AYSPS Dissertations

This dissertation examines the changes following the original Two-Child Policy (TCP) implemented in Vietnam in 1988, including the policy's relaxation in 2003, its partial reinstatement for government workers in 2007, and its full restoration of the two-child policy for the ethnic majority in 2009. These policy interventions serve as natural experiments for this investigation, allowing me to explore the evolution of the TCP and its impact on fertility outcomes. By analyzing both the intended and unintended consequences of these policy changes, this research offers valuable insights for policymakers and researchers interested in the social implications of population control measures. Utilizing data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS), I construct an event history of birth to investigate birth outcomes, specifically the probability of conception, using a Differences-in-Differences design. I found that the most affected group—the Kinh ethnic majority working in the public sector—increased their fertility following the policy's relaxation, and the increase continued even after the two-child policy was reimposed. I explored the sub-groups that change their fertility as a response to these policies and detailed some potential mechanisms at play.

This dissertation comprises two chapters, each addressing significant topics in health and public economics. The first chapter examines the long-term intergenerational effects of abortion legalization in the U.S. that began in the late 1960s and culminated with the Roe v. Wade decision. This study focuses on analyzing the life-cycle health outcomes of children conceived during the era of legal abortion, with an emphasis on cohort survival rates. The second chapter, coauthored with Hasan Shahid and Shyam Raman, explores how states respond to exogenous changes in federal funding for the provision of life-saving HIV/AIDS treatments in the U.S.

Chapter I: The legalization of abortion in the U.S. during 1969-1973 led to significant improvements in the health, educational, and economic outcomes of women directly affected by this policy, as shown by previous research. In this study, I analyze how children born to these women and exposed in-utero to abortion legalization, fare in life, particularly in terms of lifecycle health. I leverage the state-level variation in changes to abortion laws predating Roe v. Wade as well as the changes brought about by Roe v. Wade. I implement difference-in-difference and event study techniques on data from restricted-use administrative microdata on births and deaths in the U.S. I find that the likelihood of cohorts conceived under legal abortion surviving improves throughout the life course, though the magnitude varies depending on age and specification.

Chapter II: As part of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) serves as a payer of last resort for people living with HIV (PLWH) who are uninsured or underinsured and have a low income. ADAP provides recipients with access to life-saving antiretroviral treatments. The ADAP program is funded through a combination of federal and state funds but is administered by the state. We exploit a rule change which was part of the 2006 reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act and resulted in an exogenous shock to federal funding for ADAPs. Using this unique setting and instrumental variable strategy, the study finds that changes in federal contributions to ADAPs have a near dollar-to-dollar effect on state ADAP expenditures, and increased federal funding results in an increased number of clients served. These findings underscore the importance of federal support for ADAPs in providing critical care for people living with HIV.

This dissertation examines the impact of two significant educational reforms on several key educational outcomes: a grading reform at the university level, and a rescheduling reform at the secondary level. Firstly, it explores how a grade policy reform at the tertiary level affects student decision-making and academic performance, particularly focusing on dropout rates and strategic academic adjustments made by persisting students. Secondly, the dissertation investigates the school-level factors that influence the adoption of a school rescheduling policy and examines the rescheduling’s subsequent effects on students' average academic performance and attendance rates at the early secondary school level.

The first chapter co-authored with Dr. Nicholas Wright examines the impact of a grade policy reform on college students' decision-making and academic performance. Rolled out at a renowned university in the Caribbean, this reform entails increasing the minimum pass mark and recalibrating the numerical grade thresholds for every letter grade. Using administrative student-level data and various quasi-experimental approaches, we find that adopting this new grading policy resulted in a notable rise in dropout rates, primarily affecting students with incoming college scores in the lower 67th percentile of college entry scores, and those students who commenced their college education at a later stage in life. Furthermore, we find that students who persisted strategically adjusted their behavior to minimize the effect of the policy change on their academic performance. Specifically, these students were more likely to reduce their credit load, delay enrolling in general education courses, and enroll in courses that were historically more likely to award better grades. Our results also reveal a compression in the distribution of GPAs around the mid-range indicating a decreased likelihood of students achieving exceptionally high or low GPAs post reform. These results highlight the potential unintended consequences of grading policy changes and emphasize the need for careful consideration when implementing such reforms.

