How is Culture paving the path for Women's Rights?

In an emerging literature, informal institutions or culture has been defined based on four important traits - TRUST, RESPECT, CONTROL and OBEDIENCE. This paper investigates the question - do informal institutions, defined by these traits, enhance women's political, social and economic rights? A simple empirical analysis reveals that informal institutions or culture is a determinant of women's rights.Informal Institutions, Culture, Women's Rights

Is culture a determinant of financial development?

The paper investigates the missing link in the literature – whether informal institutions, or what is known as culture, can affect the level of financial development for a country? Our hypothesis stresses that the cultural dimensions of a country can have an impact on its financial set up. We consider multiple dimensions of culture, identified in the literature by Tabellini, to test our hypothesis. As culture evolve in the form of greater trust, control and other traits, individuals’ attitudes towards financial market change, and they engage in greater financial transactions. This, in turn, leads to better financial development. Using quantile estimation technique for a cross-section of 90 countries we find that culture significantly influences the level of financial development. To ensure the robustness of our findings we use Hofstede’s cultural dimension-‘uncertainty avoidance index’ as an alternative measure for culture. Our results hold for multiple measures of financial development.Informal Institutions, Financial Development, Culture, Social capital

Foreign Direct Investment, Financial Development and Political Risks

Financial development is definitely a determinant of the extent of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow into an economy. Yet, the contribution of financial development (FD) can be dependent on the political situation of the recipient nation. Higher political stability aids financial institutions to reap the benefits of FDI efficiently. Our paper empirically investigates the role of political risk in the association of FDI and FD. Using a panel of 97 countries, we show the relationship to be strictly non-linear. The impact of FD on FDI becomes negative beyond a threshold level of FD. However, we do find political risk factors to be affecting the relationship by altering the threshold level of financial development.Foreign Direct Investment, Financial Development, Political Risks

The Role of Foreign Direct Investment on Press Freedom

In our paper we establish foreign direct investment (FDI) as a major determinant of media freedom. Global integration can strengthen the media sector financially, make it technologically enhanced and can also improve the economic environment as a whole. This, in turn, would work towards the enhancement of media freedom. The sample includes high, middle and low income economies. Using a panel of 115 countries over a period of 20 years, our results reveal that FDI is an absolute necessity for a free and efficient media. The results are robust to various alternate specifications and inclusion of additional control variables.Foreign Direct Investment; Press Freedom; Institutions

(Un)attractor black holes in higher derivative AdS gravity

We investigate five-dimensional static (non-)extremal black hole solutions in higher derivative Anti-de Sitter gravity theories with neutral scalars non-minimally coupled to gauge fields. We explicitly identify the boundary counterterms to regularize the gravitational action and the stress tensor. We illustrate these results by applying the method of holographic renormalization to computing thermodynamical properties in several concrete examples. We also construct numerical extremal black hole solutions and discuss the attractor mechanism by using the entropy function formalism.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures; V2: comments on holographic renormalization method and ack. added, misprints corrected, expanded reference

