Suchergebnisse

There are arguably few topics in current global economic policy as intensely debated as the impact of different facets of globalization on human development. Given that the concept of globalization reflects a multitude of economic and societal transformations, the scope of these discussions needs to be equally nuanced. This dissertation sheds light on some of the channels through which less researched facets of globalization affect human lives. Specifically, the first essay scrutinizes the role of informational globalization, characterized by the exchange of information. It focuses on the s...

There are arguably few topics in current global economic policy as intensely debated as the impact of different facets of globalization on human development. Given that the concept of globalization reflects a multitude of economic and societal transformations, the scope of these discussions needs to be equally nuanced. This dissertation sheds light on some of the channels through which less researched facets of globalization affect human lives. Specifically, the first essay scrutinizes the role of informational globalization, characterized by the exchange of information. It focuses on the s...

There are arguably few topics in current global economic policy as intensely debated as the impact of different facets of globalization on human development. Given that the concept of globalization reflects a multitude of economic and societal transformations, the scope of these discussions needs to be equally nuanced. This dissertation sheds light on some of the channels through which less researched facets of globalization affect human lives. Specifically, the first essay scrutinizes the role of informational globalization, characterized by the exchange of information. It focuses on the spread of modern information and telecommunication technologies, such as the internet, and how this development has the potential to shape concerns about relative status and people's perception of happiness. The second essay deals with the implications of environmental globalization - more precisely, with climate change as its most perceptible phenomenon and the consequential increased prevalence of extreme weather events in many parts of the world. Focusing on the impact of drought conditions on health outcomes in the agrarian economy of Vietnam, the results reveal one component of the costs of environmental globalization for a population vulnerable to poverty. Emanating from the long-debated question whether development aid is effective in increasing economic growth, the third essay is concerned with the role of the World Bank as one key player of political globalization in alleviating poverty and fostering development and the role of cross-border official capital flows in the form of development aid. It also has a methodological focus through bringing the aid-effectiveness literature to the subnational level. Being grounded on economic theory, a unifying feature of all essays in this dissertation is an evidence-based approach to economic problems. Their research method is the use of empirical data in order to draw quantitative conclusions on the effects of different aspects of globalization on human development.

Existing work on the economics of well-being suggests that a person's subjective well-being depends to a large degree on his relative standing within his social environment. In this paper, we examine whether access to modern information and telecommunication technologies has an impact on relative concerns by raising material aspirations. We use cross-sectional data from the fifth wave of the World Values Survey and provide empirical evidence that people who regularly use the internet as a source of information derive relatively less life satisfaction from the same level of income. Using panel data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, we show that households in possession of a computer report needing significantly higher levels of income to make 'ends meet', given their actual level of income and a wide range of socio-economic characteristics. Our results corroborate the hypothesis that modern information technologies raise material aspirations via fostering relative concerns in the society. The empirical findings shed further light on the income-happiness paradox and identify a non-negligible channel how globalization might impact on subjective well-being.

The development of accessible web applications has gained significant attention over the past couple of years due to the widespread use of the Internet and the equality laws enforced by governments. Particularly in e-learning contexts, web accessibility plays an important role, as e-learning often requires to be inclusive, addressing all types of learners, including those with disabilities. However, there is still no comprehensive formal representation of learners with disabilities and their particular accessibility needs in e-learning contexts. We propose the use of ontologies to represent accessibility needs and preferences of learners in order to structure the knowledge and to access the information for recommendations and adaptations in e-learning contexts. In particular, we reused the concepts of the ACCESSIBLE ontology and extended them with concepts defined by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. We show how OpenCourseWare systems can be adapted based on this ontology to improve accessibility.