Thèses sur le sujet « Families – Economic aspects – Europe »

Defence Date: 29 September 2020 (Online)
Examining Board: Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Blossfeld, (EUI); Prof. Dr. Anton Hemerijck, (EUI); Prof. Dr. Melinda Mills, (University of Oxford); Prof. Dr. Jon Kvist, (Roskilde University)
This thesis explains differences in changes to family formation and stability in France, Norway, the FRG and the GDR based changes to family- and housing policy. Focus is on developments from the 1960s to the early 2000s. Previous research has focused on more recent developments from the 1980s onwards. A new conceptualization of family policy is introduced that enables a distinction between policy that alleviate the care giving role of mothers (de-familialization) and policies that intervene more directly in the caring responsibility within the family, aiming for a more equal share of childcare between women and men (de-genderization). Findings show that higher educated women are more likely of entry into marriage, when family policy provides more de-familalization (France, GDR) or de-genderization (Norway). But higher educated women are less likely of entry into marriage in the FRG where family policy remained conservative, forcing these women to choose between family and career. In the FRG where family policy remained conservative, with low support for female employment, married women with low levels of education became more likely of entry into divorce. A difference between women with different educational levels is not observed where family policy has included more de-familialziaiton and de-genderization. Findings for changes to housing policy are less convincing. Soft deregulation of rent control and tenure security has a positive effect on entry into consensual union in all countries, making a two person income household better equipped to cover the cost of rent increases that this change introduced. But results for the influence of support for home-ownership show little effect on entry into a marriage and divorce in all four countries. This may be because the full effect has not manifested itself yet. Extending the time period of analysis may provide more insights on the influence of these changes.

Les quatre chapitres de cette thèse analysent la manière selon laquelle les différents aspects du droit de la faillite influencent les résultats économiques d’une procédure de faillite notamment le degré de recouvrement de la dette des créanciers. Le premier chapitre montre que les lois sur les faillites présentent des conditions différentes de vote de créanciers en fonction de leur origine légale telle que : l’origine anglaise, l’origine française, l’origine allemande et celle nordique. Le second chapitre soutient que l’utilisation nationale de la procédure de réorganisation est favorisée par des processus moins stricts d’acceptation. Le troisième chapitre montre que les systèmes Est-Européens de faillite offrent une protection plus forte des créances garanties que dans le cas de créances publiques. Une concentration plus élevée de la dette diminue les taux de recouvrement en cas de la procédure de liquidation. Les estimations confirment l'existence de deux effets d'interaction entre les classes de créanciers Est-Européens: l'effet d'entraînement et l'effet de rivalité. Le dernier chapitre propose un modèle théorique qui prédit que les débiteurs ont des fortes incitations à proposer aux créanciers de plans de réorganisation avec un partage sous-Optimal de coûts quelque soit l'orientation de l'environnement juridique de la faillite y compris une orientation pro-Créancier ou une orientation pro-Débiteur
This thesis analyzes the influence of various aspects of bankruptcy law on the economic outcomes of bankruptcy proceedings, mainly the amounts of the debt recovered by claimants. First, we show that bankruptcy laws settle different voting conditions of creditors according to their legal origin, i.e. English origin, French origin, German origin, and Nordic origin. Second, the national use of reorganization procedures seems to be favoured by less strict approval processes. Third, we find that the Hungarian, the Polish, and the Romanian bankruptcy systems provide stronger protection of the private secured claims than the public ones. A higher concentration of the claims also decreases the total recovery rates produced by the liquidation procedure. Our estimations confirm the existence of two interaction effects between the claimants, i.e. the ripple effects and the rivalry effects. Fourth, we developed a theoretical model that predicts that debtors have strong incentives to submit reorganization plans with suboptimal cost sharing regardless of the orientation of the bankruptcy environment, i.e. creditor-Friendly or debtor-Friendly

This study determines how economic, political, and socio-demographic factors impact the parliamentary election outcomes in central and eastern European countries in transition period. A one-way fixed-effect method has been applied to analyze two main economic models. The dependent variables are share of the Western-oriented and traditional-oriented parties. Data of sixteen countries have been used in the thesis. According to the results of this study, it is possible to conclude that outcomes of parliamentary elections in central and eastern European countries depended on political and socio-demographic factors from I 990-2001. Factors such as loans, received from the United States, per capita in the pre-election year, as a measure of external pressure, and share of agriculture in GDP, as a measure of country`s level of development, demonstrate consistent significance in both variations of the model.

This DPhil thesis discusses how two divergent risk conceptions, a 'social view' and an 'economic view' of risk, are constructed through inter-expert risk communication. Different and sometimes contradictory concepts of risk are mobilised in regulatory practice, but the origins of these divergent risk conceptions are not extensively studied. This thesis seeks to unpack this divergence. Empirically, I analyse risk communication among experts in the European Union (EU) during the creation of two risk regulation standards. The two case studies, one related to the development of the two-degree target of EU climate policies (the climate case) and the other about the negotiation of the excessive deficit criteria of the Maastricht Treaty (the euro case), can shed light on the relations between risk conceptions and inter-expert risk communication. I argue that through risk communication, an initial 'view' of risk can be entrenched and developed into a paradigmatic 'risk conception'. My analysis uses historical and sociological institutionalism, by focusing on path dependence of risk communication and social construction risk conceptions among EU experts. Through the two case studies, I identify four analytical dimensions of inter-expert risk communication: networks (the institutional setting and relationships between different experts), cultures (the mentalities of experts in relation to discussing risks), dynamics (the actual processes of transmitting and receiving risk messages) and strategies (the rationales supporting the decisions of risk regulation standards). My thematic analysis reveals four key distinct 'features' of social/economic views of risk: expertise (the types of knowledge mobilised), normality (characterising risk as either 'special' or 'routine'), probability (considering risk as either uncertain or calculable) and impact (seeing risk as either negative or positive). I argue that these four features can help explain the construction of risk conceptions, and more broadly, provide an analytical framework for studying how views of risk evolve and interact over time.

This thesis examines three different aspects of education policy to ascertain their effects on individual outcomes, both in the classroom and in the labour market. The goal is to provide new empirical evidence using robust identification strategies that can inform better policy. The first chapter looks at the role of pre-primary education in Germany using the German Socio-Economic Panel data set (GSOEP) to determine if attending an early education programme for longer increases the probability of attending a higher-level secondary school at age fourteen. I employ family fixed effects estimation and quasi-experimental analysis to control for selection. The results of the family fixed effects estimation show a small and negative impact of attending early education for more years. In the quasi-experimental analysis, based upon a federal law change in 1996, I find no impact of more years of early education on later schooling outcomes. In the second chapter of this thesis, I again use the GSOEP to examine the recent German reform to extend the length of the primary school day. I exploit the quasi-experimental roll-out of reform to assign treatment to women and look at whether increasing school hours increases the likelihood that mothers enter into employment or extend their hours if already working. I find that the policy has an effect at the extensive margin, drawing more women into the labour market, but that there is no significant impact of the policy at the intensive margin. In the final chapter I turn my attention to how peers' non-cognitive traits impact an individual's learning outcomes. Using an educational panel from Flanders, Belgium, I use the linear-in- means model of peer effects as well as several non-linear models to see how peers' personalities in a classroom affect Dutch and math scores. The results show that having more conscientious peers on average positively impacts Dutch and math scores, but that a greater dispersion of conscientiousness hurts Dutch outcomes. I also find that having more extroverted peers on average hurts math performance.

In the 90´s, Europe used to be depicted as the most privileged political arena for regional nationalist political parties to access for “more” political power. In that sense, whereas formal channels of regional interest representation were taken for granted by those standing within federal political systems; informal channels of regional interest representation were highly valued by regional nationalists standing in decentralized or devolutionary constitutional settlements. In spite of nuanced institutional preferences, Europe was rationally inspired (Ostrom 2005) as it used to be perceived as an aggregation of formal-legal structures that could be used as a means to prescribe, proscribe and permit a certain behavior in exchange of a personal utility. Moreover, regional nationalists were policy “maximizers” who acted in isolation, away from the center, using their own limited political resources to maximize their policy gains by pursuing distinctive forms of political autonomy. However, by the end of the 90’s, both categories of regional nationalists plunged into European disillusion due to the limits of a sovereign logic prevailing in Europe.

However, in the 21st century, as soon as a new European policy cycle started to emerge and the economic crisis started to cripple, experienced regional nationalists realized that they could use the benefits of regional economic resources in face of the European Economic strategy to justify further concessions of policy competences that are still shared, either in theory or in practice, as well as to argue for new ones. The political plan would consist of using the reference of the European Economic targets to deliver policies, which would allow them to legitimize their nationalist aspirations, in both layers of governance, as well as to induce regional citizens into their political plan so they can finally reach the legal threshold to endorse a new state reform. Moreover, since they were rationally bounded, in the sense that they were lacking the policy expertise to perform these goals, they have learned to rely on a policy narrative (Shabahan et al 2011; Jones and Beth 2010; Radaelli 2010) embedded in a territorial economic argument to make sense of an advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993), using informal channels of regional interest intermediation as “cognitive” structures (Scot 1995a) to articulate a policy strategy to be implemented in Europe and at the regional level of governance.

