Financing sustainable infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean

Sustainable infrastructure investments in Latin America are still far from being mainstreamed, potentially jeopardizing progress towards the countries SDGs. Looking at 6 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru), this paper investigates the effectiveness of existing public and private sector investment vehicles in infrastructure projects, in particular through capital markets. The report overall collects information of 55 different instruments across the 6 countries and compiles a set of conclusions and recommendations both policymakers and investors could use. In most countries, capital markets instruments are ready, but often lack clear taxonomies and rules to channel sustainable investments (Brazil, Mexico, Peru); elsewhere a revision of investment regulations for pension funds, and/or for PPP investments could unlock significant investors demand for sustainable assets (Argentina, Chile, Colombia)

3D domain swapping: Structural characterizations of domain-swapped dimer proteins FVE and rhodocetin

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Optimisation of tower crane usage in planning of precast construction projects

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Collaborative Commons? A Critical Analysis of Community-Based Conservation in Kenya and Madagascar

At first, community-based conservation (CBC) seems like a brilliant idea. Combining the needs of the ecosystem with the needs of the communities living in them appears to be a win-win scenario infused with political, economic and social benefits. Although there may be considerable benefits deriving from CBC, my research in Kenya and Madagascar raised a number of questions and concerns regarding the process used to initiate a conservation area, who benefits, why they benefit, and how conservancies can be sustained into the future. I argue that the sometimes contradictory missions of conservation programs and communities fail to serve either group’s goals in a productive and effective manner. I show that the CBC is an outgrowth of neocolonialism through a historical analysis of the rise of conservation efforts in Africa as well as through the lens of postcolonial studies. Additionally, this thesis disrupts the dominant narrative of nature conservation by exploring different stories of nature presented by diverse authors and oral traditions, thereby unpacking the ways in which “nature” itself is a social construction. Using case studies from Kenya and Madagascar, I demonstrate how socially constructed ideas about nature impact contemporary environmental issues. In examining the common practice of blaming the rural poor for environmental degradation, I will ask what the role of other players are in the process. Through this analysis, the goal is to disrupt the hegemonic understanding of nature, conservation, and how humans are impacted, and impact, these relationships

Graduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2016-2017]

This catalog contains a description of the various policies, graduate programs, degree requirements, and course offerings at Florida International University during the 2016-2017 academic year.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1072/thumbnail.jp

Foreign Exchange Rate Transaction Exposure in Emerging Insurance Markets: A Model of the Egyptian Insurance Market.

Emerging insurance markets, have limited access to financial instruments that they can use to create common hedge(s) to manage foreign exchange risk. This is the first empirical study to focus on the limitations when modelling foreign exchange rate transaction exposure in emerging insurance markets. This work is based on the cash flow methodology proposed by Martin and Mauer (2003, 2005) in reference to banks, and employed by Li et al. (2009) when assessing US insurance companies. Some econometric methodological innovations have been introduced to study the limitations of modelling foreign exchange rate transaction exposure in emerging insurance markets. An extensive literature review is followed by a quantitative investigation, to answer the following research questions. 1) Is the foreign exchange transaction exposure, as measured by a fundamental (economic) method of modelling the interplay of foreign exchange rates with other economic variables, significant, for all Egyptian insurance companies? 2) Is the foreign exchange transaction exposure, as measured by a technical (statistical) way of modelling the interplay of foreign exchange rates with other economic variables, significant for all Egyptian insurance companies? 3) Is the exchange transaction exposure for the Egyptian insurance industry, as a whole, significant? Although the foreign exchange rate transaction exposure for the Egyptian insurance industry, as a whole, is insignificant (question3), the percentage of Egyptian insurers affected by foreign exchange rate transaction exposure in US dollars, estimated at the individual firm level, was found to be 22% (question 1) and 35% (question2) respectively