Essays on the political economy of welfare and redistribution

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation explores two main puzzles. First, why do some countries have more generous welfare policies than others? Second, why do some people support welfare policies more than others? This collection of essays aims to answer these two questions, focusing on the political and economic determinants of welfare policy and attitudes. Chapter 2 deals with methodological issues that will be addressed in the later substantive chapters. While this chapter discusses measurement error in general, it focuses on the problem that some respondents are likely to choose around the middle for reasons other than their true moderate attitudes in many survey items. The chapter formally analyzes the effects of this "concentrated measurement error" on the bias in regression coefficient estimates. It then proposes two estimation strategies for the handling of this problem. Turning to substantive research questions, Chapter 3 addresses the determinants of government welfare spending around the world. With the use of a unique dataset that has been constructed from six different cross-country social surveys and government finance statistics, this chapter demonstrates that public ideological preferences influence government decisions regarding the size of welfare expenditure. The chapter further presents a meaningful difference between fully and less democratic countries in welfare policy responsiveness; among less democratic countries, welfare spending policies have been little affected by public preferences. The empirical findings presented in this chapter serve as better evidence to support the mechanisms that traditional representation theories offer. In Chapter 4, I turn my attention to individual-level determinants. Recognizing the unique situation of the US, where the immigrant population is large and the natives have a distinctively individualistic taste for redistribution, this chapter assesses the role of socialization and assimilation by examining the political preferences of first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants with regard to welfare spending. It provides empirical evidence that first-generation immigrants show greater support for welfare than US-born natives; however, it also shows that the political views of immigrants more closely resemble those of US-born natives the longer that the immigrants stay in the US, thereby suggesting their assimilation into US society. Furthermore, this chapter documents that the more liberal views of first-generation immigrants do not persist into the next generation due to the effects of assimilation and socialization.by Jungho Roh.Ph.D

Chandler Wobble and Free Core Nutation: Theory and Features

Being a torque free motion of the rotating Earth, Chandler wobble is the major component in the Earth’s polar motion with amplitude about 0.05-0.2 arcsec and period about 430-435 days. Free core nutation, also called nearly diurnal free wobble, exists due to the elliptical core-mantle boundary in the Earth and takes almost the whole part of un-modelled variation of the Earth’s pole in the celestial sphere beside precession and nutation. We hereby present a brief summary of their theories and report their recent features acquired from updated datasets (EOP C04 and ECMWF) by using Fourier transform, modelling, and wavelet analysis. Our new findings include (1) period-instability of free core nutation between 420 and 450 days as well as its large amplitude-variation, (2) re-determined Chandler period and its quality factor, (3) fast decrease in Chandler amplitude after 2010

Radiosonde Sensors Bias in Precipitable Water Vapor From Comparisons With Global Positioning System Measurements

In this study, we compared the precipitable water vapor (PWV) data derived from the radiosonde observation data at Sokcho Observatory and the PWV data at Sokcho Global Positioning System (GPS) Observatory provided by Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, for the years of 2006, 2008, 2010, and analyzed the radiosonde seasonal, diurnal bias according to radiosonde sensor types. In the scatter diagram of the daytime and nighttime radiosonde PWV data and the GPS PWV data, dry bias was found in the daytime radiosonde observation as known in the previous study. Overall, the tendency that the wet bias of the radiosonde PWV increased as the GPS PWV decreased and the dry bias of the radiosonde PWV increased as the GPS PWV increased. The quantitative analysis of the bias and error of the radiosonde PWV data showed that the mean bias decreased in the nighttime except for 2006 winter, and in comparison for summer, RS92-SGP sensor showed the highest quality

Comparison of the Characteristics of Precipitable Water Vapor Measured by Global Positioning System and Microwave Radiometer

In this study, global positioning system (GPS)-derived precipitable water vapor (PWV) and microwave radiometer (MWR)-measured integrated water vapor (IWV) were compared and their characteristics were analyzed. Comparing those two quantities for two years from August 2009, we found that GPS PWV estimates were larger than MWR IWV. The average difference over the entire test period was 1.1 mm and the standard deviation was 1.2 mm. When the discrepancies between GPS PWV and MWR IWV were analyzed depending on season, the average difference was 0.7 mm and 1.9 mm in the winter and summer months, respectively. Thus, the average difference was about 2.5 times larger in summer than that in winter. However, MWR IWV measurements in the winter months were over-estimated than those in the summer months as the water vapor content got larger. The results of the diurnal analysis showed that MWR IWV was underestimated in the daytime, showing a difference of 0.8 mm. In the early morning hours, MWR IWV has a tendency to be over-estimated, with a difference of 1.3 mm with respect to GPS PWV

A single panel LCoS microdisplay for mobile projectors

A 0.55 SVGA single panel LCoS microdisplay for the applications to mobile projectors was fabricated. The Si backplane was prepared by 0.35um / 18V CMOS process. Twisted nematic (TN) liquid crystal was used as the light switch layer. The prepared the LCoS panel with field sequential color (FSC) driving scheme represented y-corrected 256 levels of gray scale. The preparation and characteristics of single panel TN-LCoS were described

A single panel LCoS microdisplay for mobile projectors

A 0.55 SVGA single panel LCoS microdisplay for the applications to mobile projectors was fabricated. The Si backplane was prepared by 0.35um / 18V CMOS process. Twisted nematic (TN) liquid crystal was used as the light switch layer. The prepared the LCoS panel with field sequential color (FSC) driving scheme represented y-corrected 256 levels of gray scale. The preparation and characteristics of single panel TN-LCoS were described