical events and developments on aspects of economic and social development. Its objective is two-fold: The thesis examines causes and effects of different historical events using econometric methods and newly constructed and newly available data sets. By studying these historical events, broader theoretical questions are addressed that are relevant and have implications for today. The first chapter studies the economic effects of the Little Ice Age, a climatic period that brought markedly colder conditions to large parts of Europe. The theoretical interest of this study lies in the question whether gradual temperature changes affect economic growth in the long-run, despite people’s efforts to adapt. This question is highly relevant in the current debate on the economic effects of climate change. Results show that the effect of temperature varies across climate zones, that temperature affected economic growth through its effect on agricultural productivity and that cities that were especially dependent on agriculture were especially affected. The second chapter examines the role of adverse climatic conditions on political protest. In particular, it assesses the role of adverse climate on the eve of the French Revolution on peasant uprisings in 1789. Historians have argued that crop failure in 1788 and cold weather in the winter of 1788/89 led to peasant revolts in various parts of France. I construct a cross section data set with information on temperature in 1788 and 1789 and on the precise location of peasant revolts. Results show that adverse climatic conditions significantly affected peasant uprisings. The third chapter examines the role of different Catholic missionary orders in colonial Mexico on long term educational outcomes. I construct a data set of the location of 1000 historical mission stations. I use OLS and instrumental variables estimation to show that only Mendicant mission stations have affected educational attainment while all orders affected conversion.
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Sims, Peter. "Social networks and entrepreneurship : the British merchant community of Uruguay, 1830-1875." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3177/.
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This thesis provides an overview of the social and entrepreneurial careers and strategies of merchants during the first modern “commercial” era, 1830-75. It examines merchants as migratory entrepreneurs during the integration of peripheral regions into the transatlantic economy via commerce, technology transfer, and ideology. Merchants organized, operated and expanded overseas commerce, importing textiles and exporting pastoral products. They used a variety of strategies and firm structures to discover and exploit niches in a competitive, developing market. They also influenced the process of economic development and state building as capitalists and risk-bearers, financing both production and politics. Based on archival material from diverse collections in both the United Kingdom and South America, the research offers a qualitative account of the entrepreneurial activities of the British merchant elite in Uruguay. It uses case studies of British immigrant entrepreneurs, whose privileged access to capital and technology allowed them to expand the market for imported products and to exploit upstream opportunities in modernizing export production. Uruguay’s distinctive institutional and geographical characteristics allowed merchants to access markets, maximize their social and political connections, and to hedge political and market risks. British merchants used Montevideo as an alternative regional port to Buenos Aires, and the implications of this opportunity have been underexplored in the literature. In establishing and expanding their operations in Uruguay, merchants gained region-specific capital in the form of geographically fixed upstream investments, market knowledge, and positions in elite networks. The social connections of Anglo-Uruguayan merchants were essential in providing resources and influence for their entrepreneurial activities, but were also their point of entry into the contest over the economy and polity of the River Plate region. British merchants’ incentives changed towards engagement in the political and ideological struggles of the Uruguayan civil war, the guerra grande of 1839-51, as they contested political outcomes by acting as suppliers, financiers, and lobbyists. This involvement created an AngloUruguayan subset of River Plate merchants, who went on in subsequent decades to reshape the economy through investment and entrepreneurship.
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Hughes, Melissa. "The Romani Place in Kosovar Space: Nationalism and Kosovo’s Roma." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2011. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1397.
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On February 17, 2008,Kosovo declared its independence. The path to independence and the claim to Kosovo was a long process that developed in three primary phases: A) the fostering of territorial solidarity under direct rule and an emphasis on historical ties to the territory; B) the foundation of the national idea within the realms of proto-nationalism; and C) the emergence of peripheral and mass nationalism. This research seeks to define the development of nationalist ideologies in Kosovo and to explore where Roma fit within those ideologies. An historical and sociological approach to nationalism in Kosovo is critical in understanding the current situation of Roma living in, and deported to, Kosovo, including the recent phenomenon of ethnic scapegoating of the Roma by both Serbs and Albanians
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Choi, Hoi-sze Elsie, and 蔡凱詩. "Working women in China and Japan in 20th century history: a comparative analysis." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31952975.
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Taylor, Nick. "Perspectives on the social question : poverty and unemployment in liberal and neoliberal Britain." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2015. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/77884/.
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The thesis seeks to ask what we can learn from historical perspectives on poverty and unemployment in the liberal era for an understanding of poverty and unemployment in the neoliberal era. It does this through staging a series of historical interventions with figures and groups in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century (1870 to 1939) and then turning to the twenty-first century to look at how poverty and unemployment have been conceptualized and governed. It explores the continuing role of moralizing discourses targeted at the poor and unemployed, variously labelled as the “residuum”, “unemployables”, “habitual loafers”, “shirkers” and “scroungers”. In both the liberal and neoliberal eras, the objective is to explore how these discourses, and various practices of classifying and excluding the poor and unemployed, and seeking to conduct their behaviour, constitute a kind of “illiberal liberalism”. The thesis employs theoretical approaches from Marxist, Foucauldian and history of economic thought literatures to understand this in terms of different forms of “social control”. It finds that moralized judgements of behaviour, character and class significantly affect how poverty and unemployment are thought about, even as structural and economic understandings of these problems advance and become more “scientific”. The first set of perspectives it explores is from late-nineteenth century neoclassical economist William Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall. The second set explores the contributions of social reformers Charles Booth, Helen Bosanquet and Hubert Llewellyn Smith. The final set looks at the interwar era and includes the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement and the reading of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier. The thesis draws from these perspectives to demonstrate the historical resonances of illiberal discourses and practices in the neoliberal workforce era, analysing the way that social control runs through the marketization of employment services and the renewed focus on “character”.
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Salazar, Domínguez Julián G. "The political determinants of resource allocation in Mexican municipalities : the fund for municipal social infrastructure." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/6306/.
