Regional Economic Growth and International Capital Flows: The Case of Ukraine
This dissertation examines divergent economic paths between regions in several countries and recommends specific steps for Ukraine's regional and overall economic policy.
Pardee Initiative Publications
Pardee RAND Dissertations
Pardee RAND students have long examined issues of global human progress — notably economic development and developing countries in general — in their research and dissertations. Below is a comprehensive list of Pardee RAND dissertations focused on these topics.
2018
2017
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Labor Market Outcomes of Youth and Women in Newly Industrialized and Developing Countries
This dissertation examines the effects of exogenous shocks and labor market policies on employment, wages, and human capital development of youth and women.
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Let There Be Light: Green Industrial Policy and Energy Access in India
Explores the competitiveness of India's domestic manufacturing across the supply chain; barriers and enablers to developing a domestic industry; and the cost of industrial policy support.
2016
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Deception in Covert Nuclear Weapons Development: A Framework to Identify, Analyze, and Mitigate Future Long-Term Deception Efforts
Develops a framework to categorize observable signatures, formulate a judgement on whether long-term deception is taking place, and propose additional areas of collection that may yield evidence of in research and development.
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Exploring Sources of Innovation in the Knowledge-Based Economy: The Case of Los Angeles
Uses a mix of both quantitative and qualitative methods to help policy makers identify sources of innovation in the knowledge-based economy and to best leverage these sources for regional economic growth.
2014
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Essays on Family Welfare and Indian Development Policy
Explores family welfare and economic development in India.
2013
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Can Economic Openness Inspire Better Corporate Governance? An Exploration of the Link between Openness and Corporate Governance based on the Asian Experience
Explores the link between economic openness and companies' corporate governance practices in developing countries.
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Emerging Infrastructure Financing Mechanisms in Sub-Saharan Africa
Explores the new flows and policy implications of private sector and emerging countries investments of emerging infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Monopoly and Micro-Irrigation in Smallholder Water Markets: Using Exploratory Modeling to Consider Interactions between Market Structure and Agriculture Technology Subsidies
Explores the changes water market participants may experience should there be a move to formalize water markets and establish tradable water rights.
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The Role of Economic Development Zones in National Development Strategies: The Case of China
Studies data from economic development zones in China and their impact on economic growth, technological innovation, exports, and employment.
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Three Essays on Child Labor and Education in Developing Countries
Seeks to understand the mechanism of a household's decision on child labor and educational investment by proposing a theoretical framework, examining the empirical evidence, and providing policy evaluation and recommendations.
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Three Essays on Entrepreneurship in India and the U.S.: Policies, Social Ties and Mobility
Explores the role entrepreneurship plays in the lives of the economically disadvantaged in both India and the United States.
2012
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Food Security, Livelihoods, and Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV: Evidence for Policy in Resource-Limited Settings
Provides evidence that food assistance, livelihood interventions, and antiretroviral therapy all have a role to play in improving the economic and nutritional well-being of people living with HIV in developing countries.
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International Labor Flows: Migration Views from the Migrant, the Receiving-Country Economy, and the Sending-Country Family
This dissertation covers three topics -- three points of view -- of issues in international migration.
2011
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Developing Stability: Community-Driven Development and Reconstruction in Conflict-Affected Settings
Tests the hypothesis that development and reconstruction actors can feasibly implement sound development and reconstruction across a relatively wide spectrum of conflict, but varying levels and natures of violence can affect its delivery.
2010
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Education, Training, Innovation: Evidence from Transition Economies
Unlike most empirical cross-country analysis of the determinants of innovation, which focus mainly on developed countries, this study analyzes the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.
2008
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Life, Livelihood, and Long Term Well-being: The Effect of Mortality Risks and Land Reforms on Human Capital Investments in India
Evaluates factors including household preferences, resource constraints, and background factors such as risks and economic shocks in determining childhood investments in rural India.
