Browsing by Subject "Infrastructure"

The global diffusion of neoliberal economic policies is one of the most significant events in modern history. This research applies current knowledge on policy diffusion to the analysis of the diffusion of two major neoliberal urban policies among Chinese cities, namely land banking and privatization of urban infrastructures. Both policies are believed to have contributed greatly to the rapid growth of China's urban economy, and reflect the idea of capitalizing a city's tangible assets and utilizing market institutions to manage them so as to achieve economic gains.

Borrowing insights from existing diffusion theories developed by scholars from different background, this research explores the determinants of the policy innovation decisions by utilizing three theoretical models: (1) The internal determinants model, which presumes that the factors causing a local state to adopt a new policy are political, economic, and social characteristics of the local state. (2) The regional diffusion model, which posits that the geographical proximity affects diffusion by encouraging emulation and competition among neighboring states. (3) Institutional diffusion model, which proposes that a new policy may be adopted to prove the legitimacy of the organization, to cope with environment uncertainties by modeling others, to conform to the will of other organizations on which the adopters depend.

This study emphasizes the role of the Chinese states, both at the central and local levels, in building neoliberal market institutions. It pays particular attention to the effects of provincial governments' pressure, and shows that local states' dependency on higher level authorities has limited the effectiveness of such interventions. Moreover, I highlight the influence of horizontal intergovernmental relations, such as competition and emulation, on the diffusion processes, and argue that it is an important factor that has promoted the national-wide expansion of neoliberal policies. The results of this study enrich our understanding on how local policy makings are influenced by complex intergovernmental relations, and how do local states balance between local economic interests and political loyalty to higher levels when they formulate local development agenda.

In this dissertation I study the long-term effects of post-disaster reconstruction of infrastructure on economic and demographic outcomes. The effects on individuals and communities that result from shocks to existing infrastructure have not been widely explored in the economic and development literature. As some of the largest natural disasters in recent times have shown, massive destruction of infrastructure is followed by large influxes of resources aimed at the reconstruction of damaged property. For example, after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Indonesia alone received enough aid to deal with the estimated seven billion dollars in infrastructure losses. While there are studies that address how money was allocated, there is hardly any good empirical evidence that provides a causal estimate of the effect that large reconstruction programs have on targeted beneficiaries. In this dissertation I address this gap in the literature.

The context of my study is the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the most devastating natural disasters in recent years. In particular, the location for this analysis is the Indonesian province of Aceh, which was the area hardest hit by the disaster (Chapter 2). One of the main reasons why long-term impacts of post-disaster reconstruction remain an understudied topic is the lack of access to data that tracks individuals over time and across space. Having longitudinal data of this type provides a more complete picture of beneficiaries of post-disaster aid, as well as the effects of reconstruction programs on economic outcomes and demographic processes, such as migration. My dissertation addresses this concern by using a unique, population representative panel of survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), which collected extensive individual, household, and community data in Aceh, Indonesia, every year between 2005 and 2010, with an additional follow-up in 2015 (Chapter 3).

Using these data, the first question I explore empirically is an estimation of the causal effects of reconstruction of the housing stock on a multidimensional set of well-being measures (Chapter 4). First, I show that post-tsunami reconstruction was largely determined by the level of damage, regardless of pre-tsunami characteristics of communities, households, and individuals. Based on this finding, I identify the causal effects of housing reconstruction on post-disaster well-being using an individual fixed effects strategy. I show that housing reconstruction causes significant reductions in levels of post-traumatic stress reactivity, and significant increases in socioeconomic well-being. These effects are mainly concentrated after two years of housing tenure, and among those from highly damaged communities. Housing reconstruction has a positive relationship with self-rated physical health (although these estimates are not statistically significant). These results provide important causal evidence of how reconstruction of infrastructure after a natural disaster can have long-lasting, positive consequences for the recovery of survivors.

Next, I continue looking at the effects of rebuilding individual assets (i.e. the home) but turn to the analysis of migration, a key demographic process following natural disasters. Specifically, I look at migration and its relationship with housing reconstruction and well-being (Chapter 5). The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami displaced large numbers of people. In Aceh, Indonesia, an estimated 500,000 people left their communities after the disaster. In this research, we provide a demographic perspective on displacement and longer-term adaptation and recovery after a disaster. We describe patterns of mobility among tsunami survivors, including those who did not return to their origin communities, those who did return, and those who never left. We also consider mobility among those living in communities that did not suffer tsunami damage. We then examine how the likelihood of receiving housing aid varies across these subgroups. Finally, we consider how measures of subjective well-being evolve after the disaster. Results show that predictors of relocation vary significantly across individuals depending on the level of exposure of communities to the physical damage of the tsunami. Relocation decisions, and in particular staying in the pre-tsunami community, are highly related to the likelihood of benefiting from housing aid. And, changes in subjective well-being not only depend on receipt of housing aid but also on interactions between relocation decisions.

