Essays on the Use of Big Data in Development Economics
Creators: name: Doria, Omar
Publisher: name: IMT Alti Studi Lucca
Year: 2016
Subjects: HB Economic Theory

description: In this thesis I approach problems within the literature of Development Economics. Using tools from policy evaluation, different quantitative methods and big data sources, I study the common problems that affect the development
 of the nations. I separate my thesis into three chapters. In Chapter
 1, using policy evaluation techniques together with other quantitative
 methods, I study the effects of the policy integration for the academic sector
 within the European Union. In the second chapter, I study one of the
 most important subjects presented in this thesis: inequality. Using the case
 of Colombian municipalities, I examine how international trade affects social
 conditions measured by the Multidimensional Poverty Index. Finally, in the
 third chapter, I study the effect of the patent innovation using the complexity
 algorithm developed by Hidalgo and Haussmann. Here I do a comparative
 of the patent innovation using two aggregations: countries and cities. Next,
 I will explain in more detail the findings of each chapter.
 Chapter 1: It is generally accepted that the frequency of cross-border collaborations
 has been increasing in recent decades, which is principally regarded
 as a symptom of globalization. While this is true on average, we uncover a
 more nuanced story by analyzing publications, and by disaggregating these
 R and D outputs by country, across 14 well-defined research subject areas. In
 this way, we are able to interpret trends in cross-border activities according
 to more domain-specific trends. We focus our analysis on the impact of entry
 into the EU by new member states by quantifying the rate of cross-border collaboration
 before and after the 2004 enlargement of the European Union. In
 this sense, we build upon recent studies aimed at quantifying the impact of
 European Research Area integration policies on the activity of the European
 innovation system. We combine descriptive complex networks techniques
 with panel regression (Difference in Difference) methods to reveal, counterintuitively,
 a decrease in cross-border activity by the new EU member states
 following their entrance. The results show that while the number of crossborder
 collaborations in academia is increasing in the old member countries,
 and despite that the number of cross-border publications in the new members
 is higher compared with past years, they would actually collaborate
 more being outside the European Union. We use data for the inventor mobility
 network to show that these counterintuitive trends are none other than
 the negative externalities of unification associated with brain-drain. Chapter
 2: We empirically measure the effects of international trade on inequality.
 By studying the Colombian case, we found that the municipalities with exporter
 firms have an 11 percent greater probability for increasing their inequality
 through social deprivations compared to municipalities, where any of the
 firms are exporters. Furthermore, we aggregate firms' exports at the municipality
 level by using the minimum economical unit affected by the incoming
 wealth from foreign markets, considering spatial relations to account for direct,
 indirect and total effects. We define social inequality as the average shortfall of social conditions by municipality. Specifically we use the Colombian
 Multidimensional Poverty Index. As a result, we found empirical evidence
 for a strong neighborhood effect, which helps make the decision that
 would be used to improve social conditions in those municipalities without
 exporter firms. Chapter 3: One of the most important questions in Developmental
 Economics is how technological innovation is able to shift development.
 Here, we use the Hidalgo and Hausmann complexity algorithm
 to estimate how the selection of the innovation field affects the leadership
 in innovation among countries by using the first patent of triadic families
 of the European, Japanese and United States patent office. In this analysis
 we rank countries, regions and patents using the Economic Complexity
 Index (ECI) and Product Complexity Index (PCI). Our findings highlight
 the United States as a leading country in patent innovation during most of
 the years. In contrast, using the region aggregation level, we find that the
 Japanese regions are the leaders in patent innovation during every year in
 our data. However, the most complex regions in the Unites States. On the
 patent side, we note that the fields related to chemistry, biotechnology and
 pharmaceuticals play a very important role in patent innovation. Finally,
 we compare our findings with similar works of other researchers, finding a
 strong relationship between academic research and patent innovation.
 In this thesis, I explore quantitative methods and Data Science techniques applied
 to social studies for different aggregations. In the first chapter, I account
 for the collaboration in R and D between groups of countries. In the second
 chapter, I explore how one single country and its municipalities relate to the
 world through trade, and how its relationship could modify the condition,
 while its minimal political level affects the social conditions through a mechanism
 accepted and studied by classical economics. In Chapter 3, we study
 the behavior of nations, where every nation with innovative production is included.
 By alternating the level of aggregations from a nation to a city, we are
 able to determine the role that political regions play within the whole country.
 Recognizing the importance of the results and the methods that I use to
 explore these important development issues, such as international integration,
 inequality, international trade, innovation and relation country-cities,
 this thesis questions the classical economical methods and the relevance in
 accepting new methodologies based on Data Science to answer the question
 of classical problems that were answered by using theoretical methods in
 the past. These new methodologies based on Big Data are evolving every
 day with importance, and, moreover, with information collected by governments,
 social networks, international organizations and private institutions.
 Therefore, the methods exposed in this dissertation play a fundamental role
 in the reshaping of economics and the study and interpretation of the relation
 between governments, societies and citizens.