The second chapter examines the impact of a school rescheduling reform in Jamaica, where schools transitioned from a double-shift to a full-day schooling system resulting in a significant increase in formal school hours. Using data from the Ministry of Education in Jamaica, I examine the school-level factors influencing the timing of this policy adoption amongst double shift schools, and the subsequent effects on students' average academic performance and attendance rates at the grade nine level. Results indicate that junior high schools, particularly those with more classrooms in 2011 and historically higher attendance rates transitioned from double-shift to full-day schooling more quickly. Conversely, schools with higher enrollment experienced a slower transition. Additionally, the switch to full-day schooling resulted in an uptick in students' average grade nine achievement test scores and school attendance rates, with the improvement being more pronounced and significant for Language Arts compared to Mathematics. These findings highlight the importance of structured school time on students’ academic performance and engagement, offering insights for policymakers to improve secondary education policies for a more cohesive and equitable system.

This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter investigates the impact of air quality changes on people's environmental awareness and beliefs which are measured by Google search interests related to air quality and the donation amounts to the Democratic and Republican parties. The increase in air pollutant indicators may influence the public's environmental attention and re-evaluate the incumbent politician's environmental position. I use the fixed effects OLS model and Instrumental Variable method to estimate the effect of air quality change on Google search interests on air quality-related terms and the contribution amount to Democrats and Republicans. Firstly, I find that Google search interests for “air quality”, “air pollution” and “environmental protection” increase by 0.0858 which is 0.3% of the mean search interests, when the average AQI increases by one unit in a month which means people pay more attention to air quality when they experienced worse air quality. People are more likely to have stronger reactions to prolonged changes in air quality compared to temporary deteriorations. Secondly, the poor air quality will lead people to increase their contribution amounts to Democrats while decrease for Republicans. It suggests that bad air quality carries a moderate electoral penalty for anti-environment incumbents as most of the Republicans are more anti-environment compared with Democrats.

In the second chapter, I investigate the benefits of the lockdown policy implemented in response to the emergence of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The Chinese government enforced strict lockdown measures to contain the spread of the virus, which resulted in economic losses but potentially led to improvements in air quality. Using the Staggered DID model, I examine the impact of the lockdown and its subsequent lifting on air quality outcomes. I use lockdown cities as the treatment group and the non-lockdown cities as the control group. The results reveal that in the cities under lockdown, both the AQI and levels showed significant improvement, with reductions of 6.610 and 2.788 respectively, compared to the control cities. Additionally, a daily decrease of 0.239 in AQI and 0.110 in was observed from the implementation of the lockdown policy until March 14th, 2020, in the lockdown cities. To ensure the robustness of the findings and rule out the possibility of systematic differences between treatment and control cities, I conduct an event study analysis. The results indicate that both the treatment and control groups exhibited a parallel trend in air quality prior to the implementation of the lockdown, further strengthening the validity of the results.

The third essay studies the impact of piloted carbon market transactions on air quality and mental health. The air pollution caused by the development of the economy has caused huge losses in human and financial costs. Much literature is concerned about the impact of air quality on heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and other health effects, but less attention is paid to mental health. China's carbon trading market pilots and the national carbon market provide ideal quasi-experiments. In this study, I utilize the DID method to estimate the effects of the ETS on air quality and mental health. The pilot province Fujian Province was treated as the treatment group, and the remaining provinces that never implemented carbon marketing policy in 2013 and 2016, served as the control group. The results reveal a significant improvement in air quality following the implementation of ETS, as indicated by a decrease in AQI by 10.98 units, by 7.92 , and by 13.23 . Furthermore, the analysis shows that CESD20 score of individuals in Fujian Province experienced a decrease of 3.7% after the pilot of ETS, indicating a positive impact on mental well-being.

The structure of educational institutions has frequently been at the center of education reforms in recent years. Beginning with the school choice movement, advocates of market-based approaches have infused school systems with policy tools that aim to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of schools while also satisfying consumers (parents and families). School choice, contracting, and performance management are major features of these systems. However, schools in the United States traditionally doubled as neighborhood centers connecting community members to each other. This dissertation explored the relationships between market-based district governance approaches and the levels of engagement and coproduction exhibited by a school community. I used three different datasets to empirically investigate these relationships. The first dataset included national data from the 2017-18 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) to explore principal perceptions of parent behaviors. The second two datasets were created from the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) IRS 990 data to measure levels of coproduction from school-supporting nonprofits. I found that, in general, levels of coproduction are no different between districts with traditional and market-based governance models. However, different types of schools and nonprofits behave differently in these contexts.

This dissertation consists of three essays on Environmental and Labor Economics.

