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Feminist geographies from the slum: violence, care, and place-making in contemporary Buenos Aires
No full textThe expression negra villera is widespread in Argentina. Although this derogatory term refers to a person’s skin colour, it is often used to denote social class. The term is also bounded to specific urban landscapes: the villas. In the Argentine social imaginary, these stigmatised territories epitomise poverty, ignorance, and crime. In the quote above, however, a woman is reclaiming the term negra villera, arguing that she is proud to be part of a collective of strong women and sexual dissidents. This movement, Feminismo Villero (slum feminism) started in 2018 in Villa 31-31 bis, the oldest villa in the city. Based on a year of participant observation, life-history interviews and digital archival research, my thesis explores how Slum Feminism contests the idea that feminism is not materially compatible with the urgencies and needs of low-income women and dissidents. Contrarywise, these material urgencies have served as a driver for explicitly feminist mobilisations. This thesis examines how material and affective aspects of that territory (the villa) shape this social movement, and how in turn, it contributes to progressively shape and transform the spaces of mobilisation. In my aim to explain this ‘feminism from the slum’, I focus on the relationship between territory and the movement, mediated by activists' everyday experiences of gendered violence. My research analyses how gender-based violence intersects with different geographical spaces and scales: the body; the home; the street, and the neighbourhood. The thesis contributes to the scholarship on geographies of social movements by re-centring the role of place (and particularly, territory) in social movements’ framing and everyday activism
Psychological factors in welfare and policy design
Full text linkThis thesis investigates the role of psychological factors in the design of optimal policy, focusing on mental health and the social safety net. Around 1 billion people suffer from mental disorders [WHO, 2022], and those with poor mental health are disproportionately likely to live in poverty [Lund et al., 2010]. Mental disorders cause significant disturbances in cognition, emotion regulation, and everyday functioning [Hammar and Årdal, 2009], yet their role in economic policy design remains understudied. Chapters 1 to 3 build on my Job Market Paper, which focuses on whether social assistance effectively reaches people with poor mental health. • Chapter 1 develops a theoretical framework showing how take-up responses to policy separately identify the marginal value of benefits (need) and the cost of barriers. • Chapter 2 presents new empirical facts about mental health and the targeting of social assistance using Dutch administrative data. • Chapter 3 combines the theory and empirics to show that people with poor mental health have a 2× higher need for benefits yet face a 64% higher cost from barriers. I also show that reducing barriers would be twice as effective as increasing benefits. While Chapters 1 to 3 take a revealed preference approach, a question remains: should the planner normatively respect the observed choices of people with poor mental health? Chapter 4 (with Daniel Reck) generalises this idea, tackling the fundamental challenge of behavioural welfare economics: psychological factors can cause inconsistencies, forcing policymakers to take a stand on which choices reflect an individual’s true normative preferences. We show that incorporating normative uncertainty leads to a structured welfare criterion, and explore how the resulting notion of robustness shapes optimal policy in several examples. Throughout the thesis, I argue that understanding psychological mechanisms, and their normative consequences, is essential for designing effective policies
Essays in labour economics
Full text linkThis thesis examines factors that influence economic and labour market outcomes throughout the life-cycle, with a focus on the importance of place. The first chapter examines the role of local labour market conditions on educational take-up and human capital investment in England. I match administrative data on firms and students to document the variation in the level and field of skills demanded and study whether local skill demand shapes local students’ educational attainment. I document a positive cross-sectional correlation between the skills demanded in local jobs and education choices. But, using a dynamic difference-in-difference strategy, I find at most a very muted response to large increases in local demand for degrees or specific skills for subsequent cohorts of students making educational investment decisions. The second chapter turns to the question of geographic mobility, using PSID data to shed light on the generational dynamics of (internal) migration. I find that children born in a different state than at least one of their parents have approximately 20-25 percent higher short-term and medium-term interstate migration rates, and 50 percent higher lifetime mobility rates. These differences are robust to controlling for a wide set of observables, and are consistent across subgroups by education and gender. These findings have significant implications for spatial sorting models and our understanding of intergenerational transmission of economic opportunity. In the third chapter, we assess the career earnings losses that individual Swedish workers suffered when their occupations’ employment declined. Our estimates show that occupational decline reduced mean cumulative earnings from 1986–2013 by no more than 2%–5%, with larger losses for those initially at the bottom of their occupations’ earnings distributions. This loss reflects a combination of reduced earnings conditional on employment, reduced years of employment and increased time spent in unemployment and retraining
Multi-agent production equilibrium models with expansion
Full text linkThis thesis is concerned with a multi-agent equilibrium expansion model where agents are faced with an exogenous stochastic constant elasticity demand function. Producers simultaneously decide their production schedule, via a sequential equilibrium market clearing condition, as well as their optimal expansion schedule which is formulated as the solution of a singular stochastic control problem. In particular, agents take into account both the fact that their expansion has an adverse effect to the price and also the effect of their actions on the rest of the agents. For every agent, the value function and the optimal control process is determined and a Nash equilibrium for the market is established. The problem is divided into two sections, the monopolist case, where a single agent dominates the market and the competitive case in which all agents form a price-taking continuum, and the problem takes the form of a mean-field stochastic differential game. In both cases the value function as well as the control is calculated in closed form. In a different topic using an implicit numerical scheme and under mild conditions we recover, in a compact way, the optimal weak convergence rate for a Cox–Ingersoll–Ross (CIR) process despite the fact that the coefficients of the underlying Stochastic differential equation are not Lipschitz
