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- International Economics M.A. (87) (remove)
The annual demand for Christmas trees in Germany and Denmark is premised upon the seeds of Nordmann firs, which come exclusively from the Racha region in the Great Caucasus ridge of Georgia. It thus forms what is variously called a commodity chain, value chain or production network (as a phenomenon) and that can be accounted for with
different concepts including Global Commodity Chains, Global Value Chains and Global Production Networks. The analysis in the thesis is grounded in the Global production Network (GPN) approach, which in the literature also is associated with possibilities of “strategic coupling” and asks for an analysis of “value capture trajectories”. But can the promise of such as “value capture trajectory” be observed in the case of the Nordmann firGPN for the Racha region, from which the seeds of Christmas trees originate? Master thesis examines the prospects for regional development.
Bangladesh has been experiencing tremendous GDP growth for a long time and is now one of the fastest-developing economies in the world. Recent CDP report on eligibility and suitability for graduation to a middle-income country from a least developed country indicates that she is on the right track to achieving development status. In her development, all her development partners have contributed on a large scale in different aspects. Currently, China is the largest trade and reliable strategic partner for Bangladesh. It has a substantial attribution on the growth and development perspectives, but the trade deficit, concentration of FDI, and bitter experiences on debt in many countries have created suspicions. Simultaneously, the Chinese greater appearance in Bangladesh has raised the contention among other regional and global partners. They have active participation in several development endeavors to restrain Bangladesh from absolute Chinese influence. As an alternative development partner, China has enhanced better bargaining power for Bangladesh and introduced a greater dilemma to uphold her neutral foreign policy. Nevertheless, Bangladesh still has succeeded in diversifying her development partners on whom she depends on foreign direct investment, debt, trade, technology, and financial support. In general, her development approach is dependent on all rather than exclusive to one, and she needs to be rigid and transparent about her development objectives and policies.
Addressing Systemic Risk in Europe during Covid-19: policies, limitations, and challenges ahead
(2021)
This work examines the impacts which the Covid-19 pandemic brought to the stability of the European financial sector. Lockdowns, businesses unable to operate and uncertainty about how the pandemic would evolve fueled a sharp recession. From the lessons learned in the global financial crises and the Eurozone debt crises, there’s an increasing role of macroprudential policies, especially the regiments of the Basel III framework and the monetary policy toolkit. Alongside macroprudential regulation, the European Central Bank provided substantial monetary policy easing, for instance the release of capital buffers and other capital requirements, expanding the TLTRO III and Pandemic Emergency Program which facilitated monetary policy transmission. Authorities also deployed strong fiscal policies which encompassed from tax holidays to direct transfers to households and firms. The combination of fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policy was unprecedented and helped the economy during the shutdown moments. As a result, indicators of systemic risks in the banking sector during the pandemic remained relatively stable. Nevertheless, some challenges might emerge in the medium-term when policies are phased-out, namely the increasing size of non-performing loans and the sovereign doom-loop. Thus, in the final part of this text a stress test is conducted to evaluate the possible future impacts of the pandemic in the banking sector.
This thesis raises the question and will identify the macroeconomic implications associated with the erosion of the collective bargaining system and how these can potentially be stabilised. It is analysed whether an erosion of the collective agreement system is accompanied by a reduced coordination of wage setting and whether this has a destabilising effect on the entire national economy and beyond. This applies to the contribution of wages to price stability as well as the distribution of income and its consequences. In addition to the instruments and possibilities already under discussion to strengthen the collective bargaining system, potentials for stabilisation can also be derived with a view to France and the Netherlands.
