ARoman Catholic Account of the Flourishing and Virtuous Agency of People with Schizophrenia in the United States:

Thesis advisor: Stephen J. PopeThis dissertation develops a Roman Catholic account of the flourishing and virtuous agency of people with schizophrenia in the United States. At least two million people in the United States live with this brain disease, whose symptoms (e.g. delusions and avolition) complicate virtuous living. This dissertation remedies the neglect of schizophrenia in Catholic ethics and advances Christian ethics beyond the best available work done on the flourishing and virtuous agency of people with it by Protestant authors by: a) drawing its understanding of the content of human flourishing and of the theological and cardinal virtues from Christian theological and ethical commitments rather than from non-Christian sources; b) grounding the social supports that would increase the likelihood of clinical recovery and, therefore, of agency, habituation, virtue, and flourishing; c) showing via careful work in virtue theory whether, why, how, to what extent, and under which circumstances people with schizophrenia can live virtuously; and d) clarifying the meaning of the theological and cardinal virtues and their relevance for people with schizophrenia. Chapter One elucidates the challenges confronting people with schizophrenia in the United States from their illness itself and from the nation’s failed social response to them, as well as the opportunities available to them through clinical, functional, and personal recovery. Chapter Two concludes that, despite their liabilities, recent secular interpretations of the good life can or do conceptualize flourishing as possible even as constraints such as those associated with schizophrenia endure rather than only after they have been removed. Chapter Threes and Four find that Roman Catholic magisterial teachings about schizophrenia and an analogized reading of Luke 8:26-39 can helpfully ground necessary social supports, but the former requires greater conceptual clarification and development, while the latter emphasizes Jesus’s agency rather than that of the Gerasene man and depicts a total healing from total brokenness that is unavailable to or not fully representative of people with schizophrenia today. Chapter Five argues that Thomas Aquinas’s understandings of perfect and imperfect beatitude provide the best way for Christian ethics to conceptualize the possibility, content, and requirements of the flourishing of people with schizophrenia. Thomistic ethics can ground necessary social supports, and Aquinas’s virtue theory, as interpreted by William C. Mattison and developed by the scientifically-informed and socially-attuned threshold thesis, can show whether, why, how, to what extent, and under which circumstances people with schizophrenia can live virtuously before onset of illness, between onset and the threshold point of clinical recovery, and at and beyond the threshold. Chapters Six and Seven use Thomistic virtue ethics to explain the meaning of the theological and cardinal virtues, respectively, and their relevance for people with schizophrenia. The result is a wider and deeper Christian assessment of their possibilities for agency, habituation, virtue, and flourishing, even as schizophrenia’s challenges continue to varying degrees.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Theology

Essays in Macroeconomics:

Thesis advisor: Fabio SchiantarelliThis dissertation comprises three self-contained essays that investigate how micro-level frictions affect firms’ operational decisions and investors’ behavior, evaluating their respective costs or benefits for the overall economy. In the first chapter, “Customer Capital and The Aggregate Effect of Short-Termism", joint work with M. Errico and A. Lavia, we study the impact of short-termism on firms’ pricing decisions and quantify the potential costs for consumers in term of welfare. Managers face continuous pressure to meet short-term forecasts and targets, which can impact their investment in customer capital and pricing decisions. Using data on U.S. public companies together with IBES analysts’ forecasts, we find that firms that just meet analysts’ profit forecasts have average markup growth of 0.8% higher than firms that just miss targets, suggesting opportunistic markup manipulation. To assess the aggregate economic implications of short-termism, we develop and estimate a quantitative heterogeneous firm model that incorporates short-term frictions and endogenous markups resulting from customer accumulation. In the model, short-termism solves an agency conflict between manager and shareholders, resulting in higher markups and lower customer capital stock. We find that, on average, firms increase markups by 8% due to short-termism, generating $38 million of additional annual profits. At the macro level, the distortion reduces consumers’ welfare by 4$3.1 trillion on average. In the second chapter, “Strategic Investors and Exchange Rate Dynamics", joint work with M. Errico, we study how the exchange rate dynamics are influenced by the presence of heterogeneous investors with varying degrees of price impact. Leveraging data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on investors’ currency positions, we show that foreign exchange rate markets display a significant level of concentration,and investors’ price impact is stronger in more concentrated markets. We develop a monetary model of exchange rate determination that incorporates heterogeneous investors with different degrees of price impact. We show that the presence of price impact amplifies the exchange rate’s response to non-fundamental shocks while dampening its response to fundamental shocks. As a result, investors’ price impact contributes to the disconnect of exchange rates from fundamentals and the excess volatility of exchange rates. We provide empirical evidence in line with our theoretical predictions, using data on trading volume concentration from the US CFTC foreign exchange rate market for 10 currencies spanning from 2006 to 2016. Additionally, we extend our framework to account for information heterogeneity among investors, which presents a competing dimension of heterogeneity with qualitatively similar implications for exchange rate dynamics. Both dimensions of heterogeneity are quantitatively relevant, with the heterogeneity in price impact accounting for 62% of the additional volatility and 35% of the additional disconnect attributed to investors’ heterogeneity. In the third chapter, “Firms’ Investment and Central Bank Communication: The Role of Financial Heterogeneity", I study how financial frictions impact the transmission of monetary policy to investment. Monetary policy affects firms’ capital investment through two distinct channels: the pure monetary channel, which operates through changes in interest rates, and the information channel, which operates through changes in investors’ beliefs about the economic outlook and future policy rates. I show that the role of financial frictions for monetary policy transmission hinges crucially on specific channel. Using Compustat data, I find that firms with high leverage are more sensitive to pure monetary shocks but are less sensitive to Fed information shocks. Finally, I develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with firm idiosyncratic productivity, real and financial frictions to rationalize the empirical findings and study aggregate implications.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics

Gender Disparities in Early Childhood Learning Opportunities and Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries:

Thesis advisor: Eric DearingDespite global efforts toward improving gender equity in education, gender-based disparities in learning opportunities and academic outcomes are still prevalent. Many gender differences in learning and academic outcomes begin emerging early in life, even before children start formal schooling. Both theory and empirical evidence point toward children’s exposure to gender-differentiated treatment from caregivers that arises from gendered stereotypes, expectations, and cultural norms. As young children’s brains have evolved to detect the subtlest nuances in their environments, even small gender differences in learning experiences could have lasting consequences in their developmental trajectories and later-life outcomes. In turn, understanding gender disparities in early learning opportunities is critical to catalyzing young girls’ and boys’ positive learning trajectories from early on. A major challenge for the field, however, has been the very limited attention given to these issues in low- and- middle-income countries (LMICs), where about 90% of the world’s children live. The present dissertation consists of three empirical papers focused on young children in LMICs, providing significant contributions to the cumulative knowledge on gender differences in early learning. Respectively, the three papers: (1) provide a thorough accounting of gender disparities across and within 71 countries, (2) uncover specific caregiving mechanisms that help explain these gender disparities in early learning outcomes across and within countries, and (3) delve into the perceptions and meaning makings of mothers and fathers about gendered parenting practices at the local level. By so doing, this dissertation pushes forward our understanding of gender disparities in early learning opportunities and development across multiple ecological levels. The results may help inform global policy and practice aimed at gender equity, a matter of social justice that has proven to affect the social fabric, economic vitality, and political stability of nations.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology

TheDebt of Love in the Theology of Richard of St. Victor:

Thesis advisor: Boyd Taylor CoolmanRichard of St. Victor is known primarily for two arguments from his book On the Trinity. The first is that the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be understood from the logic of love, which tends toward sharing with others. The second is that a divine person (persona) is an “individual existence of a divine nature,” a revision of the definition of personhood given centuries earlier by Boethius. Fewer contemporary theologians are familiar with the third major innovation Richard makes in this work. In his description of love among the trinitarian persons, Richard organizes the three loving divine persons according to three modes of loving: gratuitous love (amor gratuitus) identical with the Father, owed love (amor debitus) identical with the Holy Spirit, and love mixed from both (amor permixtus) identical with the Son. The most striking—because the most apparently problematic—part of this scheme is the nomination of amor debitus, owed love, as a mode of loving proper to the Trinity. Presenting the apparently contradictory combination of owing and loving as a love proper to God as God, the conundra raised by Richard’s use of this phrase were interpreted away by his scholastic readers in a way that buried the potential of his insight for discussions about the nature of love called divine. My dissertation analyzes the meaning of amor debitus to reframe and re-present Richard’s arguments in On the Trinity with Richard’s radical claim about the nature of intra-trinitarian love in clearer view. I argue that the notion of owed love represents a class of experience which is distinct both from the obligation of a command (typically associated with debitum) and from the freedom of an unaffected choice (typically associated with amor). Amor debitus fuses the quality of the command or commanding conditions with a freedom that is not intrinsic to these prior conditions, but does not leave them behind. Richard’s link between owed love as a personal property in the Trinity and as the norm of human love for God gives Richard a fresh approach to the idea that “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5:5), and therefore also to the longstanding Christian claim that human love is owed to God, ordered to neighborly service, and free.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Theology

Three Essays in the Economics of Education:

