Essays in Political Economy and Development Economics

Abstract

This dissertation explores questions in political economy and in developmenteconomics. I ask and answer two research questions.First, I look at whether peaceful or violent protests are more effective atsteering policy change. I study this question in the context of the US CivilRights Era, and evaluate the effects of protests on legislator votes in theUS House. I use a fixed-effects specification, and find that peaceful protestscaused a liberal shift and therefore were effective from the point of view ofthe Civil Rights Movement but violent protests caused a conservative shiftand therefore backfired.Second, I look at whether the structure of social networks in rural West-ern Kenya is affected by a large development intervention. In joint work withRobert Garlick and Kate Orkin, we evaluate the effects of a large unconditionalcash transfer and a psychological intervention. We cross-randomizevillages into these two interventions, and measure household interactions infour types of networks: talking about goals, talking about challenges, givingmoney or goods, and receiving money or goods. We estimate effects on totallink counts, measures of homophily, and measures of link intensity.