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Item Open Access A Study of Plea Bargaining, Political Power, and Case Outcomes in Local Criminal Courts(2023) Grodensky, Catherine AspdenIn this dissertation, I seek to understand the power of legal actors in determining punitiveness in plea bargaining in criminal courts. Using a unique combination of administrative court data and qualitative interviews, I evaluate the influence of the chief elected prosecutor, line prosecutors, and defense attorneys on plea bargaining practices and punitiveness in case outcomes across multiple local court systems. Chapter 2 presents an analysis of the association between the elected chief prosecutor and prosecution and active sentence rates in four types of criminal cases in nine districts in North Carolina. The study finds that chief prosecutors influenced punitiveness, but their influence was not aligned with their political party. Although Democratic and Republican chief prosecutors did not differ in levels of punitiveness, the one progressive prosecutor in the sample reduced punitiveness across most crime types to the lowest levels out of all nine study districts. Chapter 3 examines how line prosecutors working in one progressive prosecutor’s office reduced punitiveness in case outcomes, mainly by dismissing weak and low-priority cases even before they reached the plea bargaining stage. Finally, Chapter 4 explores the power of the defense attorney in plea bargaining, and shows how the legal actors and context of the plea bargaining interaction impacted defense attorneys’ leverage and negotiation strategies. These chapters provide insights into current movements to reform prosecution and reduce mass incarceration in the United States, and shed light on how punitiveness may be impacted through the complex process of plea bargaining.
Item Open Access A Study of the Impact of a Natural Disaster on Economic Behavior and Human Capital Across the Life Course(2015) Ingwersen, Nicholas ShaneHow households and individuals respond to adverse and unanticipated shocks is an important concern for both economists and policy makers. This is especially true in developing countries where poverty, weak infrastructure, and a lack of social safety nets often exacerbate the effects of adverse shocks on household welfare. My research addresses these issues in the context of three economic outcomes and behaviors - early life health and the accumulation of human capital, willingness to take on financial risk, and behavior in the labor market. The results of this research project both adds to our understanding of how life experiences shape individuals' well-being and behavior and how policy can help individuals achieve long-term improvements in the lives following adverse events.
My research focuses on households and individuals affected by a large-scale natural disaster, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. I utilize data from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), a unique longitudinal survey of individuals and households living in coastal communities in Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia, at the time of the tsunami. The STAR surveys were conducted annually for five years after the disaster and include a wide range of demographic, economic, and health measures.
In the first chapter, Child Height after a Natural Disaster, co-authored with Elizabeth Frankenberg, Duncan Thomas, and Jed Friedman, we investigate the immediate and long-run impacts on child health of in utero exposure to stress induced by the tsunami. We investigate whether in utero exposure to stress, as measured by tsunami-induced maternal posttraumatic stress, affected the growth of children born in the aftermath of the tsunami in the critical first five years of their lives. Although previous studies suggest that in utero exposure to stress is related to a number of adverse birth outcomes such as prematurity and lower birth weight, there is little evidence of the impact on linear growth, a strong correlate of later life income. We find evidence that children exposed to high levels of stress beginning in the second trimester experienced reduced growth in the first two years of their lives. We also find evidence that growth reductions largely disappear by age five. This suggests that significant catch-up growth is possible, particularly in the context of pronounced post-disaster reconstruction and economic rehabilitation.
In the second chapter, The Impact of a Natural Disaster on Observed Risk Aversion, I investigate the short and long-term impacts of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on attitudes toward risk. Attitudes toward risk are important determinants of economic, demographic, and health-related behaviors, but how these attitudes evolve after an event like a natural disaster remains unclear because past research has been confounded by issues of selective exposure, mortality, and migration. My study is the first to directly address these problems by utilizing exogenous variation in exposure to a disruptive event in a sample of individuals that is representative of the population as it existed at the time of the event. In addition, intensive efforts were made to track migrants in the sample population, which is important for this study because migration is common following events like natural disasters and is likely related to attitudes toward risk. I find that physical exposure to the tsunami (e.g., seeing or hearing the tsunami or being caught up in the tsunami) causes significant short-term decreases in observed aversion to risk, especially for the poor, but few longer-term differences. This finding has important implications for the design of effective post-disaster assistance policies. In particular, it implies that post-disaster assistance programs should include aid that is consistent with the observed risk attitudes of the survivors such as job training and capital to start-up businesses.
In the last chapter, Labor Market Outcomes following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, I investigate how labor market outcomes changed in coastal communities in Aceh and North Sumatra following the tsunami and the post-disaster recovery efforts. Although restoring the livelihoods of survivors of adverse events is critical for their long-term recovery, there is little evidence from developing countries of how labor market outcomes change after such events. Using the STAR data, I find a significant and persistent increase in paid employment for younger women in urban communities. The increase occurred in communities that were heavily damaged by the tsunami and those that were not, suggesting that the impacts of the disaster on livelihoods are likely long-lasting and extend beyond the communities that were directly stuck by the disaster.
