VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The political economy of economic diversification in Nigeria

As Africa’s largest economy and its most populous country, over a decade of rapid economic growth in Nigeria contributed to the 'Africa Rising' narrative. However, like many African commodity exporters, this economic growth, billions of dollars in oil earnings and electoral democracy have not translated into a diversified and industrial economy. This study examines why the Nigerian economy remains so dependent on oil and is non-industrial, which I argue are economic and development outcomes of specific policy choices constrained by Nigeria’s institutional configuration or the political settlement. In this endeavour, my central preoccupation is with the political processes of decision making which at any point in time favour one policy choice over the other in resource-rich and plural societies such as Nigeria, and the economic and development outcomes of these policy choices. I employ the political settlements analytical framework to unveil these political processes and the conditions they create in which certain policies are preferred over others. This entails an examination of the causal relationship within the three variables of 'constraints', 'policies' and 'economic and development outcomes'. I argue that understanding Nigeria's challenges of economic diversification requires an examination of its political settlement to identify horizontal (elite competition), vertical (societal agitations for resource redistribution) and external (oil shocks) constraints on a ruling coalition, and the specific economic policy responses each constraint generates. Essentially, my research explains how policy makers are constrained to pursue certain courses of action over others, and the outcomes of these policies on economic growth and the structural transformation of production, exports and government revenue. In the Nigerian context, the study also examines how sub-national and regional differentiation in the distribution of growth in states like Lagos and Kano affect future political processes and their policy outcomes. The thesis draws from multiple data sources, including economic data, semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders, documentary sources, and participant and non-participant observation.

Keywords: Economic Development
Extractive Industries
Institutions
Governance
Economic Reform
Natural Resources
Political Settlements
Advisor: Mustapha, R
Essays in political finance and corporate reputation

This dissertation consists of three essays which examine topics in finance, political science and corporate reputation.
The first essay investigates the movement of individuals between government positions and private sector employment in the United States. We study how such movements influence federal government contracting decisions and stock market returns. We show that the firms which will soon hire government officials receive valuable government contracts, beat consensus earnings forecasts, and outperform in the stock market. Managers of these firms can successfully forecast future firm earnings that come as a surprise to equity analysts. Our findings support a quid pro quo hypothesis, in that firms hire government officials in exchange for valuable government contracts.
In the second essay I analyse how the committee seniority system in the United States House of Representatives fosters shifts in federal government contracts towards districts of senior committee members. These shifts induce heterogeneity in firm-level investment and hiring activities, future profitability and long-run stock market returns. They also drive sizable investment spillovers through local supply chains and influence future election results. I show that an investment strategy that exploits the ramifications of committee seniority on local corporate activities generates abnormal stock market returns up to 7.03% per year.
Finally, in the last essay we undertake an analysis of the value that the stock market attaches to consumer reputation. Using an extensive database of brand imagery surveys, we capture consumers' perceptions of firms and their products in a small number of key factors and show that the stock market attaches considerable value to them. We also examine whether the stock market values consumer reputation correctly and record evidence that it does not always do so, particularly for firms with good value for money products, and during recessions and periods of weak investor sentiment. These results are confirmed by earnings forecast errors of equity analysts. The trading behaviour of investors suggests that it is retail investors who are particularly prone to misprice consumer reputation during such periods.

Advisor: Mayer, C
Ozsoylev, H
Working memory in healthy ageing

This thesis is concerned with the age-related changes in working memory (WM), and the inter-individual differences in cognitive and neural mechanisms that correspond to healthy versus poor ageing of WM function. The first half of this thesis focusses on the age-related decline in WM and whether preserved top-down attentional control could mitigate such deficits. In Chapter 2, I present a functional MRI study showing that older adults reliably recruit brain networks that subserve cognitive control, which work in concert with the task relevant sensory areas during effective selective WM. In Chapter 3, I show that older adults retain flexible control over WM representations, and this ability corresponded to the reliable recruitment of neural signals of orienting attention qualitatively similar to those observed in younger adults. Magnetoencephalographic recordings showed that the neural dynamics during orienting attention within WM was predictive of good performance, demonstrating that the more efficient the process of orienting within WM to select the target item, the better the memory representation can be preserved for upcoming behaviour. In the second half of this thesis, I explored whether WM for affective content has a special status in healthy ageing. In Chapter 4, I developed an emotional WM precision task to measure WM abilities for emotional content appropriate for elderly adults. In Chapter 5, I tested a group of young and older adults on WM and perceptual-matching abilities for emotional faces. The results suggest that older adults show a general impairment in task performance, but possibly with some preservation in the ability to maintain emotional content in WM. There were marked differences in how the emotional information was processed between age groups, in which older adults have a tendency to represent negative stimuli as less negative than younger adults in perception and WM, and tended to show a positive interpretation of the valence of more ambiguous emotional stimuli. In Chapter 6, I summarise the findings presented in this thesis, discuss the implications of the key findings, and consider some suggestions for future studies that aim to elucidate the mechanisms of WM in healthy ageing.