The first chapter estimates the impact of the winter clean heating pilot (WCHP) project on air quality in northern China using staggered models. The primary findings indicate an overall reduction in air pollution levels in northern China attributed to the WCHP. Moreover, the WCHP exhibits heightened effectiveness during the heating period, resulting in a reduction of PM_2.5 by 13.39 µg/m³ (14.2%), and PM₁₀ by 21.06 µg/m³ (13.6%). Additionally, the study reveals unintended consequences of the WCHP in mitigating historical disparities in air pollution levels between northern and southern China due to the Huai River policy (HRP). Following the implementation of the WCHP, there is a notable decrease in air pollution levels in northern regions compared to southern areas. Specifically, PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ in northern China exhibit a substantial and greater decrease than in southern China, with reductions of 13.07 µg/m³ (23%) and 21.31 µg/m³ (21%), respectively.

Hedonic theory predicts that housing prices should increase as air quality improves from environmental regulations. However, environmental policies also bring substantial costs to influenced industries and affect labor markets, which affect housing markets. The second chapter investigates the effects of environmental regulations on both house values and rents under the setting of a cap-and-trade program - the NOx Budget Trading Program (NBP), considering both the amenity channel and the labor-market channel. I find that the pass-through of the value of environmental improvements is lower among renters than that of house owners. In addition, house values and rents decrease more in higher manufacturing energy intensity areas due to the negative impact of the NBP on the local labor market. Furthermore, the distributional effects of the NBP are distinctly different between owner-occupants and renters.

The third chapter examines the impact of family size on the labor market behavior and occupational characteristics of employed parents in the United States, utilizing an instrumental variable approach. By leveraging exogenous variation in family size resulting from the sex composition of the first two children, I analyze changes in parents’ job flexibility, employer-provided health insurance, and occupational prestige scores. The findings reveal that parents with larger families tend to have occupations characterized by greater flexibility, as indicated by lower scores in the five job features related to flexibility. Additionally, parents tend to hold jobs that offer employer- or union-provided health insurance. Furthermore, the analysis uncovers a noteworthy trend: each additional child corresponds to a 7.8% to 10.2% decrease in the prestige scores of both mothers and fathers. This suggests a discernible shift towards occupations with lower prestige scores as family size increases.

This dissertation examines the uneven impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on racialized populations through differential exposure and differential effects. It analyzes how variations in physical and social environments contribute to disparities in COVID-19 mortality among racialized groups and explores the differential effects on mental health across racial lines.

The first chapter investigates the impact of urban physical and social factors, such as air pollution and social vulnerability, on COVID-19 mortality disparities. It finds that environmental hazards, particularly urban air pollution, increase mortality risks for Blacks and Hispanics. Data from five sources, including the CDC’s COVID-19 Case Surveillance, and EPA’s EJscreen, were used, covering 1,526,418 cases.

The second chapter examines the urban-rural divide in COVID-19 health outcomes, considering physical and social environments. The chapter identifies significant differences in mortality driven by variations in healthcare access and demographics. The study highlights the need to address healthcare disparities and environmental justice to mitigate the pandemic's impact on rural areas. Data from sources, including the CDC’s and County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, were analyzed, with a final sample of 1,611,874 observations.

A multilevel logistic regression analysis was conducted for both chapters. Chapter 1 examined the relationship between air pollution, socioeconomic and health variables, and COVID-19 mortality in urban settings, while Chapter 2 focused on the urban-rural divide. The logistic regression model accounted for the hierarchical structure of the data, with individual-level observations nested within counties.

The third chapter explores the differential effects of COVID-19 on mental health, focusing on how socioeconomic factors and racial inequalities influence anxiety and depression. The study finds that despite higher SES Blacks do not benefit equally in mental health outcomes compared to Whites. Data from the Household Pulse Survey were used, covering 885,495 observations.

This dissertation shows that racial minorities face increased risks of COVID-19 health outcomes due to environmental and social vulnerabilities, demonstrating how physical and social environments, combined with pre-existing conditions, shape health outcomes for racialized populations. These groups also experience mental health consequences influenced by SES. This dissertation highlights the need to address systemic inequities and environmental risks to improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations.

This dissertation has three chapters on experimental and environmental economics. Chapter one examines the economic impact of fake reviews on market outcomes. The second chapter, co-authored with my colleague Xiangyu Meng, investigates China’s location choice of air quality monitors. The third chapter analyzes the corporate reporting behavior of firms for Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The first chapter uses lab experiment to measure the impact of fake reviews on buyer seller payoffs, trust and trustworthiness in an online marketplace setting. As consumers increasingly rely on online reviews to make decisions, firms have an incentive to use fake reviews to build up their reputation and, consequently, sales revenue. Fake reviews distort the online reputation market, resulting in buyers making sub-optimal choices and truthful sellers facing unfair competition. However, the extent of the impact of fake reviews is hardly known because researchers cannot easily identify fake reviews. This problem is further exacerbated by sellers who quickly learn to mimic truthful reviews or provide monetary incentives for buyers to leave positive feedback. To solve this problem, the paper uses a laboratory experiment to accurately identify fake reviews and measure its impact on buyer

and seller payoff, trust, and trustworthiness in the marketplace. The paper also differentiates between two types of goods, experience and credence goods. We find that there is trade off between prices and fake reviews, sellers post lower price to offset the occurrence of fake reviews. The paper also finds that fake reviews lowers trust by 4.3% in the experience goods market.

