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Cash persists at a large scale in Germany despite having the necessary conditions to displace cash as has been observed in other high-income countries. This thesis examines why cash persists at the levels it has by applying network effects theory to the German payment market through a qualitative single case study. Two hypotheses are derived from the theory and are then tested through secondary da
This thesis investigated whether including binding financial commitments in an integrated blue economy policy programme yields measurably different outcomes compared to an otherwise similar unfinanced framework. The Seychelles and the Bahamas adopted comparable whole-of-government frameworks within three years of each other, differing most clearly in financing architecture: Seychelles embedded bin
Despite relatively high levels of basic water service coverage and constitutional recognition of water as a human right, Ecuador continues to face major challenges in safely managed water, wastewater treatment, and gastrointestinal disease burden. This thesis examines whether improvements in municipal water governance are associated with reductions in gastrointestinal hospitalization rates across
This paper examines whether Greenland’s annual block grant from Denmark has generated Dutch Disease effects. The foundational framework of Corden & Neary (1982) is applied to the context of aid-induces and public-sector driven transfer dependency. Using a comparative most-similar-systems design, including Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Denmark, the analysis combines a descriptive diagnostic
This thesis empirically investigates the relationship between financialization and real capital accumulation in Swedish non-financial corporations (NFCs) from 2000 to 2024. Utilizing a Two-Way Fixed Effects regression model on firm-level panel data from the Serrano database, the study isolates the impacts of financial engagement on real investments across different firm sizes. The findings reveal
This thesis explores the role of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that include environmental provisions addressing non-tariff barriers and regulatory heterogeneity in shaping bilateral trade patterns in environmental goods. By combining trade data for 199 countries in 2002--2020 with an OECD classification of environmental goods and detailed data on PTA content, the empirical analysis estimate
This paper examines the relationship between financial inclusion and financial stability using panel data analysis with fixed effects estimations alongside an instrumental variable approach to reveal causal links. The study focuses on 18 Sub-Saharan African countries whose financial inclusivity has in some form been affected and driven by mobile money technology, and is captured from the years 200
This thesis examines whether communist collectivization intensity in 1969 is associated with agricultural land inequality in Romania today. Using county-level data for all 41 Romanian județe, I document a positive association between the share of land in collective and state farms in 1969 and the share of utilized agricultural area in farms of 50 hectares or more in 2020. The association predates
ASEAN implemented AANZFTA, a new free trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand, in 2010. Previous studies find mixed and mostly insignificant results on trade increases following AANZFTA. Due to the increased interest in the effects of FTAs on outcomes besides gross trade, this paper analyses value added trade, employment embodied in trade and foreign direct investment using a gravity model.
This thesis examines whether Guarnieri and Rainer's (2021) finding that British colonial rule increased intimate partner violence through male backlash in Cameroon generalises to other Anglo-French colonial borders. Using a regression discontinuity design exploiting the arbitrary placement of the Ghana-Togo border and data from four Demographic and Health Survey rounds, the thesis estimates th
This thesis examines whether U.S. Official Development Assistance (ODA) reinforces recipient countries’ economic dependence on the United States. It constructs a novel Economic Dependence Index (EDI) combining bilateral trade and financial dependence on the United States and applies fixed-effects panel regressions on 75 developing countries over 2009-2024. The results show that higher U.S. aid sha
This thesis examines how cross-border electricity interconnectors affect price formation and market integration, using the Norwegian electricity market as a case study. The focus is on NordLink and North Sea Link, which in 2020 and 2021 respectively, connected Southern Norway’s NO2 bidding zone more directly to Germany/Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. The central question is whether these interc
This study investigates whether cultural risk preferences moderate the relationship between macroeconomic shocks — namely inflation, unemployment, and GDP contraction — and fertility across 76 developed and developing countries over the period 2000–2023. Drawing on the Becker–Tomes quantity–quality framework extended with a precautionary saving channel, I argue that more risk-averse societies trea
This study examines the extent to which Canada diversified its goods trade away from the United States between 1990 and 2023. Drawing on partner-share and HS6 product-variety data from the World Integrated Trade Solution database, it employs descriptive analysis, Herfindahl–Hirschman Index concentration measures, OLS trend regression, and sub-period analysis. On the import side, diversification wa
While earlier policy framed self-employment as a pathway to integration, Sweden’s 2026 citizenship reform replaces this approach with measurable benchmarks: language proficiency (språkkrav), civic knowledge (samhällskunskap), and self-sufficiency (försörjningskrav). This thesis uses semi-structured interviews to examine how five cases of non-EU immigrant entrepreneurs in Malmö describe their exper
This thesis examines to what extent income inequality has been associated with political polarisation in Sweden during the 1980-2020. The study examines both national and municipal level data to examine the relationship between the two concepts. The national data cover 1980-2020 while the municipal data cover 2011-2020. It employs quantitative methods such as multiple Ordinary Least Squares regres
BRICS has gained increasing attention in discussions about de-dollarization and the future of the international monetary system. This thesis examines how BRICS-related de-dollarization efforts have developed between 2009 and 2024, and how their limited effect on the U.S. dollar’s international position can be understood. Using a quantitative research design, the study combines coding of official B
This study examines the effects of the 2006 Dutch health insurance reform on healthcare expenditure, prices, the volume of care consumed, and quality. Using a difference-in-differences design with Belgium as the control country over the period 2000 to 2024, the study measures the reform's impact on four outcomes: health spending per capita, a healthcare price index, a healthcare quantity index
This thesis examines the extent to which armed conflict contributed to the deterioration of vegetation and productive land-use conditions across Syrian governorates between 2001 and 2025, and how this relationship varied with rainfall and conflict actor composition. Using a governorate-year panel combining MODIS vegetation indices (EVI and NDVI), CHIRPS rainfall data, and UCDP georeferenced confli
In post-genocide Rwanda, women’s claims to land, inheritance and household resources became central to processes of family and institutional reconstruction. Law No. 22/99, adopted in 1999, strengthened women’s formal inheritance and property rights in a context where female-headed households had become more visible and where land remained a key source of household welfare. Against this background,
