Full Citation
Title: Essays in Political Economy
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2019
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: In this dissertation, I apply theoretical and empirical analysis to three topics in political economy and microeconomics. In the first chapter, Crossing the District Line, I study how electoral district maps affect public spending. Electoral district borders regularly cross the borders of local governments. At the same time, elected representatives transfer money to local governments. Political parties may try to target these transfers to certain electoral districts, but can only imperfectly do so because of border mismatch. Using a model of political competition, I show that border mismatch creates inequality: otherwise similar counties receive different amounts of money depending on how the district map is drawn. Empirical evidence suggests that border mismatch has a sizable effect on transfers from U.S. states to counties. I discuss implications for redistricting and the tradeoff between avoiding border mismatch and respecting other redistricting principles. In the second chapter, Do Police Maximize Arrests or Minimize Crime?, I derive an empirical test to better understand the objective of police officers’ stop and search decisions. Uncertainty about the objective of police officers undermines existing tests for racial discrimination. Without knowing how unbiased police officers behave, it is difficult to identify biased or racist behavior in the data. To answer this question, I extend existing models of racial profiling and derive testable implications that require city-level data on police spending, arrests, and demographics. I find empirical evidence consistent with a model of arrest maximization, and inconsistent with crime minimization. iii In the third chapter, Polling Place Location and the Costs of Voting, co-authored with Gaurav Bagwe and Juan Margitic, we study how the distance to a polling place affects voting behavior. The distance between voters and their polling place may be an important determinant in the overall cost of voting, turnout, and election and policy outcomes. We first collect a dataset on distance to polling places for all 8.7 million registered voters in Pennsylvania. We find a small and negative effect on average of distance to polling place on turnout in 2012, 2016, and 2018 elections. The negative effects are much larger, however, among younger voters and among those who walk to work.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Stashko, Allison
Institution: Georgetown University
Department: Economics
Advisor: Laurent Bouton, Ph.D. and Garance Genicot, Ph.D.
Degree: Ph.D.
Publisher Location:
Pages: 1-175
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Crime and Deviance, Other, Population Data Science, Race and Ethnicity
Countries: