Alliance One Tobacco (Malawi)
Academic Research Repository at the Institute of Developing EconomiesNot a member yet
52305 research outputs found
Sort by
Valuation of Solar Asset-Backed Bonds After Issuance: Did the Inflation Reduction Act Lower Spreads Over Benchmark Treasury?
No full textThis paper examines whether Solar Asset-Backed Bonds (ABS) consistently trade at differentiated spreads compared to similar non-solar bonds, reflecting more favorable risk perception and investor willingness to pay a “green premium” for cash flow from solar. There is evidence that spreads on Solar ABS narrowed by approximately 200 basis points relative to non-solar ABS leading up to and during the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a key climate policy of the Biden administration. Despite the initial promising results, however, this study shows that the IRA’s impact on solar ABS waned over time – investors had anticipated more from the IRA and revised their valuations downwards upon realizing its muted impact for residential solar. Spreads widened accordingly, even surpassing non-solar bonds by Q4-2024. However, within the sub-sample of solar bonds, the IRA did have differentiated, sustained impacts on lowering solar lease/PPA spreads by 30-40 basis points relative to solar loan spreads pre-IRA. This demonstrates the significance of the IRA’s tax credit transferability mechanism, which made solar credits refundable for leasing companies, but non-refundable for individual homeowners who had taken out loans.Applied Mathematic
Boundless Weaving: Buddhist Visual Culture in a Tibetophone World, 9th to 13th Century
No full textThis dissertation examines the pivotal role of Tibetan Buddhists in shaping the Buddhist visual culture of medieval Inner Asia from the mid-ninth to the early thirteenth century, a period traditionally perceived as politically fragmented and unstable. Challenging the conventional historiographical models that portray Tibet as experiencing religious and cultural rupture after the collapse of the Tibetan Empire, this study argues that it was during the period that Tibetans emerged as key intermediaries in the transmission and transformation of Indian esoteric texts and images, weaving them into an expansive religious and visual network throughout Inner Asia.
Integrating visual, textual, and archaeological sources, this dissertation is organized into four case studies. Chapter One reassesses the Tibetan “Dark Age” by analyzing the recently excavated Bumpache Paintings from Central Tibet, revealing artistic and cultural continuities in the post-imperial period Tibet that question the traditional narratives of the region’s sudden decline. Chapters Two through Four trace how esoteric Buddhist imagery was transformed through innovative and localized reinterpretations among Tibetophone Buddhist communities across Inner Asia. Chapter Two examines the evolving iconography of the Crowned Buddha, demonstrating its fluid adaptability across diverse textual traditions. Chapter Three explores the evolution of Sitātapatrā from a protective dhāraṇī to a fully personified icon, a transformative shift inspired by a significant collection of newly translated sādhana texts, which provide unique and precise depictions of various tantric deities. Chapter Four revisits the so-called “Dance of the Sixteen Heavenly Devils” at the Mongol court, not only by tracing its origins to Indo-Tibetan esoteric ritual manuals, but also by studying how the visual representations of the assembly were formalized and standardized in the mid-twelfth century Tangut-Xixia State.
At the core of this study is the concept of the “Tibetophone world,” a transregional and transcultural network in which the Tibetan language functioned as a lingua franca for the study and practice of Indo-Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism in medieval Inner Asia. Through case studies in Dunhuang, the Tangut-Xixia State, and Mongol-ruled China, this dissertation not only foregrounds the agency of Tibetan Buddhists in shaping a cohesive religious and visual tradition. At the same time, it also demonstrates that the Tibetophone world was not a monolithic Tibetan construct, but a collaborative space where diverse ethnic groups—including Tibetans, Chinese, Tanguts, Mongols, and others—actively participated in transforming Buddhism and its visual culture. By doing so, this study redefines the concept of “Tibetan,” not as a fixed ethnic or geographic category, but as a fluid and evolving cultural identity shaped by sustained transregional exchange.Inner Asian and Altaic Studie
Get-Up
No full textGet-Up is a screenplay that offers a candid portrait of Green, a seven-year-old boy from southern Indiana who is surviving poverty with his hustler dad and his sick mom. Set in 1985, Green is disregarded for “odd” behavior, including his detached gaze toward the world beyond his windows, and his inability to physically engage with others, even his mother. As Green’s world expands through new relationships with the men of Fink’s Pool Hall and the Salvio family across the street, he transforms, gaining vibrancy and connection, quietly claiming his identity and security, while easing the hardened adults that surround him.
