Essays on the political economy of trade policy and economic *development

This dissertation studies the political economy of trade policy in a developing country, namely Turkey, under different economic and political regimes. The research analyzes the effects of these different regimes on the import structure, the trade policy and the industrialization process in Turkey and derives implications for aggregate welfare. ^ In the second chapter, the effects of trade liberalization policies on import demand are examined. Using disaggregated industry-level data, import demand elasticities for various sectors have been computed, analyzed under different economic regimes, and compared with those of developed countries. The results are statistically significant and reliable, and conform to the predictions of economic theory. Estimation of these elasticities is also a necessary ingredient for the third chapter of the dissertation. ^ The third chapter examines the predictions of the state-of-the-art “Protection For Sale” model of Grossman and Helpman (1994). Employing advanced econometric methods and a unique data set, strong support is found for the fundamental predictions of the model in the context of Turkey. Specifically, the government is found to attach a much higher weight to social welfare than to political contributions. This weight is higher under the democratic regime than under the dictatorship, a result potentially of interest to all researchers in the area of political economy. ^ The fourth chapter looks at the effects of industry concentration and import price shocks on protection, promotion and the choice of policy instruments in Turkey. In this context, it examines and finds support for the predictions of some well-known models in the literature. ^

The contribution of higher education to economic *development in a globalized environment

Amidst concerns about achieving high levels of technology to remain competitive in the global market without compromising economic development, national economies are experiencing a high demand for human capital. As higher education is assumed to be the main source of human capital, this analysis focused on a more specific and less explored area of the generally accepted idea that higher education contributes to economic growth. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to find whether higher education also contributes to economic development, and whether that contribution is more substantial in a globalized context. ^ Consequently, a multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to support with statistical significance the answer to the research question: Does higher education contributes to economic development in the context of globalization? The information analyzed was obtained from historical data of 91 selected countries, and the period of time of the study was 10 years (1990–2000). Some variables, however, were lagged back 5, 10 or 15 years along a 15-year timeframe (1975–1990). The resulting comparative static model was based on the Cobb-Douglas production function and the Solow model to specify economic growth as a function of physical capital, labor, technology, and productivity. Then, formal education, economic development, and globalization were added to the equation. ^ The findings of this study supported the assumption that the independent contribution of the changes in higher education completion and globalization to changes in economic growth is more substantial than the contribution of their interaction. The results also suggested that changes in higher and secondary education completion contribute much more to changes in economic growth in less developed countries than in their more developed counterparts. ^ As a conclusion, based on the results of this study, I proposed the implementation of public policy in less developed countries to promote and expand adequate secondary and higher education systems with the purpose of helping in the achievement of economic development. I also recommended further research efforts on this topic to emphasize the contribution of education to the economy, mainly in less developed countries. ^

International tourism and socio-economic development in the Caribbean : are they compatible?

Plagued with poverty, the countries of the Caribbean have grappled for years with numerous development models. As in many Third World countries, tourism has been used as an economic development strategy. Criticisms of the tourism industry have frequently been severe. So much that during the formation of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the tourism industry was intentionally avoided and other industries favored. One of the most critical questions asked of tourism is whether or not the economic gains of the industry are worth the detrimental social, political and environmental effects on the host country. It is the objective of this thesis to examine the relationship between international tourism and socio-economic development in the Caribbean, and to determine whether or not the deficiencies of the industry prevent it from being a beneficial development tool.

Economic Development and Mass Poverty in Africa: Assessment of the Nigerian Experience

The forces surrounding the emerging economies of underdeveloped world, especially Africa has practically stifled its economic progress, growth, development and sustainability. This economic condition brings to the fore the massive onslaught of rural/urban poverty which the African continent grapples with since the post-world war II era to date. The economic misfortunes and incidence of mass poverty in Africa, vis-à-vis Nigeria is used as a point of departure in this study. The paper underscores the ideological and philosophical undertone of international capital manifesting in form of colonialism and imperialism as a major character in the historical process of underdevelopment and mass poverty in peripheral states of Africa, Asia and Latin America, respectively. Of particular interest in this study is the activities of domestic bourgeoisie elite class who have vigorously displayed some degree of lack of much needed vision and abject lack of desires to draw up workable plans to redeem the battered image of African/ Nigerian economic misfortunes. This state of affairs has practically engendered economic underdevelopment, misery and disturbing levels of poverty in the nation-state system. The paper concludes with the forward towards realizing the vision 20-20-20 objectives in the 21t century and beyond.

