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Governing competition in electricity markets by independent regulatory agency and government: a comparative analysis on Britain and Türkiye
No full textThis thesis examines the immediate relationships between independent regulatory agencies (IRAs), and governments in the British and Turkish electricity sectors in the post-delegation regulatory process. It analyses the impact of these relationships on the capacity of the IRAs to promote competition, which is their primary regulatory objective, and the core reason for their establishment. Both IRAs implemented three main regulatory policies to promote competition: inducing new entry, reducing the market share of the incumbents, and revising the trading arrangements in the electricity market. While various studies have explored institutional and formal/informal factors influencing IRAs' formal/informal independence and regulatory capacity, this thesis focuses on the role of government. It investigates how government influence affects the IRAs' capacity to achieve their regulatory objectives and whether the presence or absence of government support plays a determining role. This research adopts a comparative case study method, analysing 12 (twelve) cases across Britain and Türkiye. It analyses four sets of three cases based on the three main regulatory policies followed by the IRAs in pairs, comparing them in terms of the presence and absence of the government support. The comparison is grounded in similarities between sectoral policies, regulatory objectives, institutional endowments, and initial bargains between IRAs and governments. The thesis’s findings indicate that IRAs’ capacity to achieve their regulatory objectives depends on government support after delegation. While the IRAs struggle to maintain their independence and capacity through institutional endowments and strategic adjustments through various conflictual/collaborative relationships with the governments, the governments continue to determine regulatory decision-making, and the IRAs’ capacity through formal/informal mechanisms, even without changing/breaking the initial formal/institutional designs and bargains established at delegation. The research highlights that regulation remains inherently political, and delegation to IRAs does not ensure political certainty/stability, predictability, reliability, or credible commitment. Political will continues to shape the post-delegation regulatory process
Essays on information economics
Full text linkChapter 1 analyses a two-period model of information selling where a risk-neutral seller offers binary signals of varying precision to a risk-neutral buyer. The seller cannot observe signal realisations, creating information asymmetry affecting pricing strategies. We demonstrate that only high-precision signals are offered in equilibrium, as they generate superior information rent whilst enabling natural market segmentation. The buyer reveals private information through their purchasing behaviour, enabling full rent extraction despite information asymmetry. Our analysis reveals that expanding signal menus does not enhance seller profits, and optimal mechanism design converges to perfect signals. These findings challenge conventional wisdom regarding product variety, demonstrating that quality concentration dominates menu diversification in information markets. Chapter 2 extends the dynamic information selling framework by introducing seller risk aversion. Whilst buyer behaviour remains unchanged, seller risk aversion fundamentally transforms optimal pricing strategies by creating tension between profit maximisation and revenue smoothing. Risk-averse sellers may abandon high-type only strategies in favour of conservative pricing that guarantees universal participation and predictable revenue. Our analysis identifies threshold levels of risk aversion at which optimal strategies shift, depending on signal quality and prior beliefs. Unlike risk-neutral sellers who prefer perfect signals, risk-averse sellers deliberately choose lower-quality signals to increase trading probability. These findings demonstrate that risk factors significantly influence information market design with implications for real-world providers. Chapter 3 examines whether deliberative mechanisms enhance collective decision-making when committee members possess opposed preferences regarding outcomes. Using cheap talk communication and majority voting, we analyse three equilibrium configurations and their efficiency properties. The analysis reveals that deliberative mechanisms improve upon decision-making based solely on prior beliefs only under restrictive conditions: signal informativeness must exceed the prior and the likelihood of recruiting well-intentioned agents must be sufficiently high. When either condition fails, principals achieve superior outcomes by foregoing deliberation entirely. These findings suggest that deliberation proves counterproductive rather than beneficial in most realistic environments with significant preference conflicts
Media, feminism and technology in postcolonial contexts
No full textThis thesis offers an important intervention in the study of feminism, media and technology by tracing how colonial legacies continue to shape contemporary gender discourse. It introduces the theorisation of colonial harms – erasure, appropriation and ambiguity – as interconnected with patriarchy and persisting as structural forms of violence in postcolonial societies, like India. Through a methodological combination of archival research, in-depth semi-structured interviews with Indian feminists and a modified form of thematic analysis incorporating elements of critical discourse analysis of news media, this thesis examines three key moments between 2010 and 2020: The Nirbhaya anti-rape protests, the MeToo India campaign and the Shaheen Bagh CAA-NRC protests. These case studies throw a critical lens on the tensions between rights-based and popular feminism, as well as the entanglement of feminist discourses with misogynistic counter-discourses, state politics and technological affordances. This thesis makes five conceptual contributions to feminist scholarship. First, it