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This research explores the political factors that affect the allocation of antipoverty funds in Mexican municipalities. Specifically, it analyses whether the adoption of FAISM, a decentralised fiscal fund intended to reduce poverty, did, in fact, help provide better services for the poor or if it was capture by political influence. In this sense, my work addresses a classic question of when and how political institutions can effectively improve the allocation of antipoverty funds. In the last decade, an ambitious decentralisation process was promoted in Mexico as a way to strengthen local governance and hence improve basic service provision. The idea was to limit politician‟s influence on resource allocation and return decision making to the people. By looking at more than 57,000 FAISM projects carried out in 122 municipalities of Estado de Mexico between 1998 and 2006 my work argues that political influence could not be circumvented and clientelism remained as a common political practice to allocate antipoverty funds. My findings demonstrate that the three major political parties relied on FAISM to obtain political benefits through the allocation of private goods. Regarding the effects of democratic institutions, my work demonstrates that greater party competition increases the probability that FAISM was used for public benefit. Similarly, there is a propensity towards greater spending on clientelism during elections. Although these factors influence the allocation of municipal funds, my work does not find concluding evidence to test the impact of fund allocation and poverty reduction. My dissertation makes three important contributions to the literature. Substantively, it qualifies the premise that clientelistic linkages between voters and politicians prevail and shows the conditions under which local politicians strategically allocate antipoverty funds for political gain. A second, methodological, contribution is the use of a more refined measure of social spending at the municipal level by looking at the split between public and private goods. Finally, this dissertation seeks to inform the longstanding debate about the ways in which democratic politics can contribute to effective poverty reduction.
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Matthews, Sally Joanne. "Responding to poverty and injustice in the light of the post-development debate : insights from a Sengalese non-governmental organisation." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2008. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/328/.
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This thesis intervenes in one of the most prominent recent debates in development theory – that between post-development theorists and their critics – and brings to it insights drawn from the experiences of a Senegalese non-governmental organisation, Enda Graf Sahel. I begin by providing a critical discussion of the post-development debate and then detail the question which guides this investigation, namely: how can we, the relatively privileged, respond meaningfully to poverty and injustice in the light of the post-development debate? I present three possible responses to my research question. Firstly, I argue that the relatively privileged have a role to play in rethinking the concepts of ‘poverty’ and ‘injustice’. Secondly, I discuss the kinds of support that we may provide to popular organisations; and finally, I describe ways in which those of us who are relatively privileged may change aspects of our own lives and settings in solidarity with the struggles of the poor and oppressed. Throughout, I draw extensively both on the post-development debate and on the experiences and insights of Enda Graf Sahel to show how we can move past a simple defence or rejection of post-development theory in order to meaningfully respond to poverty and injustice.
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Shibata, Saori. "From a 'consensus' to a 'disorganized' model of Japanese capitalism : the emergence of new forms of labour activism." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5508/.
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The coordination between the socio-economic institutions which constituted the post-war model of Japanese capitalism has been continuously undermined from the 1990s onward. This include the move by firms to focus on their own individual goals and by the state to support individualistic behaviour by introducing deregulation and liberalization and by enabling firms to compete freely in the market. There is a lack of coordination between the government and unions, and between corporations and unions. The coordinated model of Japanese capitalism has therefore transformed into a more disorganized model. Event data analysis adopted in this study demonstrates that this transformation was also accompanied by heightening social tension and class antagonism, which were expressed through increasingly non-institutionalized acts of contestations and by newly emerging agents such as community unions, NPOs and non-regular workers. Adopting a class-conflict version of Regulation Theory, this thesis argues that the disorganized model of Japanese capitalism is characterised by a contradictory accumulation regime which consists of low economic growth and corporate profit, led by increasing level of public and household debt, declining wage shares and declining union density, and accompanied by the emergence of new forms of labour activism.
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Gounarēs, Vasilēs K. "Social and economic change in Macedonia, 1871-1912 : the role of the railways." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670346.
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Doogan, Brian. "A social and economic history of the Blackmount Deer Forest, Argyllshire, 1815-1900." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6486/.
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Scottish deer forests are mainly a Highland phenomenon. Many were formed during the nineteenth century when proprietors benefited from their economic marketability as 'sporting estates'. The Blackmount area was a forest, under the ownership of the Campbells of Glenorchy, since the fifteenth century. Situated in one of the most mountainous ranges of the west Highlands, its function was to serve as a hunting reserve for both that family and their aristocratic peers, whilst being protected by foresters from poachers and trespassers. The earlier Forest of Corrie Ba ceased to exist during the later eighteenth century when sheep farming became the predominant land use there. Blackmount Forest was re-formed anew in 1820 due to an economic recession after the Napoleonic Wars terminated. This thesis identifies the social, political, economic, geographical and environmental reasons for Blackmount Forest's creation, growth and continued existence. It questions if this was for leisure alone or for a commercial ethos adopted by landlords of other forests. The Forest expanded during the nineteenth century, gaining national recognition, especially in the 1840s-1850s and thereafter. However, the Campbells of Breadalbane faced internal and external challenges and criticisms, several of a legal nature. The family were long established, in the Scottish aristocracy, with extensive estates in the west-central Highlands. The retained Blackmount for themselves, excepting the period 1863-1885 when it was let out wholesale. The thesis also identifies its social impact upon the locality, and the extent to which this forest may have influenced others coming into existence later that century.
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Hepburn, Sacha. "A social history of domestic service in post-colonial Zambia, c.1964-2014." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dfd7ee2e-81f6-458f-8ba9-467be0857040.
