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Essays on the economics of conflict and development
No full textDefence date: 07 June 2023Examining Board: Prof. David Levine (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Thomas Crossley (European University Institute, co-supervisor); Prof. Saumitra Jha (Stanford Graduate School of Business); Prof. Dominic Rohner (University of Lausanne)The three chapters of this thesis focus on matters related to development economics, and conflict in particular. In the first chapter I examine whether people change their behaviour to adhere to rules imposed on them by rebels during occupation, and whether this effect persists after the occupation has ended. Moreover, I consider sources of heterogeneity that can drive these changes in the behaviour of people. Results suggests that people adjust behaviour to adhere to rules both during and after but that effect is very heterogeneous, especially in the longer run. Though there is evidence indicating that the presence of coca increases violence, changes to the price of coca products can have both negative and positive effects on conflict. The second chapter considers resource-fuelled conflict. Using novel data on local prices of coca products, production and supply chains, this study disentangles the returns to employment in the agricultural sector (cultivators) and employment in the criminal sector (militias and armed groups). This paper thereby identifies each agents’ respective exposure to price changes, and estimates the effect of such changes on violence. An increase in income from coca results in a reduction in violence, and this reduction comes with an increase in school attendance for rural households. An increase in the objective prize leads to more violence. Moreover, armed groups flock to the area that witnesses an such an increase, resulting in higher levels of competition which coincides with the timing of the increase in violence. Additionally, increases in expected returns to joining a militia can potentially lead to a higher school dropout rate among children. The final chapter explores the effect of alliance membership on defense spending in response to a threat. This paper focuses on two types of states (small and large) and how alliance membership shapes their response to threat. Using the synthetic control method, I find that both types of states have stronger (positive) response to threat as NATO members, compared to if they would not have been part of the alliance.1 Education during conflict: the effect of territorial occupation by insurgents on schooling --
2 Cultivation and competition in Colombia: disentangling the effects of coca price changes on violence --
3 Estimating the Alliance Effect: a Synthetic Control Approach --
A. Appendix to chapter 1 --
B. Appendix to chapter 2 --
C. Appendix to chapter 3 --Chapter 3 'Estimating the alliance effect : a synthetic control approach' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Estimating the alliance effect : a synthetic control approach' (2022) in the journal 'Defence studies'
A post-Atlantic Europe
No full textPublished online: 02 February 2026The burden-sharing debate under way within the NATO alliance assumes that European security is a public good that the United States pays for and from which Europeans benefit. The reality is more complicated given the threats Europeans face. The situation is also complicated by the fact that the US may no longer be so heavily invested in providing for European security. Europeans will need to adapt to this changing geopolitical environment, and the European Union will play a crucial role in that adaptation. Only the EU can help Europeans mount the kind of ‘whole of society’ effort needed to respond to the wide range of threats they face, including consistent pressure from adversaries like Russia that seek to destabilise European politics and undermine European solidarity. And only the EU can coordinate with key partners and allies to ensure Europeans have access to the resources they need to achieve strategic autonomy. The new European strategy goes far beyond redressing the balance for burden-sharing within the NATO alliance by seeking to prepare Europeans for the efforts that will be needed to ensure their own security even without assistance from the United States
New consumer desires : consumption in fifteenth century Catalonia. The cases of Barcelona, Vic and Amer
Get PDFDefence date: 24 March 2023Examining Board: Luca Molà (European University Institute / Warwick University); Regina Grafe (European University Institute); Pere Ortí i Gost (Universitat de Girona); Peter Stabel (Universiteit Antwerpen)In 1952, at the Symposium on the Renaissance held at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Roberto Lopez claimed that, after a long period of economic expansion, the Italian economy experienced a ‘great depression’ starting in the third decade of the fourteenth century and lasting until 1530. During this period, the Italian economy experienced a contraction in the aggregate output of all its economic activities and wealth was increasingly concentrated into fewer hands. According to the Genovese scholar, the economic difficulties of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would have encouraged the Renaissance elites to invest in land, art and culture. This kind of ‘investment in culture’ was aimed at obtaining social status at a time when business opportunities and profits were declining. His claims challenged the conventional belief that art and culture could only flourish in prosperous times, by linking the artistic splendor of the Renaissance to an economic depression. However, Roberto Lopez went even further and declared that the pursuit of cultural activities would have led the Renaissance elite to neglect their economic affairs, which would have ultimately resulted in the ruin and bankruptcy of many businesses and, above all, the Medici bank. The idea that the Renaissance was a period of economic decline was soon challenged by Carlo Cipolla. While Roberto Lopez has seen a steep decline of the per capita trading volume and a reduction of the total cloth output which surpassed the fall of the European population, Carlo Cipolla believed that the decline of certain industries in traditional manufacturing regions was the result of the industrial development of peripheral European regions.Chapter 5 'Silk, Luxury and Social Emulation' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as chapter 'Ni 'tallar ne vestir' paños de seda : las leyes suntuarias y el consumo de seda en Barcelona (1400-1460)' (2020) in the book 'Ciudades mediterráneas : dinámicas sociales y transformaciones urbanas en el Antiguo Régimen'