Therefore, and irrespectively of nuanced constitutional settlements, all experienced regional nationalists have returned to the center, using informal channels as an instrument of governance (Salamon 2002) to clarify the best policy options to be implemented in both layers of governance. In other words, regional nationalists have become “policy satisficers” (Simon 1954) who have learned to forgo immediate satisfaction in Europe to collect major gains of political power across multiple layers of governance. If the term “usage” can be defined as the act of using something to achieve certain political goals (Jacquot and Wolf 2003), in this research, we will apply the concept of “usage” to demonstrate that experienced regional nationalists in government have moved from a rational to a cognitive “usage” of the European institutions to perform renewed political preferences across multiple layers of governance.

Departing from an actor centered institutionalist approach (Mayntz and Sharp 1997), we will demonstrate that the N-VA in Flanders, since 2004, and the SNP in Scotland, since 2007, have become new pragmatic nationalists. In that sense, we will argue that, in a clear contrast with pragmatic nationalists of the 90’s who expected to legitimize their nationalist aspirations in Europe by the means of a rational “usage” of the European institutions; experienced regional nationalists have become new pragmatic nationalists as they have learned to rely on a cognitive “usage” of the European institutions to legitimize their nationalist aspirations, no longer in Europe, but through Europe.

We will then conclude that in the 21st century, and against traditional dogmas of the 90’s, the “usage” of Europe by regional nationalists is cognitively twisted, economically driven and collectively performed. It embraces all experienced regional nationalist political parties in government, irrespectively of their constitutional settlement or nationalist credo, as long as they possess the ability to anchor a political strategy embedded in “identity” without sticking to strict politics of nationalism.

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Around the world, knowledge and technology transfer have moved to the forefront of attention in economic, social and industrial policy. As the origins of future development increasingly derives from innovation, attention is paid more and more to non-traditional sources that have the potential to become the basis for creation of new businesses or the catalyser for the rejuvenation of old ones. Among those sources, we find university. These last years, academic patents have been one of the emerging phenomena witnessing the growing evolvement of university in the innovation process. The aim of this doctoral dissertation is to analyse the transfer of technology from university to industry through the analysis of patents. This work pursuits a threefold approach. First, it intends to analyse which characteristics determine the propensity of a university to get involved in technology transfer and more specifically to apply for a patent. Second, it disentangles the underlining value determinants of the patents to decode the value of academic patents and to identify the research processes that are leading to the most valuable inventions. Finally, it investigates the relevancy of academic patenting for innovation in general and wonders if on the long run, such practices could put innovation at risk.
Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Defence date : 6 February 2007
Examining Board: Andrea Ichino, (Università di Bologna and the EUI) ; Riccardo Faini, (Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata") ; Hartmut Lehmann, (Università di Bologna) ; Richard Spady, (European University Institute)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
Are migrants from a transition economy positively self-selected not only with respect to observable characteristics, but also with respect to the unobservales? Moreover, since the decision to migrate is endogenous, what are the causal returns to geographic mobility, net of unobservable confounders? Finally, does gender matter? Do female migrants from a transition economy experience a gain or a (double) disadvantage in the western labour market of being both female and migrants compared to female stayers and to male migrants?

This study attempts to examine the international debt crisis in the 1980s from a primarily political perspective, to permit a greater understanding of the interaction between economics and politics in the course of crisis management The process of dealing with the current international debt crisis provides an pat case for investigation of how economic concerns affect political outcomes, and how political factors influence economic outcomes, and how political factors influence economic policies. This study concentrates on the two regions of Latin America and Eastern Europe where the debt crisis started. The study emphasizes that the international debt crisis started. The study emphasizes that the international debt problem has been increasingly politicized in the contemporary international relations, and that its solution, in addition to the economic aspects, calls for political willingness by all parties concerned.

A number of theoretical explanations seek to describe the factors that have led to the position of the United States as the last industrialized Western nation without a universal health care program. Theories focus on institutional arrangement, historic precedent, and the influence of the private sector and market forces. This study explores another factor: the role of underlying social values. The research examines differences in values among ten European countries, the United States and Canada, and analyzes the associations between the values that have been seen to contribute the individualism-collectivism dynamic in the United States. The hypothesis that equality and generalized trust are positively associated with universalism is only partially true. Equality is positively associated (B = .301, p < .001), while generalized trust is negatively associated with universalism (B = -.052, p < .001). Not only do Americans show lower levels of support for income equality and universalism than Europeans, but the effect of being American holds even after controlling for socio-demographic and religious variables (B = .044, p < .01). When the model tests the association of equality and trust on universalism in each region, it explains approximately 17 percent of the variance of universalism for the United States, and approximately 13 percent in Europe and Canada.

An exploratory field study was conducted to examine internal and external factors that influence adolescents' consumer behavior when serving as the family purchasing agents. Demographic, lifestyle, and marketing activities were examined to determine the influences that affect whether the adolescent will purchase the preferred family brands or other brands. Participating adolescents were sent by their parents to the grocery store on two separate occasions to purchase four preselected grocery items. The brands purchased were recorded and compared to the preferred brand names provided by the parents. While no statistical significance was found, occasional trends were observed. The analysis indicated that adolescents who experience a pluralistic family communication style will purchase products other than the preferred household brands. Adolescents who are exposed to television and radio tend to deviate more from the preferred family brands more often than do adolescents with less media exposure. Adolescents who work are more likely to go to the grocery store more often for their families than do nonworking adolescents. Also, adolescents seem to possess a price sensitivity to both high and low-involvement grocery items.

Consumer choice has become a key reform trend in the provision of public services in Western European welfare states. Research on the welfare effects of choice reforms – including greater provider choice for the individual and competition between providers – has largely focused on economic evaluations of the extrinsic (outcome) effects of choice, thereby leaving its intrinsic, or procedural, value unexplored. The overarching objective of this thesis is to investigate the welfare effects of choice in the provision of health and long-term care (LTC) and their implications for equity. The thesis utilises the subjective well-being approach – incorporating both procedural and outcome utility from choice – to measure welfare effects based on quantitative analysis of survey data. Welfare effects and equity implications are examined in relation to: competition in health care in the English National Health System (NHS); choice of care package in the German long-term care system; and individual preferences and views of choice as a priority in the provision of health care in three NHS countries. The thesis argues that both service characteristics – extent of competition, information availability, technical complexity – and individual capabilities – ability to process information, capacity to manage transaction costs, availability of private support – influence the benefits that individuals derive from choice. Results suggest that choice policies have an overall positive welfare effect in both health and long-term care. However, while direct evidence of outcome improvements is found, the empirical analysis only finds indirect evidence of procedural utility. Middle class characteristics, primarily income and education, are found to have a positive influence on the benefits of choice, amounting to evidence of inequitable facets of choice policies. The middle class further exhibits preferences for choice over and above other characteristics of health care systems. Overall, this thesis advocates a holistic approach to the analysis of choice, incorporating its procedural value and paying particular attention to the equity implications of the choice situation, information processing and differences in available options as well as preferences for choice.

Given the predicted increase in the number of family businesses owned and/or managed by siblings (Sibling Partnerships), as well as the lack of understanding and research attention given to such sibling teams, the purpose of this study was to contribute to the more effective functioning of such family businesses in South Africa by identifying the factors that impact on their success. With this purpose in mind, the primary objective was to identify, investigate and empirically test the possible influences of, and relationships between, various factors and the Perceived success of Sibling Partnerships. This study sets out to integrate prior findings and theories on team effectiveness and family relationships, to find support for these theories in the family business literature, and to incorporate these findings into a comprehensive model. The literature study revealed 5 main categories (context, composition, structure, processes, and people) of constructs influencing the Perceived success of sibling teams. Within these 5 main constructs, 13 underlying independent variables were identified and hypothesised to influence measures of effectiveness of sibling teams, namely the dependent variable Perceived success, and the 2 intermediate variables Financial performance and Family harmony. Of the 13 underlying independent variables, 6 were categorised as task-based and 7 as relational-based factors. In addition, hypotheses were formulated for possible relationships between the various task-based constructs (context, composition and structure) and the processes and people constructs. Each construct was clearly defined and then operationalised. Operationalisation was done by using reliable and valid items sourced from tested measuring instruments used in previous studies, as well as several self-generated items based on secondary sources. A structured questionnaire was made available to respondents identified by means of the convenience snowball sampling technique, and the data collected from 371 usable questionnaires was subjected to various statistical analyses. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted, and Cronbach-alpha coefficients were calculated to confirm the validity and reliability of the measuring instrument. The 6 task-based latent variables were confirmed by the exploratory factor analysis. However, all the other latent variables, as originally intended in the theoretical model, could not be confirmed. Instead, 3 dependent variables were identified, namely Financial performance, Growth performance and Satisfaction with work and family relationships, and 6 relational-based constructs, with some changes, did emerge. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was the main statistical procedure used to test the significance of the relationships hypothesised between the various independent and dependent variables. Because of sample size restrictions the conceptual model could not be subjected to SEM as a whole; consequently 10 submodels were identified and subjected to further analysis. The following independent variables were identified as influencing the dependent variables in this study: • Internal context • Complementary skills • Leadership • Shared dream • Fairness • Sibling relationship • Non-family members • No other family members (spouses and non-active siblings) In addition, the factors Complementary skills, Leadership, Past parent involvement, No present parent involvement, and No other family members, were identified as significantly influencing the relationship between the siblings involved in the Sibling Partnership. Furthermore, an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Multiple Linear Regression analysis and t-tests were undertaken to determine the influence of demographic variables on the dependent variables. How ownership is shared in a family business involving siblings, the shareholding between the siblings themselves, and the nature of leadership between the siblings, has been found to influence the iv dependent variables in the present study. In addition, a Sibling Partnership is likely to perform most effectively when it is composed of a relatively young sibling team that has a small age gap between the members, and business performance will improve as the siblings gain work experience together, and as the number of employees increase. This study has added to the empirical body of family business research by investigating a particularly limited segment of the literature, namely Sibling Partnerships in family businesses. By identifying and developing various models that outline the most significant factors that influence the success of such family business partnerships, this study offers recommendations and suggestions for managing family businesses involving siblings, in such a way as to enrich their family relationships and to improve the financial performance of their businesses.