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This thesis examines the history of domestic service in Zambia from the 1960s to the present day. Domestic service was one of the largest sectors of urban employment throughout this period and involved large numbers of men, women and children selling and buying labour in a variety of working arrangements. The sector has, however, received little scholarly or official attention, reflecting a broader historiographical neglect of informal sector employment and the female workers who predominate in this area of the economy. The lack of attention paid to domestic service by academics and policy-makers has considerably limited the questions that have been asked about who workers are and how processes of reproduction and production have been organized at a household and societal level in Zambia, both historically and in the present. Most immediately, in order to work outside of the home, earn money and access crucial resources, thousands of Zambians needed to find someone else to take care of their homes and children. Drawing on a wide range of source material, this study demonstrates the importance of domestic service to social and economic relations in post-colonial Zambia. The study centres on domestic service arrangements in black households in the capital city of Lusaka. It examines how and why men, women and children found work in service, how and why employers sought help with domestic and care labour, and the relationships that developed between these parties. The study illustrates the diversity of the sector, with working arrangements varying from seemingly-informal kinship-based labour relations at one end of the spectrum to formalised, contractual employment at the other. The study also explains the gendered and generational shifts that have reshaped domestic service over the last fifty years, drawing attention to the increased significance of women and female children's labour. Overall this thesis provides new insights into class formation, rural-urban dependencies, gender relations, and the nature of inequality in a post-colonial African city.
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Callahan, Bryan Thomas. "Syphilis and civilization a social and cultural history of sexually transmitted disease in colonial Zambia and Zimbabwe, 1890-1960 /." [S.l. : s.n.], 2002. http://books.google.com/books?id=JQnbAAAAMAAJ.
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Voskou, Angeliki. "Social change and history pedagogy in Greek supplementary schools in England." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8320/.
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This doctoral study examined the pedagogy of history and heritage in four Greek supplementary schools in England and how this influences the development of students' identities in a period of continuous social change. The study followed a case study design and a mixed-method methodology. The methods employed were documentary research, questionnaires, interviews and ethnographic observations. It was conducted in three distinct phases. The pre-phase of the research examined the history of Greek migration in the UK. The second, quantitative phase and the third, qualitative phase, explored participants' attitudes, perceptions and practices on history pedagogy and identity development. A notable finding of this doctoral research is that the structure of the Greek community and Greek supplementary schools in England are undergoing a dynamic change due to the influx of Greek and Greek-Cypriot migrants in the UK recently. While this change is undergoing, the findings of this research revealed that a part of pedagogical practices appear to reflect this need for a change, while some others continue to reproduce the wish of preserving primordial notions of culture and ethnicity. This doctoral study stresses the need for a reconsideration of policies and practices to suit the current fluid context of late modernity.
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Freeman, Mark David. "Social investigation in rural England, 1870-1914." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1999. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1130/.
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This thesis analyses the work of a large group of social investigators who were active in rural areas in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It follows on from studies of the investigations of Charles Booth, Seebohm Rowntree, Henry Mayhew and others, and shows how the investigation of rural life proceeded on different lines from the urban social inquiry of the period. It is argued that the political and social conflicts between town and country, and within the rural community itself, shaped the activities of the investigators considered. The model of a conflict between the 'informant' approach (where trustworthy authorities were asked to comment on the condition of the agricultural labourer) and the 'respondent' approach (where the labourer was consulted at first hand) is used to illustrate the complexity of the structure or rural social inquiries of the period. It is shown that the kinds of information which could be obtained from the two approaches differed, and that the same event or condition could be reported on very differently from two conflicting points of view. This argument is taken a study further by an examination of another genre of writers on the agricultural labourer. It is argued that the social commentary, usually by resident investigators, which tended to be cultural rather than economic in character, was as much a part of the project of social investigation as was the large-scale official inquiry or social survey. Drawing on the work of the few historians who have seriously analysed this genre of writers in its urban context, the thesis applies an analysis of this form of investigation in rural areas. The perceived need to communicate with the rural poor on a deeper level was another aspect of the 'respondent' approach to investigation, and is as much a forerunner of modern sociological method as is the classic social survey. The thesis also shows how the representations of rural communities and of agricultural labourers in the texts of the period affected the practice of investigators, and argues that the notion of the countryside as a scene of social peace and a repository of racial hardihood caused them to approach the task of investigation with particular preconceptions which shaped their diagnoses of the problems of rural life.
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Lovo, Stefania. "The role of market imperfections in shaping rural household livelihoods : evidence from South Africa." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/6299/.
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This thesis analyses farm household behaviour and livelihood strategies in the presence of market imperfections. The first chapter uses a farm household model to explain the presence of three household groups determined on the basis of the labour regime adopted: small-scale peasants, self-cultivators and hiring-in households. A partial generalised ordered logit model is used to test the main predictions of the model using data from the 1997 Rural Survey. The results show that access to liquidity and market imperfections matter in the choice of the labour strategy and that liquidity constrained households are more likely to sell labour off-farm. The second chapter provides an analysis of household technical effciency (TE) using using data on the KwaZulu Natal Province. The analysis is conducted at household-level and off-farm activities are considered as additional outputs of production. This approach better captures the jointness between farm and non-farm activities generated by the presence of market imperfections. An important source of li- quidity for the household is the receipt of a pension. Its effect on household TE is identified exploiting the age eligibility criteria adopted by the pension program. The results show that access to liquidity and income diversification has positive effects on household TE. Finally the last chapter investigates the relationship between land and household welfare. It uses the year of arrival in the current location as an instrument for land access and size for households in the former homelands. This identification strategy relies on the argument that African households have been forcibly relocated to the homelands since the introduction of the Native Land Act in 1913. Because of increasing population pressure in the homelands, later arrivals were less likely to have access to land and to larger plots of land. Results show that access to land positively affects the welfare of rural household.
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Ersoy, Aksel. "Dynamics and drivers of Turkish regional development : a Curate’s Egg." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3423/.