Item Open Access Advancing African Development Through Art: Artist Perspectives(2020) Camara, M'BalouWhile there is a common understanding that artists find it hard to make a living through their artistic activities, research is silent on how artists view and understand their lived experiences. “Creative wealth”, which is accumulated through artistic activities, is part of an untapped, unmeasured, and invisible economy (Kabanda, 2018). This qualitative, exploratory study examines the complexities of creative wealth through the lens of fifteen African and Afro-descendant performance, visual, literary, digital, and applied artists. Using a thematic analysis of semi-structured interview data, I present two conceptual themes: artistic challenges and artistic opportunities. The challenges focus on (1a) the trade-offs involved in the production and distribution of one’s art, and (1b) the lack resources to produce art, lack ownership of art, and lack of avenues to display or investigate art. The opportunities focus on (2a) how artistic activity can foster innovation and (2b) how artistic activity can be used as an individual-level and a communal-level tool of expression or "exchange of experience". The findings of this study indicate that artists perceive their artistic endeavors to be simultaneously impeded and elevated by conditions of scarcity, and they understand that these conditions are unique to their African ancestral identity. Drawing on insights and recommendations from the artists themselves, this research sheds light on how creative wealth can improve lives – both monetarily and non-monetarily.
Item Open Access Air Pollution, Water, and Sanitation: Household Response to Environmental Risk(2020) Pakhtigian, Emily LDespite the threats to morbidity, mortality, and human capital accumulation posed by environmental risks, investments in environmental health technologies remain low. This is especially evident in low- and middle-income countries, which disproportionately shoulder the burden of environmental risk exposure and consequence. Households face competing risks associated with poor air and water quality, necessitating choices about how to invest in technologies to reduce the consequences associated with their exposures. Yet, even in areas where access to environmental health technologies such as improved cookstoves, latrines, and insecticide-treated bednets has expanded and products are subsidized to make them more affordable, adoption and use of these technologies often lag. This dissertation examines some of the conditions that impact environmental health technology adoption and use decisions as well as the health implications of low investment.
In Chapter 1, I ask how air pollution exposure drives consumption behaviors and impacts health outcomes. I examine this question in the short term--asking how behavior and health respond to a large, yet transitory, spike in ambient air pollution--as well as over time--considering the responses to average ambient air pollution levels over a period of 19 years. I leverage variation in air pollution resulting from forest fire emissions in Indonesia between 1996 and 2015 to generate short-term exposure spikes and average exposures over time, and I combine these exposures with four waves household and individual-level survey data. I implement a cross-sectional, difference-in-difference analysis to estimate the immediate effects of an unexpectedly severe forest fire season in 2015, finding increased fuel demands among the most-exposed households as well as declines in lung capacity among emissions-affected children. I extend my analysis across the panel using an instrumental variables approach to estimate consequences of average exposure over time. I find that households facing higher average ambient air pollution exposures are more likely to utilize clean cooking fuels such as LPG. Even with these behavioral adjustments, more-exposed individuals face significant reductions in lung capacity. In line with existing literature, I find negative health implications resulting from short-term exposure shocks; however, my analysis demonstrates that these respiratory consequences are not fleeting, particularly in areas that experience elevated average ambient air pollution levels.
In Chapter 2, I turn to environmental risks posed by limited access to improved sanitation technologies to examine how social influences impact household sanitation decisions. Using three waves of data collected immediately before, a few months after, and a few years after a randomized latrine promotion campaign in rural Orissa, India, I evaluate the extent to which social influences impact sanitation choices. I find that a ten percentage point decrease in neighbors' open defecation reduces a household's likelihood of open defecation by 3-4 percentage points. The sanitation intervention decreased open defecation in the short term; however, this treatment was less effective in neighborhoods with higher rates of open defecation due to strong social effects. Disaggregating social effects by gender, I find that both women and men respond to sanitation behaviors among male neighbors in the short term and female neighbors in the longer term, perhaps because men have more control over initial latrine purchasing decisions while women are more influential in sustaining latrine use over time.
Finally, in Chapter 3, I expand on my analysis of social influences and sanitation practices and examine how households make decisions to contribute to collective action for sanitation. In this chapter, I analyze data from an experimental public goods game I designed and implemented among over 1500 households in rural Bihar and Orissa, India. I randomly assigned each of the 70 villages in the sample into groups that are either homogeneous or heterogeneous by gender for game play. In the context of rural India, individuals are more likely to frequently interact with and make decisions in front of others of the same gender. Thus, splitting the groups in this way provides a proxy for peer or social groups. Participants chose how much to contribute to improved sanitation by making decisions in the game that are associated with actual sanitation and hygiene choices they face every day. Payoffs were awarded after each round, and payoff amounts were dependent on both individual contributions and aggregated group contributions, generating a setting in which the benefits participants received were connected. Comparing the game behavior among participants in groups that were homogeneous and heterogeneous by gender, I find evidence that contributions to collective action for sanitation are higher in gender homogenous groups. Female participants drive this difference, and it is more distinct in the first round of game play. I also find evidence that preferences for improved sanitation as elicited during the experimental games are reflective of actual improved sanitation practices at the household level.
Item Open Access American Civil-Military Relations and the Political Economy of National Security(2021) Tier, DavidIn this dissertation I analyze aspects of American civil-military relations and the political economy of national security policymaking. Specifically, I examine efforts to balance the military power necessary to secure American interests while considering the economic implications towards the national debt, veteran behavior in congressional resource allocation, and how civil-military relations relate to military effectiveness. I employ qualitative, quantitative, as well as mixed-methods research in examining policymaker rhetoric, voting records and bill sponsorship data, as well as a list of military use-of-force decisions. I find that policymakers deliberately consider the tradeoffs between debt and defense spending, that veterans demonstrate a small yet distinct behavior on military issues considered by Congress, and that operational outcomes were not more likely to be better when military authorities applied their preferences than when civilians asserted theirs. This dissertation helps fill important underexplored gaps in American civil-military relations and political economy of security studies.