The second chapter studies the location choice of air quality monitors in China. Since 2013, China has added more than four thousand air quality monitoring stations that provide the public with real-time information on six airborne pollutants, i.e., particular matter (P.M.) 2.5, P.M.10, sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), and carbon monoxide (CO). Authorities manage these monitors at four levels of the government: state, provincial, municipal, and county. Typically, pollution monitors are located where they could be deemed useful, for example, within more air-polluted areas or near schools, hospitals, road traffic, and industries. While the real-time information has helped individuals, firms, and governments make decisions; it is unclear how a government body makes siting decisions. This chapter aims to answer three questions: Where are the pollution monitors located? What drives the decision to add a new monitor in a particular location? Is there a difference in location choice behavior between central and local governments in China? We find that, in 2021, central monitors were located in cleaner areas than local monitors and monitors were located around public buildings like schools and hospitals. However, when it comes to placing a monitor, central monitors are installed in polluted areas and local monitors are placed in cleaner areas. We also find that both, central and local monitors, are clustered around each other.

The third chapter analyzes the corporate reporting behavior for TRI program of EPA. Without the monitoring and enforcement activities by the Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA), environmental laws are primarily non-binding. Toxic Release Inventory is one such policy that requires constant monitoring by the EPA to ensure that the firms comply. The self-reported nature of firms’ toxic releases makes it crucial for the EPA to inspect and pun- ish violations of misreporting or non-reporting regularly. This paper examines the impact of past regulatory actions by the EPA on firms’ compliance behavior regarding the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reporting. Using a dataset spanning more than 30 years, our anal- ysis reveals several key findings. Firstly, there exists a significant correlation between prior inspections and subsequent enforcement actions, with firms having a notable 0.9% likelihood of facing enforcement following a previous inspection. Additionally, we observe a nuanced relationship between enforcement history and inspection likelihood, suggesting potential re- source prioritization by regulatory bodies. Furthermore, our study unveils a ”neighborhood effect” in regulatory outcomes, wherein both Neighbor Inspection and Neighbor Enforcement significantly influence a firm’s probability of facing enforcement actions. These findings pro- vide valuable insights into the complexities of EPA monitoring and enforcement strategies and their implications for promoting compliance with environmental regulations within the TRI reporting framework.

The public sector has been facing a looming human capital with persistent challenges in recruitment and retention, highlighting the need to compete for talent against private sector employers. Sector switching is the process of changing from a private to a public job or vice versa, tracking the dynamic processes of attracting private workers and retaining public workers from leaving for private jobs. As few studies have examined sector switching, this dissertation aims to examine the causes and consequences of sector switching through a comprehensive approach, focusing on two general questions: 1. What factors impact the probability of sector switching? 2. What is the effect of sector switching on workers’ pay?

This dissertation begins with the development of a framework for sector switching, discussing the necessary steps of changing jobs and moving to the other sectors in the process of switching sectors. Chapter II examines the impacts of demographic factors on the probability of sector switching, including gender, race, veteran, disability, sexual orientation, and marital and parental status. As sector switching impacts the public sector workforce, this chapter also contributes to representative bureaucracy studies by examining the representation of underrepresented groups in the public sector. The results show that gender and race, as well as veteran, disability, sexual orientation, and marital and parental status affect whether workers switch to the other sector.

Chapter III explores the impacts of sector switching on workers’ pay, appearing to be the first to examine the question in the context of the U.S. As sector switching tracks workers between the public and private sectors, this chapter also contributes to public-private sector wage differential studies by examining wage changes of workers accounting for unobserved skills. The results show that workers typically have wage gains from switching between the public and private sectors, but public workers have lower wage gains from switching to the private sector than from within-sector mobility. This dissertation ends by identifying several research gaps in examining sector switching, calling for future research to focus more on this underdeveloped area.