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Understanding of the economic processes shaping regional economies is in a constant state of change. These processes are important to understand for policy making as governments seek to improve the economic well-being of citizens. Existing empirical research in this field has focussed on regions in economically advanced and technologically innovative economies. As a consequence, the broader picture of the dynamics of regional development in less developed countries, particularly its social and political origins and the overall changes in regional inequality, have remained elusive and less clear. The purpose of this thesis has been to develop an understanding of the local and regional dynamics of economic development in the context of the transitioning and emerging economy of Turkey. The approach has been to unpack a series of local and regional development theories and, from the drivers identified, to develop an econometric model calibrated for the Turkish context using available and appropriate proxy measures. Document analysis supported by interviews with groups of policy makers has been intertwined with the results of the model. The results of the study explain that implications of the current local and regional economic development theories are a Curate’s Egg – good in parts – because these theories are only partially relevant in the Turkish context.
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Kirkup, Alexander Robert. "Exclusion in the global political economy : a critique of orthodoxy." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2009. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/72301/.
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This work is a critique of orthodox conceptions of social exclusion in the global political economy. Following Foucault’s methodology, our argument is that orthodox political-economic discourses, from 18th and 19th century classical political economy to late 20th century neoliberalism, provide only partial and limited accounts of social exclusion, and as such obscure its production and reproduction within the global political economy. We uncover this problem by first examining the contemporary period of globalization, which reveals a discrepancy between orthodox discourse taken at face value and the actuality of social exclusion. Marx’s critique of classical political economy exposes the fundamental basis of this discrepancy as the way in which the false assumptions of orthodox discourse make the market appear ‘natural’ to human social relations. Exclusion is thus conceived as the state of being on the outside of the market and associated structures and institutions. This obscures how both the historical construction and political governance of the market produce patterns of social exclusion. To move beyond this failing we employ Marx’s historical materialism as an alternative perspective which brings to light the production of exclusion within and as a product of social structures and institutions. We combine this with Foucault’s notion of power to establish a framework to investigate the production of social exclusion in terms of land, labour, capital, rights, gender and truth. Initially we develop this as a general mode of inquiry, leading to brief studies of feudal Europe, classical Islam and T’ang China. Then we apply this framework to the historical construction and political governance of the market within the capitalist global political economy, drawing upon the work of Marx along with Stephen Gill, Antonio Gramsci and David Harvey. We study three historical periods to show the production of social exclusion at work. First, agrarian capitalism and the Industrial Revolution in England and their impact upon world trade. Second, the post-1945 ‘Golden Age’ of capitalism. And third, the post-1970s era of globalization. This work makes a contribution to knowledge by being the first attempt to understand the global political economy as a whole in terms of inclusion / exclusion, and the first systematic application of the concept of social exclusion on a global scale.
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Banks-Conney, Diana Elisabeth. "Political culture and the labour movement : a comparison between Poplar and West Ham, 1889-1914." Thesis, University of Greenwich, 2005. http://gala.gre.ac.uk/5797/.
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This thesis compares two areas of East London, Poplar and West Ham,that ultimately became strongholds of the Labour Party. The thesis attemptsto answer the crucial question of why, prior to 1914, it seemed as if Labour had succeeded in South West Ham but had failed to achieve similar representation in Poplar. This thesis considers that although contemporaries had identified similar social and economic problems in both Poplar and West Ham in the early twentieth century, more detailed analysis reveals differences as well as similarities in the underlying economic and social structure, which had implications for political outcomes. The difference in attitude of local trade unionists and councillors was crucial as was the behaviour of the political leadership. The reason for this, it will be shown, lay in the characters of the individuals who led their respective activists, as well as in the social and economic structure of the two boroughs. Using the theoretical model of social movements and political parties it is hoped that an understanding may be reached as to why socialist politics in these two boroughs, apparently so similar, achieved different outcomes in the years prior to 1914. The initial chapters outline the social and economic conditions in the boroughs and the national attitudes to their problems. Chapters Three and Four consider the left wing activists and their leaders, exploring their differing attitudes to the social and economic problems and their different styles ofpolitical activity. Chapter Five discusses the difficulties experienced by activists in achieving local and national representation so as to effect social and political change. Chapters Six, Seven and Eight, by considering the issue of unemployment, the campaign for women' s suffrage and the history of the Great Unrest, exemplify the main argument of this thesis. Thus by assessing economic factors, employment patterns and trade unionism, problems with the franchise and elector registration, the quality of local party organisation and the different attitudes and aspirations of the local activists, this thesis will test the hypothesis that the reason for the difference in political fortunes in these two boroughs was that left wing activity in Poplar was more characteristic of a social movement and that of West Ham was more representative of a political party.
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Lee, Peter. "Neighbourhood trajectories and social exclusion : towards a citizenship of place." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1314/.
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This submission develops a set of arguments around the path dependency of places – how previous policy eras shape the trajectory and outcomes of places - and the tensions between social inclusion policies and practices on the one hand and competitiveness on the other. Path dependency results from previous legacies of the built form and access and eligibility rights. The "narrative" of places, the categories and descriptions used in delineating neighbourhoods and shaping policy is also influential. A coherent line of research is demonstrated which has revolved around the definition, measurement and scale of deprivation and housing's role in social exclusion and competitiveness debates. Originally focused at household and individual level, the enquiry shifted to the role of neighbourhoods and places in terms of their "compositional" and "environmental" meaning. The thesis revolves around the concept of participation standards and the underpinning principles of citizenship arising from denial of access to relative "norms and standards". This highlights tensions in the competing goals of competitiveness and inclusion in housing and urban policy at different scales resulting in differential speeds and experiences of place. Logically this would suggest that the evolution of citizenship and participation can legitimately embrace the concept of citizenship of place.
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Creasy, Stella Judith. "Understanding the lifeworld of social exclusion." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2006. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3798/.