Item Open Access Amicable Contempt: The Strategic Balance between Dictators and International NGOs(2017) Heiss, AndrewOver the past decade, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) have become increasingly active in authoritarian regimes as they respond to emergencies, assist with development, or advocate for human rights. Though these services and advocacy can challenge the legitimacy and power of the regime, many autocratic states permit INGO activities, and INGOs continue to work in these countries despite heavy restrictions on their activities. In this dissertation, I theorize that the relationship between INGOs and autocrats creates a state of amicable contempt, where each party is aware that the other both threatens and supports their existence. After outlining the theory, I explore the factors that determine when autocracies will constrict the legal environment for INGOs through de jure anti-NGO laws and the discretionary implementation of those laws. I combine a set of statistical models run on a cross-sectional dataset of 100 autocracies between 1991–2014 with case studies of Egypt, Russia, and China to test the effect of internal risk, external threats, and reputational concerns on the de facto civil society regulatory environment. I find that autocracies constrict civil society regulations in response to domestic instability and as regimes become more stable and cohesive. I also find that autocracies constrict civil society regulations in response to external threats to the regime, including the pressures of globalization. I find no evidence of an effect from reputational concerns. I then use results from a global survey of 641 INGOs to test the determinants of international NGO behavior. I find that the conflict between principles and instrumental concerns shapes INGO behavior and influences its relationship to its host government. Finally, I combine the survey results with case studies of four INGOs—Article 19, AMERA International, Index on Censorship, and the International Republican Institute—to analyze how INGOs respond to two forms of government regulation. When facing gatekeeping restrictions designed limit access to the country, I find that INGOs rely on their programmatic flexibility to creatively work around those restrictions. When facing restrictions aimed at capturing INGO programs, organizations rely on their programmatic flexibility to protect against changes to their core principles and mission.
Item Open Access Can a Broader Education Narrow the Gap? Evidence on Non-Academic Features of Schooling(2016) Sorensen, LucyEmpirical studies of education programs and systems, by nature, rely upon use of student outcomes that are measurable. Often, these come in the form of test scores. However, in light of growing evidence about the long-run importance of other student skills and behaviors, the time has come for a broader approach to evaluating education. This dissertation undertakes experimental, quasi-experimental, and descriptive analyses to examine social, behavioral, and health-related mechanisms of the educational process. My overarching research question is simply, which inside- and outside-the-classroom features of schools and educational interventions are most beneficial to students in the long term? Furthermore, how can we apply this evidence toward informing policy that could effectively reduce stark social, educational, and economic inequalities?
The first study of three assesses mechanisms by which the Fast Track project, a randomized intervention in the early 1990s for high-risk children in four communities (Durham, NC; Nashville, TN; rural PA; and Seattle, WA), reduced delinquency, arrests, and health and mental health service utilization in adolescence through young adulthood (ages 12-20). A decomposition of treatment effects indicates that about a third of Fast Track’s impact on later crime outcomes can be accounted for by improvements in social and self-regulation skills during childhood (ages 6-11), such as prosocial behavior, emotion regulation and problem solving. These skills proved less valuable for the prevention of mental and physical health problems.
The second study contributes new evidence on how non-instructional investments – such as increased spending on school social workers, guidance counselors, and health services – affect multiple aspects of student performance and well-being. Merging several administrative data sources spanning the 1996-2013 school years in North Carolina, I use an instrumental variables approach to estimate the extent to which local expenditure shifts affect students’ academic and behavioral outcomes. My findings indicate that exogenous increases in spending on non-instructional services not only reduce student absenteeism and disciplinary problems (important predictors of long-term outcomes) but also significantly raise student achievement, in similar magnitude to corresponding increases in instructional spending. Furthermore, subgroup analyses suggest that investments in student support personnel such as social workers, health services, and guidance counselors, in schools with concentrated low-income student populations could go a long way toward closing socioeconomic achievement gaps.
The third study examines individual pathways that lead to high school graduation or dropout. It employs a variety of machine learning techniques, including decision trees, random forests with bagging and boosting, and support vector machines, to predict student dropout using longitudinal administrative data from North Carolina. I consider a large set of predictor measures from grades three through eight including academic achievement, behavioral indicators, and background characteristics. My findings indicate that the most important predictors include eighth grade absences, math scores, and age-for-grade as well as early reading scores. Support vector classification (with a high cost parameter and low gamma parameter) predicts high school dropout with the highest overall validity in the testing dataset at 90.1 percent followed by decision trees with boosting and interaction terms at 89.5 percent.
Item Open Access Childhood Obesity, Development, and Self-Regulation in Girls: Three Essays(2013) Gearing, Maeve EThis dissertation encompasses three essays which examine the development of obesity in black and white girls and its responses to interventions.
The first chapter asks the question, how does obesity develop in girls? Using the National Growth and Health Study (NGHS), a longitudinal study of 2400 girls from age 9 to age 18, this chapter aims to address gaps in knowledge about the development and persistence of obesity in girls. Analyses using multivariate regression and growth-mixture modeling describe trajectories of body mass change in children and their correlates. Results suggest that obesity in children begins early and persists in most cases--BMI at age 17 is, on average, 1.3 times BMI at age 9. However, change does occur; 0.8 percent of the sample move from being obese at age 9 to healthy weight at age 17, and 2.2 percent of the sample make the reverse journey from healthy weight to obese. Where change occurs, it is most commonly seen among those who socio-demographically were anomalies among their body mass cohort at age 9. These results emphasize the importance of early interventions as well as the need for more study into body mass mutability in population subsamples.