Get-Up is a character-driven drama within the father-son theme. The screenplay employs both catalytic characters and character pairing. The father is simultaneously heroic and disappointing. Similarly, Green is a son who embodies both innocent vulnerability and the strength of a guardian. Through this characterization, intimate action and dialogue, introspection at a macro level becomes spectacle.
Get-Up is not purely autobiographical, but the story is woven with strands of personal truth. I was with my dad when he got laid off from his job as a security guard, and I spent my childhood trying to impress him in Fink’s Pool Hall, surrounded by rough men who were always just getting by
Navigating Rank-and-file Opposition to Vietnam War: Case Study of the Vietnam War Debate, 1968
No full textHow did the rank and file oppose the Vietnam war within the labor movement in 1968, and how was the rank-and-file opposition to war contested? How did the Vietnam War debate reflect the distinctive challenges of contesting the leadership’s pro-war position within the Cold War labor movement?
To answer the research question, the study investigates the Vietnam war debate in the 1968 New York State American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) convention. Zooming in on the conversation between the anti-war rank and file and the pro-war labor unionists, the study identifies the reasons and strategies used by the anti-war rank and file and the pro-war labor unionists. On this basis, the study examines how the labor movement culture contributed to the difficulty of the anti-war labor arguments prevailing over the pro-war ones. The study identifies that the anti-war rank and file criticized the South Vietnamese government’s undemocratic behavior. The anti-war rank and file also criticized that the Vietnam war did not comply with the labor movement’s moral commitment to stand for the working people, arguing that the government funding for the Great Society programs decreased because of the war. A few anti-war rank and file directly showed their distaste for the drafting and claimed that no boys should go to war. On the other hand, the pro-war labor unionists argued that the anti-war rank-and-file arguments were driven by the false belief that they could make the Vietnam war decisions for the government. The pro-war labor unionists further argued that the labor opposition to war was an act of selfishness, cowardice, and disservice to the country. In addition, the pro-war labor unionists argued that fighting the Vietnam war was necessary because the war helped fight communism and defend democracy.
Comparing both sides of the arguments, the study concludes that the pro-war and anti-war labor primarily conflicted over their interpretation of democracy; identifies that some of the anti-war arguments were set aside because of their contradiction with the institutional culture. The study concludes that the pro-war labor position prevailed without solving the real concerns over the war’s impacts on the workers’ everyday life.
The study contributes to the research literature on the anti-Vietnam war social movement and the role of the Vietnam War in the development of the labor movement by studying how anti-war rank-and-file sentiments failed to translate into visible social
actions. Re-examining the interaction between the labor movement and the Vietnam war, the study finds that the rank-and-file anti-war sentiments were suppressed from within through a set of cultural norms of democracy, loyalty, and valor and contradicted by the labor movement leadership’s strong alliance with the government. In this process, the study exposes the connection between the Vietnam War debate and the tension beneath the image of the labor movement’s solidarity in relation to job type, gender, and race.Extension Studie
The Promise and Paradox of Public Higher Education: Institutional Logics, Organizational Action, and Mission Fulfillment
No full textPublic higher education has long served as a vehicle for upward mobility in American society.
However, public colleges are experiencing difficulties in getting students across the finish line and struggle with persistently low degree completion rates. Integrating and building on key concepts of institutional and organizational theories, my dissertation investigates why public higher education is struggling to fulfill a core component of its mission and deliver on its promise of material value.
In Paper 1, I examine why colleges do not adopt or pursue organizational actions known to improve degree completion. Drawing on and extending both institutional and organizational theories, I develop a multi-level theoretical model that accounts for competing institutional logics at the macro-level, embedded organizational attributes at the meso-level, and interactions at the individual-level. In Paper 2, my co-author and I investigate how, in an institutional environment defined by pluralism, actors within a public university system are enabled or hindered from pursuing actions that align with public higher education’s democratic mission with constrained resources. Drawing on unique interview data of actors and students at a large, less-selective, public university system, we introduce the concept of structural filtering to describe the process by which organizational attributes lead actors to perceive certain kinds of organizational conduct as appropriate, resulting in an unequal provision of support. In my final paper, I explore the origins and drivers of the disconnect between the material value higher education promises and the organizational conditions that make delivering on that promise challenging for public colleges. In this historical case study and document analysis of the City University of New York (CUNY), I find that conflicting logics were adopted in response to two distinct institutional environments, which shaped its organizational characteristics in ways that remain embedded today. This has created a value-gap, where CUNY’s egalitarian-shaped characteristics communicate and reinforce its material value. Yet, CUNY’s austerity-shaped characteristics constrain its ability to deliver on its promised and expected value.