Transnational Climate Change Governance Challenges and Prospects: The Case of Private Governance
(2021)
There are multiple environmental and social risks associated with climate change, which increases the severity of climate change and necessitates immediate actions to be taken. Responding to the challenge of climate change has traditionally been seen as the primary responsibility of nation-states. However, there is a surge of transnational actors consisting of non-state, sub-state actors, and private-public partnerships that claim governance responsibilities in climate change in recent years. The purpose of this thesis to identify circumstances and motivations that induced transnational climate governance practices. This research mainly focuses on private climate governance activities that are managed and regulated by the private sector and non-governmental organizations in the absence of a public authority. This thesis also aims to illuminate potentials and limitations of private climate governance mechanisms to scale up global climate action. Critical evaluation of the literature revealed that as United Nations-sponsored international climate change governance, architecture evolved from a top-down regulatory framework towards a flexible, bottom-up approach, from the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement. This process rendered intergovernmental structures and states to delegate and orchestrate greater authority to non- state actors to take climate action. In addition to this, governance deficits and governance gaps associated with the United Nations-regulated international climate governance lead non- state actors to entrepreneurially engage in governance practices due to their dissatisfaction with the intergovernmental framework. Two case studies are conducted to analyze private governance mechanisms in the form of voluntary carbon markets and carbon disclosure, which exhibit this entrepreneurial action in the absence of formal public authority. Results revealed that private climate governance practices incentivize climate action in the short-run, yet they might not accrue actual environmental progress in the long-run. In that sense, it remains puzzling whether the private governance practices can expand the scale and reach of global responses to climate change.
The Causes of Original Sin - an Empirical Investigation of Emerging Market and Developing Countries
(2021)
Necessity or Habit? A post-Keynesian Analysis of Rising Household Debt: The Case of Housing Market
(2021)
Unpaid care policies in the time of right-wing populism: a comparative analysis of Poland and Turkey
(2021)
In recent years, increasing political repressions on women that result with social unrests and street protests in Poland and Turkey arouse interest around the ties between unpaid care workers and the current governments. Rising conservative, right-wing and populist discourses and their effects relating to care work made a further exploration in this field inevitable. Thus, this thesis examines the impacts of current policies on unpaid care workers in social and economic terms. The hypothesis of this study suggests that unpaid care workers in Poland and Turkey are exploited to a greater extent by familialist policies during the right-wing and populist governments. The discourses and policies of the governments are analyzed in the light of previous literature on care work. The paper also applies an assessment developed by Leitner (2003) in order to classify Poland and Turkey together with six European countries according to their ways of providing childcare and elderly care services. The study clearly shows that unpaid care workers have been socially downgraded and not remunerated mainly through familialist policies either explicitly or implicitly under the hegemony of right-wing populist parties in Poland and Turkey.
Digitalization as an attribute of many western countries developed in the 19th century. As a driver of technological change, digitalization has encouraged the developments and production of derived technologies such as internets, computer, smart phone etc. Software applications such as zoom, blue-button etc. are proves that distance is no longer a barrier for communication. Overall, digitalization and technological change are a fundamental foundation for today’s economic growth. There has been rapid increase in new businesses due to creativity and innovation. While this is evident, the present increase in low wage, non-standard work, working poverty and skill shortages are a concern on how digitalization impact employment pattern and social life. The objective of this paper is to provide evidence on the rise of precarious employment and to express the extent at which digitalization impact skill shortages in the German labour market. Structural labour market problems such as skill shortages (continuous demand for high skill individuals) and rise in precarious employment are a major concern that needs to be tackled in the German labour market.
Fintech is an innovative tool that applies technology to improve financial services.
Mobile Baking is the most common product of Fintech and has vast prospects to
improve access to financial resources for the previously unbanked populations. The role
of Fintech in providing inclusion is especially vital in developing countries- where the
proportion of the financially excluded remains high. This study focuses on the role of
M-Banking in serving mentioned populations, and identifies the factors influencing
adoption and usage of Fintech services. The last part also introduces the case of
Azerbaijan-a former USSR country, and concludes by drawing the potential paths of its
Fintech-inclusion development.
The role of a Universal Basic Income in addressing the socio-ecological crisis – a critical analysis
(2021)
Human induced environmental degradation and the continuous rise in inequality are two of the greatest and most pressing challenges currently facing society (UN, 2020). Climate mitigation, ecological sustainability, combating poverty and social inequality are considered prevailing imperatives to contemporary global policy. On the premise that the challenges of ecological sustainability and social inequality call for a collective response, many scholars claim that it requires alternative proposals designed to initiate a multi-disciplinary socio-ecological transition (SET) that can address both issues in an integrated way (Hall et al., 2019). This paper considers the proposal of a Universal Basic Income (UBI)1 that has long been discussed as redistributive economic policy and at present increasingly receives attention regarding strategies to improve ecological sustainability. Although Basic Income (BI) proposals have been put forward by Green and post-growth movements such as degrowth, the ecological case receives less emphasis as evidenced by the fact that hitherto research on the interface of UBI and the environment has been fairly limited (MacNeill & Vibert, 2019). The present paper will enlarge upon the question of how adequate the concept of a BI policy might be in addressing the socio-ecological crisis by critically discussing arguments that indicate its positive environmental impact. By doing so, the paper contributes to the current academic debate on BI that has been revitalized in recent years.