Castration has a long temporal and geographical span. Its origins are unclear, but likely lie in the Ancient Near East around the time of the Secondary Products Revolution and the increase in social complexity of proto-urban societies. Due to the unique social and gender roles created by castrates’ ambiguous sexual state, human castrates were used heavily in strongly hierarchical social structures such as imperial and religious institutions, and were often close to the ruler of an imperial society. This privileged position, though often occupied by slaves, gave castrates enormous power to affect governmental decisions. This often aroused the jealousy and hatred of intact elite males, who were not afforded as open access to the ruler and virulently condemned castrates in historical documents. These attitudes were passed down to the scholars and doctors who began to study castration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, affecting the manner in which castration was studied. Osteometric and anthropometric examinations of castrates were carried out during this period, but the two World Wars and a shift in focus meant that castrate bodies were not studied for nearly eighty years. Recent interest in gender and sexuality in the past has revived interest in castration as a topic, but few studies of castrate remains have occurred. As large numbers of castrates are referenced in historical documents, the lack of castrate skeletons may be due to a lack of recognition of the physical effects of castration on the skeleton. The synthesis and generation of methods for more accurate identification of castrate skeletons was undertaken and the results are presented here to improve the ability to identify castrate skeletons within the archaeological record.

Yuk-fai Fong.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-71).
Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 2. --- Review of Related Literature and Motivation of Research
Chapter 2.1 --- "Browning, Bourguignon, Chiappori and Lechene (1994)" --- p.6
Chapter 2.2 --- Chiappori (1992) --- p.9
Chapter 2.3 --- "Bourguignon, Browning, Chiappori and Lechene (1993)" --- p.10
Chapter 2.4 --- Motivation of Research --- p.11
Chapter 3. --- The Identification of non-assignable consumption
Chapter 3.1 --- Extension from Previous Results --- p.15
Chapter 3.2 --- An Alternative Approach --- p.18
Chapter 4. --- Identification in case of Incomplete Observation of Private Expenditure
Chapter 4.1 --- The BBCL Approach --- p.22
Chapter 4.2 --- An Alternative Approach of Identification --- p.24
Chapter 4.3 --- Inclusion of Exogenous variables in Sharing Rule: Structural vs. Reduced form --- p.30
Chapter 4.4 --- Test for Omission of Some Items in the Total Private Expenditure --- p.35
Chapter 4.5 --- Designation of Nature of Goods- A Remark --- p.36
Chapter 5. --- Extension to Include Private Leisure as a Choice Variable of Individuals
Chapter 5.1 --- Difficulties in Identification of Sharing Rule of Total Private Expenditure in a Framework of Free Labor Choice --- p.38
Chapter 5.2 --- Identification of Sharing Rule of Total Private Expenditure Without Observation of Private Leisure --- p.41
Chapter 5.3 --- Identification of Sharing Rule in Structural Form with the Observation of Unearned Incomes --- p.46
Chapter 6. --- Possibility of Identifying the Sharing Rule of Total Private Expenditure under Incomplete Observation of Consumption of Commodities --- p.49
Chapter 6.1 --- Identification of ) --- p.50
Chapter 7. --- Parametric Examples for Illustration
Chapter 7.1 --- Example I --- p.57
Chapter 7.2 --- Example II --- p.61
Chapter 8. --- Conclusion --- p.65
Appendix --- p.67
Reference --- p.69

Chau Tak Wai.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-100).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.5
Chapter 2.1 --- Pioneering Work --- p.5
Chapter 2.2 --- Collective Household Consumption --- p.8
Chapter 2.3 --- Household Production --- p.16
Chapter 2.4 --- Tests between Unitary Model and Collective Model --- p.17
Chapter 2.5 --- Distribution Factors in Collective Labor Supply --- p.19
Chapter 2.6 --- Identification of Spousal Leisure --- p.20
Chapter 2.7 --- Plan of the thesis --- p.21
Chapter 3 --- Data Descriptions --- p.23
Chapter 3.1 --- Data Collection Process --- p.23
Chapter 3.2 --- Data Characteristics --- p.24
Chapter 4 --- Individual Wage and Labor Supply Equations --- p.30
Chapter 4.1 --- Individual Wage Equations --- p.30
Chapter 4.2 --- Individual Labor Supply Equation --- p.36
Chapter 4.3 --- Conclusion --- p.43
Chapter 5 --- Collective Household Labor Supply --- p.46
Chapter 5.1 --- Theoretical Model --- p.47
Chapter 5.2 --- Parametric Specification --- p.53
Chapter 5.3 --- Data and Empirical Results --- p.56
Chapter 5.4 --- Conclusion --- p.64
Chapter 6 --- Identification of Independent and Spousal Leisure --- p.66
Chapter 6.1 --- Theoretical Model --- p.67
Chapter 6.2 --- Parametric Specification --- p.78
Chapter 6.3 --- Data and Empirical Results --- p.82
Chapter 6.4 --- Conclusion --- p.91
Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.93
References --- p.96
Tables and Appendices --- p.101

Defence date: 13 September 2017
Examining Board: Prof. Dr. Alexander H. Trechsel, European University Institute (Supervisor) Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bernardi, European University Institute (Co-supervisor) Dr. Elias Dinas, University of Oxford Prof. Dr. Marc Hooghe, University of Leuven
How does the family influence citizens’ political ideology, and what role do family dynamics and structure play in this process of political socialization? As society and family forms are changing, this study provides new insights in political socialization research by investigating how gender dynamics in the family, parental separation, and intergenerational social mobility affect the transmission and development of citizens’ political ideology in multiparty systems in Europe. The German Socioeconomic Panel and the Swiss Household Panel are the most important data sources. The first empirical chapter provides a descriptive account of the level of transmission of left–right ideology, showing a large and stable influence of the parental on the child’s ideology. Especially the similarity of parental ideology favours this process. Chapter 3 addresses gender effects in political socialization, showing that the political ideology of both parents equally influences the ideology of their children, irrespective of their gender. In Switzerland, moderate left-wing effects of the presence of an older sister are found for females, and in families of a centrist ideology. For males, however, having a female eldest sibling has a right-wing effect. Chapter 4 investigates the ideological consequences of parental divorce, showing with pan-European data that adults whose parents separated during childhood hold a more leftist ideology. Longitudinal analysis using Swiss data shows that this is partially caused by the mother becoming more leftwing after separation from the partner. Finally, Chapter 5 addresses how vertical and horizontal intergenerational social mobility affect the ideological transmission process from parents to children, showing that especially the upwardly mobile are less influenced by the parental ideology. However, it is demonstrated that self-selection into social mobility plays an important role herein. The overall conclusion is that the family is important in shaping voters’ political ideology until in adulthood, not only in terms of intergenerational transmission, but also in terms of direct effects of family experiences and structure.

曹美英.
論文(哲學碩士) -- 香港中文大學硏究院社會學學部, 1996.
參考文献 : leaves 64-72.
Cao Meiying.
Chapter 第一部 --- 分硏究背景與硏究方法
Chapter 第一章 --- 導言 --- p.5
Chapter 第二章 --- 改革開放前的社會制度考察 --- p.7
Chapter 一、 --- 五十年代以來中國的所有制結構變遷 --- p.7
Chapter 二、 --- 公有制結構下的勞動就業制度 --- p.7
Chapter 三、 --- 公有制結構下的勞動工資制度 --- p.8
Chapter 四、 --- 小結 --- p.10
Chapter 第三章 --- 當代中國城市家庭槪況 --- p.11
Chapter 一、 --- 單位制度下的中國城市家庭 --- p.11
Chapter 二、 --- 中國城市家家庭結構掃描 --- p.12
Chapter 1、 --- 核心家庭中國城市家庭的主要形 式 --- p.12
Chapter 2、 --- 城市家庭的小型化 --- p.13
Chapter 三、 --- 城市家庭關係的變化 --- p.13
Chapter 四、 --- 小結 --- p.14
Chapter 第四章、 --- 中國的三次“下海´ح潮及“下海´ح研究綜述 --- p.15
Chapter 一、 --- 三次´ب下海´ح潮 --- p.15
Chapter 二、 --- “下海´ح硏究綜述 --- p.16
Chapter 第五章 --- 研究方法 --- p.17
Chapter 一、 --- 訪問對象的選擇 --- p.17
Chapter 二、 --- 訪問對象的基本特點 --- p.18
Chapter 三、 --- 訪問過程 --- p.20
Chapter 四、 --- 小結 --- p.21
Chapter 第二部 --- 分硏究結果
Chapter 第六章 --- “一家兩制´ح的形成原因 --- p.23
Chapter 一、 --- “下海´ح：尋找新的機會 --- p.23
Chapter 1、 --- 家庭經濟的困境 --- p.23
Chapter 2、 --- 公有制體制的流弊 --- p.27
Chapter 3、 --- 個人動機 --- p.29
Chapter 二、 --- “留守´ح:把握既得利益 --- p.31
Chapter 1、 --- 住房：對社會主義優越性的依戀 --- p.31
Chapter 2、 --- “摸著石頭過河´ح-對政策穩定性的疑慮 --- p.33
Chapter 3、 --- 個人和家庭因素 --- p.35
Chapter 4、 --- 小結 --- p.36
Chapter 第七章 --- 協商過程：走向“一家兩制´ح --- p.38
Chapter 一、 --- “誰下海´ح ？ “誰留守´ح ？ --- p.38
Chapter 二、 --- 協商對象 --- p.41
Chapter (一)、 --- 配偶協商 --- p.41
Chapter (二) 、 --- 父母協商 --- p.44
Chapter (三)、 --- 親友協商 --- p.48
Chapter 四、 --- 小結 --- p.49
Chapter 第八章 --- “一家兩制´ح給家庭帶來的影響 --- p.50
Chapter 一、 --- 家庭經濟狀況的改善 --- p.50
Chapter 二、 --- 個人價値的實現 --- p.51
Chapter 三、 --- 婦女的雙重角色 --- p.53
Chapter 四、 --- 新的社會問題 --- p.56
Chapter 五、 --- 小結 --- p.59
Chapter 第九章 --- 結論北京市“一家兩制´ح家庭的特征及對社會的影響 --- p.60
參考書目 --- p.62