Together, these papers suggest that organizational conditions and complexity can—and do—obfuscate the democratic missions of public institutions. Moreover, I demonstrate how, if society still wants, expects, or needs higher education to be a vehicle for upward mobility and not stratification, a reinvestment and corresponding organizational transformation is necessary.Educatio
High-Performance Photonic and Acoustic Interfaces for Qubits
No full textSolid-state-based quantum information technology has advanced significantly in recent years, with platforms such as diamond defect centers (e.g., silicon-vacancy and nitrogen-vacancy centers) playing a central role. Alongside the exploration of fundamental science, practical quantum applications demand scalable, efficient devices with ultra-low loss, high integrability, and robust fabrication processes.
This thesis focuses on the fabrication and demonstration of novel devices, motivated by the need for better quantum interfaces. Key contributions include developing methods to confine and manipulate phonons in diamond, fabricating state-of-the-art photonic crystal cavities, demonstrating novel 2D diamond devices, and integrating diamond with other materials like lithium niobate for hybrid quantum systems. Additionally, the work on compact microcavities offers the potential for diverse applications, including quantum networking, lasers, and precision sensing.
These innovations focus on different aspects of high-performance photonic and acoustic interfaces for qubits, pushing the boundaries of nanofabrication and quantum device performance and enabling scalable and practical solutions for emerging quantum technologies.Engineering and Applied Sciences - Applied Physic
The Pattern Recognizers: Surveillance, Security, and the Making of Identity in 20th Century America
No full textThis dissertation considers the historical relationship between science and surveillance in the 20th century in the United States. It centers its study on the emergence and development of pattern recognition as a scientific methodology and as a surveillance technique for recognizing identity. Across seven chapters, the dissertation shows how social scientific and technical research transformed patterns into a scientific object primed for classification. The dissertation begins with research in cultural anthropology in the early 20th century. It examines how, at the nexus of methodological, professional, and political concerns, anthropologists developed the notion that culture contains patterns. Throughout World War II, cultural anthropologists brought notions of patterning and their recognition into U.S. government agencies. Following the war, in response to existing research in anthropology and psychology, cyberneticists developed pattern perception mechanisms. While engaging with this work, in the 1950s scientists developed computers that could recognize patterns with formalized rules. Pattern recognition researchers soon advocated to U.S. intelligence agencies that their techniques could solve problems of surveillance. By the end of the 1960s, pattern recognition research had changed how intelligence agencies could conduct surveillance. Machine-classifiable patterns had become a ubiquitous object of scientific knowledge and object of surveillance. The dissertation foregrounds the often-mundane ways in which scientists have shaped the practice of surveillance, as well as how problems of surveillance have shaped the practice of science. More generally, the dissertation bridges historical epistemology with surveillance studies to excavate the historical conditions of possibility for surveillance practices today.History of Scienc
Raspberry-colloid-templated catalysts as a model thermocatalytic platform
No full textNanoparticle (NP)-supported catalysts are critical to the industrial production of over 90% of the chemicals and raw materials used today. Their catalytic performance is predicated on a combination of geometric and electronic descriptors associated with the properties of the NPs, support, and the (NP–support) interactions between them. However, existing catalyst preparative methods of nucleating and/or immobilizing NPs on support surfaces do not permit independent variation of NP or support properties as NP nucleation and growth characteristics are dependent on the support chemistry and vice versa. Consequently, such interconnected material properties cannot enable systematic investigations whereby individual NP or support properties are independently tuned to elucidate unambiguous and valuable structure–property relationships to guide future catalyst designs. Separately, this challenge is also exacerbated under thermocatalytic reaction conditions of high temperature, pressure, and mechanical agitation, which accelerates NP sintering and uncontrolled NP size growth, further confounding catalytic analyses. An effective model catalytic platform for fundamental structure–property studies should thus possess two pre-requisites: independent tunability of structural properties (NP and support) and high thermomechanical stability to preserve these as-synthesized structural properties under typical reaction conditions.
To address this gap, I adapted the raspberry-colloid-templating (RCT) strategy previously developed by the Aizenberg group. In Chapter 1, I outline the RCT synthetic methodology and highlight two key design features: partial NP entrenchment into the support which confers enhanced catalytic stability against NP sintering, and synthetic modularity for independent combinatorial variations of the catalyst’s building blocks and their spatial organization from the nanoscale to macroscale. These two unique features yield thermomechanically stable RCT catalysts with numerous degrees of freedom to isolate and independently tune potential catalytic descriptors, thereby facilitating unambiguous studies to derive newfound structure–property relationships that guide future catalyst designs.