Networked responses to misinformation : a deliberative and regulatory assessment
No full textDefence date: 04 October 2023Examining Board: Prof. Peter Drahos (European University Institute); Prof. Nicolas Petit (European University Institute); Prof. Joris van Hoboken (University of Amsterdam; Vrije Univeristeit Brussles); Prof. Natasha Tusikov (York University)This thesis uses a systemic deliberative democracy framework to evaluate responses to misinformation along the actors, behaviours, content and diet vectors. In stemming the tide of online falsehoods, we can aim for a system that provisionally recognizes diligent reporting and gives credit to social discovery,shielding it from both domination and manipulation, while ensuring that popular claims are properly scrutinised and demanding for citizens an opportunity to consider multiple sides of an issue. Digital platforms provide scalable infrastructure, yet scarce attention and moderation resources to their users, communities and business partners. They are caught in a web of conflicting demands to regulate their complementors, some of whom push back by enlisting public opinion, the state and other platforms. Influential industries want a better bargain and partisans seek to pre-emptively defang platforms. The latter in turn bestow privileges and rule-exemptions, while pursuing collaboration amongst themselves and external alliances. Nevertheless, I argue that the platforms’ infrastructural and regulatory roles can be harnessed towards better deliberative outcomes. I followed emerging networksthat seek to engage and countervail platform power: journalists setting up credibility initiatives, or pivoting to independent fact-checking, and researchers chasing platform manipulation. They promote the public interest, embracing clear standards and open membership. I suggest two existing platform practices, tiering and tethering, for public regulation to reshape. Tiering means distinct regimes for different on-platform actors. I argue tiers can play complementary deliberative roles, for instance pairing inclusive content to epistemically valuable scrutiny. Modelled on tripartism, tethering should link platforms to independent networks, providing complementary discursive justification and insulating platforms from hegemonic demands. In return, these networks carve an area of self-governance independent from platform power. I discern a double gateway channelling platforms’ experimentation with technical and design solutions together with independent domain expertise and dedication towards discursive justification
The proportionality defence in European patent law
No full textDefence date: 26 May 2023Examining Board: Prof. Peter Drahos, (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Urška Šadl, (European University Institute); Prof. Ansgar Ohly, (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München); Prof. Marco Ricolfi, (Università degli Studi di Torino)This thesis investigates the limitations that the proportionality test imposes on a patentee's entitlement to injunctive relief under European Union (EU) law. It has long been established orthodoxy that a patentee whose valid patent is infringed is entitled to injunctive relief requiring immediate termination of the infringement. In recent years, however, that orthodoxy has come under fire. Industry stakeholders and legal scholars worry that in some circumstances such injunctions can have disproportionate effects. Courts seem receptive to these concerns. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has emphasised that courts must make case-by-case assessments when issuing remedies for intellectual property (IP) infringements. National courts have followed suit and acknowledged that exceptions exist to the patentee's entitlement to injunctive relief. The tide is therefore clearly turning, but little is known about this proportionality test's substance. This thesis makes the case for a European proportionality framework with three dimensions: overreach, abuse, and conflicts with rights of third parties. Underlying each element of the framework is the principle that a patentee's effective sphere of exclusivity should be commensurate with their inventive contribution. The framework's scope is circumscribed not only by this principle but also by the problems with contemporary patent law that proportionality can legitimately be called upon to resolve. It derives from EU law and its principal legal basis is Directive 2004/48/EC (the Enforcement Directive). The ambition of this thesis is to offer a proportionality framework that is workable for patent courts, predictable for litigants, effective in practice, and in conformity with EU law. It hopes to be a source of inspiration in years to come for courts and scholars as they grapple with the limits that proportionality must set on patent enforcement
Objects on the move : the material culture of travel in the western mediterranean (1530-1640)
