Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Globalization Of Natural Resources: How External Actors Affect Political Survival In Resource Rich Countries, Chia-Yi Lee

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This dissertation examines the effect of external actors, including foreign investors, the home governments of foreign investors, and international organizations: IOs), on leadership survival in resource rich countries. According to the existing literature, resource rich countries care less about external reputation and have a higher level of political risks for foreign investors, so, theoretically, they would tend to nationalize the resource sectors, especially in the presence of resource nationalism. In reality, however, resource rich countries cooperate closely with foreign actors and join IOs that constrain themselves. This dissertation provides a theory to explain this puzzle, by modeling the interaction among …

Art, Ideology, And Politics At El Achiotal: A Late Preclassic Frontier Site In Northwestern Petén, Guatemala, Mary Jane Acuña

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This dissertation focuses on the study of a pyramidal mound housing multiple construction phases spanning the Late Preclassic Period: ca. 400 BCE - 250 CE) at the ancient Maya site of El Achiotal, in northwestern Guatemala. The foundation for my arguments relies principally on the documentation and analysis of archaeological materials and iconographic programs, primarily associated with two construction phases in the sequence, Structure 5C-01-sub 4 and -sub 2. The theoretical frame of reference I employ is that of early states, emphasizing archaeological variables used to study the processes and structure of complexity and the institutions forming the Late Preclassic …

The Relationship Between Household Economic Resources And Youth Academic Performance In Ghana: A Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling, David Ansong

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The Government of Ghana recognizes the importance of education for improving the socioeconomic well-being of young Ghanaians and the development of the nation. Education currently accounts for the largest share: 31%) of Ghana's national budget: GNA, 2012). Educational reforms and investments have had remarkable success in improving access to education up to the Junior High School: JHS) level, but progression beyond JHS remains a challenge. More than half of JHS graduates do not gain admission into Senior High School: SHS) because of poor academic performance and the inability of those who qualify to afford the drastic increase in educational costs. …

Combining Attentional Control And Semantic Memory Retrieval: A Sensitive Marker For Early Stage Ad And Ad-Related Biomarkers In Healthy Older Adults, Andrew Jacob Aschenbrenner

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Past studies have shown that measures of attentional control and semantic memory retrieval are sensitive markers of Alzheimer disease: AD). The present study examined the utility of combining measures of attentional control and semantic retrieval within a single task to discriminate healthy aging from early stage AD and show sensitivity to AD biomarkers in healthy control individuals. On each trial of the present task, participants viewed a category: e.g. “a unit of time”) and verified whether a subsequent target item was an exemplar of the category: “hour”) or not: “clock”). Importantly, the nonmembers of the category were associatively related: e.g., …

The Effect Of Age-Related Declines In Inhibitory Control On Audiovisual Speech Intelligibility, Avanti Dey

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Audiovisual: AV) speech perception is perception in which both auditory and visual information is available in order to understand a talker, compared to an auditory signal alone, during face-to-face communication. This form of communication yields significantly higher word recognition performance as compared to either sensory modality alone, constituting a general AV advantage for speech perception. Despite an overall AV advantage, older adults seem to receive less benefit from this bimodal presentation than do younger adults. However, there is evidence to suggest that not all age-related deficits in AV speech perception are of a sensory nature, but are also influenced by …

Tests, Tests, And More Tests: A New Era For Dementia Diagnosis, Jonathan Gooblar

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Cerebrospinal fluid: CSF) proteins correlate with pathological changes that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease: AD). CSF biomarkers have been used in research settings to predict AD diagnosis and rate of cognitive decline, however their use in clinical settings is limited. Given their potential utility in identifying preclinical AD and in increasing diagnostic confidence in clinical settings, we sought to understand how clinicians use CSF biomarkers in conjunction with other clinical details to diagnose AD. Participants: N = 193) were physicians and other medical professionals who routinely evaluate older adults for neurodegenerative disease. In a within-subjects factorial design, participants were randomized …

Personality Accounts For The Connection Between Volunteering And Health, Hannah Rose King

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No abstract provided.

