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Abstract
Following the calls of several notable policymakers and academics, this dissertationassesses the state of the concept of development and finds that the concept has evolved beyond what current measures are capable of capturing. Measures of development have remained static, while practitioners have expanded the scope development to include much more than just GDP growth. Existing studies largely use GDP per capita, a measure severely lacking in construct validity but statistically associated with almost everything. I propose a new measure of development that brings current conceptualizations in line with measurement, increasing construct validity and the accuracy of measurement. Then, I use the measure to test two empirical questions that have severe implications for development: first, what are the effects of increasing respect for labor rights on development; second, what is the effect of structural adjustment programs on countries with extractive colonial legacies (and is it different from those with representative legacies)? These questions were chosen for a variety of reasons. First, they display the utility of the new measure by answering questions from two different subfields. Second, they are questions that cannot be answered with existing measures like GDP per capita. Increasing respect for worker rights may increase GDP per capita, but does that capture all the effects of increasing respect for worker rights in an economy? Similarly, structural adjustment programs have not on the whole produced the predicted effects of better long-term growth, and countries with extractive colonial legacies have drastically worse economic performance. But what is the interactive effect, and can GDP per capita growth actually tell us what that effect is on development? There are a multitude of empirical questions related to the concept of development. This dissertation will answer two that have not yet been evaluated with any metric. That does not preclude the possibility, however, that iSHHED could provide better insights into questions that have already been evaluated using measures like GDP growth or GDP per capita.