In many parts of Lebanon, residents negotiate access to basic services such as electricity and healthcare through a byzantine web of private, public and informal networks run by local political parties organized around ethnicity or sect. My dissertation, based on fieldwork condu…
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This dissertation contains three essays on the relationship between the spatial distribution of economic activity and different types of public goods. In the first essay, I study how changes in transport infrastructure affect the location decisions of firms by examining how manu…
National infrastructure form the bedrock for economic growth and social security, both of which lowers conflict risks. This encourages states and international organizations to invest heavily in post-conflict infrastructure reconstruction efforts, believing that infrastructure p…
Information technology (IT) is a catalyst for social change and requires frequent re-evaluation and updates to keep pace with current advancements. The Internet has revolutionized the world in a variety of ways, more so in under developed countries than in developing ones. The c…
Many developing countries such as Palestine are simultaneously fiscally limited and acutely water constrained. It is vital that investments in water related infrastructure provide maximum social welfare per dollar spent. Furthermore, infrastructure must be designed to perform we…
At the intersection of East and West lays a conflicted social disjuncture presented physically in the disparate sectors of Beirut, Lebanon, and revealed in the city's divergent infrastructure. The crowded roadways saturated with pedestrians, taxicabs, minibuses, and other commut…
Spending on infrastructure accounts for several percentage points of gross world product, reflecting its perceived importance to growth and development. Previous literature has made limited progress in providing unbiased estimates of its impacts, or causal evidence about policy …
This dissertation focuses on the economics of infrastructure development and public finance. The dissertation is composed of three papers: The first paper analyzes the optimal solutions for supplying electricity to national economies from both domestic as well as distant energy …
The objective of this dissertation is to assess whether the private participation in energy sector through long term contracting, such as Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) type investments, is an efficient way of promoting efficiency in the economy. To this end; the theoretical liter…
During the Kievan era (ca. 900–1240), Novgorod was the leading fur-trade center in western Eurasia. Situated in northwestern Russia, Novgorod lay along key routes connecting Northern Europe with Byzantium and the Islamic East, all of which acted as principle consumers of pelts b…
The first chapter examines, theoretically and empirically, the determinants of collective success in the maintenance of infrastructure projects. The empirical analysis employs primary data collected on 132 community-maintained infrastructure projects in Northern Pakistan. Determ…
This study examines the impact of unreliable infrastructure on industrial performance in developing countries, such as Pakistan. The research questions are: How does unreliable infrastructure--inadequate electricity; weak transport links--affect the competitiveness of large firm…
In early 1990s, government of Pakistan realized that water infrastructure was failing, and there was a sense of urgency to cope with the water scarcity, and the challenges posed worsening groundwater quality, and potential impact of climate change variability. Thus, the governme…
Emerging media are reshaping geographic connections and formations in everyday life, from Europeanization to the Arab Spring. This dissertation in cultural anthropology investigates how communication technologies such as social and mobile media were remaking the experience of sp…
Each year, rain induced slope failures cause significant damages in highway infrastructures and environments, as well as tragic losses of human lives around the world. Rainfall-induced slope failure is a common problem in areas with slope constructed on high plasticity clays. Th…
This is a dissertation about how Niamey, Niger is experienced in neighborhoods, through bodies, and around water. I examine the particular colonial and post-colonial historical processes that impacted development and distribution of Niamey's water infrastructure, and trace shift…
This dissertation builds a socio-cultural biography of Paris's Gare du Nord, Europe's largest railway station, from its transnational aims to connect Europe in the nineteenth century, to early twentieth century strikes, to twenty-first century immigration and riots. It shows how…
The study seeks to explore entrepreneurial capacity building within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by focusing on the subject of the teaching and leading of entrepreneurship within the higher education sector. Specifically, the main purpose of the study is to examine the mainstream…
The American architect, Nicolas Negroponte, known for his work on the shift between the physical and digital states of value, critiques modern society’s means of consumption within the digital economy. He states that “the change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable,…