Scholars have consistently shown that people with mental illness are at an elevated risk for victimization experiences when compared to their non-disordered counterparts (Goodman et al., 2001; Hiday et al. 1999; Hiday et al., 2002; Silver, 2002; Teplin et al., 2005; Walsh et al., 2003). Researchers have identified numerous risk factors that elevate the risk of victimization experiences amongst people with mental illness; yet, little is known about what factors may protect this group of people from victimization That is, what is currently missing in the literature is the assessment of why, despite elevated risk, some persons with mental illness are notvictimized – known as resiliency. Utilizing multiple datasets, factors that are associated with resiliency from victimization amongst those with mental illness are investigated using multiple measure strategies for resiliency. Further, subsequent analyses examining group differences based on biological sex within the resiliency process are explored. Additional analyses examining how protective factors may differ within diagnostic categories are also examined. The applicability of resiliency models for people with mental illness are also explored. Results suggest that two domains of protective factors are important in the resiliency process from victimization amongst this population including those related to social support and those related to institutions such as the school. Results also suggest there are differences in protective factors that influence resiliency based on biological sex and protective factors within different diagnostic categories are identified. Finally, the compensatory resilience model appears to be the most applicable for people with mental illness. Future research and prevention implications are discussed.

Feminist scholarship has traditionally led the discourse on sexual violence within criminology. In the early 21st century, Richard Felson provided the first significant opposition to hardline Feminist theory’s approach to studying all kinds of violence perpetration, including sexual violence. While the Feminists believed that the desire for males to maintain the hegemony of patriarchy led to sexual violence, Felson argued that the perpetration of sexual violence was fueled by sexual desire, not sexism. This study provides a thorough historical overview of the study of sexual violence perpetration with emphasis on the Feminist and Felsonian perspectives while identifying the evidence and gaps for each. One of Felson’s hypotheses was that the physical attractiveness of a target would lead to a consistent increased victimization risk, an assumption which Feminist scholars have rejected. I analyzed Wave IV of the public use dataset National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to directly test Felson’s hypothesis implicating attractiveness as a causal factor in sexual violence while indirectly testing the Feminist contention that sexual violence exclusively results from societally ingrained patriarchal notions of misogyny, without consideration of biological or psychosocial effects of sexuality. Specifically, I employed the Add Health’s interviewer-rated physical attractiveness item as the core variable predicting participant experiences with sexual assault. The primary outcome measures evaluated were self-reported experience with Physical Forced Sex (PFS) victimization and Coerced Sex (CS) victimization. After conducting a series of logistic regression analyses through a model-building process, it was found that being rated as physically “Very unattractive” significantly lowered a female’s risk of experiencing PFS victimization when compared to those rated as “About average.” Additionally, I found no effect of physical attractiveness for those rated as “Unattractive” or above, indicating that being physically “Very unattractive” was (statistically speaking) a protective factor, creating a kind of threshold effect for the impact of physical attractiveness on PFS victimization. Moreover, there was no effect of physical attractiveness on CS victimization. The results were then discussed alongside theoretical considerations and the framing of a potential new expanded decision-making model for understanding the motivation to perpetrate sexual violence.

Over the past decade, policing has come under increased scrutiny—with an added focus on the implications of waning police legitimacy among the public. A recent examination of police legitimacy spawned the term perceived audience legitimacy (PAL), which essentially concerns how police believe they are viewed by the public. PAL may influence a host of outcomes, including adherence to procedural justice, self-legitimacy, and preferences for the use of force. One factor that has emerged across officer legitimacy studies as influential is the relationships an officer has with their peers. However, most studies focus on formal colleagues in the assessment of peers, neglecting potentially stronger bonds like those that exist between officer friends. That is, informal relationships between officers may be overlooked when focusing on formal colleagues, including both within assignment (i.e., not all officers on an assignment may like one another), and in past stages of an officer’s career (e.g., former assignment, academy mate, etc.). This mixed-method dissertation uses network analysis and qualitative interviews to examine the antecedents of PAL, with a particular emphasis on examining whether officer relationships (both formal and informal) are associated with PAL. With a combined sample size of (n = 2,355), the quantitative component of this project relies on data collected from three police departments—Southeast (SE), Northeast (NE), and Southwest (SW)—as a part of the Police Network Project (PoNET). The qualitative component relies on interviews from a convenience sample of (n = 100) police officers across each of the aforementioned departments. Quantitative results indicate evidence for only informal peer influence (i.e., friends) in the two largest of the three departments (NE, SE), though not necessarily among formal colleagues (i.e., same assignment). The qualitative component reveals the relative unimportance of individual interactions, with officers basing their perceptions of legitimacy primarily on events that received wider-spread media coverage (e.g., George Floyd). The study’s findings shed insight on the role of informal networks in structuring the dependence of officer attitudes. Pragmatically, the study provides evidence that ‘bad apple’ arguments may not be as convincing, and that traditional courses of action for problematic officers like reassignment may not be as effective.

In recent years, increasing attention has been given to the role of space in not only generating inequality but also alleviating it through place-based policies. This research focuses on mechanisms for inequality generation through local labor markets and potential routes for mitigation. In “Skills, Matching, and Skill Specificity Across Space”, we test whether urban agglomeration is skill-biased by using text data on skills from a near universe of job postings and resumes. Creating a new measure of skill specificity by modeling the network of relationships between skill, we find evidence that an increase in urban population increases match quality on average and the premium is greater for specific skills. Premiums appear to be driven by both labor market thickness and sorting between cities.

Early childhood education is often regarded as an ideal economic development investment. Numerous studies on high-quality, model programs in the 1960s and 1970s demonstrated a strong link between participation in pre-K programs and both short-term student achievement and positive later-life outcomes. However, evidence on state-funded, ‘universal’, pre-K programs is inconclusive. In “Assessing the Benefits of Education in Early Childhood: Evidence from a Pre-K Lottery in Georgia”, we use enrollment lotteries for over-subscribed school-based sites in Georgia’s Pre-K Program to analyze the impact of participation on elementary school outcomes. Lottery winners enter kindergarten more prepared in both math and reading, but gains fade by the end of kindergarten. Further, some negative achievement effects emerge by grade 4. Our evidence suggests greater benefits and lesser attenuation of gains for economically disadvantaged students.

Monopsony power in the labor market drives a substantial portion of between-city wage inequality by allowing firms in smaller areas to set wages below the competitive wage. In “Monopsony in the Market for Remote Work”, I use a double machine-learning estimator and data on job postings in the United States between 2012 and 2022 to estimate the elasticity of labor supply for fully-remote jobs. The small estimated elasticity indicates the presence of monopsony power in the market for fully-remote work. Furthermore, differences in fully-remote work’s monopsony power across city size persists despite the work’s geographically divorced nature.

In 2018, dockless, shareable micromobility devices arrived on Atlanta’s streets and sidewalks. The carrier companies that brought them did not coordinate their rollout with city officials. Much like the case in other cities where micromobility devices were introduced, Atlanta did not have the opportunity to prepare for them, meaning that the city had no oversight of the industry. The consequences were rampant clutter, increased danger to riders, pedestrians, and drivers of automobiles, and device-related crimes. News media outlets closely covered the challenges brought on by “e-scooters,” as they came to be known. Eventually, Atlanta passed regulations that expanded the city’s control over the industry but hindered it in the process. This led to vocal backlash, with some Atlantan’s asserting that the scooters and their riders should not shoulder all of the blame, and that automobiles and a lack of suitable infrastructure for innovative transportation technologies were more culpable. This raises questions about why the regulations targeted micromobility in Atlanta instead of other forms of transportation, and what the extent of the impacts of those regulations were. The current study obtains theoretical guidance from the Blackian framework, which proposes in part that socially disadvantaged entities will be vulnerable to legal intervention when they violate or threaten relatively more advantaged entities. To answer the questions at hand, the central investigation consists of a thematic analysis of news media sources (N = 243) to assess the presence of themes that align with the Blackian domains of social space and social time. Themes emerged from the data that suggest that micromobility devices, their riders, and the industry itself were portrayed in a manner that made them vulnerable to legislative intervention. The impact of the regulations is explored through a collection of rider citation reports (N = 100) and internal City of Atlanta communications. Findings suggest that the regulations heavily altered the micromobility market in Atlanta. Conclusions, policy implications, and recommendations for future research are offered.

The proliferation of online neighborhood networks has significantly expanded the way neighbors interact. Recent work indicates that these platforms provide users with social benefits such as a sense of community and potential to mobilize but they may also be responsible for negative neighborhood mechanisms such as fear, tensions, and vigilantism. Still, their popularity calls for the need to better understand their role within the scope of neighborhood studies, including how to define and operationalize collective efficacy within these platforms, and their role in shaping individual perceptions of fear of neighborhood crime. This work seeks to address these issues by examining how online neighborhood networks influence attitudes of collective efficacy and fear of crime.

This mixed-methods research is divided into three studies. First, I conducted semi-instructed interviews to understand how online neighborhood network users conceptualize the meaning and function of these groups, and how traditional collective efficacy measures are perceived and understood in online neighborhood networks. Next, I applied the findings from my qualitative research to develop and validate an online neighborhood network efficacy scale by conducting both an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to determine a factor structure that addresses the construct. Lastly, I conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire and applied an inverse probability weight model to estimate the effect of online neighborhood network use on reported fear of neighborhood victimization and estimate a log-linear model for the effects of frequency and magnitude of use on reported fear.