The 2007/08 Global Financial Crisis is commonly attributed to the increased practice of securitization by nonbank financial intermediaries. Part of the New-Keynesian and Money View literature has focused on the imbalances of supply and demand for safe liquid assets as a demand-side explanation for the surge of such institutions. The demand of Institutional Cash Pools has attracted particular interest. This master thesis studies to which extent fiscal deficits have an effect on the portfolio rebalancing of Institutional Cash Pools in the institutional framework implemented after the crisis in the United States, considering the appropriate changes in regulation, and policy framework for monetary and fiscal policy. The theoretical background is based on the Institutionalist Post-Keynesian economics, highlighting the hierarchy of promises to pay and the liquidity-preference theory of interest. Moreover, the effects in the size of institutional investors derived from a stock-flow consistent perspective are considered. For this purpose, I propose a stock-flow consistent model where the size and portfolio of institutional cash pools is endogenous and fiscal policy is determined by exogenous parameters. The results show that fiscal expansion unambiguously increases the size of Institutional Cash Pools, whilst the composition is ambiguously affected depending on the way fiscal expansion occurs and other distribution parameters.
The debate over a European Green Deal has contributed to emphasize the need to reduce environmental cost and the urgency of decarbonizing the road transport sector. Therefore, the thesis operationalizes the materialist state theory to distinguish between competing hegemony projects in the struggle over the EU’s mobility transition, in order to identify the driving forces in the European road transport sector. By empirically analyzing the power relations behind the Energy Taxation Directive and the CO2 emissions for passenger cars, the results indicate two dominant hegemony projects that are contesting the implementation of the green transition: 'the authoritarian neoliberal project' and 'the green capitalist project'. None of these projects will be enough to decarbonize the transport sector without shifting emissions and environmental costs elsewhere, nor will either project move away from a car-dependent system.
This paper investigates whether macroeconomic policy regimes contributed to the emergence and shifts in macroeconomic demand and growth regimes in the core Euro Area before and after the Eurozone crisis. Against the background of Post-Keynesian/ Kaleckian theory, it is argued that financialisation has led to higher income inequality, lower investment in capital stock, an increase in the potential for debt- and wealth-based consumption as well as high current account imbalances. These four characteristics entailed the emergence of unstable and extreme macroeconomic demand and growth regimes, in particular the export-led mercantilist and the debt-led private demand boom type, in financialised economies. In a qualitative analysis based on quantitative data, it is assessed by which regime type eleven core Eurozone economies were characterized in the periods 2001-2009 and 2010-2019. In a second step, the main transmission channels of economic policies, namely of fiscal, monetary and wage policies, as well as open economy conditions on aggregate demand are examined, and placed in the European policy context. Building upon findings of the first empirical part, the macroeconomic policy mix of four prototype and major Eurozone economies is analysed for the period before and after the crisis. It is found that macroeconomic policy regimes contributed to the emergence and shifts in macroeconomic demand and growth regimes in core Eurozone economies during the considered period.
This thesis looks at the potential role of the IG Metall, the biggest German trade union, in the Green Transition of the German automobile sector. The IG Metall’s power and influence in the political, social and economic sphere will be analysed based on the Power Resource Approach by Dörre and Schmalz (2014). The analysis will show that there are two tendencies within the union: a conservative and a progressive approach, differentiated by their goals. Consequently, both wings have different ways to approach the transition and are each relying and focusing on certain power resources. The result is a tightrope walk of the IG Metall, balancing both tendencies within one union in an environment that is as torn as the union itself.
With over one million people arriving in Germany to seek asylum since 2013, entering the labour market remains a key aspect for a successful integration process. In their attempt to attain employment, the recently arrived refugees face multiple challenges. One aspect that offers great potential to support them in finding suitable jobs and enhance their employability are Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs). This includes measures such as job-counselling, vocational training and direct placement in public or subsidised employment.
This research explores the extent to which ALMPs meet the needs and aspirations of recently arrived refugees with regard to entering the labour market. By means of conducting interviews with members of the target group, this research aims to gain insights into the accessibility, relevance and overall suitability of ALMPs from the perspective of the study participants themselves.