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In seeking to explain social exclusion. politicians. academics. and commentators alike have highlighted the role of social relationships in securing life chances. In recent years, these discussions have been characterised by three debates; those around the underclass, social cohesion and social capital. Each offers a commentary on the causes of social exclusion and community breakdown which is rooted in a focus on the social interactions within deprived neighbourhoods. As a result these debates raise many questions about the relationship between people, place and the public realm. This thesis contributes to our understanding of these issues by looking at these issues using a social psychological approach. Using a methodological framework grounded in the paradigm of social representations it analyses the cognitive actions of individuals and groups within a locality. This reveals how they generate and maintain a "cultural stock of knowledge". the social relationships which underpin this "lifeworld" and its influence on the life chances of the residents. In particular this research looks at the impact of this lifeworld on public services and regeneration projects in the research area. seeking to understand what effect the lifeworld has on their success or failure. This thesis builds on previous studies grounded in sociological and anthropological research methods in two ways. In the first instance it confirms the importance of socially constructed knowledge to social structures and the role they play in life chances. Yet using a social psychological approach also otTers an innovative way of exploring how socially constructed knowledge is created.maintained and changed by individuals and groups in their mental processes. In doing so, this thesis shows how important such knowledge is in determining social networks, social acts and social change. It therefore reveals how a social psychological approach to social exclusion can complement other forms of research into this phenomenon.
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Dellenback, Richard. "Oregon's Cuban-American community : from revolution to assimilation." PDXScholar, 1990. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4046.
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The adjustment and assimilation achieved by Cuban-Americans who arrived in Oregon during the 1960s was notable for its rapidity. Little contact existed between the state and the island prior to the resettlement efforts begun by the Charities Division of the Portland Catholic Archdiocese, where a group of concerned administrators meshed their activities with a nation-wide program created and encouraged by the united States government and private agencies.
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Stanford, Mark. "Building on shifting sands : co-operation and morality in the new Chinese co-operative movement." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3619/.
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Since the beginning of China’s transition to a market economy, there have been other voices, calling for a different kind of change. One such voice is the co-operative movement, which has continued to grow in recent years. However, China’s new co-operatives suffer from widespread problems, which vitiate the principles put forward by activists. Based on two years of multi-sited fieldwork in the cooperative movement, this thesis explores the experience of the co-operatives, and the activists and institutions which promote them. Framing the analysis in terms of the cultural evolution of co-operation, it argues that the cooperatives are threatened by a range of factors. The erosion of social capital and material interdependence resulting from urbanisation and modernisation tends to undermine the foundations of the system of mutual aid based on indirect reciprocity. Meanwhile, the trauma of the Cultural Revolution and the uncertainty of the reform era have rendered alternative forms of collectivistic morality equally unable to support co-operation. While many co-operatives have succeeded by carefully avoiding any form of co-operation which requires trust or costly monitoring, some problems cannot be solved in this way. In particular, the thesis argues that participation in democratic decision-making is itself a collective action problem, which co-operatives cannot, by their very nature, avoid. And when activists and the state provide resources to help overcome these challenges, the result is often a ‘crowding out’ of co-operation. Finally, the thesis explores the idea that the difficulties of the co-operatives may reflect a shift in the psychological underpinnings of co-operation in wider Chinese society. Through a combination of life history interviews with young people experiencing moral conflict, and a psychometric survey designed to measure differences in moral reasoning, it argues that non-market forms of cooperation are being undermined by a process of interlinked social and psychological change.
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Mejia, Pailles Gabriela. "A life course perspective on social and family formation transitions to adulthood of young men and women in Mexico." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2012. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/357/.
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This research examines the trajectories that young men and women in Mexico experienced during their transition to adulthood in the 1980s and 1990s. The study, particularly, considers two groups of significant markers of adulthood: social transitions (leaving education, entry into the labour force, parental home leaving), and family formation transitions (first sex, first partnership, and first birth). The thesis investigates the ways that these transitions were experienced among Mexican youth: first, by establishing the main interactions between social transitions and family formation transitions to adulthood; and second, by providing evidence of the main trajectories followed by young men and women in their passage to adulthood from a life course perspective. Applying Event History techniques to retrospective data from the 2000 Mexican National Youth Survey, results show that young men and women experienced different patterns of trajectories in their transit to adulthood marked by a strong gender component. While young men showed a lag between the experience of social and family formation transitions characterized by work-oriented trajectories, young women often experienced almost simultaneous occurrence of social and family formation transitions leading to predominantly family-oriented trajectories to adulthood. Differences between urban and rural respondents were also found to be significant. Another conclusion of the study is that many young people found great difficulty in obtaining their first job after leaving education, leading to high unemployment. Despite the lack of employment opportunities for Mexican young people, family formation transitions were not substantially postponed until later ages unlike many developed nations. The findings also confirm the importance of education on the experience of transitions to adulthood. The study shows the need to restructure the Mexican educational system to enable young people to work and study simultaneously, without having to leave education immediately after entering the labour force. These findings highlight the need to strengthen and reinforce current education policies to stimulate labour force participation of young women.
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Charoenpanich, Akarapat. "Information of social media platforms : the case of Last.fm." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3821/.