This study contributes to the neighborhood studies’ literature in several ways. First, by providing a better understanding of online neighborhood networks’ mechanisms and users’ individual perceptions of their role in neighborhoods. Next, by developing an online neighborhood network efficacy scale that can be used to better determine online neighborhood networks’ role in neighborhood outcomes. Finally, by creating both a specific 3-dimension measure of ONN use, and by applying causal methodology approach to isolate the effect of ONN use in fear of neighborhood victimization.

This dissertation consists of three essays on Environmental Economics.

The first chapter provides evidence of ’polluting my neighbor’ phenomenon at the province level based on two largest firm-level micro datasets and wind pattern information in China. I show that large air polluting manufacturing firms tend to be disproportionately situated near downwind borders, particularly when wind speeds are lower. Quantitatively, the expected number of new large air polluters (top 10%) in a county-year cell reduces by 11% as the countys distance to the downwind province border increases by one standard deviation, and a one standard deviation increase in wind speed will decrease the expected number of large air polluters by 6% in counties 100 km closer to the downwind border. The results are robust to different empirical strategies and survive a battery of placebo tests and robustness checks. The finding is predominantly driven by large air polluters since putting larger polluters closer to the border can externalize more environmental cost.

The second chapter offers the first causal investigation of the effect of air pollution on smoking. Using the rollout of a nationwide real-time air quality monitoring program in China, I distinguish between the direct impact of air pollution by itself and the effect of enhanced awareness of air pollution. Drawing upon both individual-level survey data and city-level aggregate online search data, my findings indicate that that while the awareness channel demonstrates significance, the direct channel exhibits less prominence.

The third chapter investigates influence activities in the context of China’s political system by examining whether local officials would deliberately reduce daily air pollution in response to top central leaders’ visits. I create a unique and comprehensive dataset of central leaders’ visits in China and examines the temporary effect of these visits on local air quality. I find that central leaders’ visits do improve air quality during high-pollution days, providing evidence of the existence of influencing activities. Moreover, the effect is much larger and more significant for the Presidents’ visits. Surprisingly, local officials’ age and political connection status do not significantly influence the observed effect.

This dissertation consists of three interconnected papers that study the intersection of correctional systems and aging in the United States, specifically in prisons and community supervision. The papers examine existing policies and the experiences of older adults using a person-centered framework. The first two papers explore data collected through semi-structured interviews with community supervision officers and people with experience under community supervision. The first paper investigates a person-centered community supervision model and highlights how it applies specifically to older adults, defined as those aged 50 or older. There is evidence of the implementation of this model, but there is an opportunity for further development. The data presented underscores the need for a more precise definition of a person-centered approach in community supervision and more attention to the age-related needs of people under supervision. The second paper explores the unique challenges of people aged 50 or older who are under community supervision, such as adapting to technology, securing stable housing, and managing chronic health conditions. It further reveals the gaps in knowledge of officers concerning aging-specific resources and the universal experiences pertinent to all age groups. The third paper is a content analysis of end-of-life decision-making policies in U.S. departments of corrections. It underscores the variability in accessibility and specificity of such policies, advocating for a more person-centered model that aligns with community standard quality of care. The research signifies that current prison systems have opportunities for enhancing policy and potentially affecting the quality of end-of-life care in prisons. Collectively, these papers emphasize potential improvement and growth in person-centered approaches for correctional systems and the opportunities to address the challenges of a growing older adult population. These findings highlight the need for additional research and collaboration between the fields of criminal justice and gerontology. The relevance extends beyond research to practitioners and policymakers in criminal justice and aging services whose work directly impacts this population.

The rapid development of the internet has far outpaced our ability to protect the internet. As new technologies have developed, so have new ways to exploit these technologies to use them for criminal purposes. This is extremely true of the core of the internet, websites. While the number of websites both personal and business focused have skyrocketed, so too have the number of cyber-attacks against these sites. These cyber-attacks are known as website defacements and can cause costly losses and damage the reputation of their internet victims. In such an attack the website defacer gains unauthorized access to the website and changes the appearance of the website, rendering it inoperable for extended periods of time.

Prior research on website defacers has provided a preliminary understanding of the motivation and attack preferences of website defacers but given the relative newness of this line of research there are many avenues to deepen our understanding beyond description of these brazen cybercriminals. This dissertation addresses two such areas in need of further study by examining the criminal careers of website defacers and how they respond to potential changes in capable guardianship. As our review of the literature shows, over half of the studies in this literature utilize a data source that was shown to be faulty in measuring the motivational factors of website defacement. Thus, this dissertation used detailed data created by tracking the individual offending patterns of website defacers and utilizing open-source intelligence methods to gather information about each defacer’s characteristics in the sample, rather than the previously mentioned data source.