The second chapter investigates 1) what motivates children to pursue weight loss; and 2) what aspects of interventions may most effectively support healthy child motivations and program success. These questions are qualitatively studied among a sample of 45 obese girls aged 9 to 13 girls participating in a behavior modification intervention. In total, 106 interviews were conducted. All of the girls in the study were interested in losing weight, most commonly in order to fit in (n=11), reduce teasing (n=10), or express particular social identities (n=6). However, not all of the girls were able to translate this desire to lose weight into a healthy and effective lifestyle change motivation. Several factors were associated with adopting healthy motivation and behavior, including familial involvement, self-regulation skills, non-social weight desires, realistic weight loss goals, and clear messages about body ideals. Other program protocols also supported motivation during difficult periods for those who adopted healthy motivation, including nutrition information, incentives, lack of physician judgment, and patient autonomy. Finally, two other potential program protocols were mentioned by girls in the study as useful aids. More support services, particularly during the summer, and more information on the expected course of weight loss could, these girls argued, help sustain motivation. Together, these findings suggest a role for self-regulation theory in the design of lifestyle change motivation and for more directly addressing expectations in weight loss treatment.
The third chapter investigates the relationship between self-worth and obesity among girls, again using the National Growth and Health Study. Results indicate a negative relationship between self-worth and obesity across all participants. However, this relationship only has predictive power from early body mass to later self-worth and self-worth trajectories. That is, higher body mass at age 9 predicts lower self-worth at age 17 and decreases in self-worth from age 9 to age 17. The effect is larger for Caucasians and for those in young adolescence but persists across the sample. Mechanisms for this relationship are also investigated, and some support found for stigma. Analyses using self-worth components suggest most of the self-worth effects are driven by social concerns, while mediational analyses suggest social body image pressures explain the relationship between global self-worth and body mass. Overall, the findings suggest a complex interrelation between self-worth and body mass in girls, meriting further investigation as well as a more nuanced discussion in the public realm.
Item Open Access Constrained Coordination: How Strategic Interests and Bureaucracy Shape Donor Coordination(2019) Olayinka, Adebola I.Scholars and practitioners recognize the importance of coordination in mitigating the costs of aid proliferation and improving the effectiveness of foreign aid. However, low levels of donor coordination persist. In this dissertation, I address this donor coordination puzzle. I offer a novel theory of coordination called Constrained Coordination, in which I posit that two key factors that play a crucial role in shaping coordination. First, I argue that donors strategic interests are a damper on coordination – the greater the strategic political, economic, and security interests of a donor government in a recipient country, the less coordination its aid agency will engage in. Second, I argue that aid agency autonomy is positively associated with coordination – the greater the level of autonomy – or freedom – that an aid agency has from its home government, the more that aid agency will coordinate. In order to test my Constrained Coordination theory, the dissertation uses mix-methods, and includes a quantitative analysis of hundreds of donor agencies coordination. I also leverage over one hundred extensive interviews with key stakeholders to present two qualitative case studies of donor coordination in Nigeria and Zambia. Finally, I use qualitative evidence to look at the coordination of South-South donors, a group of donors growing in importance. I find that a donor government’s strategic interests have a significant impact on whether its aid agency will coordinate within recipient countries. Similarly, when a recipient is strategic to a large number of countries, donors will not be well coordinated. Second, I find that aid agencies with greater levels of autonomy from their home governments coordinate more. And finally, I find that these effects amplify one another – a high autonomy donor working in a low priority country coordinates more than any other combination of strategic interests and autonomy.
Item Open Access Determinants of Teenage Childbearing in the United States(2015) Tan, Poh LinThis dissertation consists of two original empirical studies on the determinants of teenage childbearing in the United States. The first study examines the impact of educational attainment on teenage childbearing, using school entry laws as an instrument for education and a highly detailed North Carolina administrative dataset that links birth certificate data to school administrative records. I show that being born after the school entry cutoff date affects educational success in offsetting ways, with a negative impact on years of education but positive impact on test scores. Using an IV regression strategy to distinguish the impacts of years of education and test scores, I show that both educational measures have negative impacts on teenage childbearing.
The second study examines potential causes of the decline in the U.S. teenage birth rate between 1991 and 2010. Using age-period-cohort models with Vital Statistics birth data and Census population counts, I show that the decline was driven by period changes in the early 1990s but by cohort changes between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s. I also use a difference-in-differences model to investigate the extent to which social policies in the 1970s-1980s can explain these cohort changes. The evidence suggests that while legalization of abortion for adult women and unilateral divorce laws had a significant impact on teenage birth rates in the 1990s-2000s, abortion legalization is unlikely to be a major explanation for the observed decline.