Thesis advisor: Christopher BaumThis dissertation consists of three chapters studying topics in the economics of education. Chapter 1 investigates how changes in pension policies affect households' investments in their children's education. In China, elderly individuals receive financial support from their children, in addition to pension benefits and personal savings. The researchers used a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis to compare the investment behavior of households with enterprise employees (who were affected by the 1997 pension reform) and public sector employees (who were not affected) on household investments in human capital and savings. The results showed that households expecting lower pension benefits increased their investments in education by around 2%. Additionally, a 10% decrease in the pension replacement rate corresponded to a 1.1% rise in households' investments in human capital. The study also looked at the 2015 pension reform, which aimed to reduce pensions for public sector employees, but the increase in education investment among these employees was not statistically significant, possibly due to the gradual 10-year transition period. The findings suggest that when pension income is expected to decrease, households invest more in their children's human capital development to compensate. Chapter 2 studies how being admitted via affirmative action affects minority students in universities. This paper provides evidence on the effects of college admission preferential policy on students' self-perceptions, academic performance, and career intentions. We use regression discontinuity approach to compare students just below and above the cutoff with the same type of bonus points - ethnicity-based bonus points. Because of the bonus, students just below the cutoff may study in the same university as students above the cutoff. Therefore, we are able to eliminate the “peer effect”. Actual beneficiaries report negative self-perception compared with their peers, have lower college English test scores, and are less likely to get academic awards. As for their life plans, ethnicity-based beneficiaries are more inclined to find stable jobs and hope to get married sooner. Additionally, the placebo group in which students receive bonus points for academic achievements like math or physics Olympiad shows no impostor effects. These findings demonstrate that different categories of preferential policy have different effects on beneficiaries and provide insight into studying the impact of affirmative action in psychological aspect. Chapter 3 utilizes data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to investigate the effect of having a brother on women's educational attainment. The results indicate that gender discrimination persists in Chinese households' investment in human capital, with a significant negative impact of having a brother on women's education. The one-child policy, which limits family size and creates families without male offspring, has increased women's access to education by reducing competition with preferred siblings and decreasing opportunities for gender discrimination. The increase in women's average level of access to education since 1980s is the result of the combined effects of the reduction in the dilution of family resources and the reduction in opportunities for gender discrimination.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics

Share Pledging: The Costs and Benefits

Thesis advisor: Mary Ellen CarterThesis advisor: Amy HuttonManagerial share pledging (using shares as collateral for personal loans) is controversial. Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), highly publicized anecdotes, and international research suggest that share pledging increases the risk of stock price crashes. Nevertheless, U.S. boards continue to allow the practice, suggesting that share pledging benefits shareholders or some boards are beholden to controlling managers who enjoy the private benefits of share pledging. Using a hand-collected dataset of share pledging by executives and directors of S&P 1500 firms from 2007-2020, I document three benefits-greater incentive alignment, reduced executive pay and lower voluntary executive turnover-while finding little evidence of increased crash risk. Interestingly, these benefits do not exist for firms with high managerial control. However ISS's 2012 policy denouncing share pledging did little to reduce share pledging among these firms. Instead the ISS policy increased negative shareholder votes at firms with both high and low managerial control with any share pledging, coinciding with a reduction in share pledging at firms with low managerial control, despite these firms enjoying benefits from share pledging. Overall my findings suggest that, for well-governed firms, managerial share pledging facilitates incentive alignment and lowers executive turnover and pay while not increasing stock price crash risk, calling into question efforts by ISS and others to curb the practice for all firms.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management.Discipline: Accounting

Quantifying How United States Clean Energy Expansion Policies Interact with European Union Investment: An Event Study Using Green Bond Spreads

Thesis advisor: Michael GrubbWith the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) raising concern of clean energy capital flight from the European Union, investigating the effects of US clean energy expansion policy on international investment shifts is a pertinent issue. This paper uses event studies to analyze debt capital market dynamics through green bond spreads, using conventional corporate and government bonds as separate benchmarks. It finds that the simultaneous extension of ITC and PTC policies in 2015, 2020, and 2021 did not consistently produce a significant effect on green bond markets in the US and EU. This implies that the implementation of clean energy policy in the US has an insignificant impact on green debt capital markets in the US and EU, although impacts on other investment channels cannot be ruled out. A further analysis on green investment sensitivity to interest rates indicated a significant negative sensitivity for green US firms only, although this was inconsistent across measures.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics.Discipline: Departmental Honors

AMultimethod Approach to Understanding Emerging Adult and Parent Management of Congenital Heart Disease:

Thesis advisor: Christopher S. LeeBackground: Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most prevalent birth defect in the United States. Advances in treatment have changed CHD from what once was almost always a life-threatening condition to what is commonly a lifelong chronic condition. Up to 60% of adults with CHD experience large gaps in cardiology care during the transition from pediatric to adult specialty care. Effective CHD management in emerging adulthood maximizes lifelong potential, functioning and quality of life. Past research has failed to consider how emerging adults and their parents work together to manage CHD together as an interdependent team. Thus, there remains a dearth of information on how best to support emerging adults and their parents. Since CHD is a life-long diagnosis there is a critical need to understand the ways in which emerging adults and their parents as primary care partners engage in behavior to manage CHD together. This manuscript dissertation had an overarching goal to develop a deeper understanding of emerging adult and parent contributions to the management of CHD. Methods: First, an integrative review summarized and evaluated the evidence of published and peer-reviewed literature regarding parental perspective of the emerging adult with CHD. Next, a cross-sectional quantitative hypothesis-generating pilot study investigating emerging adult and parent contributions to management of CHD was conducted. And finally, an exploratory qualitative study was completed to describe health care team provider perspectives on the experience of emerging adults and their parents in managing CHD. Results: These three manuscripts have the key following results: 1) parents have concerns about their emerging adult children with CHD related to their future, independence in self-care of CHD, including health care system navigation, 2) there was a positive correlation between emerging adult and parent contributions to self-care (management, monitoring and maintenance) of CHD, and in the domain of navigating the health care system, there was a weak and negative correlation (the more an emerging adult does, the less the parent contributes), and 3) providers in health care teams report differences in both emerging adult and parent factors that impact management, and that self-care in emerging adults with CHD is critical with known health care system barriers that need assessment and improvement to support this population. Conclusion: The constellation of these findings from the dissertation and past work help fill critical knowledge and research gaps in emerging adult and parent/care partner contributions to management of CHD. These findings support the much-needed future work to inform clinical care, research, and policy for emerging adults with CHD and parents to further improve health and quality of life for this population.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing.Discipline: Nursing

Towards Holistic Evaluation of Education Systems: Using TIMSS 2023 Context Data to Classify Schools by School Climate Health

Thesis advisor: Matthias von DavierChildren internationally are entitled to quality education. International education initiatives monitor education system quality through complex evaluations, historically relying on academic benchmarks operationalized by robust comparative achievement data. However, quality in schooling is evolving to comprise development beyond academic abilities – it should support emotional, social, and psychological development. Valid systems-level evaluations of these features internationally require well-defined benchmarks for school conditions suitably supportive of this development. Emerging international initiatives, such as UNESCO’s Happy Schools Framework, define frameworks for non-academic facets but have not been empirically tested. This study defines school climate health as the intersection of the Happy Schools Framework, existing literature on school climate and wellbeing, and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science (TIMSS) Context Questionnaire. This research aims to provide a first step towards defining benchmarks by exploring an international dataset to define existing patterns of interrelated school context variables. This study is responsive to empirical literature and relevant theoretical frameworks for evaluating social systems (systems evaluation, ecological systems theories). An exploratory multilevel latent class analysis (MLCA) of 22 variables is conducted for the 58 participating countries to define four school clusters and three country classes defining the composition and distribution of school climate health internationally. Combining response variables from students, teachers, principals, and parents is a novel application. Characteristics of each school cluster and country class are described. Secondary analyses investigate possible confoundedness of school demographics and possible relationships between school-level average achievement.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Education

Not Out of the Dark Night: Beyond Sanitized Theological Scenes of Instruction

Thesis advisor: Hosffman OspinoThis work disrupts and re-envisions normative or traditional theological scenes of instruction anchored around imago Dei, dignity, and hope. These elements comprise “sanitized scenes of instruction” that are unable to adequately and creatively respond to the complex epistemes that have shaped and continue to guide contemporary death-dealing atmospheres of violence as manifested in necropolitics, biopower, and intensified precarity in the Anthropocene. The result is theological reflection, social analysis, and education that is out of touch with the perpetual dark night of the soul that we all experience but that is especially felt by those bodies considered disposable or as fodder for Orwellian visions of societal homeostasis (biopower) on an increasingly precarious Earth. Instead of providing easy chimeras or a quick way out, this work invites readers to rethink imago Dei, dignity, and hope without escaping the dark night (the atmospheres of violence). It does so by juxtaposing scenes, unsanitized ones, with traditional theological accounts on imago Dei, dignity, and hope––challenging them in the process. The hope is that such juxtapositions will jolt imaginations into considering other possible scenes of theological instruction that go beyond, but that do not discard, the normative ones. This work ends by offering some contours for a rhizomatic theological imagination and pedagogy that can perhaps facilitate an “active” sitting in the dark: one that still manages to move in all directions and that envisions infinite possibilities within states of suspension. The penultimate chapter hones in on the centrality of a theological hermeneutics that embraces plurality and ambiguity––crucial to any theological project that seeks to respond to complex contemporary concerns. The final chapter tentatively concludes with some possible fragments of scenes for consideration in developing future theological scenes of instruction. It models the pedagogy that I currently find most useful in my writing and teaching, namely a rhizomatic and pluriversal one. Rather than end the work with yet another system or scene of instruction, I offer the fragments as an exercise for the reader to think through his/her/their own experiences with theology and the precariousness that we all, to different extents, share.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry.Discipline: Theology and Education