The study shows that the participants ALMPs as relevant in terms of responding to their employment needs and aspirations. However, they perceive the accessible range of activation measures to be limited to a large degree. Certain activation measures were perceived as highly irrelevant, while some were even perceived to be obstructive to their pursuit of employment. Most notably, the participants felt supported by the employees of Public Employment Services (PES) when it comes to receiving short term training. However, when it comes to long-term training, they felt discouraged or even obstructed. This illustrated a perceived conflict between the participants' long-term aspirations, which included a focus on long-term development, and the PES’s emphasis on short-term arrangements and a quick path into employment.
This paper investigates third-party logistics from a European perspective based on outsourcing issues. The relationship between the consignors and consignees reached to its new era witnessing implication of a new intermediary, which is called third parties. A typical 3PL company is explained as a facilitator which aims to benefit partners financially and organizationally. In this research the role of outsourcing in 3PL companies, the main factors for stimulating the phenomena will be assessed. Finally, the article reviews company examples and general conditions in this market.
This study assesses how horizontal inequalities between Israeli settlers and Palestinians living in the West Bank cause grievances among Palestinians transforming to violence towards the Israeli citizens. A scoring model tailored to Hebron's case is introduced to evaluate the line of argumentation by estimating the level of violence in the designated area. This method is based on expert interviews containing pre-surveys and a theoretical review. In a second step, the estimated level of violence is tested through data of Palestinian attacks against Israelis based on the Global Terrorism Database (1976-2018). A historical review of the Israeli settlement policy since 1967 substantiates the research. The results suggest that the applied mechanism of horizontal inequalities increases Palestinian grievances and encourages violence in Hebron. Thus, the thesis strengthens theoretical research of horizontal inequalities, grievances, and violence and offers a new direction in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
This master thesis examines global value chains and more specifically the creation and distribution of value in the case of baby-care product business. As the world economy and linkages between participants of international trade are changing and becoming more complicated, the research project addressing at bringing an applicable prototype and model of a global value chain and outlining the distribution of value-added in the chain from both organizational and geographical perspective. In addition, the study includes an analysis of the value chain structure of the case company Kindoh in terms of GVC governance and tries to find out the main strategy of Kindoh for making a profit.
This research analyses whether the amended European Union (EU) Securitisation Regulation that aims to revitalise the securitisation markets is effectively reducing concerns of financial stability. Securitisation activities are a substantial part of the universe of non-bank financial intermediation, elsewhere referred to as the ‘shadow’ banking universe. Securitisations were a channel of contagion during the global financial crisis (GFC). When highly rated assets that had been packaged in mortgage-backed securities began to default, investors tried to quickly dispose of these instruments. The distrust did not discriminate, instead spreading to other securitisation instruments. The consequence was that the market for securitisation froze. This was problematic, as asset-backed securities (ABSs) are used as collateral in interbank lending. Since the GFC, securitisation markets have only recovered slowly. ABS products should stimulate access to market-based finance for the non-financial sector, primarily for small- and medium-seized enterprises, as an alternative to bank-centred finance. This assessment of whether problems of financial stability of securitisations can be ruled out takes a twofold approach. First, it is found that the regulation takes a market
rational approach and attempts to rule out false incentives and moral hazard problems with’skin-in-the-game’ rules, due diligence requirements and stringent supervision. Nevertheless, the second approach of the assessment looks beyond market failure and finds that there are problems which cannot be ruled out. Securitisation comes with bank-like risks, such as maturity and liquidity transformation, potentially divergent expectations between debtors and lenders, asset price bubbles and excessive leverage, which continue to be a potential
source of systemic risk.
Fiscal policy is back in the academic and policy discussion as a tool to stabilize business cycle fluctuations and to stimulate output, which in turn has resulted into a new generation of fiscal multiplier estimates. Recent research shows that the macroeconomic effects of
fiscal policy are country-specific and potentially dependent on the state of the business cycle. Building upon the empirical literature on time-varying fiscal policy, I estimate the magnitude of public investment effects on output for 7 Eurozone countries, using a Bayesian time-varying parameters vector autoregression (TVP-VAR). The results show that public investment shocks have a positive effect on output growth in all countries; while the effect remained constant over time in Finland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, it exhibits time-variation in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The empirical evidence also suggests that public investment effects might not necessarily depend on the state of the business cycle, as they could also remain stable over time or vary due to other macroeconomic factors.