theorises colonial harms and shows how they continue to structure media narratives, feminist practice and women’s political agency. Second, it introduces the SMART Framing Model to explain why certain gender-based violence stories and protests achieve national visibility while others are silenced. Third, it develops appraised believability to interrogate how trust in women’s disclosures is unevenly distributed across class, caste and religion. Fourth, it re-conceptualises consent as perception rather than an act, exposing the inadequate binaries of legal consent in addressing coercion and power imbalance within the MeToo India movement. Finally, and most significantly, it theorises equivocal agency – a framework for understanding how marginalised women navigate surveillance, misogyny and platform opaqueness through strategic ambiguity, cautious visibility and affective labour. By exposing how popular feminism is selectively appropriated by neo-liberal and far right politics, this thesis cautions against reductive, media-driven feminist rhetoric that risks undermining the goals of rights-based feminism. It ultimately asks: what does India’s 21st-century feminism look like, and how do media and technology shape its possibilities and limits
The errant worlds of disidencias: sex-gender dissident sense-making practices and counter-normative politics in Quito
No full textThis thesis is a theoretical and ethnographic investigation of the contemporary politics of disidencias sexo-genéricas (sex-gender dissidences) in Quito, Ecuador. Disidencias sexo-genéricas are a transfeminist political formation composed of LGBTI+, queer, and sex-gender dissident individuals and collectives. Over the last two decades, disidencias have emerged across Latin America/Abya Yala in dialogue with feminist, trans, and queer movements, challenging mainstream heterocisnormative and homonormative politics. While disidencias have been studied in major Latin American cities, their contextual specificities and political generativity in geopolitically marginal locations like Quito remain understudied. This research delves into the onto-epistemic registers of disidencias in Quito, examining the ontological and epistemic dimensions of their sense-making practices and political subjectivations. By focusing on political subjectivations, the thesis traces the intellectual and political genealogies of disidencias, highlighting their everyday forms of resistance against colonial violence and onto-epistemic assimilation. It also examines how sex-gender dissidents assert their epistemic agency to affirm their lifeworlds. Theoretically, this thesis bridges some of the gaps between decolonial and queer theories, placing them in dialogue with the situated knowledges of sex-gender dissidents themselves. In pursuit of understanding and working with these dissident knowledges, the thesis employs a patchwork-ethnographic methodological approach. Fieldwork research (June-December 2022) encompassed participant observation at key sex-gender dissident sites in Quito, deep hangouts and reflexive conversations with 27 prominent dissident actors, and archival documentation and analysis of their creative works. Drawing on these methods, the thesis examines four distinct onto-epistemic registers that emerge from the political subjectivation of disidencias. First, it explores sex-gender dissidents’ practices of disidentification and examines how these appear in response to social wrongs rooted in coloniality. Second, it analyzes their transversal political and epistemological alliances, the counter-normative identifications they develop to make sense of themselves and their worlds beyond modern-colonial frameworks, and their instrumental uses of liberal rights and justice frameworks in their struggle. Third, it considers the aesthetic subcultures of disidencias, their ambivalent complicities with queer-normativity and Whiteness, and their re-politicization through ancestral memory and remembrance. Fourth, it elucidates the political cacophony of disidencias, showing how it allows dissidents to evade normative assimilation, assert their equality as a form of difference, and sustain dynamic forms of onto-epistemic resistance in the face of ongoing repression. Ultimately, this thesis argues that disidencias craft alternative worlds of sense that both challenge and redefine the very notion of what it means to be political. These heterogeneous, contradictory, and cacophonous lifeworlds expose the hegemonic onto-epistemic frameworks of coloniality/modernity as violent orders that can, and must be, contested
Thesis in macroeconomics and Chinese economy
No full textThis dissertation examines the heterogeneous macroeconomic impacts of industrial and environmental policies on firm behavior, innovation, and regional development in China. The first chapter studies the effects of robot subsidies in the manufacturing sector. Exploiting variation in subsidy rollout across municipalities, I find that robot subsidies, while designed to be uniform across firms, disproportionately benefit larger firms at the cost of reducing new firm entry. I then build a theoretical framework to highlight how financial frictions cause a uniform subsidy to favor capital-rich firms, creating a trade-off between average automation gains and productivity-reducing dispersion. A calibrated dynamic model shows that a 20 percent subsidy raises output by around 1.2 percent but reduces total factor productivity by around 2.4 percent due to exacerbation of misallocation. The second chapter investigates the impact of electric vehicle (EV) subsidies on innovation along the supply chain. Using a newly compiled dataset of over 1,000 municipal subsidy policies, I document sharp differences in effectiveness across subsidy types. Innovation and public procurement subsidies significantly boost both downstream and upstream patenting, while investment and purchase subsidies show limited impact. These findings underscore the importance of aligning policy design with supply chain dynamics to foster industrial upgrading. The third chapter evaluates the economic consequences of flood control policies that real-locate environmental risk. Exploiting the designation of 96 counties as Flood Detention Basins (FDBs), I show that these counties experience lower firm entry, reduced investment, and declining nighttime lights. A spatial general equilibrium model reveals that while FDBs increase national flood resilience, the economic burden falls disproportionately on rural areas. Together, these chapters shed light on the distributional and efficiency trade-offs of industrial and environmental interventions in a developing economy context