Defence date: 18 May 2015
Examining Board: Professor Govanni Federico, EUI and University of Pisa, Supervisor; Professor Youssef Cassis, EUI; Professor Vicente Pinilla,University of Zaragoza; Professor/Academic Director, Alexei Pikulik, European University of St.Petersburg/Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies.
This thesis contributes to the existing literature on the agricultural reforms that took place in Central and Eastern European countries during the transformational period (1990-2004) and on the agricultural development in Europe in general in the long-term (1960-2004). The study explores the history of the agricultural transformations in Poland and Belarus through a detailed analysis of the agricultural production and productivity dynamics, aiming to answer (i) whether the reforms succeeded or failed in terms of agricultural production and agricultural productivity; and (ii) what were the determinants of the agricultural reforms' success or failure. The research is centered on a comparative analysis of Polish and Belarusian agricultural performance, but it also incorporates the other CEE countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Russia and Ukraine), as well as the advanced Western European economies.

Defence date: 27 September 2017
Examining Board: Professor Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic, Sciences Po; Dr. João Rodrigues, University of Coimbra (external advisor); Professor Youssef Cassis, European Universiy Institute; Professor Lucy Riall, European University Institute (supervisor)
Awarded the 2019 Dorfman Dissertation Prize by the History of Economics Society
The thesis is a close study of a transnational group of intellectuals, mainly economists, who met in Paris in 1938 and at Mont Pèlerin in 1947 with the explicit aim to create a new liberalism for the modern world. At times they would use neoliberalism as a description of the creed they were developing, later they would opt for classical liberalism, in a bid to highlight continuities in their approach to political philosophy. Was their liberalism classical or was it new? The verb to reinvent is used frequently in modern academe, but its meaning is somewhat unclear. In the history of political thought, however, and especially the history of liberalism, the term can become a useful tool for enquiry. One way or the other, all new creeds build on previous ones, but the intellectuals in question were involved in a conscious, explicit attempt to change liberalism. This involved restating certain aspects of what they perceived as “true liberalism” and updating these to a different social and historical context, while also purging liberalism of all they felt was wrong with it. The contextualization of the many layers of interpretation involved in making these arguments is the main topic of this thesis. The intellectuals in question argued that “economic planning” was what had led to the rise of dictatorships in Europe. They included the communist dictatorship in Russia and the fascist dictatorships in Germany and Italy as part of the same phenomenon, totalitarianism, and further claimed that democracies like the USA, Great Britain and France were headed in the same direction. In this way, other, tangential movements to reinvent liberalism under labels such as new liberalism or social liberalism also came under attack, as it was argued that they were taking society in a totalitarian direction through collectivism and economic planning. The latter concept was defined loosely as any government “intervention” in the economy or, more precisely, attempts at subverting the mechanisms of markets in order to improve on their outcomes, redistribute wealth or counter business cycles. This strong criticism of economic planning did not lead these thinkers to advocate a position of “laissez-faire”. On the contrary, the second major plank of their intellectual project was an attack on the ideas of laissez-faire liberalism, a creed they claimed was rigid and outdated. Their internal debates can be seen as an attempt to incorporate a theory of states into right-wing liberalism, and focused on how to use states to spread, protect and foster what they still saw as a largely self-regulating mechanism. The first part of the thesis traces this dual argument to books, articles, lectures and correspondence by and between the intellectuals involved, from the German language socialist calculation debates in the 1920s, to the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947. The second part of the thesis uses some of the tools of micro history to conduct an in-depth study of this ten-day meeting in the Swiss alps. In the conclusion I argue that neoliberalism is best understood as a theory of modernity arising out of the historical conjuncture of Europe in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. This theory was based on a novel conceptualization of markets as mediators of modernity, the only mechanism through which order and prosperity could be achieved in a modern mass-society. Neoliberals took this new understanding of markets and combined it with an embrace of state power as legitimate within a theory of liberalism when put to use in concordance with what was believed to be logic of markets. The work may contribute to a deeper understanding of neoliberalism, whether this is seen as a philosophy inspiring a political movement, a political rationality, or some sort of combination of the two.

Sin Lai-ting.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-156).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract in English --- p.i
Abstract in Chinese --- p.iii
Acknowledgements --- p.iv
Table of Contents --- p.v
List of Tables and Graphs --- p.vii
Chapter Chapter 1： --- lntroduction --- p.1
Chapter Chapter 2: --- Literature Review and Application --- p.4
Chapter 2.1) --- The Theory of Marriage and Family Formation --- p.4
Chapter 2.2) --- The Theory of the Allocation of Time Between Family Members in Housework and Market Work --- p.6
Chapter 2.3) --- Application of Becker's Theoretical Models to Different Variables --- p.12
Chapter 2.4) --- Empirical Review on the Division of Labor between Husbands and Wives --- p.24
Chapter 2.5) --- Decomposition of the wage differential of men and women --- p.31
Chapter 2.6) --- Summary --- p.33
Chapter Chapter 3: --- Methodology --- p.35
Chapter 3.1) --- Changes in the Relative Economic Contribution of Husbands and Wives to Their Families --- p.35
Chapter 3.2) --- Stable and Unstable Mating --- p.39
Chapter 3.3) --- Reasons for the Changes in Economic Contribution of Husbands and Wives --- p.43
Chapter 3.4) --- Decomposition of the Economic Contribution Differential --- p.46
Chapter 3.5) --- Definitions of Control Variables --- p.48
Chapter 3.6) --- Summary --- p.52
Chapter Chapter 4: --- Data and Sample Description --- p.53
Chapter 4.1) --- Data and Sample Extraction --- p.53
Chapter 4.2) --- Variable Characteristics --- p.55
Chapter Chapter 5: --- A First Look at the Changes in Relative Economic Contribution of Husbands and Wives --- p.58
Chapter 5.1) --- Simple Data Analyses --- p.58
Chapter 5.2) --- Pooled Regressions with Husband Dummy --- p.64
Chapter 5.3) --- Summary --- p.70
Chapter Chapter 6: --- An Analysis of Selected Characteristics between Husbands and Wives --- p.72
Chapter 6.1 ) --- 2x2 Canonical Correlation Analyses --- p.72
Chapter 6.2) --- 3x3 Canonical Correlation Analyses --- p.75
Chapter 6.3) --- Summary --- p.78
Chapter Chapter 7: --- Reasons for the Changes in Relative Economic Contribution of Husbands and Wives to Their Families --- p.79
Chapter 7.1) --- Determinants of the Changes in Economic Contribution of Husbands and Wives to their families --- p.79
Chapter 7.2) --- Decomposition of the Economic Contribution Differential of Husbands and Wives to their Families --- p.90
Chapter 7.3) --- Summary --- p.93
Chapter Chapter 8: --- Conclusion --- p.94
Tables --- p.98
Graphs --- p.129
Flow Chart --- p.136
Appendix --- p.137
References --- p.153

Defence date: 4 May 1998
Examining board: Prof. Werner Abelshauser, University of Bielefeld (external supervisor) ; Prof. Richard T. Griffiths, University of Leiden (supervisor) ; Prof. Charles S. Maier, Harvard University ; Prof. Alan S. Milward, EUI ; Prof. Raffaele Romanelli, EUI
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
Sulla base di un'ampia ricognizione degli archivi americani, francesi, italiani e tedeschi, l'autore avanza un'innovativa interpretazione del piano Marshall e ricostruisce per la prima volta gli effetti sulla vita politica ed economica italiana, individuando i complessi fili che legarono la politica di De Gasperi, l'espansione dell'intervento pubblico, la nascita della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno e le origini dell'integrazione europea.