Financialisation, Capital Accumulation and Economic Development : A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation of the Nigerian Economy

The primary focus of this study is to highlight those unobtrusive, yet fundamental, factors undermining economic development in Nigeria. To begin with, it posits that the decelerating pace of capital accumulation in Nigeria, which naturally occasions rising unemployment and poverty levels, and widening inequality gap, is the result of the ‘low possibility’ of capitalist enterprises in the country of earning an adequate rate of profit from their productive processes. In turn, the ‘low possibility’ is argued to be the result of the uneven development inherent in the modern capitalist structure, the high cost of capital and of production peculiar to Nigeria, and the ineffective demand for goods made in Nigeria: these elements are viewed as been precipitated by the contradictions of the contemporary political-economic arrangement that organises the Social Structures of Accumulation. For Nigeria to ‘develop’, it is contended that the unobtrusive elements inherent in the contradiction of the political-economic economic that undermine the capitalists’ ability to earn a commensurate rate of profit in the country needs to be fully addressed first. Furthermore, this study suggests that it is crucial the country embraces knowledge-based industrialisation if it is to achieve some form of ‘competitive advantage’ in the global market, which could enable its productive processes extract a commensurate level of profit from the market. To facilitate the knowledge-based industrialisation, the state should, not only create a conducive environment for industrial development but also play the lead role in transforming the peripheral and oil dependent economy to a knowledge-based economy by coordinating business organisations and investing in high-risk innovations.

Report on the High Quality Jobs Program (HQJP) and the Grow Iowa Values Fund (GIVF), administered by the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA), previously known as the Department of Economic Development, for the period July 1, 2003 through June 30, 2014

Report on the High Quality Jobs Program (HQJP) and the Grow Iowa Values Fund (GIVF), administered by the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA), previously known as the Department of Economic Development, for the period July 1, 2003 through June 30, 2014

Essays on cultural and institutional dynamics in economic development using spatial analysis

This thesis seeks to research patterns of economic growth and development from a number of perspectives often resonated in the growth literature. By addressing themes about history, geography, institutions and culture the thesis is able to bring to bear a wide range of inter-related literatures and methodologies within a single content. Additionally, by targeting different administrative levels in its research design and approach, this thesis is also able to provide a comprehensive treatment of the economic growth dilemma from both cross-national and sub-national perspectives. The three chapters herein discuss economic development from two broad dimensions. The first of these chapters takes on the economic growth inquiry by attempting to incorporate cultural geography within a cross-country formal spatial econometric growth framework. By introducing the global cultural dynamics of languages and ethnic groups as spatial network mechanisms, this chapter is able to distinguish economic growth effects accruing from own-country productive efforts from those accruing from interconnections within a global productive network chain. From this, discussions and deductions about the implications for both developed and developing countries are made as regards potentials for gains and losses from such types and levels of productive integration. The second and third chapters take a different spin to the economic development inquiry. They both focus on economic activity in Africa, tackling the relevant issues from a geo-intersected dimension involving historic regional tribal homelands and modern national and subnational administrative territories. The second chapter specifically focuses on attempting to adopt historical channels to investigate the connection between national institutional quality and economic development in demarcated tribal homelands at the fringes of national African borders. The third chapter on the other hand focuses on looking closer at the effects of demarcations on economic activity. It particularly probes how different kinds of demarcation warranted by two different but very relevant classes of politico-economic players have affected economic activity quite distinguishably within the resulting subnational regions in Africa.

