Essays in empirical political economy

This thesis is composed of three chapters. In the first chapter, joint work with Federico Masera, we study how the capacity of the state in providing similar services influences the support for the non-state organizations. We do so in the context of Pakistan and study the competition between the Pakistani state and the Taliban in the provision of natural disaster relief. In the second chapter, I study the indirect impact of international terrorism on politics. In the third chapter, I study the political impacts of mass shootings in the United States.Chapter 1: The Charitable Terrorist: State Capacity and the Support for the Pakistani Taliban / Federico Masera and Hasin Yousaf.- Chapter 2 : Risk of International terrorism and Political Participation: Evidence from September 11 attacks / Hasin Yousaf.- Chapter 3 : Sticking to one’s guns: Mass Shootings and the Political Economy of Gun Control in the U.S. / Hasin YousafPrograma Oficial de Doctorado en EconomíaPresidente: James Snyder Jr.; Secretario: Manuel Bagues; Vocal: Jan Leonard Stuhle

Psychosocial Effects of Providing Nursing Care to Patients from a Multi-Casualty, School-Associated Shooting Event

Secondary traumatic stress describes symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder but that result from witnessing or experiencing the trauma of another individual through a helping relationship. The associated symptoms include intrusions, avoidance, and hyperarousal. Secondary traumatic stress is also associated with the development of compassion fatigue and burnout. The current state of the science identifies that secondary traumatic stress may affect those nurses who provide care to critically ill or injured patients. Research has most commonly examined the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout among nurses in emergency department settings. While attention is frequently given to the actual and projected shortages in the nursing workforce in support of increasing the number of graduate nurses, there is a need to foster increased efforts to promote welfare, resilience, and retention of nurses in clinical settings. The purpose of this research was to explore the phenomena of secondary traumatic stress through the experiences of emergency department and trauma unit nurses who provided care to patients injured in a multi-casualty, school-associated shooting event to understand the psychosocial effects on their roles with these patients and to identify opportunities for strategies and interventions to mitigate secondary traumatic stress. Emergency nurses would typically experience a shorter duration of exposure to these patients but these encounters would be in the most acute phases of the traumatic event. In contrast, trauma specialty nurses would routinely experience longer exposure to these patients across the clinical work shift with additional exposure to family members of the patients. Using qualitative case series methodology, this research identified themes and findings that have implications for nursing practice and education, public policy, social change, and future research. These implications may translate to the development and implementation of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies to alleviate the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress among nurses and mitigate the incidence of mass shooting events. Benefits of this research may ultimately include improved mental health among nurses who care for critically ill and injured patients, better patient outcomes from the receipt of care from proficient nurses, retention of tenured nurses to serve as mentors for nurses entering clinical specialties, and abatement of rising health care costs through decreased expenses associated with nurse burnout and turnover

A Narrative Inquiry into the Influence of School Shooting Survival on College Transition and Experience

There is an extensive body of school-related shooting research exploring causes, how to recognize a threat, and what preparedness measures are effective (Lee et al., 2020; Muchert, 2007). However, there is insufficient research on how the broader context of school-related shootings in American society has influenced college-aged students. The purpose of this study was to tell the story of how students have been influenced by their experience surviving the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting during their transition to and performance in higher education. Narrative inquiry provided a deeper understanding through narrative retelling of the perceptions, decisions, and experiences of school shooting survivors. Schlossberg’s transition theory provided a framework by which to analyze participant experiences. This study narrowed a gap in the existing literature by exploring and uncovering school shooting survivor experiences during their transition and time in college. Participants shared important information and perspective on their challenges making friends, processing trauma, and exploring their interests outside of advocacy work. Findings demonstrate the importance of substantial mental health support in college

Estimating the Psychological Impact of Mass Shooting and Terrorist Attacks on Remote Populations

Most research examining the psychological impact of public mass-shootings and terrorist attacks focuses on the immediate victims (i.e., those at/near the scene of the crime or living nearby). Research consistently demonstrates that these directly targeted individuals experience a wide-array of adverse mental health outcomes following these traumatic events (Lowe & Galea, 2017; Wilson, 2014). What remains less understood, however, is how these violent episodes afflict the broader public who are exposed to the trauma largely through indirect means, such as media and word of mouth. While prior scholarship in this area remains quite limited, it also tends to suffer from several methodological limitations (e.g., cross sectional research design or case-study analysis of singular events). To address these limitations, this study employed a Time Series Cross Sectional (TSCS) framework, enabling an estimation of the impact of mass shooting and terrorist attacks on the general public across 72 deadly events during a 6-year period (2012-2017). In addition, this study involved an empirical testing of dose-response theory (APA, 1980), utilizing characteristics of each event (casualty rates and level of media exposure) as proxy measures for trauma dosage. Overall, findings from this study indicate that remotely exposed communities are not seriously affected psychologically by these incidents. Research and policy implications for public health and media reporting are discussed