Three essays on political economy, economic *development and capital flows

This dissertation presents three chapters on the role of political institutions in the allocation of assets and on the dynamics in the corporate taxation policies of multinational firms from a political economy perspective. Chapter 2 revisits the role of the political regime on asset returns in an International Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) framework. Chapter 3 explores the linkages between foreign aid and the quality of political institutions of a nation. Chapter 4 adopts a political economy framework and tries to investigate the impacts of taxation policies adopted by the multinationals on domestic welfare of nations.;Chapter 2 titled, Effect of the Political Regime on Asset Returns in Emerging Markets: An Empirical Investigation explores the linkages of political institutions and stock market development of emerging economies. Using a Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) framework and a sample of 17 Emerging countries, the results show that political regimes play a significant role in the average stock return of assets. Democratic institutions provide an environment with secured property rights, lower risks of expropriation by the government, well developed capital markets and favorable investment conditions. The results suggest that better political institutions have a negative relationship with asset return conditional on the fact that the nationalization of assets has not occurred. Firms in autocratic regimes have higher average returns that exceed the required returns which is consistent with the fact that autocratic institutions are more prone to political and financial risks. In CAPM framework average returns equal required returns over a long enough period of time. The fact that the average returns are higher than the required returns in autocratic countries can partly be explained by the fact that the nationalization of the assets, for which investors require insurance premium, had not yet occurred in my sample. An alternative model to the standard CAPM risk model is considered to establish robustness of the results. Additionally, an unbalanced panel of 30 emerging countries is considered. The results are qualitatively identical for all specifications.;How does foreign aid affect recipient countries\u27 political institutions? Chapter 3 titled, The Amplification Effect: Foreign Aid\u27s Impact on Political Institutions tries to find an answer to this question. Two competing hypotheses offer contradictory predictions. The first sees aid, when delivered correctly, as an important means of making politically-centralized recipient countries more democratic. The second sees aid as a corrosive force on recipient country political institutions that makes them more dictatorial. Our paper offers a third hypothesis about how aid affects recipients\u27 political institutions we call the amplification effect. We argue that foreign aid has neither the power to make dictatorships more democratic nor to make democracies more dictatorial. Instead, aid only amplifies the existing political institutions of recipient countries. We investigate this hypothesis using a panel that covers 73 countries between 1975 and 2003. Our findings support the amplification effect. Aid strengthens democracy in already democratic countries and dictatorship in already dictatorial regimes. It does not, however, alter the trajectory of political institutions in democratic or dictatorial recipient nations.;Chapter 4 titled, The Role of Political Economy in Corporate Taxation explores the impacts of Formula Apportionment (FA) taxation policy, in the presence of a political economy. The specific formula used to allocate profits of multinational firms for tax purposes will affect the firm\u27s incentive to operate in the country. As a result the choice of a particular formula will also end up having an impact on local consumers, local government and the multinational itself. The different formulas assign different weights to the capital, sales and labor shares of the multinational corporation. Suppose that the choice of the formula is the result of a political process. Which formula would then be chosen by governments representing the interests of domestic consumers, which one would be chosen to represent its own interest and which ones would be chosen to represent the interest of the multinational firm? We present a theoretical model that provides rigorous answers to these questions

Informal Sector and Corruption: An Empirical Investigation for India

India is a country characterized by a huge informal sector. At the same time, it is a country where the extent of corruption in every sector is remarkably high. Stifling bureaucratic interference and corruption at every stage of economic activities is one of the main reasons behind high participation in informal and unregulated sectors. For economies characterized by high inequality and poverty, a useful tool for the government to pacify social unrest, is to choose a lower level of governance allowing substantial corruption in the system. Based on a study of 20 Indian states, we empirically show that higher corruption increases level of employment in the informal sector. Further, our analysis also shows that for higher levels of lagged state domestic product, the positive impact of corruption on the size of the informal sector is nullified.informal sector, corruption, state domestic product, governance, India

Near-Horizon Analysis of η/s\eta/s

It is now well understood that the coefficient of shear viscosity of boundary fluid can be obtained from the horizon values of the effective coupling of transverse graviton in bulk spacetime. In this paper we observe that to find the shear viscosity coefficient it is sufficient to know only the near horizon geometry of the black hole spacetime. One does not need to know the full analytic solution. We consider several examples including non-trivial matter (dilaton, gauge fields) coupled to gravity in presence of higher derivative terms and calculate shear viscosity for both extremal and non-extremal black holes only studying the near horizon geometry. In particular, we consider higher derivative corrections to extremal R-charged black holes and compute $\eta/s$ in presence of three independent charges. We also consider asymptotically Lifshitz spacetime whose dual black hole geometry can not be found analytically. We study the near horizon behaviour of these black holes and find $\eta/s$ for its dual plasma at Lifshitz fixed point.Comment: 17 page