UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Caffeinated Development and Other Essays in Latin American Economic History(2020) Uribe-Castro, Mateo; Wallis, John J; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three essays. The first one focuses on Colombia after 1850 and measures the impact of the expropriation of Church's assets on political violence. With yearly data on the number of battles per municipality, archival information on the reform, and difference-in-differences, the paper documents a reduction of political violence in places where the Church's assets were expropriated. The paper contests the traditional idea of the expropriation of Church's real estate as a source of political violence. It highlights changes in political competition after the alliance between Conservative factions and the Church was weakened. Specifically, it shows the reduction in political violence was concentrated in municipalities with high political competition and where the Conservative Party was relatively weak. The second essay studies the effect of the first wave of globalization on developing countries' structural transformation, using data from Colombia's expansion of coffee cultivation. Counties engaged in coffee cultivation in the 1920s developed a smaller manufacturing sector by 1973 than comparable counties, despite starting at a similar level in 1912. My empirical strategy exploits variation in potential coffee yields, and variations in the probability to grow coffee at different altitudes. This paper argues that coffee cultivation increased the opportunity cost of education, which reduced the supply of skilled workers, and slowed down structural transformation. Using exogenous exposure to coffee price shocks as instrument, I show that reductions in cohorts' educational attainment led to lower manufacturing activity in the long-run. The effect is driven by both a decrease in demand for education and reductions in public goods. Finally, coffee cultivation during the early 20th Century had negative long-run effects on both individual incomes and poverty rates. The third essay explores how changes in commodities’ prices can have differential effects on school enrollment according to characteristics of crop’s production functions. It compares schooling outcomes in counties that specialize in sugar (a land intensive crop with economies of scale) or coffee (mostly produced in small farms) in Puerto Rico between 1900 and 1930. Sugar price increases lead to increases in enrollment in sugar counties, while coffee price changes have a negative relationship with enrollment in coffee regions.Item Investment and Economic Performance in Europe: The Role of the Investment Climate(2020) Schwarzenberg Zilberstein, Andres; Swagel, Phillip L; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates how investment, the investment climate, and economic integration affect the economic performance of 31 European countries. A major contribution is the development of two new composite indicators—the European Investment Attractiveness Index (IAI) and the European Union (EU) Economic Integration Index (EEI). The study conceptualizes the investment climate both as a multidimensional construct and as a framework for understanding how political, economic, and social factors interact and affect the attractiveness of a country for foreign and domestic investment. In addition, it considers how trade, financial, monetary, and value chain relationships have shaped the process of economic integration at the EU level. The study then uses the indices to examine the impact of foreign and domestic investment on gross domestic product (GDP). The results from cross-country regression and dynamic panel data analyses reveal that both types of investment have a positive and significant impact on economic growth in Europe (although, notably, exports seem to have a larger impact than either foreign or domestic investment). Moreover, this study finds that the investment climate matters for economic performance. Attractive investment climates and higher levels of economic integration—particularly among the Central and Eastern European economies—are associated with higher per capita GDP levels and growth rates. Finally, the dissertation examines the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), exports, and GDP in 11 countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). While the goal is not to establish “true” causality, the results show that links between foreign investment, exports, and GDP differ significantly across these countries. While for many of them there is a reinforcing relationship between foreign investment and GDP, there does not seem to be a “causal” relationship between their exports and GDP. These findings challenge the validity of policy guidelines that emphasize—often almost exclusively—attracting foreign investment and boosting exports for development under the assumption that FDI or exports “cause” growth. Thus, policies aimed at improving the fundamentals of these economies (i.e., the investment climate) might be key in generating and sustaining economic growth.