Grounded entanglements: land and landscape in the Khasi Hills
Full text linkThis thesis aims to understand the complex entanglements between the Khasi people and their land and landscape today. The Khasis are a matrilineal tribal group who largely inhabit the Khasi and Jain tia Hills in the North-East Indian state of Meghalaya. Like many indigenous communities, the Khasis perceive their land and landscape as central elements of their identity and ways of being in the world, and one of the ways in which the Indian State recognises this is through the Sixth Schedule provisions which grant tribal people special rights over their land. Thus, the relative autonomy that the Khasis have over land and resources is an important consideration in this thesis. However, land in the Khasi Hills is understood as a multifaceted entity; land is animated, sacred and spiritual, it is an embodiment of kinship and land is also a resource that can be exploited and capitalised. Grounded on fifteen months of fieldwork in three Khasi villages – Sohtrai, Laitrum and Mawkliar – and three months of archival research, this thesis seeks to highlight the multifarious and at times, seemingly contradictory ways in which people relate to their land. It does this through a study of various materials embedded in the landscape which include a colonial road, bri farms, indigenous-built memorial resting places, a sacred forest, limestone quarries and tourism infrastructure. The thesis asks: how should we understand the Khasis’ view of land as animated, symbolic and exploitable? What kind of effects does the exploitability of land have on the community and social relations within it, particularly in the context of present-day manifestations of market capitalism? Further, do we need to reevaluate our approaches in studying tribal and indigenous peoples and their relationship with land in order to explain such contexts where the trope of indigenous people living harmoniously with their environments is not always consistent? In addressing these questions, this thesis speaks to the larger anthropological literature which examines the question of land among tribal and indigenous communities, and also works in the anthropology of landscape
Navigating political dynamics, institutions and ideas: climate finance trajectories in Brazil
Full text linkThis thesis examines the evolution of climate finance in Brazil, focusing on its conceptual, policy, and institutional dimensions within the country’s governance and political landscape. It conceptualises climate finance as both a governance tool and a contested political space, shaped by institutional legacies, ideas, and stakeholder negotiations. By tracing Brazil’s climate finance trajectory from 1995 to 2020, the research highlights the interplay between structural constraints - such as entrenched policies and institutions - and ideational shifts that frame low-carbon development as either an economic burden or an opportunity. It reveals the fragility of institutional progress amid shifting political contexts, demonstrating the enduring “stickiness” of entrenched logics and practices. The study also introduces the concept of climate finances, drawing on boundary objects, to capture the multiple, often conflicting, meanings ascribed to climate finance by different actors. While this interpretive flexibility enables collaboration, it also obscures power asymmetries, reinforcing dominant financial and governance structures. Finally, the thesis examines the role of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) as an institutional actor in climate finance governance. It posits BNDES not just as a financial intermediary but as an agent of institutional work, actively shaping norms, investment priorities, and governance structures. However, its reliance on project-level interventions and susceptibility to political volatility constrain its ability to drive systemic transformation. Theoretically, this thesis contributes to debates on the politics of climate finance, institutional change, and power asymmetries in governance. Empirically, it sheds light on the dynamics of climate finance in an emerging market context, offering insights into the interplay between international pressures and domestic dynamics. Together, these findings advance the understanding of climate finance as a critical, yet deeply contested, tool in addressing the climate crisis
New means to old ends? The social democratic politics of financial reform in France and Spain (1981-1996)
No full textThis dissertation seeks to answer the question: why did the Left engage in financial liberalisation reforms since the 1980s? Existing accounts of the politics of financial liberalisation have focused on external constraints, notably capital flight or currency speculation, that forced them to abandon their ideological commitments and converge on pro-capital reforms; on the rise of influence of orthodox economists within Left parties; or on the expansion of credit to resolve distributive conflict. This leaves unanswered how Left parties could hope to win over their constituencies if they broke radically with social democratic policy goals. This thesis argues that financial reforms were an attempt by social democratic parties to build a new ‘growth model’ after Keynesian recipes for growth and employment had stopped working. Rather than a radical paradigm change, reforms constituted ‘second order change’ (Hall, 1993), whereby policymakers change the instruments to pursue old objectives, such as full employment and raising living standards of lower income strata. The thesis examines the cases of the governments of the Parti Socialiste in France and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español in Spain from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. Both parties pursued financial liberalisation but reform trajectories varied with the policy imperatives of the parties. In France, the aim of restoring productive investment tried to create a “finance-led growth model”, whereby savings mobilised for investment would in turn generate returns for a wide class of “popular shareholders”. In Spain, an obsession with anti-inflationary priorities tried to limit public spending, which was seen as inflationary. Financial reform thus tried to boost welfare-substituting instruments such as private pensions. In both cases, these reforms continued to be defended even when they did not result in broad-based benefits, as reformers believed that taking “corrective action” within the new growth model would suffice to fulfil their original social democratic objectives
