Digital Commons Network^™

Fast Poisson Estimation With High-Dimensional Fixed Effects, Sergio Correia, Paulo Guimarães, Thomas Zylkin

Economics Faculty Publications

In this paper we present ppmlhdfe, a new Stata command for estimation of (pseudo) Poisson regression models with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects (HDFE). Estimation is implemented using a modified version of the iteratively reweighted least-squares (IRLS) algorithm that allows for fast estimation in the presence of HDFE. Because the code is built around the reghdfe package, it has similar syntax, supports many of the same functionalities, and benefits from reghdfe’s fast convergence properties for computing high-dimensional least squares problems. Performance is further enhanced by some new techniques we introduce for accelerating HDFE-IRLS estimation specifically ppmlhdfe also implements a novel and …

Of Love And Exploitation, Karina Elizabeth Vázquez

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

As Roma’s main character, Cleo symbolizes the simultaneous feminization and racialization of domestic service.

2020 Virginia House Of Delegates: Demographics And Voting Behavior, Nathan Tatum

Student Publications

The focus of this project is on the demographic makeup of the 2020 Virginia House of Delegates, and how various demographic factors - political affiliation, gender/sex, race, religious affiliation, education level, and age - may influence their voting behavior on different legislation. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part explains the measures and methodology used in the creation of the dataset. The second and third parts make use of the information collected in the dataset. The second part details the demographic makeup of the 2020 Va. House and compares the makeup of the House to the makeup …

[Introduction To] Debating Sex Work, Lori Watson, Jessica Flanigan

Bookshelf

In this 'for and against' work, ethicists Lori Watson and Jessica Flanigan debate the criminalization of sex work. Watson argues for a sex equality approach to prostitution in which buyers are criminalized and sellers are decriminalized, known as the Nordic Model. Flanigan argues that sex work should be fully decriminalized because decriminalization ensures respect for sex workers' and clients' rights, and is more effective than alternative policies.

Putting these two views on sex work into conversation with one another, and opening up space for readers to weigh both approaches, the book provides a thorough, accessible exploration of the issues surrounding …

[Introduction To] On Agamben, Arendt, Christianity, And The Dark Arts Of Civilization, Peter I. Kaufman

Bookshelf

Many progressives have found passages in Augustine's work that suggest he entertained hopes for meaningful political melioration in his time. They also propose that his “political theology” could be an especially valuable resource for “an ethics of democratic citizenship” or for “hopeful citizenship” in our times. Peter Kaufman argues that Augustine's “political theology” offers a compelling, radical alternative to progressive politics. He chronicles Augustine's experiments with alternative polities, and pairs Augustine's criticisms of political culture with those of Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt.

This book argues that the perspectives of pilgrims (Augustine), refugees (Agamben), and pariahs (Arendt) are better staging …

[Introduction To] Treating Black Women With Eating Disorders : A Clinician’S Guide, Charlynn Small, Mazella Fuller

Bookshelf

The first of its kind, this edited volume provides in-depth, culturally sensitive material intended for addressing the unique concerns of Black women with eating disorders in addition to comprehensive discussions and treatment guidelines for this population.

The contributing authors—all of whom are Black professionals providing direct care to Black women—offer a range of perspectives to help readers understand the whole experience of their Black female clients. This includes not only discussion of their clients’ physical health but also of their emotional lives and the ways in which the stresses of racism, discrimination, trauma, and adverse childhood experiences can contribute to …

[Introduction To] Community Wealth Building And The Reconstruction Of American Democracy: Can We Make American Democracy Work?, Melody C. Barnes, Corey D. B. Walker, Thad Williamson

Bookshelf

"How can we create and sustain an America that never was, but should be? How can we build a truly multiracial democracy in which everyone is valued and possesses the needed political, economic and social capital so that democracy becomes a meaningful way of life, for all citizens? By critically probing these questions, the editors of Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy seize the opportunity to bridge the gap between our democratic aspirations and our current reality. In a moment of democratic disappointment and anxiety, politicians, policy officials, scholars and citizens desire an effective response. This book …

Core Concepts In Heroism Science, Volume Two, Scott T. Allison

Bookshelf

What lies at the core of heroism?