Emotion Versus Motivation: Probing Dissociable Effects On Cognitive Control Through Task Performance, Pupillometry Methods, And Individual Differences, Kimberly Sarah Chiew

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It is becoming increasingly appreciated that affective influences can contribute strongly to goal-oriented cognition and behaviour. However, much work is still needed to properly characterize these influences and the mechanisms by which they contribute to cognitive processing. An important question concerns the nature of emotional manipulations: i.e., direct induction of affectively valenced subjective experience) versus motivational manipulations: e.g., delivery of performance-contingent rewards and punishments) and their impact on cognitive control. Given previous empirical evidence suggesting that positive emotion may enhance cognitive flexibility and reactive control, while performance-contingent rewards may enhance goal maintenance and proactive control, we sought to directly compare …

Adolescent Male Perpetrators Of Rape In The General Population And Their Young Adult Outcomes, Karen Matta Oshima

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The Centers for Disease Control: CDC) estimated that 10.6 % of adult women and 2.1% of adult men were sexually assaulted in their lifetimes: Basile, Chen, Black, & Saltzman, 2007). Approximately 16% of single offender sexual assaults and rapes and nearly 32% of multiple offender sexual assault and rapes were perpetrated by adolescents and young adults in 2007: Maston & Klaus, 2010). Researchers estimated sexually violent behavior among adolescent males in the general population at rates of 2.2 to 10%: Ageton, 1983; Banyard, Cross, & Modecki, 2006; Borowsky, Hogan, & Ireland, 1997).

Despite the scope of the problem, there is …

Frequent False Hearing By Older Adults: The Effects Of Predictive Context In Speech Perception, John Ryan Morton

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No abstract provided.

Insulin, Central Dopamine D2 Receptors, And Monetary Reward Discounting In Obesity, Danuta M. Gredysa

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No abstract provided.

The Space To Lead, Mack A. Bradley

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No abstract provided.

The Curse Of Windfall Income: How Foreign Aid And Natural Resource Dependence Constrains Growth, Adams Bailey Nager

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Literature exists on two ‘curses,’ the natural resource curse and the curse of foreign aid, which limit growth in developing nations. At their core, both the natural resources curse and the curse of aid derive from the same root cause- the curse of windfall income. The windfall curse is a macroeconomic side-effect that negates the positive effects of unearned capital by raising domestic prices and lowering competitiveness. While windfall income creates growth in a countries service sector, it represses growth in the manufacturing sector. These trends help explain the inability of both foreign aid and natural resources to fuel sustained …

Towards A Greater Understanding Of The Antecedents Of Dehumanization: A Contempt-Dehumanization Framework, Fade Rimon Eadeh

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Although dehumanization has been studied in a variety of conceptual and methodological paradigms, surprisingly little is known about the role of affect as a mediator of the dehumanization process. In this paper we propose and test a contempt-dehumanization model, which stipulates that, the effect of severe norm violations on dehumanization is indirect, as mediated by contempt: norm violation ! contempt ! dehumanization). Across three studies we provide consistent support for this model in the realm of extremely immoral acts committed by drug dealers who intentionally target young children: Experiments 1 and 3) as well as unscrupulous Wall Street businessmen who …

The Impact Of The Built Environment And At-Home Calorie Consumption On Family-Based Behavioral Weight Loss Treatment Outcomes, Myra Altman

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No abstract provided.

The Spatial And Temporal Ecology Of Seed Dispersal By Gorillas In Lopé National Park, Gabon: Linking Patterns Of Disperser Behavior And Recruitment In An Afrotropical Forest, Marc Steven Fourrier

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Western lowland gorillas: Gorilla g. gorilla) consume large quantities of fruit and disperse a great number of seeds. The majority these seeds are dispersed intact and viable in the dung. Dung is often deposited around the rim of a night nest or at a nest-site. Gorillas often construct nests in areas that have a sparse canopy, flattening the ground vegetation. These locations can be beneficial to the growth and survival of the seed species they disperse. Thus, not only are gorillas effective in terms of depositing seeds great distances from parent plants, away from the highest seed rain densities, they …

Botanical Resource Use In The Bronze And Iron Age Of The Central Eurasian Mountain/Steppe Interface: Decision Making In Multiresource Pastoral Economies, Robert Nicholas Spengler

