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This research examines the evolution of environmental mainstreaming in the context of Ethiopia's green transition, covering the period from 1993 to 2024, using a configurational approach to analyze the structural integration of environmental considerations in policy corpus over time. Despite Ethiopia being a successful case of green industrialization in Africa, our analysis suggests that envir
This thesis investigates how technology cycle time (TCT) and legacy knowledge accumulation (LKA) jointly shape EV innovation performance and regional catch-up dynamics across automotive clusters in China and Europe. Using PCT patent data (2000–2024) and HDBSCAN clustering to identify 22 Chinese and 57 European innovation clusters, the study employs PPML-HDFE and OLS panel estimators. The results s
This thesis investigates the institutional continuity between the Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic slave trades in Senegambia during the period 1300-1600. Employing process tracing as its primary methodology, it argues that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade did not emerge independently but was fundamentally shaped by pre-existing African institutional structures that had sustained centuries of Tr
Technological catch-up has long been regarded as one of the central challenges of economic development, yet sustained catch-up has historically been limited to only a small number of cases. This study examines how contrasting development patterns in two resource-rich economies, Indonesia and Nigeria, shaped their structural and social conditions for technological catch-up between 1970 and 2020. Dr
This study employs a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to answer the question of how the 1979 revolution changed the mechanism by which oil revenues translate to GDP growth. This study takes a historical approach to discuss the major impacts of institutional change and how these changes aggregate over the pre-and or post-revolution period may have led to results seen in the data.
Abstract: The rise of AI-enabled defense contractors in the military industry, their pivotal role in times of geopolitical risk escalation, and whether and how they financially benefit from it are recent, largely unexplored phenomena in the political-economic literature. Given the broader implications these developments have for the state's structural dependency on non-traditional commercial a
One of the main activities of the European Union (EU) is fostering unity and integration through its Cohesion Policy and emphasis on regional development. The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) represents a substantial share of the EU Structural Funds, which seek to decrease economic disparities between regions in the member states. This thesis presents the first annual estimates of ERDF ex
The thesis examines how the European Union’s approach to external energy dependence developed during the beginning of the 21st century, with particular focus on the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 as a potential critical juncture. Using a historical institutionalist framework, the study analyzes three key EU strategy documents through qualitative document analysis and process tracing. The fin
Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act authorizes the President of the United States to impose tariffs on certain goods if they are considered to impose threats to national security. In March 2018, Section 232 was enacted for the first time in over 30 years when President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on certain aluminum products. The initial tariffs implemented in 2018 escalated into a near-univer
This exploratory work investigates the relationship between state capacity and economic resilience across the ASEAN–4 cases: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. The exploration applies the State Capacity as Power (SCP) framework to distinguish between state capacity and interrelated concepts. Congruently, fiscal revenues, bureaucratic human capital, and centralised information are d
This thesis studies the relationship between the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment programmes and poverty and inequality. It contributes to the broader debate on the social costs of the IMF’s interventions in West Asia and North Africa by using a sample of four countries, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia from 1986 to 2015. The thesis follows the prevailing belief that the IMF’s
This study explores the persistence of guilds in early 20th century China, contrasting their fate with European guilds. While most European guilds were abolished after the French Revolution, Chinese guilds were reorganized as industrial associations (tongye gonghui) under government oversight. Using constitutions from 29 Shanghai associations and thematic analysis, this research examines their org
This thesis examines Catalan railway companies between 1856 and 1866 as spaces of economic and social transformation. Using Social Network Analysis, it studies the relationships between shareholders, company directors and major investors in order to analyze to what extent railway companies reflected and shaped the transformation of Catalan capitalism. The results show that railway investment was n
High levels of alcohol consumption in the UK impose substantial economic and social costs. To reduce alcohol‑related harm, the Welsh Government introduced Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) on 2 March 2020. This paper evaluates the impact of MUP on alcohol consumption in Wales using a difference‑in‑differences (DID) design applied to individual‑level AUDIT‑C data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (
This thesis builds a new dataset on the composition and evolution of credit portfolios for Latin America’s six largest economies between 2000-2025. The new dataset was built by manually compiling credit information from local regulators and central banks. Its objective is to improve empirical analysis by (i) allowing to study the interaction between different credit segments and economic outcomes,
This thesis examines fiscal dependence under conditions of partial sovereignty through a comparative political economy analysis of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, two autonomous territories within the Danish Realm. Drawing on theories of fiscal federalism, soft budget constraints, and the political economy of autonomy, it explores whether the relationship between fiscal dependence and selected ec
Can a country created from three different territories achieve economic integration within two decades? The results of this paper, examining the domestic market integration in interwar Poland, indicate that, with some caveats, the feat is possible. Using a new dataset with unprecedented detail, price dispersion dynamics, the importance of old borders, and the impact of railway expansion on price g
Previous studies of the economic long-term effects of the US bombing of Cambodia (1965--1973) find divergent results, ranging from persistent poverty traps to poverty alleviation and improved economic development. To reconcile these, I propose and test a novel two-stage mechanism: first, unexploded ordnance (UXO) constrains households' effectively cultivable land, depressing the marginal produ
