This paper estimates how short-term changes in police presence affect crime using a high-resolution patrol-car location database for Dallas in 2009. The analysis exploits routine patrol behavior to isolate causal effects of police absence on local crime.
Territorial autonomy is widely promoted to protect peace in multi-ethnic states, but cross-national evidence on its effects at the subnational level is limited. Growing concern exists that autonomy might simply redirect ethnic violence from the national to the subnational arena.
Does height affect voting behavior beyond income? This study explores how height serves as a useful proxy for economic status. Using data from the British Household Panel Study, researchers find taller individuals are more likely to vote Conservative and support conservative policies. A seemingly modest one-inch increase in height corresponds with a 0.6% higher probability of supporting Conservatives.
Recent scholarship links pre-modern political practices to long-run institutional outcomes. This study identifies a distinct channel: the legacy of early statehood shapes ordinary Africans' attitudes, increasing support for autocratic rule rather than only affecting institutions themselves. Using survey data from Africa, a positive relationship is documented between early statehood development and popular support for autocratic government.
New research reveals physical barriers, intended as tools of immigration enforcement (state repression), actually increase refugee flows rather than reducing migration. Using a global directed dyad-year dataset covering 1990-2016, we find that barriers create a 'sunk costs' problem affecting people's status movement from migrant to refugee. This backfire effect occurs because enforcement discourages return and thus encourages seeking asylum.
Low education levels predict anti-immigration sentiment. But is this a cause or just selection bias?
The forced return of migrants with criminal records can transmit crime across borders. This study quantifies how US deportations of convicts affect violent crime in migrants’ countries of origin.
This study asks how international intervention affects the rule of law after civil war in Liberia. Rule of law is defined to require both that state authorities obey legal limits and that citizens rely on state laws and institutions to resolve disputes.
Did high-yield seeds help opposition parties gain power? This paper examines how agricultural technology influenced political representation - specifically weakened single-party dominance through strengthening excluded farmers.
Introduces an instrumental variables (IV) framework to study how external factors that change survey response rates can also alter the composition of respondents. The approach is intended to help evaluate survey representativeness and to assess whether conventional corrections for nonresponse bias (such as weighting) actually correct composition shifts.
Political scientists often convert treatments with multiple intensities (for example, years of schooling) into coarser measures (for example, a binary indicator for completing high school). This common choice can substantially upwardly bias instrumental variable (IV) estimates by subtly violating the exclusion restriction, producing misleading causal inferences.