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Social media has become a global phenomenon. Currently, there are 2 billion active users on Facebook. However, much of the research on social media is about the consumption side of social media rather than the production or operational aspects of social media. Although research on the production side is still relatively small, it is growing, indicating that it is a fruitful area to study. This thesis attempts to contribute to this area of research to unravel the inner operations of social media with one key research question: How does social media platform organize information? The theory of digital object of Kallinikos et al. (2013) is used to investigate this question. Information display that users of a social media platform interact with is a digital object and it is constructed by two key components which are a database and algorithms. The database and the algorithms shape how information is being organized on information displays, and these influence user behaviors which are then captured as social data in the database. This thesis also critically examines the technology of recommender system by importing engineering literature on information filtering and retrieval. While newsfeed algorithm such as EdgeRank of Facebook has already been critically examined, information systems and media scholars have yet to investigate recommendation algorithms, despite the fact that they have been widely deployed all over the Internet. It is found that the key weakness of recommendation algorithms is their inability to recommend novel items. This is because the main tenet of any recommender system is to "recommend similar items to those that users already like". Fortunately, this problem can be alleviated when recommender system is being deployed in the digital information environment of social media platforms. In turn, seven theoretical conjectures can be postulated. These are (1) navigation of information display as assembled by social media is highly interactive, (2) information organization of social media is highly unstable which would also render user behaviors unstable, (3) quality of data aggregation casts significant implications on user behaviors, (4) the amount of data captured by social media platforms limits the usefulness of their information displays, (5) output from the recommendation algorithm (recommendation list) casts real implications on user behaviors, (6) circle of friends on a social network can influence user behaviors, and (7) metadata attached to items being displayed casts influence on user behaviors. Data from Last.fm, a social media for music discovery, is used to evaluate these conjectures. The analysis supported most of the conjectures except the instability of information display and the importance of metadata attached to items being displayed. Some kinds of information organization are more stable than initially expected and some kinds of user generated contents are not so important for user behaviors.
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Vanni, Monique Barenboim Salles. "Brazilian açaí berry and non-timber forest product value chains as determinants of development from a global perspective." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3815/.
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The present research concerns the global 'value chain' of the açaí berry, a NonTimber Forest Product (NTFP) derived mainly from the Tocantins Estuary region in the State of Pará, Brazil, and which sustains its mostly riverine population. Through the adoption of methodologies employed in studies of Global Production Networks (GPNs), the study aims to identify how contextual factors have, over time, influenced the formation of the chain by actors across geographical scales, how they sustain the chain in its current configuration, how they enable or preclude the capture of value regionally, and influence development outcomes. Existing research and interventions continue to be predicated on locally-based approaches that aim to cut out middlemen or otherwise reshape local extraction and processing arrangements, without taking into full consideration the ways in which the chain is embedded into different social, economic, and cultural contexts across geographic scale, conditioning chain formation, value distribution and actor behavior. The empirical work was carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews, supported by secondary data and field observations. Field research sites included several locations in the interior of State of Pará, its capital Belem, the States of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Southeast Brazil, as well as coastal towns in California, USA. From these findings, key policy recommendations are made, which are applicable to this specific NTFP chain, but which can be extrapolated to other NTFP chains. The research also employs knowledge about consumer cultures, and the subjectivities concerning value determination, to investigate the role of consumer myths about a product in contributing to its value chain. The conclusion indicates that a whole-chain approach, which appreciates in a reflexive fashion the ways in which actors negotiate territorial specificities to configure chains, is instrumental in the development of efficient, strategic policy programs that aim to improve the income of forest communities that exploit NTFPs. In order to understand, and build trade-based development interventions, researchers and practitioners must engage with the structures, material and cultural, that encase chain relations across geographical scales.
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Durazzi, Niccolo. "The political economy of high skills : higher education in knowledge societies." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3818/.
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A successful transition into the knowledge economy is said to depend upon higher level skills, creating unprecedented pressure on university systems - as they expand across countries - to provide knowledge-based labour markets with the skills needed. But what are the political economy dynamics underlying national patterns of high skill formation? This thesis argues that existing theoretical approaches are not well-suited to answer the question: ideational and structuralist frameworks downplay persistent national differences, while institutionalist accounts assume that national differences rest upon the very lack of higher education expansion in some countries, downplaying the crossnational trend of higher education expansion. The thesis proposes a framework that accounts for distinct national trajectories of high skill formation within the convergent trend of higher education expansion. In particular, two crucial variables are identified to theorise the relationship between higher education systems and knowledge-based labour markets: (i) the predominant type of knowledge economy in a given country; and (ii) the degree of inter-university competition across different higher education systems. It is argued that the former explains what type of higher level skills will be sought by employers and cultivated by governments, while the latter helps understanding of why some higher education systems are more open at the outset to satisfy labour market demands compared to others, determining whether institutional change in a given higher education system is likely to be encompassing or marginal. Cross-national descriptive statistics and systematic process analysis across a set of diverse country case studies (Britain, Germany and South Korea) are used to test the theory. By highlighting the agency of universities, governments and businesses and by linking higher education policy with knowledge-based growth strategies, this thesis provides a theoretical and empirical contribution on processes of institutional change in higher education and on broader trajectories of institutional change across advanced capitalist countries.
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Acciari, Louisa. "Paradoxes of subaltern politics : Brazilian domestic workers' mobilisations to become workers and decolonise labour." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3839/.
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This thesis investigates the possibilities and forms of subaltern politics through an empirical study of Brazilian domestic workers' mobilisations. Domestic work, often described as a legacy of slavery in Brazil, is characterised by the intersection of gender, race and class matrices of oppression, which makes domestic workers a subaltern group. As a result of their subaltern status and characterisation as 'non-standard' workers they are expected to be harder, or even impossible, to organise and represent. Yet, Brazilian domestic workers have been organising since 1936; they formed their own autonomous trade unions, and won partial recognition in 2015 when the Brazilian Congress approved a law extending basic labour rights to them. Thus, my thesis examines how this subaltern group has been able to organise, and argues that instead of considering subalternity as an impediment to collective action it should be understood as a potential resource for mobilisation. I have identified three paradoxes of subaltern politics. First, I show how the professional identity 'domestic worker' is both necessary for political recognition in the Brazilian corporatist state, but also rejected, as it re-inscribes domestic workers into the raced-gendered power relations they want to challenge. Furthermore, I find that while the intersecting nature of their oppression is what has constructed domestic workers as a subaltern group, it has also enabled the formation of broad-based alliances with women, black and workers' movements, thereby turning subalternity into a resource for collective action. Finally, domestic workers have used their perceived vulnerability to force recognition from the Brazilian state, yet, this has led to a paternalistic mode of recognition and a certain demobilisation of the domestic workers' local unions. As domestic workers gained partial recognition as workers, they were also forced into an industrial relations model that did little to respond to the complex and multi-sided forms of oppressions they face, posing new challenges to their modes of organising.