No full textDefence date: 10 October 2023Examining Board: Guillaume Calafat, (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne); Giancarlo Casale, (European University Institute); Mercedes García-Arenal, (CSIC, Madrid); Giorgio Riello, (European University Institute)This thesis explores travel in the Western Mediterranean through a material culture perspective from the 1530s to the 1640s, a period in which the Ottoman influence in the region, among other factors, stimulated novel kinds of human and non-human mobility. Moving away from the sole reliance on travel accounts which has often characterised studies of early modern mobility, this thesis argues that travellers’ things and their interactions with the material world were the subject of intense scrutiny on the part of diverse organisations and individuals in the region, which resulted in the production of a wide array of records. Drawing on these documents, this thesis provides an innovative perspective on mobility in the Western Mediterranean. How did men and women prepare for trans-Mediterranean journeys and how did they materially adapt to mobility? What did travel to the Dār al-Islam (dominions of Islam) mean in practice for Christian travellers, and vice-versa? In regard to travellers’ things, did the concept of ‘trans-religious travel’ even have any meaning? This thesis puts forward a double comparative framework for exploring the practical underpinnings of Mediterranean journeys. First, it examines how travellers’ possessions were recorded across different types of documents, which were composed to control, attest of, and protect their belongings: customs records, judicial proceedings, chancellery archives, and the records of sanitary boards and treasuries. Second, by using documents crafted in two monarchies whose attitudes and relationships towards North Africa and the wider Muslim world have always been perceived as markedly distinct, this thesis compares the various ways in which mobile objects were recorded across political and cultural boundaries. Analysing travellers’ belongings as an emic concern in the early modern period, this thesis addresses debates intrinsic to the study of the early modern Mediterranean. An exploration of travellers’ things and interactions with the material world challenges prevalent understandings of the relations between northern and southern shores, while allowing us to question the transformative character of human and non-human movement on the Mediterranean region itself. In parallel, exploring travel through a material culture perspective enables us to characterise Mediterranean mobility as a learned practice, requiring specific kinds of expertise. Beyond the specific field of Mediterranean studies, this thesis provides an innovative framework for thinking of materiality and mobility in a connected way by addressing the gap between microhistories of mobility and the so-called ‘global turn’ in material culture
Culture in European Union law : between market and society
No full textDefence date: 22 September 2023Examining Board: Prof. Hans-W. Micklitz (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Loïc Azoulai (Sciences Po Paris, external supervisor); Prof. Bruno de Witte (European University Institute, University of Maastricht); Prof. Natali Helberger (University of Amsterdam)This dissertation argues that it is by accounting for culture in its intangible and societal aspects that EU law can address the critique as to the standardising effect of the cultural industries. This is because only if the law can detach itself from a purely market rationale and interact with the societal sphere can it account for broader cultural and societal considerations. The dissertation analyses the application of European state aid law and audiovisual media services regulation to culture and sport to explore the extent to which EU law perceives intangible aspects of culture when it regulates cultural goods and services in the internal market. Intangible aspects of culture are broader cultural and societal implications attached to cultural goods and services. They include anthropological considerations around behaviours and traditions, or societal considerations, where culture relates to other concepts such as identity, community building or intercultural dialogue. The thesis identifies three techniques through which EU law accounts for intangible aspects of culture when regulating culture. Each technique is associated with a role of culture in EU law, and a legal notion of culture. The first technique is the accommodation of culture, which corresponds to the role of culture as an economic sector wherein the relevant legal concept is ‘works’. The second is the development of a narrative, which is attached to the role of culture in disseminating a European cultural dimension and the associated legal concept is that of cultural diversity. The third is the EU’s approach to the notion of culture in a broader sense, which corresponds to the role of culture as part of growth and the concept of the cultural sector.Chapter 5 'The reach of the societal narrative in the field of sport' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as chapter 'Sport beyond the market? : sport, law and society in the European Union' (2024) in the book 'The European roots of the lex sportiva : how Europe rules global sport'
The Union of Numbers : international statistical harmonization and the European communities 1950-1979
No full textDefence date: 10 March 2023Examining Board: Prof. Corinna R. Unger (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Federico Romero (European University Institute, second Reader); Prof. Liesbeth van de Grift (Utrecht University); Prof. Heinrich Hartmann (Helmut Schmidt Universität)This thesis analyses how ongoing European economic integration affected practices of international statistical harmonization at the level of the European Communities between the 1950s and late 1970s. This study is made up of two parts. The first part analyzes the history of the Statistical Offices of the European Communities and its predecessor, the Statistical Division of the European Community of Coal and Steel within the context of ongoing European integration. The second part analyses and assesses the activities and contributions of the SOEC through three different case studies in the fields of household budget research, international frameworks for national accounting, and surveys into the structure of agricultural holdings. Through these analyses, this thesis argues that international statistical harmonization at the level of the European Communities ran parallel to the development of the European Communities themselves both with regard to the statistical subfields that the EC engaged with as well as the strategies through which the EC and SOEC engaged with them. Furthermore, this thesis shows that throughout the 1960s and 1970s the SOEC contributed to international statistical harmonization by manifesting itself as a hub between the DGs of the European Communities, national statistical offices, and international statistical offices
