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AbstractDebt, as one of basic human relations, has profound effects on economic growth. Debt accumulation in the global economy was modeled by the stochastic logistic equation reflecting causality between leverage and its rate of change. The model, identifying interactions and feedbacks in aggregate behaviour of creditors and borrowers, addressed various issues of macrofinancial stability. Qualitatively diverse patterns, including the Wicksellian (normal) market, the Minsky financial bubbles and the Fisherian debt-deflation, were discerned by appropriate combinations of rates of return, spreads and leverage. The Kolmogorov-Fokker-Plank equation was used to find out the stationary gamma distribution of leverage that was instrumental for the evaluation of appropriate failure and survival functions. Two patterns corresponding to different forms of a stationary gamma distribution were recognized in the long run leverage dynamics and were simulated as scenarios of a possible system evolution. In particular, empirically parameterized asymptotical distribution indicated excessive leverage and unsustainable global debt accumulation. It underlined the necessity of comprehensive reforms aiming to decrease uncertainty, debt and leverage. Assuming these reforms were successfully implemented, global leverage distributions would have converged in the long run to a peaked gamma distribution with the mode identical to the anchor leverage. The latter corresponded to a balanced long run debt demand and supply, hence to fairly evaluated financial assets fully collateralized by real resources. A particular case of macrofinancial Tobin's q-coefficients following the Ornstein-Ulenbeck process was studied to evaluate a reasonable range of squeezing the bloated world finance. The model was verified on data published by the IMF in Global Financial Stability Reports for the period 2003–2013.

Documentaries and feature films are cinematic vehicles of visual art that are often symbolic representations of the social, political and cultural world in which they emerge. This thesis focuses on the analysis of violence that leads to genocide both in the case of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 and the Colombian armed conflict between 1948 and 1957 through film. It explores the role of film and cinematic imagery in the formation of memories, reflections, interpretations and the dissemination of ideas. Through an analysis of a wide variety of viewpoints in documentaries and feature films, I show that the elements of knowledge of the past in each production depend heavily upon the manner in which the directors and characters within the films relate to the trauma and violence that has permanently transformed their memory. In the documentaries, various levels of personal connection to the violence of the past always produce subjective responses in the way in which individuals interpret and react to certain people, places and events. In feature films, representations of violence differ according to the story that is being told, the intentions of the directors, and the artistic devices that emphasize certain aspects of historical violence. The first main chapter of this thesis provides an analysis of the documentaries New Year Baby (2006), S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003), and El Bogotazo: La historia de una ilusión (2008) in regards to themes such as trauma, testimony, preserving memory, constructing historical truth, forgiveness, and breaking silence. The first two documentaries address the effects of the Khmer Rouge violence through investigation and personal accounts of traumatic memory. The third details the events of April 9th, 1948 in Bogotá, Colombia as the start of the brutal period of violence in the nation called La Violencia. The second main chapter of this thesis analyzes the feature films The Killing Fields (1984) and Carne de tu carne (1983). It focuses on cinematic representations of historical violence through imagery and visual depictions of political, social, and personal viewpoints.

"International Hierarchy" published on by Oxford University Press.

International theorists have long argued over the longevity of American hegemony and whether or not the American-centered international order is currently in crisis. What remains largely missing in many of the analyses of the history and present of American hegemony is an examination of how maintaining global hegemony affects or has affected domestic American political and economic institutions. Looking back at the early 1970s, I examine the nexus between the crisis of American global hegemony in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the project of neoliberalization in Chile and how the Chilean socioeconomic "laboratory" set an important precedent for the subsequent adoption of neoliberal reforms in the United States under the Reagan Administration. The reassertion of American hegemony was coextensive with a neoliberal project that was initially experimented with in Chile under the authoritarian rule of Augusto Pinochet.