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Javed, Umair. "Profit, piety, and patronage : bazaar traders and politics in urban Pakistan." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3843/.
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This thesis studies the political and social practices of prosperous bazaar merchants and traders to understand the dynamics of power and authority in contemporary urban Pakistan. Broadly, it considers how propertied groups, such as traders, maintain their dominant position in Pakistan's political sphere, and how the consent of subordinate classes is structured to reproduce this persisting arrangement. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a large wholesale bazaar of Lahore, this thesis demonstrates that bazaar traders accumulate power and authority through a fused repertoire of transactional bargaining, material patronage, and Islamic civic leadership. By mobilizing voluntary associations, and forming personalized relations of reciprocity with state functionaries and political elites, traders are able to reproduce their material and status privileges through political access and co-optation of public resources. Such networks also position them as patrons and brokers for the urban poor who work in marketplaces, helping the latter resolve pressing issues of everyday subsistence, while sustaining ties of exploitative dependence in the process. These ties are simultaneously legitimized through an accompanying cultural politics grounded in religious ideals. Bazaar traders remain deeply embedded with Islamist actors and play a central role in administering mosques, seminaries, and religious charities. Therefore, notions of piety, divinely ordained class and status hierarchies, and benevolent civic virtue - disseminated and popularized through their articulation and performance by bazaar traders - shape the cultural frames under which class authority and material conditions are interpreted by subordinate groups in marketplaces. Ultimately, these processes act as the building blocks of a persisting arrangement, wherein the influence bazaar traders possess through economic resources and their authority over the urban poor is transacted with weak political parties during elections, thus underpinning the reproduction of Pakistan's elite-dominated political sphere. By documenting the everyday power practices of a dominant group and the microprocesses that feed into the political sphere, this thesis rectifies deterministic statist and structuralist explanations for Pakistan's lasting regime of elite power. It also contributes to ongoing debates on the roles played by the state, political parties, and civil society in the articulation of hegemonic political arrangements.
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Crowley, Annie Rose. ""It's our anxiety that keeps them locked up" : protection for whom? : responding to the needs of 'at risk' young women in Scotland." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30975/.
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This thesis critiques the constructions of girls and young women who are in, or are considered ‘at risk’ of, secure care or custody by exploring the ways in which they are explained and understood by the practitioners who work closely with them. The research was shaped by feminist concerns and aims, and involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 50 practitioners working with young women in a range of settings related to criminal justice in Scotland: prison, secure care, social work, and third-sector community services. A key concern of the thesis was to contribute to the growing body of knowledge and understanding about these ‘at risk’ young women. The work that exists in the Scottish, and wider UK, sector offers rich insights into different aspects of the experiences of this marginalised population, but very little of this is focused upon the role of the practitioner, or on practice that is conducted with this group of young women. In adding to this under-researched area, the thesis makes several contributions. Firstly, it supports the work of other feminist scholars through adding to the limited body of UK-specific knowledge regarding young women’s pathways into criminal justice contact. Secondly, it contributes to feminist concerns regarding the different and changing modes of social control to which young women are subjected, finding that practitioner contribution of knowledge to such discourses can serve to exacerbate the responsibility that is placed upon them in working with these young women. Thirdly, the thesis details the aspects of working practice that practitioners viewed as key to their work, and by doing so, gives context to understanding why so many practitioners describe finding young women a ‘difficult’ group with whom to work. Lastly the thesis contributes by its exploration of the personal experiences of practitioners in conducting their work, and the working environment and conditions surrounding these, which are framed in the thesis as gendered emotional labour. The thesis makes the argument that practitioners often experience difficulties not only because they are faced with hearing about or experiencing distressing stories, but because of the precarious situations that many work within, and because of the ways in which gendered risk and gendered vulnerability act as tools of governance, leaving them anxious and uncertain about their own ‘risky decisions’ in these insecure work environments.
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Mello, Eduardo. "Explaining success and failure of rules-based distributive policies." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3823/.
