PhD

This research investigates industrial regional growth and its determinants in Mexico from 1993 to 2003. Strategies of local economic development, usually based on industrial promotion, require knowing main determinants of industrial regional growth. The case study shows that there is no variable with a systematically strong effect for a ....

This dissertation examines state-society relationships in Turkey through the lens of efforts to promote sustainable development at the local level. To this end, it first lays out a theoretical framework to analyze the political economy of local sustainable development, for which purpose the Gramscian state theory and its applications to ....

Why do people in some places experience far higher levels of social development than others? In a world in which millions of people, particularly in developing countries, continue to lead lives plagued by illiteracy and ill-health, understanding the conditions under which social development does or does not occur is of critical importance to poli ....

Many rural communities across America face several obstacles in the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) initiatives and struggle with the best approaches for leveraging these elements into an economic development strategy. These obstacles include: lack of quality local ICTs infrastructure, funding, inabil ....

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is a large, nearly intact ecosystem with significant protection that has often been considered an ideal location to examine coupled human-environment interactions due to the region's complex mosaic of private and public lands, competing natural resource uses, and rapid population growth. A transit ....

The Harry S. Truman Dam and Reservoir project is of immense size. Many thousands of tons of raw materials were required to complete the construction of the dam and relocations. Millions of dollars were spent to acquire land, compensate those who were displaced, and to pay those who were employed in the planning, purchasing, coordinating ....

In recent decades, debate over how to promote water conservation in irrigation has increased as water has become scarcer and competition for water has increased - between neighboring locales, between farms and cities, and between people and their environment. The irrigation debate is particularly salient as agricultural water use is dir ....

There have been extensive debates on the factors that influence local policy decisions. Although many researchers have contributed to uncovering various influences such as political, economic, institutional, and demographic factors on local policy decisions, however, the concept of QoL rarely has used in extant literature. Local governm ....

This study investigates how tourism affects the quality of life (QOL) of residents in tourism destinations that vary in the stage of development. The proposed model in this study structurally depicts that satisfaction with life in general derives from the satisfaction with particular life domains. Overall life satisfaction is derived fr ....

This is a comprehensive study of regional Foreign Direct Investment in Chile and its relationship with the development of Chilean regions. Following a process of steady foreign capitals flows to Chile, the link of this phenomenon with the growth of Chilean Regions are explored in three main chapters. The first part explores the main det ....

This research investigates the relationship between municipal annexation and local government's financial condition. It addresses a significant gap in the literature by focusing on the roles of local government revenue structure and land use situations in affecting annexation's fiscal implications. The major research question is how the ....

Since the early 1990s, Saudi Arabia has placed great emphasis on political and administrative reforms in order to strengthen local authorities and create more opportunities for citizen participation in decision-making. Therefore, it is important to inquire to what extent the intended goals and objectives of these reforms have been achie ....

Beginning in the 1970s, low-wage manufacturing areas in advanced industrialized countries experienced deindustrialization and worker dislocation as transnational corporations left for sites of lower-cost labor. In response, communities sought to rebuild their economies and pursue new employment opportunities in the restructured labor ma ....

This dissertation explores the interconnection between land ownership inequality and functioning of rural factor markets in Turkey. It investigates the effectiveness and efficiency of land and labor markets in generating and distributing economic opportunities within agriculture and, thereby, in reducing rural inequality. In addition, t ....