The Impact of Environmental Education on Environmental and Renewable Energy Technology Awareness: Empirical Evidence from Colombia

This paper empirically investigates to what extent environmental education (EE) at school can explain variation in environmental literacy of 15-year-olds in Colombia, while controlling for several other student- and school-level confounding factors. We use a two-level nested model, where the individual observations are nested within schools. Based on the maximum likelihood estimation method, we estimate a linear mixed model which contains both fixed effects and random effects. Our empirical results only provide weak evidence that environmental education can promote a higher level of environmental awareness. The relationship between environmental education and awareness of renewable energy technologies (RETs) is even weaker. Our findings therefore suggest that environmental education should not be considered a magic bullet in promoting environmental literacy among students. Additionally, we find more reliable predictors for environmental awareness than for awareness of RETs. Overall, the socio-economic status, stronger student science abilities, parent characteristics, and a few school-level characteristics such as quality of education resources and school ownership (public versus private) seem to be decisive factors for varying levels of environmental literacy among students in Colombia

Do authoritarian regimes receive more Chinese development finance than democratic ones? Empirical evidence for Africa.

This study is part of an emerging literature that aims to shed light on China's development finance activities in Africa using quantitative estimation techniques. This paper empirically investigates whether African authoritarian regimes receive more Chinese development finance than democratic ones. I use four different measures of democracy/autocracy which allows me to check whether my results depend on the specific indicator chosen. The OLS results suggest that Chinese development finance does not systematically flow to more authoritarian countries, controlling for strategic, economic, political, institutional and geographic confounding factors. The results are not driven by the specific democracy indicator used in the analysis. The findings remain virtually unchanged if I reduce the sample to Sub-Saharan Africa only. Furthermore, the results stand up to several robustness checks, including FE, RE and instrumental variable estimation

U.S. and Soviet foreign aid during the Cold War: A case study of Ethiopia

This study provides a historical perspective of Ethiopia's position in the international aid game at the Horn of Africa during the Cold War era (1945-1991). The main conclusions of this study are threefold. First, the countries of Ethiopia and Somalia became classic examples of pawns in Cold War politics. The two superpowers, the United States of America (USA) and the Soviet Union, switched sides to support countries to which they had been previously furnishing assistance at the apex of the Cold War. Second, recipient governments are able to use international development assistance as a tool to implement as much of their policy agenda as possible. Both the Imperial Government of Ethiopia (1941-1974) and the Ethiopian communist government (1974-1990) aimed at maximising external financial resources while minimising the amount of loss of sovereignty over the policy agenda. Third, the 1984-86 famine in the Horn of Africa region convincingly highlights the moral dilemma that the international donor community faced when assisting non-democratic recipient states. Ethiopia's history has provided two valuable lessons for the successive Ethiopian Government during the post-Cold War era: (i) the extent to which a lack of economic development and widespread death caused by famine contributed to the demise of both Ethiopian governments during the Cold War era; (ii) the extent to which large financial and military dependence of both the imperial government and the communist government on one major ally (USA and Soviet Union, respectively) during the Cold War played a decisive part in the overthrow of both governments

Identification and validation of biomarkers for Autism Spectrum Disorders: towards a shared understanding between academia, industry and regulatory authorities

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