This dissertation consists of three essays. Each one seeks to add in the understanding, in a small way, of the factors that contribute to the development of societies. The first chapter explores the decisive facts of technological advancements and the ability of trade to shape incentives to create new techniques destined for the open markets. The second chapter examines the electoral consequence of having a conservative biased source of information and its effects on the desired ideology of representatives. The third explores how using violence, illegal groups can reach their population control goals in their territories. These three chapters seek to answer history, and power relations between different groups determine societies' paths. In the first chapter, I study how access to international markets affects the direction of technical change. I use a historical trade shock that transformed the Spanish textile industry at the end of the 19th century. After Spain effectively forced its colonies to buy manufactured cotton goods in 1891, I document an increase in cotton textile innovation relative to other fabrics. After the colonies' independence in 1898, the difference in textile innovation between cotton and different fabric remained significant. This shows that innovation exhibits a path dependence even without the initial conditions that motivated the increase. I provide price evidence of the strength of the technical change indicating that the rise in relative prices of cotton fabrics boosted the rise in cotton innovation. Together, these results provide some of the first causal evidence on how international trade and foreign markets shape the direction of the technical change. Even more, I show that innovation is possible in peripherical countries. Conditions outside the technological leaders determined the incentives of local innovators to develop technologies needed for those local conditions. In chapter 2, written with Haaris Mateen, we study how the introduction of a biased local TV operator affects electoral results. We use Sinclair Broadcasting Group's (SBG) staggered expansion over 2012 and 2017. This is the largest TV operator in the United States and is known for its conservative slant. We find that in areas exposed to SBG biased news coverage in local TV stations the electoral results experienced changes compared to places where the company did not penetrate. First, we find that penetration of SBG decreased the likelihood of a third-party candidate in the House of Representatives elections yet increased the probability of having a republican candidate as the winner of the seat. On the other hand, in the presidential elections after SBG penetration, the republican party was harmed, and its candidate received fewer votes, thanks to an increase in the voting of third parties. Second, when analyzing the ideology of the winner of the local election, we document a movement to the right, partially motivated by an increase in the probability of electing a conservative republican as representative. Finally, when looking at the mechanism that explains these effects, we find no movements on the democrat candidates but changes towards the right on republican candidates. In those areas affected by SBG, the republican candidate had a more significant likelihood to be conservative and not moderate. Evermore, those republican candidates had an increase in the donations coming from PACs. Together, these results prove that media have differential impacts on the election. It can affect beyond the voters' preferences, and it also affects the decision of which type of candidates run on local electoral races. In chapter 3, together with Diego Martin, we study how non-state actors enforce stay-at-home orders to reduce COVID-19 cases. We argue that Colombian-illegal groups used massacres to enforce social distance rules. Massacres are attacks killing at least three defenseless civilians in one operation. We estimate the effect of those violent events using a synthetic control method. To rule out the channel of massacres for other reasons such as coca production, we compare sub-regions with low conflict before the pandemic and where coca is not suitable for growth. We find that places with massacres reduced the pandemic outbreak by 70 cases per 100.000 inhabitants per week after the second month. We show that the principal channel that explains our results is a reduction on mobility indexes. The first massacre decreased infection levels by reducing individuals' mobility at workplaces. Finally, we show that young population groups experienced the earliest reduction in infection rates, while the old group has the highest decline in infection rates after massacres.

The racial composition of elected officials in the United States has significantly diversified in recent decades. Nevertheless, the proportion of candidates of color still fall far short of the underlying voter population, particularly as the minority demographic continues to grow at a rapid pace. To explain the source of racial disparity in government, scholars have long examined various political opportunity structures under which minority candidates arise, suggesting that whether candidates of color emerge or not is a strategic matter: minority candidates enter politics when they perceive high electoral viability, which they estimate using information such as the racial composition of a district and prior electoral success of co-ethnic candidates. However, absent from this scholarship is a comprehensive understanding of how minority individuals enter the emergence process in the first place and how the factors that advance them through the pipeline to power evolve over time. This dissertation investigates the process by which racial minorities decide to enter politics, examining the entire pipeline to power from developing an initial interest in running for office to officially becoming a candidate. First, I examine political ambition among the general American public, focusing on the racial differences in the development of political ambition and the factors uniquely influencing ordinary minority voters' entry decisions. Through an online survey on a sample of ordinary American voters, post-stratified to be representative of each racial population, I find that factors commonly used to predict political ambition, such as encouragement from personal or political sources, political efficacy, and community participation, operate differently between minority respondents and their white counterparts as well as across different racial groups. A conjoint experiment designed to examine entry decisions among ordinary minority voters both confirms existing theories and offers a new insight. I find that the perceived electoral viability is higher in electoral districts with larger share of co-ethnic populations, which aligns with conventional wisdom that minority population is often used to gauge the primary voter base among minority candidates. Furthermore, I find that among politically ambitious minority respondents, perceived electoral viability is higher when an incumbent shares the respondent's ethnicity. However, this effect is reduced when both the incumbent and the challenger share the same ethnicity, indicating that minority status is no longer a comparative electoral advantage. Second, in two field experiments embedded in real-world candidate recruitment efforts, I investigate the relative influence of intrinsic and extrinsic appeals on developing nascent interest in running for office. I find that intrinsic motivation to run, such as a desire to bring about social change, increases not only the immediate information-seeking behavior but also a longer-term commitment to candidacy, including applying to and attending a campaign training program. On the other hand, extrinsic appeals intended to increase the perceived likelihood of winning generate a significantly smaller effect on the immediate consideration of political candidacy while exerting a modest amount of influence on the longer-term commitment. Third, through a conjoint experiment on minority individuals situated at different stages of the emergence process, I study how the motivation to run evolves as they progress through their political journey. I find modest evidence of a shift in priority, from intrinsic to extrinsic, as minority individuals advance through the pipeline to power. Specifically, those with low levels of political ambition prefer to run in districts that have undergone a surge in violence targeted toward co-ethnic groups. In contrast, those with a high level of political ambition prefer districts with a substantial share of their co-ethnic population. Fourth, I examine how both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to run play out in real-world elections. Leveraging city-level exposure to police brutality, I find that the share of Black candidates running in municipal elections increases in cities after a fatal police shooting of a Black resident, suggesting that racial violence politicizes group consciousness among the Black community, which, in turn, influences their desire to enter politics. However, exploring individual cases of who those candidates are and when they appear on a ballot reveals that Black candidates emerge for both intrinsic and strategic reasons: political veterans emerge immediately after the incident as they take advantage of increased minority voter turnout and open seats, whereas political newcomers arise several years later as they require more resources. The empirical findings challenge the conventional wisdom that attributes minority under-representation to strategic calculations alone. Instead, they highlight the importance of examining both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations at each stage of the emergence process to fully understand why racial minorities run for office. In doing so, this research offers new insights into the nuanced dynamics of minority candidate emergence and, in turn, minority representation in the United States.