Fan, Yi.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-82).
Abstract also in Chinese.
Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 2. --- Background --- p.6
Chapter 2.1. --- Son Preference in China --- p.6
Chapter 2.2. --- Unbalanced Sex Ratio in China --- p.9
Chapter 3. --- Literature Review --- p.10
Chapter 3.1. --- Reasons for Different Investment in Sons and Daughters --- p.11
Chapter 3.2. --- The Mechanism by Which Child gender Affects Parental Time Allocation --- p.15
Chapter 4. --- Empirical Strategy and Data Description --- p.21
Chapter 4.1. --- Empirical Strategy --- p.21
Chapter 4.2. --- Data Description --- p.26
Chapter 5. --- Empirical Results --- p.30
Chapter 5.1. --- OLS Estimation --- p.30
Chapter 5.2. --- Instrumental-Variables Estimation --- p.34
Chapter 5.3. --- Fixed-effects Estimation --- p.44
Chapter 6. --- Conclusion --- p.53
Figures and Tables --- p.55
Appendices --- p.74
Bibliography --- p.79

本研究旨在探討準新人通過婚禮消費來實踐家庭和婚姻關係。通過研究準新人如何商議和安排婚禮樣式、相關的消費項目和財務安排，從而剖析新婚夫婦在婚禮籌備期間如何維持父母與子女的關係和建構未來的姻親和婚姻關係。本研究研究方法是民族誌，資料是從與三十三位新娘和二十一位新郎進行深入訪談並參與了他們的婚禮所獲得。
選購浪漫的、具風格的和舖張的婚禮的讓準新人展示品位，也表示準新人的結合是以自由戀愛為基礎的；但同時，婚禮也是結二姓之好的儀式，在中國傳統上公告新娘納入新郎的家族，這賦予準新人的父母參與婚禮形式和相關消費決策的過程。在此情況下，現代婚姻追求高獨立性與父母的期望為兩代關係帶來緊張和矛盾。另一方面，現代親子關係強調和諧融洽，對兩代透過商議婚禮消費來實踐帶來另一種挑戰，這些包括了兩層面：(1)親子和姻親關係；(2)維持婚姻的獨立性。
從探討準新人和其父母商議婚禮消費、財務安排和有關的分工，本研究得出以下發現：從家庭層面，基於道德倫理責任，準新人購買舖張婚宴以維持和建構兩代關係。同時，為突顯新婚夫婦的自主性，他們購買了不同的新興婚禮服務。而且，這些家庭關係和社會角色的定位也反映在兩代商討聛禮和嫁妝之上。
另外，從夫婦層面上，準新人透過選購具風格的婚禮物品和服務來體現二人結合為一個共同決策的消費單位，這個決策過程受雙方的性別態度和角色所影響；這些影響也反映夫婦的財務負擔和婚禮分工上。整體而言，儘管新婚夫婦在建構維持、婚姻、姻親和親子關係在婚禮籌備上有不同的矛盾，但在表面上皆能保持和諧的關係。
This research studies how marrying couples do marital and family relationships through wedding consumption. By analyzing data obtained from an ethnographic study based on in-depth interviews and participant observations from a sample of 33 brides and 21 grooms, I analyze how marrying couples do marital and family relations, i.e. how they create, maintain and transform both familial and marital memberships and boundaries through the narration and reasoning of their wedding choice and relevant monetary practices. Even though public perception dictates that a wedding is owned by the couple to publicly display their independent coupledom in a romantic, stylistic and lavish ways, it is also an important family occasion that incorporates the bride into the groom’s family. These two contradictory conceptions of independent marriage and harmonious family relations put the couple and their parents into a dilemma in whether to define the wedding as jointly or solely owned by the couple.
I probed into the negotiation of lavish and stylistic weddings and the relevant money management and division of wedding labor to examine relationship making processes. The data shows that, on the family level: 1) the couple incorporates itself into the larger family network based on perceived moral obligations, the desire to maintain parent-child relationship and also to establish in-laws relationships, (e.g. through buying a lavish wedding banquet); 2) the couple also purchase various wedding consumption goods and services to differentiate the coupledom from the family network, (e.g. through wedding photography); 3) negotiation of new and existing family roles are also reflected through the couple’s negotiation of bride price and dowry with their parents. On the couple’s level, they work towards the creation of an independent coupledom a joint decision-making and consumption unit - through variously embracing and resisting stylistic consumption goods and services in the wedding market. Last but not least, the couple also negotiates the pattern of financial responsibility and division of labor based on gender ideology and “marriage ideal“. In general, couples mostly manage to create and maintain harmonious marital and family relationships despite undercurrents of tension.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Tso, Ho Yee Vienne.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-255).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract also in Chinese.
Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 1.1 --- Background of this Study --- p.1
Chapter 1.2 --- The Significance of Wedding Consumption --- p.2
Chapter 1.3 --- Doing Weddings --- p.4
Chapter 1.4 --- Outline of the Thesis --- p.6
Chapter Chapter 2 --- The Social Relational Approach to Understand Wedding Consumption --- p.8
Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.8
Chapter 2.2 --- Rational Choice Theory of Consumption --- p.9
Chapter 2.3 --- The Structural Relational Embedded Consumer Market --- p.12
Chapter 2.4 --- Wedding Consumption --- p.18
Chapter 2.5 --- The “We“ and the “Bigger We“ --- p.29
Chapter 2.6 --- Chapter Summary --- p.43
Chapter Chapter 3 --- Research Methods --- p.45
Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.45
Chapter 3.2 --- Participation Observations --- p.46
Chapter 3.3 --- Profile of Informants --- p.58
Chapter 3.4 --- Types of In-depth Interviews --- p.63
Chapter 3.5 --- Leaving the Field --- p.70
Chapter Chapter 4 --- The Negotiation of Wedding Arrangement --- p.74
Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.74
Chapter 4.2 --- The Characteristics of the Respondents’ Weddings --- p.75
Chapter 4.3 --- Between the “We“ and “Bigger We“: Demarcation of Wedding Ceremonies --- p.77
Chapter 4.4 --- Organization of the Wedding Banquet --- p.89
Chapter 4.5 --- Chapter Summary --- p.112
Chapter Chapter 5 --- Bride Price and Dowry --- p.116
Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.116
Chapter 5.2 --- The Wedding Expenditures --- p.118
Chapter 5.3 --- The Practice of Bride Price and Dowry. --- p.124
Chapter 5.4 --- Practicing the Idea of Filial Daughters --- p.132
Chapter 5.5 --- Negotiation of Bride Price: the Traditional Route --- p.141
Chapter 5.6 --- Negotiation of Bride Price: the Transitional Route --- p.150
Chapter 5.7 --- Chapter Summary --- p.162
Chapter Chapter 6 --- The Making of the Coupledom --- p.167
Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction --- p.167
Chapter 6.2 --- Building up the “We“ in the Wedding Market --- p.168
Chapter 6.3 --- The Public Display of the “We“ --- p.179
Chapter 6.4 --- The Making of the Ideal Wedding. --- p.188
Chapter 6.5 --- Chapter Summary --- p.225
Chapter Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.229
Chapter 7.1 --- Introduction --- p.229
Chapter 7.2 --- Wedding Consumption --- p.229
Chapter 7.3 --- The Formation of the Coupledom and Wider Family Network --- p.230
Chapter 7.4 --- Implications for Future Research and Limitations --- p.236

Defence date: 12 January 2016
Examining Board: Professor László Bruszt, European University Institute (EUI Supervisor); Professor Adrienne Héritier, European University Institute; Professor Wade Jacoby, Brigham Young University; Professor Frank Schimmelfenning, ETH Zürich.
The dissertation aims at understanding and explaining the existence of variation in sustainable compliance with EU legislation in two similarly rule-taking countries. The cases under examination are Hungary and Poland which have experienced a similar historical background, similar environmental problems and have been subject to similar EU conditions and requirements for accession. Nevertheless, the EU Annual Progress Reports and the Tri-Annual Monitoring Reports showed a variation in their compliance with European environmental requirements. The existing literature has explained this divergence by taking a supply-side approach, focusing on those state actors and incumbents who could decide to supply compliance or not. In particular, researchers of compliance and of Europeanisation have focused on differences in capacity limitations or incentives to domestic actors. These supply-side approaches, however, do not seem to fully explain the existing divergence between the performances of Hungary and Poland nor do they sufficiently tackle the issue of "sustainable compliance" in the post-Accession period. In my analysis, I instead explain variation in sustainable compliance by exploring demand-side explanations. To this end, the thesis explores the hypothesis of demand for compliance emerging on the part of stakeholders who recognise its potential for profitability and, thus, influence its sustainability. Its starting point is the Tsebelis' study on stakeholders which describes them solely as "veto players" along the road to compliance; however, this analysis demonstrates that there is also another dimension to the influence they may have. I build my hypothesis around the existence of such factors as market incentives and pre-existing cooperative strategies that make compliance convenient for stakeholders. Moreover, I consider the role played by external assistance and the existence of alliances between external and domestic stakeholders to improve the overall compliance performance of less-regulated countries. The study proves the significance of market incentives and pre-existing cooperative strategies in fostering sustainable compliance while showing how the two strong explanatory variables are interlinked: compliance is not a "business" per se. It has a potential to be made a "good deal" via cooperative strategies among diverse stakeholders creating a win-win settlement.