Keywords: emotion
individual differences
functional magnetic resonance imaging
ageing
neuroscience
Working memory
magnetoencephalography
psychology
cognition
Advisor: Nobre, A
Men who have sex with men and HIV transmission risks in sub-Saharan Africa: a Kenyan case study

Introduction Men who have sex with men have been largely unrecognised within African HIV epidemics until recently. This thesis reports on three projects in Mombasa, Kenya and in Oxford that aimed to describe the burden and risk factors for HIV among MSM across sub-Saharan Africa and in Kenya specifically, and to describe patterns of sexual behaviour and partnerships relevant to individual and population HIV risk.
Methods 1. cross-sectional study of HIV prevalence and risk factors among 285 MSM at enrolment to a vaccine feasibility cohort in Mtwapa, Kenya; 2. review and meta-analysis of behavioural and HIV studies in sub-Saharan African MSM until 2010 3. prospective, self-administered daily diary study of sexual behaviour among a sample of 83 IAVI vaccine feasibility cohort participants
Main results HIV prevalence was 24.6% among MSM, who frequently reported transactional sex. Receptive anal sex practice, injecting drug use, concomitant STIs, homosexual exclusivity and age were independent risk factors for HIV prevalence. Prevalence studies identified high HIV burden among MSM across Africa, not associated with prevalence amongst the general adult population despite commonplace heterosexual behaviours. HIV prevalence associations with homosexual exclusivity, unprotected anal sex and transactional sex were largely consistent across different contexts. In Mombasa, prospective behaviour studies described a transactional sexual network serving both male and female clients, transaction dictating both relationship patterns and age differences between partners and condom use. Young age, homosexual exclusivity, alcohol use, religious affiliation and low earnings were associated with high risk homosexual behaviours. Heterosexual sex was commonplace, yet heterosexually active MSM had a significantly lower profile of homosexual behavioural HIV risk.
Conclusions: There is an urgent need for African countries to identify MSM populations and deliver appropriate and relevant HIV prevention, treatment and care. Effective and accessible responses will benefit African MSM, and likely also enhance wider HIV control efforts.

Advisor: Dawson, J
Jaffe, H
Towards unity? The concepts of necessity and proportionality in exception clauses across international law

Exception clauses in treaties and their analogues in subfields of customary international law (such as the law on state responsibility) allow states to unilaterally 'derogate' from otherwise binding rules of international law, typically under the condition that the derogating action is necessary and proportionate. While necessity and proportionality thus undoubtedly play a central role in exception clauses, they have been curiously understudied and remain startlingly unclear; international courts have struggled to interpret necessity/proportionality. In addition, despite the wide-spread inclusion of necessity/proportionality in exception clauses across international law, comparative studies across contexts are exceedingly rare.
This thesis studies the concepts of necessity and proportionality enshrined in exception clauses across a variety of treaties and subfields of international law – specifically, the law on state responsibility, the law on self-defence, and the general exception clauses in WTO law -, and in particular how they are applied and reviewed by international courts. The thesis explores the concepts of necessity and proportionality in general, clarifies how they are applied in the context of the surveyed rules, and reveals the degree to which necessity/proportionality overlap across the different contexts, demonstrating the existence of a unified core. It argues further that this unified core can be utilised to facilitate cross-interpretation between different contexts, which offers an original strategy to overcome some hitherto unresolved difficulties with respect to the interpretation of necessity/proportionality in exception clauses.
The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I (chapters I-III) analyses and compares the concepts of necessity/proportionality as well as how compliance therewith is reviewed by international courts across the surveyed rules. Part II (chapter IV) explores cross-interpretation of necessity/proportionality across contexts with reference to its unified core content.