2007
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Agrarian Households in Semi-Arid Tropics: Evaluating Policy Options
This paper identifies which interventions succeed most in preserving smallholders' household wealth. The livestock intervention is the most cost-effective one, and the employment guarantee scheme provides substantial asset protection.
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Getting the Policies Right: The Prioritization and Sequencing of Policies in Post-Conflict Countries
Examines how to prioritize and sequence political, social, and economic policies in post-conflict countries to sustain peace and reduce the risk of violence reoccurring.
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Improving Decision-making Systems for Decentralized Primary Education Delivery in Pakistan
Investigates the design and implementation of General Pervaiz Musharraf's avowed decentralization initiative.
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Navigating the Information Revolution: Choices for Laggard Countries
The information revolution (IR) has been uneven, resulting in a “digital divide.” Lagging countries need the means to move ahead if they are to access the benefits that IR offers and not suffer the consequences of being left out. This analysis develops a road map for policymakers in lagging countries and discusses specific tools to understand what drives the information revolution.
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Overcoming the ''Resource Curse'': Prioritizing Policy Interventions in Countries with Large Extractive Industries
Develops guidelines regarding the design and management of policies to mitigate the political and economic risks that often accompany natural resource windfalls in less-developed countries.
2006
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Governance and Foreign Aid Allocation
Each year donors transfer tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to developing countries. This dissertation examines the role of donors’ aid allocation policies in ensuring aid effectiveness. The author unravels the critical heterogeneous impacts of governance and different aid categories on development outcomes.
2002
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What is the Quality of Care in a Developing Country? Measuring Physician Practice and Health Outcomes
Although it is widely believed that less-developed countries have lower standards of medical care than the developed world, there are few quantifiable measures of quality of clinical care in less-developed countries. The objectives of this dissertati...
2000
Reports & Journal Articles
RAND researchers, working in many of RAND's research units, examine issues of global human progress from a multidisciplinary perspective. Below is a sampling of the latest RAND research on the topic.
2018
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A Preliminary Assessment of Indonesia's Maritime Security Threats and Capabilities
In recent years, Indonesia has re-conceptualised its identity as a maritime nation whose livelihood both derives from and depends upon the sea, evidenced by President Joko Widodo's Global Maritime Fulcrum and Sea Policy proposals. This study identifies the threats and priority areas for Indonesia in the maritime security domain as a first step in an overall assessment of capability requirements and gaps
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Quantifying the Influence of Agricultural Fires in Northwest India on Urban Air Pollution in Delhi, India
The modeling approach presented in this paper can be used to infer not just the co-variability of urban pollution and upwind fires, but also the percent contribution of smoke to the already intense urban surface particulate matter in Delhi.
2017
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Against the rising tide: an overview of the growing criminalization of the Mediterranean basin
This publication is part of a series of four RAND Perspectives (PE) each focusing on different challenges in the Mediterranean region. The focus of this PE is on criminal activities and their implications for regional stability and security.
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Assessing the Spatial Concentration of Indonesia's Manufacturing Sector: Evidence from Three Decades
Investigates the impact of changes in political regimes on industrial concentration.
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Cross-Cutting Challenges and their Implications for the Mediterranean region
This publication is part of a series of four RAND Perspectives (PE) each focusing on different challenges in the Mediterranean region. The focus of this PE is on cross-cutting challenges and their implications for regional stability and security.
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Estimating Productivity Spillovers Among Firm Networks in Indonesia
Clustering of firms in Indonesia only leads to substantial productivity spillovers in a few industries, suggesting the need to review cluster policies.
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Evaluating a Complex Research Capacity-Building Intervention: Reflections on an Evaluation of the African Institutions Initiative
This article shares learning from the experience of conducting a participatory, real-time, âtheory drivenâ evaluation of the African Institutions Initiative, a Wellcome Trust-funded programme that aimed to build sustainable health research capacity in Africa at institutional and network levels, across seven research consortia.
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How Jakarta's Traffic Affects Labor Market Outcomes for Women and People with Disabilities: Results from a Baseline Survey
From the research reviewed and the existing data summarized, this report develops a theory of change for how labor market outcomes for females might be influenced by improvements to public transportation.