The electoral consequences of socio-economic inequalities
No full textDefence date: 29 September 2023Examining Board: Prof. Juho Härkönen (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Nonna Mayer (Sciences Po, external co-supervisor); Prof. Ellen M. Immergut (European University Institute); Prof. Tarik Abou-Chadi (University of Oxford)Growing evidence suggests that increasing socio-economic inequality fosters the electoral success of the far right. Yet the exact socio-economic drivers of support for these parties still cause debate among scholars, as individual-level studies provide limited causal support for the role of economic hardship. The present dissertation addresses this debate in three different ways. Chapter 3 demonstrates that far-right parties are particularly successful among social classes whose economic status – meaning their objective economic position within the social hierarchy – has worsened over time, based on ESS and EU-SILC data. In Chapter 4, my co-author and I analyze class voting patterns in Europe from an intergenerational perspective, by investigating how social mobility influences voting choices, based on ESS-DEVO data. Chapter 5 provides evidence that economic decay causes a far-right response most likely in municipalities with stronger place-based community rootedness, which I measure based on a factor analysis exploiting a variety of data sources including administrative records and phone directory data. This dissertation reveals a number of socio-economic drivers of the success of the radical right. Farright voters are citizens that have experienced a relative decline in their social class’s economic circumstances over time compared to the rest of society. It is also those that have seen their town suffer from long-term economic decline but are not willing or ready to move somewhere else. It is not those who have seen a decline in their absolute material circumstances, or those who find themselves in a worse situation compared to their parents. To achieve these results, it is crucial to adopt a group-level, relative, and dynamic research approach – unlike extant literature. These studies suggest that future research on the drivers of far-right voting should further explore the role of the subjective dimension, prior beliefs, and additional sources of socio-economic inequality
Salafism in Tunisia : trajectories of political (dis)engagement (1970-2021)
No full textDefence date: 27 June 2023Examining Board: Prof. Olivier Roy, (EUI, supervisor); Prof. Stéphane Lacroix, (Sciences Po Paris, external supervisor); Prof. Asef Bayat, (University of Illinois); Prof. Simone Tholens, (EUI, John Cabot University)This dissertation sets out to explain why and how Salafis choose to participate in institutional politics after the Arab revolutions. Existing explanations relying on the opportunity-inclusion approach cannot account for the variation in pathways taken by different Salafi groups facing the same structural opportunities. This is because they overlook motivations to mobilise (the subjective why), reasons to choose one form of mobilisation over another (the subjective how), and the right timing to do so (the subjective when). I argue that the alternative is to trace the genealogies of the different Salafi groups in the long term to explain their respective preference and choice for a specific form of mobilisation before and after the revolution. Only by reconnecting and articulating the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Salafi scene can one make sense of its post-2011 transformations. I propose to do so through a comparative case study of three Salafi groups in Tunisia, a country that experienced a decade-long process of democratisation (2011–2021) that is unique in the Arab world: the Salafi-Jihadi revolutionary group Ansar al-Shariʿa, the political Salafi group Jabhah Islamiyya (later Jabhat al-Islah party), and a group of scholastic sheikhs joining the electoral coalition Itilaf al-Karama. My analysis contributes not only to understanding how Salafism took root in the country but also how it crystallised into different currents that engaged into diverging trajectories of political (dis)engagement. Key to understanding actors’ trajectories is their respective (subjective) perception of the revolution and their respective interactions with the Islamist current embodied by Ennahdha, a pivotal Islamic and governmental actor. Tracing actors’ respective genealogies in the long-term thus sheds light on their distinct understanding of the political, ultimately leading to identifying different models of political Salafism and politicisation trajectories. The diversity of trajectories does not prevent, however, a certain convergence towards post-Salafism, understood as the revision of Salafis’ modalities of engagement with both state and society towards non-exclusivism and the prevalence of political over religious objectives.Introduction and Chapter 7 'From Movement to Party—Why and How al-Jabhah alIslamiyya Became Jabhat al-Islah ' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article ' Opportunity, ideology, and Salafi pathways of political activism in Tunisia' (2020) in the journal 'Third World thematics : a TWQ journal'