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Some governments tackle poverty and inequality by creating well-functioning, rules-based distributive programmes. Others redistribute selectively, showering their loyal supporters with goods, services, and money while denying these things to other citizens, even when those other citizens are very poor. What explains this contrast? Why do some governments prefer politically neutral rules-based forms of redistribution while others prefer highly selective clientelistic redistributive arrangements? This dissertation answers the question by developing a new line of theory. I also test that theory against evidence from a number of Latin American countries, most notably Brazil. Although rules-based social policies are a cornerstone of the modern welfare state, we know surprisingly little about the politics behind these policies. In this dissertation I show how, in much of Latin America, the development of rules-based programmes can be traced to the electoral incentives of politicians, and of presidents in particular. Forging clientelistic deals with favoured constituents may be a winning strategy for legislators and local officials, but presidents cannot play that game as well and so tend to prefer less particularistic forms of redistribution. Over the past few decades, rules-based social programmes have emerged for the first time in much of Latin America. However, the reason why these countries have been embracing programmatic redistribution now is not yet clear. Some studies have stressed that the spread of electoral democracy has created incentives for politicians to shift distribution away from powerful groups and towards the poor. For these scholars the emergence of rules-based programmes is a reflection of weakening clientelistic linkages between politicians and voters. Others have argued that, as societies get wealthier, voters have the means to rebel against clientelistic schemes and vote for politicians that favour programmatic distribution. Others still make the point that the rise of left-wing parties is what is driving these transformations. Leftist parties organise and mobilise the poor, who in turn pressure for effective, rules-based distribution. In contrast with these explanations, my analysis attributes the new emphasis on rules to the shifting balance between the powers of legislators and those of presidents in much of Latin America. My argument is that clientelism remains a useful electoral strategy mainly for legislators and in local politics, where the support of well-organised networks of clients can make a difference between winning and losing public office. Presidents, on the other hand, have much larger and more heterogeneous constituencies, which makes investing in small networks of clients prohibitively expensive for them. Furthermore, presidents strive to be seen as strong leaders that are capable of designing effective policies that will be considered fair by the majority of citizens. In the case of presidents, creating rules-based social programmes is the most efficient way to redistribute income in a way that is compatible with their political priorities. I test this theory using a unique dataset of social spending in each of Brazil's 5,570 municipalities. Employing different identification strategies, I find broad support for the argument that legislators and presidents prefer very different kinds of social policies. These differences are systematic and do not depend on a legislator's or on the incumbent president's party affiliation. Even legislators who hail from 'pro-poor' parties on the left of the political spectrum seem to prefer clientelistic forms of redistribution, despite the fact that clientelistic practices can be quite regressive. At the same time, presidents almost always prefer programmatic distributive policies, which are famously progressive, even when they hail from parties on right of the ideological spectrum. These results - the product of numerous interviews and extensive fieldwork conducted in four states over the course of two electoral cycles - help explain why Brazil and other young democracies in Latin America have seen conditional cash transfer programmes and other rules-based income distribution schemes proliferate in the recent decades. As my analysis reveals, these schemes were largely driven by presidents. As presidents gained control over the design and the funding of social policies, they used these powers to create the kinds of programmes that furthered their own electoral interests. That said, inefficient spending on clientelistic arrangements remains a problem in Brazil, as it does in much of the region. This, too, can be explained by my theory: clientelism's staying power reflects the fact that, despite recent reforms, legislators remain powerful. Exploiting that power, legislators have continued to do what they always do, rewarding clients and punishing dissenters, as illustrated by my analysis of the case of Argentina. Latin American presidents may now be gaining the upper hand, but until the power balance shifts decisively in their favour, we are unlikely to see rules-based distribution completely replacing traditional clientelistic arrangements in Latin American or, for that matter, anywhere else.
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Wouters, Olivier. "Essays on prices, volumes, and policies in generic drug markets in high- and middle-income countries." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3827/.
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Background and importance: Rising drug prices are putting pressure on health care budgets. Policymakers are assessing how they can save money through generic drugs. Objective: The aim of this Ph.D. was to explore issues relating to the prices and usage of generic medicines in high- and middle-income countries in five articles. This was done using quantitative and qualitative methods, including price and Herfindahl-Hirschman indexes, difference-in-differences regression analyses, semi-structured stakeholder interviews, and literature reviews. As a Ph.D. "thesis by papers", each of the five articles should be read as a stand-alone piece. However, the thesis presents an overarching narrative, outlined at the end of Chapter 1. Novelty and empirical contribution: My original contributions to knowledge are: (i) updated analyses of generic drug policies, prices, and usage rates in high-income countries, based on a large, representative sample of generic medicines from 2013 (Chapters 2 and 3); (ii) evidence on the impact of a pharmaceutical tendering system on medicines prices, demand, and competition over a 15-year period (Chapter 4); (iii) quantitative data on the impact of therapeutic tendering on drug spending and prices (Chapter 5); and (iv) qualitative data on how a country can move from a fragmented health-care system to a single-payer one, using tendering as the basis for a comprehensive drug-benefit plan (Chapter 6). Key findings: The prices and market shares of generics varied widely across Europe. For example, prices charged by manufacturers in Switzerland were, on average, more than 2.5 times those in Germany and more than 6 times those in the United Kingdom, based on the results of a commonly used price index. However, the results varied depending on the choice of index, base country, unit of volume, method of currency conversion, and therapeutic category. The results also differed depending on whether one looked at the prices charged by manufacturers or those charged by pharmacists. The proportion of prescriptions filled with generics ranged from 17% in Switzerland to 83% in the United Kingdom. The results of the first two studies indicated that the countries which used tender or tender-like systems to set generic drug prices in retail pharmacies (ie, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden) had among the lowest prices among the countries included in the studies. Tendering can be an effective policy to procure essential medicines at low prices, based on analysis of data from South Africa and Cyprus. For instance, the average prices of antiretroviral therapies, anti-infective medicines, small-volume parenterals, drops and inhalers, solid-dose medicines, and family-planning agents dropped by roughly 40% or more between 2003 and 2016 in South Africa. Many tender contracts in South Africa remained competitive over time, based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman results, with some notable exceptions. However, the number of different firms winning contracts decreased over time in most tender categories. Also, there were large discrepancies between the drug quantities the health ministry estimated it would need to meet patient demand and the quantities the ministry went on to procure during tender periods. In South Africa, the introduction of therapeutic tendering was associated with an estimated 33% to 44% reduction in the prices of solid-dose drugs in 2014. National governments in countries aiming to introduce national health systems (eg, Cyprus and South Africa) will need to adapt their tendering systems and other pharmaceutical policies during transition periods. Future research directions: More research is needed to better understand the drivers of differences in generic drug prices between countries. It is also important to examine why there are large differences in the prices of drugs in various therapeutic areas, both within and between countries. Also, data from more countries, especially low- and middle-income ones, are needed to determine which features of tendering systems are associated with lower prices. Future studies should re-examine the South African therapeutic tendering system once data from more post-intervention periods are available, possibly using other research designs like interrupted time-series models (ie, segmented regression analysis). Policy implications: Price indexes are useful statistical approaches for comparing drug prices across countries, but policymakers should interpret price indexes with caution given their limitations. This thesis offers useful data for policymakers using, or planning to introduce, tendering systems, especially in countries aiming for universal health coverage, like Cyprus (Chapter 6) and South Africa (Chapters 4 and 5).