Advisor: Akande, D
Investigations into mechanisms of macrophage clearance via the lymphatic system during acute inflammation

The lymphatic system is an important vascular network with many important roles which include maintaining fluid homeostasis and acting as a conduit for immune surveillance as well as to clear leucocytes from inflammatory zones. Macrophages are one such population that require to be removed from sites of inflammation to restore physiological homeostasis; persistent accumulation of macrophages is seen as a hallmark of chronic inflammation which has severe consequences in health. This thesis is concerned with the mechanisms regulating entry of these myeloid cells into the lymphatic capillaries.
In vitro adhesion and transmigration assays revealed macrophages actively adhere and migrate across activated lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) rapidly although both mechanisms do occur without inflammatory stimulation of the endothelial cells. Unlike neutrophils and dendritic cells, ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 were surprisingly redundant to macrophage transmigration of activated LECs although β2 integrin was significantly involved. A more involved role was found in the LYVE-1-hyaluronan (HA) axis; macrophage derived HA as well as lymphatic hyaluronan receptor LYVE-1 were critical to transmigration but quantitatively minimally involved in adhesion. These findings were consolidated with an in vivo sterile peritonitis model which demonstrated the importance of the receptor to trafficking of macrophages to draining lymph nodes. Furthermore, macrophage expressed CD44 was also shown to be significantly associated in both inflammatory trafficking and transmigration. The results described in this thesis provide novel evidence of the CD44-HA-LYVE-1 axis playing an active role in migration of macrophages via the lymphatics.

Advisor: Jackson, D
A study of the reactivity and coordination chemistry of N-heterocyclic carbenes with main group compounds

This thesis describes selected reactivity studies of the N-heterocyclic carbene, IPr, towards a range of main group compounds. The synthesis and characterisation of sixty-three compounds, all of which incorporate IPr as a ligand in one of three coordination modes, are detailed herein.
The deprotonation of IPr allowed for the isolation of an anionic source of the aIPr: ligand which was synthesised as a novel potassium salt and along with the previously reported lithium salt, was employed in reactions with group 12 and 14 bis(trimethylsilyl)amides and tetrahalides. The further chemistry of such novel products was investigated towards both electrophilic and nucleophilic reagents making use of both the pendant nucleophilic carbene functionality and the electrophilic main group centre.
An alternative route to such species was investigated by the spontaneous isomerisation of IPr in the coordination sphere of group 14 tetrabromides and group 15 tribromides. The scope of this reactivity was subsequently investigated and was found to provide a simpler route to access the abnormal coordination mode of IPr. The aIPr ligand which is generated may be deprotonated by additional IPr thereby affording aIPr: ligands. The addition of halide abstracting agents allowed for the synthesis of cationic species stabilised by the coordination of either IPr or aIPr ligands.
A unique, spontaneous reductive coupling of two phosphorus centres was discovered to take place upon heating a THF solution of (IPr)PBr3. This allowed for the isolation of a bromide bridged P–P bond with reduced phosphorus centres. This facile reduction chemistry was further explored by reaction with mild reducing agents which provide access to low oxidation state phosphorus compounds in high yields. This chemistry was found to be possible (and more effective) due to the presence of the weaker phosphorus bond to bromine relative to the commonly employed chlorine ligands.

Keywords: Ditopic
Silicon
N-Heterocyclic carbene
Lead
Low valent
Phosphorus
Tin
Arsenic
Germanium
Advisor: Goicoechea, J
Tracking multiple mobile devices in CCTV-enabled areas

Over the last decade, we have witnessed an unprecedented interest in indoor positioning technologies, with a variety of solutions developed in academic and industrial research labs. Although the field has reached a significant level of maturity, there is still no dominant solution and, as a consequence, positioning services are still lacking in many buildings. In order for a solution to be widely implemented and adopted, two key requirements must be satisfied: low cost and high accuracy. The dichotomy between cost and accuracy has fragmented the technology landscape, leading to a plethora of competing solutions that cannot satisfy both requirements simultaneously.
The key objective of this thesis is to investigate how to unify the two disparate camps, providing high positioning accuracy with very low cost. Many approaches have tried to achieve this goal by fusing different sensor modalities. However, the majority of existing work has only investigated how to fuse sequences of measurements for which the associations with the targets are known (i.e. device personal data). Sensor fusion techniques that combine device personal data and anonymous sensor streams (where the associations between the measurements and the targets are not known) remain under-explored as of today. In this thesis, we investigate how to efficiently combine device sensor data and anonymous sensor streams from various sensor modalities in order to build low cost and high accuracy positioning systems. By combining these two types of sensor modalities in one system we see a great potential in designing cost-effective and accurate positioning systems for challenging environments such as for tracking people in highly dynamic industrial settings. Our goal is to design a multi-target multi-sensor tracking framework which will utilise existing sensor infrastructure found in industrial environments and large public buildings (e.g museums) in order to provide reliable positioning services.