The last empirical analysis changes the focus from the reconstruction of individual assets to the reconstruction of community infrastructure (Chapter 6}), an important component of post-disaster rebuilding programs. In the aftermath of the tsunami, it is estimated that a total of 2,600 km of roads and 119 bridges needed rebuilding. In less than four years a total of 3,700 km of roads and all the destroyed (or damaged) bridges had been rebuilt \citep{indonesia2010provincial}. Roads can be an important gateway to economic development, so in this analysis I focus on estimating the economic effects of road reconstruction in post-tsunami Aceh. First, I exploit variation in timing of road reconstruction projects at the community level and, using a fixed effects strategy, I show that road reconstruction may not be enough to cause significant economic effects, but that quality of road construction matters, specifically access to all-weather roads. Further, I also show that road reconstruction that happens in combination with public works programs has additional positive effects. I provide further evidence on the effects of road reconstruction by looking at the specific case of the reconstruction of the Banda Aceh-Meulaboh road. The Banda Aceh-Meulaboh road is a good example of a project that seeks to restore large public infrastructure after a major shock to the built environment under the assumption that it would contribute to restore economic activity in the area. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I exploit changes in access to the road between 2005 and 2015. I show that gaining access to the road has positive and modest effects both on individuals and households and, in particular, on households in rural areas. I did not find any statistically significant negative effects of losing access to the road but results from this case study point that losing access may be hindering some progress, for example, to translate work opportunities into higher wages.

Taken together, results from the empirical analyses in this dissertation fill an important gap in our understanding of what happens to disaster victims in the long-run, how they benefit from reconstruction programs that rebuild both individual and community assets, and how these programs can have long-lasting consequences on economics and demographic trajectories of populations. As a result, my study not only represents an important contribution to existing literature, but it also underscores the importance of having data collection projects that account for the long-term nature of infrastructure reconstruction projects. Natural disasters are projected to become increasingly more common, and this type of data can result in empirical research, like this dissertation, that can improve our understanding of how disaster victims cope, which strategies work best and why, and create lessons that can inform disaster management and reconstruction policies that will result in successful post-disaster experiences.

This thesis sheds light on rural life in Kedu Town, southern Guizhou. Drawing from the idea of “doubling of infrastructure” (Muehlmann 2019), I see the FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) project as a channel for the state to highlight the political importance of scientific research, serving a “visible” purpose. This infrastructural project has what I call an “invisible” intention: it produces social activism at the local level, as villagers critique the politics of displacement, call for better compensation, and worry about future livelihoods in the pandemic and now post-Zero Covid policy era. Based on fieldwork and interviews, the thesis is that the FAST project unveils its “invisible” intention due to conflicts between the displaced residents and the local government. I also drawn attention to how the emergence of COVID-19 created new challenges to local livelihoods in the FAST era, revealing how the FAST project now has an increasingly complicated presence in Kedu Town.

How do people rebuild their lives, livelihoods, and community in the same location where brutal conflict has occurred? My research in San Carlos, Colombia--a rural community emerging from a decade of violence--investigates how conflict targets the built and natural environments of people's lives. Roads, bridges, buildings, and land have all been sites of violence, illustrating the blurred lines between military and civilian space. The meanings of these locations change after war. Yet, for those returning after a decade of internal displacement, these are exactly the building blocks that must be used to remake home, livelihoods, and community. I use the concept of forensic infrastructure to explore the materiality of memory and politics in war, the immediate aftermath, and long-term reconstruction.

A forensic approach to infrastructure involves understanding materials as text and tools in which politics and memory are embedded and enacted. Forms of infrastructure serve as archives of the past and stages for the practice and performance of awesome and everyday life. As both material and metaphor for interdependence, infrastructure is the physical embodiment of complex concepts such as development, modernity, progress, citizenship, and stability.

Nowhere are these concepts more contested in Colombia than San Carlos. Between 1998-2005, the FARC and ELN guerrillas, the Bloque Metro and Cacique Nutibara paramilitaries, and the armed forces fought in San Carlos over control of the country's largest hydroelectric complex and the Bogotá-Medellín highway connecting Colombia's two biggest cities. Eighty percent of the population fled. Beginning in 2005, however, after paramilitary demobilization and military victories over the FARC, people started returning to their homes. Since 2010, San Carlos has been host to innovative initiatives facilitating return. It is often portrayed in the national media as a model for return, reconstruction, and reconciliation.

While internal displacement has been a crisis in Colombia for decades, large-scale return is a new phenomenon. Little has been written about return, especially based on sustained ethnographic fieldwork. This dissertation, based on seven research trips between 2008-2015, including fifteen months of fieldwork in San Carlos and Medellín in 2011-2012, sheds light on the everyday experiences and difficulties of return--both for those who were displaced and those who remained. Rebuilding the physical spaces of connection, containment, and circulation necessary for community to function in San Carlos embodies a larger struggle over the nature of development, progress, and reparation in Colombia. I suggest return is possible in San Carlos because the fight was over mobility instead of the land itself. The same model of return will be difficult to impossible to apply in areas where monoculture agriculture or mining play a major role in conflict.