Item Open Access Diversity and Inequality in Context: Schools, Neighborhoods, and Adolescent Development(2022) Leer, JaneRising demographic diversity and persistent social inequality are two defining features of youths’ social worlds, and schools and neighborhoods are key developmental contexts where this component of contemporary life plays out. This dissertation aimed to better understand the developmental implications of these twin phenomena, focusing specifically on adolescence, a critical period of development characterized by profound neurobiological and social cognitive changes. Across three studies, I asked, (1) how does exposure to different types of diversity and inequality in schools and neighborhoods relate to adolescent mental health and academic engagement? and (2) how do these relations differ across contexts and according to individual socioeconomic and racial-ethnic identity?The first chapter examined the relation between how schools say they value diversity and adolescent belonging, mental health, and academic engagement across racial groups. Results indicate that when schools’ mission statements conveyed explicit support for diversity (versus exhibiting color-evasive ideologies), racial disparities in mental health, educational aspirations, and reading achievement were smaller. However, when there was a mismatch between how schools said they value diversity and how such values were put into practice, schools’ proclaimed support for diversity was negatively associated with mental health, especially among White youth. The second chapter examined how exposure to rising inequality within neighborhoods—vis-à-vis gentrification—may impact educational outcomes. I found small positive associations between living in a gentrifying (versus chronically disinvested) neighborhood and 12th grade cumulative grade point average, intentions to pursue higher education, and one dimension of school quality: exposure to experienced teachers. However, these potential benefits of gentrification were concentrated among youth who were not economically disadvantaged and White youth. Further, for Black youth, the relation between gentrification and postsecondary plans varied according to the degree of racial turnover occurring in gentrifying neighborhoods—Black gentrification was positively associated with intentions to pursue college, but White gentrification was not. The third chapter examined two psychological mechanisms through which living in a gentrifying neighborhood may impact reading and math achievement: educational aspirations and psychological distress. Overall, there was a positive direct association between gentrification and achievement, and limited evidence of mediation. However, the pathways linking gentrification to educational aspirations, psychological distress, and achievement differed across socioeconomic and racial groups in nuanced ways that illuminate the potential costs and benefits of living in a changing neighborhood during adolescence. These three studies contribute to advancing the education, adolescent, and neighborhood literatures by examining understudied aspects of schools and neighborhoods. Findings suggest that the relation between context, identity, and development is more nuanced than is often assumed, with policy implications for how schools and neighborhoods can better address rising demographic diversity and persistent inequality.
Item Open Access Doubled SNAP Dollars and Nudges: An Analysis of Two Pilot Programs Aimed at Increasing the Purchase of Healthy Foods(2020) Noriega-Goodwin, Danton RobertoWhat people choose to eat is a public policy and health concern. Fresh produce and similarly healthy foods are often less preferred to unhealthy foods. Unhealthy foods can at times be cheaper and more accessible than healthy foods, making it difficult for consumers to avoid temptation at grocery or convenience stores. This dissertation is an analysis of two different pilot programs which aim to increase the purchase of healthy foods, specifically produce. The first pilot program is a financial incentive known as "Double Up Food Bucks". The program is targeted towards SNAP participants, encouraging them to purchase more fresh produce by effectively doubling purchasing power. The second pilot program is a set of three behavioral nudges designed to increase the purchase of bananas in a convenience store environment. The impact of each pilot program was measured using a pre- and post-experiment difference-in-differences design. The results of both pilots are modest and support a growing body of evidence that traditional interventions, like financial incentives, and behavioral interventions, like nudges, can successfully increase healthy food purchases at the margin.
Item Open Access Economic and Demographic Effects of Infrastructure Reconstruction After a Natural Disaster(2018) Laurito, Maria MartaIn this dissertation I study the long-term effects of post-disaster reconstruction of infrastructure on economic and demographic outcomes. The effects on individuals and communities that result from shocks to existing infrastructure have not been widely explored in the economic and development literature. As some of the largest natural disasters in recent times have shown, massive destruction of infrastructure is followed by large influxes of resources aimed at the reconstruction of damaged property. For example, after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Indonesia alone received enough aid to deal with the estimated seven billion dollars in infrastructure losses. While there are studies that address how money was allocated, there is hardly any good empirical evidence that provides a causal estimate of the effect that large reconstruction programs have on targeted beneficiaries. In this dissertation I address this gap in the literature.
The context of my study is the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the most devastating natural disasters in recent years. In particular, the location for this analysis is the Indonesian province of Aceh, which was the area hardest hit by the disaster (Chapter 2). One of the main reasons why long-term impacts of post-disaster reconstruction remain an understudied topic is the lack of access to data that tracks individuals over time and across space. Having longitudinal data of this type provides a more complete picture of beneficiaries of post-disaster aid, as well as the effects of reconstruction programs on economic outcomes and demographic processes, such as migration. My dissertation addresses this concern by using a unique, population representative panel of survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), which collected extensive individual, household, and community data in Aceh, Indonesia, every year between 2005 and 2010, with an additional follow-up in 2015 (Chapter 3).
Using these data, the first question I explore empirically is an estimation of the causal effects of reconstruction of the housing stock on a multidimensional set of well-being measures (Chapter 4). First, I show that post-tsunami reconstruction was largely determined by the level of damage, regardless of pre-tsunami characteristics of communities, households, and individuals. Based on this finding, I identify the causal effects of housing reconstruction on post-disaster well-being using an individual fixed effects strategy. I show that housing reconstruction causes significant reductions in levels of post-traumatic stress reactivity, and significant increases in socioeconomic well-being. These effects are mainly concentrated after two years of housing tenure, and among those from highly damaged communities. Housing reconstruction has a positive relationship with self-rated physical health (although these estimates are not statistically significant). These results provide important causal evidence of how reconstruction of infrastructure after a natural disaster can have long-lasting, positive consequences for the recovery of survivors.