Advisor: Trigoni, N
Markham, A
Playing different games: West African and European perspectives on negotiating economic partnership agreements

This thesis examines the reasons for persistent impasses encountered in the negotiations to achieve so-called ‘Economic Partnership Agreements’ between the EU and West Africa by drawing on the analysis of strategic interaction. I argue that in order to fully understand the failure to reach an agreement during more than eight years of negotiations we need to go beyond conventional rationalist approaches that rely on game-theoretical insights. Instead of presuming that the so-called ‘rules of the game’ are common knowledge among the actors, I conceive of bargaining processes as a space to (re)negotiate the ‘games’ played by states in the first place. To systematise how disagreement at the level of the rules of the game affects strategic interaction and the cooperation issues faced by states, the thesis introduces the conceptual model of a ‘Battle over Games’. Such a constructivist-informed approach relates the choice of ‘sub-optimal’ bargaining strategies to the possibility of divergent interpretations of the rules rather than a lack of information. Moreover, it sees identity-based conflicts around values and beliefs rather than merely functional collective action problems as important obstacles to cooperation. I argue that divergent normative convictions about which ‘game’ ought to be played can lead to a hardening of negotiating positions that prolongs impasse situations. The main empirical argument presented is that different understandings about the rules of the game operative in trade negotiations with a ‘development dimension’ underpinned the cooperation partners’ inability and unwillingness to reconcile their conflicting interests. Examining two different negotiating periods (2002-2007 and 2008-2010) allows us to assess how the emergence and persistence of the impasse can be understood through the lens of the actors’ subjectively different understandings of the ‘game’ they were playing. I, firstly, argue that the EU and the West African side’s ill-conceived strategy choices in the first negotiating period were related to the divergent interpretations of the development framing of the trade negotiations. Secondly, I develop the argument that the persistence of opposing positions was ultimately sustained by a value conflict over whether to pursue procedural or substantive equality in these trade negotiations, and divergent beliefs about how best to foster economic development. The thesis concludes with a summary of the research findings.

Keywords: Negotiations
EU-Africa cooperation
game theory
International Relations
global trade
constructivism
strategic interaction
Advisor: Nicolaïdis, K
Betts, A
Patrons and artists at the crossroads: the Islamic arts of the book in the lands of Rūm, 1270s-1370s

This dissertation is the first book-length study to analyse the production and patronage of Islamic illuminated manuscripts in late medieval Rūm in their fullest cultural contexts and in relation to the arts of the book of neighbouring regions. Although research concerning the artistic landscapes of late medieval Rūm has made significant progress in recent years, the development of the arts of the book and the nature of their patronage and production has yet to be fully addressed. The topic also remains relatively neglected in the wider field of Islamic art history. This thesis considers the arts of the book and the part they played in artistic life within contemporary scholarly frameworks that emphasise inclusivity, diversity and fluidity. Such frameworks acknowledge the period’s ethnic and religious pluralism, the extent of cross-cultural exchange, the region’s complex political situation after the breakdown in Seljuk rule, and the itinerancy of scholars, Sufis and craftsmen.
Analyses are based on the codicological examination of sixteen illuminated Persian and Arabic manuscripts, none of which have been published in depth. In order to appropriately assess the material and to partially redress scholarly emphases on the constituent arts of the book (calligraphy, illumination, illustration and binding), the manuscripts are considered as whole objects. The manuscripts’ ample inscriptions also help to form a clearer picture of contemporary artistic life. Evidence from further illuminated and non-illuminated manuscripts and other textual and material primary sources is also examined.
Based on this evidence, this dissertation demonstrates that Rūm’s towns had active cultural scenes despite the frequent outbreak of hostilities and the absence of an effective centralised government. The lavishness of some manuscripts from this period also challenges the often-assumed connection between dynastic patronage and sophisticated artistic production. Furthermore, the identities and affiliations of those involved in the production and patronage of illuminated manuscripts reinforces the impression of an ethnically and religiously diverse environment and highlights the role that local amīrs and Sufi dervishes in particular had in the creation of such material.

Keywords: Manuscripts
Rūm
Konya
Calligraphy
Codicology
Erzincan
Illumination
Anatolia
Mevlevis
Beyliks
Advisor: Yurekli-Gorkay, E