Essays in empirical economics

While poverty rates have declined in recent decades, many people are still trapped in poverty with limited opportunities for better living conditions. Moreover, inequality remains high around the globe. Understanding and addressing poverty and inequality is a complex task because it is multidimensional and involves multiple actors. My dissertation contributes to the literature on poverty reduction and inequality by taking an in-depth look at the three channels of Attanasio and Székely's (1999) asset-based framework and relating them to the three actors identified by McKague, Wheeler, and Karnani (2015). It is my hope that my work will shed light on how to address some of the multidimensional aspects of inequality. In Chapter 1, I explore the human capital dimension of poverty and inequality and the potential role governments can play in addressing inequality. Next, in Chapter 2, my thesis ties into the social capital channel of the asset-based framework and analyzes the influence of civil societies. Finally, Chapter 3 speaks to the physical capital channel of the asset-based model and to the potential responsibility of the private sector in addressing poverty and inequality

Twitter and Crime: The Effect of Social Movements on GenderBased Violence

This paper asks whether social movements taking place on Twitter affect genderbased violence (GBV). Using Twitter data and machine learning methods, we construct a novel data set on the prevalence of Twitter conversations about GBV. We then link this data to weekly crime reports at the federal state level from the United States. We exploit the high-frequency nature of our data and an event study design to establish a causal impact of Twitter social movements on GBV. Our results point out that Twitter tweets related to GBV lead to a decrease in reported crime rates. The evidence shows that perpetrators commit these crimes less due to increased social pressure and perceived social costs. The results indicate that social media could significantly decrease reported GBV and might facilitate the signaling of social norms.nonPeerReviewe