Latent variable modelling and statistical analysis for high-dimensional data
Full text linkIn recent years, advances in technology have made it easier to collect and store highdimensional data, creating a growing need for effective statistical tools. This thesis presents new approaches through three related studies to improve existing methods and enhance their practical applicability. Chapter 2 proposes a novel latent variable model tailored for high-dimensional multivariate longitudinal data. This model accommodates mixed data types and missing observations by incorporating unobserved factors that capture dependence across variables and time points, facilitating both statistical inference and predictive performances. A central limit theorem is established for inference on regression coefficients, and an information criterion is developed to consistently determine the number of factors. The method is applied to grocery shopping data to predict and interpret consumer behaviour. Chapter 3 introduces a stability-based method for selecting the number of latent factors in linear factor models, using principal angles between loading spaces obtained from data splitting. Consistency is established under weaker asymptotic requirements than existing approaches. Simulations and real data examples demonstrate the method’s improved accuracy and robustness. Chapter 4 develops a flexible statistical modelling framework for pairwise comparison data, relaxing the conventional stochastic transitivity assumptions in classical models. By imposing an approximately low-dimensional skew-symmetric structure, the method achieves minimax-optimal estimation rates and performs well with sparse data. Its superiority over the traditional Bradley-Terry model is supported by simulations and real-world applications
Essays in real estate economics and household finance
Full text linkThis thesis consists of three essays on real estate and household finance. The first chapter examines heterogeneity in housing markets both within and across the largest cities in the UK. I combine several novel datasets of UK property markets and document three key novel facts: (i) housing quality is segmented between the rental and owner-occupied sectors, with rentals generally offering lower quality, (ii) cities with more quality segmentation tend to have higher rent-to-price ratios, and (iii) in more segmented cities landlords have fewer assets and face lower capital gains. These facts suggest that heterogeneity in landlord supply constraints may play an important role in shaping local housing markets. In the second chapter, I develop and estimate a two-sided assignment model of the housing market to quantify the effect of landlord supply constraints. The model features households’ optimal choice of housing quality and tenure (i.e., the choice to rent or own) in the presence of borrowing constraints, landlords’ profit-maximizing choice of quality to rent out, and endogenous quality segmentation and rent-to-price ratios determined in equilibrium. I conduct counterfactual experiments to show that differences in landlord supply constraints explain much of the variation in quality segmentation and rent-to-price ratios observed within and across cities. The third chapter, based on work co-authored with Benjamin Guin and Liam Clarke, explores the role of lending in transmitting shocks to residential real estate. We examine an adverse and salient shock to a segment of the property market (high rise flats) in England and Wales. Using an event-study design that compares flats and non-flats in the same local area, we show that mortgage originations for affected properties declined sharply by around 30% in London following the change. This contraction was concentrated among first-time buyers who experienced an almost 50% drop. At the same time, the share of cash purchases rose by five percentage points, implying a re-allocation of ownership from credit-constrained households to wealthier, mortgage-independent buyers. To distinguish between reduced credit supply and falling borrower demand, we examine the evolution of rents and prices. While prices fell by about 2.5% relative to unaffected units, rents rose by 2%, suggesting that demand to reside in these homes remained stable even as their collateral value declined
Essays on economics of natural disasters in China
Full text linkThis thesis investigates how flood management interventions and flood events shape the spatial distribution of economic development, firm adaptation, and innovation in China— one of the most flood-prone countries in the world. It examines both deliberate, policy-driven reallocations of flood risk and economic adaptations triggered by actual flooding. Chapters 1 and 2 analyze the impacts of China’s national Flood Detention Basin (FDB) policy, which redirects floodwaters into designated rural areas to protect downstream urban centers. Chapter 1 uses reduced-form empirical methods to quantify the economic costs taken by FDB-designated counties, while Chapter 2 develops a spatial general equilibrium model to assess the broader economic benefits of the policy. Chapter 3 investigates the role of floods in shaping the geographical pattern of patenting activities. Together, the three chapters provide a comprehensive analysis of how both flood risks and flood management strategies influence the geography of economic activity and adaptive responses in China. Chapter 1 examines the economic costs of China’s Flood Detention Basin (FDB) policy, implemented in 2000. Under this national policy, the government designated 96 counties to host FDBs — low-lying areas intended to absorb excess floodwater during extreme weather events. While protecting downstream urban centers, this policy imposes concentrated