Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 2026)

The original intent for the war on cannabis is heavily linked to racial prejudice and discrimination. The consequences of these tainted origins of drug laws can be traced through its impacts on particular racial groups — specifically black and ethnic minorities — including through targeted enforcement and policies, leading to more arrests for drug offences and, subsequently, disproportionate criminalisation and social exclusion. This dissertation contends that the current regime of cannabis prohibition does not justify its disproportionate and negative effects, which are contrary to democratic equality. Furthermore, in consideration of shifting attitudes in global cannabis policy and emerging trends towards legalisation and commercialisation, an equality-based approach must be adopted to remedy injustices directly inflicted by prohibition and restore full enjoyment of democratic equality.

This paper investigates the intersection of gender hierarchy and socioeconomic status in shaping the male violence that women experienced during the Partition in Punjab. Utilising a discourse analysis methodology, the findings reveal women from all socio-economic statuses faced violence because of their subordinate position in the gender hierarchy. They received little to no support from their families after surviving male violence, and men of middle and lower socio-economic status perpetrated much of this violence. This paper highlights the inescapable nature of the gender hierarchy in communal and domestic spaces, and underscores the limitations of women's agency.

I use the agricultural household model's separation property as a framework to analyse how agricultural households absorb a large shock in a context where markets function poorly. Under complete markets, farm production decisions should depend solely on prices and technology, and are separable from household characteristics like the household's labour endowment. I show that Covid-19 caused a large increase to households' labour endowments in rural Ethiopian farm households. I use this finding to examine whether the labour supply shock was so large that imperfect labour markets were unable to fully absorb it, causing households to increase total labour utilisation on the farm in response. The results show that agricultural households were operating under market failures before and after the shock. I find no evidence that the labour input misallocation consequences of market failures were statistically larger after Covid-19. I test the propositions by estimating first-differences specifications for two distinct panels of farm households in rural Ethiopia, a pre-Covid panel (2011–2015) and a Covid panel (2018–2021) using LSMS-ISA data.

This dissertation investigates whether State-Contingent Debt Instruments (SCDIs) could have prevented Zambia's 2020 sovereign default and reduced the adjustment costs from delayed debt restructuring. Using a calibrated dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) model of a small open economy calibrated to Zambia, the study compares the welfare outcomes of standard debt arrangements against SCDI alternatives under adverse climate shocks proxied by Total Factor Productivity (TFP) shocks. Results highlight the potential of SCDIs to preserve fiscal space, mitigate debt distress, and improve economic resilience in the face of external climate shocks.

This paper critically analyses the economic costs of trade conflicts through the lens of the 2018–19 US-China trade war. Drawing on a range of academic literature, it examines the factors that matter in assessing the welfare consequences of protectionist measures, including complete tariff pass-through to consumers, the absence of terms-of-trade gains, supply chain redistribution, and the ruinous effects of retaliatory tariffs. The findings underscore that protectionist policies, while politically motivated, impose significant costs on national social welfare, international trade networks, and global cooperation.