This three-paper dissertation contains a scoping review of the website defacement literature, the first of its kind, to reveal the existing scholarly gaps in this field of research. This dissertation’s second paper uses my previously published paper using this data that revealed important findings on the criminal trajectories of website defacers. The dissertation closes with the first study to examine the effect of holidays on website defacement attack frequencies. These papers serve to outline the direction of future research, aid law enforcement agencies, and bolster our understanding of these cybercriminals’ activities.

In chapter 1 of this work, I estimate the causal impact of Section 3008 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on its targeted infection outcomes. This policy, implemented in October 2014, imposes a 1% reduction in the Medicare reimbursements of hospitals that perform poorly based on a hospital-acquired infection (HAI) measure. A limited body of literature evaluates the impact of this policy in a primarily descriptive manner. Using patient discharge data from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS), Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a difference-in-differences identification strategy, I contribute to the literature by estimating the causal effects this ACA provision had on the incidence of HAIs. Results suggest that the policy reduced the likelihood of acquiring an infection, with effects varying by HAI type. In addition, I find a general reduction in the likelihood of a HAI for whites, while the effects by gender or age vary on HAI type.

In chapter 2, I look at the causal effects of expanding prescription drug coverage on hospital admissions due to antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial resistance has been growing rapidly in the United States in recent years despite government efforts to control its outbreak. Both under and overutilization of prescribed medications can lead to an increase in antimicrobial resistance. The introduction of Medicare Part D in 2006 led to an increase in prescription drug coverage, including antimicrobials, for the elderly. If cost barriers had led to underutilization of prescriptions among those without previous prescription coverage, then Medicare Part D may reduce antimicrobial resistance. On the other hand, if Medicare Part D encourages over- utilization of prescriptions, then an unintended consequence may be an increase in antimicrobial resistance. Using data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for years 2004 to 2011 and a difference-in-differences identification strategy, I estimate the net effect of Medicare Part D on the incidence of inpatient discharges due to antimicrobial resistance among the Medicare- eligible population. Results show that the incidence of antimicrobial resistance among the elderly as measured by inpatient discharges decreased after Medicare Part D implementation.

Finally in chapter 3, I estimate the causal effects of expanding prescription drug coverage on opioid use disorder-related hospital admissions. Opioid misuse is an ongoing public health concern in the United States. Each year, an increasing number of individuals continue to suffer from opioid use disorders (OUD) and fatalities despite government efforts to control the epidemic. Medicare Part D went into effect in January 2006, mandating Medicare plans to cover prescription drugs, including those intended for medication-assisted treatment (MAT) of OUD. To date, there is no estimate available in the literature regarding the causal effects the policy had on the incidence of OUD among its beneficiaries, especially on associated hospital admissions. To help fill this gap, I use a nationally representative sample of hospital discharges from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality together with a difference-in-differences strategy comparing OUD-related discharges between the Medicare-eligible adults aged 65 to 69 and ineligible adults age 60 to 64. I find that after the policy went into effect, the incidence of OUD-related hospital discharges decreased among the Medicare-eligible population.

This dissertation discusses the results of new empirical evidence in two topics of significant importance in the environmental economics field, both of them also an essential part of my research agenda. First, carbon pricing is one of the most significant contributions of Economics to the ongoing climate crisis. Based on the Pigouvian tax, carbon pricing is expected to be a major tool for achieving the required reductions in carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases efficiently. On the other hand, the effect of air quality on health outcomes, and therefore human welfare, has been one of the major issues of research in the field. Understanding the associated costs is needed to properly assess the alternatives to address air pollution in our cities and countries. The long tradition in the literature has accumulated years of research in the topics, with results continuously showing significant costs on health outcomes. This document presents three research papers on these two topics, addressing particular gaps in the current literature and providing additional empirical evidence.

Chapters I and II touch base on climate policy in developing countries by exploring the consequences and challenges of carbon pricing in Colombia. Previous studies have been centered on the experience of developed countries or groups of them. Colombia is an opportunity to evaluate a carbon pricing strategy under a design that is similar to what we can expect from future implementations in other developing countries. First, from a causal inference framework, Chapter I estimates the effects of the carbon tax on the country’s emissions. In Chapter II, I use a general equilibrium model to evaluate the environmental and economic costs of a major exemption on the Colombian carbon tax design.

Chapter III deeps into the literature on air pollution and its health outcomes. This chapter, written in collaboration with Dr. Wes Austin, Dr. Stefano Carattini, and Dr. Michael Pesko, explores the relationship between contemporaneous air pollution exposure and COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.