The Role of Fintech in Promoting Financial Inclusion in Developing Countries: THE CASE OF MEXICO
(2019)
Financial inclusion is globally on the rise since 2011; however, still, nearly 1.7 billion adults worldwide do not have a bank account at a formal institution (Demirguc- Kunt et al, 2018). Supply, demand and societal factors may lead to barriers to financial inclusion, and accelerate voluntarily and involuntarily exclusions in the developing countries (World Bank, 2008; Beck and De La Torre, 2006; Beck el at, 2008). With the mobile phone technology and advancements in the innovations, the number of participants has increased with the entrance of new challenger i.e. Fintech startups, in the financial services market. The literature reveals that Fintech has a great
potential to broaden access to financial services through lowering costs, reducing information asymmetries, enabling more transparency, increasing competitiveness, etc. This thesis analyzes the role of Fintech in promoting financial inclusion with the case of Mexico, approaching the lack of financial inclusion issue from the perspective of the household. To approach this issue, one of the objectives of this thesis is to investigate the barriers refraining households from accessing and using financial services.
In Mexico, more than half of the adult population do not have a bank account at a formal institution including mobile money account (Demirguc-Kunt et al, 2018). The G20’s financial inclusion indicators revealed that account ownership as well as saving and borrowing at financial institutions has decreased since 2014. The main barriers are the difficulties to use financial services, financial illiteracy and insufficient financial infrastructure leads to barriers to
financial inclusion in Mexico. Ideally, Fintech has a great potential to reduce the barriers to financial inclusion and promote access to and use of financial services for the people who are excluded by traditional financial institutions due to prohibitive prices, lack of documentation, etc. However, Fintech alone is not sufficient to transmit its full potential benefits. Even though Fintech ecosystem is growing rapidly in Mexico, and seen as a potential solution for lack of financial inclusion issue in Mexico, this study reveals that Fintech ecosystem couldn’t achieve its potential in Mexico so far.
This Master’s thesis examines the impact of heterogeneity on the assessment of systemic risk in the context of the German banking sector. Precisely, it is questioned whether currently employed, official systemic risk indicators are able to account for the German banking sector’s heterogeneity and to signal systemic risk reliably regardless of different bank types’ individual characteristics. For the assessment, a two-step procedure is employed. First, currently employed, official risk indicators are applied to bank-type-specific data for six different bank types from 1990 until 2018 and benchmarked against crises that occurred during the assessment period. Second, the implications of sectoral characteristics on systemic risk are assessed. The findings suggest that indicators are indeed able to account for the German banking sector’s heterogeneity, issuing different signals for various bank types. Moreover, the indicators allow for the identification of individual bank types’ behavior and their role in the accumulation of systemic risk. Yet, they are only partially able to signal crises correctly and behave more like thermometers than barometers of risk. Lastly, structural features of the German banking sector amplify the risk of individual institutions and thus their contribution to systemic risk at large.
This thesis investigates the impacts of large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs), which are an unconventional monetary policy (UMP) used by the Fed in the response to the 2008 global financial crisis and recession, on gender and racial wealth inequality in the US. After demonstrating that monetary policies have gendered and racial impacts and that none of these studies have yet considered UMPs, the thesis will then explain theoretically what the transmission channels of LSAPs to the wealth distribution are. Empirical studies show that LSAPs created a wealth effect, through increasing the price of some asset owned by households, primarily stocks prices, and to a lesser
extent house prices. Current literature on the impact of LSAPs in the US is still in dissension over whether it increased net wealth inequality or not. However, there is ample evidence from the current gender and racial economic literature that the wealth distribution in the US is significantly unequal, and a hole in the literature on the impact of LSAPs on the highly gendered and racial US wealth distribution. The thesis then begins to fill in some of these gaps in the literature by investigating what has happened to the financial and non-financial wealth of households disaggregated by gender and race in the period of the LSAPs, and whether the LSAPs did contribute to or reinforce these wealth inequalities. Due to limitations in the data collection the thesis is not able to conclude that there was a net negative gender wealth inequality effect. Nevertheless, there is strong empirical evidence that the LSAPs did increase racial wealth
inequality, due to white households disproportionately owning stocks and having higher rates on homeownership.