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 | ||
dc.subject | Economics | |
dc.title | Essays in Political Economy and Development Economics | |
dc.type | Dissertation | |
duke.embargo.months | 23 |
Files
Original bundle
- Name:
- Nyeki_duke_0066D_15236.pdf
- Size:
- 452.89 KB
- Format:
- Adobe Portable Document Format