In the rest of this dissertation, I describe how I leveraged on these two key design features to employ the RCT strategy as a well-defined and synthetically robust model thermocatalytic platform to elucidate important structural insights into catalyst design that cannot be easily achieved using traditional catalyst preparation methods. Specifically, I highlight my investigations into three structural features found in practically all NP-supported catalysts: properties of NP ensembles as a collective entity, NP–support interfaces, and individual NP properties. First, I demonstrate how using pre-formed colloidal NPs, in combination with the synthetic decoupling of the NP and support formation steps in the RCT method, disentangle the effects of NP proximity (Chapter 2), a collective NP ensemble property, from the effects of NP size (Chapter 3), to independently tune catalytic activity and selectivity, respectively. Second, I illustrate how the support chemistry and NP embedding effects can be deconvoluted to accentuate catalytic contributions arising from NP–support interfacial sites (Chapter 4), while also revealing nanoscale wetting phenomena at the interface that I subsequently exploited to direct bimetallic catalyst synthesis (Chapter 5). Third, I show how the RCT method can be applied to isolate individual NP properties from (all) other potential structural descriptors to facilitate systematic evaluations into individual NPs properties. This point is exemplified through separate studies into nanoscale effects of the surface Pd ensemble sizes in dilute Pd-in-Au alloyed NPs on competitive reactant adsorption energetics (Chapter 6), and distinguishing the surface- and vapor-mediated sintering pathways of Pt and Pd diesel oxidation catalysts (Chapter 7). Finally, I summarize my work, provide an outlook on the RCT catalyst platform, and discuss future opportunities, challenges, and applications (Chapter 8).Chemistry and Chemical Biolog
Shapeshifting: A Practical Guide
No full text"Shapeshifting: A Practical Guide" explores shapeshifting as an embodied and ethically grounded practice that expands our understanding of selfhood, kinship, belonging, and care. Drawing from physical theater and play traditions such as Jacques Lecoq and InterPlay, Buddhist teachings on no-self, and animist worldviews including those of the Yukaghir hunters of Siberia, I argue that intentional shapeshifting can be a method for softening the boundaries of the self and cultivating a felt sense of relationality with other beings, whether real or imaginary.
Through both scholarly analysis and experiential inquiry, I investigate how mimetic embodiment allows practitioners to move beyond imitation into internalization: not merely “playing at” being a tree, animal, or fictional character, but temporarily being that entity from within. Shapeshifting becomes a form of "kinning"—an imaginative and physical process that reveals our interdependence with the world.
However, this practice is not without its risks. The project also considers the psychological and cultural ethics of shapeshifting, particularly when engaging with real people or culturally significant identities. In response, I explore the importance of protective rituals, humble intention, and conceptual grounding to guide safe and responsible practice.
In addition to theoretical reflection, the project includes a section devoted to shapeshifting practices I designed, both for solo exploration and group contexts. These practices offer structured, accessible ways for participants to explore the transformative potential of the work. Ultimately, shapeshifting emerges not as escapism, but as a method of coming into deeper contact with life itself. It is a method that trains us in empathy, flexibility, and moral responsiveness by means of the body.Author's Origina
Democratic Void Cycles: Echoes of January 6
No full textThis thesis addresses a comparative puzzle: whether the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol produced democratic echoes in Brazil and South Korea, and why the aftershocks diverged. Evidence from media framing, elite rhetoric, and institutional indicators confirms a diffusion effect in both countries, while showing that its trajectory is conditional.
Three filters shape outcomes. First, polarization sets receptivity; Brazil’s intense social and digital fragmentation primed audiences, while Korea’s partisan divide remained bounded by post-1987 procedural norms. Second, media structure governs translation; Brazil’s fragmented ecosystem accelerated permissive reinterpretations, while Korea’s gate-kept press initially treated the breach as uniquely American. Third, institutional guardrails determine speed and unity of response; delayed elite accountability in Brazil prolonged the crisis, while Korea’s parliament reversed emergency measures within hours and initiated impeachment within days. The theoretical contribution is the concept of permissive sanctions, the idea that impunity itself travels and lowers perceived costs of imitation.
A three-phase Signal-Echo model links broadcast, domestic translation, and consequence, and a diffusion quotient is proposed, defined as signal strength times polarization divided by guardrail robustness. The model explains why Brazil experienced a larger and longer aftershock and why Korea’s echo was brief and corrected. Policy horizons follow directly. Brazil should institutionalize agile judicial capacity and pursue depolarization. Korea should narrow emergency authorities and require prior legislative consent for deployments in the capital. The United States bears special responsibility; timely, credible accountability at home functions as external deterrence abroad, particularly where politically framed clemency could otherwise signal tolerance for breaches.Extension Studie