Essays on the Economics of Law and Crime

The first chapter examines the connection between gentrification and urban violence. I demonstrate a positive and plausibly causal relationship between urban redevelopment and gun violence in Philadelphia. As the underlying mechanism, I focus on gentrification\u27s displacement effect on local drug markets. Treating the city as a spatial network of city blocks and using two-way fixed effects differences-in-differences estimators, I show the gentrification of one block increases violence across the surrounding neighborhood. I find that some 2,400 (8%) of Philadelphia\u27s shootings between the years 2011 and 2020 can be attributed to spillover effects from the gentrification of drug blocks. This effect is nearly ten times stronger than that observed on blocks without high levels of drug crime. This study also contributes a new empirical measurement of gentrification drawn primarily from property sales, along with building, zoning, and alteration permit issuance and utilizes a novel nearest-neighbor network approach to identify spatial spillover effects. The second chapter formalizes the synthetic difference-in-differences estimator for staggered treatment adoption settings, as briefly described in Arkhangelsky et al. (2021). To illustrate the importance of this estimator, I use replication data from Abrams (2012). I compare the estimators obtained using SynthDiD, TWFE, the group time average treatment effect estimator of Callaway and Sant\u27Anna (2021), and the partially pooled synthetic control method estimator of Ben-Michael et al. (2021) in a staggered treatment adoption setting. I find that in this staggered treatment setting, SynthDiD provides a numerically different estimate of the average treatment effect. Simulation results show that these differences may be attributable to the underlying data generating process more closely mirroring that of the latent factor model assumed for SynthDiD than that of additive fixed effects assumed under traditional difference-in-differences frameworks. The third chapter is joint work with Dr. Bryan McCannon. In it, we exploit a novel data set of criminal trials in 19th century London to evaluate the impact of an accused’s right to counsel on convictions. While lower-level crimes had an established history of professional representation prior to 1836, individuals accused of committing a felony did not, even though the prosecution was conducted by professional attorneys. The Prisoners’ Counsel At of 1836 remedied this imbalance and first introduced the right to counsel in common law systems. Using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy we identify the causal effect of defense counsel. We find the surprising result that the professionalization of the courtroom led to an increase in the conviction rate, which we interpret as a consequence of jurors perceiving the trial as being fairer. We go further and employ a topic modeling approach to the text of the transcripts to provide suggestive evidence on how the trials changed when defense counsel was fully introduced

Priorities for School Safety: The Alignment between Federal and State School Safety Legislation and Safety Needs as Perceived by Education Stakeholders in Florida Private Schools for Exceptional Students

This study investigates the apparent threat assessment priorities of potential risks to safety in the school environment in the United States and whether stakeholders in Florida private schools that serve exceptional students agree with the priority given to specific identified potential threats. Faculty and staff, high school students, and the students’ parents and guardians at four Florida private schools for exceptional students rated their perceptions of the severity and likelihood of occurrence of nine potential threats identified in a review of federal and Florida state school safety laws and national and state government surveys of incident occurrences. Results showed that although violent potential threats such as an armed intruder, students bringing weapons to school, and physical assaults received priority attention in federal and state school safety laws, stakeholders in Florida private schools for exceptional students indicated that threats of a more personal nature—such as bullying, sexual harassment, and cyberbullying—were the most significant risks to the safety of their school environment. All three respondent subgroups, however, reported high ratings of their overall feelings of safety at their schools

Psychosocial Responses by Adolescent Male Victims to Peer Bullying

Bullying remains a pervasive problem in most schools throughout the nation. Peer-bullied victims report higher levels of depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and concerns regarding their safety in school. Reactions of victims to peer bullying have been extreme, as in the cases of the rampage school shooters. Primarily, current research has not focused on the high school adolescent, although most school shooters arise from that age group. The overall purpose of this study was to examine the psychosocial responses by adolescent male victims to peer bullying. Research questions addressed the frequency and severity of peer-victimization, distress, anxiety, and their perception of school violence. This quantitative analysis comprised a convenience sample of males in Grades 9 and 10 from six suburban Southern California high schools. Each participant completed the Reynolds Bullying Victimization Scales for Schools (RBVS). The RBVS includes three instruments; the Bully Victimization Scale (BVS), Bully Victimization Distress Scale (BVDS), and the School Violence Anxiety Scale (SVAS). Only those who self reported being victims on the BVS were analyzed as to their levels of distress, anxiety, and perception of school violence. In total, 1,697 students completed the RBVS; 43.1% ninth grade (n = 732), 43.8% tenth grade (n = 743), and 13.1% (n = 222) of ninth and tenth graders choosing not to declare their grade. Of the total respondents 1,487 participants completed the BVS, of which 25.5% (n = 379) reported being a victim of bullying within the past month. Of those, 57.2% reported being victimized by a peer five or more times within the past month. Victims consistently reported significantly higher scores on the BVDS when compared to their non-victim counterparts. Of victims, 70.5% reported severe anxiety and concern of school violence within the past month. African American teens consistently reported the highest scores of all races/ethnicities on all three instruments. Adolescent male victims of peer bullying experienced markedly elevated levels of distress and anxiety. They perceived their school environment to be unsafe and reported concern of possible school violence. Future study of adolescent peer victimization should consider examining race/ethnicity as a contributing factor in peer bullying