This book attempts to answer this daunting question. To understand the core of heroism – the forces underlying it – let’s first examine what heroism is at its surface. On the outside, heroism is a behavior, or set of behaviors. These actions are directed toward helping others, and they go beyond expectation and are considered by most people to be extraordinary (Franco, Blau, & Zimbardo, 2011). In addition, heroism involves taking great risks and making exceptional sacrifices (Allison, Goethals, & Kramer, 2017). We observe these extreme helping behaviors and we admire them -- …

[Introduction To] Convenient Criticism: Local Media And Governance In Urban China, Dan Chen

Bookshelf

"Why and how does critical reporting persist at the local level in China despite state mediacontrol, a hallmark of authoritarian rule? Synthesizing ethnographic observation, interviews, survey and content analysis data, Convenient Criticism: Local Media and Governance and Urban China reveals evolving dynamics in local governance and the state-media relationship. Local critical reporting, though limited in scope, occurs because localleaders use media criticism strategically to increase bureaucratic control, address citizen grievances, and improve governance, something that ultimately advances their political careers. This new approach to governance enables the shaping of public opinion while at the same time disciplining subordinate bureaucrats. The …

A License To Kill: The Institutional Failure Of The Legal System To Hold Police Accountable, Eliana R. Fleischer

Honors Theses

In recent years, police shootings of unarmed African American men have become nationally visible. With few exceptions, the police officers involved in those shootings have escaped any criminal penalties. This paper addresses why so few police officers are convicted after shooting unarmed African Americans. Using an interdisciplinary approach, it addresses three aspects of the criminal justice system: prosecutorial power, Supreme Court case law, and jury bias. This paper argues that the legal system is structured to protect police officers from liability, making it unable to deliver justice after on-duty police shootings of unarmed African American men.

Bread And Circuses: Sports And Public Opinion In China, Dan Chen, Andrew W. Macdonald

Political Science Faculty Publications

Sports victory constitutes an important part of propaganda in authoritarian states. The heavy state investment in sports industries and sports culture in China illustrates the political importance of sports. However, few studies have systematically examined the exact impact of sports propaganda on public opinion. Using a survey experiment conducted in two Chinese cities, this article finds that broadcast highlighting national sports achievements has significant positive effects on general satisfaction and compliance with the local governments. These results expand on the small but growing literature on the effects of sports on political opinions and help detail the specific ways in which …

Spider's Guide To Sustainable Living, Office For Sustainability

Guides

Thank you for checking out this guide to caring for our future and ourselves. We're glad you did, because we need you. From the climate emergency to emerging health crises to social unrest, the need for change is all around us. The UR Sustainability Plan envisions "a future where sustainability is woven into the fabric of the University" in which we cultivate a culture of caring for people and the natural world. Consider this your invitation to join the movement to make this vision a reality.

Throughout the Spiders Guide to Sustainable Living, we will point out actions you can …

Assessing Inequitable Urban Heat Islands And Air Pollution Disparities With Low-Cost Sensors In Richmond, Virginia, Andre M. Eanes, Todd R. Lookingbill, Jeremy S. Hoffman, Kelly C. Saverino, Stephen S. Fong

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

Air pollution and the urban heat island effect are consistently linked to numerous respiratory and heat-related illnesses. Additionally, these stressors disproportionately impact low-income and historically marginalized communities due to their proximity to emissions sources, lack of access to green space, and exposure to other adverse environmental conditions. Here, we use relatively low-cost stationary sensors to analyze PM_2.5 and temperature data throughout the city of Richmond, Virginia, on the ten hottest days of 2019. For both hourly means within the ten hottest days of 2019 and daily means for the entire record for the year, the temperature was found to …

The Electoral College: Size Really Does Matter, Alexander Kirk

Honors Theses

The goal of this paper is to explore and ultimately convince the reader of the merits of the Wyoming Rule method of congressional apportionment as a method for altering the functioning of the Electoral College in United States presidential elections. This is conducted through an analysis of the role that the Electoral College has played throughout the history of American elections, in depth looks at four common proposals for changing or replacing the Electoral College, and finally discussion of the intricacies of the Wyoming Rule and the effects that it would have on American politics.

Tuition Resets: An Economic Analysis, Claire Mendelson

Honors Theses

American higher education today is defined by rising tuition and decreasing enrollment. As higher education institutions prepare for a looming enrollment crisis, tuition resets – when colleges or universities decrease their sticker price of tuition – are becoming a newly popular strategy. Although much research has been done regarding the economics of higher education and what influences tuition, no quantitative research study has been done on tuition resets. This research study contributes to the existing literature by quantitatively testing the effect of a tuition reset on an institution’s financial health, as measured by net tuition revenue from students and undergraduate …

Public Perceptions And Knowledge Of Transplantation, Kimberly Smith

Honors Theses

Objective: Organ transplantation is currently the most preferred treatment method for end-stage organ disease. Despite this fact, the need for transplants is currently higher than the availability of organs, resulting in approximately 20 deaths each day. The objective of this study was to use qualitative research methods to better understand attitudes towards and public knowledge of organ transplantation. Method: Fourteen focus groups with 58 participants were conducted by a research team. Thematic analyses were conducted using a phenomenological framework. Results: Knowledge of the transplant process was found to play a critical role in one’s decision to donate an organ. Individuals …