Next, I continue looking at the effects of rebuilding individual assets (i.e. the home) but turn to the analysis of migration, a key demographic process following natural disasters. Specifically, I look at migration and its relationship with housing reconstruction and well-being (Chapter 5). The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami displaced large numbers of people. In Aceh, Indonesia, an estimated 500,000 people left their communities after the disaster. In this research, we provide a demographic perspective on displacement and longer-term adaptation and recovery after a disaster. We describe patterns of mobility among tsunami survivors, including those who did not return to their origin communities, those who did return, and those who never left. We also consider mobility among those living in communities that did not suffer tsunami damage. We then examine how the likelihood of receiving housing aid varies across these subgroups. Finally, we consider how measures of subjective well-being evolve after the disaster. Results show that predictors of relocation vary significantly across individuals depending on the level of exposure of communities to the physical damage of the tsunami. Relocation decisions, and in particular staying in the pre-tsunami community, are highly related to the likelihood of benefiting from housing aid. And, changes in subjective well-being not only depend on receipt of housing aid but also on interactions between relocation decisions.
The last empirical analysis changes the focus from the reconstruction of individual assets to the reconstruction of community infrastructure (Chapter 6}), an important component of post-disaster rebuilding programs. In the aftermath of the tsunami, it is estimated that a total of 2,600 km of roads and 119 bridges needed rebuilding. In less than four years a total of 3,700 km of roads and all the destroyed (or damaged) bridges had been rebuilt \citep{indonesia2010provincial}. Roads can be an important gateway to economic development, so in this analysis I focus on estimating the economic effects of road reconstruction in post-tsunami Aceh. First, I exploit variation in timing of road reconstruction projects at the community level and, using a fixed effects strategy, I show that road reconstruction may not be enough to cause significant economic effects, but that quality of road construction matters, specifically access to all-weather roads. Further, I also show that road reconstruction that happens in combination with public works programs has additional positive effects. I provide further evidence on the effects of road reconstruction by looking at the specific case of the reconstruction of the Banda Aceh-Meulaboh road. The Banda Aceh-Meulaboh road is a good example of a project that seeks to restore large public infrastructure after a major shock to the built environment under the assumption that it would contribute to restore economic activity in the area. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I exploit changes in access to the road between 2005 and 2015. I show that gaining access to the road has positive and modest effects both on individuals and households and, in particular, on households in rural areas. I did not find any statistically significant negative effects of losing access to the road but results from this case study point that losing access may be hindering some progress, for example, to translate work opportunities into higher wages.
Taken together, results from the empirical analyses in this dissertation fill an important gap in our understanding of what happens to disaster victims in the long-run, how they benefit from reconstruction programs that rebuild both individual and community assets, and how these programs can have long-lasting consequences on economics and demographic trajectories of populations. As a result, my study not only represents an important contribution to existing literature, but it also underscores the importance of having data collection projects that account for the long-term nature of infrastructure reconstruction projects. Natural disasters are projected to become increasingly more common, and this type of data can result in empirical research, like this dissertation, that can improve our understanding of how disaster victims cope, which strategies work best and why, and create lessons that can inform disaster management and reconstruction policies that will result in successful post-disaster experiences.
Item Open Access Essays in Education and Politics(2013) Duch, Katherine H.This dissertation explores three topics relating to education and politics. The first chapter examines gender gaps in test scores among top-scoring students. Recent research by Pope and Sydnor (2010) and Nosek et al. (2008) suggests that regions where individuals hold traditional gender stereotypes may have greater gender gaps. To explore this possibility, the current study examines whether five proxy variables for traditional gender stereotypes are correlated with greater gender gaps on math, science, and reading assessments. Using data from North Carolina, the results suggest that gender gaps on 5th and 8th grade state tests are strongly associated with the proportion of voters who supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. A one standard deviation increase in support for the amendment is associated with a 26 percent standard deviation increase in the 5th grade gender gap and a 31 percent standard deviation increase in the 8th grade gender gap. Other proxy variables for traditional gender stereotypes, such as the proportion of voters who supported the Republican Presidential candidate in 2012 and the proportion of religious adherents who are Evangelical, are not statistically significantly related to gender gaps.
The second chapter evaluates a one-to-one laptop program implemented by a North Carolina school district. The Digital Conversion Initiative provides all 4th through 12th grade students in the Mooresville Graded School District with a laptop for use at school and at home. Using administrative data on students in North Carolina, this paper analyzes the effect of the program on 4th through 8th grade reading and math assessments. The results suggest that the effect of the laptop program varies substantially depending on the grade in which students first received a laptop. The program had an impressive effect on test scores for students who received a laptop in 4th or 5th grades. Compared to students who were unexposed to the program, students who received a laptop in 4th grade scored 0.12 standard deviations higher on reading tests and 0.42 standard deviations higher on math tests after three years of the program. Students who received a laptop in 5th grade scored 0.22 standard deviations higher on reading tests and 0.09 standard deviations higher on math tests after three years than their unexposed peers. Meanwhile, the program had smaller effects on reading test scores and significant negative effects on math test scores for students who received a laptop in 6th or 7th grade. Compared to their unexposed peers, students who received a laptop in 6th grade scored 0.12 standard deviations lower on math tests after three years of exposure, and students who received a laptop in 7th grade scored 0.22 standard deviations lower on math tests after two years of exposure. These mixed results should serve as a warning to school districts, and to middle schools in particular, that are planning to launch one-to-one programs.