Avoiding adverse consequences of climate change requires policy, technological, and adaptation solutions. The overall theme of this dissertation is to examine the effectiveness of these solutions by exploring firms' and individuals' responses in the context of energy infrastructure investments and climate change. Chapter 1 discusses the interaction of governments' different policy actions in the energy transition. It provides empirical evidence that natural gas infrastructure expansion shifts consumer choice towards gas-powered systems and increases the cost of residential electrification. Chapter 2 studies the effects of technology upgrades and infrastructure investments in the electricity sector. It shows that enhanced electricity infrastructure can reduce electricity losses, improve service quality, and provide climate benefits. Chapter 3 explores human performance effect of heat adaptation and its implications for estimates of climate change damage. It provides some of the first empirical evidence of the magnitude of human adaptive capacity by documenting acclimatization in collegiate athletes.

In the first chapter, "Bridge or Barrier to Net Zero? Gas Infrastructure Expansion and the Cost of Electrification", I investigate the potential cost of natural gas expansion when electrification is a long-term goal. The expansion of gas infrastructure raises consumer valuation of gas water heaters relative to electric ones, significantly raising the market share and sales quantity of gas water heaters. This implies a higher cost of electrifying water heating when gas infrastructure is expanding, as the goal of electrification is to shift consumers towards electric appliances. Counterfactual simulations suggest that, with a 20% increase in gas infrastructure penetration, the cost of electrification rises from 1.4 to 2.2 billion USD, corresponding to an increase of over 50% relative to the status-quo gas infrastructure scenario. The increased cost of electrification will be weighed against both near-term environmental benefits and other consequences from natural gas expansion. The findings underscore a long-run economic burden of utilizing natural gas as a bridge fuel in the transition towards a net-zero carbon emissions future.

The second chapter, "The Economic and Environmental Effects of Making Electricity Infrastructure Excludable" (co-authored with Husnain Ahmad, Ayesha Ali, Robyn Meeks, and Javed Younas), analyzes the welfare impacts of investments in electricity distribution infrastructure. Electricity theft occurs when individuals cannot be excluded from accessing services. We study the impacts of an infrastructure upgrade in Karachi, Pakistan -- converting bare distribution wires to aerial bundled cables (ABCs) -- that was intended to prevent illegal connections. We find that ABCs reduced unbilled consumption, increasing both the number of formal utility customers and per customer usage. ABC installation also decreased the utility's annual CO2 emissions via reduced electricity generation, providing climate benefits. Resulting changes in consumer surplus vary by consumer type (previously informal versus always formal) and depend on reductions in electricity rationing and the cost of prior illegal grid connections. This study provides evidence on a path to mitigate the financial crises facing utilities in many developing countries.

The third chapter, "Heat Adaptation and Human Performance in a Warming Climate" (co-authored with Steven Sexton and Jamie T. Mullims), improves our understanding of human adaptation to climate change, which is essential for valid damage estimates and thereby, the determination of optimal stringency of mitigation efforts. Labor productivity, human capital formation, and income growth decline amid hot ambient temperatures. The implications of such temperature sensitivity for climate change damages depend upon the capacity for human adaptation to persistent temperature changes---as opposed to idiosyncratic temperature variation. In this paper, we provide some of the first empirical evidence of the magnitude of human adaptive capacity and its implications for estimates of climate change damages by documenting acclimatization in collegiate athletes. Acclimatization is an adaptation to persistent heat exposure, which is common to athletes and non-athletes, old and young. Across varied specifications of the temperature-performance relationship, we find that adaptation reduces performance losses from alternative climate change scenarios by more than 50%.

This dissertation explores the contractual dynamics between a Chinese construction company, China Hydraulic Construction Group, and its Rwandan counterpart, Rwanda’s Water and Sanitation Corporation, through a focus on a water pipeline project in Rusizi District, southwestern Rwanda. It examines how infrastructure contracts for this pipeline system were designed, negotiated, implemented, and manipulated by both parties during the construction phase of the project. While the contract agreed to by both sides apparently defined the responsibilities and obligations of each party in transparent terms and through detailed clauses, phrases, and stipulations, both parties nevertheless interpreted those terms and stipulations from their own perspective in order to turn the documents to their own purposes and interests. My ethnographic study shows that while documents certainly possess considerable coercive power to influence human transactions, at the same time they are comprised of open, mutable, manipulable words and signifiers that are subject to diverse interpretations and capable of bearing different meanings. On the one hand, the practical implementation and use of contracts and documents sometimes produces consequences that go against their original objectives. On the other hand, the implementation of documents in practical situations can produce multi-directional and indeterminate effects that generate unforeseen outcomes. Throughout this project, Rwandan clients actively utilized their knowledge, power, and social networks to impact, renegotiate, and sometimes even overturn decisions made by the Chinese company. This case study suggests that in their infrastructure collaborations with Chinese firms, these African agents are anything but passive. Here, Rwandan engineers and project managers routinely devised strategies to get their way and feed local interests in their interactions with Chinese companies. My dissertation reveals the multifaceted dynamics characterizing China-Africa infrastructure collaborations, providing a unique perspective on the complex and strategic interactions that define current China-Africa relations.