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Does the quality of project planning documents predict development outcomes? This thesis examines that question empirically using 1,110 World Bank Investment Project Financing operations in South Asia approved between 1958 and 2021. Drawing on the full text of project appraisal documents, the thesis constructs quantitative scores operationalising three competing theoretical frameworks: Results-Bas

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has made data centres a significant and growing source of electricity demand. This study projects AI-driven data centre electricity demand in Sweden for the years 2022 to 2045, and further quantifies its implications for Sweden’s 2030 and 2045 climate targets. Using a three-step methodological approach, the study constructs a total data centre elect

This thesis investigates how the 2004 European Union enlargement influenced economic development in border regions of new member states. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences approach on panel data for NUTS 3 regions across all EU member states between 1995-2024, the analysis estimates the causal effect of EU accession on border regions relative to interior regions. The results show that lan

This study investigates how mobile broadband expansion affected the allocation of labor across sectors in Mongolia from 2000 to 2020. Drawing on MobiCom tower rollout data and IPUMS International census microdata, it employs a Difference-in-Differences design that exploits the staggered geographic rollout of broadband infrastructure as a source of quasi-experimental variation. Key findings indicat

In 2005, the EU launched its flagship environmental policy, the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Through the framework of the leading environmental regulation theories, the Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH) and the Porter Hypothesis (PH), this study explores the effect of Phase 3 of the EU ETS on foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and the industrial production index (IPI). Using

This thesis evaluates whether Thailand’s EV industrial policies, EV 3.0 and EV 3.5, have supported domestic industrial upgrading or reorganised foreign dependency under new technological conditions. It develops a framework combining global value chain governance theory, leapfrogging theory and product cycle theory, operationalised through four diagnostic conditions: lead firm control, knowledge tr

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