Defence date: 8 October 1987
Examining board: Prof. Vincent Wright, Nuffield College ; Prof. Yves Morvan, University of Rennes ; Prof. Julien Savary, University of Toulouse ; Prof. Stephen Young, Strathclyde University
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 13 May 2008
Examining Board: Prof. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (EUI) - supervisor; Prof. Bartolomé Yun (EUI); Prof. Eric Vanhaute (Ghent University); Prof. Lewis Fischer (University of Newfoundland).
First made available online on 24 August 2018
Why, yet another study on the long 19th century European mass-migration movement to the US, when during the last decade migration historians have encouraged a shift away from the Atlanto-centrism and Modernization-centrism that has dominated the sub-discipline (Lucassen and Lucassen, 1996, 28-30; Hoerder, 2002, 10-18)? For many, the topic seems saturated, yet one particular and reoccurring question has not yet received a satisfying answer: how did the migrant trade evolve and influence the relocation of approximately thirty five million migrants across the Atlantic, of whom an ever increasing percentage returned and repeated the journey during the steamship era? More than half a century ago Maldwyn Jones, Frank Thistletwaite, and Rolf Engelsing drew attention to the fact that transatlantic migration was determined by trade routes (Jones, 1956, Engelsing, 1961; Thistletwaite, 1960). Migrants essentially became valuable cargo, on a shipping route made up of raw cotton, tobacco or timber from the New World; a route that had room to spare on the return leg of the journey. Rolf Engelsing in particular documented how the maritime business community reacted to this trade opportunity, by erecting inland networks, directing a continuous flow of human cargo to the port of Bremen during the sailship-era. Marianne Wokeck later stressed the Atlantic dimensions of these networks, by dating the origins of non-colonial mass migration movements to the 18th Century (Wokeck, 1999).

Defence date: 2 April 2007
Examining Board: Prof. P. Winand (EUI) ; Prof. B. Stråth (EUI) ; Prof. A. Kersten (University of Leyden) ; Prof. W. Loth (University of Essen)
First made available online 2 August 2018

The first essay studies how early health shocks affect the child's human capital formation. We first formulate a theoretical model to understand how early health shocks affect child outcomes through parental responses. We nest a dynamic model of human capability formation into a standard intrahousehold resource allocation framework. By introducing the multidimensionality of child endowments, we allow parents to compensate and reinforce along different dimensions. We then test our main empirical predictions using a Chinese child twins survey, which contains detailed information on child- and parent-specific expenditures. We can differentiate between investments in money and investments in time. On the one hand, we find evidence of compensating investment in child health but of reinforcing investment in education. On the other hand, we find no change in the time spent with the child. We confirm that an early health insult negatively affects the child under several different domains, ranging from later health, to cognition, and then to personality. Our findings suggest caution in interpreting reduced-form estimates of the effects of early-life shocks. In the presence of asymmetric parental responses under different dimensions of the child's human capital, they cannot even be unambiguously interpreted as upper or lower bounds of the biological effects.
The second essay empirically estimates the effects of education on two dimensions of preference -- decision making under risk and uncertainty and decision making involving time. We conduct a number of incentivized choice experiments on Chinese adult twins to measure preference, and use a within-twin-pair fixed-effects estimator to sweep out unobservable family background effects. The estimation results show that a higher level of education tends to reduce the degree of risk aversion toward moderate prospects, moderate hazards, and longshot prospects. In terms of decision making anomalies under risk and uncertainty, university educated subjects exhibit significantly more Allais-type behavior compared to pre-high school subjects, while high school educated subjects also exhibit more ambiguity aversion as well as familiarity bias relative to pre-high school subjects. For decision making involving time, a higher level of education tends to reduce the degree of impatience, hyperbolic discounting, dread, and hopefulness. The experimental evidences suggest that people with a higher level of education tends to exhibit more "biased" preference in risk attitude and less "biased" preference regarding time.
This thesis consists of two essays on family behavior and human capital.
essay 1. Early health shocks, parental responses, and child outcome -- essay 2. Education and preferences: experimental evidences from Chinese adult twins.
Yi, Junjian.
Adviser: Junsen Zhang.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: A, page: .
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-41; 82-88).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract also in Chinese.

Given the growth of households headed by women, one of the biggest social concerns is the high poverty level within these households. Studies have shown that individuals living in female-headed households are more likely to be in poverty than those in other types of households due to women's disadvantaged position in the labor market. However, the disadvantage of women in the labor market does not necessarily lead to poverty within households headed by women. The livelihood of female-headed households is determined by contextual factors as well as the labor market condition, because the labor market, family and welfare policies all contribute to family well-being within a particular national context. Using both quantitative and qualitative method, I examine various components that are associated with social and family life of Mexican female heads and single mothers: living arrangements, household practices, the labor market, and welfare policy. Interview data with Mexican single mothers provide this research with basic research questions as well as evidences supporting the findings of quantitative analyses about the association between poverty and those women. Quantitative data analyses show that kinship network is important resources of welfare of female-headed or single-mother households in Mexico. First, the prevalence of female-headed households in Mexico is associated with gender-specific migration, increased economic opportunities for women, and marriage-market conditions. Second, Mexican female heads have household income relatively higher than or equivalent to that of male heads, and this peculiarity is attributed to the financial support to female-headed households provided by family networks, and to the selection process of single mothers. Third, extended family members residing with mothers affect their time allocation, and the effects vary by the gender of the extended family member and the mothers' marital status.
text

Defence date: 16 December 1993
Examining board: Prof. Louis Bergeron ; Prof. Paul Butel ; Prof. Carlo Capra ; Prof. Christof Dipper ; Prof. Raffaele Romanelli ; Prof. Stuart Woolf (supervisor)
First made available online: 1 June 2016

This study examined the association between poverty and child neglect. The existence of a general association has been established for some time. However, there is much debate, and little detailed research, on the specific processes that create this association. This study focused on the form of neglect that involves the most health risk for children—physical neglect. It was hypothesized that poverty should increase the likelihood of a specific type of physical neglect, neglect of safety and basic needs, occurring more than other types. Using official child protective services data from a national data set three types of physical neglect were examined: abandonment, lack of safety or basic needs, and inadequate supervision. Hypothesis 1 was that poverty increases the odds of safety/basic needs neglect more than it influences the odds of either abandonment neglect or inadequate supervision neglect, controlling for prior neglect. Hypothesis 2 focused on a test of whether the link between poverty and physical neglect is not direct, but is instead mediated by caregiver stress. Three waves of longitudinal data were used for this test to establish causal time order between poverty and stress, and between stress and physical neglect. This study analyzed data from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN), Assessments 0-3 from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University. The data was analyzed using multinominal logistic regression for both models. The results did not confirm Hypothesis 1, though the analysis was limited somewhat due to low frequencies of some physical neglect types in certain age groups. Hypothesis 2 was confirmed showing that the effect of poverty on physical neglect was completely mediated by caregiver stress for the abandonment and safety/basic needs types of physical neglect. Implications of the results for research on the effects of poverty on child neglect, and for preventing child neglect are discussed.
Graduation date: 2012

Defence date: 7 February 2009
Examining Board: Prof. Peter Wagner, University of Trento and formerly EUI (Supervisor); Prof. Richard Bellamy, University College London; Prof. Claus Offe, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin; Prof. Neil Walker, University of Edinburgh and formerly EUI
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis proposes a new way of addressing two central questions in the study of the European Union: What is the nature of the European Union as a political entity and how does it emerge? The point of departure is the, by now widely accepted, conceptualisation of the EU as a polity and the extensive discussions, not least in normative and prescriptive terms, that this process implied. Judging that many of the debates have reached dead-ends, the thesis proposes a novel way of conceptualising the concept ‘polity’ in its application to the European Union. It argues that the European Union polity should be understood as a configuration of agreements to collectively address common problems. The thesis then offers an analysis of three such fields of agreed upon common activities over the period 1992 to 2005 which are constitutive of the European Union polity and construct its boundedness: ‘Enlargement to the East’; ‘Immigration policy’; and ‘Europe as an actor in the world.’ Under scrutiny includes: the context in which these policies emerged; the normative ideas through which the problems at stake were identified; and the agreed-upon mechanisms for addressing common problems. To understand the emergence and nature of these common activities, the thesis proposes a concept-centred approach. It argues that concepts are constitutive for the European Union polity. The concepts constitute the agreements to address problems in common and thus ‘form’ the European Union polity. Thereby, the thesis shows the ways in which five key concepts - human rights, democracy, diversity, prosperity and security - are effective (‘their power’ or ‘efficacy’) and which Gestalt (‘meaning’) they take on in these specific problem-ridden situations. Particular attention is paid to the relationship and, specifically, tensions between the different normative concepts as well as the compromises that they form and the re-configuration of the respective policy fields they bring about. The thesis concludes that these findings should be interpreted as a self-understanding of the European Union. This self-understanding encompasses the commitment to a set of ideas, the decision to take action in certain political domains and, not least, the selfidentification as a political actor and entity. Thus, focusing on the power and Gestalt of concepts without falling into an abstract idealism, the thesis combines an approach of a historical sociology, cultural sociology and the history of concepts with key concerns of European Union studies.