flood risks on rural counties. Using difference-indifferences methods, the chapter documents significant economic costs for FDB counties: a 10.7% reduction in nighttime light intensity, a 15.9% decline in new firm entries, and a 19.7% drop in fixed asset investment. These losses are persistent and primarily driven by firms’ aversion to locating in high-risk areas, rather than migration responses by individuals. Overall, using causal identification tools, this chapter shows that FDB policy has led to a substantial economic cost in counties selected to take more flood risks. Chapter 2 builds a structural spatial general equilibrium model to quantify both the aggregate benefits of the FDB policy. The model captures trade linkages across FDB counties, protected cities, and the rest of the country. Counterfactual simulations reveal that the policy indeed enhances national output by protecting high-productivity urban centers. Overall, the benefit to cost ratio of the Flood Detention Basin policy exceeds one. However, these gains come at the expense of lower-productivity rural areas bearing the flood risk. The model shows that removing high-productivity counties from the FDB list would not substantially reduce output gains, while greatly improving equity. These findings suggest that the current FDB configuration may overprioritize output over equality. The results indicate the necessity for a more balanced compensation scheme to support vulnerable regions. Chapter 3 explores how floods shape the spatial distribution of innovation in China. Using satellite-derived flood maps and detailed patent data, I created a dataset to measure collaborative patents among different regions. The chapter finds that floods decrease local patenting activity but simultaneously encourage cross-county collaboration in innovation. A one-day increase in average flood duration is related to a 12% increase in collaborative patents between counties. These partnerships are especially strong between counties that share similar flood histories and are more likely to yield disaster mitigation technologies. Mechanism analysis shows that historical flood experience—rather than unexpected shocks—drives the shift toward collaboration, suggesting a strategic adaptation to long-term climate risks
Motherhood and violence
Full text linkIntimate Partner Violence (IPV) imposes large psychological and economic costs for women worldwide, and it is positively correlated with motherhood. This thesis explores why. I propose a model and an empirical test for two alternative explanations which look observationally equivalent if we use usual IPV data. The first is that having a baby triggers men’s violent behavior; the second is that motherhood makes women more likely to stay with a violent partner. I use Mexican survey data with information on fertility, relationship history and violence history with current and past partners; this history allows me to disentangle the mechanisms. I find that motherhood is associated with a higher probability of current violence and a lower probability of leaving but I find no relationship between motherhood and men’s violent behavior. Evidence for this selection channel is further supported by exploiting the fertility shock induced by the opening of pharmacies, where I show that women are less likely to leave violent partners when they are mothers compared to when they are not. My results suggest that policies which strengthen women’s control over their fertility can reduce the incidence of IPV by enabling them to leave violent relationships before they are locked in by motherhood
It rains miscarriages, a feminist investigation of toxic risks in the Bajo Cauca region (Colombia)
No full textThis set of essays investigates the relationship between social identities and toxic contamination by analysing the role that institutional risk-issue framings play in enhancing or limiting the agency of gendered and racialized social actors exposed to toxic risks. This research is motivated by the increasing mainstreaming of gender in environmental policies for chemical risk management and, at the same time, the paradoxical lack of effective inclusion of the expertise of the most vulnerable social actors in environmental decision-making spaces. Drawing on more than 13 months of participatory ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Bajo Cauca region (Colombia) among gold mining and coca farming communities, as well as the revision of policies for chemical risk management, research in medical archives, and participatory video-making processes, I investigate the social life of two toxic chemicals: mercury and glyphosate, and their role in shaping processes of gendered identity-making as well as state-citizens relation. In particular, I engage with women’s everyday reproductive struggles to explore the tensions emerging between toxic exposure and care, to conceptualise miscarriages related to toxic contamination as resulting from a complex entanglement between social identities and everyday geographies, which determines the emergence of reproductive inequalities. Moreover, I investigate the interplay between representations of masculinity and the criminalisation of informal gold-miners and coca-farmers as contaminating actors. I build on scholarship in feminist geography and Latin American feminist science and technology studies to argue that the ineffective integration of gender in the institutional debate on toxic contamination reproduces, rather than challenges, the invisibility of rural women before the state. The essays contribute to the debate on gender and environmental policy-making by analysing the unintended political outcomes of gendered representations that underpin environmental discourses in contexts of toxic contamination, thereby suggesting ways for environmental policy-makers to better reflect the priorities and needs of local actors in risk management plans. I contend that making environmental policy-making more socially just does not only require the recognition of gender as a determinant of environmental vulnerability, but also the promotion of the effective inclusion of women’s reproductive concerns and their expertise on toxic reproductive risks in public debates