The third chapter explores whether state legislative candidates differ in their support for abortion bans and abstinence-only sex education programs based on the gender and age of their children. Previous research by Washington (2008) suggests that legislative candidates with daughters would be less likely to support abortion bans and abstinence-only sex education programs than candidates with only sons, but the present study finds that legislative candidates with daughters feel the same about abortion and abstinence-only sex education programs as their colleagues with only sons. This finding suggests that differences in legislators' views may not explain the differences in legislators' voting identified by Washington (2008). This paper also serves as a cautionary tale to researchers who may be quick to generalize the conclusions from prior work. Although the characteristics of legislators themselves produce robust differences in voting, it appears that the characteristics of legislators' children may only matter in some circumstances.
Item Open Access Essays in Empirical Development Economics(2020) Subramanian, NivedhithaSocial norms can play an important role in economic decision-making. Individuals face costs if they deviate from cultural norms in their families or communities, and firms seek to preserve reputation in order to bolster their position in their market. In this dissertation, I explore the role of cultural norms and reputation in individual, household, and firm decision-making in developing countries. The first chapter is comprised of information and priming experiments on a job search platform in urban Pakistan identifying the role of social norms and workplace attributes on educated women's job search and occupational choice. The second chapter studies the relationship between gold price in year of birth and household decision-making at adulthood using nationally representative data in India. The third chapter combines a lab-in-field generosity game with field-based measures of healthcare provider effort to document that a sizable proportion of healthcare providers in this setting in rural India exert clinical effort with patients in ways consistent with maintaining reputation in their communities.
Item Open Access Essays in Health, Education and Development(2012) Cas, Ava GailThis dissertation encompasses three essays that examine the extent to which parental loss and social programs affect the health, education and time allocation of children in developing countries.
The first chapter asks the question of whether early life public health interventions have lasting or long term impact on children's human capital development. In order to answer this question, this chapter investigates the long term impact of the safe motherhood program in Indonesia on later cognition and schooling outcomes of children when they are age 11 to 17 years. The paper further investigates this question by examining the impact of the program based on exposure that began during a particular year. The findings suggest that the safe motherhood program had an impact on adolescent cognition and schooling. In particular, the program impact is relatively large and significant for those children who began exposure to the program at age 2 or younger, or not yet conceived. These estimates are robust to a series of robustness and specification checks. The results are also in general consistent with the findings in biological literature that suggest the importance of the first two years of life in shaping outcomes later in life.
The second chapter examines the question of how parental loss or absence affects child well-being. While the strategy of many papers in the literature is to use parental death due to HIV/Aids to examine this question, this chapter uses the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in parental death. In addition, the paper uses a unique longitudinal dataset that has baseline information on the same sample of individuals interviewed after the tsunami. Also, given rich data, the paper is able to look at various dimensions of child well-being which include school attendance, post-secondary aspirations, time allocation as well as educational attainment and marriage decisions for older children. The paper provides an in-depth analysis by examining the impact of parental death by age and gender of the child as well as looking at the impact in the short term and longer term. The results suggest that death of both parents, which has been little explored in the literature, has a large, negative impact on the human capital accumulation of both males and females. The loss of father alone led older males (aged 15 to 17 at the time of tsunami) to acquire less education compared to same age males whose both parents survived, while no effect is found on younger males aged 9 to 14. Furthermore, the results suggest that maternal death has little impact on schooling outcomes but does affect time allocation of children.
Finally, the third chapter examines the impact of a unique bilateral grant-aid program which provided typhoon-resistant schools and instructional equipment to the Philippines. The results suggest that the presence of both the typhoon-resistant schools and instructional equipment programs had a positive impact on the educational attainment of both men and women. The availability of instructional equipment program alone also increased the educational attainment of men but it does not seem to have had substantive effect on women. On the other hand, the availability of typhoon-resistant schools without the instructional equipment package did not have any impact on schooling outcomes of either the males or females. Except for the falsification exercise which suggests that there could be other underlying trends which may not be fully captured by the specifications, the estimates are in general robust to the inclusion of individual level characteristics, accounting of other concurrent national government's programs, restricting to municipalities in the typhoon belt region and accounting for municipality-specific trends. The findings suggest the importance of not only expanding access to schooling through increased availability of schools or classrooms (particularly, those that are resistant to natural disasters) but also the importance of improving the quality of learning through the availability of school resources that aide in students' learning in developing countries.
Item Open Access Essays in the Economics of Education(2017) Shi, YingThis dissertation comprises three essays in the economics of education. I begin with a paper that evaluates the effectiveness of selective secondary schools. An unique admissions context permits identifying the causal benefits of such institutions for a more heterogeneous sample of students than previous US-based studies. The second essay examines the causes of female under-representation in STEM fields, with a focus on engineering. I decompose the gender gap into explanatory accounts such as academic preparation, ability beliefs, and preferences for prosocial values and professional goals. The final essay investigates the roles of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in explaining high school graduation gaps at the three-way intersection of race, gender, and income. A finding of particular interest is the lagging performance of disadvantaged white students relative to African American peers, even after accounting for skill disparities using a sequential model of educational attainment.