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays investigating different aspects of health care for children and families. The first essay examines the effectiveness of adherence to American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for preventive pediatric health care. Using a national longitudinal sample of children age two years and younger, we investigate whether compliance with prescribed periodic well-child care visits has beneficial effects on child health. We find that increased compliance improves child health. In particular, higher compliance lowers future risks of fair or poor health, of some history of a serious illness and of having a health limitation. The second essay examines child health care utilization in relation to maternal labor supply. We test the hypothesis that working-mothers trade off the advantages of greater income against the disadvantages of less time for other valuable tasks, such as seeking health care for their children. This tradeoff may result in positive, negative, or no net impacts on child health investment. We estimate health care demand regressions that include separate variables for mother’s labor supply and her labor income. Our results indicate that higher maternal work hours reduce child health care visits; higher maternal earnings increase them. In addition, wage-employment, as opposed to self-employment, is detrimental to child health investment. A further finding is that preventive care demand for younger children is less sensitive to maternal time and income changes. We also find that detrimental time effects dominate beneficial income effects. The third essay studies intra-household resource allocation as it pertains to its demand for preventive medical care. We test the income-pooling hypothesis of the common preference model by using individual specific medical care consumption data and present evidence on the allocation of household resources to the medical needs of the child, husband and wife. Our results are in line with the findings of previous studies that emphasize the ongoing importance of the traditional gender role of woman as the primary caregiver. We find that the resources of the wife have a greater positive impact on child’s and her own preventive care demand than does the resources of the husband. In contrast to most studies from developing countries, we find that US families do not exhibit differential health care demand based on child gender. It is also noteworthy that the wife’s education level has a greater positive impact than that of her husband does on both the husband’s and her own preventive care utilization.
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In any act of household migration, there are movers (the migrant) and stayers (those left behind), and both of these two groups have expectations. The movers expect to make some benefits at the destination while the stayers expect the migrant to send or do something at home of origin. Some work, though limited, has been done to improve our understanding of how potential migrants form their expectations of what they can get from the destination country in studies involving determinants of individual migration. But for those left behind very little is known about how they form their expectations of what they can get from the migrant. The few studies that have been done on this have only used observed flow of remittances to estimate what people left behind expect from migration. Hence these studies equate observed flow of remittances to expected flows. And by this equation, these studies also assume perfect information flow between migrants and relations left behind as well as perfect knowledge to help those left behind to form realistic expectations: expectations that reflects exactly what can be sent to them. Obviously these assumptions are not tenable. These untenable assumptions also leave a hole in our ability to explain why a household will choose to either continue supporting members for migration or not. This is because we cannot tell from observed data alone whether or not the desire to continue to support migration of a household or a family member is as a result of well-informed subjective expectations or not. The crust of the problem here is therefore that by relying on observed data alone we fail to account for the important role subjective expectations or beliefs of those left behind play in decisions for further migration movements, especially within the family. To be able to unravel this problem we need elicitation of subjective expectations of remittance flows from those left behind. Using data from a specially designed survey in two districts in Ghana, I construct time-adjusted subjective remittance expectations of migrant families at home of origin and analyse the factors that determine the formation of these expectations and how formation of these expectations can help us explain perpetuation of migration within a household. The key analytical models employed in these investigations are summarised below In order to understand the exogenous determinants of remittance expectations of migrant households, I first of all estimate factors that influence performance of migrant at home of origin and general flow of information between the migrants and the household members left behind. In order to see the effect of remittances on formation of subjective expectations, remittance flow was measured in terms of migrant performance by adjusting the flows to the time period during which the migrant could do what he or she has done. The items were limited to the popular ones people receive: money for living expenses, establishment of a house and business investment. The theoretical explanation for this adjustment is that if the observed trend in remittance flow has any effect on expectations it would be through individual household’s evaluation of what migrants have achieved within a certain number of years. In other words, all things being equal, families whose migrants took much longer period to achieve certain things would have lower levels of expectations than a comparable family whose migrant took relatively shorter period. This is because taking a long time to achieve something at home of origin would breed some kind of skepticism and uncertainty among those left behind as to what they can get from migration. And this skepticism can lead to low levels of expectations. This is also in line with the reference people left behind often make when talking about achievements of migrants at home of origin as they always point to what XYZ has done. Ordinary least squared regression is then used to estimate factors determining level of migrant performance at home of origin after the transformation of the dependent variable: migrant performance. Heckman selection model is also applied to control for possible effect of bias since some households have migrants who have done nothing at home. Kinship ties are the major factors under this investigation. To determine the main factors influencing information flow, ordinary least squared estimates are used while a generalised ordered logit model, with maximum likelihood method, is used to estimate the factors influencing the likelihood of a household getting higher categories of private/dedicated information from the migrant. Major factors for this investigation are kinship ties and performance of migrant at home of origin. Since information flow and remittance flows are suspected to have endogenous relationship, instrumental variables (IV) technique is employed to estimated impact of remittance flow on both private and public information flows. This is important for us to understand how information flow act as exogenous determinant of subjective remittance expectations, and resultant effect on perpetuation of migration. Once current information flow and performance of migrants have been examined and effects of their exogenous factors estimated, the next stage of the analysis is the examination of effects of these past performance and information flow on household subjective remittance expectations while controlling for other major exogenous factors such as kinship ties, level of education and household wealth. Ordinary least square regression technique is used to estimate major determinants of these levels of expectations. However, to control for possible bias resulting from the fact that a select group of households may not expect anything, Heckman selection model is applied. The final analysis is the estimation of impact household subjective remittance expectations on migration-support intentions. Due to the problem of endogenous relationship between expectations and migration decisions, ordinary maximum likelihood estimates would not be very effective in identifying the real impact expectations have on migration decisions. Hence I use maximum likelihood with endogenous repressors to estimate or identify the influence of expectation on potential migration decisions, applying the probit model with selection model (heckprob) technique. Ordered probit analysis is also used to investigate what determines household’s desire to support more than one person for migration. The results are summarised below. Summary of Findings Economics and sociology literature makes us aware that in order to understand formation of expectations of any kind we first have to investigate two important factors: past events and current information flow, because these are the two factors that hugely influence expectations. Hence, for us to understand remittance expectations, we first have to understand two issues: observed past flows of remittances and current flow of information between the migrant and relations left behind at home of origin. If remittance flows should influence household or family’s (including the extended family members) subjective expectations and the support to move abroad, it should largely do so in terms of what has been observed in the past. In Chapter Six, I investigated the influence of kinship ties on receipts of remittances. As expected, closer migrant relations such as spouse and head of family stand a much better chance of having better performance from migrant than distant kinship ties such as friendship. However when it comes to performance in individual items such as house or business investment, a household cannot rely only on kinship ties with migrant. It should also have some wealth. Specifically, among the kinship ties only spousal relationship was found to have positive effect on migrant performance in areas such as housing and business investment. Thus the influence of kinship ties on observed flow of remittances is mostly limited to money for living expenses, unless the family left behind is wealthy enough to enable allocation of what is sent into other things such as investment in housing and business. With kinship ties being very influential in the determination of past performance of migrants one would expect that these ties would also influence information flow if the assumption of remittance and information flow being together holds. It has always been assumed by cumulative causation theories of migration that together with the flow of remittances from migrant to relations back at home is the flow of information that connects migrant, potential migrants and those left behind (Massey et al, 1993). If this is the case then relationship should be a key factor in determining information flow from the migrants, because these ties influence flow of remittances. Results from the 2SLS model show that remittance flow has impact only at the lower levels of private information flow, reinforcing the point that information that comes with remittance flow may just be social issues such as size of family, marital status, and not economic ones. In spite of their strong effect on remittance flow or migrant performance, all the types of kinship ties generally have negative effects on private information flow. Thus kinship ties are not enough for those left behind to get more private information from the migrant relations residing abroad. It should not be surprising that remittance flows do not lead to higher levels of information flow from the migrants to those left behind. This is because remittances are mostly made up of monetary transfers for living expenses which may not carry much information with it as, in most cases, migrants do not require monitoring. And with electronic transfers of these days, it becomes more implausible to assume that remittance flows, which are mostly limited to monetary transfers, would generate private information as the interpersonal exchanges in these transfers become more and more reduced. But since the lower levels of private information flows only contain pieces of information such as marital status, household size and education levels, it follows that remittance flow may not be the best channel through which relations get important information about the socioeconomic conditions of the migrant. Perhaps this assumption was more plausible about 30 years ago when migrants mostly relied on methods such as using other migrants going home. Families left behind have to rely on their wealth or good level of education to be able to source information from the migrants. On the other hand, remittance flow or migrant performance has highly significant and positive influence on public information flow, suggesting that what migrants do at home influence some perceived knowledge of the migrants’ socioeconomic conditions. It is also interesting to note that factors such as average household education and wealth that have significant positive effect on private information flow have negative effect on public information flow. One can therefore deduce that the more families are able to access information from the migrants themselves, the less they rely on migration information from nonmigrant sources or the general public in the community of origin. Unfortunately remittance flow is unable to help those left behind to get more information from the migrant. Hence most of them will have to rely on public information. With the flow of crucial information such as economic conditions of migrants lacking or being inadequate, it can be concluded that there would be some level of uncertainty about conditions. And this level of uncertainty may lead to some guess-work or reliance on information from other sources in the formation of remittance expectations. That is, would their inability to access crucial information on economic conditions of the migrants “push” them to rely on information reaching them from other sources in the formation of expectations? Also if the wealthy and the more educated families are more likely to know more about the migrants, and if knowing more about the migrant is most likely to temper high expectations with realism as hypothesized in this study, would it be fair to conclude that wealthier and more educated families may have ambivalent, if not negative expectation levels? Results from Chapter Seven show that families would use their experience of what migrants have done at home of origin as a starting point in the formation of their remittance expectations in terms of whether or not they should expect something. But once their expectation status is assured, families are much more influenced by other factors than migrant performance in the formation of their subjective remittance expectation levels. In other words at lower levels of information, remittance expectations seem to be more adaptive to past trends of observed remittance flows. Kinship ties become very significant in this respect in spite of its insignificant influence on information flow. This raises a question of whether or not the effect of kinship ties on formation of remittance expectations is informed by information from the migrants. All the results point to the contrary. The effects of kinship ties on subjective remittance expectations are informed more by past experience of remittance receipts than current dedicated/ private flow of information between the families and the migrants. When kinship ties are interacted with private information their effects on remittance expectations are, however, significantly reduced, indicating that when people take private or dedicated information into consideration their high expectations are very much checked. What are the implications of subjective remittance expectations form under low levels of dedicated information flow for migration decisions? Chapter Eight sought to provide the answer to this question. The results confirmed the hypothesis that subjective remittance expectations formed under inadequate flow of dedicated information would lead to increasing desire to support more migration from the family and the opposite should also true. That is under inadequate information flow, subjective remittance expectations have highly positive effect on desire to perpetuate migration more than the demonstrative effect of migrant performance, emphasizing the importance of expectations in perpetuation of migration. However, the strong effect of expectations and kinship ties on desire to support migration could be reduced if high levels of dedicated information are taken into consideration. Further investigation into why some families with remittance expectations would still not want to support members to migrate revealed that, in addition to private or dedicated information flow, average household education level is a major factor that discourages families with remittance expectations from further supporting members to migrate. This is in sharp contrast with the generally accepted view that education selects families and individuals into migration, especially international migration. This is true in the general population. When only migrant families are sampled, as in this study, the effects of education on migration are tempered with information flow. Education allows the family to access more and more of private/dedicated information which has negative effect on remittance expectations. It is therefore not surprising that education may discourage families with expectations to continue supporting migration. But since most people do not get the private information or do not even consider it as, expectations which are hugely informed by past performance, public information and mere kinship ties would continue to drive perpetuation of migration, at least, at the household level.

