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Title: Essays in Political Economy and Development Economics
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2019
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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 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 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 infour types of networks: talking about goals, talking about challenges, givingmoney or goods, and receiving money or goods. We estimate effects on total link counts, measures of homophily, and measures of link intensity
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Authors: Nyéki, Gábor
Institution: Duke University
Department: Economics
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Pages: 1-112
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Other
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