Item Open Access Essays on Education Policy(2013) Francis, Dania VeronicaThis dissertation consists of three essays on the topic of education policy. In the first essay, I evaluate the impacts of a teacher quality equity law that was enacted in California in the fall of 2006 prohibiting superintendents from transferring a teacher into a school in the bottom three performance deciles of the state's academic performance index if the principal refuses the transfer. The primary mechanism through which the policy should affect student outcomes is through the mix of the quality of teachers in the school. Using publicly available statewide administrative education data, and two quasi-experimental methodologies, I assess whether the policy had an effect on the district-wide distribution of teachers with varying levels of experience, education and licensure and on student academic performance. I extend the analysis by examining whether the policy has differential effects on subgroups of schools classified as having high-poverty or high-minority student populations. I find that, as a result of the teacher quality equity law, low-performing schools experienced a relative increase in fully-credentialed teachers and more highly educated teachers, but that did not necessarily translate to an increase in academic performance. I also find evidence that the dimension along which the policy was most effective was in improving teacher pre-service qualifications in schools with high minority student populations.
In the second essay, I estimate racial, ethnic, gender and socioeconomic differences in teacher reports of student absenteeism and tardiness while controlling for administrative records of actual absences. Subjective perceptions that teachers form about students' classroom behaviors matter for student academic outcomes. Given this potential impact, it is important to identify any biases in these perceptions that would disadvantage subgroups of students. I use longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 in conjunction with longitudinal, student-level data from the North Carolina Education Data Research Center to employ a variation of a two sample instrumental variables approach in which I instrument for actual eighth grade absences with simulated measures of eight grade absences. I find consistent evidence that teacher reports of the attendance of poor students are negatively biased and that math teacher reports of male attendance are positively biased. There is mixed evidence with regard to student race and ethnicity.
The third essay is a co-authored work in which we employ a quasi-experimental estimation strategy to examine the effects of state-level job losses on fourth- and eighth-grade test scores, using federal Mass Layoff Statistics and 1996-2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress data. Results indicate that job losses decrease scores. Effects are larger for eighth than fourth graders and for math than reading assessments, and are robust to specification checks. Job losses to 1 percent of a state's working-age population lead to a .076 standard deviation decrease in the state's eighth-grade math scores. This result is an order of magnitude larger than those found in previous studies that have compared students whose parents lose employment to otherwise similar students, suggesting that downturns affect all students, not just students who experience parental job loss. Our findings have important implications for accountability schemes: we calculate that a state experiencing one-year job losses to 2 percent of its workers (a magnitude observed in seven states) likely sees a 16 percent increase in the share of its schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind.
Item Open Access ESSAYS ON GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS, POLICIES AND INEQUALITY.(2019) Carnovale, MariaThis thesis tackles development policy issues that arise when institutions have unequal power. It contributes to three fields: International Political Economy; Industrial Organization; Global Value Chain Analysis. Within this intersection I examine the institutional constraints to economic development created by global markets. I approach this question by mathematically modelling surplus distribution along Global Value Chains to simulate policy measures.
It shows that policy interventions can shift surplus shares from developing countries to advanced economies in presence of market power asymmetries. This surplus shift occurs with environmental and labor standards applied in the presence of partially-substitutable goods; and trade-based development policies . The models I develop in these papers provide a framework for further empirical investigation and policies that are better aligned with development goals.
Item Embargo Essays on Labor Market Dynamics and Innovation(2024) Pei, AlisonThis dissertation studies the relationship between labor market dynamics and innovation, with a focus on the impact of regulations on worker outcomes. Specifically, it investigates how regulations such as high-skilled immigration policies and noncompete agreements influence monetary wages, mobility patterns, and innovation outcomes within the labor market.
In Chapter II, "Monopsony in the High-Skilled Migrant Labor Market - Evidence from H-1BVisa Program" (co-written with Seohee Kim), we assess the extent of monopsony power in the labor market for highly skilled immigrants, focusing on employer concentration and its impact on wages. Leveraging data obtained through a FOIA request for H-1B visa program petitions, we find that the H-1B labor market is significantly more concentrated than the broader U.S. labor market, with a steadily increasing trend over the past decade. Our analysis reveals that higher employer concentration leads to significant wage declines for H-1B workers. Furthermore, we establish a causal relationship between employer concentration and wage decreases, highlighting the importance of considering policy reforms to mitigate these negative effects on immigrant workers' wages and mobility.
In Chapter III, "Innovation and the Enforceability of Noncompete Agreements" (co-written with Matthew S. Johnson and Michael A. Lipsitz), we investigate the impact of noncompete agreements on innovation. Using state-level law changes, we find that stricter enforcement of noncompete agreements substantially reduces patenting activity, indicative of a loss in true innovation. We also observe that stricter enforceability of noncompete agreements leads to reduced job mobility and hinders new business formation, suggesting broader negative implications for knowledge dissemination and entrepreneurial activity. Our findings underscore the need for policymakers to carefully consider the trade-offs between the private benefits of noncompete enforceability and the broader societal impacts on innovation and entrepreneurship.
In Chapter IV, "Measuring Inventor Mobility from Online Professional Profiles", I investigate inventor mobility patterns by combining data from LinkedIn profiles and USPTO patent records. By integrating these datasets, significant disparities in mobility emerge. While USPTO data indicates a decline in mobility over time, LinkedIn data reveals a steady increase, particularly among younger cohorts. This highlights the necessity of utilizing multiple data sources for a comprehensive understanding of inventor mobility. Furthermore, a comparison with the general labor force underscores heightened mobility among inventors, prompting further exploration of policy implications and industry dynamics.
Overall, this dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of the regulatory landscape surrounding labor markets and innovation. By identifying the mechanisms through which regulations influence worker outcomes and innovation dynamics, it provides a foundation for informed policymaking aimed at fostering a more dynamic labor market conducive to innovation and economic growth.