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This dissertation examines botanical resources as components of Central Asian economies in the Bronze: ca. 2500 - 800 B.C.) and Iron Ages: ca. 800 B.C. - A.D. 500) using a paleoethnobotanical data set from four archaeological sites, Begash, Mukri, Tasbas, and Tuzusai. These sites are located in the Semirech'ye region of eastern Kazakhstan, and they occupy distinctive microenvironmental zones along the mountain and steppe boundaries; furthermore, they show a great deal of material cultural similarity and are placed into the same culture groups by researchers. The introduction of macrobotanical studies to Central Asian archaeology allows for a critique of former …

Spying: A Normative Account Of The Second Oldest Profession, Ronald E. Watson

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My dissertation attends to the urgent ethical problems raised by government spying. It asks and answers three principal questions: What is spying? What principles should regulate government spying? And how can government agents be constrained to follow these principles?

The first chapter takes up the conceptual question. I defend the following definition of spying: agent A spies on agent B, if and only if she collects information that relates to B and intends to conceal her information collection from B. The main challenge any conception of spying faces is to cover a relatively wide range of agents often thought to …

The Long-Term Costs Of Caring: How Caring For An Aging Parent Impacts Wealth Trajectories Of Caregivers, Jennifer Crane Greenfield

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Long-term care in the U.S. is a growing concern as our aging population exerts pressure on formal and informal care systems. Public expenditures on formal care are increasing rapidly, even as reliance on informal caregivers expands. Recent policy innovations are shifting Medicaid and Medicare funding toward home- and community-based services: HCBS) as an alternative to nursing home care. This may help reduce overall LTC care costs to states and the federal government, but it also shifts more responsibility to families and informal care networks. Not only can caregiving have negative impacts on the physical and mental health of caregivers, but …

Moving Targets: Meanings Of Mobility In Metropolitan Nairobi, Meghan Elizabeth Ference

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This dissertation is an ethnographic and historical study of the urban transportation system in Nairobi, Kenya and the large youth workforce who operate it. Currently, the informal mini-bus taxi system made up of vehicles called matatus, carries nearly 80% of the urban population in Nairobi on a daily basis. It is, by far, the most popular form of transportation in the country and employs the largest number of young people, as well. This type of transportation is not unique to African countries as mini-bus: 14-32 passengers) and midi-bus: 32-48 passengers) taxis are common in Turkey, Jamaica, Philippines, Russia and Chile …

Essays On Applied Economic Theory, Haibo Xu

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Essay 1: A Model of Dynamic Information Disclosure

We study a dynamic game in which a financial expert seeks to optimize the utilization of her private information either by information disclosure to an investor or by self-using. The investor may be aligned or biased: an aligned investor always cooperates on the disclosed information, whereas a biased investor may strategically betray the expert. We characterize the joint dynamics of the expert's information disclosure and the investor's type revelation and show that, by the process of gradual information disclosure, the expert can significantly alleviate the hold-up effect exerted by the biased investor. …

Essays On Price Dynamics And Market Selection, Filippo Massari

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This paper analyzes and characterizes the dynamics of wealth-share and equilibrium price in a stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous consumers. The characterization enables a comparison between probabilistic learning and price evolution, revealing that prices incorporate "sparse" information efficiently. Results on wealth-share are obtained by comparing traders' optimal investment-consumption plans against their prices. This novel approach extends recent results in the literature by providing a condition that is necessary as well as sufficient for a trader to vanish. The results are applied to survival in iid, survival in large economies, and survival of traders that follow strategies commonly observed in …

The Biomechanics Of Spear Throwing: An Analysis Of The Effects Of Anatomical Variation On Throwing Performance, With Implications For The Fossil Record, Julia Marie Maki

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Accurate, high velocity throwing is a skill unique to humans among living species. It likely provided an adaptive advantage for our hominin ancestors, either in the context of hunting, or protection from predators. Thus, understanding how variation in body form and anatomy influences throwing ability may provide insight into the evolution of human morphology. Research has been done on various forms of ball and javelin throwing, yet the biomechanics of spear throwing were completely unknown. Moreover, it has been suggested that early modern humans had lesser effective mechanical advantage: EMA, the ratio of moment arm to load arm) than Neandertals, …