The Return of Institutions. On the Latest Change in the Research on Social and Economic Development

The paper describes the latest change in the research on social and economic development of states. This change is characterized mainly by a strong emphasis put on the role of institutions as key instruments of reducing the development gap between countries. It is argued that in the years after 1989 institutions have disappeared from mainstream academia and major intellectual debates because of: (1) the widespread belief in global convergence of capitalism and (2) the modernization theory which prevailed in the social science in the 1990s. The article indicates that institutions were once again brought into focus as a result of (1) a wider debate about the institutional sources of growth and development sparked by Acemoglu and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail, (2) the beginning of the global economic crisis of 2008 triggered by the fall of American investment bank Lehman Brothers (3) diversified consequences of the economic crisis seen all over Europe and the USA which illustrate (4) the institutional varieties of capitalism.

Economic development and Environmental quality: The environmental Kuznets curve for water pollution

The main aim of this study was to analyze evidence of an environmental Kuznets curve for water pollution in the developing and developed countries. The study was conducted based on a panel data set of 54 countries – that were categorized into six groups of “developed countries”, “developing countries”, “developed countries with low income”, “developed countries with high income” and “coastal countries”- between the years 1995 to 2006. The results do not confirm the inverted U-shape of EKC curve for the developed countries with low income. Based on the estimated turning points and the average GDP per capita, the study revealed at which point of the EKC the countries are. Furthermore, impacts of capital-and-labor ratio as well as trade openness are drawn by estimating different models for the EKC. The magnitude role of each explanatory variable on BOD was calculated by estimating the associated elasticity.

Essays in Economic Geography and Long-Term Development

This dissertation has two main themes: first, the economic impact of tourism on cities and, secondly, the determinants of European long-run development, with a focus on the pre-Industrial era. The common thread is the attempt to develop economic geography models that incorporate spatial frictions and are liable to be given empirical content. Chapter 1, written in conjunction with G. Alfredo Minerva, provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between tourism and economic activity across Italian municipalities, and lays down the basic elements of an urban theory of tourism in an a-spatial setting. Chapter 2 extends these ideas to a quantitative urban framework to study the economic impact and the welfare consequences of tourism into the city of Venice. The model is given empirical content thanks to a large collection of data at the Census tract level for the Municipality of Venice, and then used to perform counterfactual policty analysis. In chapter 3, with Matteo Santacesaria, we consider a setting where agents are continuously distributed over a two-dimensional heterogeneous geography, and are allowed to do business at a finite set of markets. We study the equilibrium partition of the economic space into a collection of mutually-exclusive market areas, and provide condition for this equilibrium partition to exist and to be unique. Finally, chapter 4 "The rise of (urban) Europe: a Quantitative-Spatial analysis", co-authored with Matteo Cervellati and Alex Lehner, sets up a quantitative economic geography model to understand the roots of the Industrial Revolution, in an attempt to match the evolution of the European urban network, and the corresponding city-size distribution, over the period A.D. 1000-1850. It highlights the importance of agricultural trade across cities for the emergence of large manufacturing hubs.

"Ancestry, gender and language - The role of culture in economic development"

This thesis is a combination of research questions in development economics and economics of culture, with an emphasis on the role of ancestry, gender and language policies in shaping inequality of opportunities and socio-economic outcomes across different segments of a society. The first chapter shows both theoretically and empirically that heterogeneity in risk attitudes can be traced to the ethnic origins and ancestral way of living. In particular, I construct a measure of historical nomadism at the ethnicity level and link it to contemporary individual-level data on various proxies of risk attitudes. I exploit exogenous variation in biodiversity to build a novel instrument for nomadism: distance to domestication points. I find that descendants of ethnic groups that historically practiced nomadism (i) are more willing to take risks, (ii) value security less, and (iii) have riskier health behavior. The second chapter evaluates the nature of a trade-off between the advantages of female labor participation and the positive effects of female education. This work exploits a triple difference identification strategy relying on exogenous spike in cotton price and spatial variation in suitability for cotton, and split sample analyses based on the exogenous allocation of land contracts. Results show that gender differences in parental investments in patriarchal societies can be reinforced by the type of agricultural activity, while positive economic shocks may further exacerbate this bias, additionally crowding out higher possibilities to invest in female education. The third chapter brings novel evidence of the role of the language policy in building national sentiments, affecting educational and occupational choices. Here I focus on the case of Uzbekistan and estimate the effects of exposure to the Latin alphabet on informational literacy, education and career choices. I show that alphabet change affects people's informational literacy and the formation of certain educational and labour market trends.