Defense Date: 28/10/2009
Examining Board: Nicholas Barr (LSE), Martin Kohli (EUI), Martin Rhodes (University of Denver, formerly EUI) (Supervisor), Tine Stanovnik (University of Ljubljana)
The study analyses the legislation and implementation of pension reforms in four Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries: Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. By comparing the political economy of their policymaking processes, it pinpoints regularities between institutional settings, actor constellations, decision-making strategies and reform outcomes. The dissertation addresses three research questions: Why was reform possible and how was it carried through? What are its distributive consequences? Does it guarantee long-term political support? The main argument is that viable pension reforms should not be seen as an event, but rather as a continuing process that must be fiscally, socially and politically sustainable. The primary goals of a pension scheme are poverty reduction, consumption smoothing and insurance. These can be achieved only if the scheme enjoys continuing political support at all levels. Elaborating on this premise, the research makes four broad claims; two related to legislation and two to the implementation of reforms. First, policymakers in post-socialist countries quickly exhausted the possibility of enacting simple corrective measures and were hence forced to negotiate pension reforms with the pro-welfare coalition. Complex exchanges between policy and politics became central to these negotiated bargains. Second, systemic reforms introducing policy innovations, such as funding, were politically superior to parametric changes. Systemic innovations are a source of popular support and free room for manoeuvre. The new funded elements are traded for cuts in public pension schemes. Third, trade-offs between fiscal and social sustainability emerged during legislation, jeopardizing successful implementation. Excessive emphasis on financial viability conflicts with sound social policy. Conversely, failure to eliminate extreme imbalances between contributions and benefits, and unjustified special privileges disrupt the fiscal budget. Finally, how legislation is conducted is important for a reform’s political acceptability. Negotiated bargains are qualitatively different from other modes of policymaking. Contrary to a received wisdom in the literature, the thesis argues that inclusive decision-making, as opposed to limited bargaining, increases both the effectiveness of reforms and their political sustainability over time. The involvement of a greater number of stakeholders allows for smoother implementation: costly deviations from efficient solutions are avoided, and incentives to stick to the reform’s initial rationale are put in place. With respect to existing work, this study makes two innovations. First, it extends analysis to ten years of implementation, following the reform wave of the late 1990s. Second, it employs theoretical instruments to study Eastern pension reforms that are entirely consistent with those applied to the West. The dissertation links the legislative and the implementation phases together by adapting the Natali-Rhodes’ theoretical framework, developed for pension reforms in Continental Europe. The ‘spillover’ is justified on multiple grounds. First, sufficient analogies exist between the institutional structure and the mounting problems of Bismarckian retirement arrangements and post-socialist pension schemes. Second, this approach accounts for the popularity of systemic pension reforms in the region. By focussing on the ‘creative opportunism’ of policymakers, it shows how they simultaneously introduced policy improvements and imposed benefit cuts. Finally, the framework is easily extended to the implementation of reforms, thereby linking individual decision-makers’ preferences to policy outcomes and their consequent sustainability in time.

Rwanda, in its transition phase since 1994, has had the support of major international development organizations, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations Development Program, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other development organizations. The aim of this support is to promote Rwandan agriculture in which 45 percent of the Rwandan GDP and 90 percent of employment share originate. The possible role that farmers can play in this process through their small-scale farmers' associations is well recognized by the Ministry of Agriculture in Rwanda. Farmers in Gikongoro province, the study area, are constrained by many factors, such as soil infertility, small land areas, and lack of access to modern inputs (e.g., seed, fertilizer and lime) and agricultural credit. In addition, land degradation in the form of soil erosion, soil acidity, and nutrient depletion undermines soil productivity leading to poor crop yields, and keeps farmers dependent on potential support from government and non-governmental projects. Between 2000 and 2004, farmers in Gikongoro province received support from the Development Activity Program (DAP) under the umbrella of World Vision International, Rwanda. The DAP supports farmers mainly in land terracing for soil erosion control, and supported farmers also receive modern inputs (fertilizer, seed and lime), storage facilities, and training. This study analyzes the impact of agricultural assistance afforded by the DAP and socioeconomic characteristics of households on agricultural production in Gikongoro province. Data for this study were collected from July to August 2004 using a stratified multistage sample of 204 household heads who are members of 24 farmers' associations of which 10 are supported by the DAP in the three districts; Mudasomwa, Kivu, and Nyamagabe. The study compares DAP supported and unsupported farmers in terms of differences in household incomes and crop yields. Descriptive statistics indicate that DAP supported farmers have significantly higher yields, household income, and better access to modern inputs and terraced land than unsupported farmers. These results seem to indicate that DAP support has had a significant impact on agricultural production and household incomes in Gikongoro province. However, these results are based only on a univariate analysis. The relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and household potato production in Gikongoro province was also analyzed to identify other factors that affect food production. A recursive system of linear and log-linear equations was estimated to analyze the effects of DAP, cultivated potato area, liquidity, gender of the household head (producer), years of schooling, family size, and age of the producer on farmers' productivity as measured by potato yields. Investment in operating inputs (fertilizer, seed, and lime) was used as a determinant of potato yields. Results indicate that cultivated potato area, liquidity, family size, and age (greater experience and lower transaction costs) of the household head significantly increase the use of operating inputs, which in turn has a significant positive impact on potato yield. The study suggests that DAP may need to be more selective in supporting farmers, focusing more on the farm size, education and family size profile of association members when deciding where to channel support. The study also recommends more research into the efficiency of land rental and credit markets to better understand land and liquidity constraints to improved household production in Gikongoro province. A networking model for supporting farmers' associations is proposed, in which a joint role for the Rwandan government, academic and research institutions, NGOs, and the private sector is expected to lead to sustainable agricultural development in Gikongoro province, Rwanda.
Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

Defence date: 1 February 1988
Examining Board: Prof. A. S. Milward (supervisor), London School of Economics and Political Science ; Prof. R.T. Griffiths, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam ; Prof. Prof. A. Kersten, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden ; Prof. Dr. W. Loth, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster ; Prof. R. Poidevin, Université de Strasbourg III
First made available online 21 March 2019

The full text available is only the introduction of the thesis.
Defence date: 15 June 2009
Supervisor: Giovanni Federico External supervisor: Timo Myllyntaus Examining Board: Giovanni Federico Bartolomé Yun Casalilla Magnus Lindmark Jan Luiten van Zanden
This thesis examines Finland‘s transition from a solar based energy system to a fossil fuel based one, and the environmental consequences of this transition. The period under examination is from the beginning of the 19th century to the present, covering Finland's transition from a proto-industrial agricultural society to a --post- industrial| society. The theoretical starting point has been the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, which proposes that some pollution or measures of environmental degradation would follow an inverted U-curve related to incomes, increasing at low income levels and decreasing at high income levels. Based on the historical approach used in this thesis, two new explanations for the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve are added: 1) The severity of environmental degradation might itself create a turning point for the emissions, or in some cases fear of severe effects. 2) What at a first glance seems to be a genuine environmental improvement might just be a transformation of one environmental problem into another. Some proponents of economic growth go as far as claiming that economic growth is a necessary condition for proper protection of the environment. This thesis turns the argument around, claiming that the causal connection goes in an opposite direction: proper environmental standards and conservation comprise a necessary condition for economic growth in the long run. Finland industrialized by means of renewable, indigenous energy sources. The switch to imported fossil fuels in the 1960s led to exceptionally fast growth of carbon and sulphur dioxide emissions. The emissions of sulphur dioxide started to decline in the 1970s while the emission growth of carbon dioxide only slowed down. The initial decline of sulphur dioxide emissions was mainly a side-effect of changes in industrial processes rather than an outcome of a deliberate policy. Furthermore, anxiety about large and widespread damage to the forests was a major reason for active measures to decrease sulphur dioxide emissions since the mid- 1980s. Thus the emissions themselves provoked their downturn. Quantitative calculations on the use of natural resources provide valuable tools, which can give new insights to old questions and raise new questions. Burning cultivation of peatlands, which has been neglected in historical research, was found to be the greatest source of carbon dioxide in Finland during the whole of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. Another neglected occupation, the production of potash might have consumed as much wood during the 19th century as the production of tar.