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 The Arts of Domestic Devotion in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Venice(2006-11-21) Morse, Margaret Anne; Colantuono, Anthony; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the rich visual culture that developed around the pervasive practice of religion in the Renaissance household, with a specific focus on the city of Venice in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a subject that has received little attention in the recent art historical scholarship that has focused on the domestic arts in early modern Italy. Documentary evidence confirms, however, that over ninety percent of Venetian homes contained articles of spiritual import and function, consisting of a wide range of goods, from paintings by the period's most renowned artists to mass-produced items, such as prints, amulets, and prayer beads. These visible expressions of religion within the household context were essential for the formation and preservation of a devout familial dwelling. Sacred imagery fostered devotion and spiritual activity within the everyday lives of Venetians and ritual environments were fashioned throughout the household, from a picture hung on a wall to an altar furnished with the appropriate vessels and linens for mass. Images of prophylactic saints, like Christopher, Roch, and Sebastian, along with thaumaturgic objects, such as amulets and prayer beads, provided bodily and spiritual protection to family members in this sea-faring city that continually faced disease and a host of other misfortunes. The religious visual culture of the <em>casa</em> also shaped the sacred and ethical character of the family, which included the moral formation of children, the role of women in the home as spiritual educators, and the preservation of the household for future generations. Additionally, while located within a "private" setting, religious objects from domestic spaces were intimately tied to Venice's mercantile economy, and connected individuals and families to the city's wider community of Christian devotion. In a period in which the laity assumed greater control over their spiritual lives, the home served as one of the most salient settings for religious activity and expression, made possible by the acquisition and display of a variety of devotional goods.Item Methodology and Estimation of the Welfare Impact of Energy Reforms on Households in Azerbaijan(2006-06-07) Klytchnikova, Irina; Just, Richard; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation develops a new approach that enables policy-makers to analyze welfare gains from improvements in the quality of infrastructure services in developing countries where data are limited and supply is subject to interruptions. With the tight budgetary constraints that usually exist, it is important to be able to prioritize public sector investments on the basis of expected benefits. However, policy analysts are rarely able to measure the benefits of improving the quality of infrastructure services, even though they may yield large welfare benefits. The most frequently cited reason for failures to carry out such welfare analysis is the scarcity of data on service quality. The main contribution of this dissertation is a new model of welfare evaluation of changes in the quality of infrastructure services. This model is estimated using the existing data from household energy surveys or data from the energy sections of multi-purpose household surveys. Potential applications of this model range from ex-ante reform evaluation to ex-post monitoring of policy outcomes, which makes this approach a useful contribution to policy analysis and to the literature on welfare evaluation of quality changes in infrastructure. An application of the proposed model in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan demonstrates how this approach can be used in welfare assessment of energy sector reforms. The planned reforms in Azerbaijan include a set of measures that will result in a significant improvement in supply reliability, accompanied by a significant increase in the prices of energy services so that they reach the cost recovery level. Currently, households in rural areas receive electricity and gas for only a few hours a day because of a severe deterioration of the energy infrastructure following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The reforms that have recently been initiated will have far-reaching poverty and distributional consequences for the country as they result in an improvement in supply reliability and an increase in energy prices. The new model of intermittent supply developed in this dissertation is based on the household production function approach and draws on previous research in the energy reliability literature. Since modern energy sources (network gas and electricity) in Azerbaijan are cleaner and cheaper than the traditional fuels (fuel wood, etc.), households choose modern fuels whenever they are available. During outages, they rely on traditional fuels. Theoretical welfare measures are derived from a system of fuel demands that takes into account the intermittent availability of energy sources. The model is estimated with the data from the Azerbaijan Household Energy Survey, implemented by the World Bank in December 2003/January 2004. This survey includes an innovative contingent behavior module in which the respondents were asked about their energy consumption patterns in specified reform scenarios. Estimation results strongly indicate that households in the areas with poor supply quality have a high willingness to pay for reliability improvements. However, a relatively small group of households may incur substantial welfare losses from an electricity price increase even when it is combined with a partial reliability improvement. Unlike an earlier assessment of the same reforms in Azerbaijan, analysis in this dissertation clearly shows that targeted investments in improving service reliability may be the best way to mitigate adverse welfare consequences of electricity price increases. Hence, policymakers should focus their attention on ensuring that quality improvements are a central component of power sector reforms. Survey evidence also shows that, although households may incur sizable welfare losses from indoor air pollution when they rely on traditional fuels, they do not recognize indoor air pollution as a factor contributing to the high incidence of respiratory illness among fuel wood users. Therefore, benefits may be greater if policy interventions that improve the reliability of modern energy sources are combined with an information campaign about the adverse health effects of fuel wood use.Item Immigrant-Native Differentials in Multiple-Earner Strategies and Household Poverty(2004-08-12) Kennedy-Puthoff, Alexa Kjestine; Bianchi, Suzanne M.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2001 Supplementary Survey, this thesis addresses poverty at the household level and examines the role of secondary earners in alleviating household poverty. Descriptive analyses assess the extent of poverty among native- and foreign-born households as well as the prevalence of secondary earners in each household. Multivariate analyses follow Jensen's (1991) conceptualization of "amelioration," that is, the ability of secondary earners to raise household income above the poverty line. The analyses highlight the importance of considering household composition in studies of poverty. The central research question posed is: is the ameliorative effect of secondary earners greater in foreign-born than in native-born households? The results suggest that secondary earners are more important in alleviating poverty in low-income foreign-born households than in low-income native-born households (households that are below the poverty threshold on the basis of the primary earner's earnings alone).