Learning To Check Yourself: Improving Civic Engagement Through Duties, Better Voting Practices, And Combatting Group Loyalty, Katherine Brumund

Honors Theses

This project examines civic engagement. It is divided into three chapters: apathy, voting, and group loyalties. I derive two duties, a duty to care and a duty to reason well, that serve as a framework for community engagement aimed at facilitating moral progress. In the second section the main topic is voting. I argue for strategies to vote well. The third section of this project then focuses on group loyalties. This project uses two duties to frame how to engage with others, proposes a better way to participate civically, and ways to avoid pitfalls associated with group membership.

The Effect Of President Trump’S Company-Specific Tweets On Company’S Stocks, Justin Kleczka

Honors Theses

Implementing event-study analysis, I find that President Trump’s tweets about publicly traded companies cause daily abnormal returns of 0.25% in a company’s stock in the same direction as the sentiment of the tweet: positive tweets increase abnormal returns by 0.25% on the day’s end, while negative tweets will cause -0.25% abnormal returns.

Additionally, I find that President Trump’s company-specific tweets increase the daily abnormal trading volume and volatility of a company’s stock by 19%, regardless of tweet sentiment. For abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume, the effects of President Trump’s tweets do not last multiple days after a tweet. However, …

The Crowbar Sabotaged The Machine: Effects Of Verb Intentionality And Syntactic Structure On Fixation Times During Reading, Michael Pittman

Honors Theses

Research conducted by linguists has indicated that inanimate entities are incompatible with verbs that connote intentionality because inanimate entities lack the facilities to complete intentional actions. However, there are currently no studies that have analyzed this inappropriate relationship in real-time. To address this gap, the current eye-tracking experiment investigated the infelicitous nature of this relationship, as well as how it may be modulated by different syntactic structures. The experiment implemented a 2 x 2 within-subjects design, in which the independent variables were verb type (neutral versus intentional) and syntactic structure (main clause versus relative clause), and the dependent variables were …

The Rawlsian Mirror Of Justice, Jessica Flanigan

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Libertarians(like me) generally disagree with orthodox Rawlsians (like Samuel Freeman) about whether Rawlsian principles of distributive justice are compatible with libertarianism.¹In this essay, I set out to explain why. In section 1, I describe the problem, which is essentially that libertarians think the Rawlsian framework does not rule out anti-statist, capitalist, and broadly libertarian approaches to distributive justice and orthodox Rawlsians think that it does. I propose that this problem arises because the Rawlsian framework is underspecified in two ways. First, the Rawlsian framework has a lot of moving parts, so people with different pre-theoretical intuitions can use …

Profitability And Corporate Social Responsibility, Alexander Kirk

Honors Theses

This project examines the relationship between net margins and measures of corporate social responsibility for the companies in the S&P 500 index. This is conducted through linear regressions of overall, environmental, social, and governance scores on net margin percentages for firms from their annual 10-K reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The corporate social responsibility measures were taken from Sustainalytics via Yahoo Finance and combined with dummy variables for Global Industry Classification Standard sectors. Results indicate very limited role in corporate social responsibility measures for predicting net margins, instead favoring sector specific variables as driving net margins to …

Internal Migration Of Foreign-Born In Us: Impacts Of Population Concentration And Risk Aversion, Thin Yee Mon Su

Honors Theses

Internal migration in the US has been declining since the 1990s and research has mostly focused on labor market dynamics and aging population to explain the migration trends. This paper analyzes migration patterns of foreign-born groups in the US from 2000 to 2019. Along with the migration determinants such as education and employment, the paper focuses on population concentration as a factor that shapes foreign-born decisions to relocate in the US. Population concertation is defined to be a measure of how geographically concentrated each foreign-born group is across the US. I find that the likelihood of migrating to another state …

Landscapes Of War Permanently Altered Topography Is One Of The Casualties Of War, But Battlefields Can Also Be Of "Collateral Value", Todd R. Lookingbill, Peter D. Smallwood

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

But the rationale for creating battlefield parks has changed over the past 100 years, as have attitudes about battlefield conservation with a related emphasis on the physical landscapes themselves, leading to their management for multiple, layered assets through principles of constructive conservation. Existing battlefield parks provide perhaps the longest-standing examples of the evolution of landscapes of war toward generators of multiple ecosystem benefits. Moving from battlefield parks that, in some cases, have not seen warfare for hundreds of years, we examined landscapes of more recent conflict and considered the future collateral values that could be attained by establishing parks at …

