Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-98). / by John Kim. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-120). / by Li-Lan Cheng. / Ph.D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics. Thesis. 1968. Ph.D. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 227-229. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Christopher M. Snyder. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1983. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY / Includes bibliographies. / by Amitava Krishna Dutt. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Donald B. Marron. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Deborah Lynne Swenson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-182). / This dissertation consists of three chapters on topics relating to conflict, social cooperation and development economics. Several studies have identified the impact of adverse economic shocks on civil conflict using rainfall variation as an instrument for income or growth. The first chapter contributes to this literature by carrying out a micro-level analysis on the relationship between climate and resource variation with armed conflict using a novel dataset on inter-tribal violence manifested through livestock raids in a pastoral-dependent region of East African called the Karamoja. Consistent with previous work, I find that across the region there is a negative relationship between resources and conflict, when resources are measured with forage. However, I also find that both decreases and increases in rainfall are correlated with conflict across the region. This bimodal relationship between precipitation and conflict persists when I analyse raid-location and tribe specific variation in rainfall, while the relationship between forage and raiding is less clear. There is some indication that forage-scarcity motivates tribes to carry out raids and forage-scarce sublocations appear to be more vulnerable to raids and livestock losses, but these results are not robust to all specifications. In the second chapter, I study the effect of Uganda's 2006 disarmament policy in the Karamoja region in East Africa. The disarmament policy greatly reduced the guns of tribes in the Ugandan districts of the region but not in the Kenyan districts. The theoretical impact of the disarmament is ambiguous, however, since guns can be used for deterrence as well as helping aggressors carry out violent crimes, such as livestock raiding. Empirically, I find that the disarmament campaign had the unintended effect of increasing the frequency of raids in Uganda by about 40%, while, consistent with the idea that disarmament reduced the costs of raiding, I find no impact on the monthly death rate. Moreover, the increase in raids in Uganda was driven by an increase in Ugandan initiated raids on other Ugandans, not an increase in Kenyan initiated raids on Ugandans, suggesting that within Uganda the deterrent effect of guns outweighs their impact as a tool of aggression. In the third chapter, written jointly with Johannes Haushofer, we study the impact of stress on social behavior by exogenously stimulating the two biological systems associated with stress: the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) and noradrenergic (NA) system and measuring behavior in interactive tasks in a laboratory experiment. Our preliminary findings suggest that the concurrent stimulation of both systems, through the administration of 60mg of hydrocortisone and 20mg of yohimbine, did not lead to statistically detectable changes to behavior in any of the social tasks. It did, however, manifest in lower opinions of the trustworthiness and fairness of other people, as well as a decrease in the value associated with helping other people, as measured through a visual analog scale survey. Given these initial results, we find preliminary evidence for a relationship between stress and anti-social behavior as revealed through lower beliefs on social standards. JEL Classification: C91, K42, Q56 / by Laura R. Ralston. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1984. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Bibliography: leaves 197-200. / by James Arthur Berkovec. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. / (cont.) the release of information until the long-term results of the firm are realized. In equilibrium, when the belief about the aggregate state is high, managers will be given short-term incentives, delaying the release of information. When the belief about the aggregate state is low, long-term incentives will be prevalent and information will be released without delay. This produces asymmetric learning dynamics for the economy, with gradual booms and rapid recessions. In a boom the belief about the aggregate state increases, information is pushed off into the future, and learning is slow. In a recession the belief is falling, triggering a switch to long-term incentives, that brings forward the release of information and accelerates learning. Chapter 2 presents a model of corporate misreporting in an environment where investors have heterogeneous beliefs and short sale constraints. The disagreement between investors provides a motive for agents who start a firm to limit the amount of information which it releases to the public so as to sponsor speculation over its value. This incentive to limit information is stronger when the heterogeneity of beliefs among investors is stronger. Investors also learn about a firm's expected profitability from the information released by other firms in the industry. I show that this creates a strategic complementarily in the precision of information released by each firm. This can give rise to multiple equilibria: one in which all firms release precise reports and one in which their reports are inaccurate ... / This thesis consists of three essays at the intersection of macroeconomics, corporate finance, and social learning. The underlying theme which links these three chapters is the study of private incentives to gather and release information and their impact upon the way society learns as a whole. Chapters 1 and 2 focus upon the incentives within a firm to distort the way a firm's performance is perceived publicly. Chapter 1 focuses upon the case of a manager whose incentives encourage her to take actions which distort the observed performance of the firm. In that context the firm's owners tolerate distortions so as to gain from high powered incentives. In chapter 2 I argue that the owners of a firm may have it in their interest to distort the information a firm releases so as to create uncertainty and thereby sponsor speculation on the value of the firm. Chapter 3 considers a scenario where an intelligence agency relies upon the information provided by citizens not under their direct control. A common feature of each chapter is that private decisions about information release are made without considering their full social value. Turning to specifics, Chapter 1 presents a theory of gradual booms and rapid recessions that is motivated by the experience of the US economy over the last decade. The dynamics of the economy are driven by the speed at which agents learn about the unobserved aggregate state. Agents learn from the observed performance of firms. Each firm is controlled by a manager whose compensation is based upon the observed performance of their firm. If a manager is given short-term incentives, she will try to hide weak short-term performance. This makes the short-term performance of a firm less informative for the aggregate state, delaying / by Andrew C.P. Hertzberg. / Ph.D.