Are we the people? Democratic municipalism in two European cities, in the approach to power and thereafter 2011-2024
No full textThis thesis examines the theory and practice of democratic (“new”) municipalism, as it has been expressed in Madrid, Spain and Zagreb, Croatia. In theory, municipalism aims to reclaim popular control over key dimensions of everyday urban life — from housing and infrastructure to public services — through a unique hybridization of participatory policy formation with conventionally electoral contestation. While widely celebrated in activist and scholarly discourse, however, the ability of municipalist formations to produce real-world outcomes consonant with their aims has varied sharply from place to place, and the tradition’s present vitality and capacity to produce new liberatory openings is in question. This research, grounded in a constructivist and critical epistemological framework, traces the intellectual and historical lineage of municipalism from its roots in libertarian socialist thought, through the horizontalist movements of the early 21st century, to its political crystallization in Ahora Madrid and Zagreb je NAŠ!. It blends textual analysis and a program of semi-structured interviews with close observation of the urban environments in question. Through detailed reconstruction of these two efforts, the study identifies municipalism as a participatory, feminist, agonistic and commons-based practice that proposes to challenge neoliberal hegemony from within the urban polity. It also assesses the limitations of the municipalist form, including its vulnerability to institutional capture, its theoretical looseness, and its retreat from mass participation into academic and elite spaces. The thesis contributes to the sociology of urban place and governance by clarifying the conditions under which municipalist experiments succeed, the assemblages they form, and the residual value they may offer to future emancipatory movements. Ultimately, it argues that while municipalism may not presently function as a mass political vehicle, its constituent practices retain relevance for prefigurative politics and the democratic stewardship of urban life
Essays in econometric theory
Full text linkWe design and analyse nonparametric techniques for understanding the structure of network data, inference on network statistics, and testing for shape constraints. In the first chapter, I look at symmetric binary exchangeable networks. Any such network can be characterised by a distribution over characteristics of nodes and a linking (graphon) function which gives the probability of link between any two nodes. To learn about the network structure, I propose a nonparametric estimator of the linking function. I provide conditions under which the estimator is uniformly consistent and a numerical procedure for choosing a tuning parameter. My procedure makes minimal assumptions and allows for moderate sparsity levels. In the second chapter, I propose a bootstrap procedure which allows for valid inference on network statistics. It uses my nonparametric linking function estimator from Chapter 1 to generate bootstrap networks with a similar dependence structure to the original network. I prove that the distribution of the bootstrap network is consistent for the distribution of the original network, and I provide conditions under which bootstrap consistently recovers distributions of a class of functions related to U-statistics. I find good performance in Monte Carlo simulations and apply my procedure to the data from Banerjee, Chandrasekhar, Duflo, and Jackson (2013). In the third chapter, we propose a test for whether a nonparametric regression mean satisfies a shape restriction that varies within the domain of the regressor (e.g. (inverted) U-shaped, S-shaped). Our procedure extends the methodology of Komarova and Hidalgo (2023) to the setting where the points at which the shape changes are unknown and must be estimated, and the shapes may only appear after controlling for covariates. We provide a generalised transformation which achieves the same asymptotic distribution but adds robustness to the test and credibility to the conclusions
Essays in applied labour economics
Full text linkThis thesis consists of four main chapters that focus on the themes of occupational choice, wage gaps, and networks. Chapter 1 assesses the impact of financial incentives on the recruitment and retention of trainee teachers. Using a panel of UK teachers, I exploit policy-induced variation in the bursary levels offered across years, subjects, and the trainee’s undergraduate classification. Larger bursaries increase both trainee recruitment and teacher cohort size three years post-training. However, the probability of becoming a teacher post-training also falls, which is driven by unobservable selection. Chapter 2 explores the heterogeneity of teacher wage gaps in England. I assess the comparability of teacher wages across sources and explore the robustness of estimated wage gaps for state-funded school teachers. I find substantial variation in wage gaps depending on the data, method, and counterfactual used, in addition to geographic inequality in teacher wage competitiveness. Chapter 3 describes how ethnic and migrant wage gaps vary across the life cycle. By exploiting newly linked UK administrative panel data, we estimate pay gaps on labour market entry and differences in pay growth. We find that the entry pay gaps are large, though they vary between groups. For most groups, pay gaps are largely preserved over the life cycle. For migrants, we find that the extra pay penalty is concentrated in those who arrived in the UK at a later age. Chapter 4 studies gangs in Brazil, an underexplored yet pervasive and volatile setting in organised crime. Using highly detailed information from intelligence, occurrence data, and prison records, we construct a network of gang affiliation and detect gang clusters using Markov stability analysis. We analyse the identified clusters through different network statistics and find a strong correlation between most individual centrality measures, while intercentrality highlights that some “key players” may have been missed in official hierarchical classifications