The Relationship Between Nature, Media Use And Psychosocial Well Being In A College Population, Eve Gilles

Honors Theses

Time in nature is associated with a variety of mental, physical and emotional health benefits while the effects of media use on psychosocial well being are unclear. Although our society is increasingly urbanized and technology-focused, there is a lack of research examining the relationship between nature, media and psychosocial well-being. The aim of this research was to explore these variables in a college-age population. Method: 82 participants participated in a survey using measures of Psychosocial Well Being, Media Use and Nature Connection and Exposure. Results: Media use partially mediates the relationship between nature relatedness and social anxiety. Conclusions: There is …

Associations Between Hookup Culture And Social Group, Ross Abrash

Honors Theses

Differences in hookup culture and behavior were examined across different social groups at the University of Richmond. Specifically, I examined the difference between Greek life members, varsity athletes, and the general student population. The sample consisted of 174 students (123 females, 51 males) from the University of Richmond. The sample was 33.3% Greek life, 25.9% varsity athletes, and 40.8% general student population. I distributed a web-based survey for participants to complete in a quiet place of their choosing. Fraternity members, sorority members, and male athletes scored higher than the comparison group on a measure of personal attitudes towards hooking up. …

Liking And Listening: Impression Formation And Information Processing In Presidential Debates, Lauren Haviland O'Brien

Honors Theses

Ninety-three undergraduate students at the University of Richmond were asked to watch, listen to, or read a transcript of the opening statements from the first presidential debate of the Election of 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Afterwards, participants were asked to recall three notable moments in the debate, both list and identify quotes from each Candidate, and indicate their impressions of each Candidate’s personality. The purpose of my research was twofold: to revisit Dr. James Druckman’s renowned experiment on the first presidential debate of 1960 that concluded that Kennedy won on television and Nixon won on …

Gratitude, Resilience And Post-Traumatic Growth Among Kidney Transplant Recipients, Lillie Credle

Honors Theses

Chronic health conditions, such as end-stage renal disease (ESRD), can produce detrimental physical, psychological, and emotional effects (Schulz & Kroencke, 2015). While transplantation helps to alleviate the physical symptoms, other psychosocial problems can remain. The present study sought to investigate whether organ transplant recipients utilize certain strength-based attributes—gratitude, resilience, and post-traumatic growth—when coping with life post-transplant. This mixed-methods study recruited eight (N=8) kidney transplant recipients, who took part in semi-structured interviews followed by a survey. Though quantitative data was limited due to COVID-19 interruptions, the qualitative data revealed evidence of gratitude, resilience, and post-traumatic growth being used by the participants …

“Smile For Me, Sweetie!”: An Analysis Of Contemporary Gender Based Violence And Discrimination In The Bahamas, Jennifer Munnings

Honors Theses

Women in the Bahamas face various forms of pervasive sexist discrimination and high rates of gender-based violence. However, recent governmental initiatives aimed at addressing gender inequality have not proven effective. The narrow focus on individual reforms like anti-crime measures to curb structural violence highlights a lack of understanding of gender inequality as embedded within social institutions. To interrogate the institutionalized nature of gender inequality in the Bahamas, the present study draws on in-depth interviews with seven Bahamian women’s rights activists to explore the social, cultural, and political explanations for the persistence of gender-based violence and discrimination. Three major themes emerged …

Storytelling For Fundraising: Assessing The Impact Of Personal Stories On Donation Behavior, Kate A. Mccarthy

Honors Theses

In fundraising, some nonprofits have sought to channel the power of personal stories by including them in appeal letters. Are stories an effective tool in soliciting donations? In this study, participants read one of three appeals from an unnamed abortion fund. Two conditions contained a personal story, either an “unapologetic” or a “uncontroversial” narrative, about a woman who underwent an abortion; one condition did not include a story. Participants were then asked questions regarding the appeal and the organization before being given a “bonus” dollar, and offered the option of donating a portion of that to an abortion fund. Results …

Estimating Value-At-Risk Of An Unconventional Portfolio, Elizabeth N. Mejía-Ricart

Honors Theses

Since the 2008 financial crisis, interest rates and bond yields have been low all through the recovery and expansion that followed, and they are still low. As a result, more investors have been attracted to US equities, a space of possibly higher returns. However, these returns come with a potential downside: risk of loss. One of the methods to assess this potential downside is value-at-risk (VaR), which gained momentum in the late 1990s. At the time, the market risk amendment to the 1988 Basle Capital Accord required commercial banks with significant trading activities to put aside capital to cover market …