DELOS/DEV - Presentations

25 ottobre 2016
25 October 2016
Contatti: 
Doctoral School of Social Sciences
via Verdi 26, 38122 - Trento
Tel. 
+39 0461 283756 - 2290
Fax 
+39 0461 282335

Skype: school.socialsciences

9 AM - Room 10, Department of Sociology and Social Research (UNITN) and D15/005 (UNIFI)

Bortolotti Luca: THE UNBALANCED DEVELOPMENT OF CHINA: THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME AND WELLBEING IN CHINA
Abstract
Purpose - This thesis aims to investigate the unbalances that emerged in the Chinese economy along with the implementation of reforms, focusing on the most recent trends (i.e. post 2008 crisis). A number of critical issues (economic, social and environmental) arose along the with GDP growth, overshadowed by its spectacular rise. These unbalances are a major concern for the “harmonious society” project; beside this, inequality also undermines a sustainable economic growth. Structure - The thesis is structured into three chapters. Each chapter focuses on a different outcome of Chinese reforms. The first chapter, on multidimensional inequality (in income, health and education), investigates the causes of such inequalities within Chinese provinces. The second chapter, on economic diversification and specialization of Chinese provinces, describes the differences in the economic structure and performances of different provinces according to New Economic Geography criteria. The third chapter, on inequality between provinces, investigates whether economic growth and human development are converging between the provinces and if the “Flying Geese Within Borders” model fits with the recent development of China.
Originality – Despite a growing number of studies is investigating the unbalances between Chinese provinces, most of them adopted a quantitative perspective limited to GDP growth analysis. Consistently with the Chinese “New Left” school of thought, the thesis wants to focus on income achievements as well as on other dimensions of wellbeing.
Methodology - The investigation of these aspects relies on various data sources –on top of which there are the provincial annual data collected by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics- analyzed with different quantitative econometric methods.
Keywords: China; inequality; division of labor; convergence; human development

Cirillo Cristina: Social Protection and Risk Coping Strategies in Developing Countries
Abstract
Social protection programmes are becoming increasingly important for developing countries. The recent literature maintains that they are essential instruments to deal with poverty and vulnerability and result in protective measures. In developing countries, households are highly exposed to risk and often face liquidity or credit constraints. Given the lack of feasible instruments to deal with these issues, households may put in place ex-ante or ex-post risk coping strategies. Some of these strategies, as for instance livestock and assets sales or school drop-out and child labor, may be highly detrimental in the long run while others, as migration due to income sources differentiation, may imply huge social changes and determine the need of new policies at international level. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze how social protection may affect the implementation of these risk coping strategies. In particular, we propose three research projects on the relationship between social protection and different risk coping strategies, namely assets sales, child labor and migration. For each of them, we focus on specific programmes, data, and methodologies. Our objective is to contribute to the debate about the preventive and productive role of social protection in the long run and to provide concrete policies implications.

Santi Filippo: The Good, the Bad, or the Ugly? A different view on Migrants’ Networks, Investments and the Environment
Abstract

This thesis studies some relevant explanations of migration in the context of the globalization process that has characterized the last twenty years. More specifically, it investigates the so-called “pollution haven” hypothesis as well as migration due to environmental events (such as flooding or
earthquakes etc.). It then connects these issues by examining the role of diasporas for enhancing FDIs. It is out of doubt that FDIs take advantage of favourable conditions in the receiving economies, even beyond simple market considerations. In this thesis, we focus on two major and novel explanations: the role of migrants networks as information conductor able to lift intangible barriers that limit profitability of investments and the role of environmental standards in driving the location of productive activities at world level. The relationship between migrants’ networks and international trade has recently been the object of several studies. Despite the fact that FDI and trade are different modes of internationalization, a much less explored channel is the one that ties together migration networks
and FDIs. Even if, according to UNACTAD (2015), FDIs directed to developing countries has been substantially increasing since the 1970s, as well as the migratory flows did, their linkages have not yet been explicitly investigated in a rigorous way.The second driver considered here refers to the so-called “Pollution Haven Hypothesis”. By this,the existing literature describes the tendency of Western MNE to relocate their most polluting activities in developing countries, to take advantage of lax environmental regulations and a less influential public opinion. This suggestive idea has found little empirical confirmation so far given the difficulty to test data on pollutants; however, some recent relocations, especially in Sub Saharan Africa and in South East Asia, suggest that this issue is worth being further investigated. Indeed, while FDIs may represent a considerable source of growth for LDCs, their (negative) impact on the environment may also be substantial. Building on such premises, this thesis will also attempt to investigate the “FDI-environmentmigration” nexus by evaluating the impacts of pollution and climate change on human movements, as well as the role that these two connected fields of research have on foreign direct investments.

Bibi Samuele: TBA

Oskouruchi Hamid Reza: Conflict and Household Food Resilience Threshold in Afghanistan.

Abstract

Our paper investigates the effect of conflict on the household food security status in Afghanistan. A body of the recent literature underlines a positive correlation between violent events and food security. Our suspicious is that in protracted crisis countries households show a resilience threshold above which this impact becomes negative. This possibility is not investigated in the literature and we tested it by an OLS approach in which we controlled for the non-linear effect of violent events on the household food consumption score using micro-data at the household level. We considered 20,000 observations representative of the 34 Afghan provinces over the period 2013-2014. Moreover, we distinguished between conventional and unconventional conflicts in light of the suspicious of their different impact on household food security.

Parisi Diletta: Rural Non-farm activities in Ethiopia: effect on Household Food Consumption.

Abstract
The paper wants to assess the effect of participating in non-farm activities on food consumption choices for Ethiopian households during 2014. To account the selection bias for having a non-farm activity we use a switching regression model. Results suggests that households enter the sector as result of push factors (shocks and seasonality) and mainly to improve household diet variety rather than per capita food expenditure.

Teng Yue: TBA