Essays in Political Economy and Development Economics

dc.contributor.advisor

Bayer, Patrick J

dc.contributor.advisor

Garlick, Robert J

dc.contributor.author

Nyeki, Gabor

dc.date.accessioned

2019-06-07T19:49:42Z

dc.date.available

2021-05-21T08:17:23Z

dc.date.issued

2019

dc.department

Economics

dc.description.abstract

This dissertation explores questions in political economy and in development

economics. I ask and answer two research questions.

First, I look at whether peaceful or violent protests are more effective at

steering policy change. I study this question in the context of the US Civil

Rights Era, and evaluate the effects of protests on legislator votes in the

US House. I use a fixed-effects specification, and find that peaceful protests

caused a liberal shift and therefore were effective from the point of view of

the Civil Rights Movement but violent protests caused a conservative shift

and 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 with

Robert Garlick and Kate Orkin, we evaluate the effects of a large unconditional

cash transfer and a psychological intervention. We cross-randomize

villages into these two interventions, and measure household interactions in

four types of networks: talking about goals, talking about challenges, giving

money or goods, and receiving money or goods. We estimate effects on total

link counts, measures of homophily, and measures of link intensity.

dc.identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/18829

dc.subject

Economics

dc.title

Essays in Political Economy and Development Economics

dc.type

Dissertation

duke.embargo.months

23

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