Essays On Political Economy, Gustavo Federico Torrens

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“Essays on Political Economy” explores the connections between politics and economics in several different contexts. By politics, or more precisely the political game, I mean the social procedures through which collective decisions are made. By economics I mean the economic game once collective decisions have already been selected. Of particular interest are the preferences about collective decisions among agents induced by the economic game. Some of the political institutions for selecting public policies can be easily changed and, hence, should be treated themselves as endogenous collective decisions. Others are very robust. I will refer to the later group as the …

Growing Up Tamarin: Morphology, Reproduction, And Population Demography Of Sympatric Free-Ranging Saguinus Fuscicollis And S. Imperator, Mrinalini Watsa

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The Callitrichidae are family of small New World primates with a suite of distinctive morphological and behavioral adaptations that set them apart from other primates. Of primary interest is their reproductive system that includes compulsive twinning: ≥80% of births) and cooperative care of offspring by individuals other than biological parents: termed alloparenting). Further, hematopoietic tissues in callitrichids display signals of both self and sibling DNA, due to an exchange of stem cells early in gestation that renders twin callitrichids as cellular mosaics of each other. This phenomenon is known as genetic chimerism, which increases genetic relatedness between individuals and is …

The Emotional Logic Of Participation In Intergroup Violence, Christopher Bruce Phillips Claassen

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Existing theories of intergroup violence focus on the motives of group or leaders. But why do thousands of people choose to take part given the dangers and risks? This dissertation develops a model, the entitlement-blame-anger model, to explain participation in intergroup violence. According to this model, participation is motivated by emotional reactions of intergroup anger. Anger is useful in this respect because it shapes both the preference for confrontation and beliefs about the risks of taking part. Intergroup anger, in turn, is triggered by appraisals that the outgroup are to blame for some harm suffered by the ingroup. Blame and …

Mental Health Service Utilization Among African American Emerging Adults, Sha-Lai Williams

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Mental illness affects 25-30% of US adults ages 18 years and older in a given year. Of those individuals, about 41% fail to utilize mental health services. Research indicates that being African American and between the ages of 18 and 29 are associated with decreased rates of service utilization. Yet, less is known about the factors related to mental health service utilization among a specific subset of these groups, namely, African American emerging adults. Using empirically-tested theoretical frameworks as its foundation, this dissertation study aimed to address this gap in literature by examining specific predisposing, enabling, and need factors: e.g., …

Essays On Nonlinearities And Structural Breaks In The Relationships Between Macroeconomic Variables, Irina B. Panovska

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The dissertation is set out in three chapters, focusing on the structural changes that led to jobless recoveries in following the past three recessions, the asymmetric effects of fiscal stimulus over the business cycle, and the asymmetric effects of fiscal cuts and stimulus respectively. In the first chapter, I examine the three leading theoretical explanations for the recent jobless recoveries using a correlated unobserved components model of aggregate data for output, sales, employment, and hours. The main finding is that employment now respond to demand shocks in a way that is consistent with just-in-time utilization of labor resources. The second …

The Role Of The U.S. Courts Of Appeals In Legal Development: An Empirical Analysis, Rachael K. Hinkle

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What are the causes and consequences of legal development? In recent years courts scholars have begun to address these broad and challenging questions, yet there is still much work to be done. The intermediate level of the federal court system: a.k.a., circuit courts) provides an institutional context replete with opportunities to extend our theoretical and empirical understanding of legal development. My dissertation takes advantage of these opportunities in three ways. First, I explore legal constraint by comparing citation to and treatment of circuit court precedents. A precedent is binding in its own circuit, but merely persuasive in other circuits. Consequently, …

Explaining Subnational Variation In Voter Coordination And Party Entry In Electoral Competition, Joshua David Potter

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This dissertation focuses on electoral politics in a comparative perspective, specifically subnational variation in strategic party entry and strategic voter coordination. The dissertation studies how within-country variation both in the demographic composition of electoral districts and also in the supply-side composition of ballots can impact: where parties choose to contest elections, which and how many parties are successful, and why some voters in a country might not have the option of casting a ballot for all parties on election day. The first and third papers concentrate specifically on the supply side of electoral competition and demonstrate under what circumstances parties …