Understanding the Political Motivations That Shape Rwanda's Emergent Developmental State

Twenty years after its horrific genocide, Rwanda has become a model for economic development. At the same time, its government has been criticised for authoritarian tactics and the use of violence. Missing from the often polarised debate are the connections between these two perspectives. Synthesising existing literature on Rwanda in light of a combined year of fieldwork, we argue that the Government of Rwanda is using the developmental infrastructure to deepen state power and expand political control. We first identify the historical pressures that have motivated the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) to reimagine the political landscape. Sectarian unrest, political rivalry, wider regional insecurity and aid withdrawal have all pressured the RPF to identify growth as strategic. However, the political transformation extends beyond a prioritisation of growth and encompasses the articulation of ideologies and new mindsets, the provision of social services and infrastructure and the reordering of the social and physical layout of the territory. Growth and social control go hand in hand. As such, this paper's main contribution is to bring together the two sides of the Rwandan debate and place the country in a broader sociological literature about the parallel development of capitalist relations and transformations in state power.     

Nonparametric estimation for i.i.d. paths of a martingale-driven model with application to non-autonomous financial models

Finance and Stochastics - This paper deals with a projection least squares estimator of the function $J_{0}$ computed from multiple independent observations on $[0,T]$ of the process $Z$ defined by...     

Pro-cyclicality beyond business cycle

We show that pro-cyclicality is inherent in risk measure estimates based on historical data. Taking the example of VaR, we show that the empirical VaR measure is mean-reverting over a 1-year horizon when the portfolio is held fixed. It means that a capital requirement rule based on historical measurements of VaR tends in calm times to understate future required capital and tends in volatile times to overstate it. To quantify this pro-cyclicality, we develop a simple and efficient methodology, which we apply to major equity market indices. We make the interesting point that the pro-cyclicality property holds true even in a world with constant volatility, though the empirical magnitude of the mean-reversion is greater than what would be observed in that special case.     

The marketing firm and co-creation: The case of co-creation by LEGO

This article discusses the marketer and customer co-creation process within the context of bilateral contingencies. Bilateral contingencies occur when the marketers' behavior is reinforced (and/or punished) by the customers' behavior, whereas the behavior of the customers is reinforced (and/or punished) by the marketers' actions. Using the example of the LEGO community, we discuss how the marketers in the organization can respond to behaviors resulting from co-creational customer–customer exchanges. This paper fills the knowledge gap by presenting a behavior analysis framework (theory of the marketing firm) for the empirical measurement of the co-creation process.     

Does a better diet reduce dependence on imports? The case of Tunisia

In the last 40 years, Tunisia has experienced—as many other developing and emerging countries—a dietary transition, which led to an increase in the consumption of sugar, fats, and animal products. This transition was accompanied by an increase in noncommunicable diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases. Using mathematical programming, we optimized the Tunisian diet using the French dietary recommendations as constraints. Then, we used the Global Trade Analysis Project's constant elasticities of substitution in order to simulate the impact of fulfilling the nutrient recommendations on international trade and domestic supply. Using this approach, we showed that the Tunisian diet is rich in carbohydrates and sugar but lacks fibers, some minerals, and vitamins. The adherence to all recommendations would induce an imperative shift to less sugar and cereal-based products by reducing the import dependence on these products, but would result a dramatic increase in the domestic supply of products from animal origin, fruits, vegetables, and legumes.