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Identifying Productivity Spillovers Using the Structure of Production Networks
Develops a novel identification strategy that uses information on the network structure of producer relationships to provide estimates of the size of productivity spillovers.
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In with the Big, Out with the Small: Removing Small-Scale Reservations in India
Our analysis suggests that the removal of small-scale reservations increased overall employment by encouraging the growth of younger, larger establishments—those that are most likely to pay higher wages, create more investment, be more productive, and generate growth in employment.
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Regional foreign policy dynamics and their implications for the Mediterranean Region
This publication is part of a series of four RAND Perspectives (PE) each focusing on different challenges in the Mediterranean region. The focus of this PE is on regional foreign policy dynamics and their implications for stability and security
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Troubled waters: a snapshot of security challenges in the Mediterranean region
This publication is part of a series of four RAND Perspectives (PE) each focusing on different challenges in the Mediterranean region. The focus of this PE is on defence and security issues and their implications for regional stability.
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When Regional Policies Fail: An Evaluation of Indonesia's Integrated Economic Development Zones
Studies the effects of Indonesia's Integrated Economic Development Zone program which provides substantial tax-breaks for firms that locate in certain districts in the Outer Islands of Indonesia.
2016
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Climate Change, Migration, and Adaptation in the MENA Region
Climate change is a major source of concern in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This chapter is based in large part on new data collected in 2011 in Algeria, the Arab Republic of Egypt, Morocco, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the Republic of Yemen.
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Community-Facility Survey Questionnaire for the Indonesia Family Life Survey, Wave 5
Includes the community-facility survey questionnaire used in the Malaysian Indonesia Family Life Survey, wave 5 (IFLS5).
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The Fifth Wave of the Indonesia Family Life Survey: Overview and Field Report: Volume 1
Describes the design and implementation and provides a preview of some key results of the Indonesia Family Life Survey, with an emphasis on wave 5
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Household Shocks and Education Investments in Madagascar
This paper investigates the impact of exogenous shocks to household income, assets and labour supply on children's school attendance in Madagascar.
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Household Survey Questionnaire for the Indonesia Family Life Survey, Wave 5
Includes the household survey questionnaire used in the Malaysian Indonesia Family Life Survey, wave 5 (IFLS5).
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Prevalence and Patterns of Health Risk Behaviors of Palestinian Youth: Findings from a Representative Survey
Investigates the prevalence and patterns of risk behaviors as well as of mental health, perceptions of the risks of such behaviors, and the factors increasing vulnerability to as well as protection from engagement in them.
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Rethinking Indonesia's Informal Sector
This paper reviews competing theories about the causes of informality in developing countries and uses new data to determine which theory best explains the persistence and scale of Indonesia's informal sector.
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Review of Six DFID-funded Growth Research Programmes: Main report
To foster economic research on growth in poor and developing countries the Department for International Development in the UK has provided funding to several organisations focused on economic growth research. Of interest for this study were six individual programmes. The aim of this review was to compare the six programmes over time, against each other, and against relevant benchmarks to capture their performance to date.
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User's Guide for the Indonesia Family Life Survey, Wave 5: Volume 2
Describes the design and implementation and provides a preview of some key results of the Indonesia Family Life Survey, with an emphasis on wave 5 (IFLS5).
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When do Firms Go Green? Comparing Price Incentives with Command and Control Regulations in India
Compares the impacts of India's command-and-control environmental regulations with the impact of changes in coal prices on establishment-level pollution abatement, coal consumption, and productivity growth.
2015
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Can Institutional Deliveries Reduce Newborn Mortality? Evidence from Rwanda
Explores if policies promoting institutional deliveries in developing countries can actually reduce newborn deaths.
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Does a Ban on Informal Health Providers Save Lives? Evidence from Malawi
Studies the effect of a